DIALOGUES
SESSION 1
IF WE OPENED PEOPLE UP, WE’D FIND LANDSCAPES
- Agnes Varda
REVIEW:
PILLARS: 1. STILLNESS, 2. AWARENESS, 3. COMPASSION, 4. INQUIRY, 5. INTEGRATION, 5. EXPASION
OUR MULTIPLE PARTS: Based on the idea that we have a Self that is very present and carries qualities like courage, curiosity, compassion etc.. and we are also made of different parts. Parts that have been developing and growing internally that have their own perspective, emotions, goals, roles. The process lays in finding or returning that Self and meeting these parts, how we relate to them? how we can unburden them? how we get curious about them? How we listen to them?
4 NOBLE TRUTHS
Part of the first discourse of the Buddha and the core teaching around Buddhist Psychology
1 Noble Truth Suffering: The human condition involves suffering (Dukkha)
2 Noble Truth Origin /Causes: The conflict between how things are and how we desire them to be causes suffering
3 Noble Truth Cessation: Suffering can be reduced or even eliminated by changing our attitude toward experience
4 Noble Truth The Path : There are eight general strategies to bring suffering to an end
MINDFULNESS
“Sati” = to remember”
Awareness of present moment with acceptance*
Mindfulness as a skill allows us to be less reactive to what is happening in the moment. It is a way of relating to all experience - positive, negative, neutral- such that our overall level of suffering is reduced and our sense of well being increases. (*Acceptance as being an extension of non-judgment, a willingness to just let things be as they are the moment we become aware of them. A PROCESS THAT BROAD THE PERSPECTIVE: INCLUDE & INTEGRATE
FIRST FOUNDATION OF MINDFULNESS : BODY/BREATH
OUR STARTING POINT, OUR HOME BASE, OUR RETURNING POINT
THE BEGINNING OF THE PRACTICE TO HELP US RESTRICT THE FOCUS OF ATTENTION
CULTIVATING BOTH CONCENTRATION AND A SENSE OF RELAXATION TO CONTINUE OUR INNER EXPLORATION
ADDITIONAL READING MATERIAL / RESOURCES
The 4 foundations of mindfulness / Bhante Gunaratana
The wise heart / Jack Kornfield
The Places that Scary you/ Pema Chödrön
Mindfulness: A practical guide to awakening/ Joseph Goldstein
Article about Dukkhas
TO REFLECT/JOURNAL
If you have time during this week, make some space to explore these inquiries:
How does it feel/what does it mean to connect with your body?
What do you notice when you get quiet?
On your internal landscape, can you identify a part of you that needs more attention today?
What do you hear when you ask yourself “how are you”?
TO PRACTICE
Mindfulness of breath/body
TO CONTEMPLATE
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
SESSION 2
REVIEW:
EXPLORING ACCEPTANCE
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” – Carl Jung
The idea behind acceptance is the notion of surrendering and opening yourself up to all aspects of your internal and external experience in their entirety. This means being willing to fully accept painful, joyous, and neutral experiences. When you make the choice (consciously or otherwise) to shut yourself off from the painful experiences and only open yourself up to joy, you are living a part of your life in denial. When you deny all pain and only accept joy, you are also missing out on the full range of emotional experiences that makes human life unique.
2ND NOBLE TRUTH: ORIGIN/ CAUSES
“ The cause of suffering is craving or thirst”
For sense pleasures:
What’s the nature of our craving?
What motivates us and what’s the gratification we are seeking?
Learning about the draw backs of gratification: unreliable, it's impermanent
ASPIRATION (where we act, we hold inspiration) IS DIFFERENT THAN EXPECTATION (where we hold hope)
INVESTIGATE
The next time we feel frustrated: let’s look to see if there is any expectation. Do I have some idea of what I want to be happening as opposed to what is happening right now? And look more in depth, what is the craving behind?For becoming:
It’s our basic urge and desire to be, for our continue existence
The projection to our future self: I will be doing, I will be there etc…
We see this everyday, in our practice as well, how we are always leaning into the next moment, as if we don’t trust what is here
For non existence
A desire to scape, skip, disassociate what is present here and what we don’t like.
SECOND FOUNDATION OF MINDFULNESS : Mindfulness of sensation/feelings
The field where we experience our relationship with 3 kinds/groups of sensations: PLEASANT, UNPLEASANT, NEUTRAL. We are attuning to our feeling tone, specifically noting if the experience is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Using inquisitiveness, patience and acceptance with the mindful observing capacity of whatever is encountered, one learns to override the habitual reactive tendencies of clinging to the pleasant, avoiding the unpleasant and ignoring the neutral. Whereas the first foundation helps us cultivate focused calm, the second cultivates balanced sensitivity, which is described as equanimity, when one is able to remain present to the full range of internal sensations without impulsive reactions.
ADDITIONAL READING/RESOURCES
Open to Desire by Mark Epstein
TO REFLECT
During this week, I’d like to invite you to continue investigate your relationship with craving/attachment and acceptance:
What is difficult to allow in this moment or in this season of your life?
What is the story around the allowing that gets in the way?
When you notice your craving, how do you normally relate to it? Can you hear what it has to say?
And, what does it need?
TO PRACTICE
TO CONTEMPLATE
“Listen to the listening”
SESSION 3
REVIEW:
THE POWER OF INQUIRY
“Our suffering and our neurosis come from the unseen, unfelt parts of our psyche” - Carl Jung
In buddhist psychology inquiry is a fundamental part. Buddhism is actually often described as a wisdom tradition, a path to realization.
THE PATH OF INQUIRY:
• Welcome questions and curiosity
• New forms of inner dialogue: deep listening, space, waiting
• Safe spaces for inquiry invites in the whole self
• Looking within rather than looking outside
• Friendliness towards the unknown, to what is not fully expressed
3rd NOBLE TRUTH: CESSATION
We are STOPPING THE PATTERN / THE HABITUAL CYCLE OF SUFFERING
Clarity of mind = little pieces of freedom + a sense of possibility
In psychology context > UNLEARNING/UNDOING/RECONDITIONING the habit of suffering
Deconstruction of preconceptions: narrative, choices, associations
If we want to stop the way we are experiencing, we have to go back to how we create our preconceptions and go to that open awareness. In order to do that we need to go to the source = watch our mind or stay on the edge of the mind.
Who is observing?
The Self (In buddhism, there is no self so we call it our Buddha Nature)
The third foundation: Mindfulness of Mind
The 3rd foundation attunes one to the nature of mind itself, opening the lens of awareness to include awareness itself.
One learns to observe the states and qualities of awareness without being compelled by them
One learns to override habitual reactions of clinging, avoiding in the second foundation. In the third one, one learns to decondition automatic reactions by applying antidotes that counter balance the so-called five hindrances to mental pliancy.
Mindfulness of mind protects one from the escapism and disassociation by engaging mind/body events, fully, clearly, courageously without reactive tendencies
Mind in Buddhist Contemplative practice is that spacious awareness in which thoughts arise, capable of reflecting on itself and recognizing the true nature of things
ADDITIONAL READING
The eye of the I - David Hawkins
TO REFLECT
What is the question I want to ask myself right now? or What is wanting to be known?
What is the question I don’t want to sit with it? Or What is being pushed to the side?
Notice how is to sit between the inquiry and the listening, observe your body, observe what wants to come to surface, what stories come up.
TO PRACTICE
“Always we hope someone else has the answer, some other place will be better, some other time it will all turn out. At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. There is no need to run outside for better seeing. Nor to peer from a window. Rather abide at the center of your being, for the more you leave it, the less you learn. Search you heart and see the way to do is to be”
Lao Tzu
SESSION 4
“The middle path does not go from here to there. It goes from there to here.”
REVIEW:
Self integration x Stress
Fragmented Brain x Integrated Brain
Mindfulness and research
Polyvagal Theory
Integration = wholeness
Welcoming our Multiplicity
4TH NOBLE TRUTH: THE PATH (OR THE EIGHTFOLD PATH)
Right Understanding
Right Thought
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
4th FOUNDATION OF MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness of experience (also called mindfulness of phenomena)
Here we Include the body, sensations, mind while opening the circle to embrace all experience arising in the present moment
TO REFLECT
Can you identify parts of yourself that are difficult to welcome?
Can you hear what these parts want/need?
When, in stress, what makes you feel safe, seen, connected?
TO practice
Traveler, your footprints
Are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
You make your own path as you walk
As you walk, you make your own road (...)
- Antonio Machado
SESSION 5
“Do you pay regular visits to yourself?” - Rumi
REVIEW
What is self compassion?
Compassion is our intention to alleviate others and ours suffering. Compassion, therefore, presupposes the recognition and clear seeing of suffering. Self-compassion has exactly the same qualities—it’s just compassion turned inward.
MSC(Mindful Self Compassion) Germer, Neff
When there is suffering, the question in mindfulness is : can i make room for this?
In self compassion the question is what do I need?
3 main components for self compassion: self kindness, common humanity and mindfulness
SOFTENING….
When we are in fight (feelings of defense, anger, aversion), quickly becomes self criticism which can be soften by self kindness
When we in flight (feelings of dissociation, confusion, avoidance), quickly becomes self isolation which can be soften by common humanity (i’m only human) not a justification but an understanding
When we are in freeze (feelings of stuckness, block), quickly becomes self absorption which can be soften by mindfulness
Self compassion is not: self pity, self indulgence, self esteem.
RAIN(Brach, Tara model)
Tool to help and support with difficult emotions and to find our way into self compassion. Bridging mindfulness and compassion.
R: Recognizing
A: Allowing
I: Investigating
N: Nurturing
Additional Reading
Radical Compassion, Tara Brach (rain method explained in depth)
Dr. Kristin Neff (leading on self compassion research)
TO REFLECT
SELF COMPASSION BREAK
Think of a situation in your life that is difficult, that is causing you stress. Call the situation to mind, and see if you can actually feel the stress and emotional discomfort in your body. Now, say mentally to yourself:
1. This is a moment of suffering.
That’s mindfulness. Other options include: This hurts. This is stress. This is difficult. In a way, here we are saying YES to what’s here. to what’s present
2. Suffering is a part of life.
That’s common humanity. Other options include: Other people feel this way. I’m not alone. We all struggle.
Now, put your hands over your heart, feel the warmth of your hands and the gentle touch of your hands on your chest and say to yourself:
3. May I be kind to myself. You can also ask yourself, “What do I need to hear right now to express kindness to myself?” Is there a phrase that speaks to you in your particular situation, such as:
May I learn to accept myself as I am
May I forgive myself
May I be strong
May I be patient
or it’s okay, i’m here. i’m sorry, I care.
TO PRACTICE
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your placein the family of things.
-Mary Oliver