Last Monday, Camille helped us to explore the 2nd Mindfulness Training: True Happiness. Several people shared their challenges, and their practice with this part of the training: “…the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering…”
From a theoretical perspective, we know that we “inter-are”with those who are suffering, and we have a clear sense of the implications. Yet from a practical perspective, this can be difficult to do, especially (for me), with those I love the most who have been suffering for a long time.
As I reflected on this, I found Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “How to Love” of help. As he writes, so simply, “...understanding is love’s other name.” Even though I know this, when the going gets tough, I can get caught in small things, fixated on an idea or an outcome, and my field of understanding shrinks accordingly.
While I’ve read this 100 times, the 101st remains helpful:
"If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform."
The above can be easy to do when we’re grounded and the water is still. What happens when the storms come and the waves get ginormous?
When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness...
...You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person...
...Often, when we say, “I love you” we focus mostly on the idea of the “I” who is doing the loving and less on the quality of the love that’s being offered. This is because we are caught by the idea of self. We think we have a self. But there is no such thing as an individual separate self. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, such as chlorophyll, sunlight, and water. If we were to remove all the non-flower elements from the flower, there would be no flower left. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with all of us… Humans are like this too. We can’t exist by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be. I am made only of non-me elements, such as the Earth, the sun, parents, and ancestors. In a relationship, if you can see the nature of interbeing between you and the other person, you can see that his suffering is your own suffering, and your happiness is his own happiness. With this way of seeing, you speak and act differently. This in itself can relieve so much suffering."
With our Thanksgivings still fresh in our memories and more holidays coming soon, I invite you to dive deeply into your experiences with these teachings so that we can all learn from each other.
- How is your practice with deep listening in order to understand yourself and those you love most?
- When is it easy or difficult to inter-be with close friends/family and how has that changed over time?
- From a practical perspective, what do you do to “build a home inside yourself to love and heal yourself?
I will enjoy being with you on Monday
Warmly,
Marie