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Guided Meditation: Peaceful Meditation, Peaceful Dedication

So good morning everyone. Those of you here, welcome to IMC. For some of you, it might be one of the largest gatherings you've been to in the last two years. If that's the case, welcome, and I appreciate that maybe it's a big deal for your heart to do this. And for those of you who are online, welcome. I appreciate that we have such a wide-ranging community coming together to meditate this day.

I'll do this meditation, what I offer, in two parts. I'll say a few words now, and then I'll follow up with the dedication of merit. To begin with, I'd like to say... is that hard to hear? Is it a little bit soft? Should I increase the volume a little bit? Let's see. If I listen in silence to see if it got louder, it doesn't work. Is that louder now? You could also use the hearing assist devices; they still work.

So I would like to say to start, one of the principles, especially in meditation, that may be easier to understand here than anywhere else, but it applies in many other places in our life, is that peace begins in our own hearts. That peace begins for each individual. It starts here in ourselves rather than looking for it in the world around us. In meditation, if you can't start with peace in your own heart, then we have peace in our speech—at least out loud we're not speaking. And ideally, we have peaceful speech in our own minds. How we talk about ourselves or talk about what's going on, we try to do it in a way that's coming from a place of peace, of compassion, of care, of generosity.

If we can't do that, then in meditation we're doing it with our body. We're sitting in a peaceful posture, a posture in which we're not going to move particularly, unless you have to make yourself more comfortable. So it's not a posture in which you're going to punch someone out. This is a peaceful posture. Take refuge in the posture. Take refuge and inspiration that for these minutes, this is a place of peace, this body. Take refuge in whatever way in which your mind can speak peacefully. Take refuge in that interest, intention, and desire to do so. It might be more important to take refuge in the desire to do so than our ability to do so. It might be more inspiring and meaningful to be with people and be oneself who has this wish to work and go in this direction. Perhaps in your hearts, maybe take refuge in your heart's capacity to sit in such a way that it's peaceful. Peaceful means, my understanding is, that it's a heart that wishes to do no harm. It wants to avoid causing harm anywhere to self or others. This is one of the great things to do in this world, and that kind of peace begins with ourselves.

So assume this posture of meditation, a posture that's meant to be a peaceful posture, and gently close your eyes. It's possible you don't feel particularly peaceful, and that's okay. As you start meditation, the beginning of meditation is the beginning of being at peace with what is. So if you're agitated, angry, or upset, it's okay. Here we're going to meet everything that is occurring with an openness, with a willingness to be present and see it without condemning anything. For these minutes, just be present for how it goes in us. Take a few minutes to feel your body. How's your body now?

Within this body is the breathing. From this place within where the in-breath begins, take a long, slow, deep inhale. As you exhale, relax your body. Relax into here, now, the present moment.

Let your breathing return to normal. With normal breathing, for a few rounds of exhales, continue to relax your body. Relaxing is a movement towards peace, towards being peaceful and calm.

Then letting go of relaxing the body. Instead, for a few rounds of breathing, if it's possible, relax your breathing. Kind of a lightening up, softening, and breathing it in. Allowing the body to breathe itself. Not trying to use your breathing or influence or to affect your breathing. You do the breathing, but kind of getting out of the way of breathing, and accompany it with your attention. Maybe the idea of being side by side with your breathing. In whatever way that you can easily do so, accompany your breathing peacefully, with a peaceful attention. As if peace is your offering. What you offer your breathing.

As we come to the end of the sitting, the dedication of merit, of care for the world, is not an addendum to meditation. It's a peaceful expression that arises out of a peaceful heart. It's not a duty or obligation, but rather a continuation of the care that we offer to ourselves as we meditate. A care that then spreads outwards into the world. It's also a wise thing to do for oneself. If you want to be peaceful, offer peace to others. If you want safety, be a safe person for others. If you want to heal your sadness or your anger, be a healing presence for the sadness and anger of others. If you want to be understood, understand others, take the time to know them in their challenges.

We could offer ourselves in our presence. The way we are, the way we attend and are aware of others, we can offer so much. May it be that as we end this meditation, we offer our concern and care and kind regard for others. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free. May everyone who has been affected by the fighting and crisis of Ukraine find a way to peace, into happiness, into freedom. May all the forces of goodness in this world come forth at this point to offer this goodness to the world. May we offer our goodness. May it spread from us into the world.

Reflections on War and Peace

Good morning to all of you who are here. Thank you for being here. And hello to everyone attending online, happy to have you.

From time to time, all too often, there are current events which are so big that it feels that to not address them as part of the dharma talk shouldn't be done; I can't ignore them. This dharma practice that we do is a practice to be present for what's happening in the world, to be witnesses, and to care. Some things are so big that they should be named and we'll see where we go. The fighting in the Ukraine, I think, has affected me this way. I don't think I could not talk about it in some way. But what do we say? How do we understand this?

You know, there was an earthquake in Haiti last summer. That was such a clear event that through the YouTube channel and elsewhere here at IMC, we raised over thirty thousand dollars to dedicate to a wonderful non-profit, Partners in Health. That seemed clear. But with Ukraine, there's so much not known yet, it's so unknown how this is evolving, and what's going to be needed and what's happening. In terms of responding to what's needed there from people like us, that's obvious to me. But I think being caring and concerned for the people of Ukraine, and the people of Russia—a lot of the ordinary people in Russia are going to suffer, and maybe much of the world is going to suffer. We don't know how this is going to expand, and will it spill out beyond the borders of the Ukraine. So we're just watching now and seeing, hoping that the people who have some role in addressing this are doing it wisely and carefully and for the long term. It's hard to know that. It's easy to second-guess, it's easy to have opinions, but it's hard to really know what's going on and what is consequential, what's going to make a difference.

9/11 happened, and as a community, we actually had a special meeting, I think on a Tuesday evening or Wednesday evening, so we could just meet and process it as a community. Then the second invasion of Iraq, and the invasion of Afghanistan. These kinds of things go on and on. They've gone down through history; there's been war and people attacking each other. It seems like most times when it happens, people say, "It's different this time." And this time Ukraine is different, because it's always different, but it's always the same. In some ways, it's not news that these things happen, it's "olds".

In a bigger perspective, this is what human life is about. At the time of the Buddha, there was a war. As the Buddha was getting old and close to his death, he was cognizant that the countries of his area were getting ready to fight and go to war with each other, and he witnessed fortifications being built on his last travels before he died. What is it like to be one of the great champions of peace, an ethical way of living, a non-violent way of living, who dedicated his life to that, and then to watch around that violence getting ready to start?

So here we are with this. I don't know what to say. I could offer opinions, but you're not here for my opinions exactly. So what do we say? One of the things that I'd like to say is that this is a time—as if there's ever not a time—but this is a time to stay close to the dharma. The word dharma includes much more than Buddhism. To say to stay close to Buddhism, I think would almost be an insult to Buddhism, because Buddhism is not about itself. The dharma is about the discovery and expression of a heart that has no conflict, a heart which is at peace with itself. A heart which doesn't cause any self-harm. And one of the ways that self-harm is caused is by harming others. I can't get away from it.

One of the definitions for evil, a word which I seldom use, but many English translations of the suttas use the word evil—whether it's appropriate to translate that way is a scholarly question—but one of the definitions is: evil is when the mind turns on itself to harm others. The mind turns on itself to harm others. What this implies is certain actions of evil harm the person who's evil. Certain expressions of hostility harm the person who's hostile.

There's a Jataka tale^[1], these old Buddhist fables. There was a donkey who was being led to slaughter. When the donkey realizes it's going to be slaughtered, the donkey's first reaction is to laugh. But then after laughing for a while, it starts crying. After it cries for a while, the slaughterer says to the donkey, "What's going on with you? I'm about to kill you, but first you laugh and then you cry. Explain yourself." The donkey said, "Well, for 500 lifetimes I was reborn as a donkey, and this will be the last time. It's so great, I'm so happy that I'm done with it." It had exhausted its karma^[2] of being reborn 500 times as a donkey, so it was laughing, happy. "And then why were you crying?" "Well, the reason I was reborn as a donkey for 500 times was I slaughtered a donkey 500 lifetimes ago. Now you are going to slaughter me, and you will be reborn as a donkey for 500 lives."

So the teachings of karma are that what you do comes back to you in some form or other. This self-harm is deep; we harm others, we harm ourselves. Who's harming each other right now? And how are they harming themselves? Looking at Ukraine and Russia, I almost don't want to answer that question. I have that principle in my mind and concern. But the place I want to apply it the most is to ourselves. How do we respond to all this? Because unless we can do something directly—and if we can, please help—but unless you can do something directly, perhaps peace begins with yourself. Perhaps that's the person that you can have the most impact on. If you don't know how to be peaceful, is there any hope for the Ukraine? If we don't know how to resolve our own inner conflicts and challenges, who can we expect in other people to do it?

Friends of mine just went to Spirit Rock to participate in the month-long retreat there. One person was concerned that it was the wrong time to go because what's happening in the world, on an international stage, is so big and such a big concern. It seemed to be selfish to go off and do meditation like this. I said, "It's the opposite. Unless you can do something for the world directly, this is actually one of the greatest responses you can do." Because this path of meditation that we're offering in Buddhism is a path to get to the bottom of our own peace. To discover our capacity for living in non-conflict, in a wise and generous and supportive way. How not to hate, how not to get angry, how not to be hostile, how not to be greedy, how not to have lust for power and money in such a way that we're harming people around. How not to live in delusion. It's a powerful path of really uprooting the attachments, the clinging, the grasping, the fears that are kind of like barbs in the heart, or close down the heart, or constrict it, or limit it. It creates a kind of heart where the good heart we have is lost.

When we're not connected deeply to ourselves, it's our surface reactivity which gets the upper hand. Surface reactivity is usually not so wise. Reacting angrily to the world, for example, is usually not that wise. The consequences are not that good. Sometimes they accomplish what we want in the short term, but in the long term, do they really help us live in a better world or better situation?

I've told this story before, but please allow me to say it again because it's such a powerful lesson for me. I try to live wisely, to parent wisely with my sons when they were young. Sometimes they were challenging for me with my parenting skills, and I felt like it was hopeless unless I used my strong voice. I never hit them or anything, I never was in danger of it, but sometimes I used a strong voice, which was done consciously, carefully, because I didn't know what else to do. Like, "You have to stop what you're doing. You cannot do that anymore." It was effective. But then one day, I heard my older son use the same voice to his one-and-a-half-year-old brother. I said, "What have I done? I accomplished what I wanted to do in stopping the behavior, but what was the influence? What a horrible conditioning influence, an example I gave to a small child that it's okay to do this, so he could turn around and do it to his brother." What does his brother learn? Then it goes on, from one person to another, one generation to the other, and they learn somehow at an early age this is okay. But what are the consequences?

What are the consequences of invading another country? The consequences of certainly the people who get killed and die. When I think of war and people getting killed, I not only think about the people who get killed, but the ripple of their family and their friends and their neighborhood, and it goes out on and on. Some of this suffering goes on for decades and decades. I grew up very much under the influence of World War II. I was born after World War II, but I grew up with it as a very strong presence in my family life. My parents, my grandparents, my parents-in-law, and their parents all were deeply affected by World War II and the violence, so much so that it still affects me to this day. Some of the horrible things that happened to some of them touch me very deeply. Especially because I have two sons, the older one who has had firsthand conversations with his grandfather. Actually, when he was 14, he interviewed my father-in-law and did a little video about his experiences in the concentration camps in Germany where he was a prisoner. It's 70 years ago now or so, but it's still alive. These things go on and on. The things that happen in and around World War II are still alive in communities. Things that happened in the Civil War are still alive in this country and communities. I would argue, if I may, that the violence of the American Revolutionary War is still rippling, affecting this country, coursing through it in a way that maybe we don't directly see, but I think the violence of that time is still in effect here. It goes on and on, these things.

So I think about that ripple effect of violence and what does it do. In Buddhism, there is a very strong, repeated emphasis on non-harming, non-violence, on not killing. The first precept^[3] is not to kill. You don't have to go very far in the teachings of the Buddha to find all kinds of direct teachings about the value of radical non-harming, radical non-violence. Even to the extent that if someone's harming you, he says do not give in to harm. He does say that you can strike back if someone attacks you in order to escape, so you don't just stand there and passively be beat up, but there is this radical strong idea of non-violence. Some kings in ancient India interpreted this to mean that they were going to have their army stand down and not fight, and not have capital punishment, and all these kinds of things.

I've had an adult life where I felt, ever since I was probably 18, dedicated to non-violence. It was relevant for me because when I was 18, I was of the age that could be drafted for the Vietnam War. So it was very alive that I would be called up and have to go fight the war across the Pacific. I had to contend with that. War was really alive and present, and what do I do if I get drafted? I was not going to fight. I knew that I would not go. I'm from Norway originally, and I went back there a few times. I wasn't drafted because my draft number was so low at that point, so I didn't have to go.

A couple of years later, I went to live in Norway for a year. There, I was surprised to discover that there was a movement where you could be a conscientious objector. In Norway's mandatory military service for men back then, you could be a conscientious objector, and if you were, you didn't have to do the one-year military service that all males had to do, but you had to do two years of public service. A friend of mine spent almost two years working in a hospital in order to do the equivalent to support the country. Some of the conscientious objectors in Norway protested. They said they knew about Russia being right nearby, and Russia within that time was still pushing the edges of the border, testing things. People were worried about Russia and Norway in the mid-1970s. Some of the conscientious objectors who didn't want to become soldiers and fight, wanted to be able to defend the country if it was attacked. They were asking for training in civil disobedience, training in non-violent resistance, and they were lobbying to try and get that to happen. I don't know if it ever happened in Norway, but it has happened now in Sweden and Finland. They have trainings now in the techniques of non-violent civil disobedience and non-violent resistance.

The reason I bring it up is following up on talking about how important non-violence and non-harming are in the teachings of the Buddha. Very often, when people hear that, they say, "Well, that just means we have to passively allow people to attack us, and no self-defense is allowed, you're not allowed to fight back." Down through the centuries, Buddhist kings and Buddhist countries have justified standing armies and fighting defensively, because defending yourself is allowed in the dharma, they say, just not attacking people or being the aggressor. But how do you know who's the aggressor and who's the defender? Right now, I think the president of Russia, Putin, thinks of himself as a defender. At least that's what he says, and he keeps referring to being defensive. But for many of us, it looks like he's the aggressor. Where do you decide that? If the justification for war is that it's the only way to defend yourself, then the Buddhist principle of non-violence is conditional, it's situational. And then which situations do we live by it, and which don't we live by it?

When I was around 19 or so, I came very much under the influence of a particular scholar in the United States, an academic named Gene Sharp^[4]. He was a scholar of non-violent civil disobedience efforts around the world, the non-violent ways and resistance by which people successfully resisted dictators and authoritarian regimes. He has a three-volume book on non-violence that chronicles and lists all the different sophisticated techniques that are used by people who engage in this kind of work, and how so many times it's been successful, and sometimes it hasn't. It was eye-opening for me to see. It was interesting, he points out that Mahatma Gandhi^[5] is the great exemplar of non-violent civil disobedience. Gandhi was inspired by civil disobedience in Russia in 1905. Nicholas II was the Tsar of Russia at that time. There were massive public strikes and demonstrations—non-violent ones on the part of the demonstrators—that eventually forced the Tsar to create the first parliament in Russia, the Duma. He had to contend with the members of parliament, they shared the power, and they continued that way. Mahatma Gandhi saw that and said, "Wow, that can be done," and that inspired him in his work. So it's interesting how important Russia would have been as an example, given what's happening now in the Ukraine.

There was the Orange Revolution in 2004. That was a student-led movement of non-violence that brought down the Russian-supported president of Ukraine, who probably won through rigged elections and a lot of corruption. Those students in the Orange Revolution were reading Gene Sharp. He spent a lot of time as an academic writing and describing the techniques and the methods of non-violent civil disobedience. And he says people will die with non-violent civil disobedience. Some people say, "Well, it doesn't work because if you put yourself on the front line, they'll just kill you." They will, maybe. But if you put soldiers on the front lines, they'll die too. His argument: fewer people die with civil disobedience than with armed struggle.

When I say all this, that in Buddhism this central ethical tenet is non-violence, non-harming, not killing, it's possible that that strategy, that way of living, should not be done naively. This is something we bring our wisdom to, our intelligence to, our reflections to really engage and think about. How can we do this? What's the practical way, what's the wise way, what's the active way to do this? Too many people want to defend themselves, and their first strategy is to get a gun in this country. Are they really safer? The instinct is that's how you make yourself safe, but is that really a safe way? What about doing the research, the reflection, to look at all the alternative ways to become safe? Are there other ways to become safe than having a gun? Are there better ways of becoming safe than having a gun? However, it takes research and intelligence and engagement in this process, and not many people want to do that. We want to do the instinctual so we can get on with our lives.

So here we are with Ukraine and this major event in the world. There's so much stress these days with the pandemic and all kinds of other things, and politics. It's almost like the more stress there is, the more stress it produces. The more people feel the stress of it all, the worry of it all, the fear of it all, the more they take on stress. And when we're stressed, it's a recipe for more reactivity. It's a recipe for anger and for fear and for dysfunctional ways of responding. With too much stress, if we're not careful, we add to the stress in the world. This practice that we do is a revolutionary thing, it's a radical thing to do. It's finding a way to not contribute to the stress of the societies of the world. It's a radical way of being someone who does the opposite. Someone who's almost like a healthy sink, where the stresses of the world can come into us, we experience it and know it, and are present for it, and somehow we can process it and empty it and de-stress ourselves from it. We can go through the world committed to not adding to the stress of the world. Committed not to add to the violence of the world, to the anger of the world.

Doing our work is such an important thing. Someone has to do it. Some people have to show everyone else that it's possible to become free of these instinctual forces that, one way or the other, contribute to causing more harm, and respond to harm with more harm, passing it on from generation to generation. Someone has to do this work.

There are people who are doing it all over the world; we're not alone in doing it. I think this is what this practice we're doing is about most importantly. I would say that the reason I'm here today, and because I'm here you're here today, and IMC is here in Redwood City today, one of the causes for why this whole YouTube thing is happening, is because I believed when I was quite young that this work of finding peace in oneself, becoming free in oneself of clinging and reactivity, is a way of responding to war in this world.

My whole first interest in Buddhism was as a response to the Vietnam War. My whole reason to dedicate my life to Buddhism was witnessing from a distance the violence of war in the early 80s, and being deeply impacted by it. War has been part of my life, and something I'm conscious of and aware of, without ever having the misfortune of being in the presence of it directly. But it's part of my whole life experience that it's influenced me, and it's part of the reason why I'm dedicated to be a dharma teacher and to do all this. For me, this is not only stress reduction so we can go back to work and live stress-free at work. This is a revolutionary activity. If we go to the depths of our heart and really find a way to uproot the deepest attachments we have, we become peacemakers for this world. Maybe just locally, maybe it's just for our neighbors, but how does it ripple out from your neighbors? Who do you know, who you don't know, who you touch, and how this goes out and out into the world?

Peace begins with ourselves. If you want a peaceful world, start with yourself. Find out how you can be at peace. Find out how you can walk in peace. How you can speak in peaceful ways, how you can relate to others in ways that they feel safe and feel like there's another way. And learn how to be in conflict wisely. We're not going to not be in conflict with people. That's not part of what life is about. But can we be in conflict peacefully with them? Can we be in conflict in a sense where the motivation for how we are with the conflict is cooperation, not competition? Not to win and they lose, but can the motivation be, how can we both win? There will be conflict. Conflict doesn't betray peace. It does not mean the absence of conflict. To have peace is the absence of harm.

Not knowing what to do for the Ukraine at this juncture, I feel like we do the other great thing for the Ukraine. At least let's do our practice. Stay close to the dharma, stay close to the practice. Let what's happening in the world be an inspiration, and evoke a wonderful aspiration that this practice is so important, so valuable. It is a way of responding to the world, to happily know you have something precious in this practice. Maybe there are ways you can give yourself to this practice a little bit more, that will feel like a reason that you know is a response to what's happening in the world. You're not ignoring it. You're responding in this powerful way by becoming a person who's a beacon for peace. Wouldn't that be great for all of us to do?

So those are my thoughts today. Wouldn't it be great if this is the last time I give a talk in responding to war in this world? I have hope that that's the case, though that's probably naive. One of the reasons I have some hope is that as much as we're seeing fighting going on in the Ukraine, we're seeing, currently at least, the international community responding non-violently and economically. Who knows, maybe it'll teach us that war is old-fashioned and war doesn't really work, and we have to find other ways to work through our conflicts than through war. So hoping so. I have high hopes for the sanctions, the economic debate, that this will be seen as a non-violent way of responding to aggression and will make a difference.

May we all find ways to be non-violent in our lives, and support that in the world around us. If you want to learn more, read some of the works of Gene Sharp. Thank you.