Rayne,
You ask some great questions! It is worth mentioning that your desires are noble, and as you look for inner peace and to strengthen your compassion, the external circumstances provide lots of opportunity for practicing. They say Buddhism is a practice, because our habits reemerge as soon as our butt leaves the cushion. A few things came to heart as I read your words.
The first is be patient. We have many delusions and much ignorance that we disentangle and erode. It takes time. Buddha taught that these challenges are impermanent, all phenomena are, and remembering that helps a lot. Rather than becoming restless with our suffering (and others’) we can simply tend. We notice what is arising, accept it will pass through us shortly, and stay with the breath or other meditation object. “Yes, rippling and restless mind, this is the nature of mind” and concentrate on the feeling of breath. The ripples fade as we tend in this way.
Another thing Buddha taught was “not-self”. Using this helps to further disentangle our view from afflicting mental state. Said differently, as you see a situation that is “invasive to your happiness”, there is a double delusion arising. The situation is actually empty of any inherent meaning, or has no “self”. Neither does the person observing it. The entanglement is the personal “self” clashing with the invasive “self”. Said differently, the “invasive” quality is projected outward from the mind, not produced externally and pushing inward. As we continue to meditate, it becomes more and more clear. My teacher used to say that we are living in a beautiful garden and constantly jumping at shadows, at projections.
To stabilize and dig our roots deep into the dharma, into peace and compassion we can do a metta practice. Metta is very nourishing to use for many reasons. First, it moves us from conditional nourishment to unconditioned nourishment for our happiness. As we learn to have kindness for all living beings, the appearance of trespassing simply vanishes. Much like when we love our children, their selfishness is accepted as “where they are” and we tend to it skillfully with love. Metta also helps create a peaceful mind, because it softens and erodes our resentment, greed, anger. When we can see hundreds of billions of living things all reaching for sun and earth in their own ways, there is no need for aggression, no cause for its arrival. Finally, metta also produces an emotional warmth in the body, which produces concentration. We move into a state of warmth, and notice its fading. We become naturally curious as to why it faded, what happened, what to do next. So we refuel our warmth and look. Not do, just look.
What we find is that our intention slipped… we produced the coldness as we met up with an experience our heart was not able to stay open toward. For instance, we get off the cushion, warm and ready. Then we stub our toe. Ouch! That damn couch! Oops, the couch was just being a couch, and a little toe pain zipped that warmth right out. So we go back to the cushion when we can. Warm and ready. The phone rings. Damn telemarketer! Oops, just a sibling trying to make their way in the world, there it zipped again. Back to the cushion, back to the breath, back to becoming the genesis of light and love within the world. Up and down we go, exercising the strength of heart, and we become stronger and more resilient to what arises in our view.
For the “coping with change”, that is part curiosity, part courage. The unknown is always right in front of us, and if we accept that, we can explore it with openness. Sure we’ll fail and succeed and fail and succeed, that is the story. Namaste.
With warmth,
Matt
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