Unfortunately the beginning wasn’t recorded so in case you can make sense of them I’ll include my notes below.
Compassion and Fears of Compassion
Last week we talked a little about pathways of training, how do we open our hearts at Bodhisattvas – how do we practice compassion and how can we make the compassion more possible. Let’s touch briefly on a few pathways and then let’s think a little about fears of compassion.
- HH: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
- Compassion 6 ways:
- The first way of cultivating, or allowing compassion, is a naturally arising when the mind is settled – this is what’s emphasized in Zen, once the craziness of our mind settles out what arises is compassion, there are various techniques for inquiring into the craziness that’s swirling around – all of our conditioning – we do get interested in the mind and the process of mind, but not it’s better not to get too interested. Just enough awareness and understanding to dance with it all and let it go. And in that settledness is a grounded acceptance that supports compassion. A famous example of this is a priest named Hakuin who lived in a fishing village in old Japan (tell the story). So the first of six ways to practice compassion is just settle, just let go, just be present, just respond. The practice of zazen is all about this. And the extension of zazen into daily life from this settled place is a one-pointedness. The classic Zen phrases like “when walking just walk” are an expression of this. And we can hold that space in more complex situations too, I’ve really been trying to apply that sensibility more to using the computer. When doing email, just do email. Set a period of time to focus on it, attend to each message mindfully and move on. This first way is a kind of getting out of our own way as wise and compassionate beings.
- The second way is we study cause and effect. We often have a narrow understanding of what leads to what which can cause us to misjudge what’s really helpful. HH has a nice comment on this: “The view of interdependence makes for a great openness of mind. In general, instead of realizing that what we experience arises from a complicated network of causes, we tend to attribute happiness or sadness, for example, to single, individual sources. But if this were so, as soon as we came into contact with what we consider to be good, we would be automatically happy, and conversely, in the case of bad things, invariably sad. The causes of joy and sorrow would be easy to identify and target. It would all be very simple, and there would be good reason for our anger and attachment. When on the other hand, we consider that everything we experience results from a complex interplay of causes and conditions, we find that there is no single thing to desire or resent, and it is more difficult for the afflictions of attachment or anger to arise. In this way, the view of interdependence makes our minds more relaxed and open. By training our minds and getting used to this view, we change our way of seeing things, and as a result we gradually change our behavior and do less harm to others.” And we become more skillful in helping and supporting ourselves and others in ways that really matter, that really help, that really lead to the way of living we so deeply desire.Here’s a poem by Jane Hirshfield
I Imagine Myself in Time by Jane Hirshfield
I imagine myself in time looking back on myself —
this self, this morning,
drinking her coffee on the first day of a new year
and once again almost unable to move her pen through the iron air.
Perplexed by my life as Midas was in his world of sudden metal,
surprised that it was not as he’d expected, what he had asked.
And that other self, who watches me from the distance of decades,
what will she say? Will she look at me with hatred or with compassion,
I whose choices made her what she will be?
- The third way to bring forth compassion is to put energy into our intention, and Buddhism focuses strongly on the power of intention, or vow, we arise the deep deep wish for all being to be happy and free from suffering. And Buddhism frees up intention from our doubts about it by unzipping it from action, by encouraging us to look deeply at intention before action arises. And even if our actions aren’t as we hope they would be we can turn back to our intention and strengthen and clarity there.
- This probably should have been the first think I mentioned. Practice vow. You might take on the practice of reciting the Bodhisattva Vows every morning during practice period.In the life of the Bodhisattva the hope or wish or intention to be compassionate and kind is seen as a pivotal thought – there’s a wonderful term for this thought: “bodhichitta” – the mind of awakening – in the chant we did at the beginning this morning we vowed to awaken “true mind” which is the Zen way of expressing this. Bodhicitta arises both spontaneously from our practice, and the possibility of it’s arising is supported by the first two practices of settling to make room for bodhichitta and understanding karma so that we see it’s a natural and logical thing. Bodhicitta is also cultivated and encouraged. We invite it forth.
- The forth way of developing compassion is to work actively with mind states that block compassion. This is called “apply the antidote” this is emphasized a lot in the Tibetan tradition. If you’re angry you can’t be compassionate. If you’re withdrawn and depressed it’s hard to be compassionate. These kleshas or afflictive emotions are to be really worked with. They often use military language actually: we see these afflictive emotions as enemies and do battle with them. Each one that arises we respond by fighting back with what they call the antidotes, so they mix military and medical language. When stinginess arises you practice gratitude. When anger arises you practice loving others and seeing yourself in others. There is a relative, conventional, realm to this work with emotion that we’re quite familiar with. It can feel like such a tempest in the tea pot of the mind when we are in the middle of this relative realm. In the relative realm we are buffeted by desire, by impatience, by wanting things to be a different way than they are. And in the Tibetan system we notice each of these arising and apply the antidote. One antidote to desire, rooted in early Buddhism, is to contemplate how whatever it is we desire won’t really satisfy us in the lasting way we crave – they say to examine it’s essential ugliness, like if you desire someone’s beautiful body you contemplate how it’s really full of phlegm and guts and feces and so on, which isn’t language I find so helpful. But we can certainly all relate to how temporary the satisfaction from whatever it is we’re crazing really is. And how surface level our understanding of objects in the world and in our own mind are. Once we get them close they turn out to be different from what we thought! Another antidote to desire for something for ourself is to practice generosity – go get whatever that is and give it to someone else! The antidote to impatience is to practice patience and so on. So we’re trying to actively dance with our afflictive emotions so we can re-emerge into the field of beneficial conduct for all beings.
- It’s worth acknowledging that this is a little different from modern positive psychology and the the mindfulness meditation movement which encourage us to accept and befriend our negative emotions. American Vipassana teacher Tara Broch says the Dharma is “radical acceptance.” Here is some commentary from HH that seems to completely contradict that idea: [p.37]. So which is better? To accept and befriend or to neutralize and remove? Well I think both approaches are important and we can learn to discern when to be firm in this Tibetan Bodhisattva Warrior way and when to accept and relax. I think part of what the enemies language reminds us is not to be complacent, to be active in our curiosity about how to respond to our mind states, and most importantly not to identify with our negative emotions. When we tell ourselves I’m an anxious person that’s just how it is that’s a kind of surrender that limits the scope of our life. On the other hand if we refuse to acknowledge the arising of anxiety because we are a fierce warrior of awakening and anxiety is not permitted in consciousness we need to relax and practice honesty and acceptance as the place to start from. So we can see this language of getting rid of the enemy of afflictive emotions as a deep encouragement to be vigorous and active in our approach when that’s helpful. And, and this is a very important and, we can also look a the whole drama of emotional life from an other angle.There’s also an ultimate realm to this working with afflictive emotions. The difficult emotions are hard on us because we think they’re real. When anger is here we think “she made me angry” or “I am angry” or “this is my anger” which is true enough in the relative realm, but we’re also doing ourselves a real disservice if we stop there. Is the anger real? Is it solid? Is it making me feel in some way or act in some way? Really? What if it’s more like an illusion, more like a shape made out of smoke, not so solid, what if it’s not real at all? And here we practice the ultimate or absolute bodhichitta: [HH p. 38]Another Tibetan system of practice that we’re studied before called the Lojong mind training slogans has a number of suggestions for how to work with this ultimate level, the true antidote. My favorite is the slogan – “regard all dharmas as dreams” – dharmas here means everything that we experience. Can we hold it all so much more softly and relate to it as we would a dream. We participate and are a part of our dreams, they have a reality to them certainly, but they are just dreams, no?
The Genjo Koan text by Dogen is also all about the relative and the absolute levels. Did you notice that? From the opening lines [read from chant book] If we can learn to dance a bit better between these two aspects of reality we will be so much happier, so much less will grab us and pull is into suffering.
So this idea of relative and absolute is the deep wisdom thought of Buddhism. Probably the most important teaching that Buddhism contributes to the conversation about being a human being.
- The fifth way of cultivating compassion I want to mention is encouraging its arising through compassion meditation, using phrases and visualization and encouraging the nascent compassion to manifest and be strengthened. Most of us our familiar with loving-kindness meditation which is popular in the Vipassana world emerging from the South Asian traditions. We can add to that universal wish that others be happy a deeply felt acknowledgment that all being suffer. That we share in common a universal common bond as beings – we do suffer and we do want to be happy. This is such a profound thought and it sounds simple and is easy to underestimate. We can systematically bring up that thought in various ways in meditation. Usually you start with yourself so if you like let’s dip into this practice for a moment and if it strikes you you can continue through the day with this. It’s also great to just rest in simple awareness of body and breath. You start with yourself “May I be free from suffering and the roots of suffering.” [loved one, friend, neutral person, difficult person, all 5, all beings].
- And the sixth and last way to cultivate compassion is to get out there and do something. Actually help someone with your words and deeds. But that help won’t be compassion unless we have a wise attitude. The wisdom piece is essential, you can help others in ways that don’t cultivate compassion. So we have to be a little careful not to wait until we’re all wise and so on but in the Buddhist tradition the inner work is seen as essential training that brings wisdom forward.
It’s important to acknowledge the deep parts of us that don’t want compassion. That don’t want connection. That are afraid of exposure. That worry about losing control or something. A really interesting psychologist in the UK named Paul Gilbert has done a bunch of work with people who have pretty several psychological illnesses – scitsophreniza and the like – and he’s found that working directly with compassion and connection to others is a powerful treatment. In other words he’s training them to be bodhisattvas in some way. And what’s interesting is that he’s done research into what blocks people from accepting their compassionate nature; from accepting compassion for themselves, compassion from others, and their ability to be compassionate and connected.
One way to think about compassion is that it can operate in three directions.
Compassion from Others – think about how open you are to the help and support of others? Is there resistance to receiving that help or love? Do you deserve it? Do you trust them to give you the right kind of help? Do you not want help from others?
Compassion for Others – there’s only so much energy to go around isn’t there? I mean we’d give more if we could, right? Well maybe not to everybody. Do they deserve our help? Well, maybe they do but how can we really know what would really help? Can we know how to help?
Sometimes I don’t story from How Can I Help?
Compassion for Self – boy, tough one. Do we take care of ourselves in a way that’s truly nourishing? Why not?
Paul Gilbert created a list of questions that he uses to measure fear of compassion and I have a selected list here, let’s read this over together and see what strikes us and then have a conversation with a partner. The partner conversation will be pretty structured but we’ll get to that in a minute.
If time after getting back together Tibetan Medicine story from How Can I help?
