This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Wisdom, Care, and the Paramis - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good morning. For this talk, I want to start in a different way. I would like to, partly to make a point better, maybe to do a little ritual with you. Some of you who don’t like ritual will call it theater. For this, I need four volunteers.
There are four envelopes here, and in each envelope, there’s a question. You will read the question when the time comes, so don’t open the envelope until it’s your time.
(Volunteer 1 reads) “From where comes love?” From wisdom.
(Volunteer 2 reads) “From where comes wisdom?” From love.
(Volunteer 3 reads) “What is love?” To care.
(Volunteer 4 reads) “What is wisdom?” To care.
The topic today is wisdom, but wisdom can seem abstract. It can seem heady; it could seem like it has nothing to do with love. And maybe that’s the case sometimes, but in the teachings of the Buddha, there’s a distinction that he sometimes makes—or at least it stands out as I read the text—between wisdom and being a wise person. Wisdom can be found in a book, and as long as it stays in the book, it doesn’t benefit anyone. Being a wise person is found in living a life, and that’s what the Buddha was emphasizing: how we live our life. The purpose of wisdom is to live wisely. But what does it mean to live wisely?
In that little question-answer we did, I’m putting love and wisdom closely together, which they often are not. So I want to read a quote from one of my favorite teachings from the Buddha. Some of you have heard me do it before because I like it so much. It’s the Buddha’s description or definition of a wise person:
Wise people of great wisdom do not think of harming themselves, of harming others, or of harming both. Rather, wise people consider their own welfare, the welfare of others, the welfare of both, and the welfare of the whole world. In this way, one is a wise person of great wisdom.
Here, the wisdom that’s being emphasized, the way of being a wise person, is to have in your heart, in your field of concern, the welfare of self, the welfare of others, the welfare of both, and the welfare of the whole world. That means to care—to care for the world, to care for oneself. And how do we care for ourselves? Well, that takes wisdom. How do we learn how to care well? Well, that takes love. Here, wisdom is not apart from our relationship to other people.
Sometimes when we focus on Buddhism, the Buddhist teachings, and Buddhist practice, it can have, at times in an appropriate way, a very personal orientation. You sit and close your eyes and meditate, and you’re kind of tuning the world out, tuning others out. You’re quieting your mind, so you’re not thinking about who you’re going to give a gift to over the holidays; you’re just sitting here with your own breathing. The stereotypical criticism of people who meditate is that they’re just watching their belly button, you know, it really gets focused.
But there’s a way in which that’s appropriate to do, and how it fits into this definition of a wise person is that something profound can happen when the attention gets organized, unified, collected here in the present moment. That awakens within us a feeling of wholeness, a feeling of samadhi1 that is a holistic state of phenomenal well-being. Now, it’s possible to be focused on that for the purposes of just your own pleasure or your own relief from the difficulties of life. But in the Buddhist teachings, this deep experience of samadhi, of wholeness, of really kind of going inward, is to be turned inside out. You have to go in, but then you get turned inside out, so that the focus now becomes: how do we care? How do we meet the world? How do we meet ourselves in a caring way?
The inward focus that is part of Buddhism is not supposed to leave us isolated from the world or not attuned to the world; it’s meant to do the exact opposite. Just like if you really want to care for people well, and have people relax around you and feel like you’re accessible, and they’re happy to sit next to you and be close, maybe even happy for you to give them a hug in the right circumstance, it would be useful from time to time if you really went into your own privacy, away from all people, and took a shower. Sometimes that’s what meditation does. You’re just cleaning up, getting cleansed on the inside, and then you’re ready to come out in a whole different way for the world.
The development of this caring wisdom, this wise caring, is to come to a place where it’s possible to care for the whole world. That includes the people who are our enemies, the people who’ve betrayed us, and the people who have offended us in all kinds of ways. That’s a tall order; that’s not easy to do. It’s very difficult to deal with one’s own hurt, one’s own pain, one’s own fear, to be able to have it that big. And that’s one of the purposes of this inward focus: to really address and meet all the barriers, all the unresolved ways we are, all the wounds we carry, so that we can get turned inside out and be able to have care for everyone.
Maybe in this context, we don’t need to use the word “love,” which for many people is a high bar or becomes something too hallmark-y. But “care” is much more humble, much more basic, and I would say very profound—to offer care, to care for the whole world, no one left out.
To learn this wisdom, to understand this wisdom, does not require book reading. It doesn’t require Dharma talks—but please stay until the end. [Laughter] It doesn’t require exceptional knowledge. It doesn’t require mystical states or supernatural experiences, and it doesn’t involve abstract metaphysical ideas. What it involves is a deeper sensitivity in oneself, a deeper sensitivity to well-being, to where the sense of your own welfare is. Because the more you have a sense of welfare for yourself, what brings your own goodness, two things will happen: you’ll appreciate that’s possible for other people, and you’ll have a profound appreciation for what it feels like to care for others. It feels good. It adds to that well-being, if done the right way.
In some of the path models of Buddhism, like the one called the paramis2, the ten perfections, it begins with generosity. Generosity is relational. You can be generous to yourself, but it’s very easy then to be selfish. Generosity is generally considered to be something we do for others and for the world. The idea of generosity is that it’s non-obligatory. The source inside from which it comes cannot be logical or reasoned out, because then it’s not quite generosity, though reason and rationality can have a role. And it certainly can’t be obligatory; it can’t be a duty, because generosity is something that’s freely given from some generative source inside, some feeling of openness, some feeling of delight, some feeling of care for the person that you’re giving it to.
If we have cultivated a capacity of mindfulness for ourselves, we can feel the joy, the delight, the pleasure that this kind of generosity can be. If there isn’t some kind of pleasure in being generous, it probably isn’t being generous. It has a good feeling, this lightening and offering and freeing of something. Then we can feel how we’re a better person because of it. We can also feel the joy, hopefully, that it brings other people. So it can bring us joy and satisfaction that we’ve offered something to someone else, and it can affect our interpersonal relationships. It tends to create positive interpersonal relations to be generous. Chances are, it’s more likely to create positive interpersonal relationships than being stingy, which doesn’t usually hold up for good friendship.
There tends to be a field of mutual appreciation, maybe even mutual gratitude. I’ve felt very grateful sometimes when I’ve been able to give something to someone because I feel so lucky. It does me good, it’s so nice, so I want to say thank you to them. I learned in Zen that when you give, you don’t give casually, like look the other way and hand it to them as if it’s nothing. Even if it’s a small thing, that relationship is important, the respect is important. In Zen, you’re supposed to give something with two hands, so it’s really like all of you is present, and you’re present for the other person that you’re giving to, because that relationship is important. The respect and care is important.
It creates a kind of positivity in the interpersonal sphere. Some people use giving as a way of healing interpersonal relationships that are strained or to shift the dynamic. It’s hard to be angry at someone or be mean to them at work if they’ve given you a gift. You know, they came with cookies for you, or maybe you came out of the parking lot at work and your tire was flat, and you didn’t know what to do, and the very person you’ve been meeting with all day long came over and said, “Oh, I’ll help you. I know how to change the tires.” The next day, you’re probably not going to start being mean again, not right away.
In terms of wisdom, what was very important in what I just described was all the good feelings that arose in that act of generosity. Something softened inside, something warmed inside, something relaxed, maybe some joy or delight or pleasure arose. And in this path model, that’s where Buddhism begins. If you want to start practicing Buddhism, don’t start with meditation; start with generosity.
What does that do to a person who has that feeling of well-being? One of the things it does is make you become more sensitive to how that is diminished, how that’s broken, how that is taken away. So you feel the goodness of generosity, and now you have a reference point for what not to do, because that would cause harm. You cause harm to yourself by diminishing or breaking the relationship, breaking the kind of goodness you’re coming from. If you felt lousy and miserable and stressed out to begin with, it’s not a big deal to do something with your middle finger. It doesn’t make anything worse, so you might as well. But if you’re feeling good and calm and peaceful, you can feel that a certain way of using your middle finger actually diminishes you, actually harms your welfare, takes something away. So why would you do it? The more you have the sense of well-being, the more you recognize and feel the difference between what brings harm and what brings welfare. And that is the key aspect of this wisdom that I’m highlighting today: the wisdom to be able to see, feel, know experientially, “this brings harm, this brings benefit.”
Generosity then sets the stage for that. The second step in this path model is virtuous conduct. Virtuous conduct is primarily defined in this early tradition by restraining yourself from causing harm. So you would abstain from killing people or physically harming them, you’d abstain from stealing, you’d abstain from causing harm through your sexual behavior, you would avoid lying, and you’d avoid intoxicating your mind. These are considered virtuous conduct. Why would you do that? Well, if you develop this warmer sensitivity to others through generosity, you can feel how doing those unvirtuous things diminishes the joy, it diminishes the quality of the relationships. You have a foundation for appreciating why it’s important to be ethical, where it no longer becomes a rule to be followed, but rather an inspiration to maintain something good, to avoid causing harm to yourself and to others. In order to intentionally cause harm to others, it involves a fracturing of the wholeness of self. It involves diminishing the wholesome joy and well-being that the Dharma practice is developing in people.
In the teachings of the Buddha, avoiding those five things—not killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxication—is a gift we give the world. It doesn’t take a lot of analysis to appreciate how much killing, stealing, sexual harm, lying, and intoxication goes on in our society. It’s tremendously damaging. The only thing it seems to benefit is politicians and newspapers who write about it. What would the news be like if the whole world stopped doing those things? It would be dramatically different. So it’s a gift to the world for you to meet someone whose ethical integrity is so good that you feel safe with them. It’s remarkable.
I’ve met transformed people who I trusted deeply. I trusted them enough to bring my son, when he was 18, to meet them. The people who were transformed were still lifers in prison who had murdered someone. That’s considered some of the worst of people, but they had gone through the GRIP program that we’ve had presentations here about in such a thorough and transformative way that it was remarkable to feel their transformation. I was able to bring my son, when he was just old enough to get clearance to go to San Quentin, and sit in a room of 30 lifers who were there because of murder. I was a little bit worried, but it was remarkable to feel how they’ve been changed. It’s possible to change; people can be transformed.
Classically in Buddhism, being ethical by abstaining from these five things is meant to be a source of joy. This is something I couldn’t understand when I first came to Buddhism. I thought it was weird that people felt joy because they were ethical; nothing in my background made sense of that. Then I went to Thailand, and my first retreat there was ten weeks long. In the course of that retreat, something shifted inside: some kind of settling, relaxing, calming, opening. A sense of well-being. I remember feeling very, very clean on my inside. And lo and behold, I felt this joy for not being inclined to do anything unethical. It came up that before I went there, I’d met this woman that I had a certain… I hope this doesn’t offend anyone… something that bordered on lust. And then when I was sitting in that retreat, I could feel that I had no inclination in that direction, that having that actually felt like I was going to harm myself. And I felt this joy of not having that kind of unhealthy relationship to another person.
So again, to live an ethical life creates a different reference point for wisdom because it shows us what causes harm and what causes benefit in ourselves, in others, and in the relationship between self and others, and then maybe to the whole world.
The third step, then we’re getting to what’s called the perfection of wisdom. The third step in this path model is renunciation. The practitioner has now gathered a lot of information. They’ve learned a lot about what feels good—not just good in some hedonistic way, but what feels good ethically, interpersonally, coming from our heart, from a deep generative place inside. From there, it makes sense to begin letting go.
I remember when I took my kids to school when they were young, I would get up and meditate. I had this fantasy that it would be so great: I’ll be meditating, and they’ll come in, really young, and sit on my lap. I’ll put my shawl on them, and it’ll be such a wonderful influence on them. And sure enough, they’d wake up early, they’d be willing to sit on my lap, and it lasted half a second. So I was never fulfilled in that area of parenting. But I would feel kind of good just from sitting a little bit. By the time I made breakfast for the kids, got them dressed, and drove the carpool to school, I was ready to come back and take a nap. This is exhausting, this is stressful, what’s going on? This is back in the ancient times when they had something called newspapers. It turned out every morning I wanted to read the newspaper, but that was what made the whole morning stressful because it meant I didn’t have enough time for all the other steps. So I had to renounce the newspaper, and I was so much happier because I knew there was happiness, I knew there was well-being, and I knew there was harm. Something that I enjoyed doing had to go for the greater good. That was a renunciation.
To know that being stressed out is losing something… the Dharma question is: why be stressed? Why agree to being stressed? Why go along with the forces inside that cause you stress? Some of you will have brilliant answers to that. What I’d like to encourage you is not to argue with me, but to engage those mental lawyers that are justifying stress and really question them. Is it really better? Is it really worthwhile to allow yourself to get stressed? I’ve known at times that I’ve been stressed trying to do something, and then I had to do it over again. It would have been faster if I had done it calmly the first time.
Beginning to care deeply for yourself—care enough to not be stressed, care enough not to sacrifice your own well-being for greed or hatred. Care enough so that you do the kind of things that nourish and support a profoundly inspiring inner life, so your inner life inspires you. Wow, can you believe this? There’s something here which is maybe not me, but it’s better than me, which is this generative place of goodness or warmth or wholesomeness that can live inside of us.
Renunciation is part of that training. We learn to let go, and renunciation brings even more sense of well-being. That’s the point of it; it’s not meant to be deprivation. In this teaching, renunciation includes the practice of meditation. There’s a lot of letting go in meditation: letting go of thoughts, impulses, motivations. Learning to sit quietly and peacefully, letting go of all the ways that we’re harming ourselves. One way of understanding meditation is a progressive lessening of self-harm. It’s hard for people to believe how much we’re actually harming ourselves by the ordinary, stressful ways that we’re thinking and caught in thoughts and feelings. But we start seeing that and relaxing and softening. Part of the function of meditation is to let go of all forms of self-harm. That’s the purpose of the Four Noble Truths3, which use the word “suffering” to address it.
Meditation then produces a sense of wholeness, deep peace, a deep sense of well-being. And again, it becomes an even deeper reference point for wisdom. Now we know better and better what it means to avoid harm, what it means to benefit self, to stay close to the inner welfare and happiness, and what it means to really benefit others in some good way. It might be that you give someone cookies at work, and that might be nice, but it might be that how you give it makes all the difference in the world.
It’s based on this that this path model moves into a discussion of wisdom. Wisdom here is not something you learn first and foremost. The practical wisdom of the Dharma is gained through these first three steps. Many people in the West begin their path with meditation, and so that’s where they learn this eventually. From that, they learn, “Oh, it’s good to be generous,” or maybe first they learn it’s good to be ethical, and then they learn it’s good to be generous. They kind of do it backwards sometimes in the West because we start with meditation. I mean, how many of you would come to a course at IMC, “Five-Week Introduction to Mindful Generosity”? You might, some of you might come, but our introduction here is a five-week course in mindfulness meditation.
These deeper reference points are what we’re trying to look for in this practice. How do we learn this reference point, this way of living? By living it. Action is needed: action in body, action in speech, and action in mind. This is an active path, even though meditation can look kind of passive. It’s actively doing less. This is a path of action, of how you live your life. And in living it, you then learn from the feedback loops. You recognize and feel and know what causes harm and what brings benefit. In doing that, you have the basis for wanting to care.
Care comes out of that. Care is a deep place inside where we feel a concern, we have empathic concern, we have a sense of shared humanity. We have a sense that it’s important that humans and their well-being, their inner life, are invaluable. That everyone has the same kind of basic building blocks of an inner life that you do—building blocks where there can be a completely natural instinct or impulse to care for the world. It’s not an obligation.
One of the most beautiful little stories I like in Zen: someone asks the Zen master in China, “What is it like to be the embodiment of compassion?” There’s a day for Kuan Yin4, the embodiment of compassion. And the Zen Master says, “Oh, it’s like rearranging the pillow when you’re sleeping at night.” The idea being that it’s completely done unselfconsciously. Of course, if you’re uncomfortable, something inside of you rearranges the pillow to make yourself more comfortable to sleep better. There’s almost no thought going into it. That’s the source from which the embodiment of compassion cares for the world. It’s just a matter of course. If you have three pillows and the person sleeping near you has none and they’re uncomfortable, here, take a pillow, take two. How do we share from this deep kind of caring instinct that we have?
I was really touched when my mother was in the memory care home here in Redwood City to watch people who, in the conventional way of using the word “love,” didn’t love my mother. But it was remarkable the care that they offered her. It was as if they loved her. Their professionalism, their calm, their dedication, their unwaveringness for the year and a half or two years she was there was phenomenal to watch and see the level of care they had. This is possible for all of us. We can live in the world with care.
So I’ll read that quote again, and then I’ll make a statement to close. More theater.
Wise people of great wisdom do not think of harming themselves, of harming others, or of harming both. Rather, wise people consider their own welfare, the welfare of others, the welfare of both, and the welfare of the whole world. In this way, one is a wise person of great wisdom.
To conclude, because this is practical wisdom, this is wisdom that comes from how we live our life: it is up to you whether what you do for the rest of this morning, no matter how mundane it is, is wise, wholesome, and well-born from this caring place within. It’s really up to you in all the things you do.
May you experience the wisdom that allows you to live with this kind of care, with this kind of self-care, with this kind of generative way of bringing well-being. And may it be an act of love.
Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of deep meditative concentration, often translated as “unification of mind” or “wholeness.” It is a state of profound stillness and well-being. ↩
Paramis: A Pali word meaning “perfections.” In the Theravada tradition, these are ten qualities cultivated on the path to awakening: generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity. ↩
Four Noble Truths: The foundational teaching of the Buddha, which outlines the nature of suffering (dukkha), its cause (craving), its cessation, and the path to its cessation (the Noble Eightfold Path). ↩
Kuan Yin: The bodhisattva of compassion in East Asian Buddhism, known as Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit. A bodhisattva is an enlightened being who delays their own final nirvana to help all sentient beings achieve enlightenment. ↩