Considering compassion

Today while visiting this small, local store around the corner.  There was a bunch of junkies, high and wasted and lost, they were stealing food, not the expensive type even, just something for themselves to eat.   The security was summoned and they were left checking the thieves out.

And everyone was staring or trying hard not to, and I saw the empty eyes that had given up and felt my heart breaking.  The unbearable amount of compassion on it's rawest washed over like a wave and I willingly drowned.  I felt so sorry for those people being so lost and I just wanted to walk over to one of them, hold his face in my hands. Look into his dull eyes and tell him that it will all be just fine if he only lets it be. It wasn't like carrying the weight of their state on my shoulders.  It was just an overwhelming feeling of compassion.

It feels like my heart is so open and raw in these days.

of letting go part 1

There is a thin line drawn between giving up and letting go and still it can be as wide as the ocean.  There are things to be learned from the past and plenty of things to be let go and mostly they are included.

At the Dharma-study circle we were talking about Suffering.  Things that lead to Suffering, mainly.  The rest will follow.  The duality of pleasure-pain is my main issue at the moment; how seemingly easy would it be, just to take the shortest path, focus momentarily on some impermanent pleasure, avoid the pain for a while, until the instant fix would dry out and the pain would be knocking on my door again.  

The pain can't be avoided.  We all know that deep in our hearts.  And you can not get attached to either pain or pleasure.  It is good to remember, true, but desperately dragging either good old times or bad things with you all along the way, would make life quite hard and painful.  Relationships might be easiest examples;  there has been good things in each one of them.  You wouldn't have been with that person if there weren't.  There have also been bad things, because without them I doubt highly that you wouldn't have broken up.  (Yes, there are also the "bad things" that can tie the two persons together on a more solid basis than "good things", but since this isn't a blog about relationships in this sense, I'll leave it to someone else.)

Note; to my opinion, there are no such things as good or bad things when it comes to so-called "normal" life, meaning the life without wars, murders and such things.  There are only possibilities to learn and see.  I haven't lived my life in a palace yard knowing nothing about the cruelties of life and suffering of beings (and even if I would have, it has been shown that it's not a problem on the road of compassion) , so don't be insulted if you have gone through hell.  It's not my place to point fingers or give advices, I'm nothing more than another seeker, and this is merely my opinion. 

But the "good" or "bad" things alone are not a reason to get back together with your ex or to stop dating in general.  That didn't work out, but there has to be plenty to learn from.  There IS plenty to learn from.  Your own behavior, your partner's, expectations, hopes, dreams, fears, everything.  You could just find someone to keep you warm at night and have your easy fix from the comfort of that person's body and sweet words.  But the things built on sand won't last and if a relationship is based on the fear of being alone or fear of facing yourself and everything you carry, it's not likely to last.

So you've got two choices; to either find the easy fix, live with that for a while, pile up the dirt and wait until it all collapses on you, or, stay on your own and face those things you're running from. 

Will continue on another part.

(My writings are my opinions, the do not represent the official stands of FWBO.)

Library, keeps on growing

Yesterday I ordered some books.  I love to read when the subjects are close to my heart and no other subject can get so close as the search for Metta has gotten.  I want to absorb more knowledge, I want to learn how to be more compassionate towards others and myself.  

I love books written by Pema Chödrön, so I decided to add a couple of them to my shelf instead of just borrowing them from friends.

So, I ordered

Start Where You Are

 

 

and

Comfortable with Uncertainty- 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

Wanderlust

Tickets to Dalai Lama's Hungarian visit have been sold out.  India is still on the visiting-list, the time just depends.

Am roaming through pages of Plum Village in France, Musang Am in Italy.  Dharmapala in Birmingham.  Am actually considering the last one; it would happen to be a relatively cheap trip, flying to London, taking a train to Birmingham, less than a week on a retreat, then returning.  I have to discuss this with the people who have already visited the place.

Then there's the autumn retreat, meditating and making apple jam. Doesn't sound so bad at all.   Might still have time for some other visits.

There is this incredible force, pulling me towards it all the time. Meditating and Metta. 

Metta bhavana for the first time

I attended my first actual, guided metta-meditation last night.  It was short by it's length and if my back could have tolerated, I would gladly have sat through another part, too.  Before I have experienced with some diy-metta bhavana; not really guiding any previously given advices or guidelines, rather just focusing on loving kindness towards all the people in my closest circle, then the circle around it, and so on until I've reached the whole world.  When dealing with people less fantastic, I've tried to focus on the positive sides and silently aiming some loving kindness towards them. Mostly failed miserably with it, for I am the worst person to hide my emotions and when I don't like someone or accept her/his actions, it's really visible.

It's not about denying the feeling of hate, anxiousness, dislike. It's about not spreading it.  It's about accepting that ok, I feel like this person is an utter asshole and I would rather see her moving as far from me as possible, accepting it and working on it.  Why do I feel this way about her, might those things be similar to the ones I hate or dislike in my own persona?  Why shouldn't I still be kind to her and let her be what ever she is, for I already know that bitching about it won't really help either of us?

Metta-meditation on it's simplest could be described somehow like this;

1. focusing loving kindness towards yourself

2. focusing loving kindness towards someone close to you, a best friend or such-someone whom you feel no sexual attraction towards

3.focusing loving kindness towards someone neutral, like a person who you pass by everyday when buying your food, but not really knowing him at all

4.focusing loving kindness towards someone you don't like

5.focusing loving kindness towards everyone who's present at the room etc. you're in, then the whole building, town, country, until you reach the whole world.

An article considering this can also be found from here.

The hardest part was to concentrate loving kindness towards myself.  It tells plenty.  I am deeply grateful of the possibility to be taught these things, and, hopefully, slowly being able to live up to them.

Things that have been part 1

I think it began in a relatively early age.  I remember not believing into stories of my Sunday-school teacher in the age of five.  I remember sitting by my desk in the first grade, our teacher asking us to draw something that we first think about when someone mentions for example gymnastics or religious studies, things we had began learning just then.  I drew tears and rain for the religion-part, cemeteries and crosses.  It was my vision of Christianity.  

I asked to be placed on a non-religious studygroup instead.  I was seven or eight years old by then.  My parents and the school disagreed and told me, that I could do that after six years, when I got into junior high.  I actually counted the days.

In fourth grade I was best friends with a deeply religious girl.  She and her whole family held Christ really close and I wanted to belong, I was curious.  I read the bible, I listened to gospel, I prayed.  I tried really hard but it just felt so phony- well, it wasn't really my piece of cake.

In the time of junior high I was 13, and still denied the access to non-religious studies of ethics and non-Christian point of view to the world's religions.  On the next year, the excuse was that we were about to attend the world of Church's history and art, and as my teacher put the case, "you'll be left out of so huge part of general knowledge if you don't study these things, that you'll be left stupid".  So I had no choice but to stay.  

Yes, I was sad and pissed off in the beginning.  I was on my teens and I was anxious to move forward and get rid of this whole burden.  My parents never saw the depth of my anxiousness and most likely refused to see the craving I had for learning and I don't blame them.  I can imagine plenty of kids trying to swap boring religious studies to something alternative just for the fun, but I don't think it was the case with me to begin with.