We’re ridiculously over-stimulated in our lives these days. There is so much going on all the time. Your phone is pinging alerts to you – Ping! here are the latest COVID figures, Ping! missed call from an unknown number Ping! the PM is giving a press conference! Ping! Here’s a reminder about your doctor’s appointment – tell us now if you’re not coming! Ping! WA goes into lockdown tonight! Ping! Here’s a text from the Aust Tax Office! – they want you to contact them!
Not only are we bombarded with alarms and alerts from outside, we’re often over-stimulated by our inner lives, by the stories we tell ourselves about our worries and fears, about what’s happening to us. With all of this going on it’s hard to stay focused on the things that are truly important to us. The hardest thing about practice is often just remembering that we have these values and these tools at our disposal and that we can use them. It can be really hard to remember what’s important when something bad happens that throws us out of balance for a while.
So this evening I would like to give you a mantra – a mantra is a kind of prayer or affirmation – that you can use in your day to day life. I really think of it as a reminder – something that you repeat over and over to yourself in the hope that when you really need it – then you will remember it. Mantra’s are very important in the Tibetan tradition – I think we all know the great Tibetan mantra – Om mani padme hum – which means ‘at the heart of enlightened mind are wisdom and compassion indivisible’ and so reminds us that we must seek out and train ourselves for both aspects – wisdom and compassion.
This mantra that I have for you today is a different one and it comes from a teacher in the Theravaddin tradition, Sylvia Boorstein – an American Dhamma teacher, one of the founders of the Spirit Rock meditation centre in the United States. I really like Sylvia’s teachings (which I mostly have from her books). Like the Buddha’s early women disciples she is gentle, humourous, straight to the point and you never get the feeling that she is trying to impress you with how clever she is or what great levels of spiritual attainment she has reached.
May I meet this moment fully – may I meet it as a friend.
This is Sylvia’s mantra –
Think of all the things that have happened lately that you didn’t ask for and didn’t want but which happened anyway. The moment when you realised that you may well lose your job or your business because of the lockdowns; that you won’t be able to visit family or friends who really need your help; that you are the one who could really use some help or companionship but you will not be able to see the people who are dearest to you; that you may never be able to leave the country again and yet your parents or child or best friend is overseas; that your own life or the life of someone dear to you is under threat or coming to an end.
Perhaps you would like to sit with your eyes closed, holding that difficult moment in your awareness and just try repeating the mantra to yourself.
May I meet this moment fully, may I meet it as a friend.
You can try the first sentence on the in breath, the second sentence on the outbreath.
How does that feel?
I find that this little reminder really works for me to call me back to my true values whenever I am faced with some situation I may not like. This little aspiration reminds me of my intention and what I need to practice.
Whatever happens in my life, whether at first it appears good or bad – may I not hide from it, may I not push away difficult thoughts, emotions or feelings in the body. Instead, whatever happens may I turn towards it without negativity, without pre-judging but with engaged interest.
What do we mean by meeting the moment fully? The eightfold path tells us that we need to take a wise or whole view of any situation. Let me give you an example from my own life. My eldest son was often a difficult child – he was never afraid to challenge authority and he seemed always to make things difficult for himself. When I tell you that at 25 he took his girlfriend and went to live in one of the most difficult countries in the world, at one of the most difficult times in its history you will get an idea of what I mean. I was quite worried about him and I was talking to Bhante Teja about him one day. After listening to all my concerns he said ‘I think you should step back for a minute and take a wider view. Your son is building a life for himself in a new country with a different language and a very different culture. That’s not easy. But he has found a job in the field he wanted and is sticking with it. He is in a long term committed relationship – also not easy but it seems to be working out well. In anyone’s life there will be one or two aspects that may not be going so well at any given time. It’s natural to focus on the difficulties but if you step back and look at the whole life you many get quite a different picture.’
And what do we mean by meeting a difficult moment as a friend? In all of our lives plenty of things happen that we never would have wanted, never would have chosen. They happen to us or to the people around us who we love. Sylvia Boorstein tells the story of her friend Jane, a psychotherapist, who is still working at the age of 75 because she is the breadwinner for herself and her disabled husband. However she is looking forward to her retirement soon and she has been building up a retirement fund – all of which she has invested with Bernie Maddox. You may or may not have heard of Bernie Maddox but he ran a very big investment fund in New York. In 2008 when the global financial crisis hit he, like all other investment funds, lost a huge amount of money. But Bernie, in order to stay in business and attract new investors pretended that he was smarter than all the rest, that his company was not in trouble. He took to using whatever was left of the invested funds to pay the interest owing to his investors until every last bit of capital was gone and the whole thing came crashing down. So that is how Sylvia’s friend Jane found herself at 75 with absolutely no money, an invalid husband and no idea how she was going to live.
Jane had been a long term Buddhist practitioner. She told Sylvia that at first when she was informed about what had happened she just couldn’t take it in. As the reality sank in she was fearful and distressed and anxious but she said to Sylvia that despite this she never got angry. She said ‘I have enough trouble as it is without confusing my mind with anger. And who should I get angry with? Bernie M – who knew what he was thinking? The regulatory authority who obviously weren’t paying attention? Myself? For being stupid enough to put all my eggs in one basket? But they were paying good returns and we really needed the money. But right now I need to think clearly. I need a clear mind to figure out what I’m going to do with my life – I can’t spare any for anger. I couldn’t do this without my practice.’
We often talk about how much we’ve been practicing or not practicing lately but in truth we are practicing every moment of our lives. Something comes up and we have to respond – Life as they say, is what happens while you’re making other plans – and then Oh! – What do I do now? How do we keep ourselves as clear seeing as possible in order to meet these moments? That’s where our mantra comes in – We remind ourselves –
May I meet this moment fully – May I meet it as a friend.
The Buddha taught 4 noble truths – the first – that life is challenging for everyone, because everything changes and we all have to deal with the results. The second truth is that we are not built to accept things we don’t like. To find out that things are different from the way we want them to be is difficult for us. If it’s possible to change them then of course we will but there are many things difficult or impossible to change at least in the direction we would like them to go and we find that very difficult to accept.
The third noble truth is that peace, contentment, acceptance is possible – if we let go of that imperative in our minds that says that things have to be different from the way they are. When disasters happen – when your house burns down in a bushfire, when you’re diagnosed with life ending illness, when you’re in a car accident your first thought may be – ‘Why me?’ But when you think about it for a few minutes you realize that these things happen to lots of people. These events are caused by all kinds of complex causes and conditions interacting in ways that we have no control over. When we get over the initial shock a more clear minded response may be ‘This is never what I would have wanted but it’s what I got – and it’s what I have to deal with.
When you widen your vision from your own disaster you realize that everyone suffers – everyone has something to deal with. How can I be angry at anyone, we’re all struggling in this human life together.
The Buddha said – Don’t take my word for it – try it out and see for yourself. So next time you’re struggling, try saying to yourself – This is not what I wanted but it is what I have to deal with – and see if that changes the way you feel at all.
Right now we are here together, in our virtual community, working on our habits of mind and just by practicing this, saying to ourselves – ‘This is not what I wanted but it is what is here’ – we are working on the Buddha’s 8 fold path – the way out of suffering and towards peace. Specifically we are working on 4 strands of the path – developing wise or whole view, (looking at the situation as fully as we can) developing effort (not giving way to imagining how awful things might be), developing mindfulness (recognizing the feelings that are coming up), developing concentration (picking up our mantra and repeating it to ourselves (May I meet this moment fully…. In this way we develop a balanced recognition of what’s happening. Feelings of pain & distress arise but then you focus on the breath for a few moments and before long you can go ‘Well – that really shook me up!’ And then before the mind starts to run away with itself and create stories about what might come next – you can return to our mantra –
May I meet this moment fully – May I meet it as a friend.
And in the way of mantras you can repeat it to yourself, linking it with the breath, until you notice the mind settling, notice how the body is starting to relax, to release the tension, so that then you’re able to meet this moment fully. While you are repeating the mantra you are not creating any more anger and upset, not creating stories in your heads about how things might go. Instead we develop that clarity of mind that shows us that things change and I’m not in control of much. But I don’t have to make things worse. I have only today with things as they are so I might as well accept it, deal with it as best I can and enjoy what I can.
Insight arises, wisdom arises, and enables us to meet this moment fully, to meet it as a friend. It becomes difficult to hold grudges and resentment. Everyone is stumbling along, trying to figure out how to do this really complicated thing called life.
We are not in charge, we’re subject to very complicated karmic forces and conditions. To fight it is to create suffering. This doesn’t mean that we don’t change anything! It doesn’t mean that this is a wrong moment! This very difficult moment could be a great moment, a necessary moment if it causes several people to realize – we need to change things so this doesn’t happen again!
So next time you’re faced with some bad news see if you can remember – I didn’t ask for this but this is what has arrived. Instead of fighting against this with rage and anger can I turn towards it? Can I change the way I feel about my life? Can I ask myself – what can I do with this situation that I didn’t ask for and don’t want? How can I do the best for myself and the best for others in this difficult situation? Can I meet this moment fully and meet it as a friend?
