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Happy Hour: Compassion 360 Degrees for All Beings Who Are Suffering Right Now - Nikki Mirghafori

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 12, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Happy Hour: Compassion 360 Degrees for All Beings Who Are Suffering Right Now

Introduction

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Happy Hour. For today's practice, given what's happening in the world geopolitically and so much suffering, I thought it might be appropriate for us to do some Tonglen¹ practice. Specifically, Tonglen is a compassion practice from the Tibetan tradition.

Last time on Monday, a reflection came in asking, "How can our practice here be of benefit given the many challenging things happening in the world?" Let's consider that as long as we are not adding to the hatred that's already happening in the world, our practice is of benefit. No matter what side of the argument we're on, as long as we're not adding fuel to the fire of hatred, we're not making it worse by getting riled up and getting others riled up.

If we can have compassion for the human beings who are suffering 360 degrees—people who are running to go into shelters or who don't have shelters and are living in a lack of safety—no matter their background, religion, belief, color, or history, they're human beings just like us. They are living through a very difficult time. With compassion 360 degrees, we can have a healthier stance to actually have an appropriate response in the world, instead of adding more hatred to what there is already plenty of.

Through compassion practice, we can have a more stable ground for compassionate action, for altruistic action, and for offering support. But first, we need to stabilize ourselves. The practice of Tonglen, which involves breathing in and breathing out, is a beautiful and appropriate practice at this time for us to engage in. Everything you need to know, I will share with you during the guided meditation. So, without further ado, let's begin.

Guided Meditation

Arriving in your body, arriving in this moment in time. Take a moment of refuge first to find your stability, to connect with a centered, calm, grounded, non-reactive center for the sake of yourself and for the sake of all beings. For this moment, put down the stories, the thoughts, the arguments, the images, and the news flashes. Put it down for a moment and just connect with the body breathing, the body sitting.

Breathing this body like so many bodies sitting and breathing. Letting the breath be received just in the abdomen. Let the breath be received in the abdomen. Just this in-breath, just this out-breath.

Let the breath be calming, settling a sense of stability and groundedness. With each moment of connecting to the breath, receiving the in-breath, offering the out-breath.

And now, I'd like to invite you to imagine that the breath is moving through your heart center, the center of your chest. As it's being received, it's waking up a connection with a sense of care for yourself, for others, for the world. And with each out-breath, you're offering that care to the world.

Now imagine that in your heart center—the proverbial heart center often associated with kind and caring emotions, mettā² radiating out—there is an orb of light. A transformative, bright orb of light representing care, kindness, and compassion for yourself and for all beings. This bright orb of light is shining brightly, and with each in-breath and out-breath, it gets brighter.

This bright orb of light in the center of your chest is yours, and it's also not yours. It's universal care and compassion that's being held by this living being who is you, but it's universal. It doesn't belong to you; it's larger than you. Yours is one instantiation of this universal compassion shining brightly.

Now imagine that suffering, challenges, pain, sorrow, fear, and anger—yours and others'—is like a fog or smoke. When it's breathed into the heart center, it gets transformed into a bright light of comfort, succor, and care, and gets breathed out and shared. It doesn't affect you because this orb of universal compassion and care in your heart center is much bigger than yours. You're just holding it for now in this lifetime while you're alive. You're extending compassion like an Olympic torch; you're carrying it for a limited time.

As the suffering and pain enters and is breathed into this orb, it gets transformed into care and compassion, and then it's breathed out. You can imagine it is breathed out as a bright light of care and goodness, bringing aid, comfort, and feelings of safety to those it touches. With each breath, you're spreading compassion and care. With each mind moment, with each breath, you're reducing and transforming pain, hatred, and anger in the world into care and goodness. Your heart, too, is being transformed. In your mind, find your own way with this practice.

If you find you're struggling, then let your own struggle be breathed in as this fog, be transformed into ease, and breathed out over your whole body as comfort and ease. Care. Your heart is strong enough, grand, shining with compassion, stronger and more courageous than you realize.

Suffering being breathed into the heart center, in this transformative space of compassion, transformed into love, into care, and breathed out. Your own suffering or other people's suffering.

If it helps to add phrasing, you could do that too. As you breathe out: May you have ease in the midst of this challenge, in the midst of this pain and suffering. May you be free from this sorrow, this suffering, this pain. Or, I care for you.

May all beings, all humans, especially those who are suffering right now in war zones where there's a lack of safety, fear, danger, anger, heartbreak, and so much suffering... may all fellow human beings be free from suffering. May all beings be free from sorrow, pain, and suffering. May we all grow as a race to love each other, to love our neighbors.

[Ding, ding, ding]

Thank you all for your practice. I don't have my bell with me.

Reflections and Teaching

I want to share this teaching from the Dhammapada³, and many of you might have heard it before. This is one version of the translation: "Hatred never ceases through hatred. By love alone does it end. This is an ancient and eternal law."

When I came across this teaching decades ago—this was before I had practiced any Buddhist meditation or was familiar with any other Buddhist teaching—I saw this actually on a plaque in a small town in Japan. It told the story of how after World War II, there was a meeting of the United Nations. The victors were quite angry and wanted to exert punitive damages on those who had lost the war, including Japan. The prime minister of a Buddhist country⁴ got up and shared this quote: "Hatred never ceases through hatred." It is said that it completely shifted the energy of the meeting, and the victors decided not to exert punitive damages and instead to support Japan so that it could restore and rebuild itself.

I was so touched by the wisdom of this teaching. We know this from our own lives, not just from nations. If we keep hating and hating, it never ends. It's only through love, through care. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew this too well and taught this.

So with this, I'd like to invite us all, if you would, to engage with reflecting out loud for your own sake in small groups about how this practice was for you this evening, or how this teaching impacts you. You're speaking in the group for your own benefit. You're not trying to educate, edify, or impress anybody. You're only exploring for your own sake, as if you're journaling out loud, and the other people are only holding you in witness. If you're holding someone witness and you didn't even understand what they said, don't ask them a question; just let it be. Just hold kind presence for them to explore their own understanding.

It's a very different way of being in community in small groups. It's not a support group; it's a reflective way of exploring and teaching out loud while being held in witness. It's rare and powerful, so please do take advantage of it. Offer one reflection or exploration, the next person will do the same, and your turn will come. You can also say "pass", no problem. Don't make it a long monologue so that everybody has a chance to speak. In small groups, please turn on your camera if at all possible to respect one another.

Be kind to yourself, be kind to one another. Let's go with the order of birth dates—whoever has a birth date closest to January 1st will go first. I don't mean age, I just mean birth date. So at the beginning, just say your names and figure out what the order is. Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other. We're here to cultivate compassion and care for ourselves and for others. Here we go, opening all rooms.

Practice Reports

Hi everyone, the rooms are closed and everybody's back. We have a few minutes for any practice reports. If you'd like to share how the meditation was for you or what you might have discovered in the exploration, I'll invite you to raise your hand. You're also welcome to share in the chat; I just changed the setting so that you can type your reflections in the chat directly.

Mima: Nikki, I just want to say thank you for bringing this into the room tonight. Since the beginning of the tragedies that are going on right now, I needed a place to be able to find some refuge and express what was weighing on my heart. Tonight was really helpful for me to be able to share that in the rooms, and the feedback I got was also very constructive. So thank you.

Nikki: Thank you so much, Mima. I appreciate you saying this and verbalizing it. Thanks for coming. It's really each of us coming together in this way, creating a space of refuge for one another in such a challenging time.

Neil: I got tense, stiff, and panicky right at the word "Tonglen". I hadn't even started it, and I felt overwhelmed. What got me out of it was remembering a conversation we had about Guanyin⁵ in a breakout room maybe a year ago. Someone said the typical story is that Guanyin's job is to go around with a magical vase of soothing water and pour it on the suffering of the world. But some people say she has two jobs: one is to pour the soothing water on the world, and the other is to keep the vase filled with soothing water. That really struck me. When I panicked, I realized I needed to fill the vase, not pour right now. It was a lovely practice, thank you.

Nikki: Beautiful. We need to fill the vase. I so appreciate you sharing that. It takes courage to admit that just hearing the word made you panic, so thank you for modeling that courage and stability that compassion can support.

There are a couple of things here. First, the beautiful image of refilling, because it's not just pouring out or giving. There are many things about Tonglen that could be scary, like the thought of "I need to give, and I'm going to be diminished or left empty." Actually, the practice of Tonglen is a resourcing practice; it resources us while we're practicing it.

I remember the first time I practiced it, there was a sense of joy and delight. The feeling that came over me was, "Wow, every breath matters. Every breath is bringing succor to this world of turmoil. My breathing has never felt so precious and important." So thank you for sharing both aspects. Maybe the next time I introduce it, I won't mention the word "Tonglen", because unfortunately, it gets a bad rap among practitioners as a challenging practice, which it isn't.

Jerry says in the chat: "I struggled with how religions are often the cause of much suffering in the world, like Buddhism in Southeast Asia, so I found it soothing to focus on compassion for everyone. Yes, we're all confused human beings trying to find our way, causing harm." Thank you, Jerry. I see Claire's hand.

Claire: Nikki, I just wanted to share because of what you just said about how we're all confused. I may have told you this before, but I went to a very famous therapist who founded the school of cognitive therapy⁶. He used to sit in with his groups, and when people brought up problems, he would often say, "Yes, we're all fallible human beings." He was referring to himself too; he truly meant it. He was just as screwy as the rest of us, and it was delightful.

Nikki: Thanks, Claire. What you said reminds me of a line from a poem—maybe one of you will pull it up in the chat if you know it: "You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart." I just love that. I see Diana.

Diana: I was saying in my group that the word "Tonglen" seemed unfamiliar, but the practice actually isn't. Through the mettā practice we do in this group, a lot of us are already halfway there. It was nice tonight to do more of it. It can seem like some sort of scary, exotic thing, but it really wasn't; it just flowed, and I felt warmth afterwards. I really wish we could do it once a month. Maybe you could spring it on us so we don't have to know in advance, just to get more used to it.

Nikki: Thank you, Diana. A couple of things: As you were saying, it didn't seem so unfamiliar because here in this group, we have done a lot of practicing mettā connected to the breath—breathing in kindness, breathing out love. We've done that a lot. The part that sometimes feels challenging for people is breathing in suffering, because they think they're taking it on. But you're not taking it on; it's just this compassion in your heart center that's transforming it. I try to set it up carefully, as I did tonight: "It's not yours; this is universal compassion doing its own thing."

Diana: Just one small point: we're also used to the imagery used in meditation. So when the suffering was described as a fog, we're used to working with that kind of imagery, and it's helpful.

Nikki: Thank you, Diana. And thank you, Neil, our great resource finder—the quote from the poem is by W.H. Auden: "You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart."

I did see your question sent to me directly, but since it has to do with AI and transcendence, it seems outside the purview of the conversation we're having tonight, so I'm not going to take that question right now.

Thank you all for your practice and for cultivating your hearts. May all beings everywhere be free from suffering. May all beings everywhere, including ourselves, learn to love well. May we all be free. Thank you all, take good care.

[Ding, ding, ding]

That's it for the dedication of merit⁷.