Session Details - February 15th, 2016 - Managing the pain of empathic connection by cultivating greater equanimity in our compassion practice.

The word empathy means an affective resonance with someone else. If you are moved by the suffering of someone, even though you make a clear distinction between yourself and that person, you suffer because she/he suffers. You may also feel joy when she/he feels joy. Researchers found that a part of the brain network associated with pain is activated in subjects who watch someone being hurt. When repeated over time, empathic resonance with others’ pain can lead to empathic distress, exhaustion, or burnout. According to a study carried out in North America, 60% of all nurses, doctors, and caregivers who are in constant contact with patients experiencing suffering have or will suffer burnout at some point in their professional life.

Compassion is associated with positive emotions. Based on this, Matthieu Ricard in collaboration with Tania Singer, a neuroscientist Director at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, concluded that burnout was actually due to “empathy fatigue” and not to “compassion fatigue”. In fact, compassion far from leading to distress and discouragement strengthens our resilience, our inner balance and our courageous determination to help those who suffer.

From their point of view, love and compassion do not wear us out; rather they help us to overcome empathic distress.

These three dimensions — altruistic love, empathy and compassion — are naturally connected. Within altruistic love, or benevolence, empathy alerts us that the other person might be suffering. Compassion — the desire to dispel these sufferings and their causes — follows. Thus, when confronted with suffering, altruistic love, catalysed by empathy, becomes compassion.

 

Equanimity via understanding Dependant arising / Causes & Conditions

Perhaps the most important teaching we need is that everything happening in the present moment is the result of innumerable causes and conditions coming together and constantly changing. This understanding motivates us to cultivate mindfulness in every emerging moment and to appreciate how each moment is entirely new – a fresh start. When things are going well, we are thankful for how numerous positive conditions have come together, including our own actions and those of many other people, to make it possible. When things are not going so well, we are less likely to fall into despair when we recognize that despite our best efforts, the causes and conditions needed to bring about the desired outcome were not fully present.

This understanding helps us embrace the ups and downs of life with equanimity; a sense of ‘okness’, balance via the understanding of all things in transition. Equanimity can give us the will to persist in the face of difficulty; past failures do not mean future success is not possible. We know that through our actions, we can still cultivate the necessary causes and conditions for success. 

This attitude is particularly important for solving complex problems requiring long-term commitments, and involving other parties. We simply do our best, while knowing clearly that we don’t have full control over the outcome because many other causes and conditions are at play. In this way, we do not become discouraged and fall into hopelessness. If we truly integrate this understanding into every aspect of our life, the way we respond to situations will be slowly transformed. As our capacity for wise and compassionate action grows, we will lessen the harm we cause others and ourselves and be a more positive force in the world.

(Based on an article in the magazine “Lion’s Roar”- Buddhist wisdom for your life – February 2016 edition)

 

Faith:

• Confidence / trust, a verb;

• Doesn’t require a belief system;

• Emphasizes a foundation of love and respect for ourselves and cultivates connection to others;

• It’s based on our own experience reached with eyes wide open;

• Is the opposite to resignation and despair;

• Links our present day experience, whether wonderful or terrible to the underlying pulse of life itself, forever changing, in transition and not permanent;

• Saying yes to life, to the journey / adventure (similar to MSC).

“To offer or give over one’s heart” (Sharon Salzburg)

 

Equanimity via faith:

“There is darkness in the world, but it is merely an absence of light. All the darkness in the world cannot dispel even the smallest candle flame. We need only to accustom ourselves to the dim vision, and then the blessing of light will grow.” (Aung San Suu Kyi, Leader of the Democracy movement in Burma)

We can all place faith in our awareness; the open nature of awareness can bear anything without becoming damaged. Therefore we can have faith that whatever happens on this roller coaster ride that is life, innate value lies within you – in your awareness and your love.

We all have the ability to realize our true nature in our everyday life, to find inner peace you don’t need to be a recluse or search within another. We need connection – with others and with ourselves – just as the breath flows out and in, so our faith is within us and then touches outwards to others. Our inner faith is self-affirming & self-respectful, from this steady place we live and love.

(Discussion based on Sharon Salzburg’s book – “Faith”)

 

Equanimity practices:

Soft eyes
Formal practice may help us to deepen faith via experiencing our interconnection with what theologian Howard Thurman referred to as “quiet eyes.” Through pausing, stillness and silence we gain the clarity of contrast, perception via “quiet eyes”.

Sound
Feeling into our sense of hearing can assist with cultivating a sense of all things in transition. It can also assist with deepening our interconnectedness.

 

Birdsong – Rumi

“Birdsong brings relief to my longing.

I’m just as ecstatic as they are, but with nothing to say!

Please universal soul, practice some song or something through me…”