Sebene Selassie On: Resiliency, Rewriting Your Patterns and Finding a Teacher Who Speaks to You
Buddhist teacher Sebene Selassie shares her journey to meditation and teaching, detailing how personal challenges like stage three and four breast cancer deepened her practice. She discusses her teaching approach, focusing on personal experience and accepting reality. She's the Teacher of the Month.
Deep Dive Analysis
8 Topic Outline
Introduction to Sebene Selassie as October's Teacher of the Month
Sebene's Journey to Becoming a Meditation Teacher
Deepening Practice Through Stage Three Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Why Sebene Decided to Teach Meditation
Sebene's Personal Approach to Teaching Meditation
The Distinctive Nature of Freedom and Suffering
Suffering as an Opportunity for Awakening
Overview of Sebene's Custom Guided Meditations
2 Key Concepts
Contention with Reality
This concept suggests that the core of the spiritual path and teaching is to learn how not to be in conflict with the present moment. Liberation and awakening involve being with the reality in front of us with a measure of ease, which means not adding unnecessary suffering to the inevitable pain of life.
Freedom vs. Suffering Manifestation
Suffering, such as anxiety, fear, and depression, tends to manifest similarly across different individuals. In contrast, freedom is highly distinctive and unique, meaning that the most awakened version of oneself will look different for each person rather than conforming to a single ideal.
6 Questions Answered
Sebene's journey began with her brother introducing her to Eastern spirituality, leading her to major in comparative religious studies. Her practice deepened significantly after a stage three breast cancer diagnosis at 34, which ultimately led to an invitation to a meditation teacher program.
Her unique and challenging history with illness has made her teaching deeply personal, emphasizing speaking from her own experience rather than objective authority. This perspective allows her to acknowledge that there isn't one universal path to freedom, making her teachings more relatable and accessible.
Initially resistant and viewing a teacher program as a way to improve administrative skills, Sebene discovered a natural extension of her love for teaching and leading groups when she started sharing the teachings. Positive feedback from others reinforced her enjoyment and impact, leading her to embrace the role.
Sebene's approach focuses on speaking from her own lived experience, illustrating how Buddhist teachings have personally impacted her and manifest in her life. She aims to avoid didactic instruction, instead sharing in a way that helps individuals find their own truth, recognizing that no single method works for everyone.
Sebene notes that hardship has often served as a crucible for her to recognize and transform clinging patterns. While acknowledging her own path, she hopes that individuals with less dramatic stories can also find their way to awakening, as freedom can manifest uniquely in everyone.
The fundamental principle is to learn how to cease being in contention with reality. This means being present with whatever life brings, both positive and challenging, with a sense of ease, thereby avoiding the addition of unnecessary suffering to inherent pain.
14 Actionable Insights
1. Practice Non-Contention with Reality
Learn to avoid being in contention with reality by simply being present with what is in front of you, which can lead to a measure of ease and liberation even amidst pain.
2. Avoid Adding Suffering
Understand that while pain and some suffering are inevitable in life, you have the choice not to add additional suffering that diminishes your well-being and freedom.
3. Utilize Hardship for Growth
Leverage times of hardship as crucibles to identify areas where you are clinging and to recognize and change your ingrained patterns, as these insights are often less apparent during periods of ease.
4. Deepen Practice During Hardship
Take your meditation practice more seriously, especially when facing significant life challenges or diagnoses, as such experiences can serve as a powerful catalyst for deepening engagement.
5. Be Present with Hardship
Recognize that suffering always presents an opportunity for growth, and one path to reducing suffering is to simply be present with whatever the most difficult challenge is at the moment.
6. Aspire to Unique Awakening
Recognize that while suffering may appear similar across individuals, freedom and awakening are distinctive; therefore, aspire to become the entirely unique and most awakened version of yourself, rather than imitating others.
7. Embrace Unique Freedom
Understand that freedom is a personal quality that manifests uniquely in each individual, so aspire to your own distinctive version of an awakened or free self rather than conforming to others’ experiences.
8. Find Your Own Truth
Engage with teachings by finding your own truth in what is shared, recognizing that there is no single objective reality or one-size-fits-all approach, especially in practices like meditation.
9. Overcome Anxiety for Goals
Acknowledge and work through anxieties or perceived limitations, such as public speaking fears, to pursue and achieve what you genuinely want to do.
10. Cultivate Humility
Recognize that humility may be a key component in excelling at certain endeavors, as observed in individuals who are initially reluctant but prove to be highly effective.
11. Use Meditations to Internalize Wisdom
Engage with custom guided meditations to help take the wisdom from conversations and integrate it into your mind in an enduring way, countering the natural tendency to forget due to daily habit patterns.
12. Explore Creative Meditations
Engage in meditative contemplations that start with grounding and present moment awareness, then creatively explore various topics to practice with them in different ways.
13. Join Live Meditation & Q&A
Sign up at danharris.com to participate in weekly live guided meditation and Q&A sessions, available every Tuesday at 4 PM Eastern for subscribers.
14. Attend In-Person Meditation Retreat
Sign up for a weekend-long meditation retreat to engage in a mixture of meditation, conversation, Q&A, small group discussions, and optional activities like hiking, sports, yoga, and tai chi.
6 Key Quotes
There's nothing like a terminal diagnosis to make you deep in your practice.
Sebene Selassie
I can't know what's right for anyone else. I can work with them and communicate in a way that hopefully people find their own truth in what I'm sharing.
Sebene Selassie
Suffering looks more or less the same on everybody... But freedom is very distinctive and free versions of people can look very, very different from one another.
DJ Cashmere
Our suffering always has an opportunity in it.
DJ Cashmere
This whole path and teaching is really just learning how not to be in contention with reality.
Sebene Selassie
Grant me the appropriate amount of suffering today that will lead to the opening of my heart and awakening.
Sebene Selassie