Transcription
Good morning, everyone. Delightful to be here again. I always see such a thriving Saṅgha. It's very lovely. So I've got quite a sore throat, and I'm hoping that my voice is still reaching the back. Please, if it gets quiet, please just say something. Don't be polite about that. Just let me know. Does anyone here today feel like they're a beginner or relatively new to meditation? Yeah? Okay. So I will stay behind in one of the walking periods later on for anyone who feels like they have any questions about meditation or the basics of meditation or something. Please feel free to attend that if you are. Okay. So the theme that I wanted to explore a little bit today is emotional healing and the Dharma. It was a while that I wanted to speak around this theme, but kept holding back just for a couple of reasons, one of which is that it's such a huge subject. It's so multifaceted and involved that it felt like to even begin to try and address it in one talk would just be foolishness. But never being one to shy away from making a fool of myself ... [laughter] Here I am!
It's very huge. All I can do today is take a few strands, a few avenues in, and see what light can be thrown on this area. Another reason why I have been a little reluctant to talk about it is looking back on my own past, and I know it's true for others, too, emotions and emotional healing is an area that can be very charged for us, because emotions are very charged in themselves. Our relationship to healing emotions can be very charged, and it certainly was for me in the past. It's very easy for a lot of views to arise around how it is or how it isn't or whatever. And what I want to do today is present, kind of from different angles, different views. If I reflect back some fifteen, twenty years ago, some of the things that I might say today, if I'd have heard them fifteen years ago I probably would have, I don't know, bitten the head off the speaker or something. [laughter] So I really just want to explore it in the context of kind of unpacking it a little bit and seeing what's there. Always in Dharma talks and Dharma teachings, the emphasis, the thrust, is a simple question, a very simple question, a very far-reaching question: what is it that leads to suffering, to dis-ease, to discontent, to unsatisfactoriness? And what is it that leads to freedom from that, freedom from suffering, freedom from discontent? And it's not about views and who's right and who's wrong and all that.
Okay. So just jumping right in. We come to meditation, and this particular kind of meditation, insight meditation, most people tend to start with mindfulness of the breathing, giving attention, a very careful, very sensitive attention to the breathing process. And then after a while beginning to expand the range of mindfulness, expand the areas that we're paying attention to in life, to actually include the whole of life. So one begins to pay attention to the life of the body and the life of the mind and the feeling life, the emotional life, as well as other things. So this mindfulness of the emotional life is where I want to start. As insight meditators, mindfulness is usually the foundation of our practice. I want to explore this a little bit this morning and then talk about other aspects this afternoon.
What does it mean to bring mindfulness to the emotional life? So this is a practice as much as being with the breath, being mindful of the breath is a practice. We can develop our skill or the art of being with our emotions, both lovely and enjoyable emotions and difficult emotions and everything in between. We can develop that skill, that art, so that we're really okay with being with, being present to, being attentive to our emotional life. A large thrust of mindfulness practice is this intimacy, intimacy with experience, drawing close to our experience of life, touching life, being open to life. In terms of mindfulness with emotion, an emotion's actually quite a complex thing, typically. Oftentimes with emotion, the mind gets involved in a story, a narrative around what the emotion is. This is just normal human functioning. The thrust of the mindfulness practice, though, is as much as possible -- and this is a practice -- not to get too involved in the story, not to get dragged into that vortex, that whirlpool of the story, and dragged round and round like in a spin dryer, and ricocheted off to some astral realm somewhere of misery. So not to get too lost in the story. The story is there; we don't have to suppress it. But actually as much as possible -- this is really, really crucial, a fundamental aspect of mindfulness -- not to get too involved in the story, but as much as possible, to see if one can come down into the immediacy of the experience of the emotion.
We don't have too much time to talk about technique today, but all emotions or most emotions are actually reflected somewhere in the body, in the bodily sense. Some of this is very obvious with strong fear or anger, but actually everything is reflected there. Can be really helpful in terms of the mindfulness and being with, being attentive to, to come into the body and give a very open, delicate sensitivity to the physical manifestation of the emotional state, wherever that is -- in the mouth, in the heart area, could be anywhere in the body. So this basic principle of mindfulness, giving mindfulness to what's going on emotionally, and the power of attention, absolutely fundamental in this kind of practice, the power of attention. There's something very interesting just about this much, the power of attention, in relation to emotions and in particular in relation to difficult emotions. You could look at it a certain way. When there's an afflictive emotion, a difficult emotion, if it's anger or rage or depression or grief or whatever it is, it's usually the case that that emotion has a lot of energy caught up in it. It's taking a lot of energy, and there's a lot of energy kind of whirling around in that emotional pathway, pathways. The energy of the human system, a lot of it is caught up in the whirlpool of that emotion. It can seem that we don't have the energy to pay attention. Literally we don't see clearly at those times when the emotion is really strong.
[8:41] So what's possible is to actually deliberately, consciously energize the attentiveness in that moment. When the emotional energy is very strong, actually energize the attentiveness, really pay attention to the physical manifestation of what's going on. Really just keep trying to pay attention. Something happens then, potentially. You could say the energy of attentiveness gets built up, and it sucks the energy out of the whirlpool of the emotions. So the energy has been caught up with the emotion, it sucks it out into attentiveness, and then it's almost like the attentiveness is able to be bigger than the emotion, instead of the attentiveness, the attention, being overwhelmed by the energy of the emotion. You get a seesaw effect. Just in trying, literally putting the effort to just stay present, stay present, give attention, there's this effect that happens. The energy shifts into the attention itself and drains away, its excess drains away from the emotion. The emotion becomes much more handleable.
If what we're going through is rage or something where there's a lot of agitation of energy, a lot of bubbly energy, what can happen, you start putting the energy into the attentiveness and it drains that excess energy from the agitation, from the rage, from whatever it is. If the emotion we're going through is a kind of suppression of energy, like depression or grief or something, the attentiveness raises, lifts the energy. Very important principle.
It can be tempting when we think about healing and this whole area of emotional healing, the largeness of what that is, it can be tempting to feel that the healing comes in feeling the old emotions. We feel like there are some old emotions from the past and I just need to feel them, and if I feel them, in the feeling of them will be the healing. Partly what I want to do today is explore and expose some of the views we have around healing, around emotional healing. Some of them are conscious and we're conscious of holding them. Some of them will be not so conscious. I want to just kind of inject a little air in and have a look what's there.
Sometimes -- or a question -- do I assume that I just need to feel an old feeling to heal it? It may be the case that that's what's needed. But probably what's more important than just the feeling of an old emotion is our relationship to it in the present. What is the relationship to it as we feel it? So that's one of the aspects. It's actually much more important than just the feeling of it. I can be feeling it and having a lot of aversion, a lot of negative view of myself, of life, of the situation. It's not just the feeling. It's the relationship and the view and all kinds of other factors that bring the healing. So we can, as practitioners, part of the good news is we can learn relating. We can learn to bring a real skill to our presence with what's difficult emotionally. We can learn that art. We can learn to relate in a kind and open and gentle and sensitive, delicate way. We can learn that. It's a skill. Wherever we are in our evolution, if we use that terrible word, we can learn that so that we are then not compounding the suffering of a difficult emotion. We're not compounding it with disconnection. If something's going on, and I'm sort of feeling it but I'm actually just disconnected, I'm pushing it away, I've got a double whammy of dukkha there, a double whammy of suffering. Not only is the feeling difficult, but I'm adding a suffering of disconnection. Does that make sense? Yeah? I'm adding another suffering of disconnection. To be disconnected from what's going on, to be disconnected from ourselves, is suffering, plain and simple.
Sometimes when we can learn this skill in relating we find we can connect. And that connectedness with what's going on brings a kind of sweetness with it. The taste of connection, the taste of connection to our own heart, the taste of connection to our own emotions, is a taste of sweetness. So even if the emotion is difficult -- for instance, there's grief, let's say, going on; there can be something very difficult going on -- there's a grief there, and yet, because of the connection with it and with ourselves there's actually a sweetness washing through the whole experience. Yes, it's difficult, but it's kind of held in a larger context of sweetness. Makes it so much easier to bear, so much actually a person wants to be there with the difficulty because of that sweetness and the sense of connection.
I'll take a slight tangent and talk about grief for a second. Sometimes a human being looks at themselves, looks at their life after twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, longer, of being alive, being on the earth, and has a sense, when they look honestly inside, or has a feeling, that some part of themselves, some very basic part, very beautiful part perhaps, has been lost. Somewhere along the line, some piece of one's own being has just detached itself and got lost somewhere. We have lost contact. We literally feel like we've lost contact with a deep and almost a core part of ourselves. It could be we've lost contact with our playfulness, lost contact with our tenderness, with our kindness. Can be anything like that. This is extremely common, extremely common that at a certain point in one's life one looks inside and says, "Where did that go?" Maybe one remembers childhood, "I remember I used to be ... What happened? What happened?"
[16:33] In seeing that, the seeing of it can be the beginning of a reconnection, and other aspects, too, of reconnecting. But in the process of reconnecting, and in the process of being conscious of that, oftentimes there is a grief. One is grieving what one has lost of oneself. Very normal and natural part of the healing process. That grief, that grief at what has been disconnected, actually can function a bit like a glue. It glues back, so to speak, into the being what has been disconnected. The grief is part of that. It begins to help to stick back what has been lost.
So if we are willing as practitioners to learn this art of relating, learn this art of mindfulness, being with our emotions in this way, slowly we can develop the capacity, we're developing the capacity -- it's important to see it this way, to see what we're doing, part of what we're doing, we're developing the capacity to accommodate what's difficult emotionally. Developing the capacity to accommodate what's difficult emotionally. If we think about or if we reflect on what does healing mean -- what does it mean, emotional healing? It's such a big concept. What does it mean? Part, and a very central part of what it means, must mean exactly that: the development of the capacity to accommodate, to accommodate what's going on emotionally. It doesn't mean the absence of certain feelings. It means the capacity to accommodate them, to be with them, to handle them, to be okay with them.
If we're willing to tread that journey, we see in so doing we also develop courage, courage to be with what's difficult. Really important. We develop a quality of openness of heart. Beautiful, beautiful for a human being to have. We develop confidence. How many human beings -- and I don't know what the answer is -- in the world can honestly put their hand on their heart and say, "I feel totally confident with whatever might come up emotionally"? Really, "I have no fear that there's something lurking in here that's going to show its monstrous head at some point. I have no fear that something might happen in some situation that's going to -- I feel I really have, through practice, developed this capacity to accommodate what's difficult, and I feel confident about that." How many human beings? I have no idea what the answer is. We develop the inner resources to be with our experience and to be open with it in a self-nurturing way, in a kind way.
That's not easy. No way is that easy. It's a very gradual process and a very challenging process, no question about it. Just to do that much, just to tread the path of mindfulness, just beginning with mindfulness, it takes kindness. It needs kindness. It needs patience. A lot of this stuff, it's not you sort of look at something once and, "Right, that's that dealt with." It takes repeated visiting, a lot of patience. Takes interest. We need to be interested in our experience and interested in our emotional life. It really takes a lot of interest. It takes compassion. It also takes rest. In other words, there's nothing to be gained from just 24/7 sticking one's nose in what's difficult and feeling completely overwhelmed by it. It needs rest. We need to say, "Enough now," and do something that's resting the consciousness, resting the being in a way that's wholesome. That doesn't mean switching on and tuning into Big Brother for fifteen hours or whatever, or drink or whatever. Learning how to rest wholesomely. What does that mean? Partly, in the context of insight meditation, that's one of the functions of breath meditation or loving-kindness meditation. It's learning to put the consciousness somewhere that it's just "ah," it's just okay, or even sometimes nice, and just rest it, rest it. But equally, being in nature -- something that nourishes deeply, that's restful, that's healing, that's opening.
A while ago I was talking to a very good friend of mine. He's not a practitioner. I've known him a long time; he's a good friend. He was just saying, going through some emotional stuff, "You know, I feel I've become so sophisticated at talking around my emotions, in very sophisticated psychological language." I was just listening, and he was saying this. "Sometimes I feel like I just need to sit with them quietly and just open to them." And this, of course, is a lot about what this foundation of mindfulness is about, being with what is, just simply meeting life as it is -- we'll revisit that later on, but -- being with what is, being open to it, touching life in that way. If we say there is a kind of project of mindfulness -- actually mindfulness has many projects and many agendas. One of them is to be with the fullness of life. So if you're signing up to mindfulness, that's, in a way, what you're signing up to: to be with the fullness of life, good, bad, beautiful, ugly. Something very noble in that. Just want to open the being, open the consciousness, open the heart to the fullness of what life is, because we're alive and because that's what life is. We're here, and why not taste it, why not drink deeply from that well? That's a fundamental agenda of mindfulness. So being with what's difficult emotionally -- and today that's much of what we're talking about -- that's part of that being with the fullness of life.
Okay. Enough talking for now. We'll do a sitting meditation, but if you feel like stretching your legs for half a minute, please do.
