Non-harming Is Dharma

so I'm going to tell you a tale about a monk and um and I want to dedicate the tale to a wonderful monk that I met many years ago named Yanda and uh he was the the the monk responsible for the Burmese temple in back then back in Daily City eventually he moved down and built the temple that's now now in um just south of Half Moon Bay and back then um uh the so the so-called Temple was just a small house in Daily City kind a regular looking house in Daily City and and um and when I was going to um go to practice in Burma I heard about this Monk and so I went to to um I called him up and said can I come visit you and he said sure so I think I took some bus and walked some way into the neighborhood into the neighborhood and I knocked on the door the and he he answered the door and the remarkable thing about how he received me I immediately felt like I'd been his friend for decades like we were like he was like we were like old friend old friends was the best way I could describe how he received me he never met me and he brought me in and we sat and talked and it was the the kindness and warmth and friendship and friendliness that he offered was kind of outstanding given that We Were Strangers so the tale is dedicated to yil andand and hopefully he will proove so there was this monk Buddhist monk who was traveling around and he came to a town where um there never been any Buddhists there before people kind of hardly knew what Buddhism Buddhism was and he stayed there for some for some while some days and and the people in the town kind of liked him and he seemed to be remarkably calm and peaceful and U people felt really safe with him and so actually some people started telling them telling him their life story what was going on with him their challenges and it was just so nice and he didn't seem to have a lot to tell them but they left those encounters with him kind of changed just because he was so so friendly and kind and receptive to what they had to say so that was nice and uh so then a local professor of religion heard about the Monk and I was interested in Buddhism what is this Buddhism never met the Buddhist before and so there was a chance maybe to learn something about Buddhism so she came to visit him and um and uh you know she wanted to find out not what Buddhism is so she asked maybe for her what seemed like the obvious questions she asked him what do you believe and he answered long ago I believed but now I act she was a little confused by this answer doesn't all religions have beliefs and could he just have told her so she asked again a different way what teachings do you rely on long ago I relied on teachings now I rely on what I know what but of course he was a Buddhist monk right so she try again aren't you devoted to the Buddha because the follower of the Buddha right aren't you devoted to the Buddha long ago I was devoted to the Buddha but now I am devoted to non-harming but what do you have faith in she said us trying again all the ways in which he understood what religion is what do you have faith in I don't have faith I have confidence in nonharming action but but what is your ultimate truth the end of doing harm ended doing any harm to myself or to others but but but this is nothing like religion in her mind but then you are left with no desire for Good Life Hereafter many religions that's an important part of their religion but then are you left with no desire for a good life Hereafter I have no desire for a life Hereafter I desire a good life now the rest will take care of itself but but but what is the good life now a life lived without any deliberate Act of body speech or mind that harm self or others but then she had heard you know in Buddhism you're not supposed to have any desires so she thought she would ask you know finally ask kind of a Buddhist question she did she was so confused by this time do you have no desires no I I desire a world committed to non-harming and he answered her questions so kindly and calmly and without any sense that she was wrong or any hostility or she didn't she was left confused didn't fit any of her ideas of what religion is but she left transformed in some way changed so I offer that tale as a way of suggesting that Buddhism has a radically different orientation than what most people think about as religion and that this idea of non-harming lays at the center of what what Buddhism is and maybe as an the ultimate goal to non-harm and some people will feel that's not good enough because religions have ultimate truths ultimate purposes ultimate goals ultimate experiences of Enlightenment it wouldn't that be nice to be enlightened what is Enlightenment so transformed so fully transformed that a person will have no deliberate attempts to harm anyone in the world including themselves that's what enlightenment is but we don't usually say that because I don't think you get so much people don't get so excited by non-harming you know even if you said you know the ultimate goal is to realize the truth oh that gets that seems pretty good you know or the ultimate the ultimate Enlightenment is to you know realize the highest possible human realization of of Liberation you know then I get liberated that's really great isn't it don't you want to be liberated so that's exciting but to realize nonharming that is a transformation it is a Liberation it's a Liberation for doing anything at all that causes harm but but but that's not about me isn't Enlightenment about something for me well you you you stop causing harm to yourself isn't that pretty good you know I don't harm myself that much I just suffer so then the monk would say well in that case you should look more deeply see what you're doing because the Cor four teachings of Buddhism it's often called the four noble truths uh doesn't have the word harm in it it has the word duka which is usually translated to English as suffering it literally means pain but um the causes of that suffering the causes of that pain our activities that what we're focusing on is not what the world does to us but what we do to ourselves so if the world does something unfortunate to us that's unfortunate and that we have to do our best to figure out what to do but if because of that we now want to hate and because that we want to now harm others because of that in that momentum we're harming ourselves hate always harms the hater violence intentional violence always harms the one who is violent it can't not because but they're not often we're not paying attention that way so that's why study yourself see what's going on deeply and if you go really deep you also see that the suffering that we can have some role in changing and transforming is the ones that arise from our own attachments to cling is to harm ourselves and it's not necessarily an ethical thing like so often we think of harming others as being unethical but to um but uh you know being attached is not you know it's not an ethical issue but but it is a issue of whether you are happy or whether you suffer and there's a way in which attachment is there uh is the root way in which we harm ourselves and chances are it's the root for why we harm others and so uh so but at the heart what i is the Dharma is this non-harming Instinct this movement towards this but is it ultimate shouldn't religion be about ultimate thing things that uh you know that you can't really know for yourself but you take it on faith because it comes from your Scriptures it comes from the Buddha it comes from your teachers you now I know what's ultimate people involved in religion like ultimate things and uh and partly it's because people religious people tend to put a lot of themselves into the religious life that there's a kind of a commitment to something that's maybe bigger than themselves or something other and for that level of a commitment people really want to know that it's this is really the best this is really good this is Ultimate in the earliest teachings of the Buddha uh he he he he explicitly was not interested in having ultimate truths so that and now this professor is can even more confused um that that the pursuit of ultimate truth was a detour what the task was he said was to let go of clinging let go of craving let go of attachments and uh to have ultimate truths for some people is just another attachment it's another detour it's a distraction from doing this deep work but that's not you know just letting go of my attachments I mean that's kind of like isn't that kind of like a small thing isn't that like that's not so how can that be so great and wonderful and ultimate and I don't get a lot of credit among my religious friends when I tell them what well our ultimate is just letting go of clinging that doesn't seem very good so so I think the best thing to do is to grant them that that is not that good it's not that ultimate and uh and however it's that it might not be ultimate might be the greatest thing you can do with your life however it's the fundamental thing we should do in our life it's the beginning of what we should do in our life we should um uh at least live a life of non-harming at least find a way not to cause harm to oursel and others at least do that important work our world will be transformed if we did that we might we'll be transformed if we do that and once we learn once we discover how to live without causing harm to self and other once we learn to live without clinging and craving once we have that level of Liberation well then if you're still interested in Ultimate truths help yourself please that's good and maybe you have some wonderful ones that are inspiring and wonderful and poetic and and uh fun to read about and listen to and and be amazed by yes but let's do this first thing and uh and what not a few Buddhists have discovered that doing the Deep work the inner work uh of becoming free in this way is pretty ultimate pretty fantastic the level of Peace the level of well-being the well level of of safety that that provides is astounding and uh and on the way to there there starts to be becoming an appreciation of how difficult and deep this at work is it's a task of a lifetime to really settle and find and come to what I would like to suggest that I like to believe is a you know a really good fundamental place for all of us to be all of us to begin begin everything from the Buddha said that if you cling and you crave you can't really see what's really true and so if you're in a religion and you're craving and clinging as part of it it might obscure your ability to really understand even what your religion is talking about and um and some people will say that uh once we once and there's not Buddhism not the only religion that talks about non- clinging non-attachment and um and a lot of the mystics in Rel in religions of all kinds um the beautiful teachings by a Catholic Mystic named uh Mr Master E eart is that his name who uh talked explicitly about the value of non-attachment non- clinging in ways that completely would be home in Buddhism and um and uh it's not a surprise because the way we can see clearly see something beautiful here in this world is so fantastic when we do this inner work in uh teaching in in Buddhism in Mahayana Buddhism in Zen Buddhism is go something like this uh when your mind is pure the world is pure when the mind is pure you see the world and a certain kind of Purity and um so this work on your your own heart your own mind understanding it seeing how it is doing that work of really recognizing where the harming is how we harm ourselves and um and finding a way not to do it and for many of us part of that work is to deal with all the lawyers in the mind there are some really clever lawyers in there who will make a really good case that it's okay to harm sometimes it's to harm other people they deserve it how else am I going to take care of myself what other choice do we have and and uh sometimes the lawyers represent you of course I have to harm myself I'm such a terrible person you know I deserve it so part of the task in this practice is to question the lawyers but when the lawyers come remember don't harm them receive them as old friends receive them calmly kindly listen to them but don't believe them believe in non-harming and then finally what I'd like to offer around this thing believing uh many of us believe things that maybe we shouldn't be believing um recently I talked to someone who said that I don't I don't believe I'm capable of doing something that needs to be done I don't think I'm capable that's my belief and um and instead of uh when when you have when that when you that occurs to you change that your language don't say don't say this is what I believe say this is what I'm believing and if you want to get extra credit you say for right now this is what I'm believing the difference is huge if you say I believe it's like now it's a solid truthful statement like this is how it is and like who's going to find a way out of that but if it's just an act of believing right now this is what I'm believing then it's not so solid it's like well it's just right now is just an act and it's an activity of the mind and the focus on Buddhism is not so much on belief or at all on belief but rather on the activity the mind is doing and turns out that believing when there's a belief there's an activity of the Mind happening and that is called believing and now we're that and that puts the mirror back on the mindfulness back on what's the nature what's the quality the characteristic of that act the act of believing and um so um what do you believe long ago I believed now I act we're always acting there's always action and so so um what's the so then um um what teachings do you rely on now long ago I relied on teachings now I rely on what I know so and what what can you know maybe you don't know ultimate truths but if you pay attention you can know the actions that you're involved in and if the action has to do with thinking then you know oh I'm thinking something I'm thinking about I'm thinking about an ultimate truth I'm thinking that I believe ult in this this that this is ultimately true the action of thinking is happening and we often Overlook the action because we get caught up in what we're thinking about we Overlook the fact that I'm believing because we're caught in the belief this is what's true oh now I'm believing this now I'm reacting to this now I'm feeling this now I'm wanting this to happen there's always an action so what teachings do you rely on I rely on what I know and what you can know is you can know the activities we're involved in that is a core Central activity that we mindfulness brings attention to aren't you devoted to the Buddha long long ago I was devoted to the Buddha now I am devoted to non-harming once you start tracking the activities of the mind and speech and body then you can start noticing oh this hurts there's an ouch in this there's harm in this there's harm for me and maybe there's harm for others and then we can question is this how I want to live my life is this the activity that I want to be part of well then the lawyer comes and says it has to be this way there can't be any other way oh that's a clever lawyer but the lawyer is not the judge who has to decide don't let the lawyers decide but what do you have faith in I don't have faith I have confidence in non-harming action what is your ultimate truth the end of doing any harm to myself or others what is the good life now a life lived without deliberate act any deliberate Act of body speech and mind that harm self or others do you have no desires no I do have desires I desire a world committed to non-harming it's fine to have desires in Buddhism but the desires have to be when then you're Desiring so as you're Desiring desire in a way that doesn't cause harm find a way to have desires that actually can be nourishing and supportive and helpful for you some desires are actually helpful healing beneficial inspiring and any desire that has to do with living a life of not causing harm living a life that does the opposite it lives with love and care and respect for self and others those desires have desire them in ways that are inspiring that that don't cause more harm someone have the desire to be non-harming God I get I have to get on with it here I'm such a lousy person I need to I have to desire non-harming you know and not to be the best non-harming person on my block the very Act of wanting to non-harm is now harming you so we're always looking what in what way am I inging what way what way what way am I acting here what way am I thinking here what way am I intending here is the very way in which I'm intending wanting thinking does that Inspire this inner beauty of non-harming we're always tracking this looking at it and now over time it has phenomenal results over time it creates so much inner well-being and peace and space and goodness that um maybe you'll be the person the Buddhist so-called Buddhist that goes into a town where there's never many Buddhists and the religious Professor will come to you what do you believe in I believe it's po important to notice how I'm believing now you understand why that's an important answer I believe it's important to study how I'm believing so that I believe in a way that doesn't cause any harm does the opposite it's it's nourishing it's supporting it's it's liberating so those are my thoughts for today so um now what do the lawyer say or what questions do you have or com might you have yes please this topic was spoton for something I'm struggling with right now I realized that I am harming myself through perpetuating suffering over a loss I've experienced so you harm yourself but by perpetuating the suffering yes and so um I realize it's coming from clinging a wonderful friendship I had and it's not wonderful at all anymore and I keep clinging to what it was so the Buddha was so wonderful at giving us lists but I don't find a list for how to let go I think that's just the hardest thing for me oh there's a there's a really there's a really good list which one it's a list that has only one item in it yeah I need steps I need 12 steps to learn to let go it's repeatedly my biggest okay well then problem well then I'll give you four steps okay be mindful of your body be mindful of your feelings be mindful of your mind States and be mindful of uh the activities of your mind the four foundations of mindfulness so when you when you have the particular suffering that you have um go through the checklist of those four and and if you haven't if you're not really recently familiar with the four foundations of mindfulness really kind of study them a little bit and uh and then um you know that's a checklist it just it takes a lot of familiarity a lot of mindfulness a lot of looking at it and seeing what's going on here um not analytically but uh what What's the inging what's the activities that are happening now in the body in the the mind in the heart and you have to spend a lot of time just being mindful of it and um and um and so also remember that mindfulness is also not quite a good word we're we're mindfulness sing we're doing mindfulness we're practicing the activity of mindfulness and then the question is how are you being mindful are you doing it holding on for de life are are you holding on are you doing it with with uh greed with aversion to what's happening and uh uh do the mindfulness sing in a way that feels good I must be missing something because I'm actually doing a practice so similar I mean it's like almost dad on my coach was taking me through I catch myself I wake up almost every morning with these thoughts so I catch myself oh I wish I had said that or oh it hurts so much when she said this or oh my gosh that was so wonderful when we were friends like that it's Poss it's possible but then I stop I look I say oh I'm saying this and then I rub my fingers together I check in with my body my breathing every damn morning it comes back so I don't know you that well in this regard right but I suspect that you're doing all this from the neck up and that uh do it once your belly is really Rel relaxed find a way good posture really find your let your belly be deeply relaxed and then do the work do the practice I will try that from the bottom up rather than the top down yeah yeah I think you're right I'm doing it in a as a mental construct I'm going step one step two step three yeah yeah okay that'll be weird thank you so you have it go ahead but let's stay on topic if you have an looks like you might have an announcement noning but it's an announcement right it might be how about waiting a couple of minutes because I think I think it's better to kind of stay on track a little bit here rather than changing the topic we end with you then can you give that mic to the person out there in the outer Hall the outer Hall oh and then we can do you after her thank you you have to turn it on green light light goes on thank you um isn't having expectations of others it's always um harming them and harming yourself and if you have no expectations then you are all alone I think having expectations when there's been I think having uh an expect ation when there's been an agreement is reasonable you know so if someone promises something and you agreed like together like this is what we're going to do I think that's that's that's one of the functions of an of an agreement is now we can expect that something will happen we can trust something will happen in a particular way and then if the agreement is broken we feel kind of hurt but if there has been no agreement between the people then I have to we have to be very very careful about the expectation because then we're projecting something on the situation and um that might not other people don't agree haven't agreed to we're bringing our values and putting it on other people and um now there might be implicit agreements we have in our society you know like um when the traffic light is red we don't drive through it we have expectation that that's how we all agree to drive but you never asked the other driver you promis not to drive you know we kind of have all kinds sometimes implicit agreements um so I think that when there's an agreement we it's reasonable to have some expectation and then people are accountable to the agreement say I I expected that what happened what was going on you can you have something you can talk about but expectation for on one for on on oneself and expectations on others uh are also source of a lot of suffering other people suffer we suffer uh we have standards we hold people ourselves to standards we hold hold other people to that's much higher than they can actually live by and and we can be it can be oppressive it can be harmful to ex to have expectations of self and others which are unreasonable and um and so this is why this this mindfulness where we looking at how again the not the expects expectations are important to look at but the uh what's going on for you when you're expecting when you have an when you're doing the action of expecting expectation um are you what do you want what are you attached to what are you hoping for what are you afraid of this gives you enough to think about thank you what if it's a kind of complicated situation I'm thinking of an example let's say I have a pond and I have some fish in it and then there's an invasive species that now live in the pond that's killing my fish so if I don't harm that species of some sort my fish will all die then then what should I do in that case there's all kinds of things first of all I love it when people ask the question I have this problem invasive fish I don't want to kill them but what can I do that people that ask that question I I I welcome so much this is fantastic that they're asking rather than immediately go get the poison to kill the fish and then the question well let's think about it maybe let's do some research and find out what we can do and um and maybe there's something can be done maybe there are traps you can put in that can trap the fish and take them where they belong which is maybe expensive but maybe that's nicer than just killing them um so maybe there's something can be done maybe uh the your fish are really small and that's a really big fish and if you take a big net fishing net through the pond you get all the bad fish on one side and the all the small fish stay on the other side of the net and then you can kind of let's figure out what we can do now maybe we maybe that's a good way of living and maybe they can just kind of you know share share the pond together that way or maybe um you realize the reason why the big fish are eating the small ones is because they're hungry but they actually have in their where they came from they have a preferred diet and so let's get let's bring in the preferred diet and they'll leave the small fish alone so I'm just making up ideas but it's possible by thinking about it and exploring and but sometimes it takes a while sometimes just killing them seems like it takes care of it really quickly but then because you killed them the other your fish now think oh killing is right and so they start killing each other for this slightest little you know they' learned that killing was possible in this Pond and you know you don't know the repercussions that killing has so um and then there's also the it could also be that the um the invasive species was coming like the the the the fish the person didn't read the news and didn't read that uh if you bring in this particular kind of feed it has this fish eggs in it and you have to be really careful oh but it's so much work who cares about doing that and I don't believe in anyway and and so then there's no preventive work done so if if you have the equivalent today of a pond with fish in it think ahead notice what's happening set up a situation so in the future there's not that problem so so if people who want to live in non harming life they also need to be uh proactive they need to set the conditions in now so that uh so that in 5 10 20 years 50 years that um uh there's not any problems and to only look at the present moment uh is very myopic when it comes to living a life of non-harming so does that give you some ideas yes there was not an ultimate answer but it's it's it's a beginning maybe last one thank you so when I'm thinking about invasive fish and a fish pond I'm thinking about Israel and Gaza and I'm wondering I don't know how to how to think about it and I wonder if you have any suggestions yes I mean the talk today was partly a response to that without mentioning it explicitly and um and one of the reasons not to mention explicitly is I'll tell you a story about Tik Nan uh tnat Han lived in Vietnam during the war between Northern Vietnam and Southern Vietnam he lived right in the area where the conflict was most active battles back and forth and fields nearby and um and he was dedicated to doing it a different way not fighting he was dedicated to non-harming and he had a whole group of monastics and women and men who were out there trying to support everyone in both sides of the conflict and offer a different approach to it all and because of that both neither side trusted him the PE because he was supporting the northern Vietnamese you trying to help them and maybe even offer Medical Care the southern Vietnamese didn't trust him and vice versa and so the situation in Gaza in Israel is awful there so much pain but and to uh and even so uh to take the middle view the middle way that really wants the best for both sides uh is kind of difficult to say because one way or the other people on either side gets upset that you don't understand how terrible it is for us and and how much we've been violated and and so how much we've been kind of forgotten by the world or all kinds of things and so um and so I didn't want to talk about it directly and uh and and not talking about it is also very difficult because then you're ignoring you know and people say you're ignoring my people I don't feel safe and but when there's both people who feel that way then you know it's a very difficult thing to be in that to have that middle so the middle for me is not being aloof or indifferent but is um having a heart that's really concerned for everyone involved and um and is dedicated to finding best we can way of non-harming without um I don't know without um I don't know without maybe giving the question earlier today without um projecting expectations on what people do thank you

Channel: Insight Meditation Center

Views: 2,805

Keywords: meditation, vipassana, buddhism, insight meditiaion, mindfulness

Id: MIZVy8Rc_Wc

Length: 41min 7sec (2467 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2023