Habits of the Heart: Training the Heart in Lovingkindness

A few months ago, my doctor advised that I should undergo a surgical procedure on my heart to fix an ongoing issue with A-Fib, a disease where the electrical signals in my heart don’t behave quite like they should. And I must admit, that was terrifying news. I am an impatient person by nature and was eager to get the procedure on the calendar as soon as possible. Instead, it was scheduled for two months down the road. Very frustrating. So much waiting. So much time to think about the inner workings of the human heart…

We have a different relationship with the heart than we do with our other body parts, don’t we? We just talk about it differently.

It’s a symbol of love and care and courage and what most matters. When we love someone, we say “You are in my heart” -- the famous line from E. E. Cummings “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart).” When another is grieving, we say “my heart is with you”. We get to the heart of the matter. We follow our hearts. Many times, we use it to describe the entirety of who we are: “He put his whole heart into it.” We never really talk like that about, you know, our livers or gallbladder or whatever…

The essential nature of the heart is universally understood as that which is most precious, most vital to who we are. And what is most vital can often be what is most vulnerable. And so, it also seems natural that, just as we train our minds in attending to the present moment, we intentionally engage in practices that nourish and support the well-being of this fundamental, life-sustaining part of us.

Training Our Hearts for Kindness

There are a few versions of heart-training—loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity. Every one of those is a talk in itself. So, for tonight’s short talk, we will focus on Metta, or lovingkindness, meditation. This is one of the most powerful trainings that I have worked with in my own practice.

Loving-kindness, or Metta in Pali, is a friendly, caring attitude towards all beings, including ourselves. I recently heard my teacher Jonathan Foust describe Metta as "a powerful practice that can help counteract feelings of loneliness and separation and open the heart. It can make it easier for us to be with whatever challenging or unpleasant conditions arise." 

"And the good news," he says, "is that it’s something we can cultivate."

Meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg refers to Metta as the Song of the Heart. I love that. Metta meditation is a very intentional way of offering loving care, friendliness, and well wishes to ourselves and to others…all beings, without exception. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you live with ease. May you be free from suffering.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison study done several years ago showed that positive emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion can be learned in the same way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport. In the study, researchers noticed increased brain activity in key areas related to empathy and that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion and loving-kindness meditation.

Practicing Metta

In the traditional Metta practice, we begin with ourselves. Sometimes that can be hard, so we might start with a visualization to gladden the mind. A remembering of what you really appreciate or love.

Many times, even that can be difficult, so I often begin a formal Metta practice with a visualization of someone very dear to me, someone who helps me remember my own goodness, whose love is easy and uncomplicated. Imagining that being sitting right there with me, I imagine them offering the phrases to me and with each phrase, I repeat it to myself. May you be happy… (May I be happy)…

It is helpful for me, also, to just place my hand gently on my chest where I feel the energy and warmth of that touch flowing into and around my heart. It deepens the sense of caring, the sincerity of my aspiration that my heart might be open and free.

The practice then moves on to a loved one, a benefactor…a neutral person…a difficult person…and finally, bringing all those beings around us, remembering that everyone just wants to love and be loved, we extend our care, including all beings everywhere in our blessings of peace and happiness and freedom.

For some, this is an easy, beautiful practice, almost a prayer. For others, it can be a real challenge. I’ve heard people say that, for them, it is dry and boring to just repeat phrases over and over. One person told me that it felt like the positive affirmations that were so prevalent in popular psychology a while back. Still others say that it just doesn’t feel like meditating.

And sometimes, it is just like that. But I find that, the more deeply I explore the practice, the more connected I feel to my center--to my heart--and the more available I am for that same kind of connection with others.

Of course, it can seem rote and boring if what you are doing is simply recounting phrases. But when we take the time to deeply sense into what it feels like to wish ease and well-being to ourselves or another – whether it’s a loved one, a stranger, or someone we think of as our worst enemy – our hearts begin to relax and open.

Making it Personal

One thing I find so beneficial about Metta meditation is that it is so easily customizable and feels useful in so many situations. It can be a part of your practice daily or weekly – or even your entire practice. I have one friend whose teacher suggested that she only do Metta practice for a year. And I find that to me, even that suggestion is quite powerful.

But Metta can also be done totally on the fly. For every opportunity that this world gives us to close our hearts or harden them in some way, there is the possibility of not just countering that, but creating even more openness. More compassion. More connection.

When I moved from Dallas to Nashville, I was really amazed at how people drive here. It’s a small city, compared to where I came from, but the traffic here is just unreal. And I am more than a little prone to verbalizing my frustrations with people that are not as good at driving as I think I am.

A few years ago, a dear dharma buddy sent me a link to a little trinket they thought I might enjoy. It was a dashboard Buddha--actually a bouncing buddha. Because I’m irreverent that way.

I figured it would be a cool thing to have, particularly when I am stressed out in traffic. I can look at my bouncing Buddha and feel all calm and peaceful again, right? Soon, it was installed and ready to go.

After a few trips to work and running errands around town, I noticed that, rather than the Buddha bringing a sense of peace and balance, it was instead bringing up a great deal of guilt and self-aversion. Someone would cut me off or a pedestrian would run out into the street for no apparent reason, and off I would go. Once the outrage and some swearing, died down a bit, I would look at the Buddha and experience an immediate sense of shame and failure. Even with the reminder, I couldn’t act right.

I was talking about it one day with a teacher, and they asked me: “You know, what if that guilt could be reframed? What if that moment you realize what just happened is actually a moment of awakening?” What would happen if, in the very moment of realization, you could offer Metta – to both yourself, and to the person that just cut you off?

So, this became a practice. Every day as I was making my way through the traffic gauntlet, when a situation would arise that brought up anger or frustration, as soon as I noticed it, I would offer lovingkindness to myself, and to the other driver. Many times, it was “May I be patient.” “May you arrive home safely.” “May your car run out of gas before you actually kill someone...” (Ok, not really).

Sometimes, the moment of awakening came before the swearing. Sometimes, it didn’t. Sometimes, I had to forgive the reactivity that was there before I could make it to the Metta part.

After some time, I began noticing that, occasionally, instead of being hostile and judging when these incidents occurred, my first thought would be of concern. Rather than “Oh my god, what a jerk!” it might be “I hope that guy makes it to where he’s going.”

As I continued, I began to realize that, while this started as somewhat of a little game with myself, I was truly beginning to respond in a more caring way. I was beginning to really find this connected part of my heart that understood how the other driver was no different than I was. We were both probably tired after a long day and just trying to get home to our families. Compassion was arising...my heart was softer and more awake.

There are endless ways that heart practices can become personal and alive for each of us. In the same way that hitting a tennis ball or striking a perfect chord on the guitar becomes a natural movement after hours and hours of training, so too become the habits of the heart. What we practice grows stronger. These trainings are transformational, and their effects ripple out endlessly into our world in ways that we really can only imagine.

Connecting With What Really Matters

Over these weeks of waiting for my surgery, I have had to slow down, pay more attention to my body and its signals. Often, I haven’t been able to push through the fatigue or side effects of the medications. There have been many times when the pull was strong to motivate myself with harsh words and get down on myself for being so limited.

In these moments, my own Metta practice has become especially poignant. During episodes where my heart fell out of rhythm, I often found myself sitting in my office, or in my living room, or lying in my bed at night--thinking about how many people live with this every day—and with my hand pressed right into the pain: “May you be held in loving presence, may you feel safe and at ease.” It became so clear to me how much I want to live, how much I want to be right in the center of this loving awareness.

As we wind down, we’ll take some time to reflect on words from the Metta Sutta, the Buddha’s direction on training our hearts in loving-kindness...

This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness
And who knows the path of peace, they should wish:

In gladness and in safety
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be,
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none

Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings,
Radiating kindness over the entire world,
Spreading upwards to the skies, and downwards to the depths,
Outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill-will...

...Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down,
Free from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection.

~~~~~~~~~~

May all beings everywhere be filled with loving presence

May all beings everywhere feel safe and at ease

May all beings everywhere be happy

May all beings everywhere awaken and be free

c.sharshel

9/11/2018

Living with Diseases of Despair

For the last few weeks, I've been contemplating suicide.

Don't panic! I am not thinking about killing myself. But with recent high-profile suicides all over the airwaves, and newly recycled statistics that show an increase in the numbers of people taking their own lives, I will admit that I am drawn to reflection on my own encounters with darkness and how I have gone about surviving.

If you know my story, you know how my own life was once devastated by the suicide of someone I loved. And you also know how close I’ve been to that edge—not once, but over and over again—as I have sought to reconcile a deep desire to relieve the suffering of my own depression, anxiety, and PTSD (and the stigma around them) with my will to, from their wreckage, create a life of beauty and meaning. It has never been easy.

The edge used to be closer, the drop much higher and the tiniest nudge was enough to send me over. I spent the better part of my twenties and early thirties attempting to end my life in various ways – some quite intentional, others tragically accidental. I was reckless in a thousand ways and had an affinity for any object, substance, or activity that could change my reality and take away the pain of self-loathing, the shame and exhaustion of depression, and the ever-looming terror of traumatic memory. In my own malfunctioning mind, I was not just unlovable, I was a monster. I wasn’t just worthless, I was a drain on everyone around me. I wasn’t just without a place in the world, but the world would be so much better without me in it. I was either so invisible that my absence would not be noticed, or such a burden that my absence would be celebrated.

When I get online and read about suffering people that have taken their own lives, I deeply understand the darkness that they crawled through to get there. The agonizing trade-off when the demons demand your life for a measure of peace. It can feel so impossible to resist. I was incredibly fortunate to have people in my life that simply would not let me die. Some of you are reading this, you know who you are, and I am grateful for you every day.

Still, I cry as I read the judgments on the screen in front of me: So selfish. He had everything. She should’ve asked for help. This from individuals whose nights are lit by stars and give way to the rising sun – individuals who will never know the sucking vacuum of true, unending darkness so thick and black it feels like breathing tar. But I get it. I get how, from another perspective, the manifestations of mental illness can appear self-centered, ungrateful, irresponsible, lazy. I get why people in their “right” minds look for an easier answer, something more logical, more palatable than that their friend, sibling, child, parent, rockstar idol was in relentless, blinding, intractable pain.

More than 20 years have passed since the last time that I intentionally tried to end my life. Things couldn’t be more different now than they were then. I like to think these battles are over for me, but I know that it’s something I will be working with for the rest of my life. When people look at me, they see a high functioning, competent individual with a good life—good job, dogs to cuddle, people to love, financially stable, laughing with friends. And most days, it feels just like it looks. And then there are the days that they don’t see, the days I can barely move, when the muddy waves start lapping at my feet—the fear, self-doubt, unworthiness, shame. And I always wonder if this will be the time it pulls me under.

In his poem Adrift, Mark Nepo writes: Everything is beautiful and I'm so sad.

It’s still an edge. It will always be an edge.

Here is the thing that I most understand: We cannot know the pain of a stranger’s heart. We cannot know what their disease of despair is doing to them, or the ways in which it has ravaged their life. What we can know is that, but for the grace of whatever gods may be, it could be us, or our dear ones. It may have already been at some point in our lives.

And as we grow into this understanding, may our reactive judgment and blame be replaced with empathy and compassion for all who suffer in this way, those that don’t make it out of the darkness, and all the people who love them.