Hugh Byrne summary - Jan 8, 2023

Live Session Summary, Sunday, January 8, 2023: It was good to be back with you today for our first Live session of 2023. Here is a summary of today’s theme, ‘The Paths of Wellness and Awakening’

I argued that while there are many different ways practitioners describe the goals and intentions of their practice, it’s possible to identify two broadly distinct goals of practicing mindfulness, meditation and related skills. The first is a goal of greater peace and ease in our life, a reduction in stress and worry, a better quality of life—what could be termed a path of wellness. The second goal, identified with the Buddha’s teachings on suffering and the end of suffering, can be called a path of awakening—pointing to the potential of realizing freedom from suffering through ending clinging.

We can see psychotherapy as within the first goal: Freud said, “… much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.” The practices of secular mindfulness—exemplified in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT,) and other secular mindfulness programs—while having their roots in Buddhist teachings, are also focused on reducing stress and anxiety and improving quality of life rather than seeking the goal of awakening. Other approaches to wellness or well-being that we will discuss also focus on greater ease and peace but don’t have as their goal ‘awakening’ or ‘the end of suffering.’ 

The Buddha’s path, on the other hand, grounded in teachings of the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, has as its goal the complete ending of suffering that results from letting go of clinging to anything as ‘I’ or ‘mine.’ 

We can see these goals and the paths that are connected with these goals as distinct—the first goal is focused on everyday well-being; the second on ending suffering completely. But we can also see them as on a continuum where the second path points to a loftier and more distant goal. We may see this sense of progression in the well-known statement of Thai forest meditation teacher Ajahn Chah, who said: “If you let go a little you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace. Your struggle with the world will be at an end.” 

We can see cultivating wellness as essential to moving towards the goal of awakening: if we are caught up in stress, worry, and burnout we will not be in a position to go more deeply into the practices of letting go. Reflecting on the relationship between therapy and other wellness practices, on one hand—of developing a more balanced, peaceful, and less-stressed version of our ‘self’—and, on the other, the loftier goal of enlightenment through letting go of any identification with a separate ‘self,’ spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, “Once you have become somebody, then you are ready to start the journey to becoming nobody.” 

The Buddha himself spoke of his teachings—whether directed towards laypeople with many day-to-day worldly responsibilities, or monastics, who have chosen to focus their lives on awakening—as having ‘one taste,” the taste of freedom: “Just as the great ocean has one taste—the taste of salt—so also this teaching and discipline has one taste—the taste of liberation.”

Another helpful way we can look at these two paths is through the metaphor of a spiral—where the same patterns keep coming round again and revisiting us. For example, where we keep playing out the same patterns in relationships and having the same negative outcomes. Without awareness, we keep facing the same problems and repeating behaviors. But if we bring awareness to what’s arising, bringing what is unconscious into awareness, our life can become more of a virtuous spiral—where we don’t need to keep repeating mistakes over and over, like ‘Groundhog Day.’ 

As Jung said, “What is not brought into consciousness, comes to us as fate.”

I finished by touching on an approach that includes eight elements of wellness: Emotional, Physical, Social, Occupational, Financial, Environmental, Spiritual and Intellectual. We’ll explore these and their relationship with the path of awakening in more depth next week.

I shared Martha Postlethwaite’s poem ‘Clearing,’ a part of Rumi’s ‘The Guest House,’ and Lynn Ungar’s poem ‘The Way It Is’, and recommended the documentary film ‘My Year of Living Mindfully’ (available on Amazon Prime and other platforms.)

I hope this summary is helpful, if you missed the session or parts of it. Have a good week and see you next Sunday at 9am Eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🌻 💜 🙏🏻

Hugh Byrne - 9/25/2022

• To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart and sing it to them when they have forgotten. -Arne Garborg
• also spoke about suffering, boddhisattvas and Shantideva's verse about being a light for those who don't have light...
• Jack Kornfield on 3 qualities of the bodhisattva...including having a vision..'envisioning' sets our direction. 
• in 'The Wise Heart' by Jack Kornfield
• …to transform ourselves with the willingness to hold our suffering…

Reflection on Four Noble Truths

Live Session Summary, Sunday, Sept 4, 2022: It was good to be with you today. I recorded the meditation and talk and hope to make them available on Insight Timer as soon as possible. Today’s theme was ‘Ending Suffering’ and the focus was on the Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths: 1) the existence of suffering; 2) craving/clinging as the cause of suffering; 3) letting go of clinging leading to freedom from suffering—Nibbana or Nirvana; and 4) there is a path to the end of suffering—the Noble Eightfold Path, which is a training in virtue (wise speech, action, and livelihood), training the mind (wise effort, mindfulness, and concentration), and cultivating wisdom (wise view and wise intention).

The Buddha said, ‘I teach one thing: suffering and its end’ and all of his teachings lead back to this central teaching, which can be simply stated as: when we cling, we suffer and when we let go of clinging, we let go of or end suffering. 

I shared one practitioner’s experience of bringing awareness to her sharing of how her cravings—for food, drink, etc.—were really false refuges that masked her deeper longings for love, comfort, kindness, peace, and ‘the loveliness of life.’ I pointed to the way that her experience mapped the Buddha’s teachings of the four noble truths—and emphasized that we can work with these teachings on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment level, asking ourselves, Is suffering present right now? If it is, we can explore our own role in creating our suffering. Seeing the relationship between clinging and suffering can help us let go of clinging—the third noble truth, the end of suffering—and we can cultivate beneficial states of mind and heart that lead to letting go and the end of suffering.  

I shared the story of the Buddha responding to a question of how to respond if someone is angry towards you—and the Buddha’s response that we can respond the way we would if we didn’t want a letter that was sent to us. It is returned to sender. We can choose not to be caught up in other people’s anger and drama, and to avoid proliferating conflict and suffering.

I shared a poem ‘The Buddha’s Last Instruction’ by Mary Oliver; ‘Small Kindnesses’ by Danusha Lameris; ‘Clearing’ by Martha Postlethwaite; and lines from Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ and Dorothy Hunt’s ‘Peace is this moment without judgment.’ 

Have a good week and see you next Sunday, September 11 at 9 am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

Road Trip plan

Additions to Live Summary #1: Road Trip Duluth to Tulsa (and before and after), September 27 – October 6: I mentioned that we have events planned or in the works for Duluth and Minneapolis, Minnesota; Kansas City, Missouri; and hopefully something in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Some folks asked if Chicago (Abigail today and others in previous weeks) and Asheville, North Carolina (Amy today and others in previous weeks) might be possible.

The answer is yes, but only if a specific day can be arranged: Chicago—Tuesday, Sept 27; and Asheville—Thursday, October 6. If you are interested in being involved in organizing an event—1-5–2 hours, including talk and meditation, Q&A and sharing—please let me know. This is a key piece for one or both of these to happen—hopefully to have a meditation group or center to sponsor (I have some connections with Asheville Insight where I’ve given talks before), or if you are connected enough yourself to organize an event through your own contacts…

If you are interested in attending, but can’t be part of organizing an event, please send me your email address and we’ll keep you in the loop. (My email address is hughgbyrne123@gmail.com I think it is ok to share it here without breaking it into parts to avoid the automatic algorithmic guillotine.) 

Please be in touch if you are interested—and, assuming this pilot road trip goes well enough—I’d be happy to try to organize other road trips in the U.S. and abroad. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

Hugh Byrne: Intention

Live Session Summary, Sunday, July 31, 2022: 

Good to be with you today. The theme of this week’s Live session was, ‘Intention: Remembering What Matters Most.’ I began by speaking of my own experience: how I am able to focus well and accomplish things when they are important, interesting, or enjoyable to me. But when space opens up and there are fewer obvious priorities to give my attention to I can feel stuck, unfocused, and, at times, feel a sense of malaise and lack of direction. I’ve found that at these times reflecting on intention and what matters most is the most helpful path to finding my way out of these ‘stuck’ states.

I discussed what intention means and why it is important in freeing ourselves from painful or difficult mind states. Webster’s dictionary defines intention as ‘the determination to act in a particular way.’ Meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal speaks of intentions as ‘often more basic than what we want; they are the deeper purposes for why we want what we want.’ And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote extensively about ‘flow states’, said ‘intentions operate as magnetic fields moving attention toward some objects and away from others, keeping our mind focused on some stimuli in preference to others.’

This sense of intentions as ‘magnetic fields’ is a useful one in illustrating the way they help us gather our attention and other beneficial qualities to help move us towards what is important to us. When we are clear about and focused on what matters to us we are much more likely to both achieve our goals and be happy—if our objectives are not harmful ones. Conversely, when we are disconnected from our intentions, we are much more likely to be moved by our unconscious habits and neither move towards what’s important to us nor be happy. As Yogi Berra said, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.’ And Carl Jung: ‘What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.’

I spoke about three different understandings of intention in Buddhist teachings: 

• Volition (Cetana, in Pali), a mental factor that urges the mind in a particular direction—e.g., the intention to stand up or look around

• Intention as ‘resolve’ or ‘determination’ (Aditthanna), which is one of the ten perfections (paramis), or qualities that support awakening

• Wise/right intention (Samma sankappa), the second factor of the Eightfold Path, which is intention directed towards freeing ourselves from suffering. This involves the cultivation of the intentions of 1) renunciation or letting go; 2) good will or loving-kindness; and 3) harmlessness or compassion.

Finding my way out of the ‘stuck’ state required all three forms of intention: 1) the volition or will to make a change and put in the effort to let go of the painful state; 2) the determination to stay focused and avoid sliding back into the difficult and unhelpful mind state; and 3) the intention to commit to letting go of the unskillful mind states when they arose and to meet my experience with self-compassion. One of the most significant changes I have seen is how cultivating wise intention can help us move from difficult and unpleasant mind states to palpably happier and more contented states.

I shared Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi’s saying, ‘The most important thing is to remember the most important thing’; Mary Oliver’s ‘When I am among the trees’; some lines from Shantideva’s Prayer; and ‘Lost’ by David Wagoner. 

Please let me know if I missed anything or if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing you next Sunday, August 7 at 9am eastern for our 100th consecutive Sunday Live session. Please join us if you can—and have a lovely week. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

hugh byrne jun 26

Live Session Summary, Sunday, June 26, 2022: 

Good to be with you on Sunday from Galway in the west of Ireland. The theme of the session was meeting our experience with curiosity and kindness. I spoke about how approaching our experience—in meditation and in daily life—with curiosity and kindness can be a path to greater happiness, well-being, and freedom.

When we meet what is present with curiosity—not clinging, resisting, judging, escaping, or avoiding our experience—we come into alignment with the truth: this moment is like this. When we are judging, resisting, etc., we are in conflict with how things are, with reality—and will experience suffering. When we accept the truth—not necessarily thinking it is ‘good’ or the best thing—we are allowing life to be life.

This doesn’t mean we never try to change things that need changing—as Eckhart Tolle said, ‘When the basis of your action is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions become empowered by the intelligence of life itself…’

When we bring the quality of curiosity together with compassion, we are cultivating what in Buddhism are often referred to as the ‘two wings of the bird’: the wing of wisdom (including mindfulness, insight, awareness, clarity) and the wing of compassion (kindness and other qualities of the heart). Compassion helps us meet ourselves, others, and painful situations and experiences with care, kindness, and understanding. 

In the talk, I also responded to two questions from participants regarding 1) how to bring these qualities of kindness and curiosity to bear on our current difficult realities in the United States—particularly with the recent court rulings—and the world; and 2) what we need to do to let go of difficult mind states and emotions that arise. Here I focused on the importance of ‘letting be’—particularly, not to fuel mental narratives about how things are or will be—and letting them ‘self-liberate,’ in the term used in Tibetan Buddhism.  

Quotes and poems I shared included: 

• T.S. Eliot, ‘At the still point of the turning world… there the dance is… Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.’ (‘The Four Quartets’)

• Viktor Frankl: ‘Between the stimulus and the response is a space. In that space lies our ability to choose. In our ability to choose lies our growth and our freedom.’

• Ajahn Chah: ‘One day Ajahn Chah held up a beautiful Chinese tea cup, “To me this cup is already broken. Because I know its fate, I can enjoy it fully here and now. And when it's gone, it's gone.’”

• James Baldwin: ‘I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.’

• Dorothy Hunt: ‘Peace is this moment without judgment // This moment in the heartspace // where everything that is is welcome.’

• T.S. Eliot, ‘Quick, now, here, now, always // A condition of complete simplicity // (Costing not less than everything).’ (‘The Four Quartets’)

• ‘Birdwings’ by Rumi

• ‘Warmth’ by Thich Nhat Hanh (I wanted to share but couldn’t locate in the moment.)

Have a good week and see you again next Sunday, July 3 at 9am eastern—from the west of Ireland. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

'Skillful' relationship to Suffering

Live Session Summary, Sunday, June 12, 2022: Good to see everyone! The theme of today’s session was letting go of suffering and cultivating happiness. I spoke of how the central question for the Buddha was, ‘Is there an end to suffering in this human life?’ This was the search that he embarked on when he left his life of comfort and luxury and entered the homeless life. He found an end to suffering and shared his teachings for 45 years.

All the Buddha’s teachings revolve around suffering. He said, ‘I teach one thing: suffering and its end.’ His first and central teaching—around which all his other teachings revolve—was the ‘four noble truths’: the existence of suffering, the cause of suffering—craving/clinging, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering. 

Dukkha, in the Pali language, is most often translated as suffering. A better translation may be ‘unsatisfactoriness’ or ‘dissatisfaction—the feeling that things are not the way we want them to be. The derivation of the word dukkha, according to meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal, is ‘du’, meaning ‘bad’, and ‘kha’, meaning the hub of a wheel. So, we might think of dukkha as a wheel out-of-kilter. 

In the Buddha’s teachings, suffering is not a thing but rather a relationship—an unskillful relationship with our experience or with what is happening. When we suffer, there is something we are doing to create or perpetuate our suffering. When we see our own involvement in our suffering, we are then in a position to let go of clinging, which leads to freedom. 

We have the capacity, then, to untangle ourselves from suffering by meeting our experience whole-heartedly, with acceptance and without judgment. We transform our experience by how we meet it. A difficult situation—for example, receiving a serious health diagnosis—will be experienced very differently if we react to it with aversion, fear, or catastrophizing than if we meet it with self-compassion, understanding, and equanimity. How we meet our experience makes all the difference in the world.

We explored dukkha—in the talk and meditation—as the second ‘characteristic of existence’—the others are impermanence/change (anicca) and non-self or absence of a permanent ‘self’ (anatta). When we meet our experience—whatever is present—by reflecting that ‘this is unreliable; this cannot provide lasting satisfaction,’ we have the possibility of letting go of clinging and experiencing greater freedom. The invitation is to simply notice if reflecting on this truth that nothing can be clung to leads to greater ease and well-being. 

I shared William Blake’s poem ‘Eternity’; John O’Donohue’s poem ‘Fluent’: ‘I would love to live // Like a river flows, // Carried by the surprise // Of its own unfolding’; and the last lines of Mary Oliver’s poem ‘The Summer Day.’ Have a good week and I’ll see you next Sunday from County Mayo, Ireland, at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

Byrne - May 8, 2022 - Freedom of the Heart

Live Session Summary, Sunday, May 8, 2022: The theme of Sunday's Live session was ‘Trusting in the Difficult’. I spoke about the way we tend to habitually respond to difficulties by trying to push them away, avoid them, blame ourselves or others for them, or repress them. While it can be wise to move away from what is threatening to us, often, responding with aversion—for example, anger, judgment or blame—to what we don’t like or want is a way of resisting the experience of unpleasant feelings or emotions. Turning towards and opening to the difficult can be a powerful doorway to freedom of the heart. 

I quoted one of Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ where he advises the young man to ‘always trust in the difficult… Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love…’ 

When we ‘trust in the difficult’, what appears as a problem can be experienced as an opportunity to free ourselves from unhelpful habitual responses. I shared some of Pema Chodron’s reflections on the Tibetan word shenpa, which means a ‘hook’ or ‘being hooked’, and that shenpa is like an itch that we habitually want to scratch—but scratching only makes the itch worse. She says, ‘…the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule our lives…’

I spoke of how ‘trusting in the difficult’ is at the heart of the Buddha’s core teaching of the Four Noble Truths—a shorthand statement of this teaching might be, when we cling, we suffer. When we let go of clinging, we experience freedom from suffering—and when we let go completely, we experience complete freedom. Being willing to stay with and experience what is difficult or unpleasant, as both Rilke and Pema Chodron discuss, provides a path to letting go and finding freedom. 

In Zen Buddhism, they say: ‘The obstacle is the path’. If we chose to go through our days treating what’s difficult not as a problem to be avoided or resisted but as an opportunity to open and be present with the difficult or unpleasant experience, this way of seeing can transform our life and lead us to ever deeper levels of freedom. 

The poems I shared included Rumi’s ‘The Guest House’; Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’. and Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’. I also recommended two books on the Buddha’s ‘heart practices’ of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity: Sharon Salzberg’s ‘Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness’ and Christina Feldman’s ‘Boundless Heart: The Buddha’s Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity.’

Byrne - April 17, 2022

 Live Session Summary, April 17, 2022: Good to see everyone today for the Live session. The theme was ‘The transforming power of mindfulness in freeing our heart’. Here are the main themes, poems and quotes:

I briefly reviewed last week’s session on how mindfulness can help us untangle ourselves from suffering using the Buddha’s four noble truths as a framework for investigating suffering in our experience and how to find release from suffering. 

I went on to discuss key elements of wise or skillful mindfulness (Samma Sati, in Pali, or highest mindfulness,) that need to be present if mindfulness is to help us realize freedom from suffering: 

• The first is wise understanding—our awareness needs to be directed to freeing ourselves from suffering, rather than towards gaining wealth or fame or worldly pleasure. Mindfulness directed to these worldly goals is not wise or skillful mindfulness. 

• Similarly, mindfulness needs to be supported by wise intention—the intention of loving-kindness, compassion, and letting go of clinging rather than the intention of harming, cruelty or gaining some material advantage. 

• Mindfulness also needs to be supported by wise or appropriate effort—the use of energy and effort to free ourselves from suffering rather than for gain or fame or another worldly goal. Our effort needs also to be balanced, not too tight or clinging, or too loose and lethargic, if it is to support mindfulness and insight.

• Mindfulness needs to be imbued with attitudes that support us being present and opening to our experience—attitudes of kindness, acceptance, curiosity, patience, non-judging rather than attitudes of clinging, resisting, or judging our experience.

When mindfulness is supported by these qualities, we can shine the spotlight of attention on any aspect of our experience and move from a state of suffering and entanglement to awareness and freedom. This shift from being swept up in, or identified with, our experience—for example, with our fear, worry, craving, blame, or anger—to being aware of our experience is a key to freeing ourselves from suffering. 

I shared the story of the horse and rider and the person shouting ‘where are you going?’ and the rider replying, ‘don’t ask me, ask the horse!’ to illustrate the way that we are often habitually swept along by our thoughts, emotions, and mental narratives rather than choosing the direction of our thoughts and actions. I also shared the quote from Viktor Frankl: ‘Between stimulus and response is a space. In that space lies our ability to choose our response. In our ability to choose lies our growth and our freedom.’ 

The poems I shared today included lines from Mary Oliver’s ‘The Summer Day’; Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’; Rumi’s ‘The Guest House’; and Lynn Ungar’s ‘The Way It Is.’ Good wishes for the week ahead and see you next Sunday at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 🌻

Hugh Byrne, April 10, 2022

Live Session Summary, April 10, 2022: The theme of this week’s Live session was ‘Untangling the Tangles of our Lives’. We explored the essential role played by awareness of our present-moment experience on the path to freedom of the heart. 

In a well-known sutta, or discourse, of the Buddha, a brahmin came to the Buddha and asked him a question: ‘A tangle within, a tangle without, people are entangled in a tangle. Gotama (the Buddha’s family name), I ask you this: who can untangle this tangle?’ The Buddha responded that a person trained in meditation, wise and compassionate living, and wisdom can untangle the tangle and live free of suffering. In this session, we explored one of the most direct paths to freedom: using conscious awareness to investigate the four noble truths of suffering and its end. 

The Buddha taught that mindfulness—a kind, accepting, and non-judgmental awareness of our present experience—is a direct path to the deepest freedom we can realize in this human life. This awareness is available at any time, but we spend much of our lives in the future or the past, lost in distraction, wanting, or reactivity. However, the possibility of coming home to ourselves is never more than a breath away… In any moment, we can ask ourselves: What am I aware of right now?

Mindfulness provides a doorway to insight into the four noble truths—the Buddha’s core teaching of freedom from suffering. We begin by bringing awareness to our present experience and investigating: Is suffering present? Am I caught up in resisting my experience, clinging, judging, or other afflictive state? Acknowledging when suffering—dukkha, in Pali—is present is the first step to freeing ourselves from suffering.

The Buddha taught the second noble truth—that the cause of suffering is craving, holding on to how we want things to be or resisting what we don’t like. When suffer, there is always something we are adding to the experience, a resistance we are bringing to the way things are. This clinging or resistance is sometimes described as the ‘second arrow’—the first arrow is pain, or something unpleasant; the second arrow is the resistance we bring to the first arrow: ‘this shouldn’t be happening…’, ‘when will this end?’ There is another well-known axiom: ‘pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.’ If we can stay with the first arrow, the direct experience, we can find freedom from suffering. We won’t escape the pains of being human, but we don’t have to add unhappiness, discontent, or anguish to our experience.

When we are able to see our own role in our suffering and are willing to experience the waves of wanting, resistance, or other difficult feelings without acting them out, this leads to freedom from suffering—the third noble truth that freedom comes from letting go of clinging. The fourth noble truth is that there is a path of training—in meditation, ethics/wise and compassionate living, and wisdom—that leads to the end of suffering. Bringing mindfulness to our experience just as it is opens the doorway to ending suffering in our lives—untangling the tangle.

The poems I shared included ‘Clearing’ by Martha Postlethwaite; part of Mary Oliver’s ‘The Summer Day’; part of Rumi’s ‘The Guest House’; and Mary Oliver’s ‘Am I not among the early risers…’ I also shared a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: ‘If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.’

All good wishes for the week ahead—and see you next Sunday at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 🌻

Hugh Byrne - Mar 20

Live Session, March 20, 2022 (High listed this incorrectly as a summary pkg Mar 13) Hi everyone, it was good to be with you this morning for our 80th live session. The overall theme was the importance of cultivating joy in the midst of difficulties and challenges. The talk covered a lot of ground, including suffering, compassion, truth, courage and inspiration, wise and compassionate action, and the importance of bearing witness. Since it was largely extemporaneous, I won’t try to summarize it. Here are some of the poems and quotes I shared:

• ‘A Brief for the Defense’, by Jack Gilbert

• A reading from an interview entitled ‘A Life Worthy of Our Breath’ by Krista Tippett, for her ‘On Being’ radio broadcast on U.S. public radio with Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese-American writer, teacher, poet, and author of a collection of poems, ‘Night Sky with Exit Wounds’. Vuong’s quote I shared that ended the interview concluded: ‘I want to love more than death can harm. And I want to tell you this often: That despite being so human and so terrified, here, standing on this unfinished staircase to nowhere and everywhere, surrounded by the cold and starless night—we can live. And we will’.

• Mary Oliver’s poem ‘The Uses of Sorrow’: ‘Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.’ 

• Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’

Please let me know if I missed anything. Wishing you a safe and joyful week. May there be peace in our hearts, in Ukraine, and in the world. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

The four Brahmaviharas - Opening the heart ~ a Training of the heart ~ Hugh Byrne - Mar 27, 2022

Befriending all beings, all experiences..befriending all experiences. ~ Feldman? 

Empty honour

This little passage from “A Heart Afire” demonstrates that just eleven words can fill your whole mind with things to think about!

“Of what use is the empty honour of an argument won?”

🙏🏼🕊🎶🎶

Blessings for your weekend everyone 🎶🎵🎼🕊

Hugh Byrne (Feb 27, 2022) on Rilke, kindness towards self, overcoming fear with kindness towards self

Summary of Live Session, February 27, 2022: 

"It was good to be with everyone today and hold in our hearts and meditation the people of Ukraine at this extraordinarily difficult time. The theme of our session today was ‘Working Wisely and Kindly with Fear.’ 

I shared that while many people view fear and anger as ‘negative’ emotions, it is more helpful to see them as intelligent, survival-based emotions that allowed our ancestors to respond immediately to threats and be able to survive and pass on their genes. These emotions provide us with helpful information and continue to be necessary and useful to us today—particularly in situations of danger. 

These emotions can get us into trouble when we do not respond to them with awareness and, particularly, when we create fear-based, future scenarios that may never happen, but keep us locked in a fight-or-flight reaction. I used the image of the Zen monk in a cave, who painted a tiger on the wall and was terrified every time he looked at the image of the tiger. We often paint pictures in our minds—sometimes catastrophizing—and then become activated and fearful when we think of the pictures or fears we’ve created ourselves. As Mark Twain reputedly said, ‘My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.’ 

So, when fear arises in the mind, rather than getting caught up in thoughts about what might happen, it is wise to stay grounded in our direct experience, particularly bodily feelings and sensations, and, meet them with kindness, letting them come and go. 

Two keys to working with fear are, first, to meet fear with awareness—making space for whatever we’re experiencing, ‘welcoming the guests’—and letting the sensations, feelings, and emotions come and go without resistance or getting lost in thoughts and narratives about the situation. 

The second essential way of working wisely with fear is to bring in the heart—to meet fear with loving-kindness and compassion, rather than with aversion and ‘fearing the fear.’ I shared the Buddhist legend of the origin of the practice of loving-kindness (metta)—of the Buddha giving his followers the practice of metta as an antidote to fear—and Sharon Salzberg’s reflection on the meaning of the story: that loving-kindness can penetrate and dislodge fear, but a heart filled with love and friendliness cannot be overtaken by fear. 

The stories and poems I shared include:

• Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’—where he invites his young friend to ‘always trust in the difficult’ and turn towards what we fear: ‘Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.’ And he adds, ‘Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.’

• Wendell Berry’s poem ‘I go among trees’

• W.B. Yeats, “We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” (‘The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore’)

• Romain Rolland, ‘There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.’

• Some of Rumi’s ‘The Guest House’, Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’, and Mary Oliver’s ending to ‘The Summer Day’—‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.’

Wishing you a safe and open-hearted week ahead. Let us hold the people of Ukraine in our hearts, prayers, and meditation—and do all that we can to support them in this hour of need. See you next Sunday at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🇺🇦💙 💛 🙏🏻

If it has terrors, they are our terrors -Rilke

~ Arrange our lives to always trust in the difficult.

~ the myths about dragons ...dragons are ultimately transformed into princes...acting with beauty and courage...opening to what is scary or difficult.

opening to whatever is scary...with courage, with kindness

Rilke on th emyth of dragons and transforming the scary into prince.

'this moment without judgment' ~  - Dorothy Hunt

may I be kind to myself....may I accept myself just as I am.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is helpless, wants our kindness ~ Rilke

Romain Roland   https://www.azquotes.com/author/12563-Romain_Rolland

only one true heroism...to see the world as it is, and to love it.

https://whatsmyquote.com/quote/there-is-only-one-heroism-in-the-world-to-see-the-world-as-it-is-and-to-love-it/page/2

Wishing oneself well, to love the world, we  must love ourselves first...lovingkindness and care towards self. Wishing this intention can plant the seeds of possibility... (include the people of Ukraine).

Kindness has no enemy...includes everyone. particularly today the people of Ukraine...even Putin himself. 

This is 'unconditional' ...for all beings.

Wendell Berry - I go among trees...It sings and I hear its song."

Hugh Byrne - Feb 13, 2022 - Being conscious

Summary of Live session, February 13, 2022: For our 75th Live session we had participants from at least 21 countries, spanning 21 time zones (from NZ to CA). The theme of this week’s Live session was ‘The Heart of Mindfulness Practice.’ 

I spoke of mindfulness as a radical practice in that it shifts us into a different way of being in the world and relating to ourselves and others. Rather than being swept up in our unconscious habits, reactions, impulses, and mental narratives, and caught up or identified with our worries, fears, cravings and dislikes, we bring awareness to them. 

We’re moving from unconsciousness to being conscious and aware—the shift from being caught up in a behavior, emotion, or mind state to being aware of it is at the heart of our practice. It’s here where freedom comes—it’s what Viktor Frankl spoke about as the space between stimulus and response, which provides us the ability to choose our response, which in turn leads—when we choose wisely—to growth and freedom.

When we step out of unconscious behaviors into awareness, we’re taking refuge in the truth—in the Dharma. We’re taking our stand on what is, rather than on our wishes or beliefs about how things should be or could be. Rather than defaulting to our escape mechanisms, to what is comfortable and familiar, we open honestly to our experience as it is, meeting it with acceptance and without judgment. 

Mindfulness is also radical and transformative in its goal and outcome: bringing mindfulness to our experience in a skillful way—whatever we are paying attention to—leads to the end of suffering. 

It leads directly to freedom by way of the insights (or seeing clearly—Vipassana, in Pali) we gain into reality: By bringing mindfulness to our own experience, we can see what our subjective experience has in common with all experience—specifically, the impermanence of all phenomena (anicca, in Pali); that nothing can be held onto (dukkha), and that there is no separate or permanent self (anatta), who owns these experiences or to whom they are happening. 

These are known in Buddhism as the three fundamental characteristics of existence. Gaining insight into the impersonal, impermanent, and ungraspable—and hence unsatisfactory—nature of all phenomena helps us see reality clearly and leads to letting go, dispassion, disenchantment (no longer being caught up illusion) and freedom from suffering. 

This letting go allows us to enjoy the deepest peace, joy, and freedom that is not dependent on changing conditions. William Blake’s poem ‘Eternity’ captures this freedom and joy in the midst of impermanence: ‘He who binds to himself a joy // Does the winged life destroy; // But he who kisses the joy as it flies // Lives in eternity’s sunrise.’ 

The poems I shared included ‘Walker’ by Antonio Machado and ‘Mind Wanting More’ by Holly Hughes. 

Wishing everyone a safe, happy, and peaceful week—please pray and meditate for a peaceful outcome to the conflict threatening the people of Ukraine. See you next Sunday at 9am eastern time. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 🌎 ☮️ 💜

Hugh Byrne Feb, 6 2022 - Lovingkindness

Summary of Live session, February 6, 2022: The theme of this week’s Live session was ‘The Four Faces of Love’, a phrase from meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal for the Buddhist teachings of 1) loving-kindness; 2) compassion; 3) sympathetic joy (joy in the happiness of another/others); and 4) equanimity. These four heart qualities are known in Buddhism as the Brahma Vihara, ‘divine abodes’, or beautiful qualities of heart. 

I shared how these qualities can arise naturally when we let go of clinging and contracted states of mind—and that we can train our heart-mind to develop and deepen these qualities through practice. We normally begin the practice with ourselves—using phrases, if these are helpful, such as ‘May I be happy… May I be safe… peaceful… live with ease and kindness…’ We then extend the practice outward to someone who it is easy to wish well to… to ‘neutral’ person/s… difficult person/s, and out to include all beings. 

As well as using phrases, which help focus the mind and engage our cognitive functions, we can also connect with the bodily feelings that may arise—for example, inviting pleasant feelings of kindness and care to spread through the body and mind—as well as using visualization, for example, imagining a difficult person whom you are sending loving-kindness to as a baby or young child, who wants to happy, safe, loved…

These heart qualities are also called ‘boundless’ and ‘immeasurable’ since rather than reaching a limit of who and how many can be included in our wishes and intentions of loving-kindness, the more our heart opens, the more capacity it has to open further—and, ultimately, to include all beings everywhere without distinction.

Poems and quotes I shared include:

• Sri Nisargadatta, 20th Century Indian teacher and sage: ‘Wisdom tells me I’m nothing. Love tells me I’m everything. Between the two my life flows.’

• Lines that Thich Nhat Hanh learned as a very young monk in Vietnam: ‘Waking up this morning, I smile // Twenty-four brand-new hours are before me // I vow to live each moment deeply // And to look at all beings with the eyes of compassion.’ (In Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet.’)

• First half of the poem ‘Saint Francis and the Sow’ (‘sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness…’) by Galway Kinnell—who was American, not Irish, as I said. (His parents were immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. Thank you, Francine)

• Martha Postlethwaite’s poem ‘Clearing’ and the final lines from Mary Oliver’s ‘The Summer Day’ (‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do // With your one wild and precious life?’)

Wishing everyone a week of kindness, joy, and connection—and see you at 9am eastern next Sunday for our 75th weekly Live session. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜

Rilke on acceptance, courage, letting go,

https://mind-springs.org/library/rilke-on-acceptance/ 

Letter to a Young Poet

We have no reason to harbour any mistrust against our world,
for it is not against us.
If it has terrors, they are our terrors.
If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us.
If there are dangers, we must try to love them,
and only if we could arrange our lives,
in accordance with the principle that tells us
that we must always trust in the difficult,
then what now appears to us to be alien
will become our most intimate and trusted experience.
How could we forget those ancient myths
that stand at the beginning of all races –
the myths of dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses?
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses
waiting for us to act, just once,
with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is,
in its deepest essence,
something helpless that wants our love.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you
larger than any you’ve ever seen,
if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows
moves over your hands and everything that you do.
Life has not forgotten you.
It holds you in its hands and will not yet you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life
any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions?
For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

https://mind-springs.org/library/rilke-on-acceptance/

Hugh Byrne : Resources

Summary of today’s (Jan 2, 2022) 

Live session: Happy New Year everyone! We had over 650 of us practicing together today from at least 22 countries—and all continents (except Antarctica).

The theme today was cultivating ‘resources’ to support us in our meditation practice—and in daily life. Resources can help us settle and arrive at the beginning of a meditation session and can provide powerful support when we are working with difficult mind states or emotions, or in dealing with challenging situations.

I highlighted a number of potential resources, including:
1) Our breath—both as a focus or ‘anchor’ in meditation and (through deeper breathing) as a way of relaxing the mind and body.
2) Inviting a smile, which can relax the body, mind, and nervous system.
3) Placing a hand on your heart (and possibly the other on your belly) and connecting with yourself and meeting difficulties with a gesture of kindness. 4) Bringing to mind a poem or some lines from poetry that inspire you—and consider learning poems or parts of them ‘by heart’, so that they are readily accessible without having to take out your phone and google the poem.
5) Reflecting on things—people, conditions, etc.—in your life that you are grateful for. Gratitude helps us step out of our frequent focus on what is ‘wrong’ or what we lack and shifts attention to what we have and are grateful for.
6) Bringing to mind someone who inspires you or who helps to open your heart—it might be a loved one, a teacher or parent/grandparent, or other person who has cared deeply for you, or an inspiring spiritual figure, etc.
7) Remembering to pause, particularly when things are difficult, and bringing awareness to your direct experience—rather than your worried or angry thoughts, for example. A practice to help us pause goes by the acronym SOBER (Stop-Observe-Breathe-Expand awareness-Respond mindfully). If you’re interested in this practice, I have a SOBER meditation on Insight Timer.
8) Taking refuge in community (sangha)—remembering that you are not alone.

There are numerous other potential resources that can support you. You might think about these and other resources, so that they are available to you in times of difficulty or when you want to relax and settle the body and mind. What helps you to feel safe, supported, held, and not alone when you are experiencing difficulties or painful emotions or mind states? This can be one of your resources.

The poems I shared today included lines from poems I often come back to: Mary Oliver’s ‘The Summer Day’ and ‘Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift’; Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’; and Rumi’s ‘The Guest House.’

I also shared two well-known, short poems by William Blake: ‘He who binds to himself a joy…’ and ‘To see a world in a grain of sand // And a heaven in a wild flower…’; and ‘Walker’ by Antonio Machado.

Zahra shared in the comments two ‘poetry and meditation’ recommendations: Roger Housden’s books: ‘Ten Poems to Change Your Life’, ‘Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime’, ‘Ten Poems to Say Goodbye’, and others. I love his books too. They include the poems and his reflections on them. Zahra also shared Daisy Goodwin’s ‘101 Poems to Save Your Life’.

I hope this summary is helpful. Please let me know if anything is missing. Wishing you a lovely week ahead—and a happy and fruitful 2022! See you next Sunday at 9am eastern!

Warmly, Hugh

hUgh Byrne, dec 5

Summary of two Live sessions, Sunday, Dec 5: The theme was ‘The Habit of Meditation’ and the main points I emphasized were: 

1. Training the mind is essential if we wish to find freedom from suffering;

 

2. Meditation is one of the most helpful practices for training the mind as it allows us to identify where and how we are suffering; our own role in creating our suffering; and how we can untangle ourselves by ‘abandoning the unskillful’—identifying and letting go of mind states such as greed, aversion, and delusion—and  ‘developing the skillful’—cultivating qualities like gratitude, generosity, compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity; 

3. If we wish to gain the benefits of meditation, it’s important to make meditation a habit, rather than just an occasional practice. I highlighted ways of making meditation a habit through: 

• cultivating a strong and clear intention to develop a daily/regular practice 
• creating as much consistency as possible—same time, same place, where possible—to help our brain turn the practice into a habit 
• making a commitment for a set period—say, a week—and meditating each day, and at the end of the period, making a commitment for the next week…until the practice becomes a habit 
• using guided meditations, if helpful, or sitting in silence for a set period, for example, 15 or 30 minutes 
• finding a meditation ‘buddy’ or group to practice with and be accountable to
• practicing with diligence and with kindness towards yourself.

I shared a number of poems this week, including: 

• Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’

• Rumi’s ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there…’ 

• Antonio Machado’s ‘Walker’ 

• Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘For Warmth’ 

• Dawna Markova’s ‘I will not die an unlived life’ 

• Wu Men’s ‘Ten Thousand flowers in spring…’ 

• William Blake’s ‘He who binds to himself a joy…’

• Lao Tzu’s ‘Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace…’

• Layman Pang’s ‘My daily affairs are quite ordinary… drawing water and carrying wood.’

 Please let me know if I missed anything. I’ll share the full text of a couple of the shorter poems in a separate post. Have a lovely week and see you next Sunday at 9 am eastern—or at the Mindfulness and Habit Change workshop on Saturday, December 11 🙏🏼

On thoughts, meditation

Learning to let your thoughts go.

"The thought of your mother isn't your mother. "

Wumen -

• 10000 flowers in Spring
• If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season ...

Antonio Muchado - 'Walker'

Antonio Machado: "Walker"

Walker, your footsteps

are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

Walking you make the road,

and turning to look behind

you see the path you never

again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road,

only foam trails on the sea.

TNH: For Warmth

I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm –
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.

~Thich Nhat Hanh
(written after the bombing of Ben Tre, during the Vietnam War)