Heart Of Compassion: Transforming Suffering Into Happiness

The topic for today is the Heart of Compassion,

Transforming Suffering into Happiness.

It's related to a book I'm working on that is tentatively titled The Paradox of Life,

Transforming Suffering into Happiness,

Because it sounds paradoxical,

Right?

How can suffering lead to happiness?

And it's a topic that I think is timely for all that is happening in the world,

When there is so much suffering and it's a challenging time to be on the planet,

To be human,

Because it can be really hard being human sometimes.

And in Buddhism,

The first noble truth is often translated as life is suffering.

It means that simply by being embodied beings,

By being alive,

We will all experience suffering.

We will all experience times of pain and anguish and loss.

It's part of the nature of life and being alive.

We cannot have life without having those experiences.

And the human tendency is often to try to shut it down,

To try to push away or avoid the suffering and the difficult experiences,

Or when they happen,

To have the mind come into it and have judgments of it being right or wrong,

Or that it shouldn't be this way,

Or for us to have guilt,

Or feel like it's indicative of something that's certainly wrong with us.

And that compounds the experiences of suffering.

In actuality,

Suffering is simply a part of life,

But it's not only that,

It actually is part of what enables us to live more fully.

Often we don't realize that suffering can bring with it many hidden gifts.

It's part of how we learn and grow and transform.

If we never experienced any difficulty or challenge,

We wouldn't be able to learn and grow.

And so,

First and foremost,

I think it's important to acknowledge that there is a place for suffering,

And that it's a necessary part of being alive,

And at times it can even bring great benefit for us.

In order to get the most benefit from the difficult experiences of life,

However,

We have to make space for them.

When we judge them or try to avoid them,

Or when they occur and we try to do everything to make it go away or to numb the feeling,

It actually impedes the natural process of transformation that suffering can bring for us.

You know,

In some traditions they liken this to the formation of a pearl.

You know,

And when the oyster first opens up a little bit,

A grain of sand enters in,

And that grain of sand enters deeply and it begins to scratch at the flesh inside the oyster,

Just as when we first open our hearts to the experiences of life,

We experience the suffering and the pain.

But over time,

As that grain of sand continues scratching at the flesh within the oyster,

The pearl is formed,

And that is likened in Buddhism to the pearl of wisdom and compassion that is formed in our hearts as we work skillfully with the difficult experiences of life.

Part of the reason it's necessary to open to the experience of suffering is that we cannot selectively shut down our capacity to experience.

We are experiential beings,

And when we try to shut down to experiencing something,

When we resist experiencing something difficult or painful,

It actually inhibits our ability to experience the beauty and joy in life.

And we'll get more into this part later on about happiness,

But I think it's important to state at this point that the way I view happiness is not simply being joyful all the time or having pleasure all the time.

To me,

Happiness is a full expression and experiencing of life,

Being fully present and grounded within ourselves and experiencing life to the fullest.

And so,

Because we cannot selectively shut down to certain experiences without closing down our capacity to experience overall,

It's important to make space for the difficult experiences of life.

The other interesting thing is that the tolerance for suffering is something that we can actually grow.

And so,

As we experience difficulty and make space to sit with it patiently,

We actually increase our capacity to sit with even more difficulty.

You know,

We can think of this if we watch kids that will throw temper tantrums over the slightest little thing,

You know,

And that's because they're young and they're still very reactive.

But then,

As an adult,

We don't react to those little minor slights anymore because we've grown in our ability to handle difficulty.

And so,

This is kind of like a muscle that the more we work it,

The greater our capacity and the easier it is to work skillfully with the difficult experiences within life.

As I said at the beginning,

This is the heart of compassion.

In modern times,

I think we often believe that suffering is something to be avoided and that the compassionate thing is to try to take it away,

To remove it.

And so,

We think that if someone is in difficulty or if we see suffering out in the world or if we ourselves are suffering,

Often the immediate thought is to try to make it go away.

And also,

For me as a practitioner and many of you who are practitioners,

You know,

I've witnessed this in myself in clinical practice.

Now,

This is not to say that there's anything wrong at all with helping to remove or lighten someone's burden or helping them to heal when they're sick.

But I think it's important to first make space to be with people in their suffering and to be with ourselves in our suffering without it being a reactive desire to try to remove it immediately.

Because if we immediately try to change it or remove it,

Often that stems from fear.

It stems from judging that experience as inherently wrong and we miss out on some of the gifts that that might bring for us.

And so,

This is where compassion comes in because compassion,

Its definition is not removing of suffering.

Etymologically,

Compassion is in two parts,

Come,

Which means with,

And passion,

Which is suffering.

So,

Compassion literally is to be with suffering.

And there's a lot of wisdom in that when we understand that simply making space to be with suffering as it is is what allows this transformative potential to come out.

Another word that I like to talk about the etymology of is patience,

Which is very closely related to compassion because compassion is to be with suffering.

Patience,

Etymologically,

Is the calm enduring of suffering.

And sometimes I just sit with that and ponder it because it has so many levels and depths.

And so,

It's important to cultivate patience,

First and foremost,

In order to enhance our ability to be compassionate.

We have to create the tolerance within ourselves to patiently endure suffering,

To create the space to then sit with suffering and be present with it.

When we allow ourselves to be with it,

It's amazing the transformations that begin to occur.

At first,

When we sit to meditate or we're having a difficult experience that we don't want to be with,

And we pause for a second,

We can actually feel this urge to react against it,

To try to change something,

To not want to experience it.

As I said at the beginning,

It's hard being human.

And there are overwhelming experiences in life.

And this is part of the cultivation of our humanity and the cultivation of virtue and bringing forth of beauty and wholeness is making space for all of the multidimensional aspects of our being and of our experience.

I sometimes think that patience is one of the core virtues that is necessary for the cultivation of all of the other virtues because virtue,

By nature,

All virtues are a choice.

If it's forced on us or conditioned,

It's not technically a virtue.

The nature of virtue is that we have a choice to do this or that.

For example,

Patience.

Often when we experience suffering,

The desire of the mind and the ego is to try to change it and make it go away,

To be impatient.

It takes patience,

Which is a choice,

To sit with it as it is.

Same with humility,

Another great virtue.

We can choose to let our egos determine what we do or we can allow ourselves to be humbled.

And courage,

We have to have patience to choose to not react to fear and to do what is courageous,

To do what we know is right,

Even though we might be afraid or we might not want to do it.

And so all of these virtues come forth as a result of patience and are growing in our ability to be compassionate with our experiences.

I would say that patience and courage and humility are at the heart of compassion.

We have to have all three of these to be truly compassionate.

We have to have patience to be with suffering.

We have to have courage to open our hearts to the moment-to-moment experiences of life,

Which can open us to extreme vulnerability,

To pain,

To loss.

It takes courage to open our hearts and stay present with things as they are when things are difficult.

And we need humility,

Because if we don't have humility,

Then our ego will take charge and it will say,

No,

I don't want to be here for that.

I don't want to experience that.

We'll dissociate.

We'll turn to coping mechanisms.

All of which is okay too at times.

You know,

The most important thing is not to judge,

Because judgment shuts down the heart.

It's to be gentle with ourselves and to realize that at times it's okay to not be okay.

And just allow that experience to be as it is.

As I said,

If we resist what we're experiencing,

It starts to close down the heart.

And that resistance to the experiences of life often stems from judgment,

From the mind.

The mind is a wily creature.

The mind is based in duality.

The way I like to describe it is that it is our filter between the oneness that we are all always a part of and our experience as individuated beings that exist in a world of self and other relatively.

The mind is the filter that allows us to relate to duality.

But because the mind exists in the realm of duality,

It very much likes for there to be black and white and right and wrong and yes or no and all of these delineated things.

The mind wants there to be one way that the world is and that we are and that everybody is supposed to be.

Because that's clean and simple.

And then the mind feels like we have control over our experience and what's happening in the world.

But that's a delusion.

Because in truth we do not have control.

And the world is not black and white or right and wrong.

The world is complex and multidimensional and impermanent.

Everything that exists in material form is impermanent and is constantly changing.

And so it is necessary to open ourselves to that and understand that everything will change.

If we're experiencing something amazing,

That will change.

If we're experiencing something we don't like,

That will change.

And everything that we know,

Including ourselves and everyone we know,

Will at some point pass away out of physical form.

And that can be hard to have loss.

And it's also an innate part of life.

We cannot have life without death.

Life is composed of infinite endless transformations of form.

And so when we have loss,

We can work with that skillfully.

We can make meaning of the loss through opening to the difficult,

Overwhelming pain,

Making space for it,

And allowing it to transform us so that we can become more wise and more compassionate and more human.

And in doing so,

It honors those that we have lost.

We are all here for an unknown amount of time.

When we acknowledge and open to the truth of impermanence,

It allows us to make meaning of every moment that we have.

It allows us to cultivate greater compassion for others in their struggles,

In their suffering,

Because we understand how difficult it is being an embodied being in this impermanent and ever-changing reality.

And it allows us to let go of judgment.

You know,

There's a quote I love from the Dalai Lama,

That love is the absence of judgment.

To truly love and to love unconditionally,

By its very definition,

Unconditionally,

Means that there is no judgment.

And this is something that as we cultivate space to be with the difficult experiences of life,

We make space to let go of judgment,

To stop judging what we're experiencing or how we are or what we're observing in the world as right or wrong.

We make space to let ourselves be as we are and the world as it is.

And when we do that,

We move closer to being able to perceive ourselves and reality as we are.

And that opens us up to so much more beauty and life and fulfillment and ultimately happiness.

Because as I said earlier,

Happiness is a fullness of life.

It is not the absence of suffering.

Comfort is the absence of suffering.

And I think often we conflate comfort and happiness,

But they are two very different things.

And if we are not in touch with the suffering of life,

We cannot be happy.

And that's part of the paradox of life.

And it's part of what's so challenging.

And it's complex.

And complexity is challenging for the mind because as I said,

The mind tends to be very reductionistic.

And yet complexity is where beauty arises from.

When we watch an amazing sunrise or sunset and we stand in awe as the colors are changing moment by moment and how every single sunrise and sunset is different depending on where the sun is on the horizon,

Or if it's over mountains or the sea,

If there's clouds in the sky or if it's a clear day.

All of those different elements are the complexity that help to make each sunrise and sunset so beautiful and awe-inspiring.

And just like a sunrise or a sunset,

We are complex in that way.

That we are multidimensional,

Continually changing,

Impermanent living beings that suffer,

That have joy,

That have pleasure,

That have anguish,

That have loss,

That have incredible fulfillment.

All of it is part of life and part of us and part of our experience here.

And that's part of what makes life an adventure.

It's the journey of life that gives life meaning.

If we knew exactly what was going to happen,

It wouldn't be an adventure because there would be no unknowns.

And facing the unknown can be terrifying and it can bring up a lot of fear.

But it's only by making space for the unknown that we also make space for all of the incredible beauty that we can encounter in life.

And so all of this to me is part of the meaning of life and part of finding happiness and fulfillment.

To realize that to be happy is to be fully alive and it means we're going to experience all of it.

We can have moments of sadness or grief and still feel happy by the fulfillment of that emotion.

It's paradoxical and may sound crazy,

But that's part of reality and being alive.

And so as we make space to be with suffering and difficulty,

We actually increase our capacity for all the experiences of life and we increase our ability to be fully happy and fulfilled.

You know,

When I was studying Chinese medicine in school,

In the foundations course in my first year,

One of the teachers said that in Taoism and Chinese medicine,

They say that health and happiness is when the qi flows freely through the body.

And to me,

That immediately made so much sense and it clarified so many things for me.

Because what this means is when the qi,

The energy,

The life force is flowing freely through the body,

It means we have no tension or resistance to life as it is.

It means we are fully connected and integrated within ourselves and fully connected to the world around us,

Heaven above and earth below.

It means that we are fully present with each experiential moment,

The spirit fully grounded within the physicality of the body.

At a physical level,

The body is completely relaxed and without any unnecessary tension.

At an emotional level,

We experience each emotion as it occurs and let it go without attachment or aversion.

At a mental level,

Our mind is still and quiet with crystal clear insight into anything that we direct it to.

In Buddhism and Taoism,

They refer to this state as the natural state.

I often will call it a state of experiential awareness when we are fully present to each moment of life as it is.

That is health.

That is happiness.

And that brings us to the meaning of life.

Because we're here to experience.

We're here to live.

We're here to partake of all of the joys and sorrows of the love of connection of relationship.

And so in this sense,

To be happy is to be free of the obscurations or delusions that prevent us from perceiving reality clearly.

To be fully experientially aware of things as they are.

Because most of us,

Including myself,

Including everyone I know,

We're all caught in some level of delusion because our minds have conditioned habits,

Habituated patterns and tendencies of how we tend to perceive reality that are based on cultural conditioning.

They're based on defense mechanisms that we've created from different difficult experiences that we've had and how we responded to them.

And so often,

Much of the time,

We can be walking around and perceiving reality through these filters that create minor distortions in what is actually occurring and what we think is occurring.

So the more we can clear those obscurations,

The closer we move to perceiving ourselves as we are in reality as it is.

And that is the natural state.

And that is happiness.

And so part of this is making space for suffering because that is part of the reality of life.

And we can deny it.

We can try to avoid it.

We can do all these things.

And yet often that will only make it worse.

The more we tend to try to avoid it,

The more we tend to compound it and create more stagnation and stasis and more separation from the reality of things as they are.

And the more I learn as a practitioner and teacher and human being and husband,

Friend,

Everything,

The more I realize that I think the greatest thing we can do for anyone is to give them the space to allow them to be how they are.

And to give ourselves the space to be how we are.

And that that is true compassion.

Is to allow ourselves to be as we are and the world as it is.

And to allow space for the impermanence and the suffering and all of it.

And when we do that,

It allows ourselves and others in the world to naturally transform because we are all like a flower unfolding.

We are all in a process of natural development.

And the more we just allow space for ourselves and others to be as we are,

We will.

.

.

It's like gravity pulling us.

We'll naturally move towards that unfoldment that we will become who we are meant to be with less unnecessary suffering from trying to fight or resist the process.

And a lot of this has to do with shifting our perspective and how we relate to all of it.

You know,

Hazrat Anaya Khan is this amazing Sufi teacher.

And he says that one of his quotes that I like is that,

Spiritual progress is the changing of the point of view.

And so as we shift our perspective and allow ourselves to see a bigger picture,

It allows us to grow.

We begin to see how everything is interrelated.

How we are connected to everything and everyone.

And that everything is already perfect just as it is.

And the more we shift our perspective to allow for that,

The more we naturally bring forth beauty and virtue and happiness into our experience and into the experience of others.

So,

At this point,

Let's move into a meditative practice.

It'll be about 15 minutes.

If you will,

Please find a comfortable posture for meditation.

You can be seated or lying down.

Most important thing is that you find a posture that's stable and full of ease so that you can release any unnecessary tension from the body.

This will be a combination of a couple of different practices.

Part of it,

Which I invite you to explore for either the beginning five or 10 minutes or for the entire time,

Is a practice related to patience.

Which is,

Once you have your posture and we begin the meditation,

Try to not move other than the natural movement of your breath,

Moving your abdomen and maybe your torso.

This practice is powerful because when we're sitting or lying down in meditation,

There will be little discomforts that arise and there will be a tendency to want to fidget or move.

And so practicing not moving helps to develop patience,

The calm enduring of suffering.

And it helps us to develop non-reactivity so that when difficult things happen out in the world,

We can be present with them without immediately reacting or judging or trying to change them.

But we've cultivated the space to simply be with them and then to act from a space of compassion,

Love and wisdom.

Once you've found your posture,

Begin to bring awareness to the breath.

Simply observe the breath as it is.

It might be shallow or deep,

Choppy or smooth,

Long or short.

Simply observe the movement of the breath and allow it to be as it is.

Begin abdominal breathing with every inhalation allowing the abdomen to gently expand,

With every exhalation allowing to gently contract.

Abdominal breathing helps us to shift from the sympathetic nervous system,

Fight or flight,

Into the parasympathetic,

Rest and digest.

In doing so,

It allows us to become more present with our moment-to-moment experience.

Now,

As you continue abdominal breathing,

Allow your awareness to gently scan through your physical body.

Just allowing it to flow,

Noticing any areas that might have tension or discomfort.

And notice the internal reaction when you notice tension or discomfort.

Try to let any judgment go and just make space for each part of your body and each sensation to be as it is.

Makers and As thoughts arise,

Simply return the focus to the movement of the breath.

Now,

Allow your awareness to scan the emotional body.

Notice what emotions are arising within you as you move awareness through the body.

Is there grief,

Sadness,

Irritability,

Joy or pleasure,

Anxiety?

And allow each emotion that arises to simply be as it is.

Is there grief,

Sadness,

Irritability,

Joy or pleasure,

Anxiety?

Allow the awareness to scan the emotional body.

Allow the awareness to arrive at the center of the chest,

The heart center.

Notice any physical sensations in this area.

Notice any emotions or thoughts that arise as you focus your awareness in this area.

And with your breath,

Use each exhalation to try to soften your heart center.

Allow it to soften and open.

Notice what arises.

There may be fear,

Vulnerability,

Unworthiness,

Joy.

Whatever arises as you soften into this place,

Allow your heart center to open.

Simply make space for it.

Allow room for everything.

Make space for the complexity of life.

Make space for the unknown and for the truth of impermanence.

Be grateful for each moment and each experience.

Experience the felt sense of presence in this moment.

The felt sense of your body as a whole.

The felt sense of your emotions,

Your thoughts.

And allow yourself to be just as you are.

Bring awareness back to the breath.

Notice if your breath has changed since the beginning of the practice.

Notice if your awareness of the breath has changed.

Become aware of the solidity beneath you,

Supporting you and holding you up.

Become aware of the air around you in which you are immersed like a fish in water.

When you're ready,

Try to maintain a connection to the sense of stillness and presence within.

As you gently and slowly begin to open your eyes,

Taking in the world around you,

Letting it flow through you,

Noticing if your vision has changed,

Notice if your gaze is softer.

The etymology of the word doctor is to teach.

For those of us who are practitioners,

Teaching our patients how to transform their relationship to suffering,

Teaching them to shift their perspective and how they relate to all that they experience can often be one of the greatest forms of healing.

We can help them move towards accepting themselves as they are in the world as it is,

And in so doing,

Help them move closer to perceiving reality as it is,

And helping to remove a greater degree of unnecessary suffering.

It's through being present with these experiences of difficulty,

Of suffering,

That we allow them to transform us and to bring forth the gifts that they have for us.

I truly believe that suffering can be one of the greatest gifts for us as I reflect over my own life at some of the most painful,

Difficult,

Horrendous experiences that I've had,

Whether physically or emotionally,

Heartbreak,

Mental anguish,

Spiritual disconnectedness.

It was some of the most difficult and worst experiences of my life that later brought forth the most wisdom and learning and growth that helped cultivate a deeper understanding.

And while I would never have wanted those experiences while they were happening,

I wouldn't trade them for anything at this point.

Now that I can see a bigger picture of how they fit into the fabric of my life and how they've made me who I am today.

True compassion is a form of forgiveness.

It's forgiving ourselves for making mistakes.

It's forgiving others for making mistakes.

It's forgiving ourselves for being imperfect beings,

For struggling,

For suffering,

And for realizing that that's all okay and it's all part of it.

I'm grateful for this time with you.

Thank you for joining us today.