Thinking Out Loud

How has mindfulness practice increased your self-compassion? This was a question posed by Tara Brach today in our dharma talk. Mindfulness has given me objective vision and observational wisdom. I no longer judge people, situations, emotions as good or bad, I just observe. By observing, I realize that anger, sadness, frustration, laziness, happiness, joy, pleasure, pain, and all other emotions and experiences are universal. They are part of the human experience. There is no need to ascribe a label such as "good" or "bad" to our experiences or people. Just observe, investigate, nurture, accept, allow, and perhaps even embrace. It is what it is. How do we stay mindful? Practice. Just as a muscle becomes stronger through lifting weights, or cloth becomes saturated with color in proportion to the number of times it is dipped in dye, so too it is with our ability to stay mindful. We must train for it is natural to be loving, compassionate, kind, non-judgmental, etc. w...

I was participating in a mindfulness meditation led by Jack Kornfield wherein he shared this beautiful analogy about holding the crying child. He was teaching about the importance of sitting with uncomfortable emotions and practicing self-compassion. He spoke of RAIN, which is the acronym for recognizing the emotion, allowing the emotion, investigating the emotion, nurturing yourself through the emotion, and not identifying yourself with the emotion. Just like the loving, attentive parent who when their baby cries, checks to see if the young one needs a diaper change, or if the baby is hungry, or tired. If none of the aforementioned is needed, and the baby still wails, what next should the parents do? It's a rather simple solution. They simply hold the crying child.  And so, like the loving, nurturing parent, we too can sit with difficult emotions and just hold the crying child. Sometimes the child just needs to cry and holding the crying child is just what the baby needs.