Gift of Lovingkindness Group
Transcript of the Interview with Sylia Boorstein (Part 2)
The below is the transcript of the final Part (2) of the interview with Sylvia Boorstein
Please note that the transcript is slightly edited for flow purposes.
Interview Questions (Part 2):
Q6: How do you practice on a daily basis?
Q7: What keeps you motivated to practice every day?
Q8: For a person who is new to meditation, what is the best way to approach/introduce lovingkindness in your practice?
Q9: What has influenced your most spiritually in your life?
Q10: Is there are specific passage or quote that has influenced you?
Q11: Do you have a message for the Group?
Syliva:
I do try to have a formal practice every morning. Sometimes I just sit (and do mindfulness meditation), sometimes I sit and do formal metta meditation, often I do both…I also like to think as the whole of my life as an arena for practice. People ask me what percentage of time do you practice mindfulness and what percentage do you practice lovingkindness, and I tell them 100% of the day both. People laugh, but this is not a joke, what I mean to say is that during the whole of the day….I am noticing what is the climate of my heart and what is the climate of my mind…. I stay particularly attuned to noticing when the climate of my mind and heart has been filled with an afflict of emotion such as when I think of something that someone said and I think of something that I might say back… then I realize “I am in pain”. It is… an awareness of unpleasant mindstates that catches my attention.. . Then I say “wait a minute- let’s take a breath- let’s take another breath- let’s choose something else to do… I am very excited about the idea that we can catch the mind in “mid movement” to an “unwholesome” or “unhappy mindstate”.
Sylvia:
What happens is that if I don’t keep (the awareness and lovingkindess) as a focus of my attention, I fall into an afflicted state and I will allow my mind to be filled with distress and despair or irritation or anger or lust and envy, and I won’t notice that it has fallen into that state until I actually quite suffer from it… then I realize “whow, look what happened to me?”. The antidote is to cultivate a warm and cordial and compassionate relationship to myself (to say): “sweetheart, you are in pain, stop! do something else”. I tell people it is very important that I say “sweetheart” because I do not want to make myself wrong from falling into disrepair. When the mind is broadsided by some unexpected, inconvenience it often responds with annoyance, anger, irritation and envy, something that is “uncomfortable”…it is that catching of this discomfort that is important… and the first thing I can do is wish myself well (with phrases like): “may I feel content, may I feel strong, may I live with ease”. It is amazing how catching the mind and wishing myself can divert it…you have the sense sometimes my mind is in such a (bad) state, I never get it around in good shape, but the good shape is really (only) a thought and a breath away.
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Sylvia:
I think what Sharon taught me now 20 years ago… the traditional way of starting with a very simple blessing of starting with oneself, starting with one’s best friends or someone’s benefactor… sometimes people find that they have a very easy entry into the lovingkindness practice by starting not with themselves but with all the beings of the world and think “may they all feel safe, may they all feel content, may they all be strong, may they all live with ease”- ….Everybody can find their door that is most easy for them to enter.
Sylvia:
I would have answered this differently had you asked me this question 5 years ago, 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Today, what is influencing me most, is realizing how heroic people are…. Life is so difficult for everybody, even without the catastrophic events that happen to people, there are so many challenges to equanimity in the mind, so many challenges to feeing ok. What I think we want most of all as human beings is to feel safe and content and strong and at ease…it is so hard to feel that.- not to say that we do not sometimes feel at ease and be content, but it so easy to have that contentment challenged and so often it is challenged not in small ways.. but in major ways; but people nevertheless carry on… When I look at a room full of people… that many of those people are struggling with an illness with a loss of hope or dream or a relationship or someone that they care about is in trouble… I look up and realize that all those people in the room got up in the morning put on their shoes and went on with life…. I am so inspired by the heroism of human beings and by the goodness of human beings.
On Thanksgiving I went to the Salvation Army in San Francisco…there was an opportunity for people to take thanksgiving meals and deliver them (to people who cannot leave their home). The part that moved me so much was that we got there very very early, about an hour early and the room was already full of people who had come to drive. I started to cry and said to myself, people are so good, they are so good...
Sylvia:
The group may want to know that when I travel to teach I do not take any books or papers or material with me. I make up my talks when I get there, but I do carry one piece of paper with me. One of them is the Metta Sutta, the Buddhist teaching on lovingkindness, one of them is the poem on keeping quite on Pablo Nerude and one is kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye. I have them all printed on a single sheet of paper and these are the things I have with me.
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Sylvia:
Yes I do. One of the things that I think is most wonderful is that I think companions are a huge part of practice. One of the lines of the Buddha that inspires me a lot, a conversation when Ananda (his chief disciple) asked: “is it true that noble friends are half of the holy life”, and the Buddha said to have replied: “No it is not true, noble friends are the whole of the holy life”- that is how I would like to end it.