Christina Feldman
https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/making-a-joyful-effort/
"How is our mind shaping our participation in life?" ~ Shelly Graf
...being able to lean into the power of choice, and recognizing our powerlessness when facing our craving. ~ Christina Feldman
The nagging, negative voice of self-judgement, says Christina Feldman, is a powerful affliction best met with courage, kindness, and understanding. CHRISTINA FELDMAN12 JANUARY 2018
The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree on the eve of his enlightenment and was assailed by Mara, representing all of the afflictions we meet in the landscape of our minds: worry and restlessness, dullness and resistance, craving, aversion, and doubt. The one affliction that did not make an appearance in this story is the powerful voice of the inner critic—the inner judge that can torment us on a daily basis, undermining our well-being and distorting our relationship with life. The inner critic is the voice of shame, blame, belittlement, aversion, and contempt. To many of us, it is so familiar that it seems almost hardwired into our hearts.
Before exploring the nature of the judgmental mind, it is essential to mark the distinction between the voice of the inner critic and our capacity for discernment and discriminating wisdom. Discriminating wisdom is what brings us to our cushion to meditate and inspires us to act in ways that bring suffering and harm to an end. Discriminating wisdom is the source of every wise act and word. Discernment draws upon ethics, compassion, and wisdom and teaches us moment by moment to discover the Buddha in ourselves and in others.
The inner critic is a creature of a different nature. With the inner critic, we may still come to our cushion but we come accompanied by a story that tells us we are unworthy or inadequate. With the inner critic, we still act, speak, and make choices, yet moment by moment we feel endlessly criticized, compared, and belittled. The judgmental mind draws not upon all that is wise but upon Mara, the patterns of aversion, doubt, ill will, and fear. Rarely is the judgmental heart the source of wise action or speech, nor does it lead to the end of suffering. The judgmental mind is suffering and compounds suffering. It suffocates ethics, the guidelines of kindness and care, and it wounds our hearts and lives.
Discriminating wisdom is essential and must be cultivated. The judging mind is optional; it can be understood and released. Thomas Merton, the great Christian mystic described the essence of the spiritual path as a search for truth that springs from love. Beneath the Bodhi tree, Mara’s power over Siddhartha ended the moment he was able to look Mara in the eye and simply say, “I know you.” These few words were a reflection of a profound shift in Siddhartha’s heart: the shift from being intimidated and overpowered by Mara to having the courage to open a dialogue of understanding with Mara, and bringing intimidation to an end.
The judgmental mind that causes so much pain in our lives cannot be exempted from our practice. The judgmental mind needs to be met with the same courage and investigation we bring to any other afflictive emotion. The judgmental mind does not respond well to suppression, avoidance, or aversion. It needs kindness and understanding. The late Jiyu-Kennett Roshi, a Zen teacher, said the training of liberation begins with compassion for the self, and that cultivating a non-judgmental mind toward ourselves is the key to a genuine compassion for all beings.
We begin this process by asking what a non-judgmental mind looks like, and what it means to be free of the burden of the inner critic. To understand these questions experientially, we need to turn our attention to the judgmental mind and embrace its pain with the same mindfulness we would bring to a pain in our body or to another’s sorrow.
The essence of mindfulness is to see, to understand, and to find freedom within everything that feels intractable and clouded by confusion. Mindfulness is a present-moment experience, concerned with embracing and understanding the entirety of each moment with tenderness, warmth, and interest. In the light of this engaged attention, we discover it is impossible to hate or fear anything we truly understand, including the judgmental mind. We begin to see that the greatest barrier to compassion and freedom is not the pain or adversity we meet in our lives but the ongoing tendency to criticize and fear the simple truths of the moment. Instead of just wanting the judgmental mind to go away, we could begin to ask what it is teaching us. Abhirupa Nanda, a nun from the time of the Buddha, suggested meditating on the unconditioned. Liberate the tendency to judge yourself as being above, below, or the same as others. By penetrating deeply into judgment, you will live at peace.
Although it may seem so, we were not born with a judgmental, aversive mind. It is a learned way of seeing and relating, and it can be unlearned. Looking closely at the judgmental mind, we see that it is rarely truthful or able to see the whole of anything. Instead, the judgmental mind is governed by seizing upon the particulars of ourselves and others and mistaking those particulars for the truth. A friend neglects to return a phone call, and this triggers a cascade of anxious thinking that convinces us they are an indifferent person or we are unworthy of their attention. We arrive late for an appointment and in moments the inner critic determines we are a mindless failure. The practice of meditation, of discovering what is true, suggests there is another path that can be followed.
In the Sufi tradition it is suggested that our thoughts should pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask of our thought, “Is it true?” If so, we let the thought pass through to the second gate, where we ask, “Is it necessary or useful?” If this also is so, we let the thought continue on its way to the third gate, where we ask, “Is this thought rooted in love and kindness?” Judgmental thoughts, which are neither true, helpful, nor kind, falter at the gates.
Students often wonder why the judgmental mind does not appear in the traditional list of afflictions that Siddhartha met under the Bodhi tree. Perhaps it is because the judgmental mind is not one affliction or hindrance but a compounded hindrance. If you explore just one moment during which the inner critic is operating, you sense how the winds of all of the hindrances flow through it. There is craving, which takes form in the expectations and ideals we hold for ourselves and others. There is restlessness and worry — the shoulds and expectations generating endless thought and emotion as we struggle to avoid imperfection. And there is aversion and ill will, directed toward ourselves and others when our shoulds and expectations are disappointed. Doubt makes a powerful appearance too—doubt in our worthiness, goodness, and capacity. Then there is the affliction of dullness, which makes a disguised appearance in the form of despair, resignation, and numbness.
Holding all of these afflictions together are the beliefs we have regarding who we are and who we are not, which continually fuel the afflictive emotions. But the path of awakening invites us to understand this compound of the inner critic, to learn how to loosen its hold and power, and to rediscover all that is true within ourselves and others. The path invites us to extend kindness, rather than harshness, to ourselves and all beings and to learn to see a thought as a thought, rather than as a description of reality. On the path, we can begin to see that self-judgment or judgment of another is no more than a thought that is laden with ill will and aversion. There is a profound liberation in knowing this so deeply that we can let go of ill will.
The Buddha taught that what we dwell upon becomes the shape of our mind. If we dwell on ill will, directed outwardly or inwardly in the form of blame, disparagement, or aversion, it will become the shape of our mind until all that we see is that which is broken, flawed, imperfect, and impossible. In India there is a saying that when a pickpocket meets a saint in the marketplace, all he sees are the saint’s pockets. Habit and awareness do not co-exist. Nurturing our capacity to be mindful and present is the first step to understanding and disempowering the identity and power of the inner critic.
We can learn to pause and to listen deeply to the voice of the inner judge, with its endless symphony of blame and shame, and we can surround it with the kindness of mindfulness. We can investigate the truth of its story. We can begin to sense that the inner critic truly warrants compassion, as does any suffering and affliction. Instead of fleeing the painfulness of the judgmental mind we can turn toward it, sensing that everything we are invited to understand in the journey of awakening can be understood within the judgmental mind. Letting go, compassion, the emptiness of self, equanimity, and wisdom are the lessons we are invited to explore with this most powerful of afflictions. The alchemy of mindfulness is to nurture a sense of possibility. We are encouraged to imagine a life free from ill will, blame, and shame. To imagine a life and a heart of compassion, wisdom, and peace.
Ten thousand flowers in Spring,
the Moon in autumn
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
Live Session Summary, Sunday, November 12, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session. In today’s session we continued the discussion of how the Buddha’s teachings can support us in these difficult times, focusing on the role the Buddha’s heart practices—loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity.
Here are some of the main themes, quotes, and poems I shared:
I began by sharing the simile used in Buddhism of the ‘two wings of the bird’: Just as a bird needs two wings to fly, so our practice requires two wings—the wing of wisdom (awareness, understanding, insight) and the wing of compassion (kindness, care, love, connection). I reviewed briefly our discussion from two weeks ago on the role of practices of awareness (the first ‘wing’) in helping us let go of the clinging and aversion that we can easily be caught up in during these times. I shared these quotes:
“Wisdom tells me I’m nothing. Love tells me I’m everything. And between the two my life flows.” (Sri Nisargadata, 20th Century Indian spiritual teacher)
“Anything unconscious dissolves when you shine the light of consciousness on it.” (Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now)
“You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection—you cannot cope with the future.” (Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now)
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” (Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher, 1623-1662)
I highlighted the role that the ‘heart practices’ can play in providing support, particularly when we find ourselves swept up in fear, anger, debilitating grief, powerlessness, despair, self-judgment, guilt, and many other challenging emotions and mind states. The four heart practices are described by Insight meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal as ‘four faces of love’—one overarching quality of kindness and friendliness that takes on different forms depending on the circumstances and conditions we meet.
We focused on three of the four heart practices—loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity—as particularly powerful supports for these times.
At the heart of these teachings is the understanding that these are not qualities that we either have or don’t have, but rather, qualities that we can cultivate through the diligent practice of inclining our mind towards compassion, kindness, and care for all beings. Sharon Salzberg shared this perspective:
• “Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are the results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation.” (Salzberg, Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness)
Loving-kindness invites us to meet all beings—without exception—with understanding and kindness. Christina Feldman expressed this intention and commitment as “cultivating an attitudinal commitment of friendliness towards all beings and all experience.” (Feldman, Boundless Heart)
Compassion is the quality that arises when an open heart meets suffering. It’s been described as ‘the quivering of the heart in the face of suffering.” Compassion incorporates two central responses: 1) empathy—caring for the suffering of another (or oneself); and 2) the wish to alleviate the suffering. We begin by acknowledging our own or another’s suffering:
• “The first step in developing true compassion is being able to recognize, to open to, and to acknowledge that pain and sorrow exist. Everywhere, absolutely everywhere, in one way or another, beings are suffering.” (Salzberg, Loving Kindness)
• “Compassion in its deepest sense is immeasurable. It embraces the most difficult people in our lives, the most brutal people in the world. Compassion is concerned with meeting suffering and uprooting the causes of suffering: the greed, hatred, and confusion that scars the lives and hearts of too many in this world.” (Feldman, Boundless Heart)
We finished by discussing the quality and practice of equanimity, which is the invitation to meet all experience without clinging to what’s pleasant or resisting or pulling away from what is difficult or unpleasant. The Buddha spoke of ‘eight worldly winds’ that are an inevitable part of our human existence:
• “Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, success and failure are the eight worldly winds. They ceaselessly change. As a mountain is unshaken by the wind, so the heart of a wise person is steady amidst all the changes on this earth.” (Lokavipatti Sutta: ‘The Failings of the World’)
I emphasized that equanimity is not indifference to suffering, or aloofness, or not caring. With equanimity, our heart remains open and caring, but without clinging or resistance. T.S. Eliot in his poem ‘Ash Wednesday’ said, “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.” Caring without clinging.
I shared a quote from ‘The Mind of Absolute Trust’ by the 3rd Zen Patriarch, Tsin Tsin Ming:
“The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart….
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
I finished the meditation with the poem ‘School Prayer’ by Diane Ackerman.
This is a longer summary. I hope the review and quotes are helpful to you. Have a peaceful week and see you next Sunday, November 19 at 9am Eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻
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Befriending all beings, all experiences..befriending all experiences. ~ Feldman?
Silencing the Inner Critic
“The Fight” by Helena Perez García.
Unruly beings are like space.
There’s not enough time to overcome them.
Overcoming these angry thoughts.
Is like defeating all of our enemies.
—Shantideva
The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree on the eve of his enlightenment and was assailed by Mara, representing all of the afflictions we meet in the landscape of our minds: worry and restlessness, dullness and resistance, craving, aversion, and doubt. The one affliction that did not make an appearance in this story is the powerful voice of the inner critic—the inner judge that can torment us on a daily basis, undermining our well-being and distorting our relationship with life. The inner critic is the voice of shame, blame, belittlement, aversion, and contempt. To many of us, it is so familiar that it seems almost hardwired into our hearts.
Before exploring the nature of the judgmental mind, it is essential to mark the distinction between the voice of the inner critic and our capacity for discernment and discriminating wisdom. Discriminating wisdom is what brings us to our cushion to meditate and inspires us to act in ways that bring suffering and harm to an end. Discriminating wisdom is the source of every wise act and word. Discernment draws upon ethics, compassion, and wisdom and teaches us moment by moment to discover the Buddha in ourselves and in others.
The inner critic is a creature of a different nature. With the inner critic, we may still come to our cushion but we come accompanied by a story that tells us we are unworthy or inadequate. With the inner critic, we still act, speak, and make choices, yet moment by moment we feel endlessly criticized, compared, and belittled. The judgmental mind draws not upon all that is wise but upon Mara, the patterns of aversion, doubt, ill will, and fear. Rarely is the judgmental heart the source of wise action or speech, nor does it lead to the end of suffering. The judgmental mind is suffering and compounds suffering. It suffocates ethics, the guidelines of kindness and care, and it wounds our hearts and lives.
Discriminating wisdom is essential and must be cultivated. The judging mind is optional; it can be understood and released. Thomas Merton, the great Christian mystic described the essence of the spiritual path as a search for truth that springs from love. Beneath the Bodhi tree, Mara’s power over Siddhartha ended the moment he was able to look Mara in the eye and simply say, “I know you.” These few words were a reflection of a profound shift in Siddhartha’s heart: the shift from being intimidated and overpowered by Mara to having the courage to open a dialogue of understanding with Mara, and bringing intimidation to an end.
The judgmental mind that causes so much pain in our lives cannot be exempted from our practice. The judgmental mind needs to be met with the same courage and investigation we bring to any other afflictive emotion. The judgmental mind does not respond well to suppression, avoidance, or aversion. It needs kindness and understanding. The late Jiyu-Kennett Roshi, a Zen teacher, said the training of liberation begins with compassion for the self, and that cultivating a non-judgmental mind toward ourselves is the key to a genuine compassion for all beings.
We begin this process by asking what a non-judgmental mind looks like, and what it means to be free of the burden of the inner critic. To understand these questions experientially, we need to turn our attention to the judgmental mind and embrace its pain with the same mindfulness we would bring to a pain in our body or to another’s sorrow.
The essence of mindfulness is to see, to understand, and to find freedom within everything that feels intractable and clouded by confusion. Mindfulness is a present-moment experience, concerned with embracing and understanding the entirety of each moment with tenderness, warmth, and interest. In the light of this engaged attention, we discover it is impossible to hate or fear anything we truly understand, including the judgmental mind. We begin to see that the greatest barrier to compassion and freedom is not the pain or adversity we meet in our lives but the ongoing tendency to criticize and fear the simple truths of the moment. Instead of just wanting the judgmental mind to go away, we could begin to ask what it is teaching us. Abhirupa Nanda, a nun from the time of the Buddha, suggested meditating on the unconditioned. Liberate the tendency to judge yourself as being above, below, or the same as others. By penetrating deeply into judgment, you will live at peace.
Although it may seem so, we were not born with a judgmental, aversive mind. It is a learned way of seeing and relating, and it can be unlearned. Looking closely at the judgmental mind, we see that it is rarely truthful or able to see the whole of anything. Instead, the judgmental mind is governed by seizing upon the particulars of ourselves and others and mistaking those particulars for the truth. A friend neglects to return a phone call, and this triggers a cascade of anxious thinking that convinces us they are an indifferent person or we are unworthy of their attention. We arrive late for an appointment and in moments the inner critic determines we are a mindless failure. The practice of meditation, of discovering what is true, suggests there is another path that can be followed.
In the Sufi tradition it is suggested that our thoughts should pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask of our thought, “Is it true?” If so, we let the thought pass through to the second gate, where we ask, “Is it necessary or useful?” If this also is so, we let the thought continue on its way to the third gate, where we ask, “Is this thought rooted in love and kindness?” Judgmental thoughts, which are neither true, helpful, nor kind, falter at the gates.
Students often wonder why the judgmental mind does not appear in the traditional list of afflictions that Siddhartha met under the Bodhi tree. Perhaps it is because the judgmental mind is not one affliction or hindrance but a compounded hindrance. If you explore just one moment during which the inner critic is operating, you sense how the winds of all of the hindrances flow through it. There is craving, which takes form in the expectations and ideals we hold for ourselves and others. There is restlessness and worry — the shoulds and expectations generating endless thought and emotion as we struggle to avoid imperfection. And there is aversion and ill will, directed toward ourselves and others when our shoulds and expectations are disappointed. Doubt makes a powerful appearance too—doubt in our worthiness, goodness, and capacity. Then there is the affliction of dullness, which makes a disguised appearance in the form of despair, resignation, and numbness.
Holding all of these afflictions together are the beliefs we have regarding who we are and who we are not, which continually fuel the afflictive emotions. But the path of awakening invites us to understand this compound of the inner critic, to learn how to loosen its hold and power, and to rediscover all that is true within ourselves and others. The path invites us to extend kindness, rather than harshness, to ourselves and all beings and to learn to see a thought as a thought, rather than as a description of reality. On the path, we can begin to see that self-judgment or judgment of another is no more than a thought that is laden with ill will and aversion. There is a profound liberation in knowing this so deeply that we can let go of ill will.
The Buddha taught that what we dwell upon becomes the shape of our mind. If we dwell on ill will, directed outwardly or inwardly in the form of blame, disparagement, or aversion, it will become the shape of our mind until all that we see is that which is broken, flawed, imperfect, and impossible. In India there is a saying that when a pickpocket meets a saint in the marketplace, all he sees are the saint’s pockets. Habit and awareness do not co-exist. Nurturing our capacity to be mindful and present is the first step to understanding and disempowering the identity and power of the inner critic.
We can learn to pause and to listen deeply to the voice of the inner judge, with its endless symphony of blame and shame, and we can surround it with the kindness of mindfulness. We can investigate the truth of its story. We can begin to sense that the inner critic truly warrants compassion, as does any suffering and affliction. Instead of fleeing the painfulness of the judgmental mind we can turn toward it, sensing that everything we are invited to understand in the journey of awakening can be understood within the judgmental mind. Letting go, compassion, the emptiness of self, equanimity, and wisdom are the lessons we are invited to explore with this most powerful of afflictions. The alchemy of mindfulness is to nurture a sense of possibility. We are encouraged to imagine a life free from ill will, blame, and shame. To imagine a life and a heart of compassion, wisdom, and peace.
When I try to bring awareness to my breath, I feel instead like I’m interfering with its natural flow. What should I do?
This is not an unusual experience. Throughout our lives, we breathe without effort; then the moment we try to breathe consciously, our breathing suddenly feels blocked, shortened, or constricted. Our bodies know how to breathe without instruction, yet it can feel as if we are having to learn how to breathe all over again.
One reason for this is that you have suddenly become the breather. Your mindfulness of breathing has taken on something extra, a layer of self-consciousness, which brings with it tension and uncertainty. You may be trying too hard. Self-consciousness disguised as mindfulness often manifests as an effort to control the breath. Observe this. There is insight to be gained in seeing how we transfer life patterns of control, anxiety, or self-consciousness into our meditation practice. Learning to undo some of these patterns within our practice is a meaningful step in learning how to release their grip on the rest of our lives.
It is important to remember that there is no “right” breath. If you carry with you the idea that your breath should be deep and full when in reality it is shallow, you immediately get into trouble. At times the breath is deep, at times shallow, at times freely flowing, and at other times it can feel blocked. Your practice is to be with your breath as it is, learning to let go of how you think things “should be.” Mindfulness of breathing is a practice of learning to harmonize your attention with what is, in this moment. Short, long, deep, shallow are all fine breaths. Trust your body; it knows what is needed.
Some people come into meditation with a history of breathing difficulties such as asthma. The moment they consciously bring their attention to their breath, the emotional history associated with breathing comes to the forefront of their consciousness. They find themselves struggling with the breath in meditation practice just as they have in life. The fear of not having enough breath to sustain life serves to make each breath an increasingly arduous process. Your meditation should be founded in ease and relaxation. If you have historical associations with the breath that hinder its free flowing, it may be helpful to adopt for a time another object of attention, such as listening. Bear in mind that it is the development of attention that is of primary significance; the object of attention is secondary.
As we begin to practice mindfulness of breathing, we often see ourselves, initially, as the breather, apart and separate from the breath itself. The direction and development of the practice is eventually to bridge this separation until our attention is absorbed fully into the breath. The breath breathes itself, and we experience a place of deep calmness, concentration, and ease. When we breathe, we just breathe. As our practice develops, we learn to let go of much of the emotional and psychological baggage that surrounds so much of what we “do” in life. Essentially, we learn to let go of the “doer.” It is important to be patient with this process. Mindfulness of breathing is a practice of patient intimacy, learning to come closer and closer to the simple process of just breathing.
Without becoming overly strategic or feeling that this is a problem you are required to fix, there are a couple of ways to experiment with letting go of the tension that surrounds your breath. You might experiment with simply focusing your attention in the area of your upper lip and nostrils. Just notice the sensation of your breath entering and leaving your body. Let go of any expectation that your breath should be deeper than it is. Be aware just of the coolness of your incoming breath and the warmth of your outgoing breath. If you notice that there is still tension within your breathing, take your attention just to listening for a few moments. Again, don’t look for sounds, just be receptive to the sounds near and far that come to you. Then return your attention to your breathing once more. See if that same quality of receptivity that you brought to listening can be brought into your awareness of breathing. Sense if it is possible just to receive your breath. Your body is breathing; trust it, let it be just as it is.