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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
Spirituality in Daily Life:
Making Friends with Ourselves-
Part 1
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by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron |
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Opening Meditation
Be aware of sensations in your back, shoulders, chest, and arms. Some people store their tension in their shoulders; if you’re one of them, I found it very helpful to lift your shoulders up towards your ears, tuck your chin in a little bit and let your shoulders drop rather suddenly. You can do that a couple of times and it helps to relax the shoulders.
Be aware of the sensations in your neck, jaw and face. People store their tension in their jaw. Their jaw is clenched. If you’re one of those people then let your jaw and all your facial muscles relax.
Be aware that the position of your body is firm, but also at ease. Be aware that being firm and being relaxed can go together.
This is how we prepare the body, now let’s prepare the mind. We do this by cultivating our motivation. Begin by asking yourself what was my motivation for coming here this evening? There’s no right or wrong answer, just be inquisitive. What was my motivation for coming? Why did I come here tonight? (pause)
Now whatever your initial response was, let’s build on that. Let’s transform it into a very expansive motivation. Think that through working on ourselves through meditation and the sharing of the Dharma we will be better able to serve and benefit others.
Generate the mind of loving compassion that wants to practice the Dharma. The mind that seeks full enlightenment. We do this for our own benefit as well as for the benefit of each and every sentient being. This is the motivation we want to generate. (pause)
Now turn your focus to your breath. Breathe normally and naturally. Be aware of each inhalation and exhalation. Be aware of what is happening in your body and what is happening in your mind. If you get distracted by a sensation, thought or sound, just recognize that and bring your focus back to the breath. By staying focused on one object, in this case the breath, we let our minds settle down. We let our minds become peaceful.
While you’re breathing allow yourself to be content to sit here and breathe. What you are doing is good enough. Be content with what is happening now. Be satisfied with what is happening now. Simply do that for a few minutes. Do silent meditation being mindful of the breath. (bell)
Dharma Talk
I started off cultivating the motivation at the beginning of the meditation. This is a really important part of our Buddhist practice. The long term effects of our actions, this kind of karmic seed we create by what we do is largely based on our motivation. Being aware of our motivations increases our knowledge about ourselves. Consciously cultivating a motivation of love, compassion, and altruism towards others helps us to become friends with ourselves.
We have to look at our mind. What is our motivation? What are our emotions? What are our thoughts? What is going on inside of us? Our mind is what generates a motivation. When the mind has a motivation, then the mouth moves and the body moves. Deliberately cultivating a good motivation is an essential part of Buddhist practice.
This is something that really appealed to me when I first met the Dharma. It put me very squarely in front of myself. I couldn’t wiggle out by trying to look good. You can try to look good all you want and impress people all you want, but getting them to think well of you doesn’t mean you’re creating virtuous karma. Manipulating people so that they’ll do something for you doesn’t mean you’re putting good energy into your mindstream. It’s quite the contrary: a motivation in which we’re looking out only for our own pleasure now puts negative karmic seeds on our mindstream.
Our motivations and our intentions are what leaves karmic seeds on our mindstream. It’s not what other people think about us; not what they say about us; not whether we’re praised or blamed. What is going on in our own heart and mind is what determines the type of karmic seeds we’re depositing on our mindstream.
One example I like to give is someone is building a clinic in a poor neighborhood. They’re collecting donations to build this clinic. There’s somebody who is really rich and they give a million dollars. The thought in their mind when they give the million dollars is, “My business is going really well. I’m going to give this million dollars. When they build the clinic, in the foyer where you walk in, they’ll have a plaque with my name. I’ll be chief benefactor.” That is their motivation.
There’s somebody else. They don’t have much money, so they give ten dollars. Their motivation, the thought in their mind is, “It’s fantastic that there’s going to be a clinic here. May everyone who comes to this clinic be instantly healed from all of their diseases and ailments. May they abide in happiness.”
We have one guy giving a million dollars with one motivation and another guy giving ten dollars with a different motivation. In general society, who do we say is the generous person? The one who gives a million dollars, right? That person gets so much credit and everyone goes, “Ah, look at so and so, how generous he is and how kind he was.” They make a big deal out of that person and the person who gave ten dollars, everybody just ignores.
When you look at their motivations that they had, who is the generous one? It was the one who gave ten dollars. Was the person who gave the million dollars generous? From the point of view of his motivation, was there any generosity? No, the guy was doing it completely for his own ego benefit; he did it to gain status in the community. He came out looking good in people’s eyes and everybody thought he was generous. But in terms of the karma he created it was not a generous action.
In Dharma practice we have to face ourselves honestly. Dharma is like a mirror and we look at ourselves. What’s going in my mind? What’s my intention? What are my motivations? This kind of investigation into the workings of our own mind and heart is what produces real change in us. This brings about actual mental purification. Being a spiritual person is not about doing things that look spiritual, it’s about actually transforming our mind.
The majority of the time we are totally unaware of our motivations; people live on automatic. They get up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to work, have lunch, work some more in the afternoon, have dinner, read a book, watch TV, talk with friends, and collapse into bed. There went a whole day! What was the motivation underlying all that? They have such incredible potential, human intelligence and the human rebirth. What was the person’s motivation for everything they did? They probably had motivations for what they did, but they weren’t aware of their motivation. When they went to breakfast their motivation was probably, “I’m hungry and I want to eat.” Then they ate with that motivation. Maybe the motivation switched after a few bites and became “I’m eating because I want pleasure.”
When we wake up in the morning, what is our motivation for living that day? What’s the thought that gets us out of bed in the morning? We wake up and what are our first thoughts? What are our motivations? What are we seeking in life when we wake up?
We roll over and we think, “Ugh that alarm, that bell again! I want to stay in bed.” Then we think, “Coffee, oh coffee, that sounds good, some pleasure. I’ll get out of bed for coffee, breakfast. To get pleasure I can get out of bed.” Many of our motivations are seeking pleasure, something to make us feel good ASAP. If somebody gets in our way when we’re trying to get some pleasure, we get mad and take it out on them, “You’re interfering with my pleasure! You’re preventing me from getting what I want! How dare you!!” These thoughts of ill will and malice put karmic seeds in our mindstream. These thoughts motivate us to speak harshly or behave aggressively. That creates more karma. As the ones who create the karma, we are also the ones who experience the results of our own actions.
We wake up in the morning instantly seeking our own pleasure. Is that the meaning or purpose of human life? It doesn’t seem very meaningful, does it? We just seek pleasure, help our friends, and harm our enemies. If people give us pleasure they’re our friend; if people get in our way they’re our enemy.
That’s how dogs think. What do dogs do? If you give him a biscuit, the dog considers you his friend for life. You’re giving that dog a little bit of pleasure and now he loves you. Then if you don’t give him the biscuit, he’ll consider you an enemy because you’re depriving him of pleasure.
The mind grasps onto pleasure. It gets upset when someone interferes with our pleasure. Our slogan is “I want what I want when I want it!” and we expect the world to cooperate. We make friends and help them because they do things that benefit us. We get upset when people do things we don’t like; we call them enemies and want to harm them. This is how most people live.
From the Buddhist point of view, we have a much greater human potential than just seeking pleasure and getting mad at the people who interfere with that. This is not the meaning or purpose of life.
Since all of these pleasures end very quickly, what’s the use of greedily chasing after them or of retaliating if someone gets in our way? How long does the pleasure of eating breakfast last? It depends on if you’re a fast eater or a slow eater, but either way it doesn’t last longer than half an hour and it’s over.
We run around struggling for pleasure, but the pleasure doesn’t last very long. We do all these things to have a feel-good experience, and we retaliate against those people who obstruct our feel-good experiences. But these experiences last a very short time. Meanwhile the motivations we’re operating under put negative karmic imprints in our mind. When we operate under the influence of jealousy, hostility and resentment, it puts karmic seeds in our mind.
These seeds influence what we experience in the future. These seeds ripen and influence what situations we encounter and whether we’ll be happy or miserable. Sometimes the seeds ripen in this life, other times in future lives.
It’s ironic that even though we want happiness, we create the causes for unhappiness when we act motivated by the self-centered thought, “My happiness now is the most important thing in the world.” Whenever we act with a selfish and greedy mind, we’re putting that energy into our consciousness. Is the selfish and greedy mind relaxed and peaceful? Or is it tight and clinging?
The Buddha said that we have incredible human potential. That Buddha potential is what allows us to become fully enlightened beings. Enlightened beings may seem very abstract to you. What does it mean to be a fully enlightened being?
One of the qualities of a fully enlightened being or Buddha is that the seeds of anger and resentment have been totally eliminated from the mindstream in such a way that they can never reappear. What would it feel like not to have even the potential for anger or hatred in your mind? Can you even imagine what that would feel like? Think about it: No matter what somebody says to you, no matter what somebody does to you, your mind is peaceful. You calmly accept what’s happening and have compassion for the other person. There is no possibility for anger, hatred or resentment to arise.
When I think about that I go, “Wow!” Anger is a big problem with a lot of people. Wouldn’t it be wonderful never to get angry again? And this not because you’re stuffing the anger down, but because you are completely free from the seeds of anger in your mind.
Another quality of a Buddha is that a Buddha is satisfied with whatever there is. A Buddha doesn’t have greed, possessiveness, clinging, craving, or any other attachments. Imagine what it would be like to be totally satisfied. It wouldn’t matter who you’re with or what’s going on, your mind wouldn’t crave for more and better. Your mind would be satisfied with what is in the moment.
How different that would be from our present state of mind. I don’t know about you, but my mind is continually saying, “I want more! I want better! I like this. I don’t like that. Do it this way and don’t do it that way.” In other words, my mind loves to complain. What a pain in the neck that mind is.
When we think about a Buddha’s qualities, we get an idea of our potential. There is the possibility to be completely free from craving, dissatisfaction, and hostility. We also have the potential to develop equal love and compassion for every living being. This means that anytime you meet anybody, your instant reaction would be one of closeness, affection, and care for that person. Think about that, wouldn’t it be great to have that be your automatic reaction to everyone? It’d be so different from how our out-of-control mind acts now. Now when we meet somebody, what’s our first reaction? We ask ourselves, “What can I get out of them? or “What are they going to try to get out of me?” There is a lot of fear and distrust in our reactions. Those are the thoughts in the mind. They’re only conceptual thoughts, but they sure create a lot of pain inside of us. Aren’t fear and distrust painful?
What would it be like—even here in prison—to be able to greet each person you meet with an open heart? What would it be like to have a heart that feels kindness and closeness instantly towards everyone? How wonderful it would be if you could see that one nasty guard that you normally can’t stand and be peaceful! Wouldn’t it be great to be able to look into his heart and have a feeling of kindness and affection for him? We wouldn’t lose anything by doing that. Instead, we would gain a lot of internal peace. Don’t immediately tell yourself it’s impossible. Instead, try being less judgmental, try being more pleasant to others. Give it a try and see what happens not only to your inner sense of well being but also to how others treat you in return.
We have such incredible potential inside of us. We have the ability to transform our mind in this way, to become a fully enlightened Buddha. Now that we’ve seen our human potential, we should want to live our lives in a very meaningful way. Now can you see how just looking out for “my pleasure ASAP” and getting “my way as much as possible” can be a dead end? It’s a waste of time, not because it’s bad, but because it doesn’t make much sense to put so much time and energy into doing things that bring such little happiness? Instead we see we have great human potential for magnificent happiness that comes from purifying our own mind and developing a kind heart. We’d prefer big happiness to small happiness, wouldn’t we? We’d prefer long lasting happiness or peace to a quick fix that left us feeling empty afterwards, wouldn’t we? Then let’s have confidence in our potential to follow the path and become an enlightened being, and let’s act on that confidence by being more respectful and kinder to others. Let’s develop that confidence by studying the Buddha’s teachings and increasing our wisdom.
Right now, though, the mind is very much externally orientated. We believe that happiness and suffering come from outside of ourselves. This is a deluded state of mind. We assume that happiness comes from outside so we want this and we want that. We’re always trying to get something; one person wants smokes, another person wants cheesecake, but everybody wants something different. Ultimately though, we are looking outside of ourselves for happiness. We end up sitting here our entire life mentally clinging to stuff that we think is going to bring us pleasure. Some of us try to control the world around us, to make everyone and everything be the way we want it to be so that we can be happy. Has that ever worked? Has anyone ever succeeded at making the world and everyone in it conform to his idea of how they should be? No, no one has ever succeeded at controlling everything and everyone.
We keep trying to make other people what we want them to be. After all, we know how they should be, don’t we? We have really good advice to offer all of them. We all have a little advice for everyone else, don’t we? We know exactly how our friends could improve so that we could be happy, how our parents could change, how our kids could change. We have advice for everyone! Sometimes we give them our wonderful and sage advice, and what do they do? Nothing! They don’t listen to us when we know the truth of how they should live and what they should do and how they should change so that the world would be different and we’ll be happy. When we give others our wonderful and wise advice about how they should live their lives, what do they say to us? “Mind your own business,” and that’s if they are being nice. When they are not being polite, well you know what they say. Here we offered them our wonderful advice and they just disregard it. Can you imagine? Such stupid people!
Of course when they give us their advice do we listen? Forget it. They don’t know what they’re talking about.
This world view that thinks that happiness and suffering come from outside puts us in the situation of constantly trying to rearrange everybody and everything to make it the way we want it. We never succeed. Have we ever met anyone that has succeeded in making the world everything they wanted it to be? Think of someone you are really jealous of—have they ever succeeded in making the world what they wanted it to be? Have they found any kind of lasting happiness by getting everything they want? They haven’t, have they?
We look at others’ lives and we feel that something’s missing in our life. This comes from these views that believe happiness and suffering come from outside. These views make us try to rearrange everybody and everything. But what we’re missing is inside, because the real source of our happiness and suffering is not other people. The real source of our happiness and suffering is what is going on inside of us. Have you ever been in a beautiful place with the right people and been totally miserable? I think most of us have had that experience at one time or another. We finally find ourselves in a wonderful situation but we are completely miserable. That’s a perfect example of showing how happiness and suffering don’t come from the outside.
As long as our mind has the seeds of clinging, ignorance and hostility, we’re never going to find any kind of permanent or lasting happiness because these emotions will always continually arise and interfere. All we have to do is look at our life and we can see that has always been the story. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in prison or outside, this is what is going on inside all of us.
The Buddha said that actually happiness and suffering aren’t dependent on the outside. They’re more dependent on the inside—on what is going on inside your own heart and mind. How you perceive the situation is what is going to determine whether you are happy or miserable. That’s because the real happiness comes from inside.
We’ve all had the experience of going into a room of strangers. Think of a time when you’ve had to do that. Your thought process before going into that room is, “Uuuu, there are all these people in there and I don’t know them. I don’t know if I’m going to fit in. I don’t now if they’re going to like me. I don’t know if I’m going to like them. They’re all probably judgmental. I bet they all know each other and they’re all friends with each other, and I’m going to be the only person that nobody knows. They’re going to leave me out, and it’s going to be horrible in there.” If you think like that before you go into that room full of strangers, what is your experience going to be? It is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy; you are going to feel left out, like the odd person out. The entire incident happens in the way it does because of they way you’re thinking.
Now let’s say that before you go into that room full of strangers you think, “Well, there’s all these people that I don’t know. I bet they have really interesting life experiences. Most likely they have a lot of stories and experiences I could learn from. It’s going to be really interesting going in and meeting all these people. I’m going to really enjoy it. I get to ask them questions about their interests, their lives, and what they know about. I’m going to learn a lot, and it’ll be fun!” If you go into that room full of strangers with that thought, what’s your experience going to be? You’re going to have a great time. The situation hasn’t changed at all, the situation is exactly the same, but our experience has changed dramatically! All of this is because of what we are thinking.
When I was a teenager, I hated it when my mother told me what to wear. Why? She was infringing on my independence. “I am an independent person; I can make up my own mind. I can do what I like. Don’t tell me what to do, thank-you very much. I’m sixteen years old and I know everything.” With this attitude, I of course was upset with my mother when she told me what to do. Every time she suggested I wear something, I would growl; it wasn’t a happy situation for either of us.
Years later, when I was an adult, my parents were having some friends over. At breakfast, with my sister, sister-in-law and mother, my mom says to me “Oh why don’t you wear this and such when the company comes this evening?” I said “Okay.” My sister and sister-in-law came to me afterwards and said, “We can’t believe you were so cool with what she did, and we can’t believe that she did that!” I said, “Why not wear what she suggested? It makes her happy and I don’t have any trip with it.”
Here you can see the difference in my mind in those years. When I was younger, my mind framed anything they said to me as, “They don’t trust me, they don’t respect me. They’re infringing on my autonomy and independence, they’re bossing me around.” I was defensive and resistant. When I was older and more confident, they could say the exact same thing to me but my mind didn’t perceive it in the same way. I just thought that their friends were coming over; it will make them happy, and let’s make someone happy. You see the difference? The situation was exactly the same, but what was different was my own mind.
When we really understand deeply how our mind works to create our experience, then we see that we actually have a lot of power to control our own experiences. We have power not by making other people do what we want or by making other things be what we want them to be. Instead, we have the power to control our experiences by changing what is happening in our own heart.
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Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron,
Buddhist Nun, Teacher, Author
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Thubten Chodron (Cherry Greene) graduated with a B.A. in History from UCLA in 1971. After traveling extensively in Europe, North Africa and Asia, she taught in the Los Angeles City School District did post-graduate work in Education at USC.
In l975, she attended a meditation course given by Ven. Lama Yeshe and Ven. Zopa Rinpoche, and subsequently went to their monastery in Nepal to explore Buddhism. In l977, she was ordained as a Buddhist nun.
Chodron studied and practiced Buddhism of the Tibetan tradition under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan masters for many years in India and Nepal.
She was the spiritual program director at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Italy for nearly two years and studied three years at Dorje Pamo Monastery in France. For two years she was resident teacher at Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore, and for ten years she was resident teacher and spiritual advisor at Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle.
She currently is co-founder of Sravasti Abbey at Liberation Park in USA. Ven. Chodron has taught Buddhist philosophy, psychology and meditation worldwide.
Her books include:
Open Heart, Clear Mind; Buddhism for Beginners; Working with Anger; Taming the Monkey Mind, and Blossoms of the Dharma: Living as a Buddhist Nun.
Active in interfaith dialogue, she also does prison work. Ven. Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha's teachings in daily life and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners.
www.thubtenchodron.
org
www.sravastiabbey.
org
www.dharmafriendship.
org
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