Real Love

by Sharon Salzberg

  As a first step, Georgia drove to the supermarket to replenish her kitchen with healthy food. The store was brightly lit, music was playing, and as she wandered down an unfamiliar aisle, she came across a display of tall Mexican votive candles dedicated to the saints. Georgia is not Christian, but she loves candles, and her hand reached out to pull one off the shelf. On the front was the image of San Judas Tadeo, the patron saint of difficult and desperate cases. On the back was a traditional prayer in Spanish and English: “Pray for me. I am so helpless and alone.” That summed up how Georgia had been feeling, so she brought the candle home. She showered and lit the candle.

  Then she felt a bit silly, because she was not really such a difficult or desperate case. She reminded herself that she was healthy, enjoyed her work, and had many strong, close relationships. She just hadn’t been acknowledging those things. I need to remember my blessings, she thought.

  So Georgia took a walk down to the riverfront, and upon arriving home, she pulled up the blinds to let the light in and put on some music. Step by step, Georgia gradually reentered the world. She returned to her meditation practice, and with it as a foundation, she regained a kind of balance.

  In order to restore love to her life, Georgia had to start with forgiveness: with forgiving herself for falling so low, and compassion for the pain that had kept her there. Lovingkindness, too, for the part of her that sought to be happy but chose the wrong tools when she reached for the wine bottle or the junk food, and then seemed to forget that she had a right to be happy at all.

  It is fascinating to me that she phrased her turnaround insight as “I wasn’t taking a stand on my right to be happy,” because the particular form of meditation she found most helpful to her recovery was standing meditation.

  She later wrote me: “As I stood at the top of the loft, I closed my eyes and imagined the strong connection I had to the world through my vulnerability, the desire to be happy, to be free from mental or physical suffering, and to live a life of ease, which we all share. How could I have felt so alone?

  “I felt the earth supporting me. I felt my legs making those micro-adjustments to help me stay upright in a constantly moving, changing world. I thought, My body knows how to do this.”

  As Georgia continued her meditation, she says she felt herself freeing her heart from a cage.

  She concluded, “Breathe in the connection to all things, to the beautiful world that is just beyond the window, to the birds I saw in the marshes by the river, to my neighbors and to myself. Breathe out to spread that awareness, to share it, with the little cities nearby and the big ones out in the distance, and all the places in between and beyond. Light pouring into me and light pouring out from me in a grateful relationship with the world.”

  Standing meditation remains the mainstay of Georgia’s meditation practice. When she puts her body in a posture that expresses innate dignity, when she feels the support of the earth, when her chest opens with the breath, Georgia takes a stand on the rightness of her being and on her connection to all others.

  CHAPTER 8 PRACTICES

  Standing meditation

  Georgia did this meditation barefoot, which is a good way to engage all of your muscles and experience fully how you maintain your balance in space. But feel free to wear socks if you’ll be more comfortable.

  Standing upright, close your eyes and feel the earth supporting you. Spread your toes wide, feeling the solidity of the floor under your feet or noting how the fibers of the carpet press into your soles. Start making micro-movements to distribute your weight broadly, testing the arch of the foot as you slowly roll the pad of your foot back and forth to loosen your ankles.

  Now begin to experiment with restacking your skeleton bone by bone to form the foundation of a more solid and confident posture. Standing with your knees a little bent, let your ankles adjust to a straighter line, like a column. Then slowly straighten your knees without locking them, a movement of about an inch.

  As your legs extend fully, feel how your pelvis lifts your spine as your shoulders pull back. This takes a lot of pressure off the small of your back and allows your lower back to elongate. Pause there for a while playing with this minor adjustment at the knees, enjoying how the more you straighten your legs, the taller you stand and the deeper you breathe.

  The pelvis is the next place for investigation. Tip your tailbone down an inch, and the shoulders pull farther back. Moving your tailbone back and forth, feel how your ribs spread slightly with each tip.

  Without forcing the movement of your ribs, feel your lungs rising and falling as you take each breath. Try breathing into the bottom of your lungs, where they press against the diaphragm. Then explore how they expand sideways. Then feel the breath moving into your back, under your shoulder blades. Visualize yourself freeing your heart from a cage. Continue to enjoy the rhythm of the breath and the expansion of your bones, taking a stand on your right to be happy.

  9

  FOLLOWING YOUR ETHICAL COMPASS

  WHAT DO ETHICS HAVE TO do with loving yourself? After all, ethics is a Big Topic, while self-love seems more individualized, more intimate. We tend to equate being free and happy with doing as we please. But if we really look at our actions with eyes of love, we see that our lives can be more straightforward, simpler, less sculpted by regret and fear, more in alignment with our deepest values.

  Paying attention to the ethical implications of our choices has never been more pressing—or more complicated—than it is today. Our options, many of them unimaginable one hundred years ago, have nearly spiraled out of control in today’s global, digital world. Is it okay to eat meat, or should we be vegan? Why commit to one person when you can experience the rush of meeting someone new every day just by swiping on Tinder? To what lengths should we—can we, as individuals—go to protect our troubled planet?

  How do we make choices when the possibilities appear limitless?

  The Buddha offered this: “If you truly loved yourself, you’d never harm another.” This is not a sanctimonious or repressive frame for morality, nor is it an invitation to deny our desires or judge them. It’s not even a frame that focuses solely on compassion for another—refraining from stealing or lying because we don’t want to cause someone else pain.

  Causing harm is never just a one-way street. If we harm someone else, we’re inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify others, to deny them as living, feeling beings—those who want to be happy, just as we do. We don’t relate to kicking a table as a moral issue. For a person or animal to, in effect, become a table in our minds takes a lot of numbing (hard to shake off), a significant set of blinders (hard to see around later), and a lot of armoring (hard to remove at will). We grow a skin of indifference.

  Yet even when we do our best to treat others with kindness, it’s often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves. We may, for instance, believe fervently that eating animals is ethically wrong. But what choice do we make when our physician diagnoses us with anemia and tells us we should eat red meat for our health? I have a friend in drought-stricken California who tries to monitor every drop of water she uses and worries over whether to let her daughter go to school in her favorite—but stained—dress, or run the washing machine when she doesn’t have a full load. How do we know what’s right for us when there are so many gray areas, so many imperfect answers?

  LISTEN TO YOUR BODY

  WHEN WE FEEL conflicted about a particular decision or action, our bodies often hold the answer—if we take the time to stop and tune in. Our minds tend to race ahead into the future or replay the past, but our bodies are always in the present moment. A tightness in the chest or a squeamish sensation in the gut may signal harm—even when reason may suggest that a given choice is perfectly ethical. A feeling of calm or a sense of expansiveness throughout the body sends us a very different message.

  My student Sarah wasn
’t much of a drinker, but she enjoyed the occasional glass of wine at social gatherings. The problem was that once in a while—unpredictably—she’d get a raging migraine from just a single glass. Sarah knew from the constriction she felt in her throat when she even contemplated taking a drink that she’d be causing herself harm if she went ahead. Still, sometimes she chose to ignore her body’s SOS. But recently, after years of playing Russian roulette with her health, Sarah decided to stop drinking wine altogether—and is now migraine-free. As she said to me, “Not drinking feels like a profound act of self-love.”

  RELY ON GUIDING PRECEPTS

  WHEN WE CAN’T slow down enough to hear the body’s message or when that message is unclear, we can protect ourselves by following a few essential precepts that are remarkably similar across the world’s wisdom traditions.

  My colleague JoAnna Harper derived the following precepts from Buddhist teachings. They are both simple and accessible, while also elegantly covering the basics:

  Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the precept to protect life.

  Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the precept to be generous.

  Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the precept to protect the sexuality of myself and others.

  Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the precept to be careful with my speech.

  Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the precept to be free of intoxicants for a clear mind and heart.

  These precepts demand that we pay attention to what we’re feeling and what we most deeply want. They ask us to learn how to let go of desires gracefully, without judging ourselves. They also require that we recognize when we do or say something not in the spirit of the precepts, and resolve to begin again.

  I’ve had students and friends who have worked hard to replace the harsh moral strictures imposed during childhood with their own set of values. One friend, describing her new understanding of strength and freedom gained through meditation, said, “If you really want to be a rebel, practice kindness.” Or you might put it this way: “If you want to live on your own terms, breaking free from old habits and stories that no longer have any meaning, be different—practice love.”

  NOTICE YOUR SECRETS

  I OFTEN USE secret-keeping as a kind of personal moral compass. I’ve seen it take a toll on the keeper of the secret, on the person left out of the knowing, and on all who are enlisted to isolate that person from knowledge of what is actually going on. We may pursue it blithely, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t consequential. As architect Christopher Alexander said, “Making wholeness heals the maker.” In other words, the environment we create can help heal us or fracture us. This is true not just for buildings and landscapes but also for interactions and relationships. What does adding to fragmentation rather than wholeness yield? What happens within us when we increase division and isolation?

  I think of my childhood, laden with secrets. When I was eleven, I was told that my father had been hospitalized after an “accidental” dose of sleeping pills. He lived in psychiatric hospitals from that time on, but it wasn’t until five years later, when I was already in college, that I put the pieces together and realized that the overdose was not an accident. All those years, that vital, aware part of me lived in emotional and physical lockdown because my inner knowing didn’t harmonize with the version of reality offered to me. Of course, my family was motivated by wanting to spare me pain, but even so, keeping secrets is a consequential act for all involved.

  The more we practice mindfulness, the more alert we become to the cost of keeping secrets. John told me this story: “I was offered an apartment in New York City at a reasonable rent, in my desired neighborhood. It seemed too good to be true—and in fact it was. According to the rules of the co-op board that governed the building, the owner wasn’t allowed to rent it out.

  “I was hugely tempted. This wasn’t contravening the laws of God or even the state! Who were these people on the co-op board, anyway? Probably an officious, power-hungry bunch. Talk about a victimless crime! I really wanted that apartment! My friends urged me on: ‘Do you know how many people violate co-op laws every day! Go for it!’

  “But then I imagined walking into that lobby every day, feeling furtive, hoping the ‘right’ doorman was on duty, the less observant one, the one less likely to ask after my supposed ‘cousin,’ the owner of the apartment. I knew I would start to worry that someone was calculating how long I’d been there, that I’d plan on staying away at times so I’d look more like a visitor than a resident. I saw my future: paying rent for an apartment where I could never live in peace and happiness.”

  Even if we’re never found out, as the old adage warns, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up that will get you.” The costs of keeping secrets include our growing isolation due to fear of detection and the ways we shut down inside to avoid feeling the effects of our behavior. We can never afford to be truly seen and known—even by ourselves.

  The price of keeping secrets can literally weigh people down, according to research conducted by Columbia University professor Michael Slepian. In one study, he asked gay men to help him move some boxes. The result? Those whose sexual preference was locked in the closet moved fewer boxes. Another study revealed that people who had recently had affairs felt more burdened by daily tasks, such as carrying groceries upstairs. In an interview in The Atlantic, Slepian commented, “The more preoccupied people were with their secrets, the more effort they thought was required to keep their secrets, and so other things seemed more challenging.”

  I don’t mean to imply that we need to disclose everything about ourselves to everyone. There is such a thing as discretion or lifestyle choices that aren’t really anyone’s business. But the fear of getting found out can start permeating our days and even our dreams. To me, that’s a big clue that we’re creating more suffering than wholeness.

  MONITOR YOUR SELF-RESPECT

  ANOTHER KEY BAROMETER to help us weigh the rightness of our actions is self-respect. I have found that my ability to accept whatever challenges life sends my way is largely connected to my degree of self-respect. When my self-respect has been strong, I’ve been able to go through difficult times without being disheartened—that is, difficulties did not reflect a lack of basic self-worth, and I could enjoy good times without trying to get a death grip on them, for fear that they would end and leave me feeling bad about myself. For me, self-respect definitely seemed to be key to maintaining happiness. And it became clear that my level of self-respect was rooted in how I behaved.

  When we have that kind of self-regard, we’re not grabbing onto experiences or relationships to make us feel better. We don’t feel a deep hollowness inside that needs to be filled. Self-respect enables us to love ourselves more fully. And the self-respect that comes from loving ourselves enhances our ability to love more broadly.

  Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, a professor at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, a leading scholar in the field of social psychology, and author of Love 2.0, developed the “broaden and build” theory of positive emotions. The idea is that cultivation of positive emotions, including self-love and self-respect, strengthens our inner resources and opens us to a broader range of thoughts and actions. In turn, we gain trust in our resilience and the ability to face whatever surprises life may throw our way. Indeed, life can be stressful, with periods of peril, but we can have confidence in our capacity to meet it, instead of being torn apart by it.

  Following our ethical compass helps to support this new, more nimble response. Increasingly, we trust ourselves to behave ethically, speak thoughtfully, and act responsibly. We’re not burdened by carrying a shameful secret that, if exposed, would ruin our reputation. In everyday life, we pay attention to how our actions line up with our values. This is another piece of the confidence that allows us to expand love.

  HONORING OURSELVES

  “IF YOU TRULY loved yo
urself, you’d never harm another.” These words from the Buddha suggest that we’re capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world. As human beings, we’re actually capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life. To settle for walling ourselves off through indifference, or the temporary high of getting what we want by whatever means, or the petty excitement of besting someone however we can is actually quite sad.

  If we recognized all that we could be and honored ourselves for that, we wouldn’t compromise our integrity and wholeness for the superficial sense of power that can come from lying to someone (“I know something you don’t”) or the fleeting rush and more enduring objectification and distance that come from exploitation. If we thought we were capable of much more than mediocrity, we’d envision more for ourselves than skulking though a building’s lobby, hoping the doorman won’t ask us what we’re doing there.

  If we truly loved ourselves, we’d never harm another. That is a truly revolutionary, celebratory mode of self-care.

  REFLECTION

  IS THERE ANYONE in your life whom you think of as a model of integrity in some area? Do you identify with that person, or do they seem too rigid to you?

  Do you have disagreements with friends or colleagues about right and wrong behavior? Who would you talk with if you were trying to solve a moral dilemma? How do you decide what is right for you?

  If you have a secret about an important area of your life, how is that affecting your relationship with others? With yourself?

  SECTION 2

  INTRODUCTION

  Love as a Verb

  I HAD A DREAM ONCE, and in it, someone asked me, “Why do we love people?”

  Still dreaming, I responded, “Because they see us.” I woke up thinking, That’s a really good answer.