Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better

Join me as I share my struggle finding some peace in the midst of the uncertainties that have chased us from 2020 into 2021. Despite our urge to run, hide, strike out, or curl up in a ball, as Buddhists we need to remember that the Buddha never promised a rose garden. The Buddha never promised an ordered universe. He said life is suffering because we grasp to life being something other than it is. There's a post-modern paradigm that life keeps getting better and better due to technological and scientific progress. In some ways it does. But not without a little disorder. We need ways to navigate the disorder to some sense of reorder, without running back to the old order ... to our old "normal." We can do that with our minds. The Buddha made that promise through the first of the Noble Eightfold Path: Right View or Right Understanding.

In this episode we are continuing our "How I'm Coping" series but with a bit of a different twist. I've brought together two podcast listeners who expressed a different perspective on how they are coping with the pandemic. Both of them come to their current coping abilities through previous "practice" as people with serious long-term health issues. We share many of the challenges, frustrations, fear, and daily uncertainties that come with serious chronic and/or progressive diseases and injury. This is just the sort of uncertainty and lack of control that we have all felt during the pandemic. We are still trying to understand how to cope with this uncertainty the pandemic has thrust upon us but our guests, Dr. Kelly Lockwood and William Seiyo Shehan Sensei, have navigated these challenges for many years due to their illness and injuries. Those with disabilities and chronic illnesses are easily overlooked in our "power-through" culture. This pandemic has highlighted how easily forgotten the aged and those with chronic illness and disabilities have become while the rest of the world rushes to get back to a "normal" that those with chronic illness will never regain.

In this podcast, we'll explore finding ways to say "thank you" in this time of loss, fear, despair, and uncertainty. I take some time reflecting on the Buddhist teachings of the gift of our "precious human life." Our lives are a gift. We did not plan, arrange, or have any control in making our births happen. We were gifted them. And, for that gift, despite how rocky our lives sometimes seem, we say "thank you!" Listen to how you can use mindful awareness to shift your focus to what's in front of you ... to "just this". Sitting in "just this", you are relieved of your endless wants, worries, dramas, AND sadness. From that place, you can connect to a place of freedom where your heart softens around your fears and joys, and you can relax in the whole of life—if only for a few minutes.

Join me in conversation with Kimberly Brown as we discuss her new book, Steady, Calm and Brave, a handbook of healing tools to help us through the fraught times of 2020—and beyond. In a delightfully honest and personal conversation, Kimberly shares how seeing students, friends, neighbors, and family afraid, disheartened, and sad, at the beginning of the pandemic was the motivation for writing the book. Kimberly shares her personal experience with trauma and how metta, body-based, and self-compassion Buddhist and pyschotherapeutic practices helped heal her and formed the intention for her to become a teacher of these practices. The practices Kimberly shares are a true Bodhisattva offering. She explains her motivation to not only reduce stress, deal with difficult emotions, and care for yourself and your loved ones, but to help recognize your gifts of deep wisdom, compassion, and courage. And these gifts will animate "your words, actions, and presence...to help reveal our healthy and equitable world. Remember, only everyone can save us—and we're everyone."

"When you look around you it feels like the world is going crazy.... Is this normal or have we all fallen under some spell?" ~Tristan Harris In this episode I take a Buddhist view on the spell we've fallen under—and it is the spell of a self-involved culture, swallowed by social media and focused on the hatred of "the other." We are largely living in a world of the extremes of ignorance and false certainty. "The more fixed we get about things, the more confusion, emotional disturbance, and conflict we experience," according to Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel. Nothing or no one is a fixed, discrete thing. Everything is empty of inherent existence. When you fix a difficult person, a political side, or sociopolitical view, you are creating something that doesn't actually exist. Shantideva said: "Thus, when enemies of friends are seen to act improperly, be calm and call to mind that everything arises from conditions."

Join me for the first of a series of interviews with podcast listeners on how they are coping with the pandemic. In this episode, David Farley, a travel and food writer who lives in New York City, joins me for a conversation. David wrote a blog post where he mused about our seeming missing future. He wrote: We can't envision what life is going to be like in, say, a year or what we'll be doing.... It's seriously anxiety-producing for many of us.... The only way we can maneuver, even survive without eventually imploding, is to change our outlook on life and the world. And reality. Listen for more of this thoughtful conversation with David where he shares his understanding of Buddhist teachings and his refuge in them. And listen for how you can share what you've learned as an upcoming podcast guest!

Announcing a new Everyday Buddhism feature for the Membership Community: A lecture series/workshop on mindful writing! In this series I hope to introduce you to a new way of practicing mindfulness through writing. As Gary Snyder wrote, meditation can put you totally into the world even as it takes you out of it. Mindfulness and meditation are practices of deliberate attention that can create a spacious awareness of what is and help us escape the narrow box in our heads where the thinker lives. Focusing in on what is at any one moment doesn't narrow our awareness but, instead, opens us up to what is outside our concepts of self and what we 'think' we are seeing. This will not be 'writing course' but a practice of engaged seeing, hearing, and feeling with the objective of capturing moments and expressing them through writing. This does not mean you need to be a poet, nor a writer. If you would like to join the Everyday Buddhism Membership Community and continue your participation in this virtual workshop on mindful writing, you can do so at this link: https://www.everyday-buddhism.com/join-community-or-sangha.html

Join me as I share some insights from an article by Tara Haelle, Your Surge Capacity is Depleted—It's Why You Feel Awful, and some insights of my own, that may help you find new attitudes and practices to help you keep going. Help you go the distance of this pandemic, even though we don't know how long that distance is—or what's at the end. This time of ambiguous loss can cause feelings of helplessness and hopelessness because our solution-oriented culture is actually destructive when faced with a problem that has no solution. Instead we need to look at things differently and do things differently. The end isn't in sight but that doesn't mean we give up. We just need to find new ways to keep going. This podcast should help...PLUS keep listening to find ways YOU, as a podcast listener, can share some of the ways you are coping through these troubled times.

We're currently faced with a global pandemic, which reminds us how uncertain life really is. So what do we do? How do we cope? Join me in conversation with Gregg Krech, who uses the concepts of acceptance—active acceptance—to understand how we can't take effective action until we've accepted the reality of the situation we're in. Gregg talks about how a large portion of the population has not accepted the situation and others whose impatience pushes them to make bad decisions. Is there another way? We talk about 6 action steps we can take to reach deep within ourselves to find capabilities that may have been sleeping for a long time. They are: - Waking up to our faith or true entrusting - Working with our attention - Sharpening our skills of reflecting on ourselves - Recognizing the blessings that we encounter throughout the day - Act constructively and compassionately in the face of fear - Find something purposeful and meaningful to live for each day

Join me for a short episode check-in and sharing of how I am taking personal action despite living in our current reality of uncertainty. Awakening to the fact that I was spending too much time anxiously looking "out there" at what was or could be coming ... or focusing on the horrible feelings inside me, I decided to turn my personal boat around. As Gregg Krech of the ToDo Institute reminds us "Everyone is dealing with losses but ultimately it's an individual thing.... It's not a mass issue. It's your personal situation and attachment." How are you doing as the navigator and pilot of your own boat? Listen for some questions for reflection. And if you have questions about how to cope with these uncertain times email them to wendyshinyo@everyday-buddhism.com with the subject line "Question for Gregg" and Gregg Krech, one of the leading authorities of Japanese Psychology will do his best to answer them in an upcoming podcast episode.