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Deepening Inner Practice Leads to Outer Peace

Welcome everyone to IMC, and I am happy to be here. I've been gone from IMC for quite a while, it feels like, so it's nice to be back in this community with all of you. It's a potluck to come back to! I've been on vacation for almost a month, and spent about three weeks hiking—we called it a pilgrimage. It was very nice, but I didn't give much thought to IMC, Dharma talks, or such things. However, the one thing I did give thought about was that starting tomorrow, together with two colleagues, I am beginning a new program having to do with peace chaplaincy. This whole idea of peace and being a chaplain—offering spiritual care in the context of conflict—has been very much on my mind. I took notes about it, and when I came back yesterday, I wrote an article or an essay about it. That's the only thing I have on my mind, so that's what I'll share.

One of the very interesting phenomena in the early teachings of the Buddha is that the two emotional or psychological states consistently, and maybe only, associated with full awakening—the goal of Buddhist practice, of becoming fully mature in this practice—are happiness and peace. Sometimes the idea of enlightenment, awakening, or liberation can have grandiose ideas of what it involves. We might lose sight that one of the primary characteristics and purposes of this maturation in the Dharma is to be a person who has a deep, abiding sense of happiness and a sense of inner peace.

But this inner peace is not a private affair. It's not something that is just held and contained within the person who has it. It spills out, and it has an orientation, a movement out into the world to connect, to relate to, and to understand others. We are deeply social beings, and so the deep inner peace that we can attain in this practice has social consequences. The gift of an awakened person to the world is that they share their peace and their happiness. There is a concern for the well-being of others that is quite deep. It's a natural expression of that peace. It's almost like this peace can't just stay contained within oneself; there's a movement outward into the world with it.

There is an amazing discourse, a little series of poems attributed to the Buddha, that is said to be some of the oldest pieces of literature in Buddhism. This was before there was a lot of embellishment of who the Buddha was in ways that sometimes became more than human. In this very human depiction of the Buddha in this text, he talks in the first person about his own distress—the way he was dismayed, shaken, and afraid when he looked around the world of his time and saw that there was conflict and violence everywhere. He didn't see any place that was settled, without there being turmoil.

It's quite a touching description, so I want to read some of it for you. It begins this way:

"Violence gives birth to fear. Just look at people and their quarrels. I will speak of my dismay and the way that I was shaken."

In the history of Buddhism, the Buddha was often considered to be kind of superhuman—the perfection of all human qualities. Even before he was a Buddha, he was seen as already perfected, with no shortcomings at all. So to admit that the Buddha was shaken and dismayed didn't go over very well as Buddhism developed in India. But here in these earliest texts, we can imagine this man in a world back in the Bronze Age, I guess, with a lot of poverty, no social services, and a lot of violence:

"I will speak of my dismay and the way that I was shaken. Seeing people thrashing about like fish in little water and seeing them feuding with each other, I became afraid."

Usually, we don't think of him, even before he was awakened, as a person who would be afraid.

"The world is completely without a core. Everywhere things are in turmoil. Wanting a place of my own, I saw nothing that was settled. I felt discontent at seeing only conflict to the very end."

"Discontent at seeing only conflict to the very end." I don't know exactly what that means, but how many of us have looked around the world? I grew up in the shadow of the stories of World War II in Europe; my family, my in-laws, were all deeply affected by it. Then the Vietnam War was huge for me because I was of draftable age, and there was a real possibility that I'd be drafted. Contending with the Vietnam War, the draft, the violence, and whether I would serve if drafted or be a conscientious objector, was a huge thing. Over and over again, there is war. Some of these conflicts, like what we have in Palestine, have been going on for almost a hundred years now, depending on how you count. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight.

"I felt discontent at seeing only conflict to the very end. Then I saw an arrow here, hard to see, embedded in the heart. Pierced by this arrow, people dash about in all directions. When the arrow is pulled out, they don't run and they don't sink. Don't pursue what the world is knotted up in. Having fully pierced sensuality, train in your full release."

Here he talks about seeing something. He saw all this dismay in the world out there, and in trying to contend with it and his own fear, he discovered that in his own heart, there was an arrow. Some people translate it as a "dart," since an arrow is kind of big to have in your heart. This piercing pain of the sharp arrowhead embedded in the heart speaks to the pain of attachment, craving, greed, hostility, and divisiveness that many people carry inside one way or the other. That was the source of it all, rather than the source being the lack of social services—although let's get more of those! It was something deeply psychological within ourselves, and the Buddha discovered that it is possible to pull that arrow out, and we can train to do this.

His forty-five years of teaching were bracketed at the beginning and the end by this concern with the violence and the challenges of the world we live in. He realized something very profound, and then he spent forty-five years teaching people how to pull this arrow out and discover a heart deeply at peace and deeply happy.

At the other end of the Buddha's life, when he was dying, the world that he had spent forty-five years teaching in was collapsing. The two or three primary countries he had lived and taught in were at war with each other. There is a story from his last days of him seeing that fortifications and war preparations were beginning. A king who was his good friend was usurped, dethroned, and died during the Buddha's last months. The world was collapsing around him, and yet, seeing and knowing this, he died peacefully.

You could say the Buddha failed, if you think he was supposed to be the savior of the world and bring peace to everyone. I don't think he ever saw himself that way. I don't know if he offered his teachings to create a universal peace and solution for all human conflict in his time or in ours. Perhaps wishing too much for that could be a form of attachment that prevents us from seeing and being with this world as it actually is. Wanting too much to create a universal solution to the challenges of human life is perhaps just a manifestation of that arrow still embedded in the heart—the attachment we still carry.

But that doesn't mean someone who is mature in this practice becomes passive and does nothing. They can't do that. It is natural that the way they go forth into the world is to create a better world: living in their peaceful, happy way, meeting people, engaging in conversations peacefully, and not participating in or fueling the divisiveness in our society. That is a huge thing—to be concerned with the welfare of everyone.

In the months after the Buddha was awakened, he walked around India and met different people. After some months—we don't know exactly how many—lo and behold, there were sixty people who had understood and followed his teachings, and discovered this profound possibility of peace and happiness. He gathered those people together and said something to them. In saying this, Buddhism at that point became a social movement. Maybe even before it became a religion, it was a social movement. This is what he said to those sixty people:

"Go forth. Go out into the world for the benefit and happiness of humanity, out of profound care for the world, for the good, benefit, and happiness of gods and humans. Go out individually. No two of you in the same direction."

Sixty people is a lot of people to send out across the plains of northern India. "Go out there for the welfare and happiness of the world."

One of the reasons he could send them out was that in attaining awakening, they had realized a very significant and influential degree of inner peace and happiness. This became a reference point for what other people could do as well. It wasn't simply about providing people with social services, which is a wonderful thing to do so they are less hungry or have better conditions. The true orientation is that happiness is not about having a TV, a better computer, or a better phone. Happiness is found in your heart. Someone who has discovered that for themselves can imagine or know what is possible in other people's hearts, and they want that for them. They can guide them toward that or be a reference point for it.

This peace and happiness of these mature people wasn't something they were told to keep for themselves. They were to use it as a reference point to go out and bring the ultimate welfare and happiness to the hearts of other people. They were sent out to contribute to a more peaceful and happier society. This is why I like to think of Buddhism partly as a social movement. Their inner freedom had become, by its very nature, a social gift.

We are social beings in a very profound, uncontroversial way. Regardless of how we are, we are going to have an effect on the world around us. If we are greedy, divisive, hostile, or if we complain a lot, we spread something into the world that is a little bit toxic. If we are the opposite, we spread something else entirely.

This purpose of Buddhism, where people maturing in this practice live for the welfare of others, is expressed in a wonderful quote that I've shared many times because I like it so much. It's the Buddha's description of a wise person, which is another characteristic of a person fully mature in this practice. This is a very humanistic goal. Sometimes the language of enlightenment can seem so grandiose, ultimate, complicated, or metaphysical that it loses touch with the humanity of who we are. But becoming wise is a simple, ordinary human thing to do. Hopefully, you become wiser as you age over your lifetime.

The Buddha describes a wise person this way:

"Wise people of great wisdom do not intend for their own affliction, for the affliction of others, or for the affliction of both. Rather, wise people think of their own welfare, the welfare of others, the welfare of both self and others, and the welfare of the whole world. It is in this way that a wise person is of great wisdom."

These four categories are all working together. Some people are primarily concerned with their own welfare—forget other people. Some people are mostly concerned with the welfare of others—forget about yourself, you don't count. That is a whole orientation that some people have. But for the Buddha, both are important. Buddhism is not a message of being completely altruistic where you don't count, nor is it a message of being selfish where other people don't count. Both count, and both are worked on together.

Discover what your own welfare truly is in a deep way—your capacity for peace and happiness. Be concerned for the welfare of others in addition to your own. The value of that is the more you know your own welfare, the more you can understand how to benefit and support other people in a profound way.

Then there is the category of being concerned with the welfare of both self and others. I don't know exactly what this meant in the old language, but I like to interpret it as we—how we come together. It refers to the community and how we live in community. It's not just about the individual; it's also about the collective. There is you, there is me, and there is we—the two of us, the three of us, the ten of us, the thousand of us. We want to care for that we because it is its own entity. It's a very significant and important thing to be living in and caring for. Plenty of people don't understand that the we we live in is almost its own significant reference point. The network, the connections, the warmth, the culture, the shared understandings, the emotions, and the caring for each other—all of that goes on in the we.

And finally, it says: "the whole world." I just love that care for the whole world. How I understand this is that no one is meant to be left out of our hearts. It's not caring just for your own people, your family, or your community; everyone is included. This is a powerful and challenging idea because it means that even your enemies are included. There is no one who is outside your heart's care.

One of the ways I believe this works is if you understand how peaceful and happy an unconstricted, open heart can be. You'll see that as soon as you decide there are people who are not worthy of your care—that their suffering doesn't count, that their suffering is not something we're going to care about—we are actually harming ourselves. The peaceful heart has now contracted and constricted because someone has been left out.

This is what is hard: How do we extend our welfare to people who want to harm us? Aren't we justified in harming them? Aren't we justified in hating them if they hate us? Aren't we justified in defending ourselves by attacking and killing them if that's what they're doing to us? That's a question everyone has to answer for themselves. But my understanding from this practice is that we harm ourselves if we do that.

This universal call for caring for the whole world requires a very deep inner transformation. It requires a deep understanding and a remarkable reference point that is possible, but that many people haven't touched. Because of that, they live with that arrow in their heart. When that painful arrow is embedded in people's hearts, rather than pulling it out, sometimes the arrow gets directed toward other people. Then we just continue the endless cycles of violence and harm that go on in our world.

Another place where this sense of universal care or goodwill comes through in Buddhism is in the Buddha's teachings on loving-kindness, particularly in a text called the Mettā Sutta^[1], the discourse on loving-kindness. This is a very interesting text because the Buddhist path to peace is paradoxical. In attaining peace, we naturally want to care for all people. But how do you attain this peace? By caring for all people. There is a wonderful paradox that the very goal is also the practice itself. The Mettā Sutta is explicit about this. It says that to attain the state of peace, one should cultivate this wish: "May all be happy and safe. May all beings be happy at heart."

Again, this points to a universal quality. What does it take to leave no one out, to turn your back on no one, to close down to no one? There might be some people you need to take a few steps back from, but you don't turn your back entirely. This kind of boundless goodwill is not wishful thinking. It means we have to discover the peace the Buddha talked about that dissolves the arrows of divisiveness, hostility, and fear that constrict our hearts. There is deep inner work that needs to be done here. The discourse on loving-kindness teaches that simply beginning to cultivate this care, love, and goodwill is one of the ways to dissolve a constricted heart.

The way I read the Mettā Sutta, this is not a passive goodwill or wishful thinking. It includes a clear understanding of the harm caused by deceit, contempt, anger, and hostility, alongside a genuine wish for the ending of these painful states in others. This famous discourse says:

"Let no one deceive another or loathe anyone anywhere. Let no one through anger or hostility wish for others to suffer."

How is this done? How do we not only cultivate this universal goodwill for ourselves, but also help prevent people from deceiving or loathing each other? How do we support others so they don't want to harm anyone? This is difficult work. To be actively involved in making this change in the world requires intelligence, creativity, skillfulness, and discernment about what any given situation needs. But it requires something that is even harder.

This is perhaps so hard that some people are not willing to do the work. It requires that we engage with those who deceive, loathe, and harm, without deceiving them in return, without loathing them, and without wishing them suffering. In so many places in the world, people hate, and those who are hated hate in return. It becomes a cycle, and people feel justified in hating because, after all, "they're hating me." But someone has to change these cycles. We must do the work of helping the world and holding goodwill for all beings without perpetuating the very suffering and painful hearts we are trying to heal, and without continuing to embed the arrow more deeply into our own hearts.

One way I like to think of this is that the world suffers; there is so much suffering in this world. Don't add to it. We add to it by hating. We add to it by being caught and constricted by our fear. We add to it by contempt and by our conceit. How do we remain present for the suffering of the world and not add more suffering to it? I think that is one of the great challenges and promises of Buddhist practice: to help us discover what that is like.

Contributing to social peace and the welfare of the whole world in Buddhism is not a commandment from the outside. It's not something you are simply supposed to do or have to do. Rather, it flows naturally when we have honestly reckoned with our own suffering and discovered the peace that lies beneath it. A heart freed from the grip of hostility does not need to be told to care for others. It finds that it already does, not as an obligation, but as an expression of what it has become.

That peace extending outward—as goodwill, as presence, as the refusal to add more agitation to a world already full of it—is itself a form of peacework. It is as close and as consequential as the next conversation we have, the next conflict we encounter, and the next person whose suffering we are willing to see and care for.

So, that's what I did on my vacation. [Laughter]

Reflections and Q&A

Hopefully you've heard some interesting ideas, orientations, and possibilities. It might be nice to take a few minutes to turn toward someone next to you and share what struck you about what I taught. You don't have to stay, but you are welcome to stay for the five to seven minutes we have for conversation, or just sit quietly. I love seeing people who sit, meditating and listening to the chatter, without participating in the conversation. Please turn to one or two people next to you, and make sure everyone is included. I'll ring a bell in a few minutes, and we'll finish up together as a group.

(Community converses for a few minutes)

Let's come together for the last few minutes. Any comments or questions to bring this conversation back to the whole group?

Questioner 1: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the talk, Gil, and welcome back. A few of us had a small chat here, and what really struck us was the conversation about the balance between our individual needs, the needs of who we're speaking with, and the collective needs of the "we" or the world. There seems to be a common struggle in finding that balance. Sometimes we give and forget about ourselves, and sometimes we feel that we need to take.

We were discussing different ways to think about that. One person shared that striking that balance might require a broader perspective. In a particular moment, it truly might be more about the other person who is in greater need, and in another moment, it might be more about ourselves. As long as you're thinking about the balance of yourself and others in the grander scheme of things across your life, that could be a way to navigate it. Another person connected it to mindfulness: in moments where it's a struggle to find the balance between oneself and others, we can provide a few seconds of space to ask, "What am I needing right now? What is this other person needing right now? What might the world be needing right now?" That way, we can find a way to honor all those needs together, instead of being driven by our fears, anger, or other feelings.

Gil Fronsdal: That's very nice. Thank you for both the questions and your suggestions for a solution. I concur that the answer is very situational. It's not like you are simultaneously doing all four categories. Situationally, there are times when we absolutely give up any concern for ourselves for someone else—like someone who needs to be taken to the ER right away. It doesn't matter that you're hungry or going to miss your favorite TV show; you just willingly give it up.

It is also situational for different individuals. Different individuals find themselves located in different situations that call for different things. Some people, through the karma or coincidences of their lives, find themselves in situations where it is natural to emphasize one category more than another.

This idea of a pause—having space, not being in a hurry, and having a heart that stays relaxed and peaceful so you can take in the whole—is vital. If you take in the whole of what's happening, you get evidence of where the need is greatest. If you take in the full picture, you might realize, "I'm grumpy, tired, and hungry. Yes, I want to help my sick neighbor, but I think I'll help them better if I get some food first. Otherwise, I'll make it worse."

Questioner 2: I just want to add that in my life, I often use "righteous anger" as a reminder, a kind of mindfulness bell, to say, "Hey, wake up. Something needs to be addressed here. Something's not working here." I'm curious about your thoughts on that.

Gil Fronsdal: I think we have to be careful about what we mean by anger. In Buddhism, when we use the word anger, it always implies there is hostility in it. There is never a place for hostility, so if anger always has hostility, there is no place for it.

But often in Western culture, there is this idea of righteous anger or justified anger. Maybe that is an anger that has no hostility in it, but instead has a sense of justice and a fierceness to it. The time in my life where I had the clearest example of this directed at me was when I was the kitchen manager in the monastery, which is a bit of a pressure-cooker environment. I was the manager, telling people what to do and how to do it. I have no idea what I said to him, but I remember this person just looking at me with this fierceness. At the time, I called it "white anger" to myself because it felt so clean. He said, "Don't ever say that to me again." He said it much more dramatically than that—it was fierce, and he definitely got my attention. What was remarkable was that as soon as he had said that and gotten his message across, it vanished from him completely.

He was immediately ready to be a friend, be available, or do the work. For me to be the recipient of such clean ferocity—a clear "no" that didn't feel sticky, lingering, or like he was stuck in it—was a real lesson. It showed a way of having something that looks like anger.

Questioner 2: So then anger isn't inherently unskillful, but hostility is what we want to be careful of?

Gil Fronsdal: Hostility is always unskillful. I'm a little bit confused myself about the English language here around using the word "anger" and whether we all have the same reference point for the word. But maybe if we say "fierce"—for example, if someone is stealing your lunch every day, maybe what's needed is a fierce "no" or a fierce "stop." That's not as confusing as calling it a fierce anger.

Thank you all. There is a potluck in a few minutes; please stay if you'd like. It's a wonderful time to be together, and thank you for being here today.