Model of conscious leadership.

As a dharma practitioner on the path we can often times struggle to integrate our meditation with our daily life. Training in mind and awareness cultivates a state of preparedness and responsiveness on the cushion that we slowly learn how to bring out into our daily activities. As we learn to work with this sense of preparedness, we need to learn how to live authentically and contribute meaningfully to the world around us. 

The five elements of conscious leadership create a framework to integrate your practice with your daily life. By working with each of these elements you encounter resistance and limits in your own body, mind and emotions. Pay attention to that resistance and hesitation. As you become familiar with each of these elements, you will see where you are grasping to aspects of your experience or shutting down. Acknowledging these obstacles and perceived barriers gives you something tangible to work with in your meditation. In this way, our meditation supports our daily life and our daily activities fuel our meditation.

The result of a practice that integrates both meditation and your daily life is a willingness to have an grounded, fluid and truthful connection with the world around us. We awaken to the very presence that dwells in the heart of the human condition. All of these elements are included within the single sphere of unborn bodhicitta, our ever-present primordial state of authentic presence that is open, available and responsive. 

Compassion, redefined.

I have spent a lot of time leading meditation workshops and discussions about compassion. Most people tend to focus on the action of compassion. Compassion means helping the homeless, feeding the hungry, tending to the sick. Compassion means doing. If you take the action out, then somehow compassion seems to fall away.

This type of compassion is results focused. It needs to demonstrate an impact. No impact, no meaning.

The Buddha taught this type of compassion as 'normal' compassion. This is the type of compassion that we have for our friends and family, and even to strangers in times of crisis or shared humanity. We see this type of compassion in certain mammals, this natural instinct to take care and nurture our loved ones for our own welfare and survival.

When we are trying to cultivate compassion in meditation, we are trying to cultivate unconditional compassion. This is compassion that is objectless and unbiased. For this type of unconditional compassion, we need a new definition of compassion.

Unconditional compassion is open, available and responsive.

It is open- receptive, accommodating, vulnerable.
It is available- present, alert, attentive.
It is responsive- dynamic, engaged, attuned.

Unconditional compassion is focused on being, not doing. Being open, available and responsive, we can offer others our attention and understanding, we can acknowledge the pain and suffering they are going through, we can stay with them through struggle and strife. Embodying this unconditional compassion, we can offer others our warmth, kindness and generosity, or we can simply be present, listen, and witness.

"I see you" and "I hear you" can be more powerful than offering a solution. Compassion doesn't always need to have an answer, we don't always need to provide a fix. Sometimes offering others dignity and understanding are enough.

We can learn to rest in a state of openness, availability and responsiveness. We can learn to rest in unbiased equanimity, allowing ourselves to witness our own pain and the suffering of others. We can learn to be patient with adversity and ugliness, to witness rather than react, to embrace rather than reject.

And we can learn to carry this openness, availability and responsiveness off the cushion. We can carry it into our homes, our communities and into the world. We can walk with openness, be present and available in the world, and respond and engage with the way things are.

Only so much room.

We all have our commitments that we have to honor and respect. 

We have jobs, families, friends.  We have to keep appointments and stay on top of our responsibilities.  We have bills and errands, workouts and walks in the park, babysitter's schedules and client timelines.  Of course we have email, Facebook, news and books.  And our practice (doesn't that come first;).    

We only have so much room in our day.  Only so much time we can actually give.

A part of my practice of compassion is the intention to be open and available at all times.  To be present, to give someone that space when they need it.

I fail all the time.  I'm failing now.

And that's the choice that we make over and over again.  Do we actually be present, open and available; or do we play out our own agenda, our own thoughts, our own story and interests.

We only have so much room, but we also decide where its walls are and who we let in. 

How do we knock down the walls?

The practice of compassion.

What do you think about when someone says to practice compassion?

Do you think about helping someone.  Lending a hand.  Tending to the suffering, feeding the hungry.  Do you think about a mother caring for her child.  A father picking up their child from an accident.

We tend to think of the practice of compassion as an act.

But what if the practice of compassion was to be open, available and responsive?  What if the act of compassion was to remain open, available and responsive?

The practice isn't about doing, it is about being.

Being open, available and responsive- you could help someone, lend a hand, tend to their suffering, feed them when they are hungry.

You could also simply maintain that space for them.  Be there, with them, not doing anything.  And not needing to.