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Guided Meditation: Practicing for the Sake of Others

So hello and welcome to this meditation, which in my heart is very much connected to the theme that we've been doing for the last many months, and the Buddhist relationship of love to this practice of mindfulness, to Buddhist practice itself.

And in some ways, love is at the heart of Buddhist practice. Maybe not always obvious at first, but our relationship to other people, our interconnectedness with others, the way that we're shaped and influenced by our society, the world around us, by our family—we're deeply embedded, we're deeply conditioned, shaped, and influenced by the world around us. And that influence takes a particularly wonderful form when the Buddhist practice matures. Part of that maturity is non-clinging, non-attachment, non-craving, and the absence of addictive emotions and addictive motivations, where we can stand present and balanced and not coming from our reactivity. Not easy to do, but it's possible.

And what we discover then is that we are open. We are available to be in relationship to other people. But we're available in a very different way than before. Without reactivity, it's a lot easier to be open to other people. There's less stickiness. Things don't come at us and get stuck; it's more like we're an open window in a certain way, that things just come, we take them in, we see them, we know them, but they don't stop in us. They don't gunk up the inner machinery. We don't get preoccupied, resistant, or closed down. They can just go right through us.

Or we just stay open, but not in an aloof way. With no clinging, it allows for deep interpersonal sensitivity to be present. And the expression of that deep interpersonal sensitivity is to care, to care for the well-being and happiness of others. Not because we should, but because it's just the nature of the heart. The deep mammalian hearts that we share with other creatures, where there is a natural instinct to care for the young, to sometimes care for the elderly, care for friends.

And with non-clinging, everyone becomes our friends. This heart's capacity to care takes the form, for practitioners, people who do mindfulness practice and meditation practice, of practicing for the sake of others, not only for oneself. The Buddha talked about practicing for the sake of self and others. We're doing it for both. Both count. Both self and others are important. But at some point, as people deepen their connection to Buddhist practice and mature in Buddhist practice, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to continue doing the practice if it's only for yourself.

But if you understand you're doing it for others as well—that you're cleaning yourself, you're maturing yourself, you're exploring and discovering the inner landscape of human life, that you're becoming a better person, a more available person, a freer person, a more caring person—not just for yourself, because you want to do it for the sake of others. You want this world to be a better place for everyone. And this practice is a way of doing that; it is to prepare the ground for that.

And so the idea that we're practicing for the sake of everyone, self included, this is one of the profound—for me, the profound expressions of Buddhist practice and of the maturity of Buddhist practice in us. It is the profound expression of this very deep, what I talked about yesterday, ordinary way of caring. It's very ordinary, even though it's extraordinary in a certain way, to do this for the sake of others.

So as we meditate today, is there some way in the background or deep inside that you don't get hung up on the idea? You don't get involved in thinking about doing it for the sake of others. But that motivation, that reason, that purpose gives a little bit more strength, confidence, and dedication to really practicing the simplicity of just being here fully.

Not being caught up in doing it for yourself, not being caught up in doing it for others, but knowing you're doing it for both self and others. To be completely here for your present moment experience as it is lived, as it occurs here and now. May we be free of self and others, because you know deep down inside that that freedom from self and others turns you into a person who can much better love and care for self and others.

So take an upright, alert, or confident meditation posture, and gently close your eyes, taking some fuller breaths to connect to yourself, to your body, heart, and mind from the inside out, not from the control tower. And letting your breathing return to normal.

And feel in the movements and sensations of breathing where breathing feels most natural, most easy, easeful, most pleasant. Where in your body is it that way? Maybe in the chest, the belly, the nostrils, maybe the back rib cage, maybe the gentle pressure downward into your belly, your pelvic cavity as you breathe in, the release of it as you breathe out.

And what part of the cycle of breathing in and out is most easy, easeful, and pleasant? And maybe what is easeful and pleasant in breathing can be your toehold into the present moment. Just being here.

And as you're sitting here meditating without a lot of thought, can you bring to mind the idea that your meditation practice, as you're sitting here, can be for the welfare of everyone, not just yourself? That how you grow, develop, and practice makes you more available in a good way for others, to care more, to resist less^[1], to love more.

Maybe it's simply that your regular meditation can inspire others to do the same, to feel like they're part of a wider meditation community. And your contribution is to meditate in that community. For example, in this 7 a.m. sangha^[2] that we have. And is there a quiet, deep way, a deep ballast of practicing for the sake of others that keeps you on course, gives a certain deeper dedication to just being here in the present moment for the present moment?

In maybe an infinite number of ways, our life is continuous with the lives of others, in ways we know and ways we don't know. And in all the different networks and channels of continuity and connection, may we practice so that the continuity and the connections are wholesome, clean, caring, and free. Free of hostility, free of craving, free of fear. Our fear, and others' fear of us.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, try to evoke not yourself, not others, but the rapport between self and others. The avenues of communication, the avenues of knowing about each other, the means by which we see, hear, and feel all the different networks of connections that we have with the world of other people. May we care for that rapport. May we care for what travels in all those different means of connection.

May we keep the connections open, clear, caring, and unruffled by attachments, clinging, and fear. May we be attuned to the rapport, the connection between self and others, and others and self. And may our practice care for that connection.

May the way we practice make for healthier connections with the world around us. May the rapport be happy. May the rapport we have be safe. May the rapport we have be peaceful. May the rapport we have be free of suffering.

Maybe we don't care for others always. But when we care for the rapport, the connection we have to others, we are simultaneously caring for self and others.

May we have a happy rapport, a safe rapport, safe for everyone. A peaceful, easeful rapport, and a rapport which is free of suffering, that doesn't contribute more suffering to self and others. May all beings be happy. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (83) Care for Self and Others

So hello and welcome to this perhaps penultimate talk on love in this series on love, and I feel quite inspired by coming to the culmination of it. And what seems most important to talk about on the foundation of all these different—over 80 talks now I think on love—is very meaningful for me that this week the theme has to do with care.

Yesterday's talk was about ordinary care, ordinary love. So it doesn't have to be fireworks. It doesn't have to be dramatic. In fact, the simplicity of it all, the simplicity of practice, is probably where Buddhist practice is most profound, in the ordinariness of it.

But as I practiced—when I practiced more intensely in the monasteries, it became clear at some point that the primary motivation to keep practicing was not for myself. The idea that I would be improving myself or becoming freer or have less suffering, this concern with myself began to feel not so interesting, not really motivating, not really the heart of what was most important. But to practice for the sake of others, that became the primary motivation.

But practice is very personal. So it wasn't ignoring myself in order to practice for the sake of others, and it wasn't being preoccupied with myself. There's this wonderful way in which, in practice as it deepens, me, myself, and mine begin to drop away. And there's a wonderful kind of freedom from self, an emptiness of self, but not in a way that's disconnecting or aloof. It's the opposite. We're deeply connected. We're deeply connected to ourselves, and through ourselves to the world around us.

It's just the mental constructs, the control towers concerned with me, myself, and mine, what I want and who I want to be in relationship to others, the social games we might play. At some point, we feel safe enough, connected enough, not so in need of rectifying the social world around us and our connection to everyone else, that there's a dropping away of self-concern, while there's a deepening onward movement of continuing to practice to clean, clarify, open, and settle this practice of ours.

And so when that gets combined with doing it for the sake of others, it can be very motivating. It can be very inspiring. And maybe it's the only way we can really give ourselves over to the practice in a really deep way, at least it was for me.

And this idea is encapsulated in some schools of Buddhism where people dedicate themselves to practice until they can awaken everybody. Their practice is concerned with the awakening, the liberation of all beings everywhere. It's kind of like the impossible dream. Having the impossible dream is just—not that you shouldn't do it, but it's what makes the heart sing. That's what makes it the most wondrous and wonderful thing to do, is to just be dedicated to something that has so much meaning and purpose that maybe will help some people. But the generosity of it is just to be interested in supporting everyone.

And part of this depth, as we go deeper into it, is to begin appreciating that there is a third entity in our relationship to others. In a sense, it's the relationship itself. It's the dynamics in the connection. It's what only exists when two people are in relationship to each other because there's a relationship. It can be a one-way relationship; someone doesn't even know who you are, and you can have some thoughts, ideas, or feelings about them. But the rapport is what goes on between them. And it's the rapport, or the mutual way in which there is an interactive quality, a bridge between the people. That bridge is shared; there's a dynamic that happens between people.

And so caring for that dynamic. So it's not self-focused on ourselves, and it's not necessarily other-focused just on the other people, but there's this third entity, the dynamics between you, the rapport. And that's a very special place, because to care for that is in fact to care for both self and others at the same time.

You can't really have an unhealthy rapport with someone else without having something going on in you that's unhealthy for you, unwholesome. And if you're contributing something healthy and wholesome to the rapport, then something wholesome and healthy is living in you. So you're not exactly caring for the other person, but by caring for the rapport, you care for both self and others. And what a great opportunity that is. What a nice thing.

And so when the practice gets deep, one of the core ways of saying this, of practicing for others—another whole other way of saying it is that we're practicing for the sake of the ending of suffering wherever it is.

At some point, personal suffering diminishes. So where is the suffering then? Well, we feel the suffering in the rapport, the tension and conflict that's there. So, we want to practice with that. Sometimes we feel the suffering is in other people. Suffering is in the society. And there's still suffering, and the motivation to meet suffering, to work with suffering, find a way through suffering, make a difference, and make things better for others. That's the core motivation of Buddhist practice.

And once our own suffering is somehow settled enough, or maybe freed enough, there's still work to be done. There's still a natural impulse to meet the suffering wherever it is. It's just a natural quality of the good heart. It doesn't have to be driven. It doesn't have to be neurotic. It doesn't have to be ambitious. It can be the most natural, ordinary care that you can imagine. And it can feel natural even if you're doing big things. It's just the most natural thing to care for suffering wherever it's encountered.

And this idea of self and other begins to soften. It doesn't really matter so much if it's our own suffering or the suffering of others. It's whatever comes our way. We're ready to stop, be present, and be with it without clinging. If there's clinging, there's suffering. And if we're the one who's clinging, that's our suffering for us to be responsible for and care for. If it's a clinging others have, we can't be responsible for that. We can't fix that. But we can have a rapport where we offer safety. We offer kindness. We offer goodwill. We offer companionship that maybe supports the other person to be able to settle and look at and resolve their suffering, maybe create the environment for it.

There's a lot that can happen in that rapport. That's where we become a good listener, a companion. We accompany people in their difficulty. We listen to people. That's how this healthy rapport happens.

So this word care is an ordinary, simple, and very significant and broad-scope feeling of meeting the world and caring for it as it is, in whatever way is needed. But if you understand that you're also caring for the rapport, the rapport is the means of bringing freedom to self and others.

And as I said earlier in the guided meditation, we are deeply social beings. We are deeply influenced, shaped, and connected to others. Even if we end up being hermits and not seeing anybody for years, that connection to others is quite deep and an important part of being a human being. And as that clinging gets released, then maybe each person finds where we fit into society, where we are in relationship to others, how we care for others, and how we are responsive to the suffering of the world. We'll discover what that is.

And it has to be right for you. It has to be in the way that you can create a good rapport. If your way is to make meals for people, and that's your way to have that rapport, have that means to create goodness for people and care for them. Maybe you're a cook, maybe you're a musician, maybe you're a chaplain, maybe you're a meditation teacher, maybe you work in the medical field. There are all these different ways where this can play itself out. It's not like one way.

But sooner or later in this practice, I believe it doesn't make sense to do this practice if it's only for yourself. It makes sense to do it when it's for the whole world, for everyone.

So may it be that the goodness of our practice, the benefits we get from this practice, spill out into the world to the people around us. May this practice we do benefit the whole world.

So, thank you very much.

Announcements

And a reminder that tomorrow at this time, in 24 hours, I'll provide a Zoom link, and those of you who want can come over to the Zoom link for about 45 minutes, and we'll have a community meeting. You can ask some questions. I can hear a little bit from you about what it's like on this seven-month-long journey in love. We can do a short breakout group so you get to meet some of your people. Maybe you'll meet some of the people whose names and chats have been up here.

And for those of you who can't or don't want to be in the Zoom, I'll leave the YouTube on so you can kind of participate in this YouTube way as well in this community meeting. And I'll post later today, maybe this evening, the Zoom link on IMC's website under What's New. Also, in the IMC calendar, it'll be listed there. And maybe some of you who are more connected to IMC can post it in the chat at the end of this little talk.

So thank you very, very much, and I'm looking forward to what happens for the concluding talk on this long series on love. Thank you.