This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Brahmavihara: The Beautiful Qualities of the Heart (4 of 5). It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Rachel Lewis at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
So this week, I want to recap compassion a little bit, and then we’ll talk about joy. These are the two responses of the caring heart, the heart that connects when it encounters first suffering and then well-being or joy or goodness.
The two parts of compassion, I’m just kind of saying again some things that I said last week. The two parts are being touched by suffering, so not holding oneself aloof from it, and staying focused on the possibility of the freedom from suffering. What helps us to be touched by suffering without being overwhelmed by it is an understanding of the First Noble Truth: that this is how things are. This suffering isn’t a mistake; it isn’t us getting things wrong. This is just what comes with this human birth of ours.
There’s a poem I want to share by Warsan Shire called “What They Did Yesterday Afternoon”:
they set my aunt’s house on fire i cried the way women on tv do folding at the middle like a five pound note i called the boy who used to love me tried to ‘okay’ my voice i said hello he said warsan what’s wrong what’s happened
i’ve been praying and these are what my prayers look like dear god i come from two countries one is thirsty the other is on fire both need water.
later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt?
it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere.
And so, given that the whole world is on fire, that it’s not any one person, any one place that experiences suffering, we don’t have to feel singled out. We don’t have to feel surprised or hard done by when we encounter difficulties or suffering. And the heart can be touched by the poignancy of this truth of Dukkha1, this truth of unsatisfactoriness, without being shocked by it.
And the other thing that supports compassion to not become grief is this focus on the second aspect of compassion: this desire for beings to be free from suffering. There’s that expression, “compassion fatigue,” and Venerable Analayo2 makes the point that we should actually refer to that as “empathy fatigue.” Because the desire for suffering to end, that’s not fatiguing, right? It’s the sense of being pulled down by others’ suffering that’s what depletes us.
I think there’s more to compassion fatigue than that. Oftentimes, there’s an aspect of moral injury, just the feeling of helplessness or the feeling that your work requires you to acquiesce in harmful situations. And even there, I think that the other side of compassion, the desire for beings to be free from suffering, can help to protect against compassion fatigue. Part of that is the wisdom side of compassion: the understanding of impermanence, the understanding of emptiness, the understanding of causality. When there’s a kind of bone-deep understanding of emptiness, suffering is less of a threat.
There’s a Tibetan practice, Tonglen3, which involves breathing in suffering and breathing out healing. It’s a practice that is easiest to do when there is that understanding that there’s no one here to breathe anything in. If there’s a sense of, “I’m trying to manufacture compassion,” or “I’m trying to manufacture a solution to your problems,” if there’s this solidifying around a sense of me fixing things and you having a problem, it can be exhausting. It can really push you past your limits. When there isn’t that sense of solidification, when there’s just the heart responding, that’s when these practices, whether Tonglen or other forms of compassion, can be easeful, can be sustainable.
I think that’s one of the most important things to understand about all of these Brahma Viharas4: they’re not things we need to manufacture. They’re not things we need to make happen. They’re just a way that the heart can respond when it’s not weighed down by ideas of “us” and “them,” when it’s not becoming the one who has to fix things or figure things out. It can just open into a natural compassion.
Angie: Hi Rachel, I have a quick question. I’m especially interested in what you said about compassion fatigue. I work with adults with disabilities, and we go through a lot of what you just described. However, in our official documentation, it’s referred to as “caregiver fatigue,” so it kind of took the emotion out of it. It’s often framed to us that this is a job, not involving your own emotions. So anyway, when you said that you might actually call it “empathy fatigue,” I was wondering if there’s a difference between that and compassion fatigue.
Rachel: Yeah, so I was drawing on the distinction I was making between the Pali words I’m translating here: Karuna5 for compassion and Anukampa6 for empathy. Anukampa is like the quivering of the heart in response to suffering, and Karuna is the desire for beings to be free from suffering. It’s Karuna that we are cultivating here. And so if you think of empathy as the being touched by suffering… The English word “compassion” is from the Latin roots that actually mean “suffering with.” And so if you’re doing a lot of suffering with somebody, yeah, that’s going to be fatiguing.
My point with all of these distinctions that I’m making is that there has to be the willingness to get close to suffering, but what we’re cultivating, what we’re strengthening, is this wish for beings to be free from suffering. Caregiver fatigue—yeah, anybody in a caregiving position has the potential to feel a lot of frustration if it seems like the situation they’re dealing with is intractable, or if the demands that are placed on them are just too great. Probably the manual at your workplace was trying to nudge you towards cultivating as much equanimity as possible, and we’re going to be talking about that next week.
When there’s this sense of solidification into “I am the one who fixes things, and you are the one who has a problem,” we lose equanimity. We tend to take on things that aren’t necessarily our burdens to carry, and that gets fatiguing really quick. So that’s my attempt to reconcile those different ways of talking about what compassion is and what can be its downfall.
Maybe just one other thing to say about compassion is that in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it’s seen as being the fundamental one of these four immeasurable qualities. And compassion is seen as being the highest treasure. If you lose compassion, you’ve lost everything.
There’s a really touching story of the Dalai Lama’s doctor, who was another monastic in Tibet. When the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet into India, his doctor wasn’t able to escape and was captured by the Chinese government and army. He was in prison for, I think it was 17 years. Finally, he escaped prison and made his way to India, where he was reunited with the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama was asking him about his experience in captivity and said, “Were you ever in danger?” “Oh yes, absolutely. Towards the end, I was in grave danger.” “Oh, so they were starting to torture you?” “No, no, they tortured me most days for most of my time in captivity. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I was starting to lose compassion for my captors. And so that was when I knew I was in danger, and I needed to find a way to get myself out of this situation.”
The Dalai Lama said, “Before his captivity, I thought he was a very ordinary kind of practitioner, and after this, I really had to revise my opinion of his practice.” But isn’t that amazing? Just to see one’s heart, the ability of one’s heart to stay oriented with compassion as being of greater significance than your physical safety. That’s just so inspiring to me.
There’s a quote from The Lord of the Rings: “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows, perhaps, the greater.”
The heart that is willing to connect with other beings, that can be touched by others’ suffering, is the heart that responds, the heart that cares. And when that caring heart encounters happiness, it responds with joy.
I want to do a demonstration of this. [Shares a video of a baby laughing hysterically while someone rips paper]. What was it like to see that baby laughing? It’s a natural process. When the heart that is willing to connect encounters well-being, however transient, whatever the source, as long as there’s a wholesomeness to it, it’s natural for the heart to be uplifted.
This quality of appreciative joy is related to gratitude. The heart that’s able to appreciate good conditions can take in goodness when it exists in our own life, and it can take in goodness when it exists in others’ lives. The Dalai Lama again says, “If you can make other people’s happiness your own, you increase your odds of happiness by 7 billion to one.” It’s pretty good odds.
With this heart quality, it’s the opposite of envy. One of the things that obstructs this ability of the heart to open into joy is a feeling of being threatened by other beings’ well-being. This feeling that, “Oh, if you have something, there must be less for me.” With certain material cases, like there’s only so many pieces of pie to go around, for example. But with more abstract qualities like happiness, it isn’t limited. There isn’t any real reason for that feeling of envy or threat to exist. So it’s an opportunity for us to just map the landscape of the heart. What is it like to have that obstruction to the heart’s responsiveness of joy?
That feeling of lack can arise when there’s this feeling of buying into a story about who I am, who you are, who we are with respect to each other. “I have less than you, you have more than me.” This sense of positioning ourselves and buying into these narratives about what it is to be me, what it is to be you. When we see that, we can get curious. Okay, so what would it be like to drop that narrative? What would it be like to step out of being the one who doesn’t have enough, just for this moment?
This feeling of “not enough”—so much of our economy relies on it, doesn’t it? There’s so many businesses that depend on us shopping our way to well-being. There’s a quote I’d like to share from a novel called Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Somebody who’s learning to do magic is alone in a tower with a wizard. She says:
Trying to cure my loneliness, I went down to the kitchens and made myself a small feast, just ham and kasha and stewed apples. When I put together the plate, it felt so plain and empty that for the first time I used a spell for myself, aching for something that felt like a celebration. The air shimmered, and suddenly I had a lovely platter of roast pork, hooted and pink and running with juice, my very favorite wheat porridge, a heap of brand-new fresh peas, and a cake that I’d only ever tasted once at the headwoman’s table, all of it glazed and shining with honey syrup. But it wasn’t midwinter dinner. There was no eager ache of hunger in my belly from the long day of cooking and cleaning. Without a pause, there was no joyful noise of too many people crammed in around the table, laughing and reaching for the platters. Looking down at my tiny feast only made me feel more desperately lonely. I thought of my mother cooking all along without even my clumsy pair of hands to help her, and my eyes were stinging when I put my untouched tray on my table.
I love how that quote encapsulates how we try to purchase an experience of connectedness. Having the flavors associated with a festive meal is not the same thing as having the human connection of a festive meal. When we’re buying into this view of self as disconnected or deficient or experiencing lack, there’s a deadening in the heart.
The aliveness of joy isn’t the same thing as having everything the way we want it to be. Joy can coexist with suffering. Many years ago, I was walking with my parents, and I was in a rush. My father needed to walk slowly because he’d hurt his foot. I was sort of feeling impatient and rushed, and he was using his physical pain and need to go slow as an opportunity to check out the gardens of the houses that we were going by and talking to the people that were in the gardens. He learned about several different kinds of roses just on that way to dinner. So physical pain, inconvenience, discomfort—these things can coexist with the heart that connects, the heart that delights, the heart that is uplifted by the natural world.
There are a few different kinds of joy that are worth touching on. One is integrity, the “bliss of blamelessness.” The Buddha describes this as the highest happiness that’s available to laypeople. Having the ability to look back on our past actions without remorse is such a beautiful support for our meditation practice. Having the ability to see your own past good actions helps the heart and mind to get happy, and a happy heart is one that’s able to settle in meditation.
There’s the joy of presence, the happiness of being all in one place. The mind that is not dispersed has a really exquisite kind of happiness there that is sometimes too subtle for us to notice. It might feel not so much like joy as like okayness or aliveness. Sensitivity is a way it can show up. Being touched by the natural world. In September, I spent a couple of weeks on retreat, and partway through, my mind felt really distracted. I was like, “Oh, am I even on retreat?” And then I walked outside and I saw a fern, and it was just so tender and soft that I started crying. I’m like, “Yeah, I’m crying over a fern. Okay, yeah, I’m on retreat.” If you’ve spent time on retreat, you know what I mean. There’s a sensitization of the heart that happens. You’re just so much more available for the beauty of the natural world.
Another form of joy that we can cultivate is contentment. There’s a quote from the writer Kurt Vonnegut, who was at a party with another distinguished writer at the house of somebody with absurdly large amounts of money. Kurt Vonnegut said to the other writer, “Wow, how do you feel knowing that this person makes more money in one minute than you’ve made from all the books that you’ve sold?” The other writer says, “You know, I have something that he’ll never have. I have the knowledge that I have enough.” Isn’t that amazing? Just the contentment, knowing that you’re okay with what you have.
Rebecca Solnit says, “Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. When you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”
Nick Cave says, “Joy is not always a feeling that is freely bestowed upon us. Often it’s something we must actively seek. In a way, joy is a decision, an action, even a practiced method of being. It is an earned thing, brought into focus by what we have lost.”
Leonard Bernstein says, “This will be our response to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters says something like, “Joy is expressed in music and something like it occurs in heaven, an acceleration of the rhythm of experience. Fun is closely related to joy, a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It promotes charity, courage, and contentment.”
The form of joy that I’m really supposed to be talking about today is Mudita7, which is appreciative joy. It’s taking delight in others’ good fortune. This doesn’t have to be other people enjoying the same things that you enjoy. As long as it’s something that is not intrinsically harmful, it’s appropriate to take joy in it.
I’ve got an acquaintance who likes to spend his time in a purpose-built shed in his backyard, making these really elaborate models of boats. He gets these kits that have all the parts to make a pirate ship or a historic ship of some kind, and then he’ll do extra research and figure out exactly how the rigging would have been set up. He gets really elaborate with this, and it takes pretty much all of his time. The result is quite impressive. There’s part of me that’s like, “Well, you could have been doing a lot of other things.” There can be an instinct towards judgment instead of joy at his enjoyment. But when I really stop and think about it, he’s not hurting anybody with what he’s doing, and it’s bringing him a lot of happiness. He’s using his ingenuity and persistence, and so why not take delight in his happiness?
This heart that delights in other people’s well-being helps to reaffirm the connection between us. After a retreat some years ago, some friends and I were walking along the beach in Santa Cruz. It’s a wonderful beach for surfers. A bunch of surfers all had gotten into position, and a big wave came along. They all came up onto the wave at the same time and were going along at a great rate of speed. Spontaneously, the whole group of us was like, “Wooo!” as we were watching them. It just felt so natural to be delighted by the delight that I was imagining those surfers would feel. It’s not that I personally ever have any desire to be on a surfboard for any reason whatsoever, but it’s just this sense of, “Oh wow, they’re probably finding it exhilarating to be doing what they’re doing right now.”
Some people argue that joy from this point of view is actually an easier doorway into connection for many of us than goodwill as such, because it’s just so natural to smile when you see kids playing with a dog, for example, or if you see friends laughing together. There’s a natural uplift. And in moments when there isn’t, that’s good information also. Envy is just another pointer to your own longings.
Our mindfulness practice is so important in this terrain of noticing the heart moving between joy and envy and judgment. If we’re not seeing that movement of the heart as something the heart is doing, it’s really easy to put it out onto other people. We make things complicated when we make our feelings other people’s problems.
This heart that is willing to entertain the possibility of taking delight in other people’s goodness—along the way, we are going to get to see the ways our heart shuts down and doesn’t take delight in others’ well-being. That gives us information about what in our own hearts needs tending to.
In addition to delighting in other people’s current well-being, it’s also helpful to broaden the scope of the causes of joy further and take delight in goodness. In the Tibetan tradition, a phrase for expressing goodwill is, “May you have happiness and the cause of happiness,” which is virtue. So when we see others acting with patience or kindness or generosity, it’s really appropriate for our hearts to be uplifted, for us to take delight in their well-being. Because that’s the case, it’s always going to be possible to find causes of joy, even in very challenging situations. In natural disasters, in situations of conflict, there’s always going to be people doing their best to help. Being able to let the heart be uplifted by the goodness of others means that even in situations where there’s a lot of difficulty, a lot of heaviness, there can still also be joy.
When there’s the poignancy of suffering and also the uplift of joy, it’s easier for the heart to stay in balance. There’s a quote by the medieval Tibetan teacher Longchenpa: “Out of the fertile soil of goodwill grows the beautiful flower of compassion, watered by tears of joy and shaded by the great tree of equanimity.” To see compassion as a beautiful flower that needs the moistening, the vivification of joy to stay whole, alive, to stay nourished—that makes a lot of sense to me also.
Let’s give this a try. Let’s do some meditation practice. We’ll sit for about half an hour. Just check in with the body, see what posture feels appropriate for you right now. If it’s been a really long day and you’re tired, you might want to stand up. If the body is really uncomfortable, you might want to lie down. And if you’re sitting, just see if there can be a sense of inner uprightness as well as ease.
As you’re settling in, bring to mind somebody who it’s really easy for you to delight in their happiness. For me, this is my brother. He’s got a very happy temperament, so it’s easy to imagine him being happy. He has challenges in his life, but he has a lot of good things going on. He spent the weekend hiking with his kids. I know how much he likes doing that, and thinking of him hiking with his kids, it’s just an automatic smile that comes to my face.
So think of somebody who, when you think of their happiness, you just start smiling. Maybe this is somebody close to you, maybe it’s somebody you’ve read about. It’s not so important that they be a big part of your life; it’s just easy to feel happy at their happiness. Maybe it’s that baby in the video I showed.
Imagine that being in front of you with a smile on their face. Just notice how your heart feels as you bring their image to mind. You might offer them a phrase that expresses this feeling of delight in the heart. The traditional phrase is, “May your happiness and good fortune continue. May they increase and never wane.” Or you might try something simpler, like, “I’m happy that you’re happy.”
Letting the heart rest in this feeling of connecting with their happiness, noticing what it’s like if there’s a feeling of uplift, lightness. Just notice that. Dropping in words or phrases whenever it feels appropriate. “Dear one, I’m happy that you’re happy.”
Just like we can appreciate what’s going well for this happy person, we can appreciate the things that are going well in our own lives. Just reflecting: today, I had enough health to participate in this event tonight. I probably have somewhere warm to sleep. There are people in my life who appreciate me. I’ve got clean running water. Just not taking for granted any dimension of our well-being or happiness. Maybe just dropping in a simple phrase like, “I appreciate my good fortune.” As we familiarize the heart with the quality of gratitude, appreciation.
Sometimes when we start thinking about things in our life that are going well, the mind can also present us with a list of things that are not going well. Just letting that go for right now, deliberately orienting the attention towards things that are going well. Inviting the mind to let go of any stories about any of it. In this kind of meditation, we’re using concepts and reflections as a means to an end, just bringing in enough of a concept to point the heart in a particular direction, trying to avoid stirring up the mind with a lot of stories about how our lives are. Just really simple: “I appreciate my good fortune.”
As we continue to map the terrain of the heart, you could bring to mind your benefactor, a dear friend, someone you care about a lot. Their life probably has areas of challenge and areas of ease. For right now, bring to mind whatever is going well for your dear person. I’ve got a dear friend who’s got a family member with a very difficult health situation right now, but she finds a lot of joy in nature. So when I’m using her in this practice, I imagine her sitting under a beautiful tree, knowing how much that would uplift her heart. So, “My dear one, may your happiness and good fortune continue. May they increase and never wane.” “I’m happy that you’re happy.”
Noticing what the heart feels like, inviting the possibility of Mudita with this dear person.
Continuing to map the terrain of the heart, bring to mind a neutral person. Maybe somebody that you saw in passing, playing with a dog, having fun with a small child. Sometimes a really uncomplicated Mudita can arise with strangers just enjoying themselves. “May your happiness and good fortune continue. May they increase and never wane.” Notice how the heart feels as you turn the attention to the joy of this neutral person. Sometimes with a neutral person, there’s a need for a little bit more intentionality around dropping in phrases or sustaining their image. It might or might not be the case for you right now.
If you’re up for a challenge, you could bring to mind a difficult person, in the sense of somebody you’ve had conflict with. For today, pick somebody you’ve had a pretty minor conflict with, or maybe somebody you don’t like just for no good reason. Imagine them enjoying some kind of wholesome happiness, again, perhaps playing with a dog or a small child. See if it’s possible to extend the same wishes of Mudita to them. “May your happiness and good fortune continue. May they increase and never wane.” See how the heart feels as you entertain that possibility.
If you’re up for an Olympic-level challenge, you could bring to mind somebody who has something you want, somebody who does challenge that feeling of lack in you. See if it’s possible for the heart to be uplifted by their happiness. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but you won’t know unless you try. “I’m happy that you’re happy. May your happiness and good fortune continue. May they increase and never wane.” Just notice what the heart feels like right now.
You could imagine these six people all standing together: the happy person, yourself, your benefactor, the neutral person, and these two different difficult people. “May all of our good fortune continue. May it increase and never wane.” Notice what the heart feels like as you offer that wish to the group of the six of you.
Letting go of those imagined individuals and letting the heart expand out to all humans. Every human being, they have suffering, but they also have joy. “I’m happy that they’re happy. May their happiness continue.”
All animals also have moments of delight. “May the happiness of all animals continue.”
There are some beings who have happiness from things that make sense to me. “May their happiness continue.” There are some beings who draw happiness from things that don’t make sense to me. “May their wholesome happiness continue.”
There are beings who are experiencing happiness right now. “I rejoice in their happiness.” There are beings who are creating the conditions for future happiness through their patience or generosity or kindness, truthfulness, determination. “I delight in their future happiness.”
Letting the heart rest in the vastness of gladness.
Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
They don’t publish the good news. The good news is published by us. We have a special edition every moment, and we need you to read it. The good news is that you are alive, and the linden tree is still there, standing firm in the harsh winter. The good news is that you have wonderful eyes to touch the blue sky. The good news is that your child is there before you, and your arms are available: hugging is possible. They only print what is wrong. Look at each of our special editions. We always offer the things that are not wrong. We want you to benefit from them and help protect them. The dandelion is there by the sidewalk, smiling its wondrous smile, singing the song of eternity. Listen! You have ears that can hear it. Bow your head. Listen to it. Leave behind the world of sorrow and preoccupation and get free. The latest good news is that you can do it.
As we come to the end of this period of formal practice, wishing to all beings hearts that are free from stinginess, free from envy, free from any kind of withholding from life.
In this last period of our time together, I’d really like to invite questions or responses. Via chat is great. If you’re up for being recorded, you’re welcome to unmute and speak into the group as well.
Maybe I’ll just also share a couple of thoughts about these categories of beings that I was just offering in this practice. Starting out with somebody whose happiness is very easy for you to be uplifted by. One thing I should have mentioned before we got started is in these practices of Metta, compassion, and joy, it’s best to pick people who you have uncomplicated relationships with. So a parent or a child or a partner—there can be a lot of tenderness or uplift there, but there’s also often more complicated things. At minimum, a sense of attachment. I think I might have said a few weeks ago, the wish of Metta is, “May you be happy,” and the wish of attachment is, “I can’t stand it if you’re not happy.” It’s equanimity that creates enough space for Metta to not become attachment, and similarly for joy to not become a demand that good fortune continues. Our nearest and dearest are often most appropriate people to work with in the context of the formal practice of equanimity rather than the other Brahma Viharas. They’re going to be there in our practice in the category of “all beings,” so it’s not like they’re going to be left out.
When we’re turning toward ourself with this practice of gratitude folded into this practice of appreciative joy, this is not a traditional thing to do. If you went to a monastery in Burma and were learning this practice, they would tell you not to include yourself. My opinion is that a lot of Western teachers do include oneself in various ways in this practice, and I think that’s a useful thing to do because so many of us are just so oriented to what’s lacking, to what we’re getting wrong, to feelings of threat, to comparing with other people who have more. Remembering what’s going well is just really good medicine for that particular kind of being out of balance. It’s not a matter of trying to feel a certain way, like putting on a happy face. It’s just remembering, “Right, there are areas of challenge in my life, and there are some pretty basic things that are going right. Let me not miss that.”
When aversion is in the mind, it creates a kind of tunnel vision. It predisposes us to see only what’s wrong. And once we’re seeing what’s wrong, that tends to strengthen the quality of aversion. It’s a self-reinforcing thing. Aversion can manifest as anger or fear or shame, self-blame, just this inner sense of hostility and not-rightness. One way of breaking out of that tunnel vision is just with this remembering what else is true, deliberately broadening out the scope of the awareness. Deliberately reminding oneself of things that are going right can help to undercut this lens of inner hostility that we look at ourselves with so often. Using this practice to overwrite any feelings of lack or shame or self-judgment that we’re carrying around is such an unburdening.
When we’re turning toward a difficult person who’s difficult because we’ve had some kind of conflict, as with both Metta and compassion, it’s really helpful to remind yourself, “How much easier would things be between me and this person who stresses me out if we were both truly content?” It just makes sense for me to wish them true happiness and contentment. They would be so much easier to get along with if they didn’t have a feeling of lack in their own lives.
The practice of cultivating Mudita towards somebody who has something you want is a very traditional one. Some of my teachers have shared stories about going to Burma and having a Sayadaw tell them, “Okay, think of the person you feel most competitive with. Now imagine all of the people whose opinion you value the most crowding around your difficult person and praising them and showering them with gifts and attention and telling them how wonderful they are. Could you delight in that person’s good fortune in that moment?” That’s kind of Olympic-level Mudita practice.
Jillian: Rachel, in seeing as there aren’t hundreds of questions being thrown at you, I just wanted to take this moment to express my huge appreciation of how in doing these guided meditations, you brought goodwill to ourselves into it at each level. Because I so connect with this sense of inadequacy which so many Westerners are brought up with. My therapist this morning referred to my “Catholic guilt.” And it’s just so hard to undermine that. Even having sort of accepted the Buddhist teachings, that sense of inadequacy just sort of seems to go on sitting there. So thank you for this orientation. It’s beautiful, really appreciate it.
Rachel: Thanks for that, Jillian. One of my friends calls herself a “cultural Catholic”: all of the guilt, none of the redemption. For those of us who grew up in a different religious tradition or no religious tradition, if we grew up in mainstream Western culture with its extreme individualism… there are pluses and minuses to every way that humans organize their cultures. The plus of a very individualistic culture is you’re free to find your own space and express yourself in creative ways. The minus is that you’re never quite sure if you’re doing it right. It’s not any one of us; it’s just what this culture trains us in.
For me, the number one thing in overwriting that is Bodhicitta8. After my first long retreat, I just started a new job and I was feeling kind of unsettled. I was walking down a hallway and noticing I was getting really uptight. I realized the underlying attitude in my mind was, “Am I walking down this hallway right?” The moment I articulated it, it’s like, how could I walk down the hallway wrong? But that was the tension I was holding in my body. I was still feeling really uplifted by the teachings I’d gotten on that retreat about Bodhicitta, the heart-mind of awakening, this basic intention that any action I undertake, may I undertake it for the benefit of all beings.
So I was like, okay, it doesn’t make sense to say, “Am I walking down this hallway right?” It also doesn’t make sense to say, “May I walk down this hallway for the benefit of all beings,” but what if I were to try that on? So I just dropped that in: “May I walk down this hallway for the benefit of all.” And like, “Oh, yeah, that wow, okay.” It just sort of takes me out of the frame. It doesn’t matter if I’m doing it right if I’m doing it for the benefit of all beings. That’s a way of aligning with my desire to be of service. This is the wholesome side of this self-judgment, “Am I doing this right?” There is a beauty there. It’s like, “Well, I want to be helpful and not harmful.” The basic attitude of Bodhicitta takes what’s beautiful about that and drops the becoming, the self who is getting it right. It’s like, “No, may I be of service. May service be done.” Who it is who’s doing it isn’t so important. It sure happens to be me, but whatever, right? So just putting that out there. I feel like that’s maybe the fifth Brahma Vihara or something, or maybe the zeroth Brahma Vihara, because of the way that it unites the heart that cares with the wisdom of, “It’s not all about me.” My life is just an offering; it’s not something I’m getting right.
Jillian: That’s lovely. It’s not something I’m getting right or I’m getting wrong.
Rachel: Exactly. The fact that it’s me doing it is kind of neither here nor there. Sure, it’s important because this is where I have agency, but adding any sense of “I am the one who is getting this,” that’s just extra. I could just opt out of that part.
Any last thoughts before we wrap up?
Okay, well, maybe taking a moment to gather up all of the merit or benefit that’s come from this session today, from your determination to show up and your persistence in sticking with it, and any moments of tranquility or ease that have happened. Gather those all up and give them away. Offer them up to all beings everywhere. May practice be for the benefit of all beings. May all beings be free.
Thank you for your practice, everyone.
Dukkha: A Pali word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It refers to the fundamental unsatisfactoriness and pain inherent in mortal life. ↩
Venerable Analayo: A German-born Buddhist monk, scholar, and meditation teacher. He is best known for his comparative studies of early Buddhist texts. ↩
Tonglen: A Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice which means “giving and taking” (or sending and receiving). It involves breathing in the suffering of others and breathing out happiness and relief to them. ↩
Brahma Viharas: The four “divine abodes” or “immeasurables” in Buddhism: Metta (loving-kindness), Karuna (compassion), Mudita (sympathetic joy), and Upekkha (equanimity). ↩
Karuna: The Pali word for “compassion.” It is the desire for all beings to be free from suffering. ↩
Anukampa: The Pali word for “empathy” or “sympathy.” It refers to the heart’s quivering or being moved by the suffering of others. ↩
Mudita: The Pali word for “sympathetic” or “appreciative joy.” It is the quality of taking delight in the happiness and good fortune of others. ↩
Bodhicitta: A key concept in Mahayana Buddhism, it is the mind that strives toward awakening, empathy, and compassion for the benefit of all sentient beings. ↩