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Guided Meditation: Avoiding Harm, Doing the Beneficial

A warm hello here at the beginning of our week. I am happy to be back with all of you and have this chance to share the Dharma, the teachings, and the meditation.

One of the most central features of early Buddhism—the Buddhism that you find in the teachings of the Buddha as saved in the tradition we are in, Theravada^[1] Buddhism—is this idea of, on one hand, not causing harm, and on the other hand, doing what is wholesome. The whole tradition centers on this, and I'll talk more about that in a little while. But for the meditation, this is also an orientation. We're sitting here really to care for the world. But in particular, we're learning how to care for the world by first and foremost, in a sense, caring for ourselves.

Meditation is a way of learning how not to harm, and instead, learning how to do what's beneficial and wholesome. There's something about the heightened attention and sensitivity to the details of our direct, immediate experience that gives us new information, or maybe better information, about how to orient ourselves toward avoiding harming ourselves and instead bringing benefit.

If this is a fundamental principle or purpose of this early Buddhist meditation practice, everything one does in meditation can be evaluated through that point of view: is what I'm doing now beneficial, or is it harmful? Sometimes it's not always clear if it's one or the other, so then we just keep following the instructions and doing it. But it also applies to how we're practicing, that is, how we're following the instructions. Are we doing it in a way that is harmful, or in a way that is beneficial? Harmful can be having too high expectations, or being critical of oneself. If one wanders off into thought, to be angry with oneself—those are all ways of harming oneself. Or having high expectations and insisting, "I have to have a certain experience," pushing, and having greed for meditation experiences. Any kind of greed or attachment to what we're going to attain is a kind of self-harm, even if it's not obvious now.

Part of what happens in meditation practice is we develop a higher and higher sensitivity to where the harm is, where the stress is. We learn to slowly let go of that and be able to come into greater and greater beneficial states. It's transformative to do so. We realize that the harmful ways in which the mind and heart operate are really not necessary. That's expending unnecessary energy. It's quite wonderful and appropriate to move into states of being that are beneficial. If we want to care for the world, it turns out that the more we can learn to do this for ourselves, the more we have to offer the world. We have a way of meeting the world that does the same thing.

So to begin, assume a meditation posture. I see some messages that the sound is low. I'll try to speak a little louder, and there might be some setting that later on we can adjust here, I don't know. Assume a meditation posture that you think will be beneficial for you. What's beneficial includes what helps you to be attentive, aware, and present. There's a kind of attention through the body.

Gently closing your eyes. I usually instruct to take a few long, slow, deep breaths, but as you do so, can you do it in a way that just feels beneficial, that feels like a good thing for you to do, not overdoing it? A deep inhale, appreciating the full breath in. Appreciating the release of the breath, the exhale. And then, let your breathing return to normal.

Perhaps you find it beneficial—a way of even caring for yourself—to quietly, as you exhale, relax different parts of your body. Perhaps you can soften around the forehead and the eyes. The eyes don't have to do any looking when we sit in meditation; the organ of perception we use more than seeing is sensing and feeling through the body. As you exhale, relax the other muscles of your face.

In the long term, it's beneficial to let go of tension in the body. If you can, relax your shoulders or soften some of the muscles around the shoulders. Perhaps softening the belly, relaxing. Perhaps as you exhale, release tension in the arms and the hands. As you exhale, maybe releasing the thighs, legs, and any holding or gripping there.

Then, turning your attention more fully to the experience of the body breathing. There are many circumstances in life where one of the best things we can do for ourselves is to breathe consciously with awareness. It can be grounding and settling. It can protect us from wandering off into thoughts and mind states which are not beneficial, or even harmful sometimes. The Buddha said that mindfulness of breathing brings great benefit.

Perhaps as a way of getting closer and more intimate with the body's experience of breathing, let the thinking mind become quieter. Perhaps there can be a deep appreciation of breathing, maybe even a love of this body of ours, which has been breathing and keeping us alive for many years. In a sense, returning the favor by being present, acknowledging, and experiencing fully the body breathing. Letting go of your thoughts with every exhale so you can better settle yourself when breathing in and breathing out.

As we come to the end of the sitting, whatever we learn in meditation about not harming ourselves is directly learning something about not harming others. Whatever we learn about benefiting ourselves, orienting ourselves to wholesome states of mind, is directly related to our ability to have wholesome states of mind as we encounter other people—states of mind which are beneficial for them as well. Appreciating that these two are mutual and almost, maybe not exactly the same, but closely related: benefiting oneself and benefiting others. Understand that meditation is not only done for oneself, but knowingly or unknowingly, it also brings benefit to the world.

One of the ways to benefit oneself is to wish to bring benefit to the world, to have well-wishing, goodwill, and a simple care. As we come to the end of the sitting, allow yourself to be as still and quiet as possible, and gaze upon the world with kind eyes and a caring heart. Perhaps we can all wish that the benefits of this meditation practice spread out from the meditation into the world which we encounter today.

May it be that the benefits of this meditation bring benefit and welfare to others. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free. May we contribute to this possibility.

Dharmette: Kusala (1 of 10) Wholesome and Unwholesome - Introduction

Okay, so now there is sound. Sorry, I forgot to turn it on again after taking my drink of water.

I'm going to tell a semi-story. I call it a semi-story because what we often find in the discourses of the Buddha is the context is set up for the Buddha to teach. That context is a little story about who the Buddha encounters, their situation, what they ask him, and then the Buddha responds. It's not really a full-blown story exactly, but the semi-story that initiates this teaching is about the people of Kalama.

The Buddha has this very famous text called the Kalama Sutta^[2], and for some people, it's their absolute favorite discourse of the Buddha. There was a wonderful Zen teacher by the name of Yvonne Rand^[3], who is now dead, but she was very much involved in trying to address the ethical issues in Western Buddhism in the United States here in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. A very ethical, wonderful teacher, and she made a rather dramatic statement that this particular discourse, the Kalama Sutta, everyone should have tattooed on the inside of their eyelids. She wanted people to always know it and have it close by.

One of the reasons for this is that what I'm going to teach in a moment is a protection against some of the more dangerous ways that people can adhere to religious teachings. It doesn't have to be dangerous, but historically in human history, people who adhere for these reasons can create tremendous problems.

Anyway, the Buddha is in the territory of the Kalamas, and they come out to see him and ask him a question. They say, "In our town, lots of different religious teachers of different kinds come through, and they all kind of are saying, 'This is the truth, this is the truth, and whatever everybody else is saying is not true.' How is it, Buddha, that we can discern and know which of these teachers is teaching the truth and which of them is not? What criteria can we use for understanding who is teaching the truth or not?"

The Buddha first offers criteria that we should not use for this purpose, and then he does a very interesting thing: he changes directions. He puts aside this question about truth and untruth to offer something which, for him, is more primary. The criteria that you should not go by, that you should not use for deciding what is true and false, is to go by tradition—the religious tradition that you're part of, the teaching lineage. You shouldn't go by it just because it's traditional. Just because you adhere to a particular lineage, political party, or whatever it might be, don't take that as automatically true.

Don't take it as true because it's popular or the common view of the times. Don't take it as true because it's in the scriptures or sacred texts. Don't take it as a criterion for what is true because it's logical, because you've worked it out logically and therefore it must be this way using reason. Don't go by intuition or preferences, and don't go by the reason of confidence in the speaker. If a speaker is very competent, eloquent, clear, and seems to really understand what's happening, don't simply believe it because you think that speaker knows.

And finally, don't believe something is true or untrue because the person saying it is your teacher. At this moment, I'm your teacher. In a sense, I'm teaching and you're listening, so please don't take what I'm saying as either true or false just because I say it. It is not a reliable source to really know for yourself if this is true or false.

Before he replies this way, the Buddha says to the Kalamas, "It's reasonable that you should have doubts about what is true and not true." He really appreciates them coming to him with this question. He gives this list of things not to go by, and then he offers his own criteria.

Here, the criteria are maybe not for what is true or not true, or maybe this is implied. Probably what the Buddha is doing here is he's changing what is defined, what is meant by truth. Or he has his own idea of what truth is, which he doesn't explain in the text. Or he's simply changing the flow of the conversation to be what he emphasizes. Instead of focusing on what is true and not true—what is religiously true and religiously not true as statements, as beliefs, or something that's a little bit outside of oneself—that's not his interest.

Rather, the Buddha's criteria is this: is it harmful or beneficial? Both in and of itself, and also, does it lead to harm or does it lead to welfare? Is it wholesome or unwholesome? And do the people who you think are wise, are they critical of this or not? It doesn't mean that you take what the wise say as being true, but you do have respect for their point of view. If they're critical of something, then maybe it's time to look more carefully and pause. And is it praised by the wise? Maybe you don't necessarily believe it then either, but maybe then it's worthy of further investigation.

But the core thing here is: is it harmful or beneficial? I can't underscore how much, and how wonderfully, this is the central pivot or orientation that the Buddha has. He's not so interested in religious truth or religious doctrine, but rather he's interested in what we can know for ourselves that brings harm or brings welfare.

It's a radical thing to fully bring all forms of harming to an end in ourselves. I mean, what a fantastic thing! You read the newspapers and see how much harm human beings are inflicting on each other, and then there's the massive amounts of harm that never makes it into the news. To be a person who doesn't inflict harm on themselves or someone else is a phenomenal thing. I think it's like a gymnast at the Olympics—it's such a beautiful, amazing thing to have worked through and found a way where there's no inclination, no tendency to cause harm.

And maybe the opposite: we are inclined to do what's beneficial, what brings welfare to ourselves and to someone else. There are all kinds of lofty religious states we can attain, there are all kinds of wonderful perspectives on life and experiences we can have that people say are spiritual or religious. These aren't to be devalued in and of themselves, but I think in this criteria the Buddha has, one wants to be careful not to assume that that gives us privileged access to what is true and what is false. For the Buddha, those states also are evaluated and looked at: what does this teach us about how to live a life that is beneficial, that avoids harm over and over again? That's what the Buddha is interested in.

You could say, in modern terms, the Buddha is more interested in ethics than he is in religion. He's interested in how people act and how people behave—to behave with our bodies, our speech, and also in our minds in ways that don't cause any harm. But what makes it kind of beyond ethics is the thoroughness to which the Buddha points that it's possible to do this. The level of peace, the level of well-being and happiness, the level of freedom that's possible when there's no inclination to cause any harm is, in his experience, a radical non-clinging, a non-compulsion of freedom and liberation.

This potential, this possibility, is a phenomenal human capacity. But it doesn't matter so much if we take the Buddha's path all the way to its end; what matters is that we're practicing a life of doing what is beneficial, avoiding what is harmful, and doing it in a beneficial way. Part of this teaching is not only about beneficial and harmful, but also really making a distinction between what is unwholesome and wholesome. That is going to be the theme for the next couple of weeks on these 7:00 a.m. sittings and teachings. I want to look at this very important concept of the Buddha: wholesomeness and unwholesomeness. This week it will be that.

There's an alternative translation for this Pali word kusala^[4]. Sometimes it's translated as wholesome and unwholesome, and sometimes it's translated as skillful and unskillful. For this first week, I want to look at it as wholesome and unwholesome, and next week as skillful and unskillful.

This is a pivotal orientation for all of the Buddha's teachings. To really understand this idea of kusala and akusala^[5], and to understand it well, gives you access—it's like the key to understanding so much of what the Buddha is about. If you understand these two things together: the avoidance of harm and doing what is beneficial, along with the notion of wholesome and unwholesome, then you're well on your way to discovering what the Buddha is all about. Independent of feeling that you have to know what is ultimately, religiously, and doctrinally true, you're on the way to becoming a person who is true. True in that they're free of the causes of harm and filled with these beneficial ways of being in the world.

So that's an introduction for what's coming up, and I look forward to our time together. Thank you.