Balance | Compassion | Clarity
The Five INVITATIONS
The below highlights our most important lesson we continue to learn. We don’t need to have all the answers – we simply can’t.
The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski, Founder & Director, Metta Institute
A while back, I developed five precepts as companions on the journey of accompanying the dying. Perhaps they have relevance in other dimensions of life and can offer some inspiration and guidance. I think of these as five bottomless practices that can be continually explored and deepened. They are not linear and have no value as theories or concepts. To be understood and realized, they have to be lived into and communicated through action.
The First Invitation: Welcome Everything – Push Away Nothing
In welcoming everything, we don’t have to like what’s arising. It’s actually not our job to approve or disapprove. It’s our task to trust, to listen and to pay careful attention to the changing experience. At the deepest level, we are being asked to cultivate a kind of fearless receptivity. This is a journey of continuous discovery in which we will always be entering new territory. We have no idea how it will turn out, and it takes courage and flexibility. We find a balance. The journey is a mystery we need to live into, opening, risking and forgiving constantly.
The Second Invitation: Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience
In the process of healing others and ourselves we open to both our joy and fear. In the service of this healing we draw on our strength and helplessness, our wounds and our passion to discover a meeting place with the other. Professional warmth doesn’t heal. It is not our expertise but the exploration of our own suffering that enables us to be of real assistance. That’s what allows us to touch another human being’s pain with compassion instead of with fear and pity. We have to invite it all in. We can’t travel with others in territory that we haven’t explored ourselves. It is the exploration of our own inner life that enables us to form an empathetic bridge to the other person.
The Third Invitation: Don’t Wait
Patience is different from waiting. When we wait, we are full of expectations. When we’re waiting, we miss what this moment has to offer. Worrying or strategizing about what the future holds for us, we miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. Waiting for the moment of death, we miss so many moments of living. Don’t wait. If there’s someone you love, tell him or her that you love them. Allow the precarious nature of this life to show you what’s most important – then enter fully.
The Fourth Invitation: Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things
We often think of rest as something that will come when everything else is complete, like when we go on a holiday or when our work is done. We imagine that we can only find rest by changing the conditions of our life. But it is possible to discover rest right in the middle of chaos. It is experienced when we bring our full attention, without distraction, to this moment, to this activity. This place of rest is always available. We need only turn toward it. It’s an aspect of us that’s never sick, is not born and does not die.
The Fifth Invitation: Cultivate Don’t Know Mind
This describes a mind that’s open and receptive. A mind that’s not limited by agendas, roles and expectations. The great Zen priest and teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi was fond of saying, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” From this vantage point we realize that “not knowing is most intimate.” Understanding this we stay very close to the experience allowing the situation itself to inform our actions. We listen carefully to our own inner voice, sensing our urges and trusting our intuition. We learn to look with fresh eyes.
Deeper Dive: Don’t Know Mind
Don’t know? We’re doulas! We should know everything!
Not so fast. In fact, not at all!
Frank Ostaseski suggests that a “don’t know mind” is a mind that’s open and receptive. It’s a mind that’s not limited. Zen priest and teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, was fond of saying: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts there are few.”
When we come into the room of a dying person, filled with “our knowing,” our vision of the possibilities is obscured – limited by our preconceived thoughts about the experience. This can distance us from the person we’re serving. Imagine if we could come into the room of a dying person with “don’t know mind,” with fresh eyes, free of agendas, expectations or limitations – how would that change the experience?
As noted in The Fifth Invitation above, “not knowing is most intimate.” When we don’t know, we have to stay very close to the experience. We have to allow the situation itself to inform our actions. It’s like going into a very dark cave without a flashlight. You have to feel your way along the wall to discover the path.
Just so with the dying. We try to remain open without preconceptions, feeling our way along – inch by inch – moment to moment, remaining receptive, flexible and carefully observing the changing needs. Listening carefully also to our own inner voice. Sensing our urges. Trusting our intuition.
Our willingness to “not know” is at times our greatest asset. The degree to which we are able to live in this ever-fresh moment – that’s the measure of our ability to be of real service.
Cultivate “don’t know mind.”