Creatively Companioning Distress- Jogen, Sensei
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Speaker 2:Taking refuge in Buddha, taking refuge in Dharma, taking refuge in Sangha. Good evening. Good to be here with you. Thanks to new folks who were willing to just check us out, see what the vibe is here. We appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, people have been friendly. Tonight, I'm gonna talk about being with suffering. Lauren requested this as a topic. There you are. Okay.
Speaker 2:And thank you, Lauren. And I really appreciate people suggesting topics. So please keep them coming. And this is I'm gonna try to speak to being with suffering in the context of, like, a loved one or caring for somebody in your in your life, and and I share the little I have to share out of humility that some of you may have had five, ten, twenty, thirty years of, you know, hard caretaking for somebody who's ill or in distress in some way. So I just wanna name that.
Speaker 2:And I think part of the the topic is what does this practice offer that reality that is probably part and parcel of the human experience? One of the things we have to do when we're here is companion the suffering of others. And so what is it that we can offer to someone in distress? What what can we actually offer besides think, I want someone to feel not alone or want them to feel less alone in that experience that they're going through. A reflection that I often return to is that people are a world of their own experience.
Speaker 2:People have a world of experience that we we never fully enter. It's their world. And I want their world of experience to include the experience of being cared for. I want to include the experience of being companioned. But then the the question is how to do that, and what does the practice have to kind of preface as I unpack this a little bit, being with distress is taxing.
Speaker 2:It's really hard over a long period of time and even a short period of time to really be present with someone's distress. And what makes it hard is partially nature. It's hard. We have a nervous system. We have bodies.
Speaker 2:We have limitations. And it's partially, well, could I say the hardness of our own hearts? It's partially the hardness of our own minds and habits that make it hard. Being with distress is taxing, being present, companioning somebody who is suffering in different ways. Perfectionism is going to make to go to to do it with some idea that, somehow we're gonna be like squeaky clean in it, we're always gonna feel good about showing up, we're never gonna be irritated, we're always gonna be beaming love, That kind of fantasy just really gets in the way of the, I think, the reality of what it is to keep showing up, companion people in suffering.
Speaker 2:So if to return to the perception that I'm allowed to be human, I'm allowed for this to be a mixed experience, It's okay that my compassion is mixed. It's okay that my compassion is a little tainted by my personal, whatevers. Right? It's not as if somebody in our life is distressed, and all of a sudden, we kind of transcend ourselves into sainthood. That's a weird fantasy.
Speaker 2:It's not gonna happen like that. So maybe that's the first practice I'm suggesting is how can we, in the midst of trying, connect with the perception that I'm allowed to be human? This is I'm allowed to have this be messy. I don't need to be pure. Because, and this is a point that has been very salient for me, being with others suffering is being with them, and it's being with our own relationship to that particular suffering at the same time.
Speaker 2:We might find that we're not only being present with someone's deep trauma or chronic ailment or whatever it may be, we are simultaneously present with our own relationship to that happening to me. They're both going on. And so then it's a really it's a it's a study, and in a way, the person offers us an ability to study our own hearts and to get closer to our own hearts because being with other suffering is being with them and my own enlightenment, let's say, with that particular form of suffering, my own peace with that particular form of suffering. So it's kind of a a feedback. It's a kind of mirror.
Speaker 2:Like, what what is it when we see somebody in some kind of acute distress on the street? If we turn away, what is that instinct actually? What's underneath that instinct before we go into the rationalizations of why we turn away? So, being with distress, I I think, I found it's a tour of all these different states of mind that maybe I don't normally experience. I get a tour of powerlessness, especially when we don't know what to do because someone has a world of their own experience.
Speaker 2:It can bring us into uncertainty. It can bring us death, acute trauma, somebody feeling that their life is awash, that their life is a failure, and and that being a kind of a settling into that state of mind can bring us up into right against questions of meaning, like, this can happen. What does life mean? Or somebody can be a beautifully good hearted person and then some terrible thing happens to them. And it it confronts ideas we have about how the universe works.
Speaker 2:I thought this place was fair or whatever, version we might have of that. So it can bring us up against these existential things, a whole range of I don't want tos and I can'ts. Self pity is a big one that I've encountered, especially if you're a younger person and you find yourself caring for an older person. Sometimes self pity is right there. It's just like, why should I be doing this?
Speaker 2:I've got a life to live. But they're there at times. Right? And to waste energy feeling like they shouldn't be there just kinda makes us into a knot. Maybe we shouldn't feed them, but to believe that, again, that we're supposed to be pure is probably not helpful.
Speaker 2:So in terms of practice, and what we mean by practice, is the ongoing application of our our our methods, our techniques, or the the work of a Zen Buddhist or whatever our tradition is. That's what we mean by practice. It could include a lot of things, and we could also say it could be some of the richest practice one could ever do. I mean, there's a lot of people I've known who were serious Buddhist practitioners who became chaplains or went into hospice because they had this instinct that it would really mature their their hearts to get a to get a lot closer to this stuff. That's not a wrong reason.
Speaker 2:Actually, to enrich your own spiritual practice is not a wrong reason to accompany people in their distress. I don't know if there is a wrong reason. So in terms of practice, all the skills of presence that we train in, we train in in the Zen though like we did tonight. All that training that hopefully permeates our bodies of being able to stay here even when it doesn't feel good. Know, I think, like, I can reflect when I've been, very depressed when I was younger or other states, I felt that very few people had the capacity to stay with me and not be, not collapse into some sort of aversion or not wanting to see it or, discomfort.
Speaker 2:And I think people who go through different kinds of acute suffering feel that from a lot of the people around them. Nobody can stay, or few people can actually just stay. And there's there's reasons they there's reasons why they can't stay. There's things inside of them that make it hard to stay. We are training one way to look at it when we sit in meditation is the willingness to feel and experience, but it's empowered by frictionlessness.
Speaker 2:That is where we we can stay, but we're not staying with some chunk of thingness. We are keen to, this is flowing through me. I can be with sorrow. I can be with the feeling of hopelessness. I can be with fear not because I'm masochistic or something like that, but because my being with it includes it being a rippling, changing, passing energy.
Speaker 2:And so I'm less afraid of it. I'm less afraid of my own. I'm less afraid of other people's. You know, you can imagine if if somebody has been lying in a hospital bed and ninety five percent of the people flinch at some level, if not gross but subtle, they can't really be there to have somebody be able to sit there with you and not flinch so hard. That would be really meaningful.
Speaker 2:In fact, when I've been, very sick, the thing that disturbs me is when someone is afraid of my sickness. And I don't mean afraid of my contagion, but they're afraid of the pain I'm going through, and and they're worried about it in a way that's not helpful, that actually is harmful. It actually makes me want to be alone. So we could call it a kind of a kind of listening. We just offer we offer listening.
Speaker 2:We offer, what do they say in internet spirituality? We hold space. I know some of you are really good space holders, so I don't mean to be too snarky here. Right? We we have found nourishment in somebody really being with us in difficult times.
Speaker 2:So that will be our basis of confidence that it actually is not nothing. No. My space holding probably is not gonna shrink the tumor or make the trauma go away. It might have an effect. But on a spiritual level, have something to offer with that.
Speaker 2:And and because, especially if it's somebody close to us, we we do probably at some point encounter, an instinct to fix the problem. And that's not that's not wrong, but bringing an awareness of when is that adding to distress. Because some things cannot be fixed. And if we bring forward, I'm gonna fix this to something that is not fixable, that's not being real with somebody. That's not really meeting them in the reality of where they're at.
Speaker 2:If you've ever been in acute suffering, suffering, the person who could call a spade a spade is really refreshing to you because you're you're used to people kind of dancing around the truth, but the person who's like, this is this is real, you might die, or you're gonna die, or it sucks to be depressed, or damn, that's gotta hurt. No sugarcoating. That's that's a lot more meaningful than let's just tweak this a little bit. You know, sometimes things can be tweaked. There are people who are there are people who should be tweaking things because they have that skill set.
Speaker 2:That's not what I'm I'm speaking to. So awareness of the instinct to, fix, and often, again, that's our own anxiety. You know, everyone's trying to fix old age sickness and death because we haven't come to terms with that's what this realm is, that's what characterizes this realm we're in, at least until Brian Johnson fixes it. May maybe some of us will be around when he does that. I'll sign up.
Speaker 2:Nah. We'll get uploaded. I, practice in a sangha where the teacher gave the whole sangha and he he practiced it too. He said, I want everyone to take on three months of giving no advice to anybody, and if anybody, gives you advice, raise your hand so that they know that you're giving them advice. And people found that it it was so refreshing, and they saw the instinct in themselves and where it came from.
Speaker 2:Because advice when it's not requested or that's not the context of the relationship, it can so easily be received as criticism. It's kinda like, you know what you could do to not suffer so much? I know. And it's hard because sometimes we might have. We might actually be seeing something really clearly in somebody.
Speaker 2:But when we give advice that it's not the right context, we haven't been given any permission, we, we're in a power differential, you see? We're the one who knows, and they're the one who doesn't know. Sometimes that's helpful. Sometimes that disconnects us. If the advice especially is coming out of, I'm really uncomfortable with your reality, then more than the advice being communicated, that's what comes across.
Speaker 2:What comes across is, I'm anxious about your condition. I don't feel like it's right. I don't feel like it's right the way you are with this thing. And so I I think sometimes we find ourselves in kind of impossible situations where we're just like our heart is bursting. We feel like we have to do something.
Speaker 2:If I turn away from this, I can't just ignore this, and we don't see an avenue forward. And then I I think I mentioned this recently. That's a time when we can hold our desire to help as a kind of koan of compassion. And to be in the tension of the question, What would be helpful? Is that even the right word, help?
Speaker 2:What what like, what's what's the medicine? Or, Do do I have a medicine to offer? And not let the mind leap in to filling in the blank, but just to hang out to hang out with that. Now I wanna talk about some things that maybe are a little bit more subtle. Sometimes we can offer, we can transmit the lack of wrongness with natural suffering.
Speaker 2:Because we've done our work of acceptance of the way this realm is, then the way we be with the person or the situation communicates that you are not being victimized by the universe because this is happening. And I'm not talking about I I use the word natural suffering very intentionally because there are definitely, of course, injustices that we have moral repugnance at or things that just there's no way we can accept. But there's natural suffering that it's obvious. This is just part of how it works here. Don't you think?
Speaker 2:And so we can transmit a lack of wrongness about that. It's not wrong for somebody who's, I don't know, however old to begin the death process. And yes, it often comes with disease, but that's not that's not wrong. That's how this that's how nature works. So to imagine, it's a kind of dual thing.
Speaker 2:We're companioning the actual distress, and we're also not letting ourselves slip into the view that they're being victimized by the universe. And in the Buddha's terms, this is the difference between compassion and pity. And the and the Buddha's communication was that that the compassion is beneficial. The pity, somehow it doesn't help. Because, then maybe if we have that state of mind, we actually are amplifying in somebody, yeah, I did get a raw deal.
Speaker 2:Why should I die at 80? Or, yeah, I did get a raw deal. Why should this happen to me? And maybe it shouldn't happen to anybody, but it is happening. And so the communication that it shouldn't be happening probably just doesn't help the metabolization of the experience.
Speaker 2:But the lack of wrongness with natural suffering, I don't think we say to say, hey, you're an old dude, like, just deal with it. No problem. I don't think we say something. It's certainly not glib. It might have more to do with the quality of our silence, or it might have more to do with what we don't say.
Speaker 2:And it's interest the dying process of people who practiced for a long time, and it was really striking to see people not they didn't need me to This is quite quite beautiful. There's subtle thing we can we could work with. Sometimes, can offer a non agreement, and I I I could probably say this simpler. Maybe you could help me with that. We can offer a non agreement when someone has a diminished or negative view about their life.
Speaker 2:Right? So one of the things I'm aware of is that when I'm hurting physically or emotionally, I more easily view my life pessimistically. I mean, if I get a splinter, I start thinking like, you know, my life's not right. I mean, imagine living with, you know, intense arthritis for twenty years. When the body hurts, it's hard, especially if you don't have a lot of training, it's hard for the heart mind not to get contracted around that.
Speaker 2:It's really hard. It takes a lot of energy. Sometimes that energy is not there for people. So we can offer a non agreement with diminished or negative views, and we have to be artful about that. It's it's not you know, you don't wanna just invalidate somebody and say, you're wrong.
Speaker 2:That's not how your life went. But could you communicate the bigger picture, especially if you know them? And how could you do that artfully? Maybe you could share how you've been touched or moved by that person's life. Or maybe you could say, yeah, I know this aspect of what you're going through or what's happening is really but what else is there?
Speaker 2:And they might say, there's nothing else. And you can if you have a good rapport, then you might say, is that really true? There's nothing else. Because pain, physical, emotional, even spiritual, it tends to bring in a negative view. It's hard to hold a big picture.
Speaker 2:Right? And, we might be able to offer that to somebody at at the right time. Sometimes, and this may be in the future, it may be something that you have already done, we can actually offer a fearlessness around death and sickness. For a while, we would have this class series at Great Vow Monastery because Chosin Roshi found it very meaningful to share good studies of near death experiences that people have, and how prevalent it is for people to have experiences of basically the clear light, as Tibetan Buddhists would call it. That they go through the death process, and, you know, they don't meet like a bunch of judges before the pearly gates.
Speaker 2:They just are they just are break open into pure luminosity. And some of you have had that kind of experience in a meditation retreat or with plants or whatever, however it has happened. You have you have had a different You had a taste of a different way of understanding what life and death is. Or you've been through sickness, and maybe you can say, it's it's since it's hard, but actually, at some level, this is just a texture that's moving through you. You could actually find this interesting.
Speaker 2:I have a practitioner friend who, really surprised me because they were going through sickness, and they said, I came to this place where I just found it really interesting what was happening to me. And that surprised me because I was a little bit pity forward for them. How interesting is they were saying that I now have cancer living with me. Like, what is that? That's their state of mind.
Speaker 2:So offering fearlessness around death based on our own experience, or maybe if it's not fearlessness, it's I don't quite know. The way the human mind, works, it tends to work on a fulcrum of existence or nonexistence. We can't conceive of something that is not on those two polarity or on that polarity. So that means that most people either think they keep living in some form or they just blink out of existence. And we can't possibly imagine that there's alternatives that are not conceivable because they can't be conceived.
Speaker 2:Think about it. Being and non being, can you think of something that is neither being nor non being? I guarantee you can't. You might be able to express it or know it, but you can't think it. But we may, because we can't think the unthinkable, we may be able to offer that to somebody.
Speaker 2:We may be able to offer them the fragrance of the mystery of this. Wow, how interesting. You're gonna die. That's I wish I had the Mary, Mary Oliver poem that some of you are probably familiar with about the box of wonder. Who knows?
Speaker 2:It could be so weird and strange and amazing. So, it's uncommon to be able to offer this if we're not practicing it. And, we know if we're practicing it because we're we don't worry about the future very often. Our worries about the future are not that strong. If they're strong, our own comfort with the unknown is is still a work in progress.
Speaker 2:If if we want to if we have the desire or the value of maturing spiritually, when it's our lot to companion that, they're actually giving us a gift because it's really ripe territory to to just to see, like, where where am I at? What can what can I bring forward? And especially if we love them enough, it really helps when there's love there because the love, the positive attachment of that gives you the fibers to hang in there when it's hard, gives you more motivation. What is it? What is it that we can offer someone in pain or distress?
Speaker 2:Because being with suffering is a communication of our state of being. So our our practice, practice matters. And then, finally, I know I know many of you, your life is kind of a rhythm of being being with yourself and then stepping into and holding space for the suffering of other people, stepping out, stepping back into it. I mean, that might just be human life. If you're a therapist or a nurse, it's maybe a different amplification.
Speaker 2:But if you if you're in relationship, that means that your life has a rhythm of, I step into suffering, I get away from it for a little bit. I step into it, I get away from it. It's a kind of alchemy. It's a kind of alchemy of we're bringing the impressions, the feelings, the memories of companioning suffering as messy and inadequate as we are with that, and we bring that back into our zazen. We bring that back into it.
Speaker 2:Right? And then and then, you know, the matter of life and death is is intimate. It's really one of the things in the mix, and that's that's good.
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