Developing Balanced Sensitivity.pdf

DEVELOPING BALANCED SENSITIVITY

Practical Buddhist Exercises for Daily Life

Alexander Berzin

www.berzinarchives.com

Table of Contents

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

PART I: DEALING CONSTRUCTIVELY WITH SENSITIVITY

ISSUES

1 Identifying Sensitivity Imbalances

What Is Sensitivity?

Exercise 1: Identifying Sensitivity Imbalances

2 Quieting the Mind and Generating Care

Feasibility of Improvement

Required Skills

Meditation

Basic Approach

Order of Practice

Rational and Intuitive Approaches

Abbreviating the Training

Posture

Initial Procedures for Each Training Session

Procedures for Each Part of an Exercise

Concluding Procedures for Each Training Session

Nonlinear Progress

Exercise 2: Creating a Quiet, Caring Space

Creating a Quiet Mental Space

Creating a Caring Space

Forms of Hypersensitivity

Manifestations of Insensitivity

3 Imagining Ideal Sensitivity

Qualities Suggested by the Enlightening Networks

Forms of Sensitive Response

Qualities of Mind and Heart

Exercise 3: Imagining Ideal Sensitivity

Feeling Balanced Sensitivity Toward Someone in Person and

Toward Ourselves

4 Affirming and Accessing Our Natural Abilities

The Necessity for a Pragmatic Means

Buddha-Nature

Basis, Pathway, and Resultant Levels

Acknowledging Our Network of Positive Potential

Appreciating Our Network of Deep Awareness and Our Ability to Be

Inspired

Exercise 4: Affirming and Accessing Our Natural Abilities

5 Refraining from Destructive Behavior

The Need for Ethics

Definition of Destructive Behavior

Ten Destructive Actions

Motivation for Ethical Training

Exercise 5: Resolving to Refrain from Destructive Behavior

6 Combining Warmth with Understanding

The Necessity for Joint Development of Warmth and Understanding

Taking Others Seriously

Being Unafraid to Respond

Taking in All Information

Acting Straightforwardly

Refraining from Offering Unwanted or Unneeded Help

Exercise 6: Five Decisions for Combining Warmth with

Understanding

PART II: UNCOVERING THE TALENTS OF OUR MIND AND

HEART

7 Shifting Focus from Mind and from Ourselves to Mental Activity

Integrating Mind and Heart

Mind Is Not Some Physical Entity in Our Head

Mind as the Ever-changing Experience of Things

Individuality of Experience

Mind as an Unbroken Continuum

General Definition of Mind

Significance of the Definition of Mind for Sensitivity Issues

Exercise 7: Shifting Our Focus from Mind and from Ourselves to

Mental Activity

8 Appreciating the Clear Light Nature of Mental Activity

Mental Activity as Clear Light

Four Types of Clear Light Nature

Nothing Can Affect Mind’s Fourfold Clear Light Nature

Relevance of Clear Light to Issues of Sensitivity

Exercise 8: Appreciating the Clear Light Nature of Mental Activity

9 Accessing the Natural Talents of Our Mind and Heart

Clear Light Talents

Natural Concern to Take Care of Someone

The Relation Between Concern and Appearances

Natural Warmth and Joy

Exercise 9: Accessing the Natural Talents of Our Mind and Heart

10 Applying the Five Types Of Deep Awareness

Basic Description of the Five Types of Awareness

Mirror-like Awareness

Awareness of Equalities

Awareness of Individualities

Accomplishing Awareness

Awareness of Reality

The Five Types of Deep Awareness as an Integrated Network

Exercise 10: Applying the Five Types of Deep Awareness

PART III: DISPELLING CONFUSION ABOUT APPEARANCES

11 Validating the Appearances We Perceive

Statement of the Problem

Confirming the Conventional Validity of What We Sense

Validating the Deepest Fact of Reality According to the Self-Voidness

Position

Validating the Conventional and Deepest Facts of Reality According to

the

Other-Voidness Point of View

Accepting the Conventional Facts of Reality That We Validly Experi-

ence

Rejecting the Appearances That Contradict the Deepest Facts of Reality

Exercise 11: Validating the Appearances We Perceive

12 Deconstructing Deceptive Appearances

The Need for Deconstruction Methods

Focusing on Life’s Changes

Past and Future Lives

Raising Awareness of Parts and Causes

Using the Image of Waves on the Ocean

Three Forms of Compassion

Developing Compassion for Ourselves to Avoid Overreacting to Slow

Progress

13 Four Exercises for Deconstructing Deceptive Appearances

Exercise 12: Visualizing Life’s Changes

Exercise 13: Dissecting Experiences into Parts and Causes

Exercise 14: Seeing Experiences as Waves on the Ocean

Dispelling Nervous Self-consciousness with Others

Becoming More Relaxed with Ourselves

Exercise 15: Combining Compassion with Deconstruction

PART IV: RESPONDING WITH BALANCED SENSITIVITY

14 Adjusting Our Innate Mental Factors

Ten Mental Factors That Accompany Each Moment of Experience

The Spectrum These Innate Mental Factors Encompass

How These Factors Function During Moments of Insensitivity

Exercise 16: Adjusting Our Innate Mental Factors

Focusing These Factors on Others and on Ourselves

Gaining a Balanced View of Others and of Ourselves

15 Unblocking Our Feelings

Differentiating Various Aspects of Feelings

Feeling Some Level of Happiness or Sadness

Ridding Ourselves of Upsetting Feelings That Block Sensitivity

Overcoming Alienation from Feelings

Serenity and Equanimity as the Container for Balanced Feelings

Components of Sympathy

Feeling No Sympathy

Overcoming Fear of Unhappiness When Feeling Sympathy

The Relation Between Love and Happiness

Training to Respond to Problems with Nonupsetting Feelings

Exercise 17: Accepting Suffering and Giving Happiness

Helping Others and Ourselves to Overcome Insecurity

16 Making Sensitive Decisions

Feelings, Wishes, and Necessity

Reasons for Feeling Like Doing Something and Wanting to Do It

Choosing Between What We Want to Do and What We Feel Like

Doing

Doing What We Need to Do

Alienation from What We Want to Do or What We Feel Like Doing

Decision-Making

Not Identifying with What We Want to Do or Feel Like Doing

Not Knowing What We Want to Do or Feel Like Doing

Feelings and Intuition

Compromising Our Preferences for Those of Others

Saying No

Exercise 18: Making Sensitive Decisions

Epilogue

Bibliography

Preface to the First Edition

Buddha taught that life is difficult. Achieving emotional balance, for

example, or maintaining healthy relationships is never easy. We make these

challenges even more difficult than is necessary, however, for a variety of

reasons. Among them are lacking sensitivity in certain situations and

overreacting in others. Although Buddha taught many methods for over-

coming hardships in life, traditional Indian and Tibetan Buddhist texts do

not explicitly address the topic of sensitivity. This is because the Sanskrit

and Tibetan languages lack equivalent terms for insensitivity and hypersen-

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