During this pandemic, especially as we see it strengthening again this summer, fear is a part of the landscape for many. Even for those not directly afraid of the virus, meeting life with its immense uncertainty is often challenging. How do we find a calm steady place in our practice to meet fear and not knowing with equanimity?
Finding Peace Where You Are: Befriending Your Mind, Accepting Your Emotions
Friday Evening, November 20 – Monday Noon, November 23, Led by Lisa Ernst
Difficult, anxious thoughts and emotions are often considered obstacles to meditation and peace of mind. A wiser view is available! Buddha’s path to liberation is designed to help us face the full experience of embodied human life. Through deep practice we can learn how to be at peace with our overly energetic or painful body, our restless minds and hearts and even the most irritating and hard emotions. At this retreat we will learn how to bring acceptance, patience and love for ourselves into the process. We will learn how awareness can intervene, balancing reactivity, releasing identification and catastrophizing. Inner peace emerges (samadhi), so that meditative inquiry can help us learn from our inner lives, discover gems of wisdom and insight — and tenderness for the rest. Cost is $75 plus dana to Lisa. For more information and registration, go here.
Since the murder of George Floyd and the resulting uprisings, many people have reported continuously feeling edgy, angry, unsettled and uncomfortable and the feelings are not going away. Most of us have been taught since childhood that these are not good feelings and we should try and get rid of them. Or tolerate them for a while, but try to move on quickly. Even as meditation practitioners, we may feel that these feelings are something to “meditate away.” But that’s not a skillful or constructive outlook.
It’s ok to feel uncomfortable right now, it’s a completely appropriate and even necessary response that doesn’t need to be assuaged or mitigated. The problem comes when we are at odds with it, when we feel we are “wrong” in some way for these ongoing feelings or if we act out in ways that are harmful to ourselves or others because we don’t know what to do.
A wise response is all about changing our relationship to what’s arising, not getting rid of it. This discomfort can keep us from feeling complacent; it keeps us awake right now. For me, it is an edge that I have come to welcome and trust. 400+ years of Black enslavement is not something to try and be comfortable with.
When we have a welcoming relationship to this discomfort, we are in a better position to discern a wise and compassionate response that is in alignment with right action. Without this ongoing discomfort, its likely nothing will change. We need to use this underlying energy to stay motivated. When we’re in alignment with the discomfort we don’t expend precious energy resisting it. I invite you to welcome your discomfort and let it be a teacher to you.
When I clicked on the video, immediately I felt anger welling up. The woman, Amy Cooper, was living up to every stereotype in the book for an entitled white woman. No commentary or explanation was required to see her privilege and racism on full display. An African American man and avid bird watcher, Christian Cooper, had politely asked her to put her dog on a leash in a part of Central Park that requires it. She refused. Mr. Cooper began videoing the encounter, remaining calm as Ms. Cooper (no relation) became increasingly agitated. She walked up to him, breaching social distancing boundaries and pointed to the camera, ordering him to turn it off. When he didn’t she threatened him, yelling, “I’m going to call the police and tell them an African American man is threatening my life.” She put a strong emphasis on “African American.” He answered, “please do.” She stepped away and followed through on her threat, escalating her pleas to the police as though her life was truly in danger when obviously it wasn’t.
Even as she called the police, her dog still wasn’t leashed; she was holding it by the collar as it squirmed and choked. Finally, as she hung up she leased the dog. Mr. Cooper calmly thanked her and turned the video off. When the police arrived, they were both gone and thankfully no physical harm came to Mr. Cooper.
Tragically, on this same day, another video emerged, this one of a cop in Minneapolis with his knee on a black man, George Floyd’s neck. He pleaded to be released from this strangle hold, he couldn’t breathe. After 10 minutes he went still and was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after. Mr. Floyd’s only offense was allegedly trying to spend a counterfeit $20 bill.
Anger gripped our nation along with an outpouring of grief. I personally felt horrified that the moral foundation we build our practice on in Buddhism, sila, was so fully breached in this moment, even knowing that it has been for centuries. So little has changed. My heart broke and I wept. More tragic loss of life, almost more than my heart could hold.
Grief and rage swept through social media as this video was viewed again and again. A strong public response can work to put pressure on federal and state officials regarding specific incidents and in some cases pave the way to justice. But this alone isn’t enough to bring about desperately needed systemic change. Our hearts and minds also need a deep reset; there’s real work to do.
The woman in the first video, Amy Cooper was certainly aware that her actions could have put Mr. Cooper in grave danger. Her apology indicated she was conscious of the peril that false accusations can lead to. “I am well aware of the pain that misassumptions and insensitive statements about race cause and would never have imagined that I would be involved in the type of incident that occurred with Chris.”
While I don’t know her politics, the truth is that liberals and conservatives alike are capable of behaving as Amy did. Why? Because even if we believe we personally have no bias, this is usually far from the case. Amy Cooper, in her apology even asserted, “I am not a racist.” But embedded in our culture are deeply held biases and there’s no use pretending they don’t permeate much of our conditioning and actions, even if they’re mostly unconscious. This underlying conditioning can and does lead to grave harm when unchecked.
When we only expend energy vilifying the Amy Coopers of the world, we turn them into the “other” and fail to consider how such actions could be carried out by many of us who consider ourselves beyond such behavior. Instead, can we let this be a wake up call to investigate how racism and bias exist, not only in our in our culture, but in ourselves? This quote from Ijeoma Olus speaks to this point, “The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including yourself. And that’s the only way forward.”
So what will bring about change? Here’s what Ruth King, an African American Buddhist teacher and author of Mindful of Race said, “Racism is a heart disease that’s curable. Cultivating a heart (through mindfulness practice) that is wise and open can be the medicine that is needed in moments of conflict.”
Those of us who are white can support this much needed awakening by undertaking the hard work of mindfully unpacking our own cultural conditioning about race and our own privilege. Some people are initially offended when they hear the phrase “white privilege.” I was at first. But when I attended a Buddhist teacher’s conference in 2014, we undertook challenging awareness exercises that uncovered our unconscious privilege. My own privilege became crystal clear for the first time.
In 2018 I began a white privilege program with some senior teachers from InsightLA. Their white teachers are all requited to complete this program to continue teaching there. The program template we used came from Spirit Rock and it included a monthly meeting, homework and time to explore our biases and privilege together. Honestly exploring our blind spots, bias and privilege was vulnerable and hard work, but ultimately very rewarding and eye opening. It was a start. If you’re white and you’ve never done this work, I highly recommend it.
In our practice, we can do a deep and sincere inquiry, “how can my practice and my actions lead to a more just, less biased world?
Last year the program director for an international corporation asked me to give a presentation to their staff about how mindfulness can help uncover and reduce unconscious bias. At first I was skeptical. Sometimes our culture sees mindfulness as a cure all for everything and only skims the surface of this practice. But the truth is that mindful awareness is an vital step in uncovering hidden bias and this has been verified scientifically. As I delved deeper, I concluded that right intention is also an essential ingredient. Ideally, if we start with an ethical foundation of non- harming and cultivate right intention and mindfulness, we have a recipe to begin to uncover and overcome deeply held biases. Then if we add right action to the mix, we have some hope for true change.
How could mindfulness practice have helped Amy Cooper in the split seconds before she went into full reactive/racist mode? When Christian Cooper asked her to leash her dog, instead of becoming agitated and vindictive, perhaps she could have noticed anger and tension arising in her body. She may have had enough space in her mind to perceive how she was reacting, mentally and physically, to entrenched biases about the skin color of Christian Cooper, then she might have seen a human being asking her to follow the leash laws. Most of all, perhaps a deeply embedded sense of “self against other” would not have taken full force and instead, a moment of awareness could open her to listening and taking right action. Then all she had to do was leash the dog and continue on her way.
May this moment be a deep wake up call for our hearts and minds. May we look beneath the surface and find the place where we are all connected and touch this truth. May we be kind and compassionate, may we remember we are not separate and act out of this understanding to benefit all beings.
All of the ingredients of both awakening and bondage exist in the present moment and nowhere else. In this moment, no matter how disconnected we feel from the whole, this “small I” can be met, welcomed and offered deep compassion. The fear can be held too. Awareness, when we let it, can embrace us just as we are with no conflict, no effort, nothing left out. We can relax for a while and rest in presence.
Why do most of us find it so difficult to access this sweet relief that is readily available? A primary reason is our ingrained identification with ego or self, the one who feels inadequate. If we’re honest, this is a life long struggle most of us are intimately familiar with. But if we simply switch to self-affirmation and positivity, we’re still identifying with and living out of this small and limited idea of self. Inevitably once the positivity wears off we revert to feelings of inadequacy because at the core, we are still identifying with an idea of fixed self, which is never enough.
As a child I was sexually abused by my father, as a teenager gang raped. To cope I entered my adult life with a story that I was strong and that being a women in no way marginalized me. This positive narrative did help me climb the ladder of business success. Simultaneously, at a deeper level I was in denial about the profound sense of inadequacy I felt – the surface positivity was my survival mechanism. I remember visiting various tech companies in Silicon Valley to meet with the top executives. I was in a leadership position in the tech world, a woman executive around mostly men. I held a mental narrative that being a woman didn’t limit me. But underneath I felt like an impostor who didn’t belong there. I couldn’t acknowledge or access how strongly this underlying feeling affected me. I desperately wanted to leave that life behind and a buyout opportunity gave me the chance at a young age.
Several years passed before I felt strong enough to acknowledge and touch my deep vulnerability, work with the trauma directly and finally, restore my energy and confidence. As I felt stronger at my core, beyond self-identity, I could welcome the vulnerability and fear. During daily meditation, the great embrace of awareness allowed me to let down my guard and release the armoring of false identity I had lived with for so long. Off the cushion I no longer had to pretend to be strong to cover over feelings inadequacy. I could finally relax and live a more joyful and equanimous life.
Many of us have powerful experiences of no self during meditation. But getting off the cushion, its easy to revert, again and again, to a life that feels incomplete. We may be aware of a subtle discomfort just under the surface and spend most of our time seeking strategies to eliminate it. Even efforts that seem in accordance with the dharma can easily turn into a trap of self improvement. We’re actually seeking to fill what is already full.
But if we can let go for a while, put down our (often unconscious) attempts to build a better self and touch with compassion what’s really here, no matter how broken and small we may feel, we gain access to true strength. Resting in the embrace of awareness, we relate our experience and our imperfections in a kinder, more inclusive way.
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We’re now moving into a new phase of the pandemic with many states partially reopening or even phasing out the quarantine. For some of us, it seems far too soon for safety. Uncertainty and a sense of groundlessness remain a significant part of this landscape. Personally I’m doing my best to walk where there is no ground and ride the unknowns without a map. Some days its easier than others. It helps to remember that the maps we hold in our minds are based on past experience or an approximation of what is present.
When our feet touch ground and the terrain differs from the map, we are in unknown territory that may feel groundless. Yet getting comfortable with this empty ground is the very heart of dharma practice, a doorway to liberation from a mind that clings to what it knows, or what it thinks it knows. Yes, it feels scary at times and compassion is essential when we explore this unknown terrain. But without allowing for these variations in the landscape, our experience hardens into an outdated map that doesn’t reflect the territory.
We can struggle to make the terrain conform to our old map, or let go and become intimate with the ground (or no-ground) we actually inhabit. We can relax with what is truly here and know in our hearts that we’ve never really been anywhere else. This great heart/mind of awareness holds us in a more reliable and spacious ground that we can learn to trust.
In April I taught my first online retreat and, to my surprise, it turned out much better than I expected.
The non profit I founded, One Dharma Nashville, holds an annual spring residential just outside of Nashville at Bethany Hills, a beautiful sport that is surrounded by nature. I knew by early March that the odds of this retreat happening were slim because of the virus. I began contemplating switching to an online offering to replace it, but felt hesitant, doubting the efficacy of meeting together on zoom while practicing at home.
Once we officially cancelled the in person retreat, I saw two choices: practice together online or skip the spring retreat entirely. Reluctantly, I chose the former. I have to admit initially I wasn’t looking forward to teaching a retreat online and only went ahead to accommodate those in our sangha who had voiced support for this format. Slowly as we got closer to the start date, I warmed up to the idea and even looked forward to leading home practice with sangha while on quarantine.
But I wondered, will people actually practice outside of our zoom meeting times? Can folks navigate home life, spouses, pets, maybe even children, wile meditating multiple times a day? Some decided they couldn’t, especially those with multiple kids at home or difficult work challenges. But many in our sangha and beyond decided it was worth a try. Everyone who attended was an online retreat beginner even though most were experienced retreat practitioners.
Observing full silence while also sharing home space with others is almost impossible, so most found a practical “middle way,” observing silence part of the time but still connecting and communicating with those at home. People living alone set up their time as a traditional silent meditation retreat.
I was surprised at how connected we felt meditating together multiple times a day. Having a schedule and sticking to it, even though it wasn’t as intensive as an in person retreat, allowed us to feel solidarity in the practice and in the dharma in a way that sitting alone doesn’t. Even when practicing during the offline times during the weekend, many people reported feeling a sense of connection to the sangha.
Retreating at home in this way isn’t as conducive to experiencing the deep samadhi (meditative absorption) that many meditators encounter on residential retreat. Yet other benefits emerged that are equally valuable. Many of our retreat participants reported how the barriers of retreat and home life dissolved. They were able to clearly observe and bring awareness to conditioned patterns that show up in daily life. Some of our retreat practitioners have reported that this mindful intervention has already had lasting positive effects. Often on residential retreats, reentry into everyday life feels challenging. But in this format, the line between the two was so subtle that reentry felt more natural.
I now believe home retreat is a valuable development in our practice that allows the barriers between retreat practice and home life to dissolve. As we bring our retreat practice more deeply into our everyday lives, the penetrating wisdom of the dharma sheds a light on parts of ourselves, and the way we function day to day, that may be obscured otherwise. It opens additional capacity to choose, with compassion and wisdom, a more responsive and aware relationship with ourselves and others.
I’m still a firm believer in retreating together in nature and look forward to the time when we can do this again safely. But for now, and even once quarantine ends, I believe online home retreat practice is here to stay. Both formats have value in differing ways. And I’m personally on board for more home Zoom retreats, both as a practitioner and a teacher. In fact, I have one coming up this weekend. See you on the other side!
We often hear of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. How do we relate to refuge through the lens of an unstable, destabilizing world and political environment and a virus that has upended our lives? In this talk I explore these questions and bring refuge back to this very moment – to the freedom we can find here and now, even in these very challenging times.
