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Guard the senses
Good is restraint in the eye; good is restraint in
the ear; good is restraint in the nose; good is restraint in
the tongue.
Bhikkhu Vagga, The Dhammapada |
Reconciliation, path to lovingkindness
Phillip MOFFITT
“My mind fills with anger each time I see his face or hear him
speak,” one student reports. “I find myself wishing ill will towards all
of them,” another says with a painful voice, ashamed of her own
reactions.
“I simply cannot practice loving kindness for these people”, says a
third. In the past three years many meditation practitioners have been
coping with such emotions as they have struggled to find the Buddhist
peace of mind in relation to national events and political leaders they
view as being harmful.
Similar feelings of outrage, of seething anger or disgust, are
frequently reported by students coping with a difficult person at work,
a betrayal by a teacher or a friend, the painful breakup of a marriage,
or an unjust family situation.
On meditation retreats and in my weekly meditation group I am often
asked by students what they should do in circumstances where the
hostility and sense of separation has persisted despite hours of loving
kindness practice and repeated attempts at forgiveness.
These are well-trained students who understand that their feelings
are only causing suffering to themselves and that anger often gets in
the way of wise action. Yet their feelings of overwhelm from frustration
and rage persist.
It is quite a conundrum. How to you find a way to not succumb to
outrage and alienation yet keep your passion and motivation for the hard
fight for justice and the social good?
Likewise, when your marriage is dissolving, how do you let go of
anger, bitterness and blame while at the same time stand up for what you
believe to be right, particularly when there are children involved? One
student recently told me she didn’t trust herself to meditate.
She found herself seething by the time she got off the cushion
because it had so increased her fixation on how poorly she had been
treated both by her ex and her former in-laws.
A man on retreat-flooded with hopelessness over the recent loss of
his family when his wife left him for another man, taking their two
children with her-asked if he should just go home. “Maybe I need
antidepressants, not meditation,” he ruefully proclaimed.
For the last five years, both in retreat and daily practice
situations, I have been offering students reconciliation practices as
ways of working with their experiences of hostility and alienation.
In many instances, students have reported dramatic reductions in
their emotional turmoil.
Particularly in difficult marriage and family circumstances, they
have found that consistently working with reconciliation meditation has
enabled them finally to be able to move forward with their lives.
Reconciliation means “to restore to compatibility or harmony” and “to
restore the sacred.” It is also defined as “to make consistent or
congruent” - for example, to reconcile your ideals with reality.
When you practice reconciliation, you are both reconciling yourself
to the truth that in this moment there are painful differences or
polarities between you and another, and rather than allowing your heart
to become closed to the other, you are seeking to align the mind/heart
to include them just as they are.
To include all people and all conditions in your experience is the
congruence taught by the dharma. You are acknowledging the truth of
interdependence and non-separateness or, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, that
we “inter-are”. In his book Old Path, White Clouds he devotes an entire
chapter to teaching reconciliation based on the vinaya.
Vipassana meditation is a means of cultivating insight through being
mindful of what is arising and passing. Reconciliation practice is the
aligning and softening of the heart to be reconciled with this moment
just as it is.
When you are reconciled, your experience returns to wholeness because
nothing is being left out. There is then the possibility of insight to
arise.
Reconciliation begins by acknowledging the truth that there are
substantial differences. It is not contingent on those differences
disappearing, and it certainly does not imply that you will become best
friends with everyone.
Rather, the intention to be reconciled is the wish to be connected to
the sacred oneness of this moment despite any differences and, by
acknowledging the truth of that oneness, to find harmony with any
situation, even the painful.
This does not mean that you have to approve or passively accept
unwholesome actions. Nor do you have to forsake passionately advocating
for what you believe to be right.
It simply means that you do so while treating the other as sacred, as
the “thou” so famously stated by Martin Buber. It is the understanding
reflected by the Dalai Lama when he refers to the Chinese as “my
friends, the enemy”.
One of my students had been “frozen in anger” for many months, unable
to deal with the practicalities of divorce, struggling to forgive her
husband even while he continued a pattern of hurtful actions. She
finally realized that her stuckness was due to her implicit demand that
he change.
Through reconciliation practice, she was able to accept him as he was
and negotiate a parting that minimized the turmoil for their young
child. A second student, to his amazement, actually reconnected with his
alienated wife once he reconciled himself to certain difficulties in her
personality.
Another person was able to let go of the outrage long held toward an
abusing father, while one more found that an intolerable supervisor at
work could actually be tolerated, if not respected.
In none of these instances did the students report strong feelings of
compassion and loving kindness for the other person. Instead, each
student experienced a release of an inner tension that had been blocking
their acceptance of the truth of how things were.
Once the truth of the moment had been accepted, each of their
situations could be worked within a manner that brought inner peace, and
even at times an outright resolution. They were able to be reconciled
whether or not their antagonist was participating in the process, and it
felt great!
Reconciliation is not an end point of practice. It is a beginning
place for continuing to free your heart. Through reconciliation, you
gain the momentum towards loving kindness - an unconditional
well-wishing that flows freely from the unencumbered heart, independent
of conditions. The Dalai Lama emanates such a feeling.
The woman who was finally able to divorce her husband is only now
able to experience moments of loving kindness towards him as another
being “who just wishes to be happy”, as the Buddha taught.
Likewise, the student with the difficult boss reports that on some
occasions when his boss is acting out, there arises the “heart’s quiver”
of compassion for such a tormented soul. Reconciliation provides the
acknowledgement and alignment that allows for such heart qualities to
emerge.
One student reported his success in practising reconciliation towards
political leaders he found detestable. He imagined his views and
feelings as constituting one circle of existence and the values and
unskilful actions of the politicians to be a separate circle.
Through reconciliation he came to realize there was a third, larger
circle of existence containing both smaller circles.
This understanding allowed him to find some harmony with people he’d
previously held in contempt. I sometimes refer to this larger circle as
the “ground of reconciliation.” By resting in this place, we can avoid
“taking birth” in the small circle of a separate identity.
Reconciliation practice can also be brought into the larger
community. One long-term vipassana student in Arizona has formed an
organization of fellow lawyers who are committed to the practice of
being reconciled.
Members of this group recently agreed to represent divorcing spouses
in settlement talks, with the understanding that if the parties cannot
reconcile their child and material differences out of court, then both
lawyers will resign.
In Greensboro, North Carolina, community leaders have started a truth
and reconciliation commission modeled on the one in South Africa in an
effort to reconcile community differences regarding the 1979 slayings by
members of the Ku Klux Klan.
It is worth remembering that the Buddha constantly admonished us not
to cling to views and taught that hatred never conquers hatred. Even the
famous murderer Angulimala was given the opportunity to discover
reconciliation through the Buddha’s compassion and loving kindness.
May you be reconciled with those with whom you have had difficulties
in your life. May all beings everywhere be reconciled. May the merit of
your reconciliation practice be to the liberation of all beings.
Courtesy: Inquiring Mind.
Seeking freedom within one’s experience Lesson from the Buddha’s
life
The following teaching on the Four Noble Truths is taken from a talk
given by Venerable Viradhammo during a ten-day retreat conducted in
Bangkok for Thai lay people, in June 1988.
This teaching is not aimed at just getting another kind of
experience. It is about complete freedom within any experience.
This evening we might begin by considering the legend of the life of
the Buddha. Now we could consider this story as factual history. Or we
could also look at it as a sort of myth - a story that reflects back on
our own development as beings seeking truth.
In the story we are told that before his enlightenment, the
Bodhisatta (Buddha to-be) lived in a royal family with a lot of power
and influence.
He was a very gifted person, and had all that any human being could
wish for: wealth, intelligence, charm, good looks, friendship, respect
and many skills. He lived the princely life of luxury and ease.
The legend has it that when the Bodhisatta was first born, his father
the king received a prediction from the wise men. They said there were
two possibilities.
Either this son would become a perfectly enlightened Buddha, or he
would become a world-ruling monarch, of course the father wanted his son
to carry on the business of being a monarch, he didn’t want him to
become a renunciate. So everybody in the palace was always trying to
protect the prince.
Whenever anyone grew vaguely old or sick they were taken away, nobody
wanted the prince to see the reality of oldage, sickness and death for
fear that he would become disenchanted with sensuality and power and
turn his mind to deeper thoughts.
But then at the age of twenty-nine, curiosity struck. The prince
wanted to see what the world outside was like. So off he went with his
charioteer and, what did he see? The first thing he saw was a sick
person, all covered with sores, in pain, and lying in his own filth a
thoroughly wretched human condition.
“What’s that?” The prince asked his attendant. The attendant replied,
“That’s a sick person.” The prince realised, for the first time, that
these human bodies can become sick and painful. The attendant pointed
out that all bodies had this potential. This came as a great shock to
the prince.
The following day he went out again. This time he saw an old person:
all bent over with age, shaking, wrinkled, grey-haired, barely able to
hold himself up.
Again, shocked by what he saw, the prince asked, “What’s that?”
“That’s an old person”, the attendant replied. “Everybody grows old.” So
the prince realised that his body too had this potential to become old.
With that he went back to the palace, quite bewildered by it all.
The third time he went out, he saw a dead person. Most of the
townsfolk were busy, happily waving at their attractive prince, thinking
he was having a great time. But behind the crowds, there were people
carrying a stretcher with a corpse on it, going to the funeral pyre.
“And what is that?!” he asked. So the attendant replied: “That’s a
corpse. All bodies go that way. Your body, my body, they all die.” That
was a really powerful one for him. That really shocked him.
The next time the Bodhisatta went out he saw a mendicant monk sitting
under a tree meditating. “And who is that?” he asked. The attendant
replied. “That’s a sadhu, someone who is seeking the answers to life and
death.”
So we have this legend. Now what does this mean for you and me? Is it
just a historical tale to tell our children, a tale about a person who
didn’t see old age, sickness or death until he was twenty-nine?
For me, this story represents the awakening of a human mind to the
limitations of sensory experience. Personally I can relate to this from
a time when I was at university. I questioned life a lot.” What is it
all about? Where is this all going to?” I used to wonder about death,
and started thinking. “What is the point of getting this university
degree? Even if I become a famous engineer, or if I become rich, I’m
still going to die. If I become the best politician, or the best lawyer,
or the best whatever..... Even if I was to become the most famous rock
star that ever existed..... Big deal.” At that time, I think Jinni
Hendrix had just taken too much heroin and died.
Nothing I thought of could answer the question of death. There was
always. “So what?..... So if I have a family? So if I am famous? So if I
am not famous? So if I have lot of money? So if I don’t have a lot of
money?” None of these things resolved this doubt. “What about death?
What is it? Why am I here? Why seek any kind of experience if it all
goes to death anyway?
Questioning all the time like this made it impossible for me to
study. So I started to travel. I managed to distract the mind for a
time, because travelling was interesting. Morocco, Turkey, India.....
But I kept coming back to this same conclusion. “So what? So if I see
another temple, if I see another mosque, if I eat yet another kind of
food - so what?”
Sometimes this doubt arises for people when somebody they know dies,
or if they become sick, or old. It can also come from religious insight.
Something in the mind clicks, and we are awakened to the fact that no
matter what experiences we have, they all change, they come to an end,
they die. Even if I’m the most famous, powerful, richest, most
influential person in the world, all that is going to die. It’s going to
cease.
So this question - “So what?” - is an awakening of the mind. If we
were to do this ten-day retreat with the idea of getting “a meditation
experience”, then “So what?” We still have to go back to work, still
have to face the word, still have to go back to Melbourne, still have to
go back to New Zealand....So what! What is the difference between “a
meditation experience” and doing a cruise on The Queen Elizabeth II? A
bit cheaper maybe!
The Buddhist teaching is not aimed at just getting another kind of
experience. It is about understanding the nature of experience itself.
It is aimed at actually observing what it means to be a human being. We
are contemplating life, letting go of delusion, letting go of the source
of human suffering and realizing truth, realizing Dhamma and that’s a
different process altogether.
When we are doing mindfulness of breathing we’re not doing it with
the effort to get something later. We’re doing it to simply be with what
is: just being with an in-breath, being with an out-breath.
And what is the result when we’re being mindful in this way? Well, I
think we can all see. The mind becomes calm, our attention is steady; we
are aware and with the way things are.
So already, we are able to see that calming the mind is a healthy and
compassionate thing to do for ourselves. Also, notice how this practise
creates space in the mind. We can see now the potential for really being
attentive to life. Our attention is not caught up.
We’re not being “kidnapped” all the time. We can really work with
attention. If we are obsessed with something, then our attention is
absorbed into the object of obsession. When we’re worried, exhausted,
upset, excited, desiring, depressed and so on, our attention energy is
lost. So by calming the mind we’re creating space and framing attention.
And there is beauty in that. When we go outside after this meditation
period, maybe we’ll notice things in a different way - the green trees,
the smells, what we’re walking on, the little lotuses in bloom.
These pleasant experiences calm and relax us and are very helpful. In
New Zealand they go trekking in the mountains for relaxation.
But this kind of happiness, or sukha, is not the full potential of
the Buddha. A lot of joy can come with this level of practice, but that
is not enough. The happiness of a relatively calm mind is not complete
freedom. This is still just another experience. It’s still caught in “So
what!”
The complete freedom of the Buddha comes from the work of
investigation. It is completely putting an end to all conflict and
tension. No matter where we are in life, there are no more problems.
To be continued
Photographic exhibition of Buddhist pilgrim places August 11,12 in
Colombo
A photographic exhibition of historic Buddhist pilgrim places will be
held at the National Art Gallery, Colombo 7 on August 11 and 12. The
exhibition is titled ‘Nethra Pooja’ - paying homage with eyes.
Most photographs at the exhibition are Janaka Wettasingha’s
contributions over the past four years as page one pictures or
illustrations to articles in Budusarana or in the Daily News on Poya
days.
Janaka Wettasinghe is the staff photographer of Budusarana, the
weekly Buddhist tabloid published by ANCL.
The exhibition will be inaugurated at 2.45 p.m. on August 10, Friday
by First Lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa and Minister of Media and Information
Anura Priyadharshana Yapa. |