Choices

Last night, at our weekly Dharma Gathering of the Israel Shambhala Meditation Group, we practiced contemplative meditation with short excerpts from Pema Chodron's talk on Practicing Peace in Times of War. Here are the phrases that we used as our objects of meditation:

* War and Peace begin at the level of the human heart. War is the result of hardening the heart. Peace is softening what is rigid in the heart

* We all experience a chain reaction:
- Something happens that causes us to feel uncomfortable
- Something inside us shuts down
- We fan this pain with our thoughts
This is a chain reaction of misery and suffering

* A change of heart requires courage. When we don't do the habitual thing of hardening the heart and holding on to views and opinions, we stay with the basic discomfort that we felt. Here begins the courage- to stay with the soft spot, the uncomfortable place. These are the seeds of peace.

These were the three contemplations that we practiced with. Contemplative practice begins with hearing the phrase, remembering the words and coming back to them, almost like saying them to ourselves internally. Then we allow our thoughts, images, reflections, reactions, etc, to come up in relation to the phrase, examining their meaning and mixing them with our own inner experience. We do this for a while. What may happen is that from this rubbing against the words and their meaning, we experience a certain atmosphere, or ambience, or non-verbal sense of the deep meaning of the phrase, beyond the words. We can stay with this deep experiential understanding, letting our mind rest within in.

This was last night.
Today, I am left with an impression from our practice session. It is quite simple, but feels deeply relevant to so many moments of the day:

We have a choice. We can close down, and we can open up.

Again and again, we can close down- harden the heart, strengthen this hardening with thoughts and rigid opinions, blaming, hating, declaring people as "bad" and "good", villians and saints, self-hate and guilt (a big and tricky way of closing down and hiding out).
And we can soften, and open up, let go of the cowardly rush to slam shut the feelings of uncertainty, fear, pain, helplessness, regret, despair, by the above methods, and many more. We can stay open, or re-open, or at least see the closing down for what it is- a painful habit, based on a reaction to fear, a reaction that itself is founded on forgetting the basic sanity and health of this very moment.

Open up, or close down. Of course, we will do both. I do, over and over again. But knowing that this is the dynamic, and- so important- learning that I have a choice, is the best news that is not making the headlines.

Practicing Peace in Times of War, is the name of Pema's talks (and book, and public programs). What a breathtakingly appropriate phrase, for these days, but for any day, any place. Right now.