This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Six Principles of Goodwill - 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.
For today, I want to tell you a story and also offer you the teachings the Buddha gave for the monks at Kosambi1. It had to do with a conflict there. We sometimes might naively think that the Buddha was such a great, wonderful teacher that there couldn’t have been any conflict among his disciples in his time. Everyone must have been floating on clouds and gotten along really well. But, just because of human nature, there were definitely conflicts within his monastic community, even in his own lifetime and in the monastery where he was living.
This happened in a town called Kosambi, and it had to do with a very minor monastic rule. It’s so minor that you think, “Is this really worth the level of conflict that arose?” They had an outhouse, and the way that people cleaned themselves, because they didn’t have toilet paper back then, was they used water. They had these dippers for dipping water, and it was very important not to leave any water in the dipper when you were finished, maybe because of mosquitoes or some other reason.
There was someone who was an expert in the monastic rules; some monks specialized in this. This expert was accused of having left some water in his dipper. [Laughter] And so, he insisted he hadn’t done that, while other people insisted he did. This created two factions in the monastery: those against him and those for him. They couldn’t reach an agreement, and eventually, the majority voted to expel him from the monastery. But that created even more conflict.
There was all this arguing, and the Buddha was there in the monastery. He said, “Cool it, you should get along and let go of this.” But they said to him something like, “Just leave us alone, venerable sir, we’ll take care of this.” They didn’t even listen to the Buddha.
So, they continued to argue, and it was noisy in the monastery. The Buddha had tried to intervene, but they didn’t listen to him, so he left. He just went off to go someplace else. But then the townspeople got wind that the Buddha wasn’t there and that there was this conflict, so they stopped supporting the monks there. Support means feeding them, because monks don’t cook; they can’t even keep food overnight. They’re not allowed to store food, so every day they’re dependent on what’s offered to them as they go for alms. When people stopped feeding them, that got their attention. Eventually, they started to starve.
So, they went to the Buddha to apologize and say, “Please forgive us and please come back.” He came back, but they were still a little bit challenged by it all.
The text describes it this way: “On that occasion, the monks at Kosambi had taken to quarreling and brawling and were deep in disputes, stabbing each other with verbal daggers.” This was serious. “They could neither convince each other nor be convinced by others. They could neither persuade each other nor be persuaded by others.” They were at a standstill.
The Buddha called them to him and asked, “Monks, is it true that you have taken to quarreling and brawling and are deep in dispute, stabbing each other with verbal daggers?” Being monks, they were supposed to be honest, so they said, “Yes, venerable sir.”
Then the Buddha said, “Monks, what do you think? When you are quarreling and brawling and deep in disputes, stabbing each other with verbal daggers, do you on that occasion maintain acts of loving kindness by body, speech, and mind, in public and in private, towards your companions in the holy life?”
That’s a beautiful expression, asking them—and we can ask ourselves that. People quarrel in families, in communities, at work, in politics. A whole nation can be at a standstill, with verbal daggers for each other. It’s not uncommon that we get into these standstills around tension and problems. So, what do you think? When you’re in opposition with other people for whatever reason, are you stabbing each other with verbal daggers, or do you on that occasion maintain acts of loving kindness by body, speech, and mind, in public and in private, towards your fellow citizens?
It’s a call to always have goodwill. Whether this word metta2 should be translated as “loving kindness” or not is an open question. For some people, loving kindness is a little bit too high a bar, a little bit too idealistic, and maybe unrealistic. But goodwill is perhaps more realistic. You can always have goodwill, even for your enemies. You can wish them well, because then maybe they’ll treat you better.
This is a very important teaching of the Buddha: to always maintain loving kindness. One reason is that it is the antidote to ill will, and ill will harms the person who has it. Why would you want to harm yourself? That’s one of the remarkable things that happens through this practice. As we settle into ourselves more and more deeply in the present moment, become more embodied, more connected to ourselves in a deep way, we become acutely sensitive to the ways that we harm ourselves by what we do with our mind, our speech, and our body. We become acutely aware of the tension that builds up, the way we close down, the way that we do something that feels like violence to ourselves by having hate, by having greed, in all directions, including towards ourselves and others. We feel how we’re harming ourselves.
And why would you harm yourself? That’s the big question in Buddhism. When you have really settled deeply into yourself, really connected and sensitive to what’s happening—which is a hard thing to come to because we’re so distracted, so busy chasing after things and thinking about important things that we’re often somewhat alienated from ourselves. This deep connection provides us with important information about how we self-harm. It’s remarkably powerful to see this, and it goes against the grain of how we normally think, when we spend a lot of time blaming other people or the world or the weather.
As we get more deeply connected, we can feel the movements of ill will, greed, ambition, and even anxiety and doubt—how they begin to twist something inside, or close something, or irritate something, harming something inside. To discover that goodwill is not something we have to do, but is what is left when ill will has gone away—that’s a treasure to discover.
So for the Buddha, he put a lot of emphasis on the importance of goodwill and loving kindness. He starts by addressing the monks who are quarreling: “When you’re quarreling, do you have goodwill?” And being committed to being honest, they said, “No, venerable sir.”
Then he goes on and says, “Well, when you’re quarreling and brawling in this way, what can you possibly know? What can you see that makes you take to quarreling and brawling? What is it that you have insight into or see clearly? What’s triggering you? What do you value that’s so important you want to quarrel and brawl?” It’s a request to look deeply at what is going on in you at that time. He adds, “If you keep living this way, it will lead to your harm and suffering for a long time.”
I’m struck by how many huge conflicts we’ve had in our world over the last hundred or two hundred years, and we’re still living in the legacy of them. The harm that was done by these major wars continues to this day. My parents-in-law were in the concentration camps in Germany, so I knew them until they died, and I knew the impact of that. I think my father-in-law died about 11 years ago, and right up to the day he died, I know that the effects of being in those camps were still with him. The people who went through the Armenian genocide in the 1910s and 20s are still living with it. We’re still in this country living with the challenges of the Civil War. Some people would argue that the violence that happened during the American Revolution is still with us in some deep way, that it wasn’t all good. That act of violence was horrible, and there could have been another way, like how Canada got its independence.
This idea of being connected to ourselves and this value of loving kindness instead of violence, instead of hate, is one the Buddha was championing.
Then the Buddha addressed the monks thus: “There are these six memorable qualities that create love and respect, and conduce to helpfulness, to non-dispute, to concord, and to unity. What are the six?”
These memorable qualities are sometimes called the “six principles of cordiality,” which seems a little bit dry. One translator calls them the “six principles of good-heartedness.” Someone else tried to translate it as the “six principles of amiability.” When’s the last time you said “amiable”? But I love this idea that they create love and respect, conduce to helpfulness, to non-dispute, to concord, and to unity. This is one of the primary principles of Buddhism: don’t create divisiveness; look to see how you can create concord and unity. There can be conflict, there can be differences of opinion, but how do we live in conflict, how do we live in challenges with loving kindness, looking for how we can come together rather than be torn apart? We’re always going to have differences of opinion. Does that have to tear us apart? For the Buddha, no.
So, there are six principles, and three of them have to do with this goodwill. The idea is to do them in public and in private. I think “private” means so no one knows about it. Isn’t that nice? You don’t have to get any credit. Maybe it’s even better to do acts of kindness, of love, of care, without anybody necessarily knowing that you’re doing it.
Maintain bodily acts of loving kindness, both in public and in private, towards one’s companions in the holy life. This is a memorable quality that creates love, respect, and conduces to helpfulness, to non-dispute, to concord, and to unity. That’s the first principle. Do things with your body: make a gift, cook a meal and offer it to a friend.
Maintain verbal acts of loving kindness, both in public and in private.
Maintain mental acts of loving kindness, both in public and in private. I don’t know what a mental act in public would be versus private. Maybe it means that when you’re out and about in society, you should just have thoughts of goodwill. And “private” maybe means when you’re meditating, when you’re alone, think well about people then too.
Share what you have without reservation. A monastic uses things in common with their virtuous companions in the holy life without making reservations. One shares with them any gain of any kind that accords with the dharma and has been obtained in a way that accords with the dharma, including even the contents of their bowl. That means the food they get. The fourth way that is conducive to loving kindness and good-heartedness is to share without reservations what you have, even the contents of your bowl of food. That’s quite something, because they only get one meal a day, and you’re just lucky if you get enough food. Even if you don’t have enough food, share with those who have even less. The principle is to always be sharing.
Live ethically in a way that is unblemished. A monastic dwells, both in public and in private, possessing in common with her companions in the holy life those virtues that are unbroken, unblotched, unmottled, liberating, commended by the wise, and conducive to concentration. Here, there’s a call to be ethical, to live by the precepts, to live with the virtues in a way that is unblemished, that is just kind of a pure-hearted connection to being ethical. This was a huge surprise for me when I started doing this insight practice for the first time in Thailand. I kind of stumbled into it and didn’t quite know what I was getting involved in. My first introduction to this practice was on a 10-week retreat. That was long enough to get my attention. One of the surprising things that happened in the course of those 10 weeks was I got so settled and so connected to myself, so at peace with myself, that there was very little inner conflict present anymore. I started to feel something inside which, according to my earlier life based on principle, I wouldn’t have appreciated. I didn’t trust words like “purity.” But I started feeling this amazing sense of purity within. And I could feel that if I had certain thoughts that were not so pure, how it was a kind of violence or how it darkened or colored or shut down this place of purity that felt so healthy and good. It felt like home. So this idea of virtue which is unblotched, unbroken in ourselves, it’s quite a remarkable experience to have as a reference point for how to live a life. Here it’s called liberating. I wasn’t liberated spiritually in the deep Buddhist sense during that 10-week retreat, but I certainly felt free from a lot of the inner conflict, the way that greed and hatred were a kind of loss of freedom because they become compulsions that are difficult to put down. They kind of drive us. So there’s a kind of freedom from living with a deep sense of virtue. But the most surprising thing about this description is it ends with the virtue that is “conducive for concentration.” In order to be able to sit in deep states of meditation, to have this deep connection to oneself, this deep feeling of wholeness, virtue is essential. You can’t be unethical and expect to become whole in the way that concentration makes you whole. There’s a safety mechanism built into this: any attempt to live an ethical life that makes you more agitated, that somehow takes away your capacity to get deeply settled, is probably not going to be ethical. A few people think they’re living an ethical life, but underneath it there is hostility, hatred, fear, anxiety, shame, embarrassment, guilt—all these complicated things that don’t help concentration, that don’t help for this deep sense of peace that concentration can provide. To connect ethics with concentration, I think, is a wonderful safeguard so that our ethics is really the right kind.
Hold a view that is liberating. A monastic dwells, both in public and in private, possessing in common with her companions in the holy life that view, that perspective, that is noble and liberating and leads one who practices in accordance with it to the complete destruction of suffering. This too is a memorable quality that creates love and respect, conduces to helpfulness, to non-dispute, to concord, and to unity. This is what Buddhism is directed towards: something in you that is conducive to love and respect, to being helpful, to non-dispute, to concord, and to unity. Is that so bad? Over and over again, this is what the Buddha is pointing towards as a possibility. I think it’s really useful not to forget this, that this is the orientation or the litmus test for practice and for Buddhist teachings. How does it support our ability to do these things? How not to succumb to ill will? How to live with goodwill? How to live with a kind of virtue or ethics that is conducive to your own well-being, that is conducive to concentration? And virtue is really good for the world around us. If you live ethically, the only people who might suffer a lot are the newspapers and the news channels, because most of the news is about people being unethical. And then sharing with others, this fourth quality. And now there’s something about a view, a perspective that’s liberating, that frees us, that also creates goodwill, helpfulness, and unity. We create a view that frees us from greed and hatred, frees us from the kind of clinging and resistance, the obsessiveness and compulsivity which gets in the way of goodwill, gets in the way of caring for our community, gets in the way of caring for the people who we disagree with.
I don’t think that this teaching here is about monks not disagreeing over a monastic rule. Rules are difficult to interpret and understand. But even if you have a disagreement, never give up your loving kindness. Hopefully, what I’m about to quote, we can understand is said in an exaggerated way to really stress how important it is. The Buddha said, “Even if bandits are sawing off your limbs, maintain goodwill.”
There was an Indian teacher named Munindra-ji. When some of the Westerners went to practice with him in the 1960s, I think there was a woman who was accosted publicly in the street. I think she fought off the person but got cut. She went to the man and said, “What should I do if I get accosted on the streets?” And he said, “With all the loving kindness you can muster, hit the person over the head with your umbrella.” [Laughter]
But that goes along with one of the rules the monastics are supposed to live by. One of the rules is that they’re not allowed to hit anyone, to strike anyone, to physically fight with them. But there is one exception. They’re allowed to strike out against someone with two requirements: they have to do it with loving kindness in their hearts, they have to have goodwill, they cannot have ill will for someone when they do it. And second, they do it only for the purposes of escaping them. So you don’t have to stand there and just not do anything if someone’s hitting you or attacking you. You’re allowed to do what it takes to escape, but there has to be goodwill. And that’s a high bar, right? I mean, how many people can do that when they’re caught in their fear?
But it is possible. I’ve known deep practitioners who have been in situations, like being robbed at gunpoint, and they somehow knew how to not succumb to fear, not to succumb to ill will. They were surprised themselves by what came out of them that settled the situation. One friend of mine looked at the person and said, “Your mother would be ashamed of you,” and that was enough. Another person was out in the desert, and this man accosted her with a gun. It wasn’t going to be a good scene. And she said, “You’re no Christian. Give me that gun.” And that was enough. Then she threw it in the bushes and ran. I’m not suggesting any of these things as a strategy, but somehow they knew what to do in the moment that settled it.
So, the six principles of goodwill, six principles that lead to love and respect, to unity and concord, begin with loving kindness in body, speech, and mind, publicly and privately. They include sharing, generosity, giving, even down to your last food in your own bowl, without reservations. And then virtue, and it’s not just any old virtue, but the ethics that really does something to your heart, to your inner life, so that when you sit down to meditate, it’s easy for you to get settled, to get concentrated. And then to have a view, a perspective that understands that clinging to anything, grasping to anything, craving anything is harmful. The purpose of the practice is to let go of that clinging, to let go of all craving and clinging. And it’s those people who have no clinging and craving for whom it becomes second nature to live with goodwill, to live with caring for people, to be helpful for this world, to be concerned with the welfare and happiness of everyone, the unity, the concord that we can live in.
It’s a high bar. It’s not easy when there’s so much divisiveness in our society and so much is at stake, and so much harm can get done. There are a lot of tempting reasons to succumb to hostile anger, a lot of reasons to succumb to fear and anxiety and distress. And the Buddha was teaching something else for us. I find it tremendously inspiring and encouraging. He was teaching that, in some sense, the world begins with you. If you want to live in a better world, begin with yourself. Live with goodwill, publicly and privately. Live with sharing, not with hoarding. Live with virtue, with ethics, not with causing harm in any way through your behavior. And understand something profound about a perspective that frees you from all intentional harm-making, any greed and hatred that causes harm to yourself and to others. Live with a view that it is possible to be free, it is possible to have profound peace at heart, to be transformed into someone who lives for the welfare and happiness of the world, not because they should, but because it becomes who we are.
So, thank you. Those people in the ancient world, how could they live in conflict with each other? Shouldn’t they have known better, at the time of the Buddha? We certainly know better now, don’t we? One of the things that disturbed me about watching things like Star Trek when I was younger—it was supposed to happen hundreds of years into the future—I was so struck by how ethically naive they were. I was so surprised that in a few hundred years, we hadn’t become ethically and psychologically sophisticated and capable of caring for each other in a deep, profound way.
Anyway, we live in this world where these teachings are so important, and maybe we’ll always need them. Six principles of goodwill. So, thank you.
Kosambi: An ancient city in India, which was the capital of the Vatsa kingdom, one of the sixteen mahajanapadas. It was a significant location during the time of the Buddha and is mentioned in many Buddhist texts. ↩
Metta: A Pali word often translated as “loving-kindness,” “friendliness,” “goodwill,” or “benevolence.” It is one of the ten perfections (paramis) of the Theravada Buddhist tradition and the first of the four sublime states (Brahma-viharas). ↩