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Caring for Self and Others

There is an ancient teaching or discourse involving a conversation the Buddha had with a pair of acrobats. It seems that these were street acrobats who performed acrobatic tricks on the street for people by climbing up on each other's shoulders. One day they were going to perform. The master acrobat said to his apprentice, "You go up on my shoulders and you watch over me, and I'll watch over you. In this way, we'll protect each other."

The apprentice said, "No, you watch over yourself, and I'll watch over myself, and that way we'll protect each other. We'll be safe."

They had a different opinion, and so they went to the Buddha and asked him. In one version of the story, the Buddha approved of the apprentice acrobat—that really you should take care of yourself, and then you will be taking care of others. But there is a verse teaching that follows what the Buddha said, and it has a slightly different message. This is what the verse says:

"Protecting oneself, one protects others. Protecting others, one protects oneself. And how does one, in protecting oneself, protect others? By the repeated and frequent practice of mindfulness. And how does one, in protecting others, protect oneself? By patience and forbearance, by a non-violent and harmless life, by loving-kindness, and compassion."

In these verses, the Buddha presents both ideas: that in protecting oneself, one protects others, and in protecting others, one can protect oneself. Perhaps the two go together. Sometimes we do one, sometimes the other, and there's a mutuality, a mutual care. Knowing which of the sides to take care of at any given time is part of the art of living.

So then the Buddha asked a question: "How does one, in protecting oneself, protect others?" He answers his own question: "By the repeated and frequent practice of mindfulness." We protect others by being mindful of ourselves. In cultivating repeatedly and frequently mindfulness, we get to know ourselves well. We get to know how we are. We get to know what motivates us, what we're about to do before we do it, what we're about to say before we say it. We know what our biases and prejudices are, and we know what our desires and aversions are. We know our feelings, our emotions, and all that goes on. If we can track ourselves carefully and really understand what we're doing, then naturally we will not want to harm ourselves. We will not want to do the things that cause suffering to ourselves. It turns out that when we harm others, we're also harming ourselves. When we protect ourselves from self-harm in that way, we're also protecting others.

This idea of mindfulness as a way of protecting others is because we really come to know ourselves. In addition to the self-understanding that mindfulness brings, committed mindfulness meditation can bring a very deep subtleness, a very deep state of unification or wholeness, really feeling connected and settled in oneself in a deep way. Generally, when people cause harm to others—either carelessly or intentionally—they are usually not very grounded or settled in themselves. They're usually quite unsettled. Often, causing harm is a symptom of feeling a lot of suffering, distress, unease, or tension in oneself. As meditation settles all the tension away, there's much less impetus to act unkindly, to be mean, to take advantage of people, to lie, to steal, and all kinds of things.

This mindfulness practice transforms us into an ethical person. There's something very ethical about practicing mindfulness deeply. We become ethical because we see the impact in a very deep way. We're not ethical simply because we're following a bunch of rules—not to dismiss the value of ethical rules—but there's an ethical sensitivity that comes along with mindfulness. We become more sensitive to ourselves, to others, and to what's going on. In this way, we then protect others from ourselves.

Then the Buddha goes on to say: "And how does one, in protecting others, protect oneself?" To actively protect others, we can practice patience, forbearance, non-violence, a harmless life, loving-kindness, and compassion. It seems like partly what the Buddha is talking about here is not that we can protect others from all the dangers of the world—we can try to help somewhat—but the primary person that we're protecting others from is ourselves. We protect others when we are actively angry or impatient by being patient, by holding our anger in check. We protect others from our tendency to cause harm by being non-violent and living a harmless life.

This idea of a harmless life—a non-violent, non-harming life—is really at the heart and key of the Buddhist ethical teachings. In fact, it's not just ethical; it's at the very heart of what it means to become free and liberated in Buddhism. To really wake up, to become enlightened, is synonymous with becoming someone who has become harmless to others, someone who doesn't want to harm others and is living a non-violent life dedicated to not causing harm. If you want to know who is awakened, see how they behave and act towards others. See if they're doing things that are harmful to others. If they are, they're probably not awakened in the way the Buddha talks about.

By loving-kindness and compassion, we protect others with our friendliness, love, kindness, and compassion. We just want the best for them. If we take care of them that way—are kind to them, compassionate with people, non-violent, and not harming—we don't give in to our anger. We might be angry, but we don't give in to it and let it spill over onto others, especially in hostile ways. We protect others from us. But we also protect ourselves, because we protect ourselves from what they might do in retribution or what they might do in return to us. If you're angry towards others, chances are they'll be angry back. Harm others, chances are they'll harm you back. In this way, take care of yourself, and in doing that, you'll take care of others. Take care of others, and you'll take care of yourself.

There is this mutuality going back and forth. The reason I wanted to give this teaching or talk about this is that some people feel that spending a lot of time meditating or involved in their own inner practice in life when the world is burning, suffering, and presenting lots of challenges around us, is maybe selfish, self-centered, or somehow inappropriate. That is certainly a valid concern. Finding the right balance between self-care and caring for others is part of the art of life. But I want to emphasize that we can take better care of the world around us when we have first taken care of ourselves. Taking time to meditate is as important as brushing your teeth, keeping yourself clean, having a good meal, or exercising—whatever you need to do to stay in balance.

The deeper you can go in meditation, the deeper you can awaken your care. The deeper the mindfulness goes, even though it's a kind of inward-directed practice, it turns us inside out. It can't be selfish; it can't be self-preoccupied, because the very movements and activity of being self-centered, arrogant, or conceited in our practice is a kind of limitation, a kind of suffering, a kind of tension that we will feel. As we keep going deeper and deeper, it will dissolve and pass away. The strong ideas we have about "me, myself, and mine," the strong sense of self and self-definitions that we might live by, cannot persist when mindfulness really goes in deep and we begin settling and quieting the mind of all its fixed ideas and opinions.

What meditators begin to experience is that the sharp and hard barriers between self and other begin to dissolve. The idea that we are holding ourselves tight and protected, that we have conceptual armor on, begins to dissolve in favor of having a sensitivity, an empathy, and a care for others. The very movement inward is an antidote to selfishness. Go in far enough, and we get turned inside out. Our care that's on the inside first is something that we kind of wear on our sleeves or on our chest, and we feel and care for the world as if the right hand is caring for the left hand, and the left hand is washing the right hand. It's a mutuality that's almost unselfconscious. It's more like the natural order of things. What naturally wells up is that, of course, we care for someone when we feel that they're our kin, when we feel intimately connected to them, when we are friends, we are family. We feel connected in a very deep way.

Can we then have too much compassion? Can we then over-give ourselves and do too much for others? It's certainly possible to be driven by the need and the desire to care, help, and do things that is overdone, where we lose ourselves. Some people can actually harm themselves by exhausting and straining themselves, sacrificing and giving up too much of themselves in the service of taking care of others. But if we keep coming back and practicing mindfulness, we will feel the imbalance of that.

We find self-care in knowing the impact things have, knowing how to hold our ground, knowing when we need to take care of ourselves. Learning how to come back and to breathe easily, find our relaxed breath again, and come into the world living with our relaxed breath. To have a breath that is at ease, a soft breath, an easeful breath, is one of the great teachers, one of the great tools, one of the great supports for us in our life. To sacrifice your breathing—breathing tight and constricted, almost out of breath by doing too much—is a kind of harm to ourselves. And if we're harming ourselves, there's a very good chance we're not really offering good care to others.

So there's a balancing act going on where we're finding our way back and forth. When do I care for others more than myself? When do I care for myself more than others? When do I care for both equally? In different circumstances and situations we find ourselves in, that balance and that equation of figuring out which is which changes depending on what the need is. When I had very small children at home, it was clear that taking care of them at the expense of my own welfare, even at times, was necessary and the appropriate thing to do. As they became older, it became appropriate not to do that anymore. It was appropriate not to lose so much sleep. It was appropriate to get more sleep, and so the balance shifted in the other direction. When a neighbor is in distress in the middle of the night, maybe that's when we give up our sleep to take them to the hospital. In those situations, it's clear we want to support others and not be so concerned with ourselves.

But at other times, if we're feeling distressed, if we're feeling afraid, or we're feeling a lot of tension and stress in our lives—a lot of preoccupation, kind of losing touch with ourselves by the spinning mind—maybe that's a time where self-care is more important than other-care. Maybe that's a time to settle back, refresh, and get grounded again in ourselves. Then once that has happened, we come back into the world in a very different way, able to help more and support more. The balance goes back and forth, and that perfect balance is quite exquisite.

Sometimes caring for self and caring for others is indistinguishable; there's no difference. Somehow the mindfulness is strong enough and broad enough—360-degree enough—that we're tracking what's going on with us, the impact things have on us, what our needs are, the stresses and joys, the motivations here, and we're tracking the other person and present for that person, understanding what's going on for the person, listening, and carrying in some active way. The two are together. I wouldn't say we merge—that's a little dangerous when we merge—but there's no barrier where fifty percent of the attention is centered on me and fifty percent of the attention is on the other person. It's an exquisite thing in that fifty-fifty. There's a kind of beautiful dissolving of the self-barrier, dissolving of the self-concepts that we often get stuck in. It's safe to dissolve those self-concepts because we're so in touch with ourselves; we're really tracking what's going on so we can take care of what's happening in a good way.

To me, it was quite a surprise after a few years of meditation to notice more and more that it didn't make so much sense to me to only be concerned about my own welfare. As I became more settled, I had this feeling of being turned inside out and feeling that the outside world was just as much part of me as the inside world. The barrier between self and the world was no longer so solid, and it felt like a complete surprise to me that there was this natural feeling that the welfare of the world was just as important as my own welfare. The suffering of others was something that I could care for just as much as for myself. Not so much because "me, myself, and I" was thinking about it, planning it, analyzing the situation, or being very rational about it; it was because somehow I became less and less self-preoccupied. I became less caught up in myself, my fears, worries, griefs, lonelinesses, and all the kinds of things I had when I was young. It all started to dissolve and settle away.

The dissolving of them opened up this whole other world: a Dharma^[1] world of care, a Dharma world of compassion. A Dharma world where the central motivation for life is compassion and care. That's what motivates, that's what gives life meaning, that's what really gives it a sense of purpose. Not because you're supposed to do that, but the surprise for me was that it just welled up. It welled up because I did this deep practice. I went to a monastery, went on long retreats, and I really practiced a lot of meditation. What would seem like self-involved practice turned me inside out, and really became the purpose and reason why I've dedicated my adult life to try to be a teacher, try to support people, try to help people with this Dharma and the practice of mindfulness meditation, to help people live better lives and have less suffering in the world, and try to improve this world for all of us.

This is the means by which I'm trying to do it, and I very much appreciate that you're here and listening. I guess you're giving me a chance to try to be supportive and helpful, and certainly it is my love to do that. While I do it, there is this kind of mutual care, this reciprocity. There are some ways in which I'm caring for myself at the same time as caring for others. It is definitely a principle of what goes on here, and I feel very fortunate, and I feel nourished by this.

Q&A

So that's about all I have to say. For some of you, it's a little bit early to stop, so we could have a few more minutes to see if any of you have any questions you would like to ask. I'm very happy to try to answer and see if we can have a little exchange back and forth through the chat box here. Let's try the experiment. There's a delay between the time I speak here and the time it appears for you all, so I'll wait a little bit to see if there are some questions. And now, here we go.

Is there a specific type of meditation or prayer to help with this?

Yeah, very nice question. Well, I certainly put a tremendous value on the practice of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness has so many different benefits that its benefits are so broad in all kinds of directions, you almost can't go wrong with doing mindfulness. Mindfulness has done the most for me to awaken my care—my care for self and care for others.

There are specific practices on compassion and practices of loving-kindness (mettā)^[2] that some people find very, very beneficial. I've had a great time practicing them, but I think sometimes it's good to practice mindfulness first. To really get the teachings and the practice of mindfulness under your belt, to really understand the foundation of it, how it works, what it is, and become skilled at it, is a fantastic foundation for all other kinds of meditation and prayer.

Do you have other examples of ways this deep care and compassion is expressed in the world beyond teaching Dharma?

Oh, an infinite number of ways. It really has to be something that makes your heart sing. I don't think that caring for the world out of the depth of our being works very well from a sense of obligation and duty. It's really what makes us sing. For example, a musician or an artist who loves what they do, and their joy, their peace, their delight, and their extensive creativity is in their music or in their art. They bring a lot of joy and delight to other people. They're not helping directly like someone who's sick and needs a doctor, but without music and without art, the life we live would be a lot poorer. The expression of compassion for some people is to make their music and art available to the world, and that would be their way.

I don't want to assume there's any one classic way you should go. You could go to a hospital and be a doctor, a nurse, or a chaplain. It really has to be a match for what makes your heart sing, and when you know what makes your heart sing, it really feels like a release. That is how you want to express your life in some deep way. Then you can ask your question: "How can I do this in a way that's beneficial for the world? How can I do this so it's caring for the suffering world?"

For some people, it's much more direct. They want to actually be right in the middle of the fire of the world and suffering, and some people go to refugee camps around the world and do work there. There are so many different ways. I like the question because it provides the opportunity to say that it doesn't have to look like a classic profession of care. Teaching Dharma is not everyone's idea of a good time or what's going to make their heart sing, and I have a lot of respect for that. There are differences in what really makes us come alive and what seems right to us. I hope that the mindfulness practice can help us find that.

Ah, someone said cooking! Yes, absolutely. Cooking is a wonderful way to love and care for the world.

In these times with social distancing, what ways can we express our compassion and care for a friend who is dying?

Mmm, yeah, that's a good question. I haven't had to address this issue directly, but if the friend can receive a letter or an email, or someone can read it to them. Perhaps you can do some art that you want to send to your friend, a photograph, or some kind words. Maybe you can send something else that would be meaningful for them to see or hear. There are all these ways of sending video now, so you could play a little video of you saying some words or offering some kindness.

It's a very difficult question to ask, and you state it in a beautiful way, because how people die is so varied, and what people need as they are dying is so varied. The first task would be, to the best of your ability, to figure out what this person needs. If you can, talk to the person directly, asking them, "What do you need? What would you like? What can I do for you?" Then, sometimes maybe ask relatives, caregivers, or other friends who are in touch.

It's very sad these days when people are dying in the hospital and nursing homes, and no one's allowed to visit them. I've had people tell me that their parents were going to die in a nursing home from COVID-19, and they actually weren't allowed to come visit. So what can you do? If you can't get through at all, can't really have contact with them, can't really get a message to them or do anything for them directly, then maybe help those who are caring for them. Help the caregivers.

If you can't help the caregivers, maybe sit and practice. Sit in meditation and touch into some of the deepest places of peace and compassion that you have access to. Sometimes when I experience the suffering of the world and I allow myself to feel it, it inspires me. It encourages me, it awakens a strong drive to practice better. I feel like I do it because I see the transformation this Dharma practice can bring. It's such good medicine for the world. It's such an important thing that people really touch into the depths of peace and depths of freedom from suffering that are possible. So if I can't really help someone else, the least I can do is to practice better and really make myself a better vehicle for the work in the future.

I sometimes find it difficult to give myself the same patience and compassion that I try to give to others. How can I remember to be gentle to myself?

Well, if the opposite of being gentle is being harsh or demanding, one of the ways to look into this is actually to feel it intimately. This is the value of mindfulness practice: really feel the harshness, feel the judgmentalism, or feel the commander requiring you to do something. Feel the distress, feel the fear, feel the impatience that we have. Feel the lack of compassion that is there.

In other words, one of the principles of mindfulness is when you can't live up to an ideal that you have, rather than keep trying to do it, really take an honest look at what keeps you from the ideal. What's actually going on? And try to do that with as much compassion and as much generosity as you can to yourself. So you're not criticizing yourself for what's going on, but you enter into that world of what's getting in the way of the ideal with care.

The tension... if you can approach it kindly, it's a door to deeper and deeper self-understanding. It's a door into some kind of resolving, dissolving, and healing of the very underlying tendencies that make you impatient and keep compassion at bay. In other words, turn towards the difficulty and go through it to the other side. That's a classic approach in Buddhism.

I hope these answers make sense, and I certainly appreciate that you asked these questions. I very much appreciated this back-and-forth exchange, and so we're connected this way as well. I hope that you take good care of yourself, and certainly, I hope that if you take care of yourself, you'll also take care of others. Maybe all of us can care for each other. Thank you.