From Suffering to Peace

by Mark Coleman

  Further, equanimity doesn’t mean that we like what has happened, that we want it to have happened, or that we ever want to experience it again. It simply asks that we turn our attention toward, and unconditionally allow, the truth of our experience. From that clarity, we can then respond wisely and appropriately.

  Lastly, we can also bring equanimity to our own resistance and judgment, which at times are unavoidable. When equanimity is not our first response to pain, we can practice and learn to be tolerant and accepting of our own limitations. We can acknowledge our reaction, bring warm attention to what is hard and unwanted, and let this compassionate attitude ease the suffering that arises from our reactivity.

  By riding with life’s ups and downs, we learn to act with fluidity in the same way water flows downstream. As water encounters obstacles, it adapts, yields, and shifts in an ever-responsive movement. The poet Wendell Berry wisely wrote: “It is the impeded stream that sings.” Without the obstacles, creeks would not make the delightful sounds we so enjoy. The same is perhaps true with life. It is so often the hard places that encourage us to grow and find the strengths, tenacity, and gifts we may have believed we never had.

  • PRACTICE •

  Cultivating a Steady Heart

  This meditation explores developing equanimity. To do so, we practice meeting what is with balance, steadiness, and acceptance. This doesn’t mean we like or want what we meet or that our response is passive. But equanimity asks that we first open to whatever exists.

  To begin, sit comfortably, take some deep breaths, and settle your attention on your posture and physical experience. Invite a quality of relaxation and ease. Then call to mind something hard in your life that you resist. Anything is fine: conflict with a partner or coworker, aches in your body, political or societal dramas, or even bad weather. Call this issue to mind and explore this experience. What do you notice in your mind, heart, and body? Let yourself feel both the experience that is difficult and your reaction to it.

  Now become present to your own awareness. Observe how that presence is like a space that makes room for an experience to unfold. When we can abide in awareness, rather than get caught up in the experience itself and our reaction to it, it allows breathing room to accommodate whatever is happening. This is like a child’s inflatable castle. Inside the walls of the castle, experience happens. Kids can scream and be as wild as they like, and it is all accommodated.

  Then notice your thoughts or views about the difficult experience. Pay attention to judgments (I shouldn’t have let this happen) and a sense of injustice (What’s happening is unfair). Such beliefs compound the difficulty and only add fuel to the fire of reactivity. Hold these thoughts in awareness and try to let them go, then return your attention to the actual experience.

  See if you can let your attention be fully present without these views interfering. Simply witness the experience rather than resist or avoid it, and notice if this makes it easier to be with. You may never like it, but you may find more capacity to hold it. And if there is resistance, know that you can bring the same spacious awareness to that experience also. Imagine your mind is like the sky and has the capacity to hold any cloud-like experience.

  Then remember that every experience is fleeting and transient and will eventually change, no matter how painful or challenging. Reflecting on impermanence is an important support for developing a steady heart. This helps develop tolerance. Thinking that pain will last forever makes it much harder to accept, but understanding that nothing lasts helps us be less reactive and more patient with difficulty.

  The final key is to bring kindness to the difficulty. Try to bring a warm, friendly attitude to this experience. Notice how that can melt some of the rigidity or contraction that arises with reacting to what is hard to bear.

  As you bring this practice to a close, make a commitment to apply these principles to any reactivity or challenging situation that occurs during your day. Notice how this approach can increase your capacity to stay steady in the midst of any experience.

  • • •

  Chapter 28

  Delighting in the Joy of Others

  If you can’t find joy in the path you are on and what you are working toward now, how do you expect to find joy once you get there?

  — ANONYMOUS

  I remember visiting a friend whose baby was on the cusp of that miraculous transition from crawling and rolling around on the floor to taking her first wobbly, tentative steps. It was hard to know who to be happier for: Davina, the eleven-month-old blond-haired toddler, or her parents, who were beaming with pride and joy. There was a lot of laughter as we watched Davina be helped up on her legs by her proud dad, stumble a couple of steps toward the outstretched arms of her radiant mother, and then fall back on her bottom to a fit of giggles and laughter. It was a momentous day in her little world, as this was the first time she had successfully taken more than one blessed step.

  In that moment I was very aware of how joy is infectious. It reminded me of the sympathetic joy meditation in which one rejoices in the happiness of others. This beautiful quality significantly increases our opportunities for experiencing delight. By appreciating the happiness of others, we do tend to improve our chances of joy by about seven billion to one! I don’t gamble, but I do know those are good odds. Sympathetic joy means the heart is like kindling, ready for sparks of happiness wherever gladness and success are found.

  The other upside to this lovely quality is that it cuts through feelings of jealousy. Envy is a painful domain of the heart, so anything that helps undermine it is a welcome guest. The contraction we feel when others are doing well or enjoying good fortune is a common way the ego self keeps us in poverty. Not celebrating the happiness and achievements of others robs us of our own well-being.

  Often, the root of jealousy is fear and anxiety about the lack or scarcity of our own circumstances. For example, I remember nearing the end of my four-year, meditation teacher–training program with Jack Kornfield. It was 2006, and finding sufficient teaching opportunities was not easy, so all of us were anxiously contemplating our next steps.

  Then one of my dearest friends in the program announced that she had been offered a full-time position with a six-figure salary leading a meditation research center in a prestigious university. This was an amazing position and fantastic news for her. My friend had been trying to pull herself out of ongoing money struggles, and this job would allow her to flourish and become economically stable. Further, not only would she be teaching mindfulness, but her new role had the potential to have a significant impact in the nascent mindfulness movement.

  I had to admit: while I was certainly happy for her, I was in equal measures jealous! Hearing the news triggered a sense of envy. I also desired to be on a more secure financial footing. I similarly aspired to have work with a high impact. In truth, I didn’t really want this particular job, which required relocating to Minnesota, a place that didn’t interest me, but my friend’s success triggered a sense of scarcity and insecurity about money and my own work.

  The logic behind this egoist reaction is that if someone gets what we want, then there will be less or nothing for us. This distorted belief assumes joy and success are limited, and if someone else succeeds or flourishes, then we become impoverished by default. Fortunately, I was aware of the nature of my mixed reaction, and I laughed about it to myself and with my friend. I was simply being human and getting caught up in my own anxiety, which expressed itself as jealousy.

  This experience is universal. It can arise when a friend tells us they have met their perfect “soul mate” and are off to Hawaii for a romantic getaway. Or when a colleague receives a windfall in their end-of-year bonus. We can feel it when looking at people’s seemingly ideal lives on Facebook or Instagram. We become both simultaneously happy and jealous, experiencing a twinge of contraction or fear that our lives are not enough. Or we may judge others, feeling they don’t deserve their good fortune and we would be more worthy recipient
s.

  Paradoxically, delighting in the joy of others is a potent way to increase one’s own well-being. I discovered this in my twenties during a meditation course in New England. As soon as I heard about it, it made perfect sense. Why wouldn’t we want to rejoice in the happiness of others, particularly if this fosters happiness in our own heart? This simple practice is a win/win with no downside. All it requires — along with all the practices in this book — is present-moment awareness, an open heart, and the intention to cultivate such things.

  To practice sympathetic joy, simply turn your attention to others when things go well for them, whenever others are touched with joy or success. It is as simple as feeling happy for your partner’s successful day at work. Or celebrating the accolades your child received at school. Or delighting when Olympic athletes dance with ecstasy as they receive a medal. Or appreciating a bumblebee who nuzzles its way into a foxglove and comes out soaked in pollen. Examples of joy and success are everywhere, including insects as they find their pots of powdered gold.

  Appreciative joy frees the heart from the unnecessary burden of envy, comparison, and scarcity. To live without those qualities clouding the freedom of our being is liberating indeed. What would it look like to turn your attention to friends, family, colleagues, and strangers and delight in their successes, accomplishments, joys, and ordinary delights? How would it feel for you to simply enjoy their happiness and to hope it would only grow? To transform the heart from its prison of envy by delighting in the well-being of others is to live in an enchanted land.

  • PRACTICE •

  Celebrating the Joy of Others

  Cultivating sympathetic joy can be an uplifting practice because you focus on the happiness, success, and good fortune of others. Start by sitting comfortably, closing your eyes, and sensing your body and your breath.

  Call to mind a good friend. Choose someone who is currently happy and doing well, whether in relationships, at work, or generally in their lives. Take time to appreciate this person’s joy, success, and good fortune. Visualize and sense their happiness or contentment.

  The conduit for sympathetic joy is saying phrases that express your delight in their happiness. First, express this appreciation by saying, I’m happy for you, or I delight in your happiness. Next, offer them this wish: May your happiness and good fortune (or success) continue to grow. You may alter these words to fit the person or your particular wish for them, but keep the general spirit of these sentiments. As you hold this person in your heart or mind’s eye, repeat the phrases slowly and meaningfully. Take time to genuinely feel this wish for them in your heart.

  Next, call to mind someone else, a loved one or a colleague, and repeat the process for some minutes. If you wish to stretch your capacity, extend this wish to someone you don’t know well, even a stranger, or call to mind someone you are in conflict with or are particularly envious of. Genuinely wish each person you call to mind, as much as you are able, continued joy and success.

  While this is a delightful practice — and often the heart blooms with a sense of celebrating the well-being of others — it is not unusual for the opposite feelings to arise. The practice can trigger jealousy, envy, or a contracted state where we feel self-judgment for not having similar success or happiness. This is natural. In fact, this meditation is considered a purification practice, in that it can stir up whatever negative reactions get in the way of our being able to rejoice in the joy of others. As it does, we get to see the ways that our heart is not yet open fully, and continuing this practice is a way of working with that and of growing and stretching our heart’s capacity to love.

  If this happens, and you find certain people trigger too much reactivity, put them aside and focus on others. Go back to people with whom you can access this quality of sympathetic joy. Over time you will find that the heart is able to expand and move through the world genuinely wishing for the well-being of all others without the need to compare or judge. In this way, you significantly increase your own inner joy and happiness.

  • • •

  Chapter 29

  Extending Compassion to Others

  Be kind to every person you meet because each person has been asked to carry a great burden.

  — REVEREND JOHN WATSON

  This beloved quote by John Watson is one I try to live by. It encourages us to keep our heart open to others, rather than closing down out of fear, judgment, or resistance. No one gets through this life with a free ride. Even the most blessed, abundant person has to deal with stress, physical pain, and health issues. They are just part of the human condition.

  However much we may love our families, every parent is challenged by raising children, and every child is challenged by growing up. We all lose friends and loved ones eventually. Walking life’s path means, at times, losing things, like our health, our wealth, and our direction, and at times challenging even our faith. When I remember this, it helps me to turn toward others with a compassionate heart and loving spirit.

  It is easy to make assumptions about people based on superficial appearances, perhaps on where they live, how they dress, or how they talk. A whole, complex world lives inside each and every person that is neither visible nor obvious from the outside. As a teacher, I meet people from all walks of life, and I get to scratch beneath the surface and hear what is really going on in the deeper currents of their lives — what is troubling their hearts and causing stress or anxiety.

  I am often moved by the litany of woes that each person has to navigate: from a mother’s loss of a child at birth to the pain of an elder whose life partner has Alzheimer’s and has forgotten all sense of who they are. I see retirees who haven’t recovered from the abuse they suffered as infants, while combat veterans struggle with the trauma from serving in Vietnam or Afghanistan. I’ve worked with beautiful models whose lives are riddled with anxiety about weight and struggles with bulimia. Single parents can barely make their monthly rent and worry about not having enough money for their children’s college fees. Meanwhile, millionaires wrestle with guilt over inherited wealth, feeling unworthy and embarrassed at never having worked for it. This is just a snapshot of what might comprise a typical group on retreat, and it is a small sampling of the multitudes who struggle in their lives.

  I have learned to never underestimate what someone might be going through. People are often coping with difficult challenges beneath the surface. Remembering this can inspire us to give people the benefit of the doubt, to be a little more patient and forgiving when they are grumpy, short-tempered, or neurotic. I was sharply reminded of this recently when I stopped to say hello to James, my neighbor. I usually have very little contact with James, who is often out of town, and lately when he was around, he seemed quite unfriendly. Then one day, I saw James alone, and something prompted me to ask how he was doing. After a little small talk, he shared that he had just lost his wife three weeks ago due to a brain tumor, which had been diagnosed only a month before she passed. I was stunned and felt deeply sorry for James, whose recent behavior I now understood in a whole new light.

  Such moments remind us of the importance of infusing love into our practice of mindfulness, without which it is incomplete, or as one of my teachers calls it, “one-legged.” Compassion arises when our open hearts meet suffering. It is the heart’s natural response: to care and wish to find ways to relieve the pain of others. Compassion is sometimes referred to as the quivering of the heart, which resonates with the anguish of another. Though innate, compassion can be developed with practice, intention, and care.

  History is replete with figures who have developed compassion to a high level, such as Mother Teresa and St. Francis of Assisi. They are shining examples of compassion that knows no limits, as is Desmond Tutu. During the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa, he endured a lot of suffering and had to bear witness as his people underwent decades of abuse and violence, yet he was able to find in his heart a place of compassion for those same oppressors. This is boundless compas
sion that rises above our personal, self-centered story.

  We all have this potential. I think about the mass shooting in 2015 at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, when a white supremacist opened fire during a prayer service in the church, killing nine people and injuring others. Despite these terrible murders, many in the congregation were able to find in their hearts the power of forgiveness. Nadine Collier, the daughter of seventy-year-old Ethel Lance, who was slain, stood up in court to face the attacker and said, her voice breaking with emotion: “You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.” This is a heart that has truly developed a compassion that knows no limits.

  Other examples include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and participants in the U.S. civil rights movement. They confronted injustice, racism, and violence with an unstoppable power of love. It is hard to watch the film archives of those Southern marches in the 1960s, where nonviolent protesters were attacked with dogs, water cannons, and violent police brutality. Yet despite such aggression, they managed to hold their heads up high and look into the eyes of their oppressors without hatred or vengeance. Such courage is a testament to the power of the human heart to face adversity and overcome through peaceful means.

  What supports the heart to open, and what closes it down? The first step on the path of compassion requires turning toward what is, particularly what is difficult. When we can attune to the suffering of another without judgment, reaction, or recoiling — when we can simply witness and acknowledge the pain — this allows the window of loving care to open. This movement in the heart allows us to feel with another and to ask the important questions: How can I help, and what would serve this person?