How to Be Courageous | Stacy McClendon
Stacy McClendon, a teacher at Common Ground Meditation Center and social worker, discusses how meditation can cultivate courage. She explores the Buddhist Ten Paramis, how white people can act courageously, and how compassion is not weakness, advocating for "compassionate agitation" in addressing systemic issues.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction: Meditation, Courage, and George Floyd's Legacy
The Importance of Consistent Meditation Practice
Stacey McClendon's Experience Witnessing the George Floyd Trial
Cultivating Compassion for Those Who Cause Harm
Buddhist Perspective on Change and Accountability (Anguli Mala Story)
Engaged Buddhism: Bridging Personal Practice and Social Action
The Ten Paramis: A Framework for Ethical Living and Awakening
Generating Courage by Turning Towards Difficulty and Discomfort
Applying Mindfulness to Overcome Personal Fears (Elevator Analogy)
How White People Can Courageously Engage in Anti-Racism
Navigating Missteps and Judgment in Social Action
The Buddhist Concept of Collective Responsibility
Defining and Practicing 'Compassionate Agitation'
The Truth and Justice Vigils: Community Support and Dialogue
5 Key Concepts
Engaged Buddhism
Engaged Buddhism, for Stacey, means her practice is inseparable from daily life, bringing its fruits into the world through ethical living, kindness, respect, patience, and generosity. It involves fostering personal accountability and addressing social issues, aligning with the teachings to guide action in relationships.
The Ten Paramis
The Ten Paramis are a Buddhist list of 10 actionable qualities or perfections that lay practitioners can cultivate in their daily lives to achieve awakening. They include generosity, integrity, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity, serving as practical steps to embody the practice.
Turning Toward vs. Turning Away
This concept describes cultivating courage by actively facing difficulty and chaos instead of avoiding it. It involves recognizing fear, discerning whether it's an old, conditioned response, and setting it aside to allow for present-moment action and growth.
Collective Responsibility
The idea that humans are responsible for one another, moving away from extreme individualism towards a shared sense of belonging. It implies mutual care, generosity, and a willingness to support others, reflecting a communal ethos found in many cultures.
Compassionate Agitator
A compassionate agitator speaks truth directly about difficult or upsetting situations, not to cause discomfort, but to help others understand the impact of their actions. This approach involves pushing boundaries and asking challenging questions while maintaining care, interest, and respect for the other person's conditioning.
8 Questions Answered
Yes, meditation can boost your courage quotient by allowing practitioners to turn toward difficulty, recognize fear as old conditioning, and act with intention rather than being limited by fear.
No, compassion for those who have done harm is not weakness; it's about relating to another human being, understanding their circumstances, and holding them accountable while believing in their capacity to do better.
One can overcome passivity by understanding one's own habit tendencies through deep practice, then using that understanding to bring the fruits of practice (like kindness and patience) into the world through action, guided by frameworks like the Ten Paramis.
The Ten Paramis are a list of 10 actionable items for lay practitioners to cultivate in their daily lives to become awakened, including generosity, integrity, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity.
White people can engage courageously by leaning into their unique station and access points, starting with difficult conversations with close friends and family, and genuinely inquiring about differing perspectives without trying to change minds.
One should approach missteps and judgment by acting with good intentions, accepting that they won't 'get it right' every time, and meeting any unintended consequences with kindness, patience, and curiosity, rather than self-judgment or self-righteousness.
'We belong to each other' means having a collective responsibility for one another, moving away from extreme individualism and recognizing a shared human connection that calls for care, generosity, and mutual support.
To be a compassionate agitator means speaking truth directly about difficult or upsetting things, not to make someone uncomfortable, but to help them understand the impact of their actions, while maintaining care, interest, and respect for the other person's conditioning.
16 Actionable Insights
1. Integrate Practice into Daily Life
Don’t separate your spiritual or mindfulness practice (ethical living, kindness, respect, patience, generosity) from daily life; actively bring its fruits into the world through your actions.
2. Practice Meditation During Good Times
Diligently establish and maintain a meditation practice during periods of ease and calm to build resilience and training that will support you during inevitable crises.
3. Cultivate Compassion for All Beings
Extend compassion even to those who have done harm, seeking to understand the circumstances of their heart and mind to melt divisions, without endorsing their actions.
4. Embrace Collective Responsibility for Others
Recognize that ‘we belong to each other’ and are responsible for one another, moving away from extreme individualism and practicing generosity by letting go of what you have in excess.
5. Be a Compassionate Agitator
Speak truth directly and ask difficult questions with interest, care, and respect, aiming to help others understand the impact of their actions rather than just pointing out wrong.
6. Turn Toward Difficulty and Chaos
Cultivate courage by actively turning toward difficulty and chaos, recognizing that fear is often a conditioned response to past experiences, and discerning when to set it aside.
7. Examine Personal Habits Deeply
Use meditation practice as an intensive ’therapy’ to deeply examine your own habit tendencies and conditioning, which enables more skillful outward expression of your practice.
8. Practice the Ten Paramis
Actively cultivate the ten paramis (generosity, integrity, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, equanimity) in daily life to foster awakening and ethical engagement.
9. Engage in Difficult Conversations
Lean into your unique station in life to take action, starting with difficult conversations with close friends and family, engaging with genuine interest to understand their perspectives without trying to convince them.
10. Accept Missteps in Action
Take action with good intentions, accepting that you will make missteps; view ‘sticking your foot in your mouth’ as a sign of engagement, and meet any fallout with kindness, patience, and curiosity.
11. Avoid Self-Righteousness and Judgment
Guard against self-righteousness by asking how judging others serves your intention, and focus on genuine commitment to helping and closing gaps where ‘othering’ lives.
12. Sustain Diligence for Long-Term Change
Work for long-term social transformation with sustained diligence, understanding that full resolution may not occur in your lifetime, and act out of kindness, compassion, and joy, not for a specific outcome.
13. Tune into ‘Clean Residue’
Be in tune with your heart and actions, choosing those that feel light, free, and happy, and avoid those driven by greed, hatred, or delusion, aiming for a ‘clean residue’ from your choices.
14. Trust Your Second Instincts
Give yourself grace for initial ’lizard brain’ reactions, and cultivate trust in your second, more evolved instincts to guide your responses.
15. Join Truth and Justice Vigils
Participate in ongoing online ‘Truth and Justice Vigils’ (open to all) to find support, engage in dialogue, explore collective intentions, and work on unraveling conditioning that prevents compassionate action.
16. Utilize a Meditation App
Consider using a meditation app (like 10% Happier) for guided meditations, courses, and coaching to maintain a consistent, high-quality practice.
7 Key Quotes
In crisis, we don't rise to our expectations, but we fall to our training.
Dan Harris
My Buddhist practice, I have not been successful at separating from this lived life.
Stacey McClendon
The Buddha didn't ask that we then kick them out of our heart, that we stay with, we stay close to.
Stacey McClendon
Your karma doesn't get erased. He's still accountable for his actions. It's like, you'll stay here, you'll sit here and you'll, you'll take it. This is the fruit of your choices. This is the fruit of your path.
Stacey McClendon
Hatred does not solve hatred.
Stacey McClendon
If you stick your foot in your mouth, that's a good thing. That means your mouth was open. You were saying something because we know silence often is interpreted as being complicit.
Stacey McClendon
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Stacey McClendon
1 Protocols
Truth and Justice Vigils
Stacey McClendon- Join online via Zoom, finding details on commongroundmeditation.org calendar.
- Engage in dialogue to explore collective intentions moving forward.
- Be willing to turn toward and unravel habits and conditioning that prevent leaning in and taking compassionate action.
- Participate in sessions that may include traditional teaching (sit, talk, Q&A) or small group discussions (dyads, open sharing).