Buddhism is filled with stories about bravery. We’ve talked about some of them - Milarepa sticking his head into the mouth of a demon, the Buddha sitting still while Maras threatened him with swords and spears - and there are hundreds more.
There are hundreds of modern examples of bravery too.. From oppressed people standing up to their oppressors every day, to the crippled guy I saw yesterday driving his wheelchair down the sidewalk. I was talking about this with my wife and she said “Like how you didn’t react when that drunk spilled beer on you last night.”
One thing that the tellers of these stories make clear is that bravery is not the absence of fear or feeling. It is the ability to stay present in the face of those feelings. To experience fear or threat or anger and not run away.
Not to delude ourselves that we can’t be hurt, but to look the experience right in the eyes and not blink.
Another thing these stories have in common is that they are about the hero doing the right thing - or not doing anything at all - in ways that make the situation better...
There are many meditation practices that can help us develop bravery. In my experience, the most powerful one is sitting meditation. It has been powerful for thousands of years, but it’s especially powerful now.
As you know, in sitting meditation, we take time away from all the external activities of our life. We have this ritual - every Tuesday and Thursday - maybe more often, where we don’t check our phone every single goddamn minute that our hands are available to do so.
Instead, we tune into what else is happening - our room, the trees, the smell of the air, each other, and our internal life. This is where we develop some bravery.
When we turn our attention from the external world, which we’ve done our best to arrange in a way that confirms our sense of ourselves, to our internal world, we often find a big difference. On the outside we might appear like we have our act together. But inside we have all these thoughts swirling around in chaotic and repetitive patterns. Our outside world is solid and reliable - even if it’s boring, our favorite chair is always in the same place every morning. But our internal experience swirls with thoughts that feel out of control and random.
We can’t even find our breath for a couple of minutes! When we stop distracting ourselves with activities and sit down to meditate, we realize we can’t even just simply experience the feeling of our breathing for a couple minutes! It’s humiliating!
Then we do find our breath and actually feel it for a bit... which feels really good! But then we just go back to thinking about lunch or that 3rd grade bully or what I’m going to do when I retire. It’s crazy! I’m missing my life! It’s slipping away from me while I daydream about stuff that happened 40 years ago!
What’s all this got to do with bravery you might ask.
Sitting meditation is the best way I’ve found to develop bravery because when all these thoughts, feelings, frustrations and fears come up, we just sit there. We don’t respond in the normal way, by reacting in our familiar patterns to these experiences. We don’t feed the fear by running away, lashing out or closing our eyes.
We just sit. Sometimes we can label our thoughts and return to our breath. Sometimes I’ve felt like I’m clinging to my cushion like a drowning man would cling to a piece of driftwood in a storm. And frankly sometimes we can’t deal with it and we get up and go outside.
And it's not just about sitting practice. We can be with ourselves when we are not meditating too. When we are walking the dog. Or waiting in line. Or sitting in traffic. Or waiting for the meeting to begin... We can develop bravery throughout the day.
So that when the moment arises, and the fear comes up, we can be present and respond - or stay quiet - in the way that makes the situation better.
Ok let’s practice.