Debra Chamberlin-Taylor

This meditation and talk was recorded at Monday Night Meditation and Talk on Monday, September 26, 2022.

Mettā, learning to love ourselves, connects to joy and to great openings—some of the deepest truths. When we practice mettā, we're not creating love or joy, we are uncovering our loving and joyful nature that’s already right here. We're not collecting goodness points that we gather up to become good, we’re uncovering and reconnecting with the innate goodness that is our deepest nature. And as we accept ourselves, we can accept others. As we make more room in ourselves for all of our humanness—there becomes more space, more room, for others to also be human.

Inspired by the Buddha’s teaching that the whole of the Dharma can be found “in this fathom-long body,” Debra leads a gentle, heart-centered body scan, awakening a deep sense of presence and kindness through softening into sensation and the life of the body as it is. This meditation was given on day 2 of the 2019 Awakening Joy retreat.

The cause of suffering isn’t that we’re in these bodies that get sick and old. It’s grasping and fighting with the way things are that brings about suffering. Even here, in the midst of this realm where everything changes, and there can be loss and disappointment—in the middle of all this, freedom is possible when we open and let go. Joy is possible. As we open and let go, we give up fighting against life. The Buddha said that there is no greater joy than the joy of freedom. He’s talking about this freedom, that real deep freedom that comes through letting go.