Category: not punishing

Meeting Myself With Kindness, Right Now

January 12, 2021

Bodhisattva Vow, Loving Kindness, Metta, not punishing, Overcoming self-hatred

Sunset over Tapping Reeve Meadow. Photo by Celia
Upajjhatthana Sutta
The Five Remembrances
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
translated by Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear friends,

As I write this, Wednesday evening, I am feeling heartbroken about the division and lack of shared reality in our country. While I do not have control over what is unfolding in Washington, I do have responsibility for how I respond to this news. I can allow myself to be pulled into speculation and fear, hatred, and separation, or I can do what is a radical act, stop breathe, find my center, and come back to myself. I can cultivate calm and stability in myself and allow my words and actions to align with my Bodhisattva intentions. I know I can’t do the big work of continuing to love others if I feel rocked and off center. My highest priority is to be a presence of care for myself at all moments.

When I judge and condemn my responses to the failed coup in Washington and to the extent of the poison in our government, I am creating a cycle of violence in myself. When I can respond to myself with understanding and concern for my fears and outrage, I am ending the cycle of harm against myself. Doing this I can find some ground, not judging myself for failing to be an enlightened being, but offering myself compassion and living as a Bodhisattva, beginning with myself.

We are called on to be Bodhisattvas of our time. This does not mean becoming a mystical deity or a monastic on a mountain top. A bodhisattva is a person who remembers the truth of Interbeing, of belonging. As Mother Theresa reminds us, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” When we think about belonging to each other, our minds go in the opposite direction of hatred, greed, and delusion. If my mind is rooted in thoughts of care and compassion, and I am able to see how I am connected to these beautiful qualities, I have a wider lens than the one that categorizes people as good and bad. This lens of care and compassion show me that the wellbeing of all of us, directly affects my wellbeing. I see that there is a lot less separation than I’ve been taught. This pandemic has showed us that lesson starkly. Shantideva, the 8^th century Monk who wrote beautiful books of poetic teachings defines the bodhisattva vow, the remembering our belonging, like this,

“May I be a protector to those without protection,

A leader for those who journey,

And a boat, a bridge, a passage

For those desiring the further shore.

May the pain of every living creature

Be completely cleared away.

May I be the doctor and the medicine

And may I be the nurse

For all sick beings in the world

Until everyone is healed.”

The Buddha taught that our actions have consequence. This is the meaning of Karmā—action. Action includes not only our physical actions and our words, karmā also includes our thoughts. Our deeds and words can be recorded and replayed, it is more difficult to see our how our flickering, ephemeral thoughts contribute to our legacy. Thoughts become the tonal quality of our lives. As thoughts repeat and strengthen, they increasingly lead us to into hell realms, or towards liberation. We can clearly see how our thoughts become our beliefs and our beliefs shape our words and our deeds. These three actions bear our signature; they are our creations, and our karma is created from this inheritance. My kindness or unkindness to myself directly affects how I engage with others.

Right now, I am asking, how are my thoughts leading to healing the pain of the world? How are my words and my actions contributing to healing this pain that I and others feel? How am I creating a heaven or hell here on Earth? When there is so much delusion fueling hatred and violence, I can chooses to pause and to come back to myself and nourish what is good and beautiful in me.

I can work to dismantle white supremacy in myself and in the world and release myself from the pain of continuing this brutal legacy. When I am refreshed and solid I can move towards opening my heart. When I engage with myself and my own capacity with gentleness, I refuse to perpetrate violence on anyone, including in myself. I give myself the time and support I need to reconnect with my intention to be a source of love for all beings. It is easy to close my heart to others and give them a negative label so I can kick them out of my heart. Loving and compassionate understanding does not mean agreeing with or permitting harm. Loving others means we can hold them accountable for the consequences of their actions. Loving others means we care about how things are for all of us, not simply my own group. It is possible to have justice without hate.

Living the way of mettā, unconditional loving, is an advanced practice. The Buddha was a practical teacher and told his students he only taught what was possible, “Abandon what is unskillful, monks. It is possible to abandon what is unskillful. If it were not possible to abandon what is unskillful, I would not say to you,” (AN 2.19, Thanissaro B. trans). This practice of loving others must firstly include ourselves, neither straining, shaming, or pushing ourselves for our responses of fear and outrage to the violence and division in our country. If we condemn ourselves for our responses we are continuing to inflict violence upon the world.

This pandemic has shown us that we are all far more connected than we knew. What we think, say, and do matters, in the mundane and in the public arena and in our hearts. If we vow to walk the path of nonviolence, the path of gentleness with ourselves, we contribute to creating the world in which I hope to live one day. If we chose to walk the path of separation and violence and self-condemnation, we create a hell for ourselves and others. The choice is ours.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

“Kusala Sutta: Skillful” (AN 2.19), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 4 August 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an02/an02.019.than.html .

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Putting an End to Hatred

October 28, 2018

Activism, Buddhism, Changing habit patterns, compassion, Ending hatred, Ignorance, non-violence, not abandoning, not punishing, Uncategorized

Ginko and denim. Photo by Celia

“I entrust myself to earth,

Earth entrusts herself to me.

I entrust myself to Buddha,

Buddha entrusts herself to me.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Being Peace.

“Without being

peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we cannot smile, we

cannot help other people to smile. If we are not peaceful, then

we cannot contribute to the peace movement.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Being Peace.

“Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world; through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law.”

~Dhammapada, Verse 5, Narada Thera trans.

“We are committed not to kill and not to let others kill. We will not support any act of killing in the world, in our thinking, or in our way of life.”

~The Twelfth Mindfulness Training. The nuns and monks of Plum Village.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I took refuge in the three jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha sharing a day of mindfulness with the Greater Hartford Sangha. I left with deep gratitude for the gift of sharing my day with a community dedicated to alleviating suffering in the world. I was so glad that I had the nourishment of the three refuges yesterday as I learned about the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill. I felt huge sadness and grief for the families and victims of the shooting. As I sat with these feelings, I was aware of the rage in me fed by the desire for all beings to be safe and valued. I saw my thoughts go into blame and judgment and turns towards punishment. I’ve grown up in a society that believes punishment equals justice and that punishment is a useful strategy for getting people to change their behavior. If we are a parent we know what punishment does; it teaches our children to be afraid or to be sneaky. Punishment, isolation, and shame are enculturated ways we believe we can effect social change. But how effective is punishment? The U. S. Bureau of Justice in a 2018 update reports that 5 out of 6 state prisoners were rearrested within 9 years of release. It seems that punishment is an expensive and misguided attempt to create change that ignores the basis of violence and hatred.

Buddhist scholar and monk Bhikkhu Bhodi writes that it is the root of ignorance or delusion (avijja/ Pali, avidya/ Sanskrit) that leads to suffering. Ignorance is not a pathological condition. It is not evil or bad; it is simply a misperception. This is the ignorance that creates the mental confusion or blindness leading to separation and hatred and forgets we inter-are. It is the ignorance that creates in-group and out-group distinctions. It’s the “I making and my making” that leads us to grab hold of the disastrous strategies of greed, hatred, and violence with the mistaken belief they will keep us safe. Writing this I am grateful that I know the usefulness of anger AND extremely grateful I have entrusted myself to the care of the Dhamma which teaches me what to do with my anger so it does not need to become hatred. Anger is a powerful message that something needs our attention. Anger, just like pain, is signal to us that there is something harmful and hurtful going on and we need to take wise action to alleviate suffering in ourselves and others.

The Buddha had a profound understanding of human nature and the innate desire to protect oneself and one’s clan. He gave a teaching on five ways to put an end to hatred that tells us when someone is acting and speaking with violence and out of the delusion in a separated protected self, it is as if they have fallen severely ill, are alone in a strange place without food or medicine and shunned by all others. “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.…” (Aghatavinaya Sutta: Subduing Hatred). The Buddha tells us that viewing those who act with hatred and delusion through our veil of ignorance and condemnation will only enforce the belief in separation and fuel the cycle of hatred and violence. He tells us it is our task as practitioners is to pick up this ill and isolated person, provide food and medicine to help restore them to health and wholeness of body and mind and most importantly to put down our ignorance and do what feels so counter-culture—to understand that violence is a sign that someone is sick and suffering and care for the person who does harm.

This is a life-altering practice and requires some deep and honest looking at how we create a dangerous “other” and feed the cycle of violence and hatred in our own lives. Ask yourself who is it ok to hate? The KKK? Nazis? White nationalists? Terrorists? Joining together in our communities, who do we hate? When we practice hating, just like any skill, we get better at it. This week please look to see the usefulness in your anger, the beautiful desires for equality and justice that lie beneath anger and judgment and then, go deeper. See how we can act to remove what is the real danger—ignorance. On Tuesday, please take your compassion to the polls and do your best to elect those who can transcend the delusion of separation, those who remember that we all belong to each other.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

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Category: not punishing

Meeting Myself With Kindness, Right Now

Putting an End to Hatred