Yoga with Melissa

Aversion

This week we continue with the five hindrances. The five hindrances are common mental states that arise in our practice and lives that can impede our practice. They have been observed and taught as part of Buddhist studies.

In teaching about the five hindrances, Sharon Salzberg quotes the Buddha, he says, “Our minds are naturally radiant and pure, our minds are shining. It is because of visiting forces that we suffer.”

The five hindrances (grasping, aversion, sleepiness, restlessness and doubt), are guests in our home. They are just visitors. Sharon Salzberg says that they may visit a lot or even continuously, but they are still visitors.

Naturally, as human beings, we become identified with these visitors and we take them personally. We think we are right or wrong, good or bad depending on who is showing up at our house on any given day. When we see ourselves as bad and horrible, these states pull us in and distort our perception and make us stuck.

Aversion is anything that you don’t like or don’t want. As yogis we have plenty of opportunity to experience aversion as we confront experiences that we don’t want or that we push away on our yoga mats whether they be physical, emotional, mental, energetic or spiritual. You may not like a yoga posture, you might feel resistance to a certain emotional tone such as anger or frustration, you may push away the very common experience of a mind that chooses to go over and over something that is bothering you, you might fight fatigue, or you may even experience some resistance to the concepts that are being offered through the teachings.

Aversion is most commonly described as anger, hatred, rage, jealousy, and fear. I find when they are described this way it is easy to not identify with them. In truth, we all experience more subtle forms of aversion on our yoga mats and throughout our day. Check in with irritation, impatience, boredom, annoyance, frustration, resentment and sorrow. These are normal parts of our yoga practice and our lived experience.

I think in the context of our yoga practice, it is important to note the distinction between aversion and a safe yoga practice. There may be certain yoga poses that you avoid or modify to keep your body safe because of illness or injury or to avoid injury or illness, but it may not necessarily indicate an aversion to the yoga pose or practice. On the other hand, you may actually experience aversion on a mental level should you experience irritation, impatience, boredom, annoyance, frustration, or upset mentally when you take a modification to keep yourself safe.

We can bring our moment to moment awareness to check in during our yoga practice. When we observe and are open to the unpleasant emotions, we can notice the feeling and embrace irritation, impatience, boredom, annoyance, frustration, resentment and sorrow with compassion and loving attention. Attention to aversion asks us to be present rather than run away and hide.

When aversion arises, we can remember it is not personal, it is a visiting force of our mind. It has simply clouded our mind and distorted our vision of our present moment experience. It is a gift to remind us of how we are not accepting things as they are and trying to make things better for us. We can notice how we are trying to change reality and exert control. When aversion arises, we bring loving kindness, compassion and forgiveness to this temporary state of mind.

Resources:

Metta Hour Podcast with Sharon Salzberg The Five Hindrances

Jack Kornfield: Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

Aversion This week we continue with the five hindrances. The five hindrances are common mental states that arise in our practice and lives that can impede our practice. They have been observed and taught as part of Buddhist studies. In teaching about the five hindrances, Sharon Salzberg quotes the Buddha, he says, “Our minds are […]

Aversion

This week we continue with the five hindrances. The five hindrances are common mental states that arise in our practice and lives that can impede our practice. They have been observed and taught as part of Buddhist studies.

In teaching about the five hindrances, Sharon Salzberg quotes the Buddha, he says, “Our minds are naturally radiant and pure, our minds are shining. It is because of visiting forces that we suffer.”

The five hindrances (grasping, aversion, sleepiness, restlessness and doubt), are guests in our home. They are just visitors. Sharon Salzberg says that they may visit a lot or even continuously, but they are still visitors.

Naturally, as human beings, we become identified with these visitors and we take them personally. We think we are right or wrong, good or bad depending on who is showing up at our house on any given day. When we see ourselves as bad and horrible, these states pull us in and distort our perception and make us stuck.

Aversion is anything that you don’t like or don’t want. As yogis we have plenty of opportunity to experience aversion as we confront experiences that we don’t want or that we push away on our yoga mats whether they be physical, emotional, mental, energetic or spiritual. You may not like a yoga posture, you might feel resistance to a certain emotional tone such as anger or frustration, you may push away the very common experience of a mind that chooses to go over and over something that is bothering you, you might fight fatigue, or you may even experience some resistance to the concepts that are being offered through the teachings.

Aversion is most commonly described as anger, hatred, rage, jealousy, and fear. I find when they are described this way it is easy to not identify with them. In truth, we all experience more subtle forms of aversion on our yoga mats and throughout our day. Check in with irritation, impatience, boredom, annoyance, frustration, resentment and sorrow. These are normal parts of our yoga practice and our lived experience.

I think in the context of our yoga practice, it is important to note the distinction between aversion and a safe yoga practice. There may be certain yoga poses that you avoid or modify to keep your body safe because of illness or injury or to avoid injury or illness, but it may not necessarily indicate an aversion to the yoga pose or practice. On the other hand, you may actually experience aversion on a mental level should you experience irritation, impatience, boredom, annoyance, frustration, or upset mentally when you take a modification to keep yourself safe.

We can bring our moment to moment awareness to check in during our yoga practice. When we observe and are open to the unpleasant emotions, we can notice the feeling and embrace irritation, impatience, boredom, annoyance, frustration, resentment and sorrow with compassion and loving attention. Attention to aversion asks us to be present rather than run away and hide.

When aversion arises, we can remember it is not personal, it is a visiting force of our mind. It has simply clouded our mind and distorted our vision of our present moment experience. It is a gift to remind us of how we are not accepting things as they are and trying to make things better for us. We can notice how we are trying to change reality and exert control. When aversion arises, we bring loving kindness, compassion and forgiveness to this temporary state of mind.

Resources:

Metta Hour Podcast with Sharon Salzberg The Five Hindrances: http://www.sharonsalzberg.com/metta-hour-podcast-the-five-hindrances/

Jack Kornfield: Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

Attachment We continue our Awakening Your True Self Series this week with another mini series within our larger series. This mini series is on the five hindrances. The five hindrances are common mental states that arise in our practice and lives that can impede our practice. They have been observed and taught as part of […]

Attachment

We continue our Awakening Your True Self Series this week with another mini series within our larger series. This mini series is on the five hindrances. The five hindrances are common mental states that arise in our practice and lives that can impede our practice. They have been observed and taught as part of Buddhist studies.

In teaching about the five hindrances, Sharon Salzberg quotes the Buddha, he says, “Our minds are naturally radiant and pure, our minds are shining. It is because of visiting forces that we suffer.”

This quote, of course, brings to mind the Rumi poem, the Guest House.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

The five hindrances (grasping, aversion, sleepiness, restlessness and doubt), are guests in our home. They are just visitors. Sharon Salzberg says that they may visit a lot or even continuously, but they are still visitors.

Naturally, as human beings, we become identified with these visitors and we take them personally. We think we are right or wrong, good or bad depending on who is showing up at our house on any given day. When we see ourselves as bad and horrible, these states pull us in and distort our perception and make us stuck.

Sharon Salzberg says, knowing what to do when grasping, or greed, or desire knocks on the door can change our relationship to our experience of suffering. When we hear the knock on the door, we can know that we are not wrong, that it is not a sign of personal failure, but that to feel desire is a natural part of the process.

Desire can take many forms. We live in a consumer culture. We are being trained to have desire for many things from products to make us look younger, vacations, bigger homes, retreats, more money. We are taught that we don’t have enough and we are trying to control what we do have. In the world of yoga, desire is rampant these days with the visual images of contortionist yoga poses, not safe or accessible for most of the yoga population all over the covers of magazines and internet.

Desire is the part of our mind that is never content. Jack Kornfield says it is the part of our mind that says, “if only I had something different than this, I would be happy.” Sharon Salzberg says, when we notice desire at our door, we don’t have to get so frightened and ashamed that we slam the door shut. When we do that, we will find that desire will find a way in through the chimney or window. Instead she suggests that we open the door and greet the visitor with awareness, clarity and compassion at the moment of hearing the knock.

When you hear the knock, you can invite desire in for tea, keep an eye on them, don’t give them free reign of your house. Remember they are visiting forces, your mind is naturally radiant, pure and shining. Jack Kornfield reminds us of the impermanence of desire. I’m sure we can all relate to this. Wanting something so badly, getting it, and then wondering what its hold was on us? It is said that the antidote to desire can be to focus on impermanence. When you notice greed arising,

Equanimity This week in our Awakening to Your True Self Series, we continue with the four Brahma Viharas. These translate as supreme states, desired dwelling, divine abiding, or our best home. They include loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The brahma viharas or the four divine abodes are the teachings on the way we relate […]

Equanimity

This week in our Awakening to Your True Self Series, we continue with the four Brahma Viharas. These translate as supreme states, desired dwelling, divine abiding, or our best home. They include loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The brahma viharas or the four divine abodes are the teachings on the way we relate to ourselves and others. For example we meet friendly people with love, those who are suffering with compassion, successful people with joy, and unpleasant people with detachment.

Sharon Salzberg, loving kindness or metta meditation teacher, speaks of the four brahma viharas as our best home. She says, just like our home, we might not be in these states all the time, but we will feel our most authentic and most at ease when we are at home, when we are expressing love, compassion, joy and equanimity.

This week, we will finish our mini series on the brahma viharas with the brahma vihara that brings loving kindness, compassion and sympathetic joy into perspective. Equanimity is wisdom, justice, and seeing things as they are. It is said to be a spacious stillness of your mind. The near enemy of equanimity is indifference. With indifference you don’t care, you are angry, you separate yourself and you build a barrier to the difficulty in your life.

With equanimity you have the strength to be completely present. Equanimity gives you the courage and determination to face your suffering without becoming grief stricken. It allows us to continually offer loving kindness when it may not be received graciously. It gives us the opportunity to offer sympathetic joy from a big and open space of perspective free from pleasure and pain.

The testimonials I read at the beginning are an example of how life is a succession of changing experiences. Just like me, you will receive pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame and fame and disrepute. Here at Namaste Yoga we have a firm commitment to ahimsa, nonviolence and loving kindness in other words to promote what we love, not bash what we hate. We choose to promote loving kindness, compassion and sympathetic joy with you our students from a place of equanimity. Yet, I assure you we, just like you, experience loss, blame, and disrepute.

As human beings we continually move between the experiences of pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute. According to equanimity, there is no need to feel betrayed or personally humiliated. We can experience the pain with openness rather than being lost in resistance in fear. Likewise there is no need to only feel fully alive when we are experiencing praise and fame and hold on desperately to pleasure.

As human beings we are infinite and open and we are also finite and limited. We are both wonderful and difficult. We are flawed, stuck in old patterns, impossible and we are beautiful beyond measure. Everyone, including myself has relative weaknesses that cause suffering. Everyone also possesses absolute beauty which surpasses these limitations. Equanimity allows us to hold both of these qualities, our weaknesses and our beauty, both, with compassion and perspective.

With equanimity we recognize that many things are out of our control. We can offer our actions with the best motives and greatest skills and yet how they are received by others are completely out of our control. Equanimity asks us to trust our actions, honour them and let go.

From example the offerings of the teachings here on Namaste Yoga. As you see from the testimonials I shared today, sometimes there is praise and sometimes there is blame. Through my own personal meditation, yoga and journaling practice, I find the space and time to gather perspective, to look at the bigger picture.

Sympathetic Joy This week in our Awakening to Your True Self Series, we continue with the four Brahma Viharas. These translate as supreme states, desired dwelling, divine abiding, or our best home. They include loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The brahma viharas or the four divine abodes are the teachings on the way we […]

Sympathetic Joy

This week in our Awakening to Your True Self Series, we continue with the four Brahma Viharas. These translate as supreme states, desired dwelling, divine abiding, or our best home. They include loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The brahma viharas or the four divine abodes are the teachings on the way we relate to ourselves and others. For example we meet friendly people with love, those who are suffering with compassion, successful people with joy, and unpleasant people with detachment.

Sharon Salzberg, loving kindness or metta meditation teacher, speaks of the four brahma viharas as our best home. She says, just like our home, we might not be in these states all the time, but we will feel our most authentic and most at ease when we are at home, when we are expressing love, compassion, joy and equanimity.

This week, we will focus on the third brahma vihara, sympathetic joy. This past weekend I had the opportunity to experience sympathetic joy. This past year we have had much compassion for friends of ours who have suffered the loss of a key family member. We have watched them struggle to travel across the country to be with their Mother. We have watched them outgrow a home that just doesn’t work for them any longer. Over the Christmas holidays we had much compassion as we witnessed them go through a nail biter of a process of selling their home and the touch and go between being able to move into their “perfect home” or having to renovate a home that would never be quite right.

This past weekend we attended a housewarming party at their new and perfect for them home. It brought us all so much joy as our friend showed us around their home and how well their whole family fit, parents, children and grandmother, everybody had their perfect space. We were all grinning ear to ear for their good fortune. This is sympathetic joy.

Sympathetic joy can be one of the most difficult brahma viharas to cultivate. It reminds me of an image Tim showed me on social media the other day with the words, “To all my friends and family on Facebook posting photos of your vacation, stop!” In the world of social media, where we feel the pressure to perform our A-reel, for likes that somehow translate into self-acceptance, to actively feel happy for somebody else’s beach vacation when you are stuck at work or with a teething child, is difficult.

Sharon Salzberg offers brilliant teachings on sympathetic joy. She suggests that happiness is not a limited commodity. She gives the example of watching somebody who has so much going for them and the very natural human tendency to think, “I’d be happier if you had a little less going for you.” We must understand that when somebody else is experiencing happiness, it is in no way a threat to our own happiness. We can shift our perspective and know that at any moment we have a choice in our belief system about happiness. Our status is not relative to another person’s. Our happiness is not defined or threatened by another person’s.

We can take a skillful course of action when we become aware of comparison. Without making ourselves bad for comparing we can recognize that comparison is simply an attribute of our mind. Our mind compares non-stop. However, the state of comparison is unwholesome and unskillful, it will always lead to suffering. We can know that there is more than enough happiness to go around and that it is not a limited commodity.

Reflect on how good it feels when somebody is genuinely happy for your happiness. Notice too how it feels when somebody is not so happy for you, how you feel then. To take delight in the happiness of others is one of the greatest pleasures of the heart you can both experience.

Resource: Sharon Salzberg,

Compassion This week in our Awakening to Your True Self Series, we continue with the four Brahama Viharas. These translate as supreme states, desired dwelling, divine abiding, or our best home. They include loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The brahma viharas or the four divine abodes are the teachings on the way we relate […]