Everyday Buddhism 58: Allow Joy - Chan Practice for Uncertain Times

Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better

Join me for a conversation—and a gentle teaching—with one of the most clear and inspiring teachers I've met. Rebecca Li, the author of Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times, talks with me about her new book and the inspiration behind it.

I used her book—and will continue to use it—to help pull myself from falling into a dark world in my mind and a heart, as a response to the suffering of the pandemic and all the fear and mistrust that came with it.

When suffering arises, Rebecca teaches us "how to suffer better." She teaches us to use a practice of total clear awareness to suffer better by knowing that we're suffering. It is the remembering to come back to practice, for the mind to come back to the body, that allows fear or sadness to move through you and not bury itself in you.

And she teaches us not to focus just on the positive as a way to flee from the pain of suffering. That, she says, is a "form of violence to ourselves." Listen to an easy conversation with Rebecca Li, who provides insight into practicing with an "unbiased view of everything that comes before you."