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Reflections on a Dharmic Life

Wow, nice to see you here, and Jamie and Jane on YouTube. Thank you for your note, glad you're with us.

I've been contemplating what it means to live a reflective life, a dharmic life. In simple terms, it's not dharma to cause harm, and it is dharma to refrain from causing harm. The discourse Advice to Rahula in the Majjhima Nikaya 61^[1] is a really great set of instructions for living a reflective life. So I'm going to talk some about that, and I'm also going to talk about how much sīla^[2], ethics, and non-harming are a part of that. I'll share some ways we can engage with reflection on layers that maybe we don't normally do, and some of the biopsychological aspects of our minds and beings that can impact and complicate our connection with our experience and our reflection process.

The dharma is a manifestation of non-harming; it's the embodiment of non-harming, and this becomes possible as we live a life that's reflective. Sīla and our ethical actions—this non-harming—is an incredibly important aspect of that, but it is also deeply connected to how well we can settle, how we can be mindful and concentrate, and that leads to our capacity to connect with wisdom. So they're separate but deeply intertwined and connected.

In the discourse on advice to Rahula, the way the Buddha teaches it is often considered a foundational teaching for how to live a dharmic life. Rahula is the Buddha's son. The Buddha is said to have left his home the night that his son was born to go and seek happiness, a different way of living. He came back to his village when Rahula was about seven. One of the ways I've heard the story is that his mom probably wasn't so happy with the Buddha for leaving her, and told her son to go find the Buddha and tell his father that he was there to collect his inheritance, his birthright, and to ask for it.

Rahula comes to meet the Buddha and relays this message. What the Buddha does is instruct Sariputta^[3] to welcome Rahula into the monastic tradition to become a samaṇa^[4] in training. It was probably not what he expected, nor what his mom expected. So he was about seven, and this teaching is the first of three big teachings to Rahula in the suttas. I don't know exactly how old Rahula was—I've heard seven, I've heard nine—but he was young.

The setting is that Rahula has been meditating in his little spot, and he sees the Buddha. He prepares a seat for him and gets water so the Buddha can wash his feet when he arrives. The Buddha comes, sits down, and talks to Rahula. The first thing he says to him is that those who are not embarrassed in knowingly telling a lie have thrown away their life as a samaṇa. It's implied—it's not said in the story that Rahula lied, but it's a pretty clear implication. The Buddha takes the bowl of water for washing his feet and says something like, "See how little water there is in here? It is like throwing this water out and wasting it." And then he turns the bowl upside down and says, "Whatever little water is here, turning the bowl upside down and wasting it."

Then he goes on and says to Rahula, "What is the purpose of a mirror?" When his son answers, "For reflection," the Buddha proceeds to give him teachings on how he is to use his actions as a mirror for reflecting on the consequences of what he does. The Pali word for reflection has the same dual meaning as it does in English. It can refer to the reflection in the mirror, as well as when we're reflecting in our mind, contemplating things, and giving it time to see the consequences. Both are here: watching what we do, seeing the consequences of that, and contemplating in advance and afterwards.

In this lesson, he is speaking to Rahula about reflecting on all actions: body, speech, and mind. Our thoughts are included. And not just reflecting on our actions, but their consequences on ourselves, on others, and both self and other. To help guide him on what he should reflect on to help with this task, the Buddha instructs Rahula to consider three questions.

If he is anticipating that whatever this action is will cause harm, he should not initiate it; he should stop, not proceed. That's before. During an action, let's say he thinks it's not going to cause a problem, but if he's reflecting and notices harm is occurring while in the middle of an action, he should stop. It sounds really simple, doesn't it? Is it always this simple? I don't think so. Sometimes it's so clear, but, you know.

And then afterwards, if Rahula realizes that the activity has led to harm of any kind, he should first tell this to his teacher or to a wise spiritual companion, and then practice restraint in the future. Now, if Rahula understands his actions are wholesome, skillful, not causing harm, and leading to happy consequences, he can engage in them freely, says the Buddha.

He also talks about this pairing: harm and non-harming, wholesome and unwholesome (which also could be thought of as skillful and unskillful), and suffering and happiness (dukkha^[5] and sukha^[6]). So we have reflecting before, during, and after. We have reflecting on the impact for self, other, and both. And then we have reflecting on these three potential ways to evaluate what we're contemplating doing or have done.

The Buddha gives him this guidance and he doesn't say, "Okay, don't do these things." He says, "Reflect." This is so much about the art of our practice. It's impossible for us to have it be about just what we do and don't do. It's a complicated life, with complicated relationships and so many possibilities of things that can happen. It's so interesting how much the Buddha pointed not to these mandates, but rather to staying aware, staying present, connected, and reflective about what's happening.

In these instructions, he is really reinforcing the idea of impact over intention. So often we get caught. If I've done something—maybe I should just speak for myself—if I've done something and my intention was not consciously to cause harm, but I have triggered something in somebody or caused some harm, it can be a little bit automatic to want to respond by clarifying what my intention was instead of just staying with what the impact was. Just really honoring that, because that's the consequence. It may not be that I did anything horrible, but if the consequence of an interaction is to cause some distress, I want to attend to that first, not try and protect my ego or my goodness or my image. But it gets tricky; it can be sticky in this space.

I really appreciate this focus on noticing the impact, having that feedback be what we pay attention to, and honoring that more than what we were thinking we were doing or trying to do. I also think it's incredibly inclusive to really spell out that we don't want to harm ourselves, we don't want to harm anybody else, and we don't want to harm both. It's not like, "Well, I can harm myself but not harm you," or "harm you but not myself." No, we don't want to harm anybody.

The other thing that stands out to me that seems really important and relational is that the Buddha tells us to go talk to somebody. When we reflect and see that what we've done is causing harm, he encourages us to share it, to not keep it quiet and hidden. To make amends potentially, to bring it into the world and not just let it be quiet inside.

All of this says to me we're living a life of caring. To care, we need to care about what our experience has been. And to do that means we need to look, to listen, to re-look. I think another area that invites deepening is: how do we really know when we're causing harm or not causing harm? How often are we actually paying attention to the subtle suffering that we're experiencing, or asking others around us if we've harmed them in some way? How often are we just assuming that what we're doing is the norm and it's fine? It would be impossible to do this constantly, but it's a challenge.

Again, this is where I come back to the incredibly important part of being connected with our direct experience and sīla. Sīla points to the experiential: what's happening in our bodies, our hearts, and our minds, and noticing contraction, dukkha, and reactivity in our lives. And noticing the opposite, right? When we feel at ease, when we feel happy, and we feel like we've been skillful.

I was reflecting and had this question: "Huh, did I avoid causing harm today?" As an invitation for reflection, can you think about a moment in your day where you avoided causing harm? I was kind of thinking, "Well, some days I will accidentally kill an insect." That didn't happen today that I know of. I don't often sit there and think at the end of the day—I might think about it if I killed an insect—"Well, did I avoid causing harm today?" I think so.

And then, was there a time today where you reflected before you were choosing to act? Was there a time today where you thought about what you were going to do and decided, "Yeah, I can do this, this is wholesome, this is skillful, this will bring happiness"? Did you stop an activity because you noticed that it wasn't skillful, or did you continue because you noticed it was? Did you reflect afterwards?

One of the reasons I think that we might be able to look a little bit more deeply is that we actually have the felt sense of our experience. We have a nervous system, and we have something called interoception and exteroception. We have all these processes happening, taking in interoception (what are the sensations happening inside my body?) and exteroception (what am I receiving from the world?). And then we have a mind that is a prediction organ. It predicts based on past experience.

That means when we're experiencing something internally or externally, the brain associates it with past experiences. It may or may not be getting it right. So this idea, again, of how important it is to continually reflect, because the brain will catch up, things will catch up as our experience continues to unfold. We will be taking in more data and getting more feedback if we're open to it and continuing to attend. But it requires this constant attunement and re-attunement.

There's that process happening, and there's the vedanā^[7] response, the feeling tone of our experience. I've had people say to me that they think they're feeling anxiety, and then later upon further reflection, they realize they're actually excited. This is an example of when they think it's anxiety, it's an unpleasant response; when they recognize it's excitement, it feels more like a pleasant response. Either one of those interpretations creates a different behavioral movement. If something feels good, we tend to be more open and follow it. If something doesn't feel good, we tend to pull back and shut down from it. But sometimes the somatic information, the story, and the historical data don't all match up.

One of the strengths that the dharma speaks about is hiri and ottappa^[8]: shame and remorse. They're said to be the guardians of the world. What is the treasure of conscience? There is the case where a disciple of the noble one feels shame at the thought of engaging in bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, or mental misconduct. This is called the treasure of conscience.

But I know for me that shame is complicated. This is an example of the brain's history of experience with shame. I can see in my own mind that there are times when I can feel that little nudge of shame—"Oh no, this is probably not a good action to take"—and there are times when I just don't want to feel it. There's something about not wanting to feel that sense of shame. Especially when we've been really shamed and humiliated, or we just generally tend that way, I think we can shut ourselves off from some of our inner wisdom if we aren't clearly noticing our reactivity to something like the purer form of shame.

I think about the Western perspective of shame. Brené Brown, a shame researcher, says shame is "I am bad," while guilt is "I've done something bad." That's an identification: "I am." From a Buddhist perspective, we have the opportunity to really say, "Okay, I'm not my actions." If I can make that shift and not identify, I think we don't have to have shame become toxic; we can actually use it to support ourselves.

There's some interesting research around shame hypothesizing that it is our primary social emotion. Shame informs us of an internal state of inadequacy and unworthiness, dishonor, regret, or disconnection. Another way to say it is that shame is a clear signal that our positive feelings have been interrupted. That's a simple way with less reactivity in it—just, "Oh, there's something here; the positivity and flow have kind of halted here."

When I'm thinking about trying to live a life where I'm not causing harm, if I get too caught up in trying to never cause harm, I can make myself feel very unworthy and bad. But I really have to focus on the fact that it's not really about being perfect; it's much more about staying connected. It's never too late to reflect. We can reflect before, during, after, and after, and after, and after. It's never over. If we think it's done, we cut ourselves off from the opportunity for letting something free itself, I guess is the way I'd put it.

When I was looking into this research on shame, I got fascinated with it. In Japan, the teaching style from what I read is actually to utilize mistakes for learning in the classroom. Students are directed to find their own way through difficult problems, and then the teachers lead discussions about the common errors and why they might seem plausible. In this way, they're bringing that opportunity to struggle and make a mistake into the environment as a place for sharing and learning.

Whereas in America, students are taught how to avoid making mistakes; that's the real emphasis. Students are rewarded and praised when they don't make mistakes. In general here, if we make mistakes, they equate to some sense of failure and hence shame. There's a great quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." I love that.

Dharma practice is not an escape. It's an intimate meeting with the discomfort of reactivity, which is stress and suffering, the First Noble Truth. It's incredibly important to turn toward that when it happens.

Here is a very small example of my personal experience. I picked my daughter up from the airport last night. I had dropped my son off at 4:00 AM, and I was picking her up at 10:00 PM. I had sent her a text during the day just letting her know I'd been up since four, so I was just hoping I'd be there to pick her up. When she got in the car, she made this sarcastic comment about, "Oh, thanks for going through all the trouble to come and pick me up." There was just this little edge in her sassy voice, and I reacted. I definitely reacted. Instead of looking at the impact, I was there defending my intent: "No, I said I'd pick you up, I'm just letting you know I'd been up!" It was kind of this "Charlie Brown sounds" argument.

Then this morning, I was reflecting on it. I had a little bit of sleep, and I thought, "You know, I think I hurt her feelings." I couldn't see that or say that because I was reacting. So I sent her a text this morning saying, "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings yesterday." She didn't respond to that text, but she did to several others, so I knew that it was okay.

That's an example for me of reflecting afterwards—and not just right after, but the next morning, maybe even after it had come up a few times for me in my mind. There's this really beautiful, inspiring idea in attachment theory: rupture and repair. We don't need to avoid rupture; we just need to pair it with repair.

Here's a quote from Bonnie Badenoch, who wrote a book called The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships. She says, "When we experience a break in connection followed by repeated attempts at repair until the bond is restored, we build implicit pathways of resilience." When we have a break in connection followed by restoring that bond, we bounce back. We come to know in a visceral way—coming back to that idea of somatic knowing—that when things break down interpersonally, someone will return to help us come back into relationship. This wired-in optimism and expectation makes it much more likely that we will form lasting relationships that have this quality, as we accept and then rejoice in our humanness, and we offer this vital gift of rupture and repair to those around us.

I think this teaching that the Buddha offers is supporting our ability to repair, if we don't think it's too late and we don't expect ourselves to be perfect. Maybe the perfection is in recognition and reconnection.

This other part of connection around this teaching—of going and telling your teacher if you've done something that you think caused harm. Gil Fronsdal wrote, "Confessing to someone else and exercising restraint in the future are characterized as growth in the path." If you make a mistake, you harm somebody, and you go and talk to your spiritual friend, it's not considered that you've regressed; it's actually considered growth.

Speaking of Gil, one of the things that happened for me when I was early in my relationship with Gil was that I was helping pack boxes of books to ship off to the prisons. I was in this room with a beautiful conference table, and I had this big, heavy tape gun. I pulled it off the package, and you know how they have those ridged ends to break the tape, and boom—I took a big chunk out of the table. I was just mortified. He wasn't there at the time, and I just remember being like, "Oh my god, oh my god, what am I going to say?" I felt so unmindful. Talk about shame. But I was like, "I gotta tell him." So I told him, and he was so kind.

There was another situation where I was managing the bell. I hit the bell so loud everybody jumped at the end of the meditation. And one of the things that he said to me was, "There are no mistakes here. There are no mistakes here. It's all okay, it's all included." To me, this is such an important balancing point to our intention to practice a harmless life: to really hold all of this, and know we don't have to be perfect. We just need to stay connected, stay aware, and open. We learn a lot from mistakes.

Most people I talk to have learned more from their mistakes—if they're willing to open up, process them, and share them, not keep them in secrecy—than from a simple success. Mostly because we didn't have to try so hard when something's successful.

Here's another quote on mistakes: "Failures are not just inevitable, but are a necessary part of the process. A good mother is not one whose baby never cries, but one who knows how to respond and soothe her crying baby. And we learn that to be part of the solution, we must be willing to be experienced as part of the problem."

I'll share one more quote and then wrap up, and if anybody has any comments or anything they want to share, I'd be delighted to hear from you. This is a quote by Sue Johnson, who does a lot of attachment and couples work. She says, "Love is a constant process of tuning in, connecting, missing and misreading cues, disconnecting, repairing, and finding deeper connection. It's a dance of meeting and parting and finding each other again, minute to minute and day to day."

Any responses to these reflections? Do they connect with you in some way and feel relevant to the teachings that the Buddha gave to Rahula, or how you engage? Let's get Bill the microphone.

Q&A

Bill: Tanya, during your talk, it got me thinking about something. I like to think of my body as an early warning system. If I'm about to say or do something harmful, anger results in all kinds of events in the body: contractions in the heart or stomach, a clenched jaw, or clenched fingers and hands. What I understood for the first time is that if you're about to do physical harm, those early warning systems in your body are real obvious, like a raised fist. That's easy to notice, comparatively. With speech, it's harder to notice the early warning systems. The chain of events is so fast—you get ticked off, and then it's really... I mean, they're there. I like to think that if you meditate a lot, time kind of slows down and you have more time to notice all that stuff and think, "Oh, I won't go there." And if you're having thoughts that are harmful, those go by too fast.

Tanya Wiser: Yeah. My example with my daughter is a great example of speech. It's not like I said anything horrible, I didn't swear, I didn't say anything mean, but the reactivity was there. I think we just start to try and tune more and more into that reactivity. There's still a feeling in the body of clenching or tightening, or for me, it often feels like a pulling back. So I agree it's harder, and the more we slow down... Also, there are mindful listening practices where we can purposefully pay attention to our body as we're speaking, and purposefully slow our speech down. These things help. It sounds great, thank you, Bill. I appreciate your sharing.

Participant: I found this very timely coming after a holiday that usually is spent with many family members. We had a little family drama, as many people do around these holidays, and so I was reflecting a lot about what you were saying in regard to those circumstances, and trying to remain out of the fray and not get activated, and wildly failing at that, and trying to recoup. But what Bill was saying about using your body as an early warning system—it seems the more I've practiced, that when I get activated or when I do something where I feel like I've caused harm, I actually feel the pain of it more. I don't know if it's because I'm finally noticing how badly it feels, or because I've become more sensitized to it. Maybe both. Anyway, it's a great subject.

Tanya Wiser: Yeah, and let me just say, I think another complicating factor is if we're really tuned into that, "Uh-oh, I'm feeling harm," and there's some degree of that slight shame response—I'll call it a clean shame response, a non-toxic response—the nervous system is still likely moving into actual shame physiology. Which means that our capacity to think and reflect is diminished, and we move more into a frozen state. So it makes it harder to have full access to our capacity to connect and relax and all of that. I think it's just a challenge because we're dealing with a physiology that wants us to do the opposite of what we're trying to do.

I also just wanted to say the trains are unbelievably active tonight, nice to hear them again. [Laughter]

Thank you all so much for being here, and may the time together be of benefit to you, and all those you meet, and everybody, and the whole world, all beings. So be well. Thank you.