Meeting old, age sickness, and death is part of being human. These challenges open our hearts to our own and others’ vulnerability and limitations. We are stripped of ideas of who and what we are, and there is the possibility of opening to something vast and mysterious. Buddhist tradition offers us practices to meet these challenges with greater peace, ease, and grace.
Grounding
Grounding helps quiet the mind and discharge emotions. Feeling the support of the earth under us, we open to the beauty of the body breathing us. We can bring a gentle awareness to the movement of the muscles of breathing, the air flowing in and out of the pores of the body, and the energy that allows breathing to happen.
When there are painful thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, we can practice widening and softening the attention and inclining the mind to areas of the body that feel neutral or pleasant. When our experience is overwhelming it can be helpful to label the different flavors of sensations, for example: burning, aching, shooting, itching, pressure, expanding, contracting, tingling, vibrating, shooting, pounding, dull aching, and oscillating.
Caring, Allowing Interest
Resisting difficult sensations, emotions, and thoughts creates stress. But by bringing a quality of care and interest to our practice, we can open to our direct experience without a conceptual overlay. A natural release often occurs, and transformation can take place. Sadness may transform to love as we open to our vulnerability. This was my personal experience when I opened to my emotions without comment.
Cultivating “Don’t Know” Mind
Often fear arises from projections of what might happen in the future. But we don’t know what will happen or how we might respond. We can cultivate an inclination to find peace in the only moment possible, which is now.
Uplifting the Heart
We can cultivate gratitude for simple things such as having food, a bed to sleep in, and being able to walk. We can open to the beauty of nature or connecting with a dear friend. Also, it can be uplifting to share what we’re going through with trusted Dharma friends and to listen deeply to them as well.
Mindfulness of Impermanence
All conditioned things are impermanent. Our life is this moment-to-moment experience of hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, seeing, and knowing that is unfolding on its own. When we can allow now to be as it is, there is stillness. Stillness is a place beyond the conceptual mind. In stillness, there are no feelings of separation, no time, no space. It is a place where beliefs, judgments, opinions, wanting, not wanting—the endless commentary in our minds ceases.
Understanding Wise View
Our view of life is often an abstraction of the constantly changing nature of our sense experiences and the knowing of them. But we can choose a view that supports freedom and compassion and see that we are not this limited mind/body process. When we experience this deeply, our boundaries of inside/outside soften. There is a sense of being something vast and loving that is always—and will always be—present.
Resting in Awareness
When we shift attention from objects to the quality of knowing, it might feel like being aware. But can explore awareness more deeply. Where is it? What quality does it have? Notice that awareness can be aware of you. Is awareness always there?
Opening to our vulnerability and limitations can be overwhelming. That’s why kindness and compassion are so important. When we bring these qualities to our practice, we learn how to live more fully with life’s challenges. No matter how great our wisdom, care and love are essential.