O Lord, you have searched me and known me

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb… (Psalm 139: 1, 13)

I lost my mother when I was very young. I learned to live with her absence, but the deep well of grief hardened as the years went by and I lived a “split existence.” On the outside, I went to school, earned good grades, had friends. But on the inside, loneliness, fear, anger, frustration, and unending sadness haunted me.

I felt a deep yearning to become the mother that I didn’t have. When my children were born, I felt overwhelming love, wonder, and appreciation, sensing that perhaps my mother, wherever she might be, was encouraging me. But within a few months, I was overwhelmed and exhausted, fearful or uncertain about what to do and what not to do. I was a practicing Christian (after a long period away), prayed daily, and attended worship services frequently. Yet no matter how often I prayed the 23rd Psalm and Lord’s Prayer, I could find no relief from the overwhelming emotions of fear, anger, and self doubt. 

Motherhood cracked open the chasm of buried pain about the loss of my mother. My faith was “strong” but I could not access the spiritual power I needed to navigate my world of mothering two young children. I had fallen into a deep well, what seemed an unbridgeable gap between my belief in God and my capacity to trust God.

One day I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, with the double stroller and my little ones in tow. I was vaguely scanning the section on religion, and a series of book titles caught my attention: Start Where You Are, When Things Fall Apart, The Places That Scare You, and my favorite, The Wisdom of No Escape. In the following weeks, I returned to that bookshelf, magnetically drawn to these titles. I discovered they were all written by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun. Spontaneously, I began repeating the words of the titles over and over throughout my daily life. An unfamiliar peace came over me. Little did I know that my Buddhist practice had begun. 

It was several months before I actually opened the pages of these books. I suffered from a hefty dose of Christian teaching that warned against investigating other religions. When I gathered up my courage to ignore the Christian teaching and tap into the profound wisdom that lay within the pages, I discovered a whole new world: a set of teachings and suggestions that helped me enter and navigate my inner world, which was so full of fear, doubt, and emotional chaos, with wisdom and compassion.

Pema Chodron’s teaching became a lifeline. She suggested beginning by breathing, inhale and exhale, and paying attention to that, just that: inhale and exhale. The extraordinary power of this simple technique helped reduce my anxiety. An inner sense of space replaced the tightness I felt in my body. The hardened inner walls within me softened, and I grieved my mother’s loss. I felt the pain of her absence, my disappointment and frustration at not having a mother. My tears subsided, and a newfound sense of acceptance emerged. For the first time, I appreciated my love for my children and the fierce determination to be a wonderful mother. I was learning to build trust, in small steps, one step at a time. Trust in myself, in Life, and in God. 

Books and tapes from Pema Chodron became daily companions. I came to recognize my strength, resilience, and courage. I learned to hold the tension between my deep love for my children and the pain of living in the shadow of an absent parent. The challenges and responsibilities of parenting were overwhelming. I became willing to ask for and receive help. For the first time in my life, I was experiencing an inner sense of safety. 

My Buddhist practice began in a Barnes & Noble bookstore. It continues this day, over thirty years later. Besides Pema Chodron, Buddhist teachers Sharon Salzberg and Tara Brach have made a profound impact on my practice. Each offers a doorway toward healing, helping me grow in my capacity to live Life more fully, within me, with others and with God. 

DEEPENING CHRISTIAN FAITH WITH BUDDHIST PRACTICE

Christians live with a painful dichotomy. Scripture emphasizes the importance of the inner world — what scripture calls “the heart” — the terrain where we encounter the meeting of God within our very being. Yet much Christian teaching either ignores the fullness of “the heart” (our interior life) or instills a sense of shame toward human emotions, desires, and the human body as the place of sin. Rather than offer clear guidance about how to navigate our inner terrain, Christian teachers emphasize doctrine over direct experience of spiritual reality, and belief in concepts over trust in the lived experience of the transcendent Christ. 

How can Buddhism help Christians? Buddhism meditation helps us experience the deep interconnectedness within all Life and shines light on how we experience ourselves and the world. Buddhist practice encourages us to question our experience and what we believe, including our doubts and fears. This is not to form us as “Buddhists” but to encourage us to face the truth of who we are, what we most value and believe is true. For Christians, this guidance can lead to a deeper, more tangible sense of God’s presence. We gain a sense of groundedness and authenticity in faith about who Jesus Christ is and how we relate to Him (or Her). 

We transform our experience of life as we deepen attention to our inner world. This journey into the heart demands our willingness to be vulnerable, and we may not welcome our vulnerability. We may believe that vulnerability is a sign of “weakness” and our task is to be (or at least appear) strong. We may build an array of defenses to “keep us safe”, which means keeping vulnerability hidden. And yet the path of Jesus IS the path of vulnerability, the path that reveals the “true self”.

As we explore our inner landscape, we discover a rich terrain of feelings, thoughts, fantasies, dreams, and yearnings. We learn to explore our experience by examining the internal effect of it. For example, if I’m angry, I can ask myself questions like “What thoughts come up with this anger?” We may notice a stream of thoughts, like “he/she has no right to do that!” Or: “I’m such an idiot for doing such-and-such!” Or: “This is a useless waste of time!”) We can ask, “What body sensations do I feel with this anger?” Perhaps we feel tightness in the chest, throat, or shoulders; heat or cold; a movement of energy; a sense of power. “Are there other feelings that go along with this anger?” We may discover fear, sadness, disappointment, or frustration are hiding just behind the anger. 

This process of self-examination slows down our inner experience. We relax a little, breathe more easily, and discover more clearly what our experience of “anger” is. As this happens, we have more “room” to make conscious choices about how to view our situation and what actions to take or not take. This differs from an experience of anger, which leads us to action that we later regret. Action that is motivated by unexamined emotions is among the most common causes of harm to self and/or others. Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg says: “Tuning in to yourself is the first step toward tuning in to others.” (Faith)

Most of us experience inner judgments toward our inner experience, judging some thoughts and emotions as “good” and others as “bad.” We construct these judgements out of (often well-meaning) messages from parents, care-givers and teachers, especially religious teachers, and cultural norms. These messages are often well-meaning, to help us “be good”, “accepted”, and to “belong.” This is what my grandmother intended, when she urged me to “be good” so that “I would go to heaven rather than hell.” (2/9/23: https://incarnation-place.com/)  

Jesus commands us to love God and love our neighbor as God loves us. In our desire to fulfill this command, we strive to be “more loving”. As St. Paul observed centuries ago, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15) The problem is that pushing away non-loving thoughts only serves to push the thoughts away from awareness. It does not eliminate the energy that fuels the thoughts. Rather, this negative energy becomes more powerful. We become afraid of our thoughts and emotions, afraid of who we are. And we redouble our efforts to “look good”, keeping hidden the parts of us we deem unacceptable (non-loving feelings). We remain caught in a double bind: wanting to be good, fearing that we’re not, perpetually trying to be someone other than who we are — human beings who experience a full range of inner thoughts and feelings. These inner patterns take many forms and go on day after day over a lifetime. 

Tending to the “heart” builds a compassionate inner presence for our own inner being, especially for the parts of our experience that frighten, frustrate, or disappoint us. This heart path says, “Do not fear any of your experience. Treat everything, especially thoughts and feelings that may be uncomfortable, with compassionate attention.” The more this compassionate attention grows, the more we can examine the parts of ourselves that we do not want to see, all the ways we turn away from God, away from the path of love for neighbor. This may seem paradoxical: becoming more loving to ourselves helps us know our sin more clearly. 

Christianity has a long tradition of attention to the inner world, mostly behind the cloistered walls of monasteries. Like so much within Christianity, this has changed dramatically in recent decades. Powerful voices, including Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, Fr. Thomas Keating was a well-known priest and Trappist monk, and Father Thomas J. Ryan have brought forward Christian approaches for meditation and Yoga. Their work is changing the landscape of Christianity and has helped me enormously. I will offer reflections on my experience with specifically “Christian meditation” in a future blog post.

Whatever path we take, tending to the heart is an essential ingredient of the spiritual life, in Christianity, Buddhism or other major religious traditions. This is not only about our own healing, but is an essential ingredient in offering compassion to a suffering world. Pema Chodron counsels: “Only when we know our own darkness well, can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.

BUDDHIST RESOURCES

If you are interested in exploring Buddhist practices, listed below are some that may be helpful especially for Christians. These are western teachers, drawn to Buddhism early in life, and spent years studying in India, Thailand, Burma, China, and other eastern countries. These teachers help primarily western audiences learn Buddhist principles and meditative practices to facilitate healing, individually and in community. Each teacher offers an array of books, talks, and on-line and in person workshops and retreats:

Pema Chodron.  Pema Chödrön was born in 1936 in New York City. She is an ordained nun in the American Tibetan-Buddhist tradition and was a principal student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (founder of Naropa Institute (now University) in 1974). Pema Chodron has written several dozen books and audiobooks, and is the principal teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. Her talks are widely available on tube and other streaming platforms. For more information: The Pema Chodron Foundation website: https://pemachodronfoundation.org/ 

Sharon Salzberg.  Sharon Salzberg was born in New York City in 1952, and in 1970 began several years of Buddhist studies in India and Burma. In 1976, she co-founded (with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield) the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. Sharon is a popular teacher of Buddhist meditation, known for teaching loving kindness meditation to adults, teens, and younger children and in specialized groups such as medical professionals, abuse victims, teachers and many others. She is a popular speaker and has facilitated many research studies on the impact of meditation on health and the intersection of meditation and the cognitive sciences. She is a prolific author and has a down-to-earth style that makes Buddhist practice easily accessible to everyone. Sharon hosts The Metta Hour podcast. Her website: https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/ 

Tara Brach.  Tara Brach was born in upstate New York and lived for ten years in a yoga spiritual community. She attended her first Buddhist Insight Meditation retreat, led by Joseph Goldstein, and has been studying, practicing and teaching ever since. Tara holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and her teaching integrates Buddhist meditation practice with psychological insights. She founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C. in 1998 and is a popular and widely known teacher, retreat leader, and author. Tara has a gentle way of bringing compassionate attention to all aspects of our inner climate, especially the parts we would rather avoid like fear, anger, shame, and the “trance of unworthiness.” She and Jack Kornfield lead the Awareness Training Institute, which offers courses on the practice and training of mindfulness and compassion, and recently co-founded Cloud Sangha. Tara hosts the Tara Brach podcast. For more information: https://www.tarabrach.com/ 

Jon Kabat-Zinn.  Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. was born in 1944 in New York City. He is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded its Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic in 1979, and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM), in 1995. Jon Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhism, and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of yoga and studies with Buddhist teachers led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. More than anyone else, Jon Kabat-Zinn has crafted the practice of “mindfulness meditation” without the specific language of Buddhism, while remaining faithful to essential Buddhist principles of compassionate wisdom. His work with a global community of colleagues has brought mindfulness into mainstream institutions such as medicine, psychology, health care, neuroscience, schools, higher education, business, social justice, criminal justice, prisons, the law, technology, the military, government, and professional sports. He is a popular teacher and prolific author of books and articles, and host of the JKZ App. For more information:  https://jonkabat-zinn.com/about/jon-kabat-zinn/