Compassion

Ken: We’re going to spend a month on compassion. So we’ll be doing this for four weeks. And part of the reason for that is that in the end, compassion is what all spiritual practice is oriented towards. And the presence or absence of compassion defines whether there is spiritual understanding or not.

One of the tragedies—I feel that we consistently hear about and some of us probably encounter—is religious ideology being the reason that people are subjected to suffering. And this can be in many, many forms. But when something moves into the level of ideology, there’s always an us versus them, and there’s no compassion for the them.

And so, to my mind, ideology is the antithesis of spiritual understanding because in spiritual understanding, there is no us versus them. There are just people. And compassion allows us to cut through the conditioning of society, of ideologies, to see suffering for what it is, wherever it is.

So, in the same way, May I be free of suffering, harm, and disturbance. Now, when you read those lines or say those lines, there can be a whole range of reactions that arise. There can be a relief, there can be a sadness, anything in between. May I be free of suffering, harm, and disturbance.

And when you say these lines with respect to other people, May those close to me be free of suffering, harm, and disturbance, there’s a similar range of reactions. And it becomes very interesting when, May those whom I am alienated from be free of suffering, harm, and disturbance. There’s another whole set of reactions because often those are the last people we want to be free of suffering, harm, and disturbance.

I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine and we were, this is about a month ago, talking about the pain that one encounters often in spiritual practice. And we both agreed that the pain each of us have encountered, at various points in our practice, was so great we wouldn’t wish it upon our worst enemies. Meeting one’s own pain at its very deepest levels actually is a basis for compassion. I wouldn’t want anybody else to have to experience this. That’s a start.

May I be present with everything I encounter. Well, I talked about this earlier this evening. Sounds very simple. It’s not that easy. And often people look at this and say, “Well, I can encounter things.” But it’s not about just the things we encounter externally. It’s also about the things we encounter internally, because it’s all our experience. And there are lots and lots of things. Whenever we get angry, we’ve encountered something that we can’t be present with. Whenever you snap or are snippy, even snippy, you’re encountering something you can’t be present with. So it can be very little stuff or maybe you just don’t want to be present and make the effort at that point. But there’s something right there.

May I experience the world wishing me freedom from pain. Now, as Susan asked in her question, this isn’t about actually hoping that the world will wish me freedom from pain. But what would it feel like to have that kind of relationship with the world? Because it requires us allowing something in that we don’t ordinarily allow in. At least that’s how it is for me. Maybe it’s different for you. And it points out how we are closed to ourselves in a certain way. And we don’t want to deal with our own pain.

May I accept things just as they are. And again, we touched on this earlier this evening. It’s another of those phrases, which sounds very simple, but it’s not. And with respect to Agnes’s question, acceptance is acceptance. It’s not resignation. Acceptance is: this is here and I will work with this. It’s not: I will tolerate it, or I will just let it be there, but I don’t really want to have to deal with it. And even in his remarks on loving-kindness, Uchiyama was pointing to this. When he talks about the Big Mind and the Magnanimous Mind, it’s this opening. And he says, “The tendency of ordinary cooks is to handle plain food, carelessly and rich food carefully.” That’s not the attitude of loving-kindness.

Loving-kindness takes everything and works with it in the same way. And then you take it more deeply into accepting things. And quite consistently, I have found both in myself and in working with people, when we can see and accept what is true, we relax. But there’s the two parts, that we have to be able to see it first and then accept it. And then even if it is very, very difficult or very painful or it is the antithesis of what we actually want to be, we relax. We relax in the body, our emotions open up, and we just become present. So, this principle of just accepting is very, very profound.

So, I’d like you to work with this. And as I say, we’ll spend a bit longer on compassion because I think it’s very, very important. We’ve been laying a foundation with the equanimity and the loving-kindness. It’ll give you a little more chance. So over the next two weeks, work principally with yourself doing a bit of extension. The next two weeks we’ll do a bit more extension. And over the next two weeks, what I want to go through is the commentary on shredding patterned existence, which I think I gave you out as the reading. We’ll do the first couple of bits next week, which is basically the infant level and the teenage level. And then we’ll do the adult level and the spiritual longing level. So page 301 to 304 for next week, as well as the chapter on Parental Mind in the Uchiyama. And then the following week, it’ll be 304 to 307. So again, we’ve gone over, my apologies. It’s hard to squeeze it all in, but this is the end of this class and look forward to seeing you next week.

Student experiences of compassion meditation

Ken: This is the fourth class. Only two more left after this. Okay, fourth class on the four immeasurables. And I believe the focus for practice over the last couple of weeks is compassion. Compassion being the wish that others not suffer, at least on one level. And working with the four lines of: May I be free from suffering, harm and disturbance. May I be present with everything I encounter. May I experience the world wishing me freedom from pain. May I accept things just as they are. What was your experience with this? What questions, insights, challenges? Julia.

Heartbreak

Julia: I had two experiences that were frequent and notable. One was heartbreak, and the other one was very strong movement of energy as I did the lines.

Ken: As you did the lines, mm-hmm. Describe the heartbreak.

Julia: I had an increased awareness of the degree to which people suffer. And also a sense that for many people they may not have the means available to them to help them with their suffering.

Ken: Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story of an extremely bad-tempered woman in a village in Vietnam. We’ll call her Mrs. Fong. And while she was very bad tempered, she was also extremely devoted to Buddha Amitabha, who is the Buddha of compassion. And she would pray at the top of her voice to Amitabha every day for hours. [Laughter] People in the village found this somewhat disturbing. And because she was so short tempered, her noise pollution was creating a body of resentment in the community.

And the elders met together to talk about what should be done. One of the elders said, “I know what to do, leave it to me.” So the next day when she is right in the middle of her prayers, he went over to her house and knocked on the door and said, “Mrs. Fong, I’d like to speak with you.” There was no response. After a few minutes, he knocked again and said, in the somewhat louder voice to be heard over her prayers, “Mrs. Fong, you know who it is, please come down. I’d like to speak with you.” The only indication that there was any effect was an increase in the decibel level of the prayers. So finally he knocked very, very loudly and said, “Mrs. Fong, I really must speak with you. Please come down.”

The prayer stopped. There was the sound of a mala or rosary being slammed on the table. Stomp, stomp, stomp. The door was thrown open, and Mrs. Fong said, “You are disturbing me at my prayers!” And the elder looked at her and said, “I’m very sorry. Obviously you’re very agitated by this and very disturbed. But I’ve only been calling you for a few minutes. Can you imagine how Buddha Amitabha must feel?” [Laughter]

And what you say, Julia, is very much to the point. The immeasurables build on each other. Let me start with equanimity. Through equanimity, we come to the understanding that everything everybody does, they do for one and one reason only. In that moment they think that what they’re doing or what they’re saying is going to make their world a little happier or a little better. Of course, because of the confusion, it often has the absolutely opposite result. But that’s why people do these things, to relieve some pressure internally or externally. It’s just going to make things a little better. They can’t stand the way things are right then, or they think maybe that’s very good and they just want it to be a little better, and they ruin it by their action. But that’s why they do things. That’s why we all do things. I think it’s going to make our world a little better. And in that way, a very profound way, we’re all the same.

Then in loving-kindness, we connect with this deep yearning, which drives our actions. We want to be happy. We tend to make a mess of it because even though we want to be happy, we don’t really see things very clearly. So the actions we do aren’t really appropriate for the situation. So it makes a mess. And as we come into touch with our own wish to be happy, it actually becomes quite easy to wish that others be happy too. It doesn’t mean we have to like them. A lot of people confuse loving-kindness with liking, but there’s a difference between liking people and wanting others to be happy.

Then we come to compassion, which is the wish that others not suffer. And as we cultivate compassion, then as Julia describes, there’s a heartbreak. Because in order to cultivate compassion, we have to see the suffering that is there. And we tend to see it not only in others, but also in ourselves. And the more intimately we become acquainted with our own suffering, the more clearly we understand that the process of suffering, how we create our suffering, operates exactly the same way in everybody else.

Again, there’s no difference. And now it’s a very short step to that heartbreak because we see and know how people are creating suffering for themselves all the time. And our heart goes out to them. And that heartbreak is not pity; it’s not feeling sorry for others. Each of those sentiments has an element of separation or possibly an element of arrogance, superiority. In compassion, there is no sense of superiority. There is just being present with the pain and suffering, our own and others. And when we do that, we experience a broken heart.

Now, Julia also made reference to energy. As we work with these practices, we are through the taking in of these lines, breaking down the mechanisms of various habituated patterns. There’s a great deal of energy locked up in those processes. So it’s not surprising that as we come to be present with the pain that is at the core of these patterns, and the problems start to fall apart, all of that energy is released, becomes available to us. It becomes available to our body; it becomes available to our emotions; it becomes available to our attention and awareness. So there can be sensations of energy moving in the body. There can be very strong emotions arising for seemingly little reason, just things resonate more powerfully and more deeply. And we can also experience much greater clarity and understanding. All of these things arise quite naturally. Okay, thank you, Julia.

Presence masquerading as indifference?

Joe: It has to do with the line, May I be present with everything I encounter. This past weekend, I had a difficult conversation with someone. And that conversation was causing that other person to experience a great deal of pain and suffering. I realized that there was nothing I could do in that circumstance, but just be there. I’m a little concerned that although it felt like I was present, that that might have been masquerading as indifference.

Ken: It’s a very deep question, a very practical question too. I am not sure that we can know, frankly. And some people say, and some people have told me, when you’re really present you know it, and that’s that. And that may be true; I can’t say that I know that. What I do know, however, is that whenever the results in an interaction or a situation are different from our intention, then that’s de facto evidence that we are not present.

I think one of the more useful approaches here, for me anyway, is what I call the black box theory. You’ve heard me talk about the world of individual experience.Uchiyama talks about it. And when we look at the world or approach the world that way, there are no other people. There are experiences which arise, which for convenience sake, we label other people, or these forms, these shapes, these sounds, and we put those all together, and call this a person. And it’s a convenient way, but there’s really just our experience. From this perspective, we only have our own experience to work with. We cannot know what that other person is thinking or feeling, etc. You follow?

And so the effort, then, is to be completely present in that world. Now, that’s easy to fall into a kind of indifference. So when I say completely present, it means that we are able to perceive and respond to all of the subtle body language, and might even say subliminal perceptions that arise. Because very small movements, and sometimes very quick movements, we may not register. Our body, our whole system registers. We may not register them conceptually, but something in us registers them. So it means being present with all of that.

And you act; you say what you have to say and you see what the result is. And the result is happening moment by moment. So there’s a constant adjustment, moment by moment, because one’s intention may be, “Oh, that intention is not going to work at all, because that’s not this world. That was an idea.” And so there could be a constant moving more and more into it, moment to moment. I think that’s all we can do. Now, when I say that’s all we can do, actually it’s quite a lot. I mean, when you’re really doing that, it’s quite extraordinary. But what more can we do?

Courage and lucidity

Student: Well, what comes to my mind is that when I say, may I experience the world celebrating my efforts, I have a sense of friendliness, a blended feeling, no separation, calmness. My question is, okay, so there’s no need for any external validation because I’m getting it, right? The world is happy for my efforts. That is a form of external validation.

Ken: Well, except in the way that I was talking with Joe, the world that’s celebrating isn’t actually the external world.

Student: Yeah.

Ken: It’s just the world you experience.

Student: So, we make it ourselves.

Ken: Well, we make everything ourselves, don’t we?

Student: Yes. And may I know how everything works. It’s all about clarity.

Ken: Yes. Which I found very interesting. In the New York Review of books, the current issue, there’s a review of a book, which I think the title is Radical Hope. And it’s a rather interesting look at what happened to the Crow Indians and the approach that their last great chief, whose name is Chief Plenty Coups, the direction he pointed when they were herded onto reservations and their whole way of life is destroyed.

And there he talks about a certain kind of courage, when you have a sense of a good that is possible, but you have no idea what it’s actually going to look like in the future. And he comments that this kind of courage relies, or is dependent, upon a certain lucidity, a clearness of vision. And I think you’re referring to the same kind of thing here. When you see things clearly, you see how they work, what happens to your relationship with all of the social conventions?

Student: They don’t come into the picture.

Ken: Well, actually they do come into the picture, in the sense you may have to violate a whole bunch of them. Right?

Student: Yeah, but you don’t need them to proceed.

Ken: Exactly. That’s the lucidity, the connection.

Student: I had an interesting experience this weekend in getting clarity on a certain issue. And what was interesting to me is that it seemed that the defining feature of it was that I had been feeling guilty in a certain way. And when that guilt was alleviated, albeit from the affirmation of my feelings, from unrelated people to the issue, suddenly the burden lifted and I was able to see clearly what to do.

Ken: And what did you experience at that point?

Student: Oh, clearly joy.

Ken: Thank you [laughs]. Yeah, right. You get the connection there, Joe? Okay, good. Okay.