Live Session Summary, Sunday, March 12, 2023: It was good to be with you today for our Live session on the ‘Spiral of Awakening.’ Here is a summary of the key points, quotes and poems from today’s session:
I shared the metaphor of a spiral to describe how we keep on revisiting and repeating unconscious or unexamined patterns of behavior that cause us suffering until we bring them into awareness and see what is causing this cycle of suffering (in Buddhism, this is clinging) and let go of clinging. When we let go, the spiral becomes a virtuous one—and we can move towards deeper levels of freedom and well-being.
I spoke about how we can understand this cycle of suffering in terms of habit formation and in terms of karma. Habits form when we repeat a behavior (or a pattern of thinking) often enough—e.g., putting on a seat belt when we get in a car. What typically begins with an intentional action that results in a ‘reward’—often a release of dopamine—with sufficient repetition will become automatic and unconscious. This is the brain’s way of being efficient and simplifying actions to save energy—so we don’t have to keep relearning basic behaviors and skills.
Once habits form, they are hard to change because they have become automatic and unconscious and are off our ‘radar screen.’ In order to free ourselves from unhelpful, unhealthy or unwanted habits, we need to bring the behavior—and the trigger that activates the behavior—into awareness. Then, we can choose a more helpful and healthy response.
Mindfulness, supported by self-compassion, is key to changing habits. (See quotes below from Frankl, Jung, and Emerson)
We can also look at the way we get caught up in suffering that leads to more suffering through the lens of karma. Karma is rooted in intention—it is the intention behind an action that matters and creates moral consequences: When we act based on a wise and kind intention—for example, an intention of kindness, good will, or generosity—it will have beneficial outcomes in terms of our inner well-being (and, often, in the world). When we act out of harmful intentions—an intention of ill-will, hatred, greed, or ignorance—our harmful intention will sow negative seeds for the future. Once we act in a beneficial or a harmful way, it creates a greater likelihood for us to act in that way in the future—we sow the seeds of well-being, or suffering, for the future.
The way we work to change harmful patterns of behavior and thought that cause us suffering is to bring them into awareness—and we can then make a more helpful choice of response. Mindfulness involves being willing to stay with unpleasantness, discomfort, or suffering that we’re trying to avoid or escape from through our unhelpful behaviors/habits—and that keeps us going round and round on what in Buddhist teachings is called the wheel of Samsara, or 'aimless wandering.’
Through mindfulness we can untangle the tangles of our life and live with ease and freedom. (See quotes below from Ajahn Chah and Mingyur Rinpoche)
Quotes:
• “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” (Viktor Frankl)
• “What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.” (Carl Jung)
• “There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.” (Ajahn Chah)
• “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.” (Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche)
• “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act(ion) and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Poems: “Clearing” by Martha Postlethwaite; and “There was a time I would reject those…” by Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi.
“Jata sutta: The Tangle”: A brahmin approached the Buddha and said,
“A tangle within, a tangle without, people everywhere are entangled in a tangle. Gotama, I ask you this: who can untangle this tangle?”
[The Buddha:] “A person established in integrity, developing discernment and mindfulness, ardent and clear, they can untangle this tangle. Those whose passions, aversions, and ignorance have faded away, for them the tangle’s untangled.”
It was wonderful to be with everyone today. Thank you for the kind birthday wishes! We're going out for a meal to celebrate this evening. 🎈I look forward to our next Live session on Sunday, March 19 at 9am Eastern. Have a lovely week! Warmly, Hugh 🌻 💜 🙏🏻
