Excellent Post On Grief by Mark Pechovnik

This is an excellent post on grief by a wise friend of mine. I highly recommend him and his blog.The link to the actual blog is below.

Mindfulness and Grief
from Portland, Oregon Therapy & Counseling by Mark Pechovnik

Grief is too often regarded as something gone wrong, something to be gotten rid of, something that is too painful to bear up under and should either be avoided or processed through as quickly and thoroughly as possible– and preferably under an anesthetic!

But in a life where everything is constantly changing and everything is bound to, at some point, go away, grief is inevitable.

So we are left with the choice of either rejecting the truth of loss, engaging in thoughts and behaviors that help us avoid the feeling of loss or of accepting loss and honoring it for what it is telling us about ourselves and about life itself.

People who choose to try to avoid grief usually do so unconsciously. They don’t want to hurt so they refuse talk or to even think about who or what has been lost. They will muffle their feelings with drugs or alcohol, compulsive sex, television, non-stop work, or any number of avoidant behaviors that, in turn, shut them off from life and those around them and cause all kinds of personal and interpersonal problems.

Choosing to honor grief requires that we slow down, look inward, note the blockages inside ourselves, and mindfully untangle the knot of emotions surrounding a loss. It requires courage, patience, kindness and resolve.

Most of all, however, it requires love.

We do not grieve what we did not love.

Indeed, when we deeply investigate the feeling of grief that sits inside us, inside our bodies, often in a well just below the heart, we learn that grief is bittersweet. At its core, is a love that knows no bounds and is wounded and maybe even outraged for having come against this irrevocable end.

Grief, in a sense, is the full expression of being human, of knowing what it is to deeply love and to just as deeply know that everything is impermanent.

Impermanence requires grief, and as life is impermanent, we cannot but grieve. However, while grief may hurt, it does not need to cause suffering if we are courageous enough to feel the love that is inside of the grief. (See my post “Pain vs. Suffernig (+pain!))

Mindfully, we watch our emotions, thoughts and behaviors. We notice sorrow, hurt, disappointment, longing … all part of the human experience that cannot be changed.

Next we then turn to our thoughts. We notice our interpretations. We may be telling ourselves, “I’ll never be happy again.” “This is so wrong.” “Unfair!” “It shouldn’t have happened this way.” We ask ourselves if these thoughts increase or decrease our suffering. Consider encouraging thoughts that are less judgmental and more factual, such as, “I miss him.” “I’m so sad and lonely.” “I remember all the good times and I worry about the bad times.” More temperate thoughts will create more space for letting the grief flow.

We then consider how we’re living our lives. We look at our behaviors. Are we engaged in wholesome activities that support our appreciation of life and love of others (the core of our grief, remember) or are we isolating and blaming others and looking to get even with the universe?

What behaviors create more space? What behaviors support us most? If we are courageous, we can reach out to others for support. We talk it over, share our emotions, let ourselves cry, take a mental health day, and let grief process at its own pace.

Just as Autumn can’t be rushed but every leaf turns at its time, so too grief will run its course according to its own need if left unhindered.

In letting grief takes its own pace, we don’t get rid of it sooner, but we increase in capacity and are better able to be more fully engaged in life.

A client once told me that, though her grief didn’t feel good, it felt real … and in feeling real, there was virtue.

Finally, just as life is impermanent, so too is grief. I promise you that, though you may continue to feel pangs of grief over any particular loss for the rest of your life, you will not feel grief all the time. When left unhindered, grief comes and goes just like all things.

Happy Thanksgiving Short thought

Happy thanksgiving everyone. Years ago pilgrims and native americans sat down for a dinner together afterwards we stole their land and pushed them onto small land dwellings. So remember be thankful for what you have there is no telling when impermanence or a race of space pilgrims will take it away.

SPACE PILGRIMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Videos Of Weird Buddhist Ritual That will shiver your Spine!!!!

Not really this is a cool ceremony to call in the dark energies of the world and ourselves to acknowledge them and feed them and then to let them go. There is a short intro I edited together at the begging The drum at the beginning are very cool and though this is a pretty esoteric Buddhist ceremony it's interesting to watch. Enjoy!

Segaki Ceremony At Great Vow Zen Monastery. This is a ceremony that ends a month of calling in the hungry ghosts or darker parts of our own nature. He talks about the need to integrate all of ourselves into life and to know the shadow parts of ourselves so we can help ourselves and others.

"The segaki (施餓鬼?, "feeding the hungry ghosts") is a ritual of Japanese Buddhism, traditionally performed to stop the suffering of the gaki, ghosts tormented by insatiable hunger. Today, the ceremony also gives participants an opportunity to remember those who have died and to symbolically sever ties with past sins.

According to legend, the segaki began as a way for Moggallana (Maudgalyayna), on instruction of his master, the Buddha Sakyamuni, to free his mother from gaki-do, the realm of the gaki." -Wikipedia


Segaki Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxIF7ETUOHw
Segaki Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKU0hPDLKPc
Dharma Talk Abour Segaki http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FBWdTjQbIo

Right Effort: Following Your Heart

So we had a class this week on Right Effort and it brought a lot of things up for me.

These questions like how long should I meditate for, how do I evaluate the effort I'm putting into practice, how do I know when to push and when to let go more.

These issues are ones that many spiritual practitioners especially those who meditate look at on a regular basis.

Whether you are a lay practitioner or live in a residential training setting or are ordained these questions can become a focus of wisdom or suffering. So I thought I would dedicate a few posts to talking about the issues I have found concerning right effort and some I have heard others talk about.

This first post is about following your heart.

This the common response I've gotten from people when I ask them about right effort. It sounds something like this, " Well no one can tell you how much you should sit you just have to listen to your heart..." On the one hand I agree quite strongly with this notion of intuitive wisdom, but on the other it seems to imply a simplicity that I have found is not always present.

Discerning what the heart is truly telling me can be quite difficult. Before I found practice I listened to my heart quite a bit and it lead me all over the place. On retrospect I believe that in reality I was following a mixture of my mind and my heart, but the fact that one can seem so much like the other is what makes this advice problematic. How do I know when it's my heart or my mind acting like my heart?

There have certainly been times where my heart was very clear about needing to sit a lot of zazen and bring practice into every aspect of my life. It seemed to call me so clearly to the cushion and nothing else seemed to help. I describe this often as sitting out of desperation. It was for me a distinct longing that was only quelled by quieting my mind and throwing myself wholeheartedly into practice. During these time this advice was all I needed.

There have also been times where a haze of confusion has descended over me. Times when I was unsure even why I was practicing. If I looked closely I could still hear that calling, but it seemed like another part of my heart was not buying into the program. When your heart says two things which one do you listen to?

I have found that often faith and even vows to practice have kept me going during these times. There have been nights where my heart ached and I just wanted to go to bed, but I stayed up and sat because I had made a practice vow. I find that often these challenges yield fruit for me. I was able to see through my aversions and confusion just by committing to sit no matter what my heart or mind said to me.

I have also slipped into spiritual athleticism which I know is not right effort. As soon as thought arises that says, I'm going to stay until he/she leaves, I know that some part of pride has slipped into my motivation. Peer pressure can be valuable in one sense but sitting as competition is not the essence of the dharma. Having said that when this does arise I greet it as an opportunity to examine it's roots and I have been able to see beneath by continuing to practice even if my motivations aren't entirely pure at that moment.

I am inspired by the Great Teachers who sat so wholeheartedly committed to practice no matter what arose, but I have a hard time believing they only sat when their hearts told them to. I have a sense they sat for different reasons, but that at some point they sat on faith alone. In most cases doing what my heart calls me to do can stop me from slipping in to critical mind states, but I can also see times where I used this as an excuse for not putting my all into practice.

It seems like this could become such a slipperly slope for any practitioner. Caught up in the evaluation of what the heart is truly saying. For myself I know that I check in with my heart when it comes to practice, but even if I find it empty my faith in my teachers and the Dharma keep me going. I don't know if this is right effort or not, but it continues to be a deep investigation I engage in on a regular basis.

I know that deep within me there is a part of my heart that calls me to see the truth. My heart calls me to seek a way of being compassionate and trying my best to be of service. But often even when I can't hear that call, I keep the faith that it's still there. I have faith that underneath whatever story or thought is clouding my wisdom my heart is calling me to my true home.