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Guided Meditation: Non-Harming

Hello everyone. Welcome to our meditation session.

One of the very important principles in Buddhist practice, one of the principles that when we live by it or when we observe it in the world, can be a source of tremendous inspiration and happiness, is a profound principle for human life. It's a profound aspect of love itself: the dedication to non-harming.

Non-harming is maybe not often associated with love, because sometimes love is expected to be much more active—actively having a positive regard, actively having feelings of goodwill, compassion, appreciation, and all kinds of things that come with love. But in fact, a profound way of loving others and loving oneself is to really see the value of non-harming. Let's just keep it for meditation for now: if we are dedicated to not harming with our thoughts, not harming with our actions, with our attitudes, and our speech, that harm is not interfering with our natural capacity to mature, to grow, and to evolve spiritually, dharmically, and humanly.

Human beings are built to change over time, and certainly if you get older, we recognize how we change.^[1] But part of the change that's built into us is that of maturation: a growth in wisdom, a growth in freedom, a growth in love. This phenomenal growth that's possible is a natural thing. One of the most important qualities is to get out of the way for it, to not interfere with it. A life dedicated to non-harming is a life dedicated to not putting up the obstacles to this natural growth, this natural evolution that's possible within us.

So, a heightened sensitivity to how our thoughts undermine us, harm us by negative thinking or critical thinking. And sometimes those thoughts come with authority, like, "This is true." But no thought that undermines us, no thought which doesn't look upon us with basic kindness, no thought that somehow hurts in some deep way is necessary. It's possible to recognize that we have behavior, thoughts, and feelings which are not so healthy, but that doesn't have to give birth to hurtful, harmful thoughts. Seeing our shortcomings clearly, without adding harm, moves us towards health.

So, to not harm, and then make space for the practice to evolve.

Assuming a meditation posture that maybe allows you to have some nice balance between being alert and being calm. The alertness is partly to be alert to the thoughts, the attitudes, and the impulses which undermine us, deplete us, shut us down, or tighten us up—that bring tension and reactivity. And the calm is partly so we can better appreciate the alternative. The calmer the mind and the heart are, the less it wants to harm.

So, take a few long, slow, deep breaths, and relax the body.

Take some long, slow, deep breaths and relax deep inside.

And then letting the breathing return to normal. As you exhale, see if you can have a calming wave move through your body. Exhale and settle in the body, calm in the body.

On the exhale, allow there to be a calming of the mind, a quieting of the thinking mind. And then to settle down into the breathing.

One way to approach a thoroughgoing attitude of not harming is to assume that in meditation, you can do no wrong. Nothing is wrong with you. However, the practice is to keep waking up, to keep being mindful of what is. To clearly see and know what's happening.

That clarity of being awake, being mindful, is leaving everything alone, not being involved, not picking up, not staying involved with thoughts. Getting out of the way. It's enough just to be clearly aware of what's happening here and now.

Using breathing as the stabilizing force in the present moment, the calming, focusing force, supporting us in not being entangled or involved with anything that goes on. Just to see, just to know, just to feel how it is, dedicated to non-harming.

Is there any way that your thoughts or your attitudes right now are harmful, undermining? Don't think that that's wrong or a mistake, or criticize yourself for it—that's more harm. Rather, know it clearly. Recognize it for what it is, and let it be. Don't grant it more attention, don't feed it with more involvement.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting: to live a life of non-harming is to live with a certain kind of reassurance, a certain kind of inner safety, and a heightened capacity to gaze upon everyone with an open heart, with kindness and goodwill, knowing that we're dedicated to not harming them. There's nothing in our hearts that is closed, regretful, or dangerous for others. Even the intention to live without harm is a beautiful intention; it's the beginning of a new direction.

May it be that on this day, as we come out of meditation, we have a heightened interest and intention to not cause harm. And that dedication is an expression of goodwill, of kindness, of love.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love When it is Hard (4 of 5) Non-Harming as Love

Hello, and welcome to the fourth talk on love when it's hard—to love in times of challenges. Today I'll introduce this topic of non-harming, which is, I think, one of the most marvelous, inspiring qualities a human being can have. It is central to the whole Buddhist enterprise. To really appreciate it as a unifying core principle of the Dharma puts everything else into a very important context. It fits everything else together.

One of the understandings of what a religion is, is that it provides values, principles, and orientations for how to live one's whole life—ultimate teachings, ultimate purposes, ultimate understandings that apply to all of one's life. This is one of those that makes Buddhism a religion: that it's a religion of non-harming, to not harm.

One of the core teachings of the Four Noble Truths is an expression of that, a formulation of that, where the word for harm is presented by the word dukkha^[2] or suffering.

I've met people whose very being, their very disposition and personality, their way of being in the world, made it clear that they were a harmless person, that they were dedicated to not harming. Sometimes such people are dedicated to being honest. I've met people who seem incapable of lying and incapable of harming others.

This dedication to not harm... when I was about 20 or 21, I made a mistake and someone wanted to challenge me to a fistfight. It all happened very suddenly, and so there was no premeditated thought on my part, but what I immediately did was I dropped to one knee, spread out my hands wide, as if to say, "I'm vulnerable now and I'm not defending myself," and I said, "I can't fight." Rather than defensively being beaten up, the person spun around and marched off in disgust.

Whether this idea of not being able to fight, not being able to harm anyone, should be practiced all the time in the way that I just described for myself, that's a personal question. It's not for me to say in all the circumstances of life what we should do. But to have this care to not want to harm in the forefront of our hearts and minds, and to really make that the first consideration—the first way of thinking about a situation, like, "Let's not harm here"—is powerful.

I'm teaching about this for this week about love, because it's a form of love to not harm. Rather than always expecting love to have a very high bar of what it is—that it means being filled with warmth, appreciation, joy, and a radiance of positive regard for anyone, everyone, and everywhere—love can also not be so dramatic. It doesn't have to be that we always have an open heart, a generous sense of gushing joy, appreciation, and compassion for others. Sometimes love is quieter, it's more basic, and one of those forms of love is not harming.

We love others through not harming them. We love others by not setting up obstacles for their growth, their evolution, and the development of their life. We love others by giving them room to be who they are. We give love to others by giving them safety. So many people in this world are not safe, don't feel safe, have grown up not feeling safe, and don't automatically feel that other people they encounter are safe for them. To really get a sense that someone is harmless, dedicated to being harmless, that they're not going to harm, is a gift that we give to other people. It's a gift of love, of care, and respect for others. Maybe we don't have gushing warmth for someone, but we have an appreciation for their autonomy, their possibility, their humanity, and we don't want to mess with it.

A dedication to non-harming is also directed towards oneself, so that one doesn't want to harm oneself in any way, and this is also a form of love. Again, the same thing as before, we sometimes measure the idea of love or mettā^[3] towards oneself, compassion for oneself, with some idea that it has to be more than it has to be. That it has to have a little bit of warmth, gushing, delight, and lots of smiles. But sometimes, even towards ourselves, it's a profound form of love that's quieter, that's not a big gushing feeling of warmth, but rather just simply caring enough for oneself that one doesn't want to cause harm to oneself.

As we practice mindfulness, a very important thing begins happening: it brings a heightened sensitivity to the impact of our behavior, our thoughts, our attitudes, and our impulses. What we start discovering is that when we intentionally want to harm someone else, get revenge, cynically poke them in some way, or whatever it might be, we are simultaneously harming ourselves. In fact, in the teachings of the Buddha, he says that when we intentionally harm others, we actually harm ourselves much, much more than we harm the other.

Mythically, they talk about rebirth, that even if you do something like kill someone else—which is pretty bad for that person who died, and that doesn't diminish the horror of that—for the person who kills, they're going to get reborn endless times, many, many times where they're going to be killed violently and be tortured in these burning hells. Those are mythic teachings of Buddhism, but it points to this idea of how much we harm ourselves more than we harm others if we want to intentionally harm them.

We can feel and see that when we have the heightened, deepened sensitivity of mindfulness. It's a game changer to feel and see how much we harm ourselves. And then we also see how we harm ourselves by our negative attitudes towards ourselves, and to not want to harm ourselves anymore. Even if the negative attitudes have some truth to them, they're not needed. We don't need to send arrows into our own hearts. We don't need to set up obstacles that interfere with the natural growth into goodness, into honesty, into non-harming that exists in every heart—in your heart and our hearts.

So, not to add restrictions on ourselves, not to add things that undermine us, discourage us, or depress us. One of the leading causes for depression, they say, is negative self-talk. The negative self-talk can come with such authority it can seem like it's true and it has to happen. But because it's repetitive, over and over and over again, it's not useful. To recognize it as a kind of self-harm might begin to put a crack into this strong impulse we have to have negative self-talk, to realize it's not necessary. There's another way. There's a way of not harming.

It's not easy to make a shift, but it isn't so much that we have to actively do something else, like actively love other people. It's mostly an avoidance. Even if all it takes is to bite your tongue to avoid saying the harmful thing, this is beneficial. Sometimes we have to really restrain ourselves physically so that we don't punch someone out.

I had the occasion to do that—to avoid punching someone out in a meditation hall once when I was in Asia. We were all monks practicing together, but this monk who was sitting next to me must have hated me and had some kind of prejudice. He was constantly poking me and saying not nice things to me during meditation in the Buddhist monastery. I just sat there, and I never replied in meditation. But there was one day I remember I just felt like I wanted to turn around and punch the guy in the face. But I didn't. I kept my hands to myself, and that took a fair amount of restraint. Sometimes it works that way, that we just have to restrain, and that's the beginning of an alternative.

But also, to begin to learn how not to participate with the thoughts and impulses without having to do a lot of work. Do not pick it up. Do not give in to it, maybe even not believe in it. All these efforts, all this approach to trying to live with non-harming, is a significant way of loving.

So the question, "Where is the love? How can I love in this when there's a challenging situation?" Here's an easy answer, but not always easy to implement: love is found in the dedication to non-harming. And what I'd like to propose is that this is such an important and central value that it's more important to adhere to that than to somehow solve the challenges we're in.

I'll end with a story that the Dalai Lama tells. At some point in India, he met with a monk who had been in a Chinese prison camp for twenty or twenty-five years before being released. He was then able to come to India, and the Dalai Lama met with him. The Dalai Lama asked the monk, "Were you ever in danger in the prison camp? You know, of violence or starving or something?"

The monk's answer surprised the Dalai Lama. The monk said, "Yes, I was in danger. I was in danger of losing my compassion for the prison guards."

The greatest wealth, the greatest thing that the monk had, maybe was his compassion, his kind regard, his not wanting to harm anyone. That's what he identified as being the most precious, most important part of who he was. And so, more than anything else, perhaps non-harming represents our greatest wealth, our greatest beauty, our greatest home, our greatest and most wonderful place that life can radiate from. No matter what the challenge that we're in, for a Buddhist, the love that doesn't want to harm should always be close by.

May we love the world through a dedication to non-harming. Thank you very much, and I plan on being back here tomorrow.