maitri or true love

For Valentine's Day, I thought it might be nice to contemplate maitri, or loving kindness. Pema Chodron has a great teaching on the subject. Chogyam Trungpa often translated maitri as "unconditional friendliness", which I find wonderful and piercing.

Maitri is one of those brilliant innate qualities that we can use our practice to uncover and nurture. In our daily lives, it can seem difficult to be unconditionally friendly towards ourselves and others. We usually put all kinds of conditions on our friendliness. We often won't even say hello to someone unless they say it to us first, and sometimes even then, we are a bit reluctant to respond in kind. It can be hard to open our hearts, to let down our guard. It can be hard to be truly gentle to ourselves and not find fault in how we are feeling, or what we are doing. Maitri transforms all that, transforms the hardness into softness, the habitual tendency to close up into just opening and extending out.

If you have a bit of space in your day to sit still, ground yourself, and place your attention on your breath as it goes in and out of your body - in other words, to meditate for a bit, you can introduce this maitri practice. Once you feel your mind is a bit settled, wish yourself happiness. You can simply say "may I be happy." It can be that simple. Once you feel relaxed with that, you can bring to mind someone dear to you, like your children. "May they be happy." Once that is settled in, bring to mind a neutral person, someone you have no strong feelings for or against (maybe your postman, or the cashier at the store). "May they be happy."

Then bring to mind someone you have trouble with. It doesn't have to be big trouble. You can start with someone that is just a little bit troublesome :). "May they be happy." Once you have worked with that person for a bit, you can extend out to all beings "May all beings be happy." Then just let go and relax. Be in the space where you are. Let the environment wake you up. Come back to the breath. You have now done maitri practice.

If this is a bit too formal for your schedule, just try and pause during your day and wish yourself happiness. When you have another little moment, wish your child happiness. Another moment and wish the postman happiness. And so on. These little moments are watering, watering the seeds of unconditional friendliness in your heart.

I always feel like I fall in love a bit when I do this practice. I can feel my heart open, little by little, and often when I see the person I have been contemplating, wishing happiness to, I feel my heart jump and get a bit happier myself. It's very softening, like a lovely, warm spring rain.

Wising you all true happiness, great ease, and love this day and all days.

smile practice

"Fear can be conquered...You can step on fear, and therefore, you can attain what is known as fearlessness. But that requires that, when you see fear, you smile." - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Having a sense of humor can be hard when your children are screaming in the middle of the grocery store, your favorite pot and the dinner in it are burning on the stove, or you realize you left the lunch sitting on the counter at home. It can be hard to smile when you are in the middle of one of those moments of feeling so completely overwhelmed and undone by the journey of parenting that you think "I can't do this".

In those moments, if you can remember to try and breathe, you may find that underneath that feeling of not being able to handle your life, your children, your reality, underneath the current of thoughts and doubt, is the shaky churning feeling of fear. If you can touch that, continue to breathe, feel your feet on the good earth, your good heart beating away in your chest, you may be able to drop deeper and touch what lies beneath the fear. You may be able to touch the sad, happy, broken heartedness of being a human being. A basically good human being. And then you can try to smile. It might be a feeble smile at first. A small, tentative smile. But if you relax into that small, shy smile, it will grow.

The wonderful Vietnamese teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh has a lovely little smile practice: When you are feeling stuck, you can close your eyes and repeat to yourself, "Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment." I actually do this with my toddler when he is very upset- I hold him and I repeat to him "breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile." It can be that short. It helps us when we are caught up in the tightness of frustration and anger. We smile together. Or maybe I smile. Just me.

Out of that smile, so much becomes possible. Smiling is a way of opening to what is. When we open to what is, we automatically lighten up. The heaviness of our situation is immediately ventilated and we can even laugh. A burnt pot, a frustrated child, an embarrassed parent - we can laugh with gentleness at the phenomena of the moment, knowing that it will soon be a passing memory, like every other moment. Knowing this, that this moment and the next and the next after that are flowing, changing, arising, then passing away- this can help us smile when we feel so stuck. That stuck feeling comes up when we cling to phenomena - try to make it solid and permanent when it is like a reflection in a pool of water. Our smile is like the wind that shakes the image - we can let go, just like that.

The more we smile and the more we let go, the more fearless we become on this path. We can do this. We can. We can have confidence in ourselves to walk the path of parenting with sanity and joy. We don't have to spend our time on this journey just trying to keep it all together. Let it fall apart. Then smile. That's enough sometimes.