The Practice of Compassionate Abiding

In my personal practice, I have been working with Compassionate Abiding lately--trying to stay present and in contact with difficult emotions such as grief, worry, anxiety, shame, and fear. It has proven a challenging, but wholly worthwhile practice, so I wanted to share it.

A Heads-Up

The practice of Compassionate Abiding is not for everyone right now. Consider your current capacity and circumstances before engaging in the practice. It is overwhelming simply to be living in a time of a global pandemic, a toxic national environment due to increased outward acts of racism and the denial of years of injustice and oppression, and the stress of the upcoming elections! The lived experiences of some individuals will create even more trauma than others as a result. So we must enter with care and compassion into exploration of difficult emotions. If you feel safe exploring your difficult emotions, start with just a few minutes at a time of these practices. We must build these skills gradually, overtime. If it doesn’t feel safe or skillful to work with difficult emotions in your meditation practice right now, I suggest trying Metta meditation. Metta meditation is a complementary practice to Compassionate Abiding.  It helps us grow our compassion for others and ourselves, that compassion, then is what helps us have the capacity to stay present with difficult emotions over time. 

ABOUT COMPASSIONATE ABIDING

Compassionate Abiding was first introduced to me by one of my teachers Pema Chödrön in her books, specifically in Taking the Leap. I was reminded of it again recently this September when I participated in a 3-day retreat with Tim Olmsted through The Omega Institute. Just like everything in mindfulness: the actual process is easy to understand logically, but difficult to do. The point is to directly contact your difficult emotions, feel them in your body, breath, and being, and get to know them. Overtime we increase our window of tolerance for staying and investigating difficult emotions. That’s how we can truly create change in our lives. 

THE PRACTICE

In a comfortable seat or any position that feels right to you, start to notice your breath for a minute or two. If you are in a safe space and feel comfortable doing so, close your eyes.  

• Breathe in: inviting in your difficult emotion(s) in and making space for it to be there, without needing for it to be any different that it is or wishing it would go away. 

• Breath out: whatever helps you to be with that difficult emotion, whatever will bring you ease around the emotion. 

You can stay with one emotion/circumstance you are confronting in your life, or let it be a more general exercise of your most common difficult emotions. You don’t have to contact them all at first, and definitely not all in one sitting no matter what you chose. 

So the practice may look like: 

• Inhale fear and uncertainty, Exhale hope and trust 

• Inhale fear, Exhale trust … 

Internally you aren’t just contacting the emotion; you are making a bigger and bigger space for it. You breathe it in deeply, as Pema says, it is as if your heart is just getting bigger and bigger in order to hold the difficulty. 

SIDE COACHING & NOTES

We use our breath to keep us moving in this practice. Let your inhales and exhales change as you see fit. Open mouth, through the nose, long, loud it doesn’t matter – let it happen. You have permission to make it your own: do it standing, lying down, or as you are taking a walk. Pema herself talks about doing this practice in nature while walking slowly because it supports her efforts. Where might you feel the most supported while engaging in this practice?  

Don’t worry if it does not come naturally to you. Staying present with hard feelings and thoughts is not a skill that we use a lot in our everyday lives. (Typically we distract ourselves away from the present to push away the unpleasant thoughts.) 

AND SO...

Compassionate Abiding and similar practices that invite us to get to know our difficult emotions not only support us in getting to know ourselves better and seeing our different patters of reactivity, but also seeing our connection with others. We’re able to better recognize our “sameness” and shared humanity: that everyone has fear and worry, and that we’re all in the same boat and just trying to stay afloat. 

For a little more about Compassionate Abiding, check out this podcast featuring Pema: : https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/pema-chodron-compassionate-abiding/ 

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Photo by lucas clarysse on Unsplash

Moving toward Unconditional Metta

The concentration practice of metta (the Palí word for “loving-kindness”) meditation is becoming more popular in the west, especially thanks to Sharon Salzberg, one of my teachers and the first teacher to teach me metta meditation in person. You silently repeat 3 or 4 phrases, whatever resonates with your deepest intention, over and over again consciously directing your well-wishes to certain beings. Metta meditation usually starts by directing loving-kindness wishes to ourselves, then to a benefactor or dear friend, then to somebody neutral in our life, then somebody that we have difficulty with (has hurt us or harmed us in some way), and eventually to all beings everywhere. 

We direct loving-kindness wishes by repeating a set of phrases.

A common set of phrases is:
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May I live with ease. 
(say each phrase silently or quietly to yourself, once you’ve said all four, start from the first again; there’s no rush to get through the phrases, it’s about the intention behind them)

The set of phrases that I commonly use is: 
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I be free from fear 
(say each phrase silently or quietly to yourself, once you’ve said all three, start from the first again; there’s no rush to get through the phrases, it’s about the intention behind them)

You are welcome to replace “happiness” with any word or intention that resonates with that person. 

Many people connect quickly to sending loving-kindness out to loved ones or friends, but have a resistance in sending metta to those that have hurt or harmed them in some way. Don’t worry, that resistance is very normal. It is challenging. We learn a lot about ourselves when we pay attention to things that are difficult for us. 

So why is it so difficult? What are we believing about that person or about ourselves? Are we believing that they are different than us? 

On a personal level we tend to get identified with our thoughts and beliefs about the person who caused us harm. We label them “bad” and put ourselves above their actions creating a separate self. This, as we know, is the ego. We are not able to separate out “bad” people from “good” ones. This is a false binary: good | bad.  We don’t exist in absolutes. We are all the same stardust and molecules, have the same wants and needs, and possess the same potential for manifesting goodness (or badness).  So the separation of some people into “bad” is just an illusion we create to explain how they could have harmed or hurt us in some way. In a bigger sense, acknowledging this illusion teaches us how to love unconditionally, or love that isn’t dependent on anything. Unconditional love isn’t based on having our affection returned, people treating us a certain way, or having our desires met. It is limitless. 

I would like to also note that in the last step of the metta meditation, when we send metta wishes to all beings everywhere, we are sending loving-kindness to EVERY single being in the multi-verse, which includes any person we might consider “bad.” These beings are still included in our metta wishes and we are working on those wishes not being conditional. We must remember everyone is deserving of loving-kindness. 

Sending metta to every being doesn’t mean that we condone violence, for example. It means that people are more than their worst mistake and that our metta for them is not based on human actions or behaviors but in their, and every human being’s, same potential for manifesting essential goodness. 

By practicing sending loving-kindness to difficult people we are exercising our heart, training it to live in the field beyond “wrong-doing and right-doing.” Metta is not dependent on anything. Metta is unconditional.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.

--Rumi