This 5-week Zen meditation course is focused on cultivating kindness and compassion in your meditation practice and life. We’ll be focusing on a variety of practices geared towards engendering kindness towards oneself, others, and to the world. These practices were laid out in great detail by the Zen teacher, Torei Enji, a few hundred years ago. They form a beautiful foundation for developing a "baseline psychological well-being" and are seen as the platform for deeper insights. This course is open to anyone. We hope you can join us.
Plan to meditate for 25-30 minutes each day.
Over the 5 weeks we’ll be exploring a variety of topics including:
Cultivating psychological well-being
Loving kindness practice
Compassion practice and the bodhissatva Kannon
Physical, mental, and emotional benefits
Sympathetic Joy
Equanimity in practice and how this can be nourished
The history of kindness and compassion practices in the Zen tradition
Practicing The Brahmaviharas
spring 2024
Week 1: Metta
not much to add on notes over fall 2023, but new self-scores
resilience 7/10
outlook 4-8/10 w/ nuance
social intuition 7/10
self-awareness 4/10
sensitivity to context 8/10
attention 3/10 & slipping
Week 2: Karuna
Week 3: Mudita
sympathetic joy, celebrating in the [success/joy/well being] of others, a big "good for you." to the world
far enemy: envy/schadenfreude/jealousy
near enemy: non-selfless joy, hypocritic etc joy, exhilaration
not as much neuro/psych research
ref: "will you be there when things go right?", mudita in partnerships correlates with successful ones
"isnt it about the intention more than the end result" ... the "why" of the brahmavihara practices is so fleeting/subtle...
self-less-ness is an important edge to this/these meditations
it's an act of recognition, recognizing the greatness in everyone
fall 2023
Week 1: Metta
Background
Richard Davidson (ref Altered Traits) writes in The Emotional Life of Your Brain that Happiness is a skill that you can improve upon.
Evaluated six factors which impact our happiness; Shinkai asked us to self-score and would do it agian at the end .
Resilience (7/10)
Outlook (5/10 but nuanced)
Social intuition (4/10)
Self awareness (3-8/10 varies)
Sensitivity to context (8/10 but often in a subversive way)
Attention (4/10)
The Four Immeasurables can shift these:
The Brahmaviharas
Linked from
Starting with a history of the practices:
These practices pre-date Buddha's life as Brahmic teachings.
In Zen it starts with Torei Enji who lived 1721-1792, but the practice is much older. Enji was a student of Hakuin. Enji identified it from Boddhidharma's Daruma-tara Zenkyo and felt that these practices were a critical foundation for Wisdom/Insight/Prajna practices.
There are four practices and four abodes:
Loving-Kindness
Compassion
Sympathetic Joy
Equanimity
These are called "the boundless abodes" or the four immeasurables because they can be cultivated endlessly and toward any and every being.
Metta
Metta is truly wishing others and yourself well-being and happiness. Loving kindness should feel like loving everyone like they were your child.
Start with a couple of Metta Mantras and direct them toward yourself. cultivate and notice and sit with that feeling of love.
They who love themself would never harm another.
Move from feeling this love for Yourself then shift -> Mentor -> Dear friend -> neutral person -> difficult person
each of these shifts should be about raising your feeling of loving-kindness to the point of the previous "targets"'
at this point you either sit with those people or open the practice up as wide as comfortable up to and including every being in the universe.
there are practices for managing animosity that comes up in meditation that shinkai may send out.
If you have anger arise around anyone (the difficult person in particular), a couple things you can do: A) return to an easier person, B) remember that anger/hatred is gratifying to the "enemy" (the difficult person) C) find some aspect of them to wish well (like their haircut, or their big toe) D) reflect on cause and effect (that being angry creates ugliness and pain within you) E) remember that that being was once your mother in the distant past F) divide them mentally into the elements and wish the elements well G) imagine giving them a gift.
Week 2: Karuna
Karuna
"may all beings be free from suffering"
Compassion, but not the Christian/Western idea of it, maybe. un-conditioned/unconditional.
Kannon/Avolokiteshvara
The Bodhisattva of compassion
compass and wisdom feed each other
The Heart Sutra is so cool...
Compassion v. Loving-Kindness
Metta gives joy, Karuna removes suffering
Karuna Practice
"May X be free from suffering" mantra
person who sparks compassion, start with an opening or spark, or a memory
self-compassion
dear friend
neutral party
difficult party
then expand to wider and wider encompassing parties
Week 3: Mudita
Mudita
a spirit of congratulations
non-hierarchical thinking without motive
"will you be with me when things go right?"
near enemy: joyful/high exhilaration
far enemy: jealousy/envy
how would it be to see every being enlightened and to rejoice in this?
Mudita is about both the mundane and the supreme
An aside
"purity of the sense organs" -> enlightenment metaphor
Mudita Practice
"May X never be separated from joy"
dear friend
neutral person
difficult person
self
opening the practice
part of this practice can be an exploration of envy or jealousy