Meditate Your Face Off

Cara Lai
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Religion & Spirituality
  • Updated Semiweekly

Guided meditations, talks, and the occasional naked surprise; from a contemporary (and iconoclastic) buddhist perspective. caralai.substack.com

  1. Oct 1

    Everything I Own, More or Less

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit caralai.substack.com The very end of this post has a dharma talk for paid subscribers that gets much deeper into this subject, from a retreat I taught recently (note that the guided meditation above is the same for both free and paid subscribers). If you can’t afford a paid subscription and want one, message me and I’ll give you one, no questions asked. Back in my Dharma bum years, I had very few belongings. All of what I owned, aside from some of my bigger paintings, could have fit into a small car— if I had a car to put it in. I liked the idea of being some kind of a renunciate living a normal life. It was countercultural, anti-materialistic, anti-capitalistic. Then I got married, had kids, and bought a house. It’s really easy to accumulate stuff when you have a big enough place to put it. And if you have kids, you’ll know that everyone wants to shower them with colorful plastic objects. On top of this, it has become ridiculously easy to impulse buy stuff you don’t need. Just a flick of the thumb and electric socks, an inflatable travel pillow, and a wheelbarrow can all wind up on your front stoop the very next day. But when we get more stuff, we get more problems. Another new item is another thing to manage, protect, take care of, keep clean, fix when broken, or feel unsatisfied with when the newer version comes out. More material stuff consumes more mental bandwidth. In my current life situation, it feels hard to be minimalistic. I have a family, our stuff is shared, my husband and I have different relationships with ownership. He’s a bit more of a collector, but also a bit more free when it comes to giving stuff away. He’s also a little less of a manager when it comes to his stuff (let’s just say I’m the tidy one in the relationship). It’s already taking a lot of effort for me to keep our possessions to a minimum. But I also watch myself open up Facebook Marketplace on a regular basis to buy stuff we only kind of need, and I watch my eyes linger on ads for smartwatches (because wouldn’t it make my life easier?). I find I do this at the end of the day when I’m trying to decompress. What’s happening here is that I’m taking refuge in belongings. I’m seeking happiness through the material world. But do I get the refuge I’m seeking? No, usually I just get a lot of screen time and a feeling of restless dissatisfaction, believing my life will be better when I get whatever it is I was researching, and going to bed with the afterglow of a screen and a mind full of clutter. If this sounds familiar, I have a practice for you. Notice how it feels before, during, and after you think about purchasing some new item. What does the wanting feel like? What does your body feel like when you’re deciding, when you’re reading AI summaries of Amazon reviews, when you’re comparing products? What about when the object of desire arrives? There might be a hit of dopamine when you actually get the product, but then, what happens if it’s defective? How does your body slip into dissatisfaction, or a sense of urgency to call customer service and make things right, or return it for a different color? Feel how it all feels on a visceral level. You might have to slow down or pause. Notice anything that’s obvious in your body, and hang out there for a few moments. There’s no need to make yourself stop buying the thing. Slowing down and pausing is purely to aid in the observation. But eventually, after we begin to see for ourselves just how much of the experience we’ve been taking refuge in is unpleasant and unsatisfying, we may want to make a different choice. When considering getting something new, Ajahn Sucitto said we can ask this question: “do I want the thing, or the space?” I’ve found this to be immensely helpful. It reminds me that there’s something else I can take refuge in, that’s not a “thing.” Space. How easily we forget the value of space. In the slowing down and pausing, we remember the existence of space. Space is subtle, more subtle than buying a new Apple Watch— but it’s so, so much more satisfying. The key is being willing to slow down and look directly into the void. It’s not as easy as it sounds. But a simple pause in our frenzied quest to feed our hungry ghost will not only be a slap in the face to capitalism and greed itself, it’s the beginning of the end of our quest for satisfaction. It turns out that space is not so empty. It’s full of something that’s hard to describe, but every time I’ve touched it, it feels like love. When we slow down and remember to be present, we find that loving awareness is waiting to catch us. It turns out that the only place we can find the contentment we’ve been seeking is in the very void we’ve been trying to fill. The ultimate refuge is in this moment. Real satisfaction is only now. The Week In Sanity With Dan Harris This Saturday, October 3rd, I’ll be appearing on this weekly series for MS NOW. Dan Harris and I will break down major news headlines through the lens of psychology and contemplative wisdom. MS NOW members will be able to check it out here: Price Change PS: Speaking of October 3rd, a reminder that $8/month pricing disappears October 3rd, and the price of this Substack will increase to $11/month. If you’re already a paying subscriber, this won’t affect you. If you’re not, you can lock in the old rate now before it changes. I contain multitudes, apparently, including the one writing about letting go of things while asking you to subscribe to more of them. . . . Paid subscribers can listen to a short talk from a recent retreat I taught on this subject below:

  2. Sep 24

    Money!

    Here’s a guided meditation on generosity. It’s not a bribe. Meditate Your Face Off is not a cult that’s trying to brainwash you into giving me money, calling it Dharma. But I know it looks bad given the essay that follows. (TLDR: price for new subscribers is going up October 4th, current subscribers aren't affected, more on why below.) Hi! This is a slightly different post, because I’m sort of gonna ask for money, but it’ll hopefully be different from that time where you put your business card in a fishbowl at a restaurant and won a free lunch for everyone in your office, and then had to sit through that poor soul’s pitch to sell you their business software while you quietly ate your free deep dish pizza and smiled politely. Instead: here’s a little context, followed by a small change. The Dāna Model: In the Buddhist tradition I teach from, teachings are offered freely. You can’t put a price on the truth, and the Buddha wanted everyone to have access to the teachings, to liberation. He also wanted people to learn about dāna (the Pāli word for generosity), because generosity is an intrinsic part of the path to freedom. So he set up a system where the teachers, who were monastics, were basically helpless— they couldn’t have possessions, they couldn’t grow food: they depended entirely on laypeople to meet their basic needs. In return, the monastics would share the dharma, teach people how to meditate, teach people about kindness and compassion. There was a constant flow of generosity. The dāna model as it was brought to Western culture means that we teachers don’t usually get paid for our work. We rely on the generosity of the people we teach to support us. It means that I have no idea how much money will come from the time and resources I put into teaching each retreat. This is truly gratifying. Because I know that people are, more often than not, offering me money for the joy of giving and the love of the dharma, not out of obligation. A dollar that comes from a place of real generosity is worth far more than an obligatory dollar. With this newsletter, everything of substance is free, and the paid tier exists so the people who get something out of it and can afford to contribute, do — which is what keeps the whole thing running for everyone, including the people who can’t pay right now. If you can’t afford a paid subscription (now, or ever) you don’t have to. Message me and I’ll give you full access, no questions asked. That’s the way the dāna model works. The teachings were never supposed to have a paywall around them in the first place; the paid tier exists so the people who can pay, do, which is what makes it possible for the people who can’t to get the same thing for free. That’s the whole arrangement. It only works if people actually use it. Also: you practicing, reading, even just having interest in this work is its own act of generosity. Not to be too sappy, but it’s true. And sharing it is another way of offering dāna: The small change: Meditate Your Face Off has been a tremendous joy for me to craft. I love the community that’s been growing around it, I love how it keeps my practice alive, and I love how weird I can get and still have readership. I want it to feel more sustainable financially, so that I can keep pouring my heart and soul into it. So, starting October 4th, new paid subscriptions move from $8/month to $11/month (or $80/year to $110/year) If you’re already a paying subscriber, this doesn’t touch you — your rate stays exactly what it is, for as long as you stay subscribed. I promise it’s not one of those promotional windows closing on you. If you’ve been meaning to upgrade or you’re currently free and thinking about it, October 3rd is your last chance to lock in $8/month instead of $11. If Meditate Your Face Off has been worth more to you than what you’re currently paying: You don’t have to cancel and resubscribe if you want to offer more. Bump up to the Pay it Forward tier (or just pay more than the standard rate) with just a couple of clicks: go to your Substack settings → Subscriptions → click on Meditate Your Face Off → hit “Change” next to your plan → pick “Pay it Forward” or enter whatever number feels right. If you do this, you still have the same full access as before. All that will change will be your contribution. If anything about any of this is unclear, please ask your questions in the comments! One of the best parts of the dāna model is that you get to feel into your own, genuine sense of gratitude. So now I’ve given you the dāna talk, but do what you want with it. Real generosity feels good. The Buddha said that a single act of giving benefits the giver three times: in the thought of giving, in the act of giving, and in the memory of having given. So however you feel called to give, let it be an authentic act that feels good. If you upgrade, do it because you want to, not because you have to. Big Love, Cara This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Sep 10

    Put Down Your Gratitude Journal and Quit Your Job

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit caralai.substack.com Above is a meditation to help you shrug off an older version of yourself and to begin anew. Scroll to the end for a videoclip and an upcoming mini-retreat online. The very end of this post contains a short talk and a guided meditation for paid subscribers on this same topic, from a recent Meditate Your Face Off drop-in class. If you can’t afford a paid subscription and want one, message me and I’ll give you one, no questions asked. Below is me reading the essay that follows: Real insight doesn't feel like enlightenment. It feels like disorientation. The food, the possessions, the experiences you used to find satisfying— suddenly they're empty. The permanence you were counting on, gone. Everything you love is on its way out, and now you know it. You start to realize that your old habits, the friends you are used to hanging around with, and sometimes even your biggest investments of time and energy; are no longer interesting to you. If you’ve ever found yourself, or are currently finding that you’re unsatisfied with your life, it might not be a you problem. Maybe you don’t have to feel good about something you don’t feel good about, and just practice more lovingkindness. In fact, maybe you’re meant to feel annoyed or disgruntled. Perhaps the situation is not helping you serve your higher purpose, and you’ve been telling yourself you need to lean in, when actually you need to open to more of who you are. Maybe the situation has been limiting you, and you’ve been trying to squeeze yourself into it. Letting go can sometimes mean walking away. Some culling may be in order. You can Marie Kondo your life in these moments of transition. Take a serious look around and feel into what you actually want to be doing, what is truly interesting for this new version of you, and what actually feels worthy of your time. Are there ways that you are hanging in limbo? Are you doing a job that you don’t really feel connected to anymore, feeling bored or detached with people you whose company you used to enjoy, or finishing a project purely out of obligation rather than passion? Sometimes one does have real obligations to fulfill. But you don’t always need to adjust your attitude and slap on your best metta face. Maybe it’s time to honor and include your deeper desires. I’m not talking about the shallow, squirrely, greener-grass desires that feed into restlessness. I’m talking about a calling for awakening, for truth, for release. Stop writing in your gratitude journal and start saying no to what you don’t like. Just because you always have lunch with your co-workers doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it. Just because you have kids doesn’t mean you have to spend your time at toddler birthday parties and storytime at the library. Just because you got that degree doesn’t mean you have to have the job that corresponds to it… maybe it’s not such a bad thing that AI is taking over your job. Don’t do what the rest of the world does, because most of the world doesn’t know about true freedom. Go against the stream. Reorganize your life around your own, deeper passions. You don't need more peace of mind about the life you have. You need a different life. That's not spiritual bypassing, that’s your practice working. Online Mini-Retreat: The Awakened Householder On Sunday, September 20th, I’ll be guiding a short online retreat meant to help people find their footing in legitimate, deepening practice while living in normal household life. If you can’t make a residential retreat work in your life, it’s still possible to make meaningful progress on the path. Find out how: Parenting as the Path Another Parenting as the Path class will meet on Tuesday, September 22nd, at 4:00pm ET. Come join Ofosu Jones-Quartey (Born I) and myself for a conversation and practice on the raw, humbling, triggering, glorious, and heart-opening experience of parenting. Here’s a recording of a recent talk and meditation on this same topic, for paid subscribers:

  4. Aug 27

    Are you eating your feelings?

    Above is a guided meditation to find emotional freedom through eating. Below is me reading the essay that follows: Most of us have a rather complicated relationship with food. We want it, it soothes us deeply, but it also makes us feel out of control. Most mindful eating instructions tell us to eat slowly, carefully, and just to notice the sensations of eating. Chew a single raisin 100 times before swallowing, simply noticing all the textures and tastes. This guidance can sometimes lead us to believe that eating mindfully requires us to feel no emotion when we eat. Rather than behaving like a starving, rabid jackal— we try to turn ourselves into a proper Victorian lady being stared down by a governess. It’s a high bar. Giving up, we go back to eating while standing in front of the fridge. The common approach to eating meditation treats eating like it’s emotionally neutral, when in fact, most people are experiencing some degree of anxiety, shame, or dissociation while eating. Why else would we compulsively distract ourselves from the pleasure of eating with reading, scrolling, working, or planning what we’ll do after the meal? We can trace this all the way back to being in the womb, when we were completely enveloped by another person’s body, which kept us safe and nourished. And when we were separated, our life could only continue through nourishment in the form of mother’s milk, or something that mimicked it. Warm food from our caregivers was what kept that sense of safety, belonging, nourishment, and love flowing through us, reassuring us that we were protected in this life. A nursing newborn can easily melt into a deep state of ecstatic serenity. So naturally, when we’re feeling lonely as adults, we reach for a cookie. But what we really want is a hug. On some level, we’re all just longing to crawl back up into the womb. But on top of that primal link, there’s social baggage. Our bodies are scrutinized by societal standards of beauty, and our ability to sculpt our bodies into perfection becomes a symbol of our worth. Body regulation becomes a public performance of control, which makes eating meditation feel exposing rather than calming. So we're stuck: food promises the safety we've always wanted, but so does having control and a hot bod. We can't have both. When we eat, we’re simultaneously feeling deeply comforted, and totally out of control and gross. We’re desperate for something, but feeling very conflicted about it. Eating is not just a pleasurable or neutral act, it’s loaded with all kinds of baggage and associations with our lovableness from as far back as we can recall. Of course we try to distract ourselves while we eat. You can’t just selectively feel only the good without the bad, so checking out becomes the workaround. Meditate Your Face Off is made possible because of you! To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Eating meditation, reframed Expect it to be hard. If you're noticing painful or unpleasant feelings, you're probably doing it right, not wrong. Usually what happens is we aren't enjoying the food, or we’re having a hard time moving slowly, and then we think we’ve failed. If we know it’s normal to encounter some hard s**t while eating, it gets easier to lean into the experience. And the more we lean in, the more insight we have. And the insight can be very, very freeing. Allow yourself to eat at a pace that feels natural, or at a pace that supports you in paying a bit more attention to the experience. Widen your attention while you eat, to include your emotional sphere. What are you feeling in your belly, or your chest, or your throat? Notice any tension, any places that don’t feel relaxed or open. No need to dig or unpack anything mentally, just bring your attention to more of your body, and make space for it to feel however it might be feeling. Turn towards it as if it’s a small, scared animal that just wants to be safe and loved. And there’s no need to do this for an extended period of time. Even just a couple seconds of tending to your body in this way can lead to insight. If you come to the end of the meal and you realize you were lost in thought the whole time, it’s the perfect time for insight. People usually don’t want to pay attention to the moment when something is over, especially something we’ve been looking forward to all morning, and believing (however unconsciously) would bring lasting satisfaction. Sit with the feelings of fullness, comfort, disappointment, regret, restlessness, or whatever it is you might have gotten used to avoiding by getting up and doing something else at the end of a meal. Just sit there for a few seconds and feel those sensations directly. All the while, use something to ground yourself. Look out a window, feel your feet on the floor. Don’t push yourself to stay with hard stuff when you’re feeling overwhelmed, but also know that you’re probably capable of staying with these feelings for longer than you realize. The more we practice like this, the more parts of ourselves begin to come home to something that can actually offer real safety and love. We can’t really rely on food, a perfect body, or a sense of control, for the safety and love we are seeking. But we can rely on mindful awareness itself. Mindfulness is not a muscle we can flex, it’s a substrate that holds us in loving attention, much like a womb. The love and connection we’ve been longing to return to has been waiting for us all along, right here in this very moment. So, as you eat, see if you can feel into a presence of love that is holding you in all of the complicated and painful feelings that can come up. The little kid inside you that’s scared, the desperation for control in this uncontrollable world, the lonely quest for safety and belonging in a harsh environment. Feel the earth beneath you. It is holding you. This food is the earth’s message: there is abundance in your life, you are supported, you are needed. You didn’t need to earn it, and you certainly didn’t have to have a hot bod to deserve it. Daylong Retreat with Matthew Brensilver On September 6th, join Matthew “Ol’ Dirty” Brensilver and me for a raucous, nerdy, hands-on look at ambition and self-compassion — in meditation and in life. This is our annual daylong retreat, where I publicly roast Matthew and then field a wave of people rushing to his defense. He keeps coming back for more. Online and in-person at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Awakening for Average People On September 20th, I’ll be offering a mini online retreat on one of my favorite topics: Getting free while being regular. This retreat is about how to make real progress towards awakening in the midst of every day life. Don’t let the idea that you need to be on retreat all the time or ordain in order to get free get the best of you! Meditation for Introverts I was recently on a podcast called The Introverted Leader with Greg Weinger, a podcast for quiet professionals who want to rise in leadership without pretending to be someone they’re not. This conversation was real, fun, and useful. I offered a pretty applicable demonstration of how mindfulness works in real time, without having to do a formal sit. Thanks Greg for having me! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Aug 14

    You've really let yourself go

    Ironically (or perhaps just on point), I wrote a lot of this post while eating chocolate cake. Scroll to the end for a bonus recording of a Meditate Your Face Off class on this same subject. Above is a guided meditation to help you appreciate your body for the miracle that it is. Below is me reading the essay that follows: I used to exercise every day. I’d run five or seven miles, stretch, and do a 20 minute ab workout. I also did things like run marathons, thru hike the hundred-mile wilderness, and ride my bike across the country. I could tell myself I was taking care of my body, that it was all a part of being a healthy, well-rounded person, but really, I just hated myself. Exercise can be a wonderful thing. It feels good, keeps us healthy in body and mind, and breaks harmful addictive habits. But we can also use exercise as a way to avoid our feelings. I’d much rather get high on adrenaline than feel the deep shame and anxiety I’d have to feel if I just hung out with myself. So, I’ll run away from my feelings. Literally. Mindfulness calls on us to pay attention to our bodies, and allow our bodies to be exactly as they are. For me, this ended up forcing me to look at the ways I was trying to beat my body into submission. I was trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to force fat to become muscle, sucking my belly in, scrutinizing my body in the mirror. I was also aware that my awakening was connected to loving my body, but I didn’t know exactly how to get there. I started by letting my belly expand a little bit on the cushion, and then later in public. It took a lot of courage to do this, especially since my belly really likes to stick out. Someone even asked me if I was pregnant (I wasn’t). Big belly practice bumped me up against a lot of the shame and fear I was avoiding by doing exercise and controlling what I ate. But then Lyme disease made the choice for me. I felt so terrible that I had to stop exercising altogether. Naturally, this was terrifying for me. But not only did I get a chance to really see the feelings motivating my exercise routine, I got to tune in way more deeply to my body’s actual needs. Our bodies are so much more than the box of societally imposed perfection that we try to stuff them into. There are countless complex systems at play that we can hardly fathom— did you know there are neurons in your gut? And now that I’m a mom, now that my body has performed the astounding magic trick of bringing life into this world, I find it tragic that we view belly fat as ugly. My belly wants to be squishy and big, and is often serving as a comfy pillow for a little person. And the more I let it hang out, the freer I feel. My body had been yearning to be loved and appreciated for all it was constantly doing to keep me alive and safe, or at the very least, to be left alone. And all I was doing was judging it and trying to control it. And that’s really what all of this boils down to: having a body is out of control. Bodies are highly sensitive. They are at the mercy of the innumerable unpredictable forces that govern life on this planet, and all the willpower in the world can’t prevent us from getting sick and dying. The brain, too, is out of our control. Our brains are governed by the animal instinct to stay alive, and if we think we can use our minds to crush our bodies, something inevitably rebels and we end up covered in Cheeto dust, feeling defeated. Meditate Your Face Off exists because of your support! To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Illness taught me what willpower couldn’t. And for each of us, nature will win over willpower. But the lesson that nature teaches us is that surrendering to the truth and power of nature is better than fighting a losing battle for our whole lives. It’s often the case that the things that befall us— illness, injury, and dying— are the best, most effective ways to free the mind. If we choose to stop fighting and pay attention. So, what to do? You don’t have to throw out your whole exercise routine. I started by pausing or meditating before and after I felt the urge to exercise, before deciding what exercise would really feel good that day. And some days I would replace exercise with meditation, just to see what I’d have to sit with. And it’s ok to not change your routine, but just to focus on how it’s making you feel. And then, at some point, you may find yourself wanting to do more of what feels good, and choosing that over what you think you should be doing. Inhabiting your body more and more means feeling all the feelings: the pleasant ones and the unpleasant ones. The more you turn towards unpleasant feelings, the more you’ll see that it can be ok to just feel them and not act. Soon, you’ll find yourself patiently listening to all of what your body is saying. Then, you can act from a place of love rather than a place of fear. Aside from noticing what feels bad, you can also focus on what feels good. Instead of scrutinizing your body in the mirror after a shower or while you brush your teeth, close your eyes or look out a window, and lovingly appreciate all the things your body does for you. It turns out you’ve had the most loyal friend keeping you company through thick and thin, for your whole life. I don’t work out anymore. At least not intentionally. I do the unplanned exercises of getting up from the floor while holding a 22 lb baby, and a steady flow of housework and yard work. Who knows, maybe going for a mindful ten minute walk is more effective for maintaining good health than running ten miles in a state of self-hatred. I like to think so. And maybe I’ll feel like exercising again one day, but for now, being constantly clambered over by two young children is quite enough physicality for me. I keep listening to what my body wants and needs, and I try my best to honor it. I still eat way more chocolate than my body wants to be eating, and I definitely don’t get enough sleep, do enough stretching, or drink enough water. But I love my body so much more than I ever have, and am grateful every day for what it does and has done for me, for the way it always tells me how things are going physically and emotionally, how it lets me pick up and hug the people I love and be hugged back, and for the simple fact that, at least for this brief time on earth, I have the privilege of inhabiting it. The Buddha famously said that this fathom-long body has everything you need to wake up. He didn’t say that sexy bodies get to wake up. He meant your body, exactly as it is. Online Classes This post was the theme of a Meditate Your Face Off drop-in class this past week. I offer these drop-in classes several times a month. They’re a great way to connect with your practice, a group, and with me; and they’re free to join. Below is an audio recording of that class, which also happened to be our 100th Meditate Your Face Off class(!!). It starts with a short talk, followed by a meditation, then a portion of the q&a that followed. More on exercise, body image, and awakening: If this topic interests you, I talked about it with Michael Easter, author of the New York Times bestseller The Comfort Crisis, in a chapter of an Audible Original called Embrace Discomfort. I also talked about it with Dan Harris in an episode of the Ten Percent Happier Podcast called Can You Get Fit Without Hating Yourself: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jul 30

    Stop trying to keep your s**t together

    If you want a pithy, artistic version of this essay, scroll to the end for the poem. Above is a guided meditation that supports being with the unresolved. Below is me reading the essay that follows: We don’t like things to be unresolved. In fact, it’s arguable that we spend most of our time and energy resolving things that we have deemed to be unresolved: clearing our inbox, putting things back where they belong, addressing conflict or tension with other people. We live in a world that is constantly unresolved, where things are always falling apart in some way. To quote Joseph Goldstein, “you don’t do anything, and your house or apartment gets dirty.” Rarely do we question whether there’s anything to do about this other than try and keep our s**t together all the time. But the dharma points to a new possibility. What would it be like to be ok with a moment that feels unresolved? If you think about it, much of humanity’s dysfunction can be traced back to an inability to hang when things are unresolved. When we sense a problem, we feel like we can’t relax until it’s solved. So we either ruminate about it until we’re an anxious mess, or we go out into the world to find a solution. Someone misunderstands us, and we must set them straight as soon as possible. Or consider how conflicts between nations escalate — each side unable to tolerate the ambiguity of an unresolved threat, so every provocation gets answered immediately, each response justifying the next, until de-escalation starts to feel impossible. These days, when something breaks, rather than going without that item even for just a week, people can buy another one on Amazon and have it delivered the next day, leading to massive amounts of energy and resource consumption. But if you’re like me, what comes to mind when I consider simply sitting with the unresolved is an image of my home filling with clutter and grime; my kids yelling obscenities at me while covered in mud and poop; colleagues, friends, and students losing all faith in me or having no support as I stop responding to their needs. So I’m not making a case for shirking responsibility or giving up, but rather a new quality of attention. What would it be like if we could be ok with the feeling of things being unresolved? To get to this, we start by noticing what exactly is happening when we feel compelled to start or finish a task— anything from cleaning clutter to telling someone off to buying something online. We might notice a leaning forward, a momentum that is taking us out of the present moment. A kind of strain, a stress. Dukkha. We don’t want to be interrupted and we want this thing to be done— so that we can relax. Speaking of interruptions, your support makes a huuuuge difference. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. One underlying assumption is that we are alone with this problem, and that we are somehow burdened with the task of resolving it on our own. If I don’t do something about it, something bad will happen. I am responsible for fixing this and there’s no other way it could be resolved. But the dharma tells us that we are not alone at all, and that all the problems we think are ours alone to deal with are much broader and more nuanced than our minds make them out to be. In fact it’s often the case that by doing nothing, the problem resolves itself. If I don’t set someone straight after they yell at me, by not fueling their anger but rather letting it be, they’ll be given space to feel their own feelings a bit more, and tension eases. The other underlying assumption here is that we can’t be ok until this task is done, until this problem is solved. That the problem is more important than anything else, and is worth turning away from this moment for, worth sacrificing our peace for; worth sacrificing our awakening for. Without mindfulness, these assumptions go unnoticed and unchallenged. But with just a short mindful pause, we get a life-changing glimpse into a mind that is caught in some erroneous and very painful beliefs. In pausing and sitting in the unresolved, we can finally have space to touch into the tenderness associated with feeling alone with all these problems. And we can begin to re-center ourselves around our true priorities. Lately, my baby girl Rumi has been just on the cusp of walking. She can take a step or two on her own, but mostly she’s been spending her time finding something to hang onto— a chair, a stool, my legs— and balance herself while she wobbles around. She often corners me while I’m in the middle of some task, like washing dishes or getting dressed, grabbing my legs and knees so that if I were to move away, she’d fall down and cry. I’m frozen in the middle of the kitchen holding dirty dishes or a handful of chopped zucchini until she moves on to another activity, or decides she needs me to pick her up. This is an excellent chance for me to hang out with myself while I’m caught in the belief that I can’t be ok unless this task is finished. How could I feel complete when I only have a bra and socks on? So I look inward, and I notice the feelings, and I begin to bring some tenderness towards my current state. Ah, here it is, the belief that I’m at a shortage of time, that there’s too much to do, what if I can’t get it all done and be a good mother to these kids? Here too is the belief that I have to rush through this task so I can pay better attention to my kids, so that later I can just relax and play with them, and eventually actually be mindful. There’s actually physical discomfort happening, that I’ll let go of once I give myself permission to relax. So much pain that I hadn’t seen. Then I remember that getting dressed isn’t nearly as important as getting free. I’m already exactly where I want to be: waking up in this moment. And then, I notice Rumi down below me, learning to walk. Shaky and balancing, she’s completely present, all while focused on accomplishing a task. I’m sort of wobbly too, as I try to put my pants on without knocking her over. In some ways, we are learning to walk together. If you find yourself interrupted in the middle of a task today, can you treat those interruptions as cues to be with the unresolvedness of your own awakening — prioritizing that over whatever task felt so urgent? What would it be like if you stopped postponing your peace for a time when things feel more resolved? What would it be like if you made it your whole practice to be with the unresolved, to watch things fall apart while you hold your heart with compassion? It is from this place of present compassion that we find clarity about how to act with kindness, clarity about what is really worth doing. In the grand scheme of things, everything is constantly falling apart. If we wait until things are resolved, we spend our whole lives just trying to keep our s**t together. We might have moments where things are finally figured out— all the emails are answered, the bills paid, the garden weeded. But invariably, something will slip out of place. Someone gets injured, the dinner on the stove gets burned, the car breaks down: all while dust bunnies are gathering in the corners of every room in the house. And if everything is constantly falling apart, and that’s just the way things are, maybe that’s also perfect. If our sense of completion does not depend on outside circumstances at all, then things are already whole and complete, impermanence and all. Stop delaying your peace. Go all in on this moment. Everything, right now, is already resolved. Sit back and marvel at its fleeting beauty. * * * Not Knowing If she thinks she cannot bear the unresolved, she forever runs towards what is not. She believes in her limitations, builds a desperate reality on a road with no end, and misses most of life. For this world is made of unresolved mystery ever poignant because we care. If it were otherwise it would cease to be. But if, standing still she holds her uncertain heart, she drops into her limitlessness and right there she lives fully. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jul 15

    The Ecstasy of Awakening

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit caralai.substack.com The paid version of this post has an extended guided meditation. Paid subscribers can also scroll to the bottom of the essay for an additional recording of a dharma talk on this subject, which was originally given for the Burlington Dharma Collective on July 13th, 2026. If you can’t afford a paid subscription and want one, message me and I’ll give you one, no questions asked. Above is a guided meditation that uses pleasure and desire to help you awaken. Below is me reading the essay that follows: Summer is in full swing here in Vermont. Apple trees are already getting heavy with fruit. Wildflowers have suddenly doubled in height and come into brilliant bloom. Ponds are teeming with frogs and salamanders; the air is filled with insects and birds and a cacophony of song. Our daughter Rumi, at ten months, is positively bursting with squishy, adorable joy. Several times a day, a well of aliveness suddenly springs up through her and she squeals and shakes with delight. Both of our kids can often be found crawling all over me and each other— it seems as though life is attempting to consume me from all sides. Meanwhile, I meditate. I think about, study, and practice the Dharma. What was it that the Buddha said about all this life? Didn’t he say that suffering is caused by birth? That to be alive is to suffer? And to be free we need to become dispassionate, to stop the cycle of birth and death, to stop being born at all? The last lines of the Metta Sutta: The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision, Being freed from all sense desires, Is not born again into this world. As I sit with myself, looking from out from the porch upon the ecstasy of summer’s orgasm, I can tap into both sides of this. Being alive, for me, does not feel all that great. My body still feels the effects of a long-term illness, there are thorny knots inside of me that I live with all the time. I am constantly aware of a deep sorrow, an anticipatory grief: my children will grow up, not want affection from me, move away, have lives of their own. Everything that I love will one day be parted from me. Admittedly, at times, I have found myself using practice to escape life. It’s easy to do when you find yourself bereft of pleasure. And too often, the Dharma has been interpreted in ways that enable escapism, leaving the dirty work of meeting life’s basic needs to the laypeople, while monastics escape into a celibate meditative bubble. But it turns out, avoidance is also suffering, since it takes work to constantly run from your experience. What was the Buddha really trying to teach us about dispassion, about the end of birth and death? Why should I become dispassionate? Should I seek the end of the cycle of life altogether, simply because death is a part of it? Meditate Your Face Off made possible by everyone’s generosity! To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. In his teachings on dispassion, the Buddha was not trying to get us to stop enjoying life. He was trying to say something like: “Can’t you see? The pleasurable things in life you believe to be so wonderful, are not so wonderful after all. They are impermanent, fleeting, ungraspable; they’ll never make you happy.” He didn’t stop there. He also said that there was a much deeper kind of pleasure available to us, one that is not fleeting, that is indeed satisfying. What we feel in a moment of pleasure is not simply the fear of its passing and the craving for more. We also experience a moment of pure presence. A moment of deep connection to the ultimate pleasure. Something that is untouched by the birth and death of this fleeting world. A mind, however briefly, undistracted. A momentarily pure heart. We could call it awareness, presence, enlightenment. We could call it love. All pleasures point to this ultimate pleasure. Even the pleasure of something as trivial as a cupcake. It’s just that we don’t notice that the pleasure is emanating from this place of oneness. We are tricked, distracted by the cupcake, thinking that the pleasure is somehow inside the cupcake, when really it’s inside us. The awakened mind was here for a brief moment, using a cupcake as its excuse to appear. The Buddha spoke of this type of pleasure: that of the undistracted mind. He said it was not to be feared, that it was to be cultivated. And in fact, human life is the optimal realm in which to cultivate it. If all pleasures point to the awakened mind, we need not fear any of them. We get to use pleasure to lead us to awakening. The trick is that you actually have to practice. Don’t use this essay as your excuse to indulge blindly in everything you want. When you feel something pleasant, pay attention. Feel it fully. All of it. Notice the places that you suffer around that pleasure, before, during, and after. Surrender completely to the pleasure, but also to the stress, the yearning, the guilt, or whatever else comes up. Stay awake for the whole experience, even if it gets hard. You will see where you get squirrely, avoid things, distract, fall asleep. Stay present, keep feeling, and the mind will recognize the fear, the clinging, how it makes no sense to cling to something so fleeting. The mind will notice that it’s not really about the sex, or the puppy, or the cupcake, but rather about a quality of attention and the opening of your heart. You will find yourself porous, awake, alive. Ultimately, stopping the cycle of birth and death is not about dying permanently, or avoiding your life. It’s the opposite. It’s about not abandoning your life in this moment, in favor of some other, more tantalizing future moment. It’s about being alive right now, and letting life flow through you completely. No matter what stage of life you’re in, whether you’re teeming with life like our little Rumi, or feeling things slow down: don’t stop living fully. Life and all its pleasures are leading you towards the ultimate pleasure of being fully alive. Fall in love with this moment of life, and you will release yourself into the bliss of awakening. Seeking Childcare Whenever I teach a retreat, someone has to take care of the baby. Nowadays, we have to find double the childcare, since Huck stays at home and Rumi comes with me. It’s expensive! I’m looking for someone with some amount of skill/experience, who’d be interested in offering dāna (i.e. volunteering), by taking care of a sweet baby while I teach. Your housing and food would be covered, and you’d get to hang out with a group of cool Dharma teachers. There are three retreats this year that I’m in need of childcare for: * Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (Barre, MA): August 24-28th * Spirit Rock (Woodacre, CA): September 8-14th and December 6-11th. If you’re interested or want more information, please send me a message: Daylong Retreat with Matthew Brensilver Matthew and I are, once again, attempting to teach the Dharma together. Join us online or in-person at Spirit Rock on September 6th for this Daylong retreat. It’s about the balance of self-compassion and determination, which is currently one of my favorite subjects. Residential Retreat at Spirit Rock Another retreat I’m teaching with an incredible teaching team: Oren Jay Sofer, Yong Oh, and devon hase, September 8-14th. It’s a Brahma Vihara retreat, which means we’ll be practicing with the qualities of the awakened heart. If you don’t know what that means, no worries—it’s basically just another way of learning not to suffer. Dharma Talk: Enlightenment is the Ultimate Pleasure The following is a dharma talk based on the above essay, which I gave at the Burlington Dharma Collective on July 13th, 2026.

  8. Jul 2

    The Inheritance

    This post is based on a dharma talk that I gave at a teen meditation retreat last week. Above is a guided meditation, below is a recording of said dharma talk: Everyone feels somehow dissatisfied with how they were raised, even people who loved and respected their parents and caregivers. There was too much judgment, anger or maybe even violence; not enough love, support, or attunement. While it might be easy to resent our parents and caregivers for what they did not provide, raising kids is an insanely difficult job. And many parents, maybe most of them, are not well equipped to do it. They try their best, but with limited resources. Our parents were harmed by the suffering of their own parents, and are still children in their own way. They haven’t been able to fully mature because they themselves didn’t get enough love. And as hard as they may have tried not to recreate that dynamic with us, they end up doing it anyway. What is a parent’s job, though, really? Because if our parents aren’t perfect, it means they’re not equipped to give us the nonjudgmental unconditional love we expect from them. Maybe it’s reasonable to expect them to love us and keep us safe. But perhaps it’s also their job to challenge us: to pass on the suffering of their parents, and their parents before that, because it’s our turn now to transmute it. As we become caregivers to our own hearts and minds, we see that we are just stewards of the family lineage of suffering. Looking back, might you see ways that the suffering of the people who raised you helped you understand the world in a unique way, helped you really know what suffering is, helped you find compassion, and come closer to knowing what love and support feels like? Why are you reading this essay today? Maybe it’s not an accident that you stumbled into meditation, dharma, and the kind of work that turns hatred into love. Maybe it's not an accident that you arrived here, with this particular inheritance of traumas, memories, and circumstances. Maybe you can use it to free yourself and everybody around you. Meditate Your Face Off is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I inherited so many good qualities from my parents. But I also inherited their pain, and their particular patterns of greed, aversion, and delusion. I want these patterns to stop with me. I don’t want to pass them on to my kids. And I don’t want to pass them on to everyone else in my life. But I don’t want to stop there. Being a steward of our parents’ suffering is not about suppressing our reactivity so we don’t cause harm— that would mean we were somehow too broken or wounded. Instead, being a steward of our ancestral suffering positions us perfectly to meet a particular set of challenges in our lives and the world around us. How has the pain your parents passed on to you been useful for your awakening? How has your learning from that pain been helpful to people in your own life? Are there places you haven’t healed from your childhood? If so, what are those wounds teaching you? We are caregivers to our own hearts and minds. When we turn to ourselves with the loving attention we didn’t get from our parents, we heal ourselves, we give ourselves the love we’ve been seeking, the love that heals us, that makes us whole, and gives us the sense of safety needed to be loving and generous to everyone around us. When we see that we can give ourselves what we’ve been seeking from our parents, we start to release them from the expectation that they give us what they simply did not have. When we meet ourselves with the loving attention we’ve always sought externally, we begin to heal ourselves in a very deep way. In the end, you are the only one who can really see and be with all the parts of yourself. Release someone else from responsibility for your pain and meet yourself with the love you’ve been longing for. Or rather, feel for the love of kind awareness that is waiting for you to rest back into it— all around you and within you in this present moment. This is how we set ourselves free. Two Percent with Michael Easter I was recently on this excellent podcast with my friend Michael Easter, where we talked about the chaos in the world and some ways to reframe it in your mind. If you don’t know him already, his substack is great. Check out the episode here: Young adult retreat at Spirit Rock Join me, Vinny Ferraro, and Matthew Brensilver for this retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center for 18-32 year olds, August 4-8th. When the three of us get together, it gets weird fast. But in a good way (we hope). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe

See All (45)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Guided meditations, talks, and the occasional naked surprise; from a contemporary (and iconoclastic) buddhist perspective. caralai.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Cara Lai
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    45
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Cara Lai
  • Show Website
    Meditate Your Face Off

You Might Also Like