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Guided Meditation: Non-Harming

A warm hello to everyone, and welcome.

One of the simplest ways of talking about the path of Buddhism, Buddhist practice, and Buddhist meditation—the direction that Buddhism is going—is to avoid causing harm. Everything about Buddhism is somehow encapsulated in this intention. It is a little bit unsatisfying; it would be nice to have some grand positive statement, but it is phenomenal to live a life that doesn't cause harm.

In meditation, this primarily means not causing harm to oneself, or not having any thoughts that could be considered harmful for others. If they knew what you were thinking, they would feel hurt. Part of the advantage of meditation is that it allows us to see that when we have thoughts that are hurtful or harmful for others—if they knew what we were thinking, or if we enacted them—the very having of those thoughts means chances are that they're also harming ourselves. When we harm ourselves, we set up the conditions, the stresses, and the tensions within us, where it's easier then to harm others. So it is a quite profound thing. If you don't think it's enough for you, then think of it as the entry door to what is greater or more profound. It is the foundation: not causing harm.

So here we are, and maybe this can be on the back of your mind, or the front of your mind. This beautiful, wonderful, marvelous thing—that maybe to sit here and be attentive enough to track your thoughts, track what you're doing, to see if you can meditate for these minutes putting aside and letting go of any ways in which you are causing harm. Even the subtlest kind of harm with thoughts as you meditate. There could be subtle aversion towards or hostility towards your thoughts or your feelings. Or a certain kind of impatience. A certain kind of tensing up around something, a certain kind of tensing up around thoughts, or a compulsion or pressure to think. There is a subtle kind of harming going on in attachment to what we're thinking about.

You don't have to be ahead of yourself, but as you become sensitive to ways in which you're adding stress, suffering, pain, or harm to yourself in meditation, see if you can let go of it. Stop doing that. And if you can't do that—which sometimes is difficult to let go of—can you then hold that, and hold yourself, in compassion? With care and kindness, with a deep appreciation of how difficult it is to live a human life. In that sense of appreciation of difficulty, hold yourself kindly, and breathe with it.

Take a comfortable meditation posture. In your comfortable posture, adjust yourself so that your body can feel a little bit more alert. Maybe a little lengthening of the spine. Maybe there's a way of opening the chest a bit. Maybe your hands can be in a position that supports confidence, being present here confidently.

Gently close your eyes.

Take a few gentle but deeper breaths, three-quarters full. As you exhale, release tensions, holdings, and tightenings in your body that might be easy to relax.

Then let your breathing return to normal. Part of the value of relaxing the muscles of the body as you begin meditating is to support a condition where you're sensitive to the subtle ways in which we think, feel, and want, which cause subtle harm to ourselves. Even subtle stress while we meditate.

As you exhale, perhaps relaxing the muscles of the face. Muscles that maybe get overused in the course of everyday life have a chance to soften and relax. No need to try so much.

Softening, relaxing the shoulders. Maybe even the area of your shoulder blades can soften a bit. Relaxing, softening in the chest. And softening in the belly.

And then to awaken awareness of breathing. As if you could awaken within the body, within your breathing. Without force. Without expectation that leads to disappointment. Without even the need to succeed, which can also lead to disappointment. But rather than a need to succeed, perhaps a dedication to engage, to be present to the best that you can, whatever that might be. Be generous to yourself and your capacity to be present.

When the mind wanders off, try not to do the subtlest harm to oneself by being discouraged, upset, disappointed, or critical. Instead of all of those things, just begin again. Simple, open, relaxed. Begin again and again and again. Perhaps even enjoying or loving the exploration of what it means, what it is like, to be aware of breathing. Entering into the world of the body breathing. The sensations in the nose or in the chest or in the belly as you breathe. Letting that be the center of your universe, just here with breathing.

Be sensitive to the slightest ways in which there is harm being made, stress being added, or tension being created. And even the most subtle and slightest you might feel, see if you can let go of it to relax it. See if you can trust that way of being that needs no stress.

Imagine, just imagine what your inner landscape would be like if there was no harm ever coming out of it. No tendency, no movement of harm, stress, or criticalness. No unwholesome, harmful thoughts about others. Imagine what it would be like in your own mind and heart. Imagine perhaps the simplicity, the clarity, the peacefulness. If we can rest in a place within that doesn't cause harm, resting confidently that this is a good place.

And then coming to the end of this sitting, turning your attention out into the world. May each of us offer non-harming to the world around us. In whatever ways in which this meditation has supported us, do not get pulled into tendencies of harm-making.

May that be expressed in a wish: May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

May how we live our lives contribute to that possibility for others. May we live for the welfare and happiness of this world.

Dharmette: The Dharmic Life (3 of 5) A Life of Non-Harming

This is the third talk now on living a Dharmic^[1] life. If you want to receive some of the benefits that could come from becoming a monastic, living in a retreat center, or being on retreat a lot where your whole life is dedicated to the Dharma and to practicing, you can get those benefits without doing those things, just continuing with your ordinary, everyday life. I'm offering different ways that you can get quite a bit of this benefit, and a lot of it depends on how much you dedicate yourself to these simple practices I'm teaching. But simple doesn't mean they're not profound or phenomenally impactful.

For today, I'd like to offer something that maybe is the only thing you really have to know about Buddhism. If you really live this idea, live this practice, live in this approach to life well and thoroughly, all of Buddhism kind of comes along and follows. All the insights and ways of growing spiritually and personally follow. And that is to be dedicated to causing no harm. That's it.

If you keep that with you—if you had a ring made that was engraved "no harm" so you remembered it all the time—you'd know that this is really the heart of it, the center of it. If that is all you did, to live by that and become more and more refined in how you live that life, more subtle in having no harm in any direction: towards oneself, to other people, to the planet, to the environment, to not cause any harm. And if it seems like too high a challenge and maybe impossible, then try not causing any intentional, willful harm, and at least start there.

I'm not making this up myself. There is an ancient teaching that the primary characteristic of the Dharma is, in fact, non-harming. There is such a strong association with the Dharma and this idea of not causing harm. The teachings I gave in the last few weeks on wholesomeness and unwholesomeness^[2] could be understood as non-harming and harm. What is unwholesome is defined by what causes vexation, suffering, and stress on our system and onto the world. And what is wholesome is that which does the opposite: it doesn't cause harm, it doesn't cause vexation, distress, and stress.

The advantage of this one simple little thing—causing no harm—is using it as a reference point, even if you can't live up to it completely. You can use it as a gauge to see much more clearly than ever before all the ways that you do cause harm. Now, not to harm yourself even more; the way we dedicate ourselves to non-harming must be done in a way that is not harming. It doesn't work to dedicate oneself to non-harming and do it in a way that sets us up to harm ourselves even more so. But we use this reference point of non-harming so we can see much more clearly where we're going off and going wrong.

On freeways, they have lines for the lanes that help us navigate and keep straight. If there were no lines, I think we'd be swerving a little bit more, moving back and forth further than we do. In the same way, this principle of non-harming is kind of like the lines for our life so we stay in our lane. We notice much more carefully when we're liable to swerve too far in the direction of harming, both to ourselves and to others.

Part of the function of this principle of non-harming is that it becomes a mirror so we see ourselves better. If we have the self-honesty to see ourselves causing harm, then what do we do? I suspect that seeing this clearly will naturally change what you want to do, how you want to live your life, how you want to talk, or what you want to do. It's when we don't see it so clearly that we tend to go ahead and cause harm.

For example, with speech which is mean, spiteful, critical of someone, or angry, we might even know that we're doing it, but we might justify it by saying, "They deserve it," or "This is how I'm trying to get my way." But if we remember that the principle is non-harming, we can explore this: In what way is my statement harmful? What kind of harm am I causing? Am I harming myself? Am I harming our friendship, my friend? Is this something that I've been doing regularly, and what's the impact of it? Is there an alternative to take care of myself without saying this harmful or spiteful thing?

A reflective life is part of a Dharmic life. It's not only about showing up and being mindful in all situations; it's also about being reflective, contemplating, and considering. Some of those considerations are debates within ourselves, going back and forth, but if you have the principle of non-harming as a reference point for those conversations, questioning, and wondering, you will come up with a question: What is the alternative to doing something harmful? Is there a way that I benefit more, or a way that others benefit more, if I say this in a different way?

And what does it take to say it differently? Maybe I need to learn new skills. A simple thing to point to these days for some people is nonviolent communication techniques, but there is a whole slew of ways of speaking that do not make statements about other people. For example, the simple principle of making "I" statements rather than "you" statements. Talking about what we're feeling doesn't mean saying, "I feel that you're wrong"; it means, "When you say X, I feel hurt or afraid." Find new ways of being in the world that are more intelligent, creative, and innovative than the ancient, primitive, simplistic, reptilian way of being aggressive or causing harm towards oneself and others.

As we live by this one simple principle of not causing harm, we begin to appreciate what bubbles up to the surface. We appreciate the peace that comes, the ease that comes, the calm that comes, and the confidence that comes with not causing harm. We start feeling better about ourselves and appreciate this wonderful place that doesn't want to cause harm. I would think that in most people there is a strong instinct to not cause harm. It is almost an instinct like pulling a hand off a hot stove, if we are quiet and mindful enough to be sensitive to where that instinct lives in us. We are not so sensitive when the agitated mind^[3] that's spinning, angry, afraid, desirous, or greedy gets the upper hand. If we are claustrophobic with thoughts, ideas, and preoccupations, there is no space to feel this wonderful place that really doesn't want to cause harm.

One of the reference points for this idea is that for many of us, if you have a young child, grandchild, niece, nephew, or neighbor who is quite young—maybe still a baby—we don't want to cause them harm. Think of how much care we would take to not cause any harm there, and to people we love. If we have that instinct there, the idea in Buddhist practice is to begin universalizing it. To spread it out to all beings, so we see that—not exactly that they are family, but as if they are family—we don't want to cause harm to them.

One of the important family members for this whole enterprise is yourself, and I can't underscore how important it is not to cause harm to oneself. If someone comes and criticizes you for anything at all, watch yourself carefully and see what your inner response is. See if there is some way in which you respond that actually causes self-harm. If you are too quick to apologize, if you are too quick to be critical of yourself, to diminish yourself and confess, "Oh, what a terrible person I am," we end up hurting ourselves if that's not done wisely and carefully. Sometimes we do it intentionally because if we show other people that we're hurting ourselves and feeling really bad, we think they will believe us, or they will see that they are having the impact they wanted, which is to put us in our place.

But what exactly does it mean to cause harm to oneself, and is it necessary? Can there be a confession of fault, an admission of, "Yes, I did something wrong," where we don't diminish ourselves, belittle ourselves, or harm ourselves? In fact, maybe we can learn how to confidently say, "Yes, I apologize," when necessary, fully and clearly, with a certain kind of strength. To say, "I made a mistake and I'm going to try my best not to do that again. I'm so sorry. How can I make amends? What can I do for you?" But we do it from a place where we are not diminished or harming ourselves. So, in all directions, non-harm.

I will repeat what I said at the beginning because I feel it is such an important point. I believe that if you hold on to this one principle, this one idea, you really don't have to believe anything else that Buddhism teaches. You don't have to hold on to anything, and you don't have to learn all kinds of complicated practices. But you do have to really become refined and subtle with it. And if you do that in a nice easy chair and close your eyes, you will begin going through layers and layers of discovering the subtle movements of harm in the mind itself, quietly within. And begin releasing them, and releasing them, and releasing them.

Even to the point where the word "harm" is not quite the right word anymore; maybe rather the word is "stress,"^[4] so we are also learning not to add any stress. In deep meditation practice, we see the subtle ways in which we self-harm—which in ordinary life are insignificant, but in meditation are quite significant. We see them as forms of stress and tension, and we can just let go of them, let go of them, let go of them, down to that place of safety and peace. That place where we can live and breathe, safe and free from all tendencies to harm.

Thank you.