Listening with the Heart

"Listening is a very deep practice.You have to empty yourself. 

You have to leave space in order to listen...

In deep listening we listen with the sole purpose of 

helping the other person feel heard and accepted." 

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

"Healing comes from our innate capacity for deep listening.  

This deep listening or seeing is not through our eyes or ears, 

but through our heart and soul."

-- Jack Kornfeld 

There is, perhaps, no more important form of meditative discipline than what Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh calls deep listening.  It connects us to ourselves, to one another -- and to our true nature.

Our time on the cushion in formal meditation is essential.  Yet, it is what happens next that really matters. It is there, in the midst of our day-to-day lives, that kindness, clarity, ease, and compassion are actualized -- or not.  

Beans in our Ears

Most of us have learned the prevailing form of listening in our society.  Much of the time we don't really listen.  Rather than listen to connect deeply with the experience of another, we listen to reply.  Rather than listen with undivided attention, we are often thinking of what we are going to say next. 

Although our ears and eyes and finer sensibilities are operational as we listen, much of our attention is locked into our thoughts about what someone is saying.

As a matter of habit, we automatically analyze, compare, judge, often immediately relating it to an associated personal experience.  On automatic pilot, we seek to advise, counsel, or otherwise react without a deep awareness of what is really going on -- either inside ourselves or the other person.  As a result, whole realms of emotional and intuitive energies remain beneath the level of our awareness.  Rather than really connect, we often end up bouncing of one another.

It doesn't have to be this way.

We can actually learn an entirely different way of listening to another person -- and to ourselves!  We can go deeper.  We can empathize.  We can listen with our hearts.    
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A Helping Hand

"If you want to find Buddha nature, love someone and care for them."
--  Dainin Katagiri
 
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us
to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Three days ago, Migdalia had surgery done on her right shoulder to repair significant tears of her rotator cuff, labrum, and biceps tendon.  

So, at this point, I'm her right hand man -- literally.  I have moved in with her full-time to provide the necessary care as she faces the significant pain and discomfort of a post-op rehab that may require 6-8 weeks of life in a sling.

In a relationship that has thrived for three years as we each maintained our own living spaces (I think a lot of marriages would still be alive if that was seen as an acceptable option), we are now sharing her place 24-7.

It's been intense.

Having committed to facing sickness, old age, and death as life-partners, we did manage to co-habitate during the first couple of months of the pandemic.  But, at that point, we were each able bodied.  Besides the various aches and pains of two folks whose average age is now on the high side of 70, we were each in relatively good health.  We could be alone together quite well.
 
This is different.  
 
Now, Migdalia looks like someone stomped on her shoulder then bound her up in a strange torture device that seems intent on poking her in the ribs, no matter what we do.  She also has to sleep sitting up.  She's black and blue and swollen and dealing with the effects of all the drugs required to allow them to punch five holes in her shoulder, insert a variety of cameras, medical instruments and paraphernalia in to her body, then stitch her up -- and send her home.
 
Hercules vs Hydra
 

One of the first challenges we faced was contending with the gazillion velcro straps and clasps of the sling/brace that is going to be her constant companion for the foreseeable future. The next morning, it had to be removed for a brief period of  physical therapy and then replaced immediately. 

I'm pretty sure that before the insurance companies and other profit driven corporations came to dominate health care in this country, Migdalia would have awoken that morning in a well-staffed hospital, and a skilled physical therapist would have arrived to cheerfully support her through the ordeal.  Now, after a fitful night's sleep propped up by pillows in a makeshift hospital bed, she had me: a similarly exhausted old coot with about ten minutes of "training," and a couple of pages of confusing and contradictory instructions.  
 
It was a Herculean task.  
 
Each of us is quite used to doing things "single-handedly" and taking the lead in moving through our lives.  So, now that "single-handedly" had become literal for one of us, Migdalia and I immediately butted heads over how to most effectively use our three good hands.  Me, an Aries, white working-class cis male and his beloved, a fiery New York Puerto Rican female from the projects in Harlem, huffed and puffed for awhile, getting nowhere with what had become a tangled mess of velcro.  A helping hand only helps if it helps.  It wasn't.  I soon realized that we had to really slow down, take a few deep breaths, and learn how to communicate a lot more carefully -- or the many-headed Hydra would have her way with us.  
 
Thankfully, like Hercules and Ioalus, Migdalia and I were able to put our heads together and prove that two heads are better than nine.  
 
 
The Theory and the Practice
 
So, this is it.  It's showtime.  

Migdalia and I are having to learn how to move through space and time in very different ways, individually, and as co-conspirators.  We are having to learn how to communicate more skillfully.  

This is where the rubber meets the road.  Mindfulness doesn't have the elbow room to be mere theory.  It has to be a moment to moment Practice.  Rather than spin out or bounce off of one another, we've already seen the need to be more adept at taking the foot off the accelerator and tapping the brakes.  We've each had to make a special effort to listen deeply -- to ourselves and one another -- and to speak clearly and carefully as we navigate ahead.

This is a good thing.

It just takes Practice.

Time Out!

It's time for a time out!

 

I plan to be embarking on a personal three day meditation retreat, turning off all the devices after the Friday Morning Circle and continuing through Sunday, surfacing on-line only to facilitate the Opening, Midday and Closing Circles of Be Still and Know on Zoom before returning to silence until Monday Morning MIndfulness.

 

 

 

 

Be Still and Know: 

A Day of Mindful Practice

Circles on Zoom

Opening Circle 9:00 AM

Midday Circle 12:00 Noon

Closing Circle 3:00 PM

 

Hope to see you in a Circle.

Zoom Circle ID 777-108-1081

Passcode: 108108

One Love,

Lance

A Solid Grasp of Reality

 “In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water,
it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.”
-- Alan Watts, The Essential Alan Watts

"It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance 
to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation."

-- Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change

All I could do was grin that morning.  

 

Eight of us had gathered for Monday Morning Mindfulness at Community Yoga and Wellness Center that day seven years ago to meditate and then explore the second slogan of the Lojong Trainings: "Regard all dharmas (i.e. everything) as dreams." 

 

I had been facilitating this weekly sitting group each Monday for two years by then.  At that point, the Heart Council Practice had not evolved to become a central focus for the band of irregular regulars who showed up each week. 

MMM could get pretty wild and crazy.

 

Although I made the effort to give each person in the Mindfulness Circle the chance to check in on their life and practice each week after we shared periods of sitting and walking meditation, an energetic discussion would often emerge.  I had to keep an eye on the clock, and "facilitate" some interesting transitions to keep us "on track." It reminded me a bit of my stint as a high school social studies teacher back in the 1970's leading somewhat "guided' discussions.  

 

Being the human beings we are, sometimes the discussions in the Circle could get quite heated and contentious.  Occasionally, I'd get "hooked," loose track of my role --  add fuel to the fire.  One morning, seeing that things were out of control, the one of the Irregular Regulars had belly flopped from her zafu and stretched out prone on the polished wooden floor of the studio to ring my bell.  I loved it.

 

The Promise of Paradox

 

Thankfully, the morning that the eight of us began our dive into"Regard all dharmas as dreams" didn't require any such belly flop.  A few months prior to that, I had been encouraged by one of the more regular of the Irregular Regulars to lead a plunge into the 59 Lojong slogans.  Knowing that I was an inveterate bookworm/spiritual geek, she had my number.  I dutifully spent months reading all the commentaries I could get my hands on, and had incorporated the slogans and Tonglen meditation into my daily life and practice.

I had just opened the discussion by briefly sharing my take on Lojong slogan two. Although a couple of folks in the Circle, perhaps quite aware of the limitations, maybe even the inadvisability, of placing so much of our emotional energy and collective attention on words and discursive thought didn't participate, the rest of us jumped right in.  

 

Having studied and practiced Zen which has a long tradition of probing questions and dharma "combat," I marveled at what emerged.  Although all assembled, myself included, were essentially beginners in the study of these particular Teachings, I imagine the energetic, sincere, often profound, sometimes amusing, discussion that emerged could have been a conversation among senior monks somewhere.  

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