This dharma talk was recorded at Insight Nashville on March 19, 2014. I explore the parami of generosity, especially in the context of receiving as an interconnected act of lovingkindness. The full audio is 30 minutes; the final portion is a guided meditation on opening our hearts to receive as well as give metta.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Unanswered questions, intractable situations often appear to stand in the way of living from our deepest intentions. At times we might feel blocked even from knowing what our true priorities are. But if we take time to turn inward with a spirit of patience and inquiry, instead of requiring the dilemmas to go away, or insisting on immediate resolutions, we can discover the resources we need. Internal dilemmas contain a rich source of insight; learning to live with them brings about a radical shift that opens the door to clarity and equanimity.
Working with unresolved questions in your meditation practice is an intentional focus, like metta, which is different from basic breath and body awareness. We are directing our attention to something more specific, in this case, deep questions in our lives. We are creating an intention to bring the question into our hearts with a quality of openness and interest, but not with an intent to analyze or resolve.
Your question may be about some aspect of your life that doesn’t make sense: loneliness, career or finances, a difficult relationship, perhaps old conditioning that keeps reappearing unexpectedly no matter what you do. It may be about health or chronic pain, the loss of a loved one or maybe deep spiritual question about life and death. Most of us are intimately familiar with our themes, the questions that we just can’t resolve.
In exploring your questions this way, they can transform into a life force. Living your deepest questions is living your life fully; loving your questions is loving even those parts of your life and those parts of yourself that you may have shut out.
This is where the radical shift can occur. Often unresolved questions represent parts of our lives that we resist. Trying to figure them out and resolve them takes us away from this moment, where the question can come alive. This is the portal to wisdom and insight. It only opens when we can move out of the realm of the intellect and our normal attempts to solve the question. Living our questions brings us fully into this moment.
Guided Meditation
Give yourself about 20 – 30 minutes to do this practice fully.
Find a comfortable place to sit. Take a few deep breaths and settle into this moment. Now take a few minutes to find your question and bring it into your heart
As you find it, just open up to it as a living thing
Keep sitting with whatever arises and let go of any thinking or stories until you become aware of your body
Notice what you feel
As the question settles into your body you may feel sadness or grief, despair, anger, fear, love or compassion. Don’t attach to the name or the explanation. Just feel it. You may even feel neutral. If it’s neutral or blank, just be with the experience of that. Chances are it will change of its own accord as you stay present. It may also appear as energy. This can happen when we move the question out of the realm of thought and into our hearts.
If you feel overwhelmed and quickly engage in busy or intensive thought, the question may be too charged. Pull back and focus on the breath or another object of attention until you feel more settled. Then return to your question as you feel ready.
There is a lot of life and energy in our deep questions once we open our hearts and minds to them.
Once your question settles into your being, just let it rest there and don’t try to direct or see the outcome. This is where your mindfulness practice will serve you, in this spaciousness of mind and heart that we can’t always so easily access in our day to day activities.
If you feel something arising allow it to flow and move. Sadness grief, energy, even joy, whatever it might be, just be open to it welcome it and let it be in your heart. If you need to cry that is ok too.
What we’re learning to do is hold the question in the realm of not knowing, the realm of mystery. With patience, we let go of trying to resolve anything. Slowly, we learn to respond from an unbiased heart, our inherent wisdom.
You can listen to my dharma talk on working with questions here.
For my Buddhist Geeks podcast on working with questions, click here.
A Shroud of Mist
by Lisa Ernst
Whatever it is, I cannot understand it
Although gratitude stubbornly overcomes me
Until I am reduced to tears.
– Saigyo
Guest meditation teacher Lisa Ernst from One Dharma Nashville will lead The Joy of Presence: A Mindfulness Meditation Workshop on Saturday, April 5, 2014 at
The Yoga Center of Huntsville
This workshop will help you learn effective techniques to establish or deepen an ongoing mindfulness meditation practice. You’ll learn correct sitting postures and concentration as well as how to work with thoughts and emotions. You also learn deep listening and mindful communication, along with powerful forgiveness and loving-kindness practices that you can offer to yourself and others. The workshop will include periods of sitting and walking meditation, instruction, discussion and Q & A. Appropriate to beginners as well as more experienced mediators who wish to refresh and deepen their practice.
Lisa Ernst is a meditation teacher and founder of One Dharma Nashville. She has been practicing Buddhist meditation for 25 years in both the Zen and Vipassana traditions. In her teaching, Lisa emphasizes both transformational insight and everyday awakening as n invitation to embrace all of the path’s possibilities. Lisa leads daylong and residential meditation retreats and has taught meditation in universities, corporations and prisons. She also offers individual meditation instruction and guidance. For more information about One Dharma Nashville, visit http://www.onedharmanashville.com.
Session duration: 12:30–5 pm
Pre-registration price: $85 (if registered and paid by Friday, March 28)
Drop-in price: $95 (if registered after March 28 until day of workshop)
To register, email Annette Beresford at annetteberseford@hotmail.com or call
256-658-9748.
This is a dharma talk and short guided meditation on Forgiveness I led at Nashville Insight this past November.
Dharma Talk on Forgiveness, and guided forgiveness meditation, recorded at Nashville Insight, November 13:
Guided Vipassana Meditation, recorded at Nashville Insight, November 13, 2013:
February is always a little tricky for scheduling events — there’s always the chance, no matter how slight, of snow. Last year I awoke to snow on the day my writing and meditation workshop was scheduled and I deliberated for a couple of hours whether to cancel it. Ultimately I went forward as the temperatures warmed up just in time to melt the snow. This Friday on the eve of my workshop, the Weather Channel predicted an 80% chance of snow with a 1″ accumulation for Saturday morning. I went to bed unsure whether the workshop would happen. Thankfully, though, the snow passed us by again here in Nashville. We may be one of only a few southern cities to have avoided snow this year – so far.
During the workshop everyone had a chance to read their writing in small, intimate groups or at the end of the day, to everyone there. Andrea Hewitt read a beautiful and inspiring essay she wrote that morning and I want to share it with you here:
Andrea Hewitt
What touched me today was reading about the actress Ellen Page’s coming out and particularly watching the video on the Human Rights Campaign website. Here was this accomplished young actress speaking in front of a crowd–something I’m sure she has done many times before. You could hear the nervousness in her voice–the wavering and uncertainty.
But what I was most transfixed by were her hands. They were shaking so much that she had to hold them cupped together for almost the entire time. At one point, she let them go to make a point, and they were like tiny birds released, but still unsure of how high to fly.
About halfway through her speech when she finally said the words, “I’m gay,” and the audience stood and cheered for her, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if everyone upon coming out had a cheering audience swelling with whoops of joy, mirroring back to you the terrifyingly awesome feeling of finally releasing your authentic self out of your mouth and into the world?”
It’s like watching a birth: the long wait and gestation before, the agonizing pains of labor, but then the deep knowing that there is no going backwards–in fact, what’s back no longer exists even–and you are propelled into a shiny, brand new, sparkling world that blinds you with its rightness. And you wonder how you ever lived in the dull past with you old, small, tightly-reined-in self.
Letting it all go–the expectations, the dreams of someone else for you, your own dreams that never quite fit no matter how you cut and sewed and re-sewed them–it’s the scariest thing ever. It’s tough enough to do that for yourself and your family & close friends privately, let alone on a widely-broadcast YouTube video.
But to live every day as authentically as you can–what a gift to yourself and the world! I could see the relief on her face when the words came out of her mouth. Naming ourselves, saying the words, and believing that you can say them and there will be a bridge to carry you to the other side requires such a leap of faith.
I remember testing out the words myself before I dared to speak them aloud to anyone. It felt like I had a tiny baby bird inside me–me, its nest–and it was time to push her out. Keeping her in the once-safe nest was no longer an option for that would only stunt her growth. I had to have faith that her wings were ready and strong enough to take on the world. It was her time to fly.
Early Spring Blossoms
photography by Lisa Ernst
A branch snaps under snow
waking me from a dream of the cherries
flowering on Yoshino
—Buson
This dharma talk was recorded at InsightLA on October 13, 2013. It was part of a daylong retreat I taught about how to work with our questions in a way that can help us live from our truest intentions. You can listen here:
I was interviewed recently by Vincent Horn, founder of Buddhist Geeks, and we talked about how to work with questions in your practice. Unanswered questions, intractable situations often appear to stand in the way of living from our deepest intentions. We might feel blocked even from knowing what our true priorities are. But if we take time to turn inward with a spirit of patience and inquiry, instead of requiring the dilemmas to go away, or insisting on immediate resolutions, we can discover the resources that we need. Internal dilemmas contain a rich source of insight; learning to live with them brings about a radical shift that opens the door to clarity and equanimity.
You can click on the image below to access the podcast. I hope you enjoy it!
Taking Refuge in This Moment
Saturday, March 15, 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Led by Lisa Ernst
Please join us for a day of sitting and walking meditation at a beautiful, wooded site in rural West Nashville. True refuge is turning toward our experience and finding freedom in the way things are. This silent retreat will focus on cultivating a quality of compassionate presence that embraces our experience with kindness and insight.
Led by meditation teacher Lisa Ernst, the retreat is suitable for both beginning and experienced meditators; it will include sitting and walking meditation, practice instructions, and a dharma talk.
Cost: $50, plus dana (donation) to the teacher. A deposit of $50 will reserve your space and is due by Friday, March 7. Paypal is available here. If paying by check, please make it out to One Dharma Nashville and send to: 12South Dharma Center c/o One Dharma Nashville, 2301 12th Ave. South, Suite 202, Nashville, TN 37204. Please include your email address. Directions and additional information will be emailed prior to the retreat.
For questions, email onedharmaretreat@gmail.com
The Lotus Blooms in The Mud 