Dharma Glimpses with Judy Lief

[This episode originally aired on December 1, 2023] Buddhist training has two sides, somewhat parallel to pure science and applied science  •  there is the meditation aspect, the inward journey; and there is the application of that in the world, or meditation in action  •  we all have the capacity to help; we all have the capacity to cultivate compassion and also to cultivate wisdom and insight, so that compassion is intelligent  •  but each of us has to find our own way to engage  •  according to the Buddhist teachings, there are five fundamental ways of engaging in the world  •  the first way is to create an accommodating, spacious mind through the practice of sitting meditation — which, according to my teacher, is one of the most radical things you can do  •  the second is exposing falsehood, clarifying situations, and providing information to address problems from a sane viewpoint  •  the third is providing resources like food or money  •  the fourth is cultivating relationships with people engaged in compassionate activities  •  the fifth has to do with understanding how to create organizations that can actually bring about effective action  •  this discussion is about taking stock of our own resources as well as being aware of what we need to cultivate in order to effectively respond to the endless variety of challenges we all face.

[This episode originally aired on November 30, 2023]  Lately I've been thinking about the slogan, “Always maintain only a joyful mind”  •  at the same time, I've been haunted by the teachings that describe samsara, the nature of reality, as an ocean of suffering  •  if the world is marked by endless suffering, how can you be joyful? and if the world is fundamentally good and wholesome, how do you account for suffering?  •  the Buddha's earliest teachings on the Four Noble Truths — suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path — were presented as a liberating and joyful discovery  •  we recognize there are causes of suffering, and because of that, it's workable; because we can remove the causes of suffering, it's possible to free ourselves  •  whatever this joyful mind is about, it's not about pretending things are okay when they’re not  •  nor is it about closing off bad stuff so we can have a little island of good and hang out there  •  it's easy to feel that the only way we can show we care about this world and our fellow suffering beings is to feel bad all the time  •  but the quality of joy radiates; it actually affects the environment in a healing and a positive direction  •  without joy, things get very tight, more fixed, less visionary  •  I would go as far as to say that joy is an essential part of the heroic path of compassion. 

[This episode originally aired on November 23, 2023] In this episode, I'd like to explore such things as resistance, avoidance, procrastination — and why it’s so hard to keep going  •  I think such things are connected with expectations and its partner, disappointment  •  in one form or another, or at one time or another, I think most of us have had these kinds of experiences  •  but we don't need to view such things as character flaws or annoying obstacles; they actually are an important part of the whole spiritual path  •  if you never felt frustrated, if you never felt resistance, that might be a sign that you aren't really doing the practice; maybe you're not letting it bite  •  we set ourselves up for disappointment and frustration by the stories we tell ourselves  •  as practitioners or as students of the Dharma, instead of trying to match our experience to the stories we've told ourselves, we could drop our stories and just look  •  instead of being threatened or annoyed, we could be curious of what this experience has to teach us  •  can we actually be with experience as it arises, just as it is?  •  moments of disappointment can be powerful teachings  •  they can loosen our resentments and liberate us from the distortions that come from viewing reality through the lens of our expectations and disappointments.

[This episode originally aired on November 15, 2023] This episode is about groundlessness and uncertainty  •  how do we respond when we are no longer on familiar ground, when we feel insecure?  •  it can feel so uncomfortable that we might begin to panic; and often, when we reach that point, we scramble — we scramble to find some new secure ground to replace the one that we have left  •  so we go on a search to find some basis that is reliable, something we can count on, some sense of solidity  •  sometimes meditation is taught as a way to find such ground, a way to find some calm and peace within the storminess of life  •  and that's important; but it may be just another way of avoiding the reality of uncertainty  •  my teacher taught that in relating to meditation practice, we need to consider two aspects  •  first we need to tame and ground our mind, but then we need to extend beyond that  •  we need to sharpen our awareness; we need to expand our notion of what being grounded is all about  • we need to drop the project of trying to find ground altogether, and instead we need to learn to find ground within groundlessness  •  in doing so, we find that our project of trying to secure our ground is is full of holes, full of little gaps — and that's a good thing  •  those moments when there's an interruption of our project of securing ourselves point to the possibility of true security  •  the basic point here is very simple: just notice such gaps during your practice and during everyday life  •  the gaps are not manufactured; and as such, they are the one true thing — so simple, so direct, and so fresh.

[This episode originally aired on November 8, 2023] One function of meditation practice is the quality of exposing and uncovering what's going on inside our thoughts and feelings  •  when we practice, the basic fundamental pattern that becomes obvious is how much our thinking revolves around our own needs and wants and desires  •  we look at what is there without judgment, without being embarrassed, without trying to prove anything  •  all of this provides ground for what Trungpa Rinpoche referred to as cultivating a Mahayana mentality — a mentality of openness, love, wisdom, and compassion  •  in cultivating a Mahayana mentality, four factors come into play  •  the first is affection for the world  •  this affection is not based on picking and choosing, but is simple affection and respect for the world, as messy as it is, as difficult as it is  •  the second factor is called faith in the right situations  •  faith here refers to faith in what we cannot grasp, faith in the unconditional nature out of which everything arises  •  the third factor is compassion for sentient beings: working with sentient beings, very simply and directly  •  we may find that working with others is the best, most effective way of working with ourselves  •  the fourth factor is bravery; simply put, it's being willing to put up with loneliness, pain, and discomfort  •  by cultivating these four, we learn to step over our hesitation and put our affection, faith, and compassion into action.

[This episode originally aired on November 1, 2023]  The “five powers” are five supports for your practice  •  they are: determination, familiarization, seed of virtue, remorse, and aspiration  •  with determination, you're willing to do what it takes to get from here to there; it is connected with having some sense of why we're doing this all together; with determination, we just keep going  •  familiarization is becoming familiar with our own potential of awakened heart, becoming familiar with our patterns of confusion and awake  •  it is getting to know yourself, peeling away levels of deception and confusion to reveal something real and solid  •  the third power is called seed of virtue; every time we do something beneficial, every time we overcome our hesitation to act in the right way, it plants a seed  •  we can recognize that our practice is not separate from virtuous and moral engagement in the troubles of our world  •  the fourth power is remorse, being willing to face our mistakes and to learn from them  •  remorse teaches us what to let go of, what to learn from, and what to stop doing  •  aspiration is what we might take up instead  •  as we aspire to let go of harm and take up actions that are beneficial, we create a strong underpinning for the quality of virtue  •  these five are called powers because they provide force and power and energy for our practice.

[This episode originally aired on October 30, 2023]  All beings truly want to be happy and content; so why do we continually and repeatedly create situations for ourselves and others that only lead to greater suffering?  •  so many large-scale problems in the world, such as warfare, famine, hatred, injustice, poverty, can be traced back to just four simple patterns: grasping, greed, hatred and ignorance  • they are tricky, because they start out so simply and innocently  •  for instance, with grasping, maybe we're window shopping and we see a beautiful pen; we admire this beautiful pen, and then we buy it  •   the pen is now our property, and we get really pissed off if someone takes it or damages it  •  along with that grasping comes its companion, greed:  you think, that's really nice, but look at that other beautiful pen  •  I could have two pens, three pens... I could have a pen factory  •  then we can feel justified about destroying anything that gets in our way, which is where aggression and hatred come in  •  and then there's ignorance, which is our tendency to pretend we don't know what we are doing  •  ignorance also has the quality of stubbornly holding certain ideas, and closing our minds to other possibilities  •  we can see the workings of grasping, greed, hatred, and ignorance in ourselves and in all around us  •  but we also see that along with these four arise a counteracting forces that are also deep within us  •  we don't have to be caught in the force of greed, but we can cultivate generosity  •  we can let loose of grasping  •  we don't have to cling to hatred; we can cultivate love  •  and in response to ignorance, we can apply insight and learning and curiosity  •  by seeing the force of these poisonous habits and emotions, we also are opening to the force of their counterparts.

 [This episode originally aired on October 23, 2023]  Many classical Buddhist texts on meditation say that the best place to meditate or to practice is a quiet place in the forest, free from distractions, pleasant and refreshing  •  but what if you're a busy mother? what if you're struggling to pay the bills by taking on three jobs? what if you're dealing with a chronic illness? what then?  •  if we spend all of our time resenting the circumstances we're in, we will be frozen and unable to do anything  •  at some point we simply have to surrender to the circumstances we are in  •  we might not have the time to go on retreat, or to practice, or even have a moment when we're not dealing with our life as it is  •  but we can always practice kindness to ourselves and others; that takes no time  •  we can also apply mindfulness and awareness to whatever we are dealing with  •  and we always have the possibility of opening our mind out beyond our particular personal suffering, to place our suffering in the context of the countless things other beings are going through  •  when we notice our mind freezing or imploding, we can find little openings, little breaks in the momentum  •  we can glimpse little gaps in the solidity of what we're experiencing, little rays of possibility  •  and from those little rays, we can reconnect ourselves over and over when we lose it in the harshness of the circumstances of our life.

[This episode originally aired on October 16, 2023] In Buddhist psychology, even large scale events and large emotional upheavals can be traced back step-by-step to simple little things  •  just a thought, just an idea, just a memory, just a little emotional undertone can quickly expand and expand until it's out of control  •  you could view this as bad news in seeing how quickly things escalate beyond our control, or you could think of this as good news in that even difficult and intense situations can be traced back and we can unravel them, get to the source, and thereby undercut their power  •  mindfulness practice is a way to observe this process in some detail  •  we can begin to discern what we're actually reacting to when we have our various reactions  •  is it something that’s actually happening? Is it a thought, a pre-existing emotion? Are we reacting to what's actually going on, or are we reacting to this knotty mix of thoughts and emotions we carry around with us all the time?  •  it's worth exploring; instead of being caught in a world of pre-existing conditions, we could begin to engage directly with what is actually going on here and now.

[This episode originally aired on October 9, 2023]  The Mahayana path, the path of the Bodhisattva warrior of wisdom and compassion, has a great deal to do with how we relate to ourselves and to one another  •  what kind of others do we include in our world?  •  what kind of underlying feelings do we honestly have about the people in our lives and the people we encounter?  •  everybody is worthy of our attention, but usually we engage in a lot of picking and choosing: who is worthy of our attention and who is not  •  the practice I want to briefly introduce is the practice of exchanging oneself for others, which is the basis of tonglen practice — the practice of taking and sending  •  this practice is very simple: it's putting yourself in the shoes of another   •  you can do this for all sorts of possible scenarios, but a very common one is looking at how we relate to people we consider to be our superiors; how we relate to people we consider to be our inferior to us; and how we relate to those we view more or less as equal  •  when we can see situations from different perspectives, we can cultivate the ability to treat others respectfully and with the same regard, whether they're more powerful than us, whether they're less powerful than us, whether they're intimate friends, or whether they're strangers.