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When I decided to become a Buddhist chaplain over two years ago, I never thought I would experience our current pandemic crisis.
After I lost my son in 2010, I decided to become a Buddhist chaplain. The experience of losing a child forever changed my relationship with the world and my relationship with grief, suffering, and compassion.
One of the most profound lessons I've learned about grief is that it doesn't have to follow the loss of a loved one. We mourn everything we feel connected to that gives meaning and purpose to our life. According to this definition, it is no wonder that our current situation of isolation creates an undercurrent of deep sorrow and loss for what we once considered our “normal life”.
For two years I studied Buddhist philosophy at the Upaya Zen Center under the guidance of Roshi Joan Halifax and other incredible Buddhist teachers. I am currently completing my 1,600 hours of pastoral clinical training (CPE) to become a chaplain certified by the board.
After experiencing a life-changing event, I wanted to be able to give something back through this work and, in a way, keep my son's memory alive. I imagined how I could be with people when they and their loved ones experience the end of their lives and sympathetically support those who mourn the person they loved and had lost.
These experiences included, as I imagined, human connection and touch. Warm hand to warm hand, heart to heart. I knew that my presence would not heal everything, but I hoped that it would mean the next brush stroke in the mandala of averaging for these people on the journey of grief.
But in the last few days it looks more like this: I call a father through the security of a phone call, not a heart to tell him that his little son was killed in a motorcycle accident. And when he asks if he could come to the hospital and visit him, I say no and explain our COVID guidelines.
When he shows up to collect his son's personal belongings, I stand with a face mask in the parking lot of our emergency room, six feet away, hand him the bag and instruct him not to open the red biohazard bag for three days . It's a COVID precaution, I tell him.
He gently holds the bag in his hand, looks at me with tears in his eyes and says: "How can we have a funeral at all? Nobody is allowed to come. “And with that, the tears break past the levy and run down his cheeks.
We stand still until he asks: "So I really can't see him?"
I immediately think of how I would have felt if someone hadn't let me see my son when he died. My heart contracts, I look away and explain the guidelines again (internally I feel like a failure as a chaplain).
If this were two months ago, this interaction would plant the seeds of healing. The emotional closure of seeing his son one last time would stimulate the pump of healing and integration. Instead, he is left with a red biohazard bag that he cannot open for three days.
Now that I'm working full-time in a Level 1 trauma center during the COVID pandemic, I can't imagine doing this work without this years of compassionate caregiver training based on Buddhist teachings.
As the days have developed and my "typical" chaplain experiences are clouded by new guidelines, I have been thinking about which teachings and skills have helped me the most, even if the patient is not a COVID patient. I hope that if I share this with you, you will get some tools that you can put next to others, warm hand to warm hand, heart to heart.
Allow all feelings and emotions that arise.
This is a time of unprecedented and volatile change. It is normal and natural for these changes to create a variety of feelings. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that includes toxic positivity. When we see bumper stickers that say "just good vibes" and are encouraged to manifest the life we want through positive affirmations, we feel guilty or as if something is wrong with us when we like normal human emotions Feeling sad, angry or sad
The unconscious withholding of permission to experience the entire spectrum of human emotions is comparable to letting only one pendulum swing in one direction.
The bottom line is that we can only feel the positive emotions in depth and to the extent that we allow ourselves to feel deep in the difficult emotions. Any joy or happiness we experience is blunted and / or limited by our inability to engage with the difficult emotions we have as part of human experience.
Like any skill that we develop, it takes practice. So if we put energy into pushing away or ignoring sadness, sadness, anger or depression, we are stealing the opportunity to better deal with that emotion.
This is one reason why many people do not understand why they are not happier, even though they are working hard on "only good mood". On the other hand, if we get to know the entire spectrum of emotions, we will be more agile in dealing with them.
For example, I know that when I feel grief, it often appears in my chest, while anger is more likely to be felt in my throat. I can only recognize this because I am working to develop mindfulness and awareness of it.
One of the best ways to relate to the more difficult emotions is to differentiate between you and the feeling.
Dr. In her TED talk on emotional flexibility, Susan David suggested changing our wording. For example, instead of saying, "I'm sad," try saying, "I'm feeling sad." There are no good / bad feelings, only feelings that need to be recognized.
Make friends with transience.
Illness, old age and death are always part of our lives, but now we feel that they have moved closer together. The latent awareness of these inevitabilities can make us increasingly fearful.
Partly because of our cultural aversion to grief, we often live our lives as if disease, old age, and death were as far away as the moon and needed a telescope to see the details. But the truth is that aging is a gift, and every morning when we wake up, we're three days closer to all three.
All of our experiences are volatile … including that with the COVID virus! The flow of life continues, even through the hurt and pain of health problems, lost jobs, and all the other difficulties that arise during this time.
These experiences are never as far away as the moon, they are always close to us. But just like hugging selective emotions when we ignore the truth of life (and death), we are likely to get caught off guard when things change.
All life, our possessions and our relationship are temporary. If we make friends with impermanence, we suffer less, and the recognition of impermanence promotes gratitude for all the best at this moment.
One of my favorite teaching about impermanence is the renowned teacher Thich Nhat Hahn. They are called The Five Memories.
My first experience with them was in a weekend course with Frank Osteseski, the founder of the Zen Hospice Project, and the Metta Institute in San Francisco.
In a very powerful group experience, we had to speak the five memories together again and again. There was no dry eye in the group!
I shared them below and I encourage you to sit with someone you trust and tell them to each other. After each statement, sit down on what comes up for you and feel yourself into what you are experiencing without turning away from anything.
I am by nature getting old. There is no way to escape aging.
I am inherently sick. There is no way to escape an illness.
I'm inherently dying. There is no way to escape death.
Everything that is dear to me and everyone I love can change. There is no way to separate them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot avoid the consequences of my actions. My actions are the floor on which I stand.
Reduce your stress and increase your joy and compassion with these four Buddhist virtues.
Relief from suffering is at the core of all Buddhist teachings. More than any other Buddhist teaching, I have used these four qualities to regulate the emotional turmoil and difficult times while working in the hospital.
In Buddhism you will often hear these characteristics, which are called "Four Limitless Homes" or "Four Brahma Viharas". You are loving kindness, compassion, compassionate joy and equanimity.
These qualities are the ultimate form of self-care and connect us with the innate goodness in ourselves and others. I think it is the element of connecting with others that makes them so powerful, especially in times of social isolation.
Loving friendliness, first quality, encourages us to always make the friendliest choice. This means in our own inner narrative about ourselves and the way we interact with other people.
Practicing amiability towards myself could mean being aware of my own limits and not thrashing myself if I miss out. Another way to say this is to make sure that we treat ourselves with the same kindness that we would offer to someone we love.
When we interact with others, it is helpful to assume that everyone is doing the best they can with their skills and resources. This does not mean that we agree with their actions, but it does lessen our suffering by allowing us to let go of what we think should happen and expressing kindness. Loving kindness is cultivated in relation to yourself and others.
The second characteristic of the four limitless homes is compassion. Compassion arises when we remain open to someone else's suffering and begin to blur the boundaries of separation from others.
Compassion encourages us not to turn away from suffering, but to lean into it. This is another way that by practicing with all of our emotions we can be fuller, more tender people. Compassion is the impetus we need to take action that could reduce another person's suffering.
Compassion is rooted in the relationship with others, as is kindness. However, it is important to recognize that we can feel sorry for another person without accepting their suffering. Sometimes it is enough to be seen only in our suffering to transform it.
As a chaplain, I often say that I'm just listening. People want their story to be heard and their suffering to be recognized. In this way, by simply being present, we give the priceless gift of being seen.
I believe that the third quality has the greatest potential to change our relationship with others and break down barriers that prevent us from suffering alone. Sympathetic joy is the practice of feeling happy for the joys and happiness of others.
In our culture that is competitive and wins at all costs, this can be a very difficult thing. Judgment, envy, comparison, greed and many other things hinder the experience of pleasant joy. However, sympathetic joy encourages us to transform these ugly feelings into the realization that our own happiness often depends on the joy and happiness of many other people.
Gratitude is a close relative of sympathetic joy. Finding joy in ourselves and others is another way to express gratitude for how things are in the present moment. It also increases awareness of the good the moment we sometimes can't find anything good about the current situation.
Last month I had a moment of sympathetic joy talking to a psychiatrist in our emergency room. She told the story of a very difficult bipolar patient who ended up telling the nurse how grateful she was for her help. Seeing the joy on the nurse's face as she told the story cultivated the joy in my heart as I thought about how good it felt to be recognized for our work, which is difficult and often unrewarded.
The last quality, equanimity, pulls everything together. It contains the best of all other properties
Equanimity works with our hearts to create a calm, impartial mind that can maintain compassion, loving-kindness and sympathetic joy without being immersed in poisonous positivity or unable to let go when the time is right.
Equanimity founds us in an open heart that does not depend on how things should be, but can accept things as they are. My teacher Roshi Joan Halifax describes this as a firm back and a soft front. She also jokingly says that the current agenda is subject to reality.
These are difficult times, and it is important that you give yourself permission to feel all emotions freely and completely so that you can expand the swing of the pendulum of emotions.
And with the support of sympathetic joy, joy becomes more fulfilling. With compassion and loving kindness, we can bring in the reality of impermanence and focus on the things that really matter because we haven't stopped them from believing we have more time or it won't happen to us.
Below I have shared some meditations on each of the four limitless homes that you can use to cultivate these traits in your own life in this difficult time.
Kindness: May I accept all my feelings with an open heart and know that I am not restricted by them.
May I be filled with love and kindness equally to myself and others.
Compassion: May I and all beings be free from suffering.
May I recognize the truth of impermanence for myself and all beings.
Sympathetic joy: May I feel your joy as my own and my joy extends to all beings.
May I find peace and well-being so that I can serve others.
Equanimity: May I accept everything as it is, with an open heart and open mind, free of judgments.
May I be able to let go of expectations and accept things as they unfold.
About Paula Stephens
Paula Stephens, M.A. is a speaker, author, yogi, and founder of Crazy Good Grief. She is studying to be recognized as a Buddhist chaplain and is currently working as a volunteer chaplain and yoga teacher in a prison near her home in Denver, Colorado. She is also hospice chaplain, wellness coach and ERYT yoga instructor.
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