bodhi tree swaying

Seeing with the eyes of compassion

We can see beings with the eyes of compassion, or with the eyes of utility. We almost literally live in different worlds depending on which eyes we use to see with.

When we see with the eyes of utility we gauge beings by their usefulness to us.

If the checkout clerk performs smoothly we’ll remain neutral, maybe even friendly, but if he or she has trouble looking up the code for an item, or — heaven forbid — has to call in a supervisor for help, we’ll quickly become irritable. This person has become an obstacle to the smooth functioning of our life.

When the child is slow getting ready for bed, succumbing to a seemingly endless stream of distractions, we yell, because the child being awake is an impediment to us getting on with our next activity.

If there’s a insect buzzing around in the house, this is an impediment to our living in a relatively annoyance-free zone, and offends our sensibilities, since bugs are dirty. The bug’s very existence is an impediment to our well-being and so we’re quick to reach for a newspaper or can of fly-spray.

The lambs in the field are cute, but we like the taste of meat. The lamb dead is of more utility to us than the lamb being alive.

Seeing with the eyes of compassion changes everything.

With the eyes of compassion, we only see one thing. We see that others’ happiness and suffering are as real to them as our own are to us. We see that others want and seek happiness, but don’t find it as often as they would like. We see that others want to be free from suffering, and yet keep suffering.

We feel for the checkout clerk because, for all we know, they are just learning the job, or are under-trained, or the systems have been changed, or they’re having to deal with someone else’s errors, or they have personal problems that are making it hard to stay focused. We don’t know that any of these things is the case, but we’re open to the possibilities. We may feel the frustration of being in a slow-moving queue, but we don’t just jump to blaming the clerk. He or she is a human being.

When we see, with the eyes of compassion, the child getting distracted while getting ready for bed, we may recall that self-control is one of the first cognitive abilities to go when we’re tired. So the child is literally unable at that point to control him or her self. What, then, is the point of getting mad? More kindly directing is needed.

The fly turns out to be just a fly. Sure, it has a dubious sense of hygiene and likes to walk over our food, and it makes an annoying sound, but it’s another living thing. Many an insect has been given safe passage to our front porch with the help of a glass and an envelope.

And the lambs? I’d rather have tempeh or tofu. After 31 years of vegetarianism I can no longer think of animals as food, any more than I can think of people as food.

With the eyes of compassion we see the most essential thing about any being: their deepest drives for life and wholeness and safety. With the eyes of utility we see only our own need. We don’t really see anything beyond ourselves. With the eyes of compassion we see beyond ourselves and are open to the magical and mysterious reality that is another life.

When we see with the eyes of compassion, recognizing that others’ happiness and suffering are as real to them as our own are to us, we don’t want to do anything to obstruct their happiness or to cause them harm. It just doesn’t happen.

And when we see in this way, and connect in this way, and respect in this way, every connection becomes a source of joy, for self-preoccupation imprisons and limits us like a birdcage, while leaving behind self-preoccupation is like flying free. It’s more than flying free, it’s like soaring with others.

Of course we can’t just switch from seeing with the eyes of utility to seeing with the eyes of compassion all at once. We’ll bounce from one perspective to another, perhaps many times in a day. Perhaps we’ll only see through compassion’s eyes for a few minutes or a few seconds, before we start to see the world in utilitarian terms once again. But it’s a training. It’s a practice.

Just keep coming gently back to the thought: “This person suffers just as I suffer. This person, just like me, doesn’t want to suffer.”

And if we keep gently reminding ourselves to see with the eyes of compassion in this way, that perspective will more and more become part of who we are.

Bearing compassion in mind

I’d like to suggest a simple practice for you.

For the next hour or so, let the first thought you have when seeing someone or meeting them face-to-face be: “This person suffers just as I suffer. This person, just like me, doesn’t want to suffer.”

“Seeing someone” can include seeing their photograph or seeing them on TV, as well as seeing them in person, or seeing them passing by.

You can try this for a longer period, of course, but I thought it would be good to try it for a very short spell initially, so that you don’t feel you’re taking on a task that’s too big.

I’d advise keeping these two phrases going prophylactically, so to speak; if you just have them running around your head whenever your mind would otherwise go off wandering, then it’ll be easier to call them to mind.

So as you’re driving, you can see cars in front or behind, going in the same direction as you or in other directions, and say to yourself, “This person suffers just as I suffer. This person, just like me, doesn’t want to suffer.”

You can do this as you’re walking along the street or cruising the aisles of a supermarket. You can do it in your office. You can do it when you’re in a meeting.

But it’s particularly to do this when you’re actually talking to someone.

Just try it and see what effect it has.

One person who tried this said it had helped “ground” him and stopped him from escalating tricky situations. Someone else who did this on the bus found that it lead to a loosening of their sense of having a “contracted self” and that they had a feeling of common experience with the other people.

Someone else said, “I felt a connection with the person … even a deep kindness. Think I could have perhaps even went over and gave them a cuddle so we could cry together.”

And yet another person tried this on public transport: “This practice just helped me keep it “chill” during a long, cross-town bus ride during which a baby was crying the whole time. Other riders were getting very bent out of shape, but thanks to this mindfulness practice I just went with the flow with kindly thoughts for everyone on the bus.”

One of the things I found happening today as I was bearing these phrases in mind toward passers-by was that I felt a strong sense of curiosity about them. It wasn’t like I had any specific questions in mind, like “I wonder what his name is,” but that I had a strong sense of an entire life being right there in front of me, just waiting to be explored.

I certainly feel much happier doing this practice. My usual thoughts — which sometimes reinforce unskillful mental states like anxiety and ill will — are displaced, and the new thoughts — “This person suffers just as I suffer; this person, just like me, doesn’t want to suffer,” lead to a sense of well-being, connectedness, and peace.

And this is a practice that you can keep “rebooting” during the day. Try it for an hour, and then another hour, and then another. What happens, I wonder, if this becomes second nature and we don’t even have to think about it? What happens when this ceases to be a practice, and just becomes part of who we are.

Guided compassion meditation (karuna bhavana)

Here’s a recording of a guided meditation that I led in a Google+ Hangout, for people who are part of Wildmind’s Google+ community. The meditation is the Karuna Bhavana (Cultivating Compassion) in five stages, where we cultivate compassion for:

1. Ourselves
2. A suffering person
3. A “neutral person”
4. A “difficult person
5. All sentient beings.

Enjoy!

Compassion is not superiority (Day 42)

It’s very easy for us to assume that the one who feels compassion is in some way superior to the one he or she feels compassion for. This is partly rooted, I presume, in the assumption that it’s weak to suffer, but that assumption in turn grows from our biological conditioning. We’re social animals, and one of the things a social animal has as part of its genetic makeup is a propensity to establish where it stands in a social hierarchy.

In Buddhist terms this is “seeking status,” which is one pair of the eight lokadhammas, which could be translated as “ways of the world,” although it’s often poetically rendered as the “eight worldly winds.” The eight ways of the world are pairs of preoccupations corresponding to four ways of seeking security in our insecure world. They are:

1. Gain and loss (materialism).
2. High status and low status.
3. Approval and disapproval.
4. Pleasure and pain (hedonism).

We tend to chase after one item in each pair, but with status our biological conditioning is usually not to seek the highest status, but to find a comfortable position in the hierarchy and to maintain it. We can be comfortable playing the victim, or feeling superior, depending on our individual inclinations. But we gain comfort from knowing where we are in a pecking order.

Of course we can never find true security within the eight ways of the world, and spiritual maturity means becoming less and less invested in the pursuit of any of these ways of being. As we mature, gain, loss, status, approval, and pleasure-seeking should become less and less meaningful to us. We see that these are all impermanent, and that we can seek status, but never hold onto it. And inherent in trying to hold on to status is a sense of fear that we’ll lose what we think we’ve gained. So what we initially pursue as a source of security turns out, in the end, to be a source of insecurity.

In all spiritual practice there’s something going on that I call “unselfing.” This takes various forms, including less selfishness and grasping, less self-preoccupation and an increased ability to empathize with others, greater kindness and compassion, an ability to mindfully and joyfully lose ourselves (although not our awareness) in the “flow” of our experience, whether that’s in meditation or elsewhere, and a “seeing through” of the concept that we actually have a thing called a self.

In fact, from a Buddhist point of view “conceit” is regarded as thinking of oneself as higher, lower, or equal to others. So what does that leave? It means basically that we don’t think in terms of status at all. We just be, with no obsession about who we are. We just live in the moment, acting spontaneously with no thought of self or other.

The Buddha said of those who are awakened:

Not as higher, lower, nor equal
do they refer to themselves.

But this should start to happen well before awakening, even though the process isn’t complete until then. Even right now, we can have more of a sense that we’re all in it together — you suffer, I suffer — and a loss of any assumption that “I’m OK, you’re not.”

If you do start feeling that you’re “looking down” on people when you’re cultivating compassion for them, see if you can simply let go of the tightness of self-clinging, and relax into the experience. Go with the flow. Ultimately there is no you, no other. There is simply suffering and a response to suffering.

Brain can be trained in compassion, study shows

Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion — the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior.

A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.

“Our fundamental question was, ‘Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?’” says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. “Our evidence points to yes.”

In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique to increase caring feelings for people who are suffering. In the meditation, participants envisioned a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, “May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease.”

Participants practiced with different categories of people, first starting with a loved one, someone whom they easily felt compassion for, like a friend or family member. Then, they practiced compassion for themselves and, then, a stranger. Finally, they practiced compassion for someone they actively had conflict with called the “difficult person,” such as a troublesome coworker or roommate.

“It’s kind of like weight training,” Weng says. “Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion ‘muscle’ and respond to others’ suffering with care and a desire to help.”

Compassion training was compared to a control group that learned cognitive reappraisal, a technique where people learn to reframe their thoughts to feel less negative. Both groups listened to guided audio instructions over the Internet for 30 minutes per day for two weeks. “We wanted to investigate whether people could begin to change their emotional habits in a relatively short period of time,” says Weng.

The real test of whether compassion could be trained was to see if people would be willing to be more altruistic — even helping people they had never met. The research tested this by asking the participants to play a game in which they were given the opportunity to spend their own money to respond to someone in need (called the “Redistribution Game”). They played the game over the Internet with two anonymous players, the “Dictator” and the “Victim.” They watched as the Dictator shared an unfair amount of money (only $1 out of $10) with the Victim. They then decided how much of their own money to spend (out of $5) in order to equalize the unfair split and redistribute funds from the Dictator to the Victim.

“We found that people trained in compassion were more likely to spend their own money altruistically to help someone who was treated unfairly than those who were trained in cognitive reappraisal,” Weng says.

“We wanted to see what changed inside the brains of people who gave more to someone in need. How are they responding to suffering differently now?” asks Weng. The study measured changes in brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training. In the MRI scanner, participants viewed images depicting human suffering, such as a crying child or a burn victim, and generated feelings of compassion towards the people using their practiced skills. The control group was exposed to the same images, and asked to recast them in a more positive light as in reappraisal.

The researchers measured how much brain activity had changed from the beginning to the end of the training, and found that the people who were the most altruistic after compassion training were the ones who showed the most brain changes when viewing human suffering. They found that activity was increased in the inferior parietal cortex, a region involved in empathy and understanding others. Compassion training also increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the extent to which it communicated with the nucleus accumbens, brain regions involved in emotion regulation and positive emotions.

“People seem to become more sensitive to other people’s suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people’s suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away,” explains Weng.

Compassion, like physical and academic skills, appears to be something that is not fixed, but rather can be enhanced with training and practice. “The fact that alterations in brain function were observed after just a total of seven hours of training is remarkable,” explains UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and senior author of the article.

“There are many possible applications of this type of training,” Davidson says. “Compassion and kindness training in schools can help children learn to be attuned to their own emotions as well as those of others, which may decrease bullying. Compassion training also may benefit people who have social challenges such as social anxiety or antisocial behavior.”

Weng is also excited about how compassion training can help the general population. “We studied the effects of this training with healthy participants, which demonstrated that this can help the average person. I would love for more people to access the training and try it for a week or two — what changes do they see in their own lives?”

Both compassion and reappraisal trainings are available on the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds’ website. “I think we are only scratching the surface of how compassion can transform people’s lives,” says Weng.

The science of happiness and compassion (Day 41)

Compassion is becoming a “hot topic” in scientific research, and the good news is that compassion has been shown to be innate, and that it makes us happier, more popular, and healthier.

1. Compassion is wired into us

Researchers at the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology observed two-year-olds’ reactions to seeing an adult who needed help because he or she had dropped an object and had trouble picking it up. The children’s pupil size increased — a sign of heightened concern — when they saw the adult in distress. Their concern decreased if they were allowed to help (and 10 out of 12 children chose to do so) or if they saw a second adult come to the rescue. However their signs of concern increased if they were prevented from helping and no one else did so.

Despite popular views of evolution as favoring competition and “survival of the fittest” (a phrase Darwin never used, incidentally), we humans have clearly evolved to cooperate and to be concerned for one another. As Darwin suggested, “communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”

2. Compassion is spontaneous, selfishness is calculated

In a recent paper in Nature researchers detailed a study in which people had to decide how much money to contribute to a common pool. The less time people had to think about their decision, the more generous they were — giving on average 15% more than those with more time. In a second study participants either had to make the same decision in less than ten seconds or were given more time. Again, those given longer to deliberate were stingier.

These studies strongly suggest that people have an initial impulse to behave cooperatively, and that selfishness is a more deliberate and secondary phenomenon.

3. Compassion makes you cool

Psychology researcher Kristin Layous of UC Riverside and a colleague from British Columbia asked nine to eleven-year olds either to perform three acts of kindness – like sharing their lunch or giving their mom a hug when she felt stressed – or to keep track of three enjoyable places they visited each week. Both groups of students improved in well-being over the four weeks of the study, but those students who performed kind acts experienced significantly bigger increases in peer popularity than those students who went visiting.

The authors noted that “Increasing peer acceptance is a critical goal, as it is related to a variety of important academic and social outcomes, including reduced likelihood of being bullied.”

4. Compassion makes you healthy

If compassion increases your social connectedness, then it likely also boosts your health. Research by psychologists Ed Diener and Martin Seligman suggest that our levels of social connectedness predict how long we’ll live, how quickly we’ll recover from disease, how much happiness and well-being we’ll have, and how much purpose and meaning there will be in our lives.

One major study showed that a lack of social connectedness is worse for your health than smoking. You’d expect compassion, which emotionally connects us with others, boosts our immunity against ill health. And in fact a study by Thaddeus Pace of Emory University School of Medicine, and colleagues, showed that those study participants who did most compassion meditation showed the least distress when subjected to stress tests, and a reduced level of Interleukin-6, which is a chemical linked to stress, heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, type-2 diabetes and certain cancers.

A recent study by Barbara Frederickson, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, investigated the effect of compassion meditation on “vagal tone,” which is a measure of the degree of healthy activity in the vagus nerve. The vagus regulates how efficiently our heart rate changes with our breathing. The greater the tone in the vagus, the higher our heart-rate variability and the less we’re at risk for heart disease. The vagus is also thought to play a role in regulating glucose levels our immune response.

5. Compassion makes you happy

Neuroscientist Jordan Grafman from the National Institutes of Health carried out a brain-imaging study which found that the brain’s “pleasure centers” which light up when we experience pleasure or experience rewards are just as active when we’re giving money to charity compared to when we’re given money.

Another study found that those who gave were actually happier than those who received. Elizabeth Dunn, of the University of British Columbia, gave money to participants in a study. Half of the participants were asked to spend the money on themselves, while the other half were asked to spend the money on others. At the end of the study, those who had spent the money on others felt significantly happier than those who had spent the money on themselves.

And again, this starts young. Another study in which Dunn was involved, along with lead author Lara Aknin, found that even before the age of two, toddlers showed greater happiness when giving treats to others than receiving treats themselves. And the more they sacrifice, the happier they become. Children who forfeit their own resources in order to benefits other kids are happier than when giving the same treat at no cost.

The bottom line

Compare the above findings to the received “wisdom” that we’re inherently selfish. Economic models are based on the assumption that we’re motivated by self-interest, and entire political ideologies are founded on that same notion. And yet clearly compassion is an inherent part of our nature, and exercising it enhances our health and enriches our emotional well-being.

What’s more the level of compassion we have is not a fixed quantity, but can be developed through practice — including meditation.

PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

Compassion, bliss, and beyond (Day 40)

People often think of compassion as being a sombre, even depressing experience, but that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact when our compassion is sorrowful, this is just a sign that we have attachments to work through. (Which is fine, by the way. This is work we all have to do.) We might be attached to the idea that suffering shouldn’t exist, or that it’s “unfair” for it to affect someone we know, or that it shouldn’t reserve its attentions for those we deem to be bad, sparing the good, or that we shouldn’t feel discomfort. But those kinds of thoughts fly in the face of reality, and simply lead to our suffering.

With practice, the development of compassion can become very joyful. In fact it’s possible to be in jh?na, which is a focused, easeful, relaxed, joyful state of mind while doing this practice.

Here’s one of the Buddha’s teachings on this.

“When this concentration [lovingkindness] is thus developed, thus well-developed by you, you should then train yourself thus: ‘Compassion, as my awareness-release, will be developed, pursued, handed the reins and taken as a basis, given a grounding, steadied, consolidated, & well-undertaken.’ That’s how you should train yourself.

“When you have developed this concentration [compassion] in this way, you should develop this concentration with directed thought & evaluation, you should develop it with no directed thought and a modicum of evaluation, you should develop it with no directed thought and no evaluation, you should develop it accompanied by rapture… not accompanied by rapture… endowed with a sense of joy; you should develop it endowed with equanimity.

For those who don’t recognize these terms, this is an abbreviated description of moving progressively deeper into the experience of jh?na. In the first level of jh?na there’s still some thinking going on, and this is accompanied by feelings of pleasure (rapture) in the body, and joy.

Later, thought dies away, and there’s simply pleasure (intensified because we’re paying more attention to the body now that we’re not thinking), joy, and compassionate intention.

Then we focus more on the feeling of joy that accompanies our compassion.

And then we simply experience compassion, accompanied by equanimity (which you can best think of as deep, refreshing peace).

So it’s clear from these traditional descriptions that it’s possible to experience deep joy alongside compassion. In fact we’re encouraged to do so.

It’s not a good idea to stive for this, however. This joy comes about from letting go and relaxing into the experience of meditating, rather than from striving.

But at the same time, don’t freak out if you feel joy while bearing people’s sufferings in mind. This isn’t a sign of callousness. In fact it’s a sign that you’re letting go more deeply, and becoming better able to be comfortable with discomfort.

PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

Compassion can be joyful (Day 39)

For most of the 25 days in which we focused on Metta Bhavana, I felt like I was swimming in joy. About two thirds or three quarters of my meditations were positively blissful, and in my daily life I felt cocooned by lovingkindness, as if I was inside a bubble of joy that stress was unable to penetrate.

Then, on day 26, I switched to the karuna bhavana (developing compassion) and that all ground to a halt. I didn’t find the practice actually depressing, but it did feel sober. There was a feeling of having a weight in the heart.

But after just over a week of karuna bhavana I started finding the joy starting to return to my meditations. I’m not the only one. One of the participants in 100 Days of Lovingkindness wrote about experiencing a rush of blissful energy (p?ti) as he cultivated compassion for a “neutral person”:

What’s startlingly odd about this is that it was only a few days ago that in the same step merely looking at others’ lingering hurt utterly flattened me, filling me with a deep, yawning sorrow. Yet, this morning I was witnessing the arising of p?ti when looking at the same thing.

He was rather perplexed by this, and concerned that it might be the result of decreased compassion. After all, why feel pleasurable sensations when contemplating someone’s suffering?

But as I said to him at the time, “Interesting things happen when you turn toward your fears.” When you find you can’t contemplate others’ suffering without feeling sorrow (which an early Buddhist commentator called “failed compassion“) but keep on looking, then the fear and aversion can drop away. And this can be experienced as liberating — even blissfully liberating — and the tension that’s released in the body can be experienced as pleasurable energy.

In fact there can be many joyful experiences that arise while cultivating compassion. It can feel both serious and light at the same time. Last night I chose to focus on someone I know who has terminal cancer, and to wish her well, in the sense of wanting her, in her final months, to experience mindfulness and evenmindedness, and to know that she is loved and that her life has been meaningful. And there was a feeling of warmth and joy. I was aware of her condition and the physical and mental suffering she must be going through, but my sense of love for her was enough to be able to balance up the sober feelings that were arising in the heart.

And I had no sense that I needed to “fix” anything. I can’t make her better. I can’t save her. There’s no point thinking that she “shouldn’t” have cancer or that life is “unfair,” or that suffering shouldn’t exist. These things just happen. People get sick. People die. The important thing, it seemed, was just to see myself as a compassionate and supportive presence for her. With an acceptance of impermanence and no attachment to the idea of her getting better (although that would be welcome!) there was no sorrow.

In fact it’s possible to experience joyful, even blissful, states of jh?na in the karuna bhavana practice. The Buddha discussed this often, and that’s something I’ll write about tomorrow. So rest assured that if you find experiencing compassion to be pleasurable, this doesn’t mean something’s wrong. It doesn’t mean you’re lacking in compassion or empathy. So don’t try to block or suppress pleasure or joy. These experiences are perfectly normal; compassion can joyful.

PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

The Heart’s Wisdom double CD — 90% off!

We’re just over a third of the way into our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, and to celebrate we’re all but giving away my double CD of guided lovingkindness and compassion meditations, The Heart’s Wisdom.

As far as I’m aware, the Heart’s Wisdom is the only CD set offering a guide to the four practices known as the “immeasurables” or “brahmaviharas.”

The four meditations on the CD set are:

1. Developing lovingkindness
2. Developing compassion
3. Developing empathetic joy
4. Developing equanimity.

You can order the double CD here, but act soon, because we’re not going to keep this offer open much longer.

You can also see all of the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

And if you’d like to support the work we do, which seeks to change the world through the promotion of mindfulness and compassion, you can make a one-time or recurring donation here.

Thank you!
Bodhipaksa

Why are we so hard on ourselves? (Day 38)

We can be very hard on ourselves, can’t we? It’s as if, sometimes, we’re watching out for any tiny hint of a mistake, and then we pounce on ourselves, getting angry, or frustrated, or ashamed.

I suspect it’s because we can be. When people are allowed or encouraged to be cruel, they often will be. There’s some inherent cruelty in all of us (to varying extents) and this is kept in check by social norms. Change the social norms so that cruelty is encouraged, and it soon emerges. The Standford Prison Experiment and other similar studies shows that that cruel streak is there and can easily be brought out to the surface.

Those social norms are reduced in the family home, which is a “private space” somewhat separated from society. You can do things there with less inhibition (pick your nose, wander around naked). One of the things you can do, free from normal social expectations, is act unkindly to family members. People are often more unkind to those they’re closest too than to anyone else.

This sometimes spills out into public behavior, so that you see parents treating children very unkindly. Listen to the way parents talk to each other and to their children in public, and compare it to how friends and strangers talk to each other. There’s little restraint — despite their actually being in public.

And inside our heads? That’s the most private space there is. We have all internalized all kinds of behaviors from others, but especially from our parents, and so that unrestrained harshness, which ricochets from generation to generation, is a part of us. And there’s no one in side our heads to remind us that there are more civilized ways to behave.

There’s the factor as well that we can hear our own thoughts, but not those of others. So when people are sitting meditating with others, they’re aware of the babble inside their own heads, but look around and see everyone else sitting in silence, and assume that they’re equally silent inside. We think we’re the odd one out. We’re worse than everyone else; especially deserving of harsh treatment. Or so we think.

Harshness is a strategy. The idea is that if we’re unkind enough in response to a particular behavior, then that behavior won’t be repeated. It’s classic “operant conditioning” — the modifying of conscious behavior through positive reinforcement and punishment. Those of us who are “perfectionists” are very used to this, although we tend to forget the “positive reinforcement” part. We take “getting it right” for granted, and instead focus on making ourselves feel bad when we haven’t performed up to our expectations. We use the stick, a lot, and forget the carrot. For many perfectionists “doing it right” is supposed to be its own reward, although as it happens this turns out, often, not to be very rewarding at all.

And this “stick only” approach to motivation can work, up to a point. Perfectionist people often do perform well. But the cost in terms of emotional pain and stress can be huge. The cost can be burnout, mental illness, depression, chronic illness — even suicide.

Fortunately we have ways to change our inner culture, and to learn to talk and act more kindly toward ourselves internally.

When we realize that there’s an alternative because we’re learning from people who are kinder to themselves, or when the stresses of giving ourselves a hard time become just too much, we can experiment with being kind to ourselves and learn that it feels amazing. I’m not talking about the “being kind” that involves days in the spa and expensive chocolates eaten by candle-light (although I won’t knock those) but the “being kind” that involves behaving with kindness internally: being forgiving, talking to ourselves in a gentle tone of voice, allowing ourselves to have breaks when we need them, meeting our needs for sleep, exercise, and food, giving ourselves a pat on the back when we’ve done something skillful, being careful about how much work we take on. All those things, when we do them, feel great, usually. And they also tend to lead to us “doing well.” The low stress mind — the one that’s stretched by a demanding task but not operating out of anxiety — is an effective mind. It’s one that functions optimally. So kindness can work better than perfectionism, often, although I don’t suggest that we be kind in order to be more effective. Be kind because it’s a better way to be. And then notice how that helps you be more effective in various aspects of your life.

So how about, as we’re talking to ourselves and responding emotionally to ourselves, we imagine that we’re talking to someone we dearly love — perhaps a child that we want to encourage. How about we notice the tone of how we talk to ourselves, and see whether what we say and how we say it hardens or softens the heart? How about we become our own audience, so that our inner communication isn’t thought of as something private and shut away, but is something that’s heard, even if only by the wiser and kinder parts of ourselves?

Maybe then we can change our inner culture, and be less hard on ourselves. And we may find that this makes it easier to be kinder to others, too.

PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

“Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help,” Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to a friend and protégé, encouraging him to make peace with his inner demons.

It’s an interesting phrase, “inner demons.” We think of the demonic as being that which is evil, that which aims at our destruction. And yet I don’t believe in the concept of self-sabotage.

Yes, I know, you sometimes act in ways that keep you from doing what you want to do, even when what you want to do is likely to bring your happiness. And I know, you sometimes act in ways that limit you and keep you bound to suffering, even though you want to be free from suffering. But these actions are only self-sabotage from the point of view of the wiser, more aware, more conscious and thoughtful part of you. From the point of view of the more habitual and unconscious parts of you that give rise to these behaviors, these decisions are not acts of self-destruction, but of self-preservation.

One of the biggest delusions we can have about ourselves is that the self is unitary. That we are one thing. That we have one mind. In fact, each of us is a composite of many minds, resulting from the modular, hit-or-miss, cobbled-together evolution of the mind. Engineers call this form of “design” a “kludge.” A kludge is a workaround: a clumsy, inelegant, yet quick and “effective-enough” solution to a problem.

Our brains are kludges. They were not designed from the ground up. Existing, basic, designs were altered. New components were bolted on to an existing structure. Layer was added upon layer. And this happened over and over, creating a rambling, shambling mess, that more or less works, but at the cost of a lot of inner conflict.

Older parts of the brain (or mind) have primitive programming that bases their actions on selfishness: greedily grasping after benefits, hurting others when we need to, running from threats. More recently evolved parts of the brain are more considered: they are able to reflect on the consequences of our decisions, to recall the past and to draw lessons from it, to run simulations of the future and to imagine how decisions we make now might affect our future well-being, to imagine new ways of acting, to considere abandoning unhelpful habits.

And the old brain and the new brain are often in conflict. We might know that we need to change something in our lives (a job, a habit, a relationship) and yet some ancient part of the brain floods the body with chemicals that induce a sense of fear. We might know we need to say something to another person that might be taken critically, and yet we’re paralyzed with anxiety; what if we’re rejected, end up friendless, alone forever? And so we limp along the same old familiar but painful pathways of life, battling with ourselves as we do so. Our self-struggles simply add another layer of pain to our lives. And it can seem that things can never change.

But this isn’t self-sabotage. This is, from the point of view of our ancient impulses, self-preservation. This is us avoiding rejection. This is us not risking making a jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Our demons are not trying to destroy us. They’re trying to keep us safe. It just so happens that make a lousy job of doing so, but isn’t it good to realize that your demons aren’t actually destructive at all? That they simply want to find peace and happiness, and to avoid suffering — just the same as every other part of you?

These demons need our help. They are, to a certain extent, helpless. They are more than half blind. They are incapable of learning on their own. They need to be regulated and their circuits need to be reprogrammed.

And this is where practice comes in. Practice is where you train the mind. The word “training” is very traditional (it’s sikkh? in Pali or ?ik?? in Sanskrit), and the Buddha often compared training the mind to training a wild animal.

“Excellent are tamed mules, tamed thoroughbreds, tamed horses from Sindh. Excellent, tamed tuskers, great elephants. But even more excellent are those self-tamed. For not by these mounts could you go to the land unreached, as the tamed one goes by taming, well-taming, himself.” – The Buddha

This animal-training analogy is very appropriate, given the primitive, animal-like perspective that some parts of the brain have. So that part of us that’s most aware, that has the longest-term perspective on our lives, the most accurate perception of the connection between actions and consequences, has to help the rest of the brain have a wiser perspective on life.

First, the wiser and more recently evolved parts of us have to stand back from and become aware of the demons within, which of course aren’t really demonic, and are more like badly house-trained animals. This “standing back” is mindfulness, and it gives us more wiggle-room in which to maneuver.

Mindfulness is vital, but it’s not enough. We have to get on the cushion, and to spend some serious time training the brain. We need to strengthen our habits of mindfulness, and to develop our habits of kindness. As long as we relate to ourselves and others in terms of hatred and fear, we’ll keep feeding our wild animals, and they’ll keep directing our lives. The Buddha said that meditating was like tethering a wild animal to a stake. If it’s just a rope, with us on one end and a wild animal on the other, we’re in trouble. We’ll be mauled, or dragged along behind the animal, or caught up in an endless tug-of-war. We need to stand our ground in meditation and to have a fixed point (the object of the meditation) to which we keep returning.

We need to reflect, and to develop wisdom. We need to strengthen our habit of looking at past experience and seeing where it led us. We need to look at what we’re doing now and see where it might take us.

In doing all this, the more recently evolved parts of your brain are getting stronger. In neurological terms we’re learning to regulate our emotions. In poetic terms the wild animals within are becoming less wild, and less fearsome. They’re being tamed and trained.

And it’s strongly advised that we don’t try to do all this alone. The task of the mind training the mind is too hard for most of us to do it unaided. Associating with other self-trainers is enormously helpful. It gives us role-models. It allows us to see others facing their inner wildness. It helps us become more aware of our blind spots. It gives us a source of support and encouragement. And it gives us, ultimately, a chance to be of benefit to others as they turn toward their own terrifying things, and find that they are no more than helpless parts of themselves, helpless parts that need help.

The Heart’s Wisdom double CD — 90% off!

We’re just over a third of the way into our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, and to celebrate we’re all but giving away my double CD of guided lovingkindness and compassion meditations, The Heart’s Wisdom.

As far as I’m aware, the Heart’s Wisdom is the only CD set offering a guide to the four practices known as the “immeasurables” or “brahmaviharas.”

The four meditations on the CD set are:

1. Developing lovingkindness
2. Developing compassion
3. Developing empathetic joy
4. Developing equanimity.

You can order the double CD here.

You can also see all of the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

And if you’d like to support the work we do, which seeks to change the world through the promotion of mindfulness and compassion, you can make a one-time or recurring donation here.

Thank you!
Bodhipaksa

Compassion and causing pain (Day 36)

The other day I wrote about “Idiot Compassion,” which I described as ‘…avoiding conflict, letting people walk all over you, not giving people a harm time when actually they need to be given a hard time. It’s “being nice,” or “being good.”’

Idiot compassion, a term Chogyam Trungpa adapted from Gurdjieff, lacks both wisdom and courage. We don’t want to jeopardize being thought of as a “nice person” and so we’re unwilling to be direct with people when that’s needed. We’re afraid to say ‘no’ to our children, for example. This is the lack of courage.

And we lack the ability to see that our actions will only lead to more suffering. That’s the lack of wisdom. So when you’re naive and too quick to place trust in someone, you’re not being compassionate, you’re just making an unwise decision.

Someone on Facebook raised an interesting objection:

Compassion is central to Buddhism, and I think it’s a bit more complicated that shying away from causing pain because it will cause some people to suffer more in the future. I mean, isn’t that the type of reasoning that Buddhist monks in Burma are using to justify their attacks against Rohingya Muslims? Don’t get me wrong, I hear what you are saying, but I don’t agree that true compassion does not shy away from causing pain when necessary. I think statements like that totally miss the point of compassion in Buddhism.

The point that “Compassion [is] … a bit more complicated than [not?] shying away from causing pain because it will cause some people to suffer more in the future” is perfectly valid, but then I’d never said that that was all there was to compassion. In fact I’d made the point that even in those circumstances where you have to be compassionate and made hard decisions, a lot of self-awareness, empathy, and wisdom are required. It’s not easy to be wisely compassionate.

And the defining characteristic of compassion is that it’s about wanting people to be free from pain, and from the causes of pain, which are unskillful states of delusion, grasping, and aversion. So most of the time we aren’t going to be causing pain while acting compassionately. These are relatively rare events for most of us. Some of us may know addicts, or people who have dysfunctional lifestyles, and may often have to practice the tough compassion of saying “no.” Those of us who have children have to do that a lot. But most of our compassion is just compassion — sensing the pain of others and responding with kindness. Hopefully that’s going to be experienced on the other end as supportive, encouraging, and sympathetic, with no hint of harshness or judgement. Usually we only need to be tough when others are trying to use us to enable their own dysfunctions.

Isn’t that the type of reasoning that Buddhist monks in Burma are using to justify their attacks against Rohingya Muslims?

If you’re unaware, there are Buddhist monks in Burma who are actively persecuting the minority Muslim population. They have been stirring up hatred and encouraging violence. Sometimes they’ve been participating in violence, against every precept of Buddhism.

But they haven’t, to the best of my knowledge, been saying that they’re acting compassionately. They are more apt to say that they are “protecting Buddhism,” which is of course nonsense since they are destroying Buddhism by violating its central tenet of nonviolence, and by bringing Buddhism into disrepute world-wide.

But even if those monks were saying that they were motivated by compassion, this would in no way be a valid interpretation of compassionate action within the Buddha’s ethical framework.

Here’s the Buddha on violence:

“Here, student, some woman or man is a killer of living beings, murderous, bloody-handed, given to blows and violence, merciless to living beings. Due to having performed and completed such kammas, on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in a state of deprivation, in an unhappy destination, in perdition, in hell.”

And here he is on compassion:

“But here some woman or man, having abandoned the killing of living beings, abstains from killing living beings, lays aside the rod and lays aside the knife, is considerate and merciful and dwells compassionate for the welfare of all living beings. Due to having performed and completed such kammas, on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in a happy destination, in the heavenly world.”

Leaving aside the heaven and hell aspect, the Buddha consistently presents compassion and violence as diametrically opposed, and mutually exclusive.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha makes clear the empathic reasons for abstaining from causing harm:

All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.

All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.

And in the famous parable of the saw, he pointed out that if you experience anger even when sawed limb from limb by bandits, then in that moment you are not following his teachings. So it’s clear that these so-called monks are not following the Buddha’s teachings on compassion.

I hear what you are saying, but I don’t agree that true compassion does not shy away from causing pain when necessary. I think statements like that totally miss the point of compassion in Buddhism.

In the sutta I quoted from in my post the other day, the example was of a child with a sharp object lodged in its throat. What would you do? You want to help the child, but you’re going to hurt the child by removing the object. Well, obviously you go ahead and remove it, because the harm done by not acting is much greater.

Similarly, if you’re a doctor acting out of compassion you don’t shy away from inflicting pain by giving injections, resetting bones, etc. It is going to hurt people to tell them they have cancer; would a compassionate doctor shy away from causing pain in that circumstance? Of course not.

So sometimes when we’re acting compassionately, we have to accept that it’s going to cause hurt or pain. We don’t want to cause hurt or pain. That’s not our intention. But it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen.

But we do have to be careful of rationalizing — that is, of explaining away unkind actions by saying that they’re for the good of others. You do see that happening. One of the forms of rationalization that most bothers me is when adults hit children “for their own good.” I don’t think that’s ever necessary or acceptable. And when this is described as “love,” I shudder, for I sense a deep confusion about what love is. If there’s any desire to inflict pain as punishment, this isn’t love or compassion. This is power and control.

If there’s ever any mental harshness in your mind about the other person, or words calculated to hurt, then beware! You probably need to get in touch with your own vulnerability, and to recognize that you too mess up, that you too create suffering for yourself, despite your best efforts not to do so. You need to try to understand the other person’s confusion and delusion. They are seeking happiness in the things they do, although they may be very deluded and doing things that can’t possibly make them happy in the long term.

And most importantly, if there’s any trace of pleasure taken in delivering bad news, or in saying “no,” or in any way hurting people’s feelings, that’s an indication that cruelty is present. And when cruelty is present, compassion is absent.

PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

Self-compassion is not selfish (Day 35)

In his book, Living Ethically: Advice from Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland, Sangharakshita has some advice for those who feel guilty about wanting to be happy. I have to confess that I’d forgotten that it was possible to feel this way…

“How can we wish for the happiness of others if we are alienated from our own desire for happiness?

“Unfortunately, many of us in the West were given to understand when we were young that it is selfish to want happiness for onself, and we therefore feel unnecessarily guilty about wanting it. As a result, we can feel guilty even about BEING happy. ‘After all,’ the perverse logic goes, ‘with all my selfish desires for my own happiness, how could I possibly deserve to be happy?’ This further produces the still more perverse belief that if we are to make spiritual progress, we will necessarily have to subject ourselves to great suffering. Such a deep-down belief that you are undeserving, even basically wicked, will inhibit your practice of the Dharma from the very beginning.”

There are lots of connections with compassion and lovingkindness here, but the main one is the simple point that our kindness and compassion should include ourselves, and so we should learn to embrace our desire for happiness, and our desire to be free from suffering. Happiness here doesn’t mean one single thing, and it’s certainly not limited to going through life with a smile on your face. It includes joy, yes, but also a sense of meaning, and fulfillment, and purpose, and peace — including the peace of accepting being unhappy. We can be happy in the face of our own unhappiness.

Learning to embrace our desire for happiness is something I suggested earlier that we can do as a conscious act as we begin a session of lovingkindness practice. And learning to embrace our innate desire to be free from suffering is likewise something we can contemplate as we begin to cultivate compassion.

When we accept the truth that we want happiness, and that happiness is rather hard to find, that we want to be free from suffering, and yet can’t avoid suffering, we’re connecting with the most vital part of our being — that deep-down drive that gives rise to every action we perform. These desires fuel everything we do.

There’s a sense of vulnerability when we reflect in this way. After all, this being human is not an easy thing. It never has been and never will be. It is hard to wand happiness and freedom from suffering in a universe where happiness is elusive and suffering is almost omnipresent. Accepting vulnerability opens the heart. But there is always some part of us, when we open up to our fragility, that is willing to give us kindly support and encouragement as we go through life. And we all need such support.

And having connected with these truths, having opened the heart, having connected with the part of us that wishes us well, it’s not hard to do the same reflections for a friend, a suffering person, someone we don’t know, a person we have problems with — anyone. Any person we can think about wants to be happy, and finds happiness elusive, wants to be free from suffering and is held captive by suffering. But the miraculous thing is that there is some inherent part of us that wishes them well. There is some part that all of us come equipped with, as part of our evolutionary heritage, that resonates with the sufferings of others, and that wishes freedom, peace, and happiness for them.

It can be painful for many people to come through their resistance and to accept that happiness (whatever that may mean for them) is a worthy and right motivation and goal. There are layers of guilt that have been erected to prevent this very realization, and peeling away those layers can be agonizing. It can be hard to accept feeling vulnerable, for we can confuse being vulnerable with being weak, and so we try to hide our vulnerability from ourselves and others. But when we do so — when we pretend that we’re not suffering, that everything in our lives is sorted, our defenses become an armor that bruises and harms others. We become callous and cold and driven, and we’re unwilling to see the vulnerability of others. At our worst, we despise the fragility of others.

Accepting our own tender and fragile desires to be happy and to be free from suffering is the beginning of true compassion. And in the end there is no self-compassion or other-compassion. There is just compassion:

Looking after oneself, one looks after others.
Looking after others, one looks after oneself.
- The Buddha

Att?na? rakkhanto para? rakkhati.
Para? rakkhanto att?na? rakkhati.?

PS. You can see a complete list all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

Mindfulness and education

Life Coach extraordinaire Tim Brownson drew my attention to this interesting infographic last week, and I promptly forgot about it until stumbling across it again last night.

According to the graphic’s creators, by the end of 2012, at least 91 schools located in 13 states were planning to implement meditation course for their students. High school students practicing meditation for a month had 25% less absence and 38% fewer suspension days when compared to other students.

Students improved scores in their attention by practicing meditation and students found that their aggressive behavior was reduced. Students practicing focused meditation committed fewer rule infractions.

The Buddha (and his disciples) on compassion (Day 34)

After 34 days of blogging on mindfulness and compassion I’m getting a little tired of the sound of my own voice, so I’m plucked some sayings from the Pali canon. The Pali canon is part of the oldest strata of teachings that we have available to us. It comprises of teachings that were memorized and passed down orally for several hundred years before being written down. The Pali canon was just one of many such bodies of teachings, which existed in numerous languages. Sadly, the Muslim invasions of India resulted in the destruction of the bulk of these other canons, and the Pali canon is the only complete collection available to us. It happened to survive because the Pali texts had been exported to Sri Lanka, which wasn’t subject to Muslim invasion.

I’ve indicated with each quote who the speaker is, and linked the name to the original source, so that you can see the quotes in context.

• The Buddha’s disciple, Vangisa: “Well taught are the Four Noble Truths by the Seeing One, the Awakened One, the Kinsman of the Sun, out of compassion for living beings.”
• The Buddha: “Rightly speaking, were it to be said of anyone: ‘A being not subject to delusion has appeared in the world for the welfare and happiness of many, out of compassion for the world, for the good, welfare and happiness of gods and humans,’ it is of me indeed that rightly speaking this should be said.”
• The Buddha: “Out of compassion for beings, I surveyed the world with the eye of an Awakened One. As I did so, I saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace & danger in the other world. Just as in a pond of blue or red or white lotuses, some lotuses — born & growing in the water — might flourish while immersed in the water, without rising up from the water; some might stand at an even level with the water; while some might rise up from the water and stand without being smeared by the water — so too, surveying the world with the eye of an Awakened One, I saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace & danger in the other world.”
• The Buddha: “In five ways, young householder, the parents … show their compassion [for their children]: they restrain them from evil, they encourage them to do good, they train them for a profession, they arrange a suitable marriage at the proper time they hand over their inheritance to them. In these five ways do … parents show their compassion to their children. Thus is the East covered by them and made safe and secure.”
• The Buddha: “In five ways, young householder, do teachers … show their compassion [for their students]: they train them in the best discipline, they see that they grasp their lessons well, they instruct them in the arts and sciences, they introduce them to their friends and associates, they provide for their safety in every quarter. “The teachers … show their compassion towards them in these five ways.”
• The Buddha: “Friends and associates .. [of] a clansman show compassion to him in five ways: they protect him when he is heedless, they protect his property when he is heedless, they become a refuge when he is in danger, they do not forsake him in his troubles, they show consideration for his family. The friends and associates [of] a clansman show their compassion towards him in these five ways.”
• The Buddha: “Ascetics and brahmans [i.e. homeless and householder spiritual teachers] [of] a householder show their compassion towards him in six ways: they restrain him from evil, they persuade him to do good, they love him with a kind heart, they make him hear what he has not heard, they clarify what he has already heard, they point out the path to a heavenly state. In these six ways do ascetics and brahmans show their compassion towards a householder.”
• The Buddha: “An individual keeps pervading the first direction [East] — as well as the second direction, the third, & the fourth — with an awareness imbued with compassion. Thus he keeps pervading above, below, & all around, everywhere & in every respect the all-encompassing cosmos with an awareness imbued with compassion: abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility, free from ill will. He savors that, longs for that, finds satisfaction through that.”
• The Buddha: “Whatever is to be done by a teacher with compassion for the welfare of students, that has been done by me out of compassion for you. Here are the roots of trees. Here are empty places. Get down and meditate. Don’t be lazy. Don’t become one who is later remorseful. This is my instruction to you.”
• The lay-follower Dhammika, to the Buddha: “Having investigated all knowledge and being compassionate towards beings you have announced the Dhamma, a revealer of what is hidden, of comprehensive vision, stainless, you illuminate all the worlds.”
• The Buddha: “The Dhamma should be taught with the thought, ‘I will speak out of compassion.’”
• The Buddha: “Develop the meditation of compassion. For when you are developing the meditation of compassion, cruelty will be abandoned.”
• King Pasenadi of Kosala, having received weight-loss instructions from the Buddha: “Indeed the Buddha has shown me compassion in two different ways: for my welfare right here and now, and also for in the future.”
• The Buddha, to his disciple Kassapa: “Very good. It seems that you are one who practices for the happiness of many, out of compassion for the world, for the welfare, benefit, and happiness of beings human and divine.”
• The Buddha: “In this community of monks there are monks who remain devoted to the development of good will: such are the monks in this community of monks. In this community of monks there are monks who remain devoted to the development of compassion: such are the monks in this community of monks. In this community of monks there are monks who remain devoted to the development of appreciation: such are the monks in this community of monks. In this community of monks there are monks who remain devoted to the development of equanimity: such are the monks in this community of monks. In this community of monks there are monks who remain devoted to the development of unattractiveness: such are the monks in this community of monks. In this community of monks there are monks who remain devoted to the development of the perception of impermanence: such are the monks in this community of monks. In this community of monks there are monks who remain devoted to mindfulness of in-&-out breathing.”
• The Buddha: “When this concentration [of lovingkindness] is thus developed, thus well-developed by you, you should then train yourself thus: ‘Compassion, as my awareness-release, will be developed, pursued, handed the reins and taken as a basis, given a grounding, steadied, consolidated, & well-undertaken.’ That’s how you should train yourself. When you have developed this concentration in this way, you should develop this concentration with directed thought and evaluation, you should develop it with no directed thought and a modicum of evaluation, you should develop it with no directed thought and no evaluation, you should develop it accompanied by rapture… not accompanied by rapture… endowed with a sense of enjoyment; you should develop it endowed with equanimity.”
• The Buddha: “The Buddhas radiate compassion on the world.”
• The Buddha: “When one gives birth to hatred for an individual, one should develop compassion for that individual. Thus the hatred for that individual should be subdued.”
• The Buddha: “And as for a person who is impure in his bodily behavior & verbal behavior, and who does not periodically experience mental clarity & calm, how should one subdue hatred for him? Just as when there is a sick man — in pain, seriously ill — traveling along a road, far from the next village & far from the last, unable to get the food he needs, unable to get the medicine he needs, unable to get a suitable assistant, unable to get anyone to take him to human habitation. Now suppose another person were to see him coming along the road. He would do what he could out of compassion, pity, & sympathy for the man, thinking, ‘O that this man should get the food he needs, the medicine he needs, a suitable assistant, someone to take him to human habitation. Why is that? So that he won’t fall into ruin right here.’ In the same way, when a person is impure in his bodily behavior & verbal behavior, and who does not periodically experience mental clarity & calm, one should do what one can out of compassion, pity, & sympathy for him, thinking, ‘O that this man should abandon wrong bodily conduct and develop right bodily conduct, abandon wrong verbal conduct and develop right verbal conduct, abandon wrong mental conduct and develop right mental conduct. Why is that? So that, on the break-up of the body, after death, he won’t fall into the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, purgatory.’ Thus the hatred for him should be subdued.”
• The Buddha: “Here someone, abandoning the killing of living beings, becomes one who abstains from killing living beings; with rod and weapon laid aside, gentle and kindly, he abides compassionate to all living beings.”
• The Buddha: A person renowned for his bounty,
  Compassionate towards all beings,
  Distributes alms gladly.
  “Give! Give!” he says.

  Like a great storm cloud
  That thunders and rains down
  Filling the levels and hollows,
  Saturating the earth with water,
  Even so is such a person.

  Having righteously gathered wealth
  Which he obtains by his own effort,
  He fully satisfies with food and drink
  Whatever beings live in need.

PS. You can see all the 100 Days of Lovingkindness posts here.

Helping to make the world a more compassionate place

As the Buddha said,

“Looking after oneself, one looks after others.
Looking after others, one looks after oneself.”

(Att?na? rakkhanto para? rakkhati.
Para? rakkhanto att?na? rakkhati.)?

Over the last 33 days of our 100 Days of Lovingkindness, I’ve written a blog post every day. Here’s a list of all the posts I’ve written, offering teachings on developing lovingkindness and compassion.

I hope you’re finding all this useful. If you haven’t had a chance to read these posts yet, then of course they’ll be there for you in the future.

Many people have said that they’ve benefited from this writing I’m doing, and it’s even been suggested that I turn all these posts into a book. I feel a slight knot of anxiety in my belly whenever this is suggested, because I know how much work is involved in putting a book together, even when you have plenty of raw material to work with. But we’ll see…

Anyway, did you know it’s taking me close to half of my working hours every week to keep up these blog posts? I love doing it; I find it rewarding to reflect on my practice and to share it; I find it rewarding beyond words to hear that other people are benefitting from what I’m doing here. But every hour I’m writing for you is an hour I’m not earning anything. (We don’t carry ads on Wildmind).

I need your help.

I’ve only been able to write so much recently because of the support of readers like you, because of the support of people who see the benefits of practicing, and who appreciate having spiritual sustenance. In fact, Wildmind wouldn’t be here without their support.

So I’m appealing to you to make a donation to Wildmind to help support what I’m doing. One-time donations are great (click on the button labelled “donate”); recurring donations are even more helpful (use the drop-down menu to select an amount and then click on the button that says “subscribe”).

In supporting Wildmind, not only will you be helping yourself, but you’ll be helping to make the world a more compassionate place.

Thank you!
Bodhipaksa

Or you can also become a one-time benefactor with a single donation of any amount:

How not to practice “idiot compassion” (Day 33)

Chogyam Trungpa borrowed from Gurdjieff the very useful notion of “idiot compassion.” Gurdjieff, a rather fascinating spiritual teacher of the early to mid-20th century, had said that we are all idiots of one kind or another, and his extensive lists of the various types of idiots we could be included “the compassionate idiot.”

Compassion is wishing that beings be free from suffering. Idiot compassion is avoiding conflict, letting people walk all over you, not giving people a harm time when actually they need to be given a hard time. It’s “being nice,” or “being good.”

It’s not compassion at all. It ends up causing us pain, and it ends up causing others pain.

The more someone self-consciously thinks of themselves as compassionate, the more likely it is that they’re a compassionate idiot.

Idiot compassion lacks both courage and intelligence.

Idiot compassion lacks courage because “being nice” and “being good” are held to be the most important qualities we can manifest, and so we’re afraid to do anything that might make us unpopular. It’s not uncommon to see a related phenomenon, “idiot kindness,” in parents’ interactions with their children. Some parents want to be their children’s best friends, and don’t want to be unpopular. And so they indulge their children, giving them what they want and never disciplining them, or using very inconsistent discipline. But it’s not a parent’s job to be a BFF for their children. It’s their job to help bring their children up to be responsible adults.

Idiot compassion lacks intelligence, because it doesn’t lead to happiness or to freedom from suffering. If someone cheats you, and you immediately decide to trust them again, you’re not helping either them or you. The person who cheats you is unlikely to have a sudden conversion to being conscientious. Any easy promise they make to change their ways is likely to be just another form of cheating. And so by letting them off the hook you don’t help them. In fact you become an enabler of their dysfunctional behavior, and thus you’re helping them to suffer more in the future, when their unskillful behavior catches up with them. And you end up suffering as well. At some point either resentment against the cheat, or against themselves, is going to kick in.

True compassion does not shy away from causing pain when necessary. Causing pain is not the same as causing harm, by the way. The Buddha talked about this in relation to speech, in an interesting dialogue with a prince named Abhaya.

Abhaya was the follower of a rival teacher, and he was sent to try to entrap the Buddha. He was to ask whether the Buddha would say words that were disagreeable to others. If the Buddha were to say he would say things that were disagreeable, then he would be accused of acting just like ordinary, unenlightened people. If he were to say he wouldn’t, then it would be pointed out that his words had in fact caused others to be upset. This was described as a “two-pronged question.” “When Gotama the contemplative is asked this two-pronged question by you,” Abhaya is told, “he won’t be able to swallow it down or spit it up.”

Of course the Buddha has no difficulty in avoiding this trap, and he turns the “two-pronged” metaphor to his advantage.

Now at that time a baby boy was lying face-up on the prince’s lap. So the Blessed One said to the prince, “What do you think, prince: If this young boy, through your own negligence or that of the nurse, were to take a stick or a piece of gravel into its mouth, what would you do?”

“I would take it out, lord. If I couldn’t get it out right away, then holding its head in my left hand and crooking a finger of my right, I would take it out, even if it meant drawing blood. Why is that? Because I have sympathy for the young boy.”

So the Buddha leads Abhaya to recognize that it’s acceptable to cause pain in the short term if you want to save someone from long-yerm harm. And he goes on to say that:

In the case of words that the Tathagata [i.e. the Buddha] knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing and disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

And those are the only circumstances under which the Buddha would say something that he knew to be disagreeable.

So this is quite a tough order. What you say has to be true — not just your opinion, but actually true. This requires a great deal of mental clarity. What you say has to be beneficial — which implies that you have a good understanding of psychology and of the spiritual path, otherwise how can you know what it helpful? And you have to have an awareness of what’s the right time to say what needs to be said. This requires some empathy.

I don’t think it’s wise to say, though, that honest but critical communication should be avoided until we’ve attained some kind of near-superhuman state of wisdom. How do we learn when it’s beneficial and timely to tell the truth? How do we clarify whether we’re actually in possession of the truth? We learn by speaking, with as much courage, honesty, kindness, and wisdom as we can muster, and by reflecting on the consequences.

So ask yourself, “Am I avoiding conflict and calling it compassion? Am I afraid to be honest because I might end up being disliked? Am I letting people off the hook too easily? Am I setting myself up for resentment?” And if any of these is the case, muster your courage, and speak up, even if you make mistakes. The spiritual path is, as I like to say, the fine art of making mistakes.

Eventually this all becomes spontaneous. And in fact when the Buddha has done explaining the circumstances under which it’s skillful to say something disagreeable, he goes on to talk about the spontaneous nature of his communication. Those who are most genuinely compassionate don’t think in terms of “being compassionate.” Expressing themselves honestly and with empathy is just what they do.

So be wary of trying to be compassionate in a self-conscious way. The more you do this, the more likely it is that you’re being a compassionate idiot.

Developing compassion: instructions from an ancient source, plus commentary (Day 32)

So far I’ve just been advising people to do the metta bhavana (development of lovingkindness) practice while bearing in mind the sufferings of others, but karuna bhavana (the development of compassion) is a practice in its own right. I thought I’d take an opportunity to geek out by looking at an early source of instruction on this practice.

The “Path of Liberation” (Vimuttimagga) by Upatissa is the oldest meditation manual that I know about. It was probably written in the 1st century, several hundred years after the Buddha’s death. It’s from India, but the text has only survived in Chinese translation.

The scriptures of the Pali canon, which contain records of the Buddha’s teachings, were written down a few hundred years earlier, but they don’t contain any coherent and structured guides to this meditation practice. The Buddha is recorded in those earlier scriptures as saying, for example, that we should cultivate lovingkindness and compassion, but there’s little detail as to how. For those of us familiar with the various stages (self, friend, neutral person, etc.) into which lovingkindness and compassion meditations are divided, there’s none of that to be found in the Buddha’s teachings.

That doesn’t mean that the forms we’ve learned are wrong. Maybe what we do was taught or practiced in the Buddha’s day, but wasn’t written down (or memorized in a formal way) for some reason. Or perhaps the techniques evolved and were improved upon, as generations of meditators continued to explore these practices. No one knows.

But I thought it would be interesting to show how the Upatissa presented the development of compassion, and to offer a little commentary.

Based on the Vimuttimagga, the Karuna Bhavana practice is as follows:

1. We cultivate lovingkindness (or compassion) for ourselves.
2. We cultivate compassion for someone we think of as suffering.
3. We cultivate compassion for a neutral person.
4. We cultivate compassion for a person we have difficulty with.
5. We extend our compassion to all beings.

So there are five stages here. Now let’s look at what the Vimuttimagga says about developing compassion.

THE IMMEASURABLE THOUGHT OF COMPASSION

So the title is “The Immeasurable Thought of Compassion.” The four practices of which compassion is a part are collectively called the “immeasurables,” because the mind imbued with these qualities embraces all beings. It’s not that we literally feel love for each individual being, but that the mind itself is completely filled with lovingkindness, compassion, etc., and that any being we encounter or think of is met with kindness and compassion.

I don’t know what’s being translated as “thought” in the title above, but compassion is much more than a thought, although reflection is used to help us contact and develop our compassion. Compassion is more a volition or intention than either a thought or an emotion.

Q. What is compassion? What is the practising of it? What are its salient characteristic, function and manifestation? What are its benefits? What is the procedure?

A. As parents who on seeing the suffering of their dear and only child, compassionate it, saying, ” O, how it suffers!”, so one compassionates all beings. This is compassion. One dwells undisturbed in compassion — this is called the practising of it. The non-manifestation of non-advantage is its salient characteristic. Happiness is its function. Harmlessness is its manifestation. Its benefits are equal to those of loving-kindness.

This is a typical commentarial device — breaking a subject area down into manageable units in order to provide a comprehensive definition from various angles.

The definition of compassion is very interesting: “As parents who on seeing the suffering of their dear and only child, compassionate it, saying, ” O, how it suffers!”, so one compassionates all beings. This is compassion.” This is reminiscent of the teaching in the Buddha’s Metta Sutta:

Just as with her own life
A mother shields from hurt
Her own son, her only child,
Let all-embracing thoughts
For all beings be yours.

“Compassionate” here is an archaic verb meaning simply “to have compassion for.”

The illustration suggests that compassion is something very natural. We already have compassion for children and others close to us, and so what we need to do is to extend that to others.

“One dwells undisturbed in compassion — this is called the practising of it.” We just need to practice! It’s just like any other form of exercise — you develop the faculty by “dwelling” in it. By connecting with our innate wish that beings be free from suffering, and by dwelling upon that volition, it becomes a stronger part of our character. We can cultivate compassion in everyday life, of course, but our efforts will always be interrupted. In meditation our exercising of compassion is relatively “undisturbed,” giving us time to really “work out” our “compassion muscles.”

“The non-manifestation of non-advantage is its salient characteristic.” I think “non-manifestation simply means “not doing” and “non-advantage” means “hindering” or “blocking.” So the salient characteristic of compassion is that we don’t make life hard for others, which is what we tend to do a lot of the time, don’t we?

“Happiness is its function.” I rarely find the karuna bhavana practice, unlike metta bhavana, to be joyful! Perhaps what’s meant here is that we help others to be happy? Or maybe “happiness” is a poor translation of “non-suffering”? I’m really not sure. The “function” given in the Vimuttimagga for lovingkindness is “the thought of lovingkindness,” which isn’t terribly helpful. “Non-fear” is the function of mudita, or appreciative joy. I find it hard to see a pattern here. Buddhaghosa, five hundred years later, has “Its [i.e. compassion's] function resides in not bearing others’ suffering.” By this he means that we don’t ignore other’s suffering. We don’t just go, “Suffering? Meh!” We are actually concerned to relieve suffering. Maybe something got lost in translation from Pali (or maybe it was Sanskrit — we don’t know the original language) to Chinese to English.

“Harmlessness is its manifestation.” This is much clearer. Harmlessness is more often called “non-harm” (ahimsa). When we’re compassionate we don’t intentionally cause harm, or even act in ways that obstruct others’ happiness.

What is the procedure ? The new yogin [meditator] enters into a place of solitude and sits down with mind collected and undisturbed. If he sees or hears of a person stricken with disease, or a person affected by decay, or a person who is full of greed, he considers thus: “That person is stricken with suffering. How will he escape suffering?”.

Now we get onto the details of practice.

You may notice that there’s no “self-compassion” stage! There’s not even a self-metta stage. We just plunge straight in. Or so it would seem. But Upatissa has just explained the lovingkindness practice, which is very detailed, and says at the end of the guidelines for practicing compassion that “the rest is as was fully taught above,” so I’m assuming he was just giving brief instructions here, and that self-metta (or self-compassion) is meant to be cultivated.

So when he says that the meditator sits “with mind collected and undisturbed,” I take it that this is a reference back to the lovingkindness instructions, where he presents a long list of things that the meditator should wish for at the start of the metta bhavana practice, including,

One should wish to be endowed with tranquillity, to be free from hatred, to be endowed with all merits and to gain good advantages. One should wish to gain a good reward, a good name, to gain confidence, to gain happiness, to be endowed with virtue, knowledge, liberality and wisdom. One should wish for happy sleep and happy awaking. One should wish to have no evil dreams.

So this is a very extended and detailed form of “May I be well; may I be happy” etc. Basically it’s self-metta, or even self-compassion.

Upatissa skips the “dear friend” stage, and this time I don’t think it’s because the practice instructions are abbreviated. My sense of Upatissa’s thinking in skipping the “friend” stage is that in the metta bhavana practice we have the friend as the person for whom we (should) naturally have metta, while the suffering person is someone for whom we (should) naturally feel compassion.

And again, if he sees or hears of a person of perverted mind and bound with the defilements, or a person entering into ignorance, or one, who, having done merit in the past does not now train himself, he considers thus: “That person is stricken with suffering; he will fare ill. How will he escape suffering?”.

Then we have the “suffering person” stage, where we call to mind someone who is obviously suffering, physically or mentally, and develop the thought for them: “That person is stricken with suffering. How will he escape suffering?”

So we’re wishing that this person be free from suffering. This includes all kinds of suffering, not just the more obvious things like sickness, bereavement, etc.

And again, if he sees or hears of a person who follows demeritorious doctrines and does not follow meritorious doctrines, or of a person who follows undesirable doctrines and does not follow desirable doctrines, he considers thus: “That person is stricken with suffering; he will fare ill. How will he escape suffering?”.

Wishing for the welfare of those who follow demeritorious doctrines would have been important for a monk, since by the time Upatissa was writing, Buddhism had splintered into many competing sects. And although Buddhists are (ahem!) not supposed to have ill will for those with differing views, it’s inevitable that this is going to happen.

Our equivalent would be those with different political views. It’s natural that we will feel threatened or angered by people having differing views, but we can combat this by contemplating how those views might lead to suffering. And if they don’t lead to suffering, why are we so bothered about them?

That yogin by these means and through these activities develops the thought of compassion for these persons and repeats it. Having by these means and through these activities developed the thought of compassion and repeated it, he makes his mind pliant, and capable of bearing the object. Thereafter he gradually develops (compassion) for an indifferent person and an enemy. The rest is as was fully taught above. Thus he fills the four directions.

So this is rather interesting. It’s by cultivating the volition of compassion for the four people who have been in the practice that we get to the point where the mind is “capable of bearing the object.” So the object is “all beings.” We’ve been practicing cultivating compassion for beings who are suffering and for whom we naturally would feel compassion, for those whose suffering we’d normally ignore, and for those whose suffering we might normally wish for! This gives the mind “pliancy” and allows us to meet any individual with a mind imbued with compassion.

What is suffering? (Day 31)

In cultivating compassion we’re responding, with kindness, to the suffering we encounter in life — especially others’ suffering. And the essence of compassion is wishing that beings be free from suffering.

But what do we mean by suffering?

There’s an unfortunate tendency for us to think of suffering in grand terms: the person with terminal cancer or a broken leg, the refugee, the starving child in a third world country. So suffering seems to be a special event. But actually, all beings suffer. We all suffer, every day.

• When you’re worrying what people think about you, you’re suffering.
• When you feel resentful, you’re suffering.
• When you’re impatient, you’re suffering.
• When you’re embarrassed, you’re suffering.
• When you’re irritated, you’re suffering.
• When you’re feeling sad, you’re suffering.
• When you have regrets, you’re suffering.
• When you’re jealous, you’re suffering.
• When you’re bored, you’re suffering.

If you look closely at your mental states over the course of any given day, you’ll probably notice that you spend a lot of time dipping in and out of suffering of one sort of another.

And if you look around you at the people you see, it’s a fair bet that at that moment half of them are suffering right at that moment. How many of them are showing signs of being happy?

We tend to ignore our own suffering, and often don’t recognize it in others either. But why? One reason might be that we take our suffering for granted, and another might be that we get caught up in the stories we tell ourselves. When you’re working on your computer and the machine is running more slowly than you want, you probably feel frustrated. You probably don’t say “I’m suffering, let me have compassion for myself.” You’re probably to busy saying “This computer’s too damn slow!” So you’re caught up in the plot-line of this all being the fault of the computer, and you just take for granted that it’s the computer that’s making you feel bad. You might not assume that you could feel any other way.

When someone else is suffering, we often get caught up in the story lines there as well. When you’re with someone who’s in a bad mood, how often you think, “Ah, this person’s suffering. What can I do to ease her pain?” You probably think something more like, “Jeez, she got out of bed on the wrong side this morning! I’d better steer clear.” We’ll often think of this person’s situation purely in terms of how it affects us. We probably don’t even think of this person as suffering, most times. We might be brusque or obstructive with them, and end up adding to their suffering.

So I’d suggest, as you observe your own experience and notice what’s going on with others around you, that you become more mindful of all the small ways in which we suffer pain.

And if you can keep your awareness in your heart, keep the lovingkindness phrases running through your mind, drop the stories, and see if you can respond to this widespread suffering with compassion.