Hugh Byrne on Clear seeing - Sep 10, 2023

Live Session Summary, Sunday, September 10, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session exploring some key themes from our sessions over the past three years. Here are some of the main topics, poems, and quotes:

• I spoke of mindfulness as, in the Buddha’s words, ‘the direct path to liberation.’ Through bringing awareness to our present-moment experience we gain insight into the nature of all experience: that everything is impermanent; nothing can be held onto; and nothing is inherently ‘I’ or ‘mine.’ Mindfulness leads to insight, or seeing clearly, and that clear seeing frees us from suffering. 

• I discussed the Buddha’s central teaching of the four noble truths: 1) that suffering (dukkha) is to be acknowledged (first noble truth); 2) that the cause of suffering is craving (which includes aversion and delusion or ignorance)—metaphorically, adding a second arrow of suffering to a first arrow of pain or difficulty—and the task of the second noble truth is to let go of craving; 3) the third noble truth is that letting go leads to freedom (nirvana, or the ending of greed, aversion, and delusion) and the deepest peace; and 4) the fourth noble truth is that there is a path to freedom, the noble eightfold path—a training to cultivate wisdom, live wisely and kindly, and train the mind. 

• The key to freeing ourselves from suffering lies in being present here and now—what Eckhart Tolle calls ‘the power of now’: We only ever live in the present, in the Now. When we move in a reactive, unconscious way into the past, the future, or away from being present for our experience, it is painful and we live in a narrow and constricted way. As Tolle, says, ‘The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind… Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment.” (Tolle, the Power of Now, p19 and 25)

• At the heart of being present is acceptance of our experience and of life as it is unfolding—which is at the core of the practice of mindfulness. When we meet our experience fully and wholeheartedly, the problematical nature of things dissolves. ‘Problems’ become situations to deal with, rather than something that feels ‘wrong’ or that ‘shouldn’t be happening’ or that needs to change. They are simply how life is unfolding in the moment that call for our response.

The quotes I shared include: 

• Eckhart Tolle on ‘The origin of fear’: He distinguishes psychological fear from the fear we might experience being attacked by someone or something that we would respond to immediately and viscerally. ‘The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. And if you are identified with your mind and have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will be your constant companion. 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.’ (The Power of Now, p35)

• Anthony de Mello: ‘Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.’

• Carl Rogers: ‘The curious paradox is that, when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.’

• Tolle: ‘What you accept fully you go beyond.’

Poems I shared include: an excerpt from Rumi’s ‘The Guest House’; Dorothy Hunt’s ‘Peace is this moment without judgment’; and Mary Oliver’s ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do // with your one wild and precious life?’ from ‘The Summer Day.’

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if I missed anything important. I have uploaded new dates for sessions in the coming weeks—and look forward to seeing you again at 9am eastern next Sunday, September 17. Wishing you a joyful and fruitful week ahead. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Acceptance & suffering

Live Session Summary, Sunday, July 23, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session on the Buddha’s teachings of awakening. The talk covered a fairly wide area, and here are some of the key points:

• At the heart of the Buddha’s teachings is the goal of ending suffering in this lifetime and cultivating skills, practices, and insights that help us achieve that goal

• All of us, no matter our backgrounds, histories, or characteristics, have the potential to realize the deepest peace, happiness, and freedom attainable in this human existence

• Realizing freedom from suffering does not require us to take on any particular views or beliefs. Rather, it calls for openness, curiosity, and a willingness to observe and feel what we are experiencing with acceptance and kindness, and without judgment. The Buddha invited his followers to ‘see for yourself’ (‘ehipassiko,’ in the Pali language)

• At the heart of his teachings to help end suffering are the four noble truths, which function for us like a key to help us move from the endless wandering of suffering (known as ‘samsara’ in Pali) to the deepest freedom. The first noble truth—the truth of suffering—calls on us to recognize and acknowledge when suffering is present in our life—when we’re tangled in stress, worry, or fear, or swept up in craving or clinging, or confused, stuck, etc.

• The second noble truth—the truth that the cause of suffering is craving/clinging—emphasizes the need to recognize our own role in our suffering (that when we are experiencing suffering, there is some way we are not accepting the truth of our experience). Acknowledging our craving (‘tanha’ or ‘thirst, in Pali) creates the conditions for freedom, letting go, and the end of suffering

• The third noble truth—the truth of freedom from suffering, or nirvana—is that when we abandon clinging, we open to a deep freedom of the heart. As Ajahn Chah said, ‘let go completely and you will experience complete peace. Your struggle with the world will be at an end’

• The fourth noble truth—the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering, the noble eightfold path—provides a path of practice, with eight elements, to help us live ethically, train the mind, and cultivate wisdom

• At the heart of the Buddha’s training is cultivating present-moment awareness—meeting this moment without judgment. The power of awareness of our experience here and now—the ‘power of now,’ in Eckhart Tolle’s phrase—is to move us from entanglement into the truth of our experience. When we bring awareness to our anger, fear, or craving, we move out of those states into consciousness of them. The difference between being swept up in anger and being aware that we’ve been caught up in anger is the difference between suffering and freedom

I spent some time exploring Mary Oliver’s poem ‘The Journey,’ which is a powerful poetic statement of the movement from entanglement and suffering into clarity, understanding, and the potential for greater peace in our life. Some of the qualities that we can see in ‘The Journey’ are intention; the difficulties of stepping out of habitual patterns and relationships; determination, effort, and perseverance; the difficulties and obstacles we confront on the path; the ability to connect with the quiet inner voice of awareness; and the potential for us to ‘save the only life you could save.’

I shared some lines from Dorothy Hunt’s ‘Peace is this moment without judgment’; Martha Postlethwaite’s ‘Clearing’; and the poem ‘There was a time when I would reject those…’, by Muhyiddin Ibn al’Arabi. 

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if I missed anything important to you. Have a wonderful week and I look forward to seeing you next Sunday, July 30, at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Hugh Byrne, Feb 19, 2023

Live Session Summary, Sunday, February 19, 2023: It was good to be with you today for our Live session on the Paths of Wellness and Awakening. I’ll begin with the poems and quotes I shared and then summarize the main points covered in today’s Live session:

Ram Dass, “Once you become somebody, then you are ready to start your journey to become nobody.’ 

Ajahn Chah, “Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. 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.”

Buddha, “Just as the mighty ocean has but one taste, the taste of salt, so too my teaching has but one taste, the taste of freedom.”

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

Mingyur Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist teacher, “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”

After his awakening, the Buddha was asked if he was a god or divine being and he said ‘no’; asked if he was a man, he said ‘no’; when asked, ‘what are you then?’, he said, ‘I am awake.’

Poems: ‘The Way It Is’ by Lynn Ungar; a quote from ‘The Mind of Absolute Trust’ by Seng Ts’an; a quote from Dorothy Hunt’s poem, ‘Peace is this moment without judgment’; and ‘Clearing’ by Martha Postlethwaite.  

I reviewed some of the main points from earlier sessions: The paths of wellness and awakening can be seen as distinct—having different goals—but can also be seen as on a continuum—and that developing wellness reducing stress and anxiety, and developing a healthy sense of ‘self,’ can be seen as necessary, if not sufficient conditions for realizing the goal of awakening. (See quotes from Ram Dass, Ajahn Chah, and the Buddha above)

I discussed the metaphor of the spiral as being helpful in seeing how we can keep going round and round, repeating old patterns and continuing to suffer until we bring our experience into the light of awareness and can see into the harm caused by being locked in this cycle—and letting go. (See quotes from Carl Jung and Mingyur Rinpoche above.)

I highlighted the earlier discussion of what awakening is: the radical transformation in our way of being in the world and seeing the world, the complete ending of suffering that comes from letting go of clinging, and shared the story of the Buddha above: ‘I am awake.’ 

Finally, I highlighted six central areas of Buddha’s teachings that lead to awakening and the end of suffering:

• The Four Noble Truths: 1) the existence of suffering; 2) the cause of suffering—clinging; 3) the end of suffering—Nirvana/awakening; and 4) the path to the end of suffering—the Noble Eightfold Path. This teaching can be summarized briefly as: When we cling, we suffer; when we let go of clinging, we end our suffering.

• The Noble Eightfold Path (the fourth noble truth), which has eight elements within three areas of training—and is the practical training to realize the end of suffering:

o The wisdom area: 1) Wise/skillful/appropriate understanding; and 2) wise intention

o The training in ethics: 3) wise speech; 4) wise action; and 5) wise livelihood

o The training in meditation, or training the mind: 6) wise effort; 7) wise mindfulness; and 8) wise concentration

• The practice of mindfulness as the ‘direct path to liberation’ (Buddha): Through bringing mindfulness to any area of our experience, we can see clearly which thoughts, words, and actions lead to suffering and which lead to freedom. It is insight, or clear seeing, that frees us from suffering. 

• Abandoning the five ‘hindrances’ that prevent us from seeing clearly and waking up. These are: 1) the wanting mind; 2) aversion; 3) sloth/torpor; 4) restlessness/worry; and 5) doubt.

• Cultivating the ‘seven factors of awakening’ that lead to freedom. These are: 1) mindfulness; 2) investigation; 3) energy; 4) joy; 5) tranquility; 6) concentration; and 7) equanimity.

• Developing the beautiful qualities of heart and mind known as the brahma viharas, or ‘divine abodes.’ These are: 1) loving-kindness; 2) compassion; 3) spiritual joy, or appreciative joy (happiness in another’s happiness); and 4) equanimity.

Next time, we’ll look at how insight leads to awakening; the question of whether awakening happens ‘suddenly’ or ‘gradually’ or both; and we’ll return to the metaphor of the spiral to sum up.

It was good to be with you today. I have uploaded four new Live sessions (March 12, March 19, April 9, and April 23). These should be findable as soon as they are reviewed. Have a good week and see you on March 12, my birthday. Warmly, Hugh 🌻 💜 🙏🏻

C. Dale Young on Jack Gilbert’s “A Brief for the Defense”

C. Dale Young on Jack Gilbert’s “A Brief for the Defense”

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

From Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert. Copyright © 2012 by Jack Gilbert. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.  

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And day after day, as I hear the panic and fears of my patients, friends, others, my mind keeps turning to a specific poem. As San Francisco went to "shelter-in-place" and the city started shutting down, people began to feel as if the world had slowed almost to a stop. We could no longer go to restaurants, cafes, bars, sporting events. And Jack Gilbert's poem kept surfacing from deep inside me. Every news item mentioned the virus, and I kept hearing Jack Gilbert. This poem, "A Brief for the Defense," is complicated and not always loved by people, but in it I hear a call for resistance in the face of overwhelming sadness and despair. I come back, again and again, to these lines: "We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, / but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have / the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless / furnace of this world."

---

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, we asked poets to write about the poems they return to in difficult times—to find solace, perspective, or even a moment of delight. Subscribe to the PSA newsletter for more Reading In The Dark responses and to keep updated with the PSA.

A basic truth of my life is that I am a poet and a physician. But as with all truths, those two roles are not equal, nor are they often seen equally. I spend the vast majority of my days being a doctor. I can assure you the vast number of people who encounter me in my day-to-day life have no idea whatsoever I am a poet. For the past three weeks, the medical staff and the entire team at my hospital have been dealing with the coronavirus issue. Do we cancel elective cases? Do we screen? Every single day, the information has changed and we have had to adapt. Many of us in healthcare are already so tired because every day we are managing people's panic and fear.

—C. DALE YOUNG

​C. Dale Young practices medicine full-time and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. He is the author of a novel in stories, The Affliction, and four collections of poetry​.

Offered by Hugh Byrne on Sunday, Mar 20, 2022 via Insighttimer app

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 🙏🏻 💜

Saint Francis and the Sow - Galway Kinnell

 

Saint Francis and the Sow

BY GALWAY KINNELL

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   

began remembering all down her thick length,   

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Galway Kinnell, “Saint Francis and the Sow” from Three Books. Copyright © 2002 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved, www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

Source: Three Books (2002)

The painting in the cave & other - Hugh Byrne - Jan 30, 2022

January 30, 2022: Live Summary: The theme for the Live session was the ‘miracle’ of mindfulness. This was the title of an early book by Thich Nhat Hanh. Mindfulness is not a miracle in a supernatural sense or something we need to have special powers to develop, but rather it is wonderful in the way that our moment-to-moment awareness can take us all the way to the deepest freedom possible in this human life.

I shared the fundamental truth that life can only be lived in the present. Past and present are only memories and possibilities. The ‘past’ was the present when it was taking place and the ‘future’ will consist of present moments. It’s only by being present—alive, awake, aware—that we can experience joy, love, connection, peace, wonder. Only this moment is life. 

When we are present, we come into alignment with life itself—we ‘keep our appointment with life,’ in Thich Nhat Hanh’s words. We see that we are as inextricably part of the web of life as are the flower in the field, the deer grazing, the tree and mountain, but much of the time we are separate from ourselves and from life. (James Joyce in Dubliners said ‘Mr Duffy lived a short distance from his body.’) Mindfulness brings us back to ourselves; it brings us back to life. 

I spoke of two primary ways in which being present here and now leads to freedom of the heart. The first way is by helping us see where we are tangled in habits of mind and behavior that keep us disconnected from ourselves and our true nature—when we are caught up, for example, in fear, anger, blame, wanting, escaping, repressing, stress, worry, and other painful mind states and behaviors.

When we see our confusion with kind, non-judging awareness, we can let go of these habits of mind and action—we see that they are causing us suffering, not leading to well-being, and we can stop fueling them. We don’t have to get rid of them as something bad, but simply see them and let them go… 

We can see the way our minds create suffering—for example, by worrying about the future and fueling anxious thinking, so that we believe the stories that our mind is telling us. Like the Zen monk in a cave, who painted a picture of a fierce tiger on the cave wall and was terrified each time he looked at it. We paint the pictures in our mind and then through fueling the fear by repetition, we stay locked in fear and suffering. 

This is the path of abandoning, letting go of unskillful mind states and behaviors. The other path—we need both—is the path of cultivation of mind states and actions that lead to happiness, well-being, and freedom. When we cultivate presence—awareness of our experience here and now—beautiful states of mind naturally arise. We see more clearly the gifts that we’ve received from life and our oneness with all of life. Compassion, gratitude, loving-kindness, joy, arise in the heart and mind. 

Other qualities that arise naturally—and that we can consciously cultivate—lead to the deepest freedom of awakening or enlightenment. The Buddha emphasized seven qualities that flow towards freedom in the way that a river flows towards the sea. These are: 1) Mindfulness; 2) Investigation; 3) Energy; 4) Joy; 5) Tranquility; 6) Concentration; and 7) Equanimity. By cultivating these ‘seven factors of awakening’ and abandoning unskillful states, mindfulness leads us to freedom of the heart. 

I shared Mary Oliver’s poem ‘Wild Geese’ and a short poem by Thich Nhat Hanh: 

‘If we are peaceful, if we are happy

We can blossom like a flower,

And everyone in our family, 

Our entire society

Will benefit from our peace.’

Warm wishes to all for the week ahead. See you next Sunday at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜

For Warmth - by Thich Nhat Hahn

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

Mary Oliver

When Death Comes