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Guided Meditation: Non-Harming

Hello. Welcome to this meditation session. We are still on this journey of the Buddhist sentiment of love. Part of Buddhist practice involves the purification of love, meaning a settling away of all the things that are extra—all the things that are sometimes confused for love or caught up in love.

Sometimes what people think is love is a strong desire. Strong desires for pleasure. Strong desire for safety, for praise, for adoration. Strong desire for belonging. Strong desires for recognition. Strong desires to feel like they count, that they're important, that someone recognizes them as being a worthy person. There are a lot of needs that people have, and there is something in all of them we should respect and care for. But in practice, especially meditation practice, a lot of these things can fall away. They are no longer needed. The activities that sustain them, the deeper emotional challenges that fuel them, become quieter and quieter.

One of the wonderful things that happens is that there's a simplification of love. Or, a purification of love, and love stands out by itself. It can be love with no object. It's just a warm-hearted, joyous feeling of friendliness, delight, love, compassion, and kindness. It just is the nature of how our experience is right now. And one of the expressions, one of the integral parts of this simple, pure kind of love, is that it comes hand-in-hand with—or it is in itself—a dedication to non-harming.

The Buddha said that when we harm others, we're harming ourselves. Those who love themselves would not harm anyone else. The reason for this is that when there's a kind of aggression of harming others, inevitably it diminishes, darkens, and harms that very love that we're discovering. And so, to not harm is an expression of love. Not harming ourselves, not harming others.

So, assume a meditation posture, and take a little time to wiggle around, feel your sway back and forth. Feel your posture, but with care, love, like you're listening, feeling deeply into your body because you care. How would you like to position the body to be present, fully present, alert? Here. And if there is a natural movement to close the eyes, let the eyelids come together.

On the next exhale, exhale a little bit more fully, longer. And as you do so, settle deep into your body, to the deepest places that can relax, release. And from the depth of where you can relax inside, allow the inhale to begin and grow and expand through your body.

Appreciating that if you're aware of your breathing, you are present. You're alive and aware and here in the moment. As you exhale, relax the mind, the heart, the body. Let anything that's extra fall away. Anything not about here and now can wait.

You're here settling into your lived experience. Breathing into your lived experience. And rather than fixating on some concern or some body sensation, see if you can have a broad awareness of your body that's more tuned into the hum, the warmth, the vibration of the body. A soft, subtle feeling of flow or humming of the body, with breathing moving through that hum, that glow, like a quiet fish moving through the water.

Feeling your way into the quietude of your body, of your heart. A quiet that is not too vacuous, but is alive with something in the family of love. A warmth. A gentle goodwill. A kindness that needs nothing, wants nothing really. Just simple love as a radiance. A hum. Into which you breathe, from which you breathe. Maybe saying some word in the family of love. Almost saying it in your thoughts. Maybe even in a non-verbal way, staying close. Being reminded. Opening up into love. Repeating some word like love. Mettā^[1]. Compassion.

And feeling, remembering, or imagining the deepest, quietest form of love. Tenderness, gentleness, kindness within you. See if you can feel or recognize that in that love there's also an orientation to harmlessness, to non-harming. That harming of any kind in thoughts, in feelings, in words, or deeds is an intrusion, a diminishment of the simplicity of love. And that love itself wants to be true to non-harming.

And now, feeling your way into the quiet, the quietude in your heart, your body, maybe in your mind. In the place where it feels both spacious and still. And in that place, might there be some glimmer of love, care, appreciation, a feeling of generosity and kindness, where being friendly is more natural than being hostile.

And with whatever friendliness towards the world you can have while you're sitting in meditation—where nothing much is needed to do or to say—gaze upon the world in a friendly way. Gaze upon the world with eyes that want to do no harm. Want well-being and happiness for this world. And wishing from deep within, as an expression of the deepest place of love:

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may the way that each of us are present for others today, with strangers and people we know, may our very presence include the depths of our goodwill. May our presence include gazing upon the world kindly, on others kindly. May we be friends with all.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (76) Non-Harming as Love

So today we continue with the theme, the idea of the expression of love. After all these months of exploring the topic of love, an important element—sooner or later, for different people at different times—is beginning to recognize that love can also be expressed in our words, in our deeds, in our eyes, in how we are in the world. Being able to recognize and appreciate that love can be expressed, that something flows out of it, is an important part of recognizing the fullness of love, becoming familiar and fluent in the language of love, the nature of love, that we've been looking at for these last six months.

Yesterday I spoke about generosity being an expression of love. Generosity can be an expression of other things besides love, but it also can be an expression of love. And today I want to emphasize that a very important expression of love—the kind of love that Buddhism cherishes and values—is non-harming. To love non-harming, because love is non-harming at its essence. The kind of mettā^[1:1], karuṇā^[2], muditā^[3], upekkhā^[4]—the kind of goodwill, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimous love that Buddhism puts a lot of value on—is a form of non-harming. This is because non-harming goes clearly against ill will. Ill will is a form of harm, the opposite of goodwill. Hostility and cruelty, the opposite of compassion, clearly harm. So we begin appreciating that there is a momentum, a desire, an orientation, a love for non-harming that is part of love.

There are two sides to that. One is that as we become simpler and quieter, and all the extra things that get added to love and confused for love settle away, we feel there is something really precious here, a valuable way of being. We don't want to make it worse, and so we don't want to harm ourselves or others. The Buddha said that in harming others, we harm ourselves. The other side is that it's not just simply wanting to not harm as a kind of keeping a better state present, but that non-harming is almost like its own force. It's almost like its own power, energy, or state that wants to come out of us.

Maybe it's hard to understand unless you've tapped into some of the depth of peace and calm that's available inside. Do you really feel that the expression of love is non-harming, wanting to not cause harm? A resistance, an allergy almost, to causing harm. I don't know if allergy is the right word, but an unwillingness.

Part of what helps us to find that is to appreciate and understand that there are a lot of things that get confused for love. Sometimes a strong drive that feels biological, compelling, that feels like "this is who I am," where there's energy and vitality, is seen as a form of love. But if it's a desire for pleasure, like sexual pleasure, or a desire for safety—which is very important—it might be an expression of love, but to confuse the desire to be safe when the source of that desire is anxiety, means we're probably not connected to love in the deepest way. Some people confuse love with the pleasure that comes from being adored, being valued, being praised. And some people confuse love with the wonderful feeling of belonging or safety that can come from some people who provide that by their very presence, involvement, or connection.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with those kinds of things, but they are more activated states, more energetic states, and sometimes more needy states. What we learn in meditation is that slowly, slowly we learn that we can settle those away. Settle the activated states. Settle the reactive states. Settle the emotions that are born of some kind of attachment or insecurity. And find a deep sense of well-being. There, with time, we start discovering love. You don't have to want to have it, but it can sometimes just appear on its own.

And to know enough of this—it might not even be a feeling, but to know something about non-harming, something about love—can translate when things are really difficult for us. When we are agitated, when we are restless, when we are caught in things, there's a way of not condemning that, not harming that, but a dedication to holding it: Okay, this too needs to be held in this non-harming way. This too needs to have space. It doesn't mean that we can do it well. But it means that we're oriented towards it: Where is the non-harming? How can I hold this? How can I include this in this field of goodwill, of kindness, of friendliness?

Maybe it's by taking some deeper breaths and relaxing. Maybe it's finding the places where the body is tense and seeing that here I can relax. Or maybe it's finding the places where the body is soft, relaxed, and peaceful. Maybe there's one little square centimeter somewhere in the body that can be a refuge that can allow us not to get caught up in the restlessness, preoccupations, and hostilities we have. Just to stay here. Don't act on it. Don't give in to it, but don't deny it. Don't push it away. Hold everything with goodwill. Hold everything with a non-harming attitude. A non-harming awareness.

There's a way in which, as Buddhist practice develops and grows over time, there becomes a baseline orientation to non-harming. It is not a strong feeling or something we strongly identify with, but it is a baseline. It's always there like a hum, like an orientation. Some people call it a vow, a commitment, a resolve, a natural kind of promise: I get this is really important for me. This is where I want to be committed to even when it's hard, even when it's not close by. Love. Goodwill. Non-harming.

In Buddhism, sometimes the dedication to non-harming is a phenomenally powerful vow that people take. Sometimes taking the precepts is a kind of vow or real commitment. And not one from the outside that imposes on us, but rather we realize that this is the heart's deepest wish. This is what I want my life to be about. I don't want to give myself over to the forces that are opposite to love. They'll be there for me, but that's not where my commitment is. That's not where a vow is. That's not where the adhiṭṭhāna^[5], the dedication, the resolve, where I'm going to take a stand, is. In early Buddhism, the closest word to the word vow means to take a higher stand. This is what I stand on. And to stand on non-harming.

For some people it's so powerful that they would rather die than to kill someone else. There's no question in their mind. If that's the choice, they'll die first. I'm not suggesting that it has to be that way for you. But what I'm suggesting is this very strong orientation: This is what my life is based on. This is so important. Who wins the World Cup, how much money I have in my bank account—all kinds of things are really a distant second to this. This is the core orientation that I live in. So, for some Buddhists, that's non-harming.

What I'm proposing here today is that there's a way in which this non-harming is not an obligation. It's not a duty. It's not a "should." Rather, it's a natural arising from being quiet enough, still enough to recognize the inner core of love, of kindness, of goodwill that includes non-harming.

May it be that we all love non-harming, a life of not causing harm, and transform the world. We need it in this world so badly. So fully. May we contribute to the flowering, the expansion, the growth, and the recognition of the beauty and the love of a non-harming heart.

Thank you.