Bring Your Whole Self

by Carol Russell
Adapted from a talk given at Tuesday night meditation on July 1, 2025

This talk is based on the third invitation in Frank Ostaseski’s book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. This is the third talk in this exploration of the book in which I have been using each invitation as a stepping off point for an exploration of the Dhamma.

The invitation here is to bring your whole self to the experience of life. The author writes beautifully about how this applies to the processes of dying and death, whether yours or someone you love, and how it applies to grief. Most certainly, in light of the subtitle of the book, this invitation applies to bringing our whole self to each day of life, to each moment.  This is an encouragement to include the parts of ourselves that don’t look good, or reveal we don’t have it all together.

In a way you could think of the last talk I gave, Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing, as how we receive the circumstances of life, how we open to what is coming in. This talk is an exploration of what we bring to the circumstance arising in life. the invitation is to bring our whole selves to our experience.

Frank Ostaseski writes:
"…more than once I have found an undesirable aspect of myself, one about which I had previously felt ashamed and kept tucked away, to be the very quality that allowed me to meet another person’s suffering with compassion instead of fear or pity… It is not our expertise, but rather the wisdom gained from our own suffering, vulnerability, and healing that enables us to be of real assistance to others."

Izumi Shikibu, a Japanese poet born in the late 10th century, expresses knowing the fullness of self in this brief poem:

Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.

Wholeness doesn’t mean we’ve ascended to some level of perfection, transcending our fear, rage, ignorance, and sadness. Bringing your whole self means no part left out.

We have many images of the Buddha – usually sitting or reclining peacefully. These images are a powerful reminder of the potency of the teachings – that it is possible to gather our attention, to cultivate tranquility, to live mindfully and with equanimity in midst of a crazy world – these images become useful metaphors for the path. Sometimes I wonder, how am I meant to interpret these images? Is the teaching to sit calmly outside of the messiness of life, to not engage? And is it also a metaphor for the skillful inner centered-ness and peace that I develop, so that I can relieve suffering, engage with life with kindness, joy, and compassion?

Along with all the beautiful mythological stories about the Buddha’s birth and previous lives, I like imagining the Buddha as a human being, like us, with all the struggles, doubts, and missteps that bless any human life, a human being who was brilliant, resilient, curious, and dogged about wanting to understand life. A human being who, through diligent practice and deep wisdom, attained full awakening.

The story goes that Siddhartha Gautama, as the Buddha was known before he was the Buddha, was young, famous, handsome and wealthy. He had every material comfort available and had no exposure to suffering. Imagine he awoke one morning after another night of partying with his friends to a dull and painful ache in his heart, wondering if there was more to life than endless pleasure-seeking. Imagine this was a strangling feeling that he was having more and more often.

Imagine he wandered out into the streets of his city, some say for the first time leaving his sheltered life, walking through a busy city, perhaps restlessly looking for answers to his unsettledness and unhappiness. 

This is where he famously encountered the four ‘messengers’: Someone bent over and feeble with age, someone collapsed with illness, a decaying corpse, and a wandering seeker. Having been shielded from any fragility of the body, these sights profoundly moved him, and he realized this was to be his fate as well. That realization set him on his quest.

There is a sutta called the Attadanda Sutta, The Discourse on Arming Oneself, or sometimes translated as The Discourse on Being Violent. It is among the oldest portions of the Pali Canon. This poem, composed in the first person, describes the Buddha’s journey to understanding. But it starts with a stunning vulnerability, expressing his sense of distress and fear at how he sees people treating one another, and contemplating what motivates people to do that. He is afraid of the violence and conflict he sees among the people of his time. Here is most of the poem:

Fear is born from arming oneself.
Just see how many people fight!
I'll tell you about the dreadful fear
that caused me to shake all over:

Seeing creatures flopping around,
Like fish in water too shallow,
So hostile to one another!
— Seeing this, I became afraid.

This world completely lacks essence;
It trembles in all directions.
I longed to find myself a place
Unscathed — but I could not see it.

Seeing people locked in conflict,
I became completely distraught.
But then I discerned here a thorn
— Hard to see — lodged deep in the heart.

It's only when pierced by this thorn
That one runs in all directions.
So, if that thorn is taken out --
one does not run, and settles down.
...........................................................

Who here has crossed over desires,
the world's bond, so hard to get past,
he does not grieve; she does not mourn.
His stream is cut, she's all unbound.

What went before — let go of that!
All that's to come — have none of it!
Don't hold on to what's in between,
And you'll wander fully at peace.

For whom there is no "I-making"
All throughout the body and mind,
And who grieves not for what is not
Is undefeated in the world.

For whom there is no "this is mine"
Nor anything like "that is theirs"
Not even finding "self-ness," he
Does not grieve at "I have nothing."

The title of the sutta, Arming Oneself, points to the very human reaction of self-protection in the face of fear. My first impulse when threatened can be to defend myself.  When you examine this deeply in your own life, do you find that arming yourself and fighting make you free of fear?  Or does it lead to more fear, more to protect?

I often think of courage as the bravery of a warrior or an explorer. But on this path, as Jack Kornfield says,
"the courageous heart is the one that is unafraid to open to the world, to care no matter what... In this vulnerable human life, in family, community and society, every loss is an opportunity either to shut out the world or to stand up with dignity and let the heart respond."

Like all of us, the Buddha longs for ‘a place unscathed.’ And then he sees the source of his pain. It is a thorn lodged in his own heart that is the cause of his distress, and it is in removing the thorn that he is able to quell his turmoil. It is inside of his own heart, not outside himself in the perceived threat. What does the thorn represent? 

To me, I hear the Four Noble Truths exquisitely offered in this poetic format. There is the truth of suffering, the fighting and the hostility. There is the truth of the thorn in the heart that is the cause of suffering, the grasping, the I-making. There is the truth of the way out of suffering, by removing of the thorn in the heart - by shunning greed, selfishness, and I-making. The result is a greater sense of peacefulness and unselfishness.

It’s the vulnerability in the opening stanzas that touch me. The Buddha is filled with dreadful fear at seeing hostility, seeing ‘creatures flopping about like fish in water too shallow’. Allowing himself to be moved, because he knows this in himself, with profound empathy at the state of humans, opens his heart of compassion. It isn’t because of some transcendent wisdom that he could analyze the truth of the human condition from afar. No, in this sutta it is because of his own fear – ‘the dreadful fear that caused me to shake all over’ – it’s because of his own experience of life and his ‘longing to find a place unscathed’, that he saw the core truth of the human predicament. 

F. Ostaseski:
"…It is not our expertise, but rather the wisdom gained from our own suffering, vulnerability, and healing that enables us to be of real assistance to others".
It is our hard-earned wisdom.

In the last talk in this series, we talked about how it’s possible to touch our own suffering, allowing natural compassion and presence arise. And I’ve noticed that when I hold myself back, sometimes the chance for connection can be lost.

Have you ever noticed how sometimes one caring person in the room can make all the difference? Or how when one person in a conversation is vulnerable about what they are feeling – skillfully sharing their worries, their grief, or their anger - it changes everything? Hearts open. Other people become more willing to be authentic.

Perhaps we are moving, as a culture, toward less opportunities to be vulnerable with each other. Relationships are increasingly facilitated by technology. Texting as a preferred way to communicate is on the rise. 52% of Americans prefer communicating with friends and family via text messages vs 25% by phone or video call. Only 7% prefer communicating face to face. Some say social media is even replacing spaces where people used to gather to talk. 

Then there is AI. I recently heard a podcast about how AI is actually replacing relationships. The most common uses of AI are therapy and companionship. 1 in 4 young adults believe AI could replace real-life friendships and romance. I read an article about a woman who created a Chat GPT ‘boyfriend,’ which she personalized with the characteristics she wanted. Then she began messaging with it. Unlike real humans, she found, the AI companion was always there for her. ‘He’ was always supportive, playful, complimentary, sexy, never critical or moody. She never had to meet ‘his’ needs. She actually developed real feelings for ‘him’ and became addicted to this artificial relationship.

So here is a mathematical algorithm learning from you what you like and feeding it back to you, and because we are humans with a real need for connection and relationships and we have neurotransmitters firing off in our brains, an AI companion becomes a substitute for a real relationship. Perhaps there are some benefits to that kind of positive reinforcement. And yet, as one researcher puts it:
"If we become habituated to endless empathy and we downgrade our real friendships, and that’s contributing to loneliness – the very real thing we’re trying to solve – that’s a real potential problem.

One thing about real relationships – whether with ourselves or with one another - is there’s a potential for being vulnerable. There is the potential to disarm ourselves. The Dhamma invites us to remove the thorn from our own heart. All the practices we do to settle in the body, center ourselves in presence, and remember our innate goodness prepare us to let go of old habits of arming ourselves. "Essential strength comes from repeated encounters with our basic goodness," Frank Ostaseski writes. "That becomes the foundation on which we stand, the essential strength we carry into action."

I resonate with that connection between vulnerability and strength, because, while it seems to be a strong message in our current culture that to be strong one has to be invulnerable, I find that it takes great courage and strength of the heart to open up in this way.

In all of these talks inspired by the book, we are talking about becoming more intimate with life: don’t wait; welcome everything, push away nothing; bring your whole self to the experience. Not sidestepping the hard stuff, but meeting it with mercy and kindness from a grounded authentic place. Opening fully to the joy and beauty of life and relationships as well. All of it.

How about the big emotions? The ones that sweep over us like a tsunami? In the book, the author describes how our usual MO is to either express or repress difficult and overwhelming emotions. Expressing emotions skillfully, like opening up somatically in the moment or sharing with a person close to us is a positive way of dealing with strong emotions. The book offers a third option, which I like: contain the emotion. 

This isn’t about bottling up feelings. It’s about ‘accepting their presence, whether we like them or not.’ It’s about caring for ourselves as we hold the emotion.

This perspective brings some equanimity to the experience. I like thinking of it as being respectfully curious. There is an invitation to investigate (one of the factors of awakening), not so much mentally, but in the body. What’s here? 

I’ve been thinking of it this way: sensing myself as a trustworthy container for the emotion that is present. It depersonalizes it and allows me to hold the emotion in a gentle way. As Frank Ostaseski says: then ‘we can regulate, reflect, and reappraise.’ It’s a mindful pause that give me the choice to be kind and honest with myself and skillful in my responses. 

Bring my whole self to the experience. Being centered and open-hearted gives me an better chance to be authentic, responsive, malleable, and kind. It allows me to grow and change and be transformed by life. 

I heard a teacher ask this question recently: what is a universal characteristic of the human heart/mind? 

His surprising answer? A universal characteristic of the human heart/mind is flexibility and malleability. Hearts and mind have the innate ability to learn and change. We can think of the Dhamma as the map to guide the way, as each of us walks the unique path before us.

Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.

May you open to wholeness and authenticity, and bring your full self to this life. May all beings be safe and happy.