This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video “Buddhist Perspectives on Conflict and Non Conflict” with Andrea Fella (2 of 2). It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Andrea Fella at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
So, I wanted to start by just recapping a little bit from last week, and then we’ll go into a little bit of a practice after that, a little bit of a meditative practice.
Last week, we mostly explored seeing how conflict comes to be, noticing the patterns and habits of our own mind and how conflict arises. The Buddhist teaching really points to conflict being a state of mind—conditioned, constructed. And so we looked a lot at the conditioned nature of conflict and how we condition each other. When conflict arises, it’s often from different perspectives, different views.
We talked a lot about how views are created and that holding to views tightly is one of the primary ways that conflict arises. I think we understand this almost intuitively, that different views and perspectives are the ground out of which conflict often arises. So we explored a little bit of the Buddhist understanding of views and how they are created. We talked about papañca1, the process of mind. A broader understanding of papañca is not just a lot of thought or proliferating mental activity, but also the way in which our mind will reify or solidify, taking what we are experiencing to be what is actually reality, as opposed to understanding that what we are experiencing is something constructed in our own mind.
That, combined with the views that are developed through our experience, solidifies our perspectives: “My way is right, I’m right, they’re wrong.” And that’s a place where conflict often arises. So we looked at all of those processes from the perspective of how the Buddhist teachings explore and understand them. One of the ways that we can really start to navigate conflict is through understanding how it happens, understanding its roots, and understanding the processes in our own minds that contribute to it.
Seeing that these processes are universal is key. The ways that our own minds create these tendencies to hold on to things, these tendencies towards liking things and wanting them to be a certain way, or not liking things and wanting to get rid of them—these are human tendencies. Seeing these tendencies in our own experience helps us understand that this is universal. We are all doing this. As we see our own views as constructed, we understand that others also have their own constructed views. As we see how we reify and hold on tightly to our own views, we understand others are doing the same thing. This gives us some understanding of how conflict happens.
In my experience, as we see and understand how our own hearts and minds work and recognize this is human, compassion for the human predicament is a natural outcome. It is a result of the investigation into how our minds work. I remember that time of just seeing, “Wow, yeah, this mind has the seeds of war in it. No wonder there’s so much mess in the world.” It was a feeling of compassion for the nature of how we are as humans and what it has created.
There’s also a recognition that understanding the state of things, understanding what is actually here and how it has come to be, can create the conditions for us to respond rather than react in our habitual ways out of greed, aversion, delusion, confusion, views, and habits. This was the quote I brought in a number of times, which I put again in the handout, and I’ll read it again because I think it’s a lovely quote and points to a lot of what I’m trying to get across. From Buddha Recognizes Buddha by Daishin Morgan:
To accept means to receive what is offered. Circumstances of life give rise to conditions and our acceptance of these conditions is just the acceptance of things as they are. What is not meant by the idea of acceptance is any agreement or disagreement with the way things are. Acceptance is about basing ourselves in reality, not about making judgments of liking and disliking, of agreement or disagreeing. To accept the situation is to be grounded in the actual state of things without getting lost in ideals or fantasies of how we would like it to be. We then have a good basis from which to see what action may be called for. Acceptance does not imply inertia. On the contrary, to be grounded in reality gives rise to a true response.
This points to the possibility of seeing the nature of our minds, seeing the nature of how conflict arises, and responding from wisdom, compassion, and equanimity, as opposed to from greed, aversion, and delusion. This is the direction that the Buddha’s teachings on conflict aim us in. The first thing we have to do is be grounded in reality, as Daishin Morgan says. We have to be grounded in understanding. And that’s a lot of what we talked about last week: understanding our own processes of mind, understanding how conflict comes to be, understanding what’s happening for ourselves, for others, for both.
In our mindfulness and meditative practice, we often look at reactivity when it’s happening. We try to be present with it to understand how it’s affecting us, to investigate what’s going on in our bodies and minds, and to see some of the processes at work. Often, in the midst of daily life where conflict arises, this is a challenge. We’re right in the midst of it, and things are happening very quickly.
However, there are some meditative tools. There’s a practice of reflection which allows us to use the understanding that when thoughts arise in the mind, they affect us. We know this intuitively. When a conflict we’re having with somebody were to arise in our mind unbidden, we might find ourselves in a loop of thoughts, emotions, and reactions. Yet, we can use the understanding that when thoughts arise, they tend to create emotions and responses in our physical body, in our hearts, and in our minds, to reflect consciously by bringing something to mind.
When we explore bringing something to mind consciously, perhaps at a later time in the day when we have some space, we can investigate. In the midst of our day, things are happening quite quickly, and we may not have time to check in: “Well, how is my body? What are the motivations here? What’s the intention underlying this? What’s being believed?” We may not have the space to do that in the moment. Yet later in the day, perhaps we do have some time when there’s a little more settledness, a little more capacity to actually meet what happens when those thoughts come up.
We can use this understanding to reflect mindfully. I learned this practice from a monastic, Ajahn Amaro2, a number of years ago. It’s a general tool, not only useful for looking at difficulty or exploring conflict. It’s a way to bring in a topic or a theme and see how it lands, how it feels in our present moment experience.
We’ll explore this together. Pick some conflict perhaps that you’ve had over the last couple of weeks. We’ll start with a little bit of settling. This is what Ajahn Amaro suggested: start with settling the mind. Then you bring in what you’d like to reflect on, what you’d like to contemplate mindfully, kind of dropping that theme or scenario into the mind. He used the analogy of a pool. If you have a pool that has settled a little bit, when you drop a pebble into that pond, it will create ripples. Likewise, when we drop a theme or a thought into our minds when there’s a little bit of settledness, we can be available to notice what the ripples are—the emotions, the reactions that arise.
So let’s settle in for five minutes or so. Just let yourself settle in a way that works for you, perhaps connecting with the breath or the body, or perhaps a receptive, open awareness. Whatever is your way in to allowing the mind to settle and let go.
Gently connecting with whatever is happening in your present moment with an attitude of allowing what is here. If you’re attending to the breath, allowing the breath to be as it is, just noticing, “How is this breath?” If you’re attending to the body, “How is the body right now?” Receiving, exploring the perspective of allowing, not needing to agree or disagree with the experience. It is the way it is.
And now, I’d like to invite you to bring to mind an event of the last week or so in which there was some conflict. I’ll give you a minute or so to reflect back and just pick one time to settle on a conflict experience that you had. It doesn’t have to be the biggest thing, just sometime when there was a tension between you and another person.
Settling with one experience, one conflict, allow yourself to call up that experience fully in your mind. You can use imagination to do this, remembering details of where you were, what you were saying, what the other person was doing and saying. While you’re creating this recollection in your mind, be aware of how it’s affecting you now. You will likely be experiencing moods and emotions that are similar to what happened at the time. Check into your bodily experience, your emotions.
Explore holding the imagination of the experience and being connected with how you are now. The intention here is not to think about the experience or try to find an answer or figure something out. It’s to begin to understand how that experience affects you now. You could refresh the image of the situation in your mind and then check in again. “How am I?”
See if you can be interested in the exploration. It’s an opportunity to learn. Exploring the possibility of allowing what’s arising, not judging it, just opening to what is here as the mind recollects this conflict.
It can also be interesting to be curious about how that recollection of the conflict affects your whole sense of experience. Often we orient to very precise body sensations of tension here and tightness there, or thoughts or emotions that might arise. Explore the possibility of opening to the broad sense. How does the wholeness feel? Particularly connected with the body, how does the whole thing feel? Maybe a kind of body-mind feeling: jumpy, agitated, fuzzy.
As we connect to a felt sense of experience related to conflict, there might be some aspect of the experience you could learn with. Sometimes we can drop in additional questions to the reflection—not to think about them, but just to invite. Think of the questions like an invitation: “Anything else want to show up right now?” “What am I not seeing?”
As those questions come in, it’s not to think about them. It’s an invitation to just keep opening to what’s here with those questions. “What purpose is this feeling serving?” “What is being believed?” Recalling the conflict and being curious about how it is being experienced now. “What can be learned now?” And being learned isn’t about thinking; it’s about feeling with what’s arising now.
Now, at this point, I’ll invite you to let go of connecting to the conflict and let yourself reflect on how a dharma perspective might support you in the conflict. You can explore and reflect in terms of causes and conditions, impermanence, clinging, the value of non-clinging, non-identification, perspectives of compassion and loving-kindness. And notice how it feels to bring in a dharma perspective right now too. What happens in your present moment experience as you bring in reflections on the dharma perspective?
And now, letting go of the reflection, returning to a simple awareness of how you are now. That will likely include some of what’s arisen in the last few minutes. Just opening to and allowing what is here. Perhaps coming back to the breath or body or simple receptivity for the last minute or two of the sitting.
So, are some of you willing to share what happened, what you noticed, what you might have learned?
I don’t want to go into a big story; I’ll just go into a little background. I just got back from six weeks of being away, and my dog, who’s a little poodleish creature, has started pooping all over a certain area of the living room. So it’s caused a lot of deep searching. What was really interesting about this whole process was it started out with working on this situation with my dog and looking at the fact that some of the things that were very obvious is that I have no control. Things are impermanent, for one thing, but I have no control over the causes and conditions going on, and yet there is some agency here. So what it opened into was a much deeper question. I’m 75, my husband’s 79. My being gone is getting harder and harder for him and causing suffering both to him and obviously to the dog. And yet my dharma practice, which is the reason I’m gone all the time, is the most important, valuable thing in my life, and I do not want to give it up. It’s becoming clear as he gets older that the point is going to come when I’m just not comfortable. So I’m in this gray area, and I see a lot of dukkha3. I see a lot of uncertainty and lack of control. There’s a lot of compassion that arises for myself and for all the players. But it was so interesting how, as we did it, the layers got deeper and deeper, and I realized that it was much more about my “dharma lust” for doing my thing and letting go of that. So it was all these many layers.
Yeah, I think I love what you pointed to. We often think a conflict is at a certain level, but when we really look at it, we see it’s often not about what we think at the surface. There are so many different levels and layers. This kind of practice can really help us see, “Well, what is this actually about?” And then decisions and perspectives, you know, you can relate to the conflict more from where it’s happening and make skillful choices based on what the actual situation is about.
There’s one other thing that was really important, and that is really seeing very clearly there’s no perfect solution here. And in seeing that, there was a real sense of letting go of something, of like wanting to be in control and get this right. And suddenly that just went away. So that was, I think, the most important thing.
Yeah, that’s beautiful to realize. We often go into something thinking there’s a right answer, a right way. And as we begin to explore the nuances, it’s like, “Well, maybe not.” Thank you, Mary. Beautiful.
And Sharon. Yeah. And this will be the last share.
Thank you, Andrea. So my husband and I are doing a remodel at home, and in a pretty small space, we’re having an accessible bathroom built. So conflicts happen like several times a day in our conversations. What I felt in my body, I don’t need to describe because that would be so ubiquitous, but what I understood about my beliefs is that I have a really deeply conditioned belief that there’s not going to be enough. Practically speaking, that’s true; it’s a small space. We’re going to fit in a shower, a sink, a toilet. But it released so much for me to recognize that I have this belief that there’s not going to be enough. And what I realized that I wasn’t seeing is that I look at my husband’s behavior and reactions, and I feel my own reactions, which are really painful when we’re in conflict. And what I wasn’t seeing is how much, how frightened we both are. So I think that’s really all I need to say about it, but it was a very important reflective practice. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Sharon. And again, I want to point out in both of these scenarios—and some of you may not have had this experience—of kind of seeing something and having there be like, “Oh, right, that’s what’s going on.” And seeing it from the dharma perspective, there could be a little bit of spaciousness and maybe a different perspective from which to understand things. When that happens, that’s the understanding. That’s the value of understanding. Even in the exploration of understanding, a different perspective can arise, and maybe even solutions, maybe not, but some understanding. Like in Mary’s case, recognizing there’s not a perfect answer. Okay, you know, we have to find what will work. So to recognize the value of the understanding in and of itself. That simple act of exploring understanding can really go a long way in working with conflict.
You could explore this too from the other person’s perspective. The guided meditation was encouraging looking at our own internal responses and reactions. For some of you, like in Sharon’s description, it came to an understanding of what the other person was experiencing too: “Oh, we’re both frightened.” That can be consciously brought into the reflective practice as well. Bringing in the situation first, exploring what’s going on for me, and then maybe dropping in the question, “And what’s happening for the other person?” We can’t necessarily know, but there might be some understanding of that. If you know the person well, there might be some understanding of their conditioning, of their history, and what might be going on for them.
I found that this kind of practice, as several of you mentioned, can bring a sense of compassion and care that arrives through this investigation, for ourselves and also perhaps for the other person as well.
Now I’d like to shift into what the Buddha talked about regarding how we engage together, our relational field. This a lot comes down to wise action and wise speech. It’s a lot connected to ethics as a guide for us in navigating our relationships and particularly in navigating conflict. A lot of conflict arises when we are not engaging with each other with wise speech and wise action.
The ethical teachings around wise action, the precepts, emphasize non-harming. They emphasize not creating harm through our actions and our speech, and that goes a long way towards avoiding conflict. And yet, in our navigation of conflict, we also need to look at maintaining our connection to the precepts. Just as a reminder, the precepts are: refraining from killing, refraining from taking what’s not given, refraining from false speech, refraining from harming with our sexuality, and also refraining from intoxicants. The precept on intoxicants is understood as, when we are intoxicated, we lose our capacity to remember to refrain from these other actions. It creates a lack of clarity in the mind.
The teachings emphasize freedom from suffering. Engaging in action that would cause harm—to kill beings, to take what’s not given, to lie, to harm with our sexuality—this creates harm in the world, and it also creates harm for us. So this is the ground of how we’re encouraged to act. I want to emphasize that in navigating conflict, we need to take care to engage ethically, even if the people we’re in conflict with are not engaging ethically. I think this is a challenge because when somebody is engaging unskillfully, it creates frustration, it creates anger. It creates a feeling of, “I’ve got to respond in kind or they’ll just steamroll me.”
This is part of our internal work: exploring the resentment, the anger, the frustration when others are not engaging skillfully, when we see that others are clinging strongly to their views that they’re right and their actions justify their means. The reflective practice can be useful in helping us to come to terms with our relationship to that kind of a situation. It’s quite common and in some ways very natural to be angry, to be resentful, to be frustrated. And yet, it is not inherently necessary to be angry, frustrated, and resentful when that’s happening.
When we’re in the perspective of reactivity—of anger, of frustration, of resentment—that perspective has its own view: “This is wrong, this is bad, this cannot be, this has to go away.” It also has an energy of action. That view and that energy come together. When we are hijacked by the energy of anger, that perspective tells us, “This is the only way you’re going to do something.” The perspective of anger thinks it’s the only way to respond. This is not true. Anger thinks it is the way to act when there’s a situation that is creating harm or difficulty. From that perspective, anger has no clue that there’s another way to act, another whole set of motivations that also have energy for engagement, like compassion. Compassion has a strong energy towards engagement, towards wanting to alleviate suffering. The perspective of compassion is to want to take care of self, other, and both, and to take action to alleviate suffering.
So when we see somebody engaged unskillfully, holding tightly to their view, doing things that are creating harm, the perspective of anger, frustration, and resentment is not a necessary relationship. It is often the relationship that arises, and it needs to be seen and understood, as we did in that reflective practice. And yet, it is not the only perspective. As we begin to investigate and understand, as we do that internal work, we may begin to see there are alternative ways that compassion, wisdom, and discernment can act and understand a situation from a different place than greed, aversion, and delusion.
This is an important piece: that we hold to the precepts, not acting out unskillfully, even as we feel the anger, the resentment. Committing to not taking what’s not given, not stealing, not lying, not harming beings with our actions, even as we may be experiencing opposing mind states. This is an art of our practice: how do we not repress and not express? Not repressing our anger, our hostility, but not acting on it unskillfully.
I’ve seen this a lot in my own practice: to observe and recognize those patterns that make me want to act, but to not follow through on the actions they’re motivating, but also not to repress them. It’s a challenge, and yet this is a big part of the work that can support us in navigating conflict skillfully. Holding to the precepts, committing to non-harming, helps us also to see all of the mental machinations that go on behind our wanting to lash out, our wanting to speak unskillfully, to act unskillfully. And again, that brings us back to the recognition of, “This is human.” This is not just my mind that wants to do this; this is multiplied by 8 billion people. And that recognition for me is such a point of compassion. It’s not some personal flaw in me that this happens. This is happening for everyone. And if I see myself holding tightly to something, of course, somebody else is holding tightly to something. So again, it can create the opening to compassion and recognizing different perspectives.
We are encouraged to hold to the precepts, and the first sutta4 quote encourages us not only to abstain from creating harm through our own actions but to encourage others to abstain from creating harm.
And how is one an individual who practices for their own benefit and for the benefit of others? There’s a case where an individual abstains from the taking of life and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from the taking of life. They abstain from stealing and encourage others in undertaking abstinence from stealing. They abstain from sexual misconduct and encourage others in abstaining from sexual misconduct. They abstain from lying and encourage others in abstaining from lying. They abstain from intoxicants that cause heedlessness and encourage others to abstain from intoxicants that cause heedlessness.
This is a training that encourages us to hold each other accountable, to actively encourage and promote ethical conduct. This gets into our next really big topic, which is how do we do that? It’s through our speech. There are ways in which this encouragement can happen non-verbally. If we engage in ethical conduct as the way we do things, then children growing up in that field absorb that. But a lot of it does happen through speech.
The basic teaching on wise speech is framed in several ways. One is refraining from false speech, harsh speech, divisive speech, and idle chatter. The first three are probably most relevant in terms of conflict.
As we explore the precepts, we can understand that refraining from killing is an expression of compassion, even if we don’t quite have the feeling of compassion in our hearts. Refraining from stealing cultivates contentment. Refraining from lying cultivates truthfulness. Refraining from creating harm through our sexuality cultivates kindness in relationship. Acting on these precepts has a flip side of cultivating a wholesome quality.
Likewise with speech. The second excerpt makes it quite clear:
Abandoning false speech, one does not tell a lie for their own sake, for the sake of another, or for any reward. One speaks the truth, holds to the truth, is firm, reliable, no deceiver of the world.
Refraining from false speech cultivates truthfulness and non-deception. Refraining from divisive speech—speech intending to create division—moves us in the direction of promoting concord and unity.
What one has heard here, one does not tell there in order to break people here from people there… Thus reconciling those who have broken apart or cementing those who are united, one loves concord, delights in concord, enjoys concord, speaks things that create concord.
Refraining from harsh speech, which is abusive speech that attacks someone personally or has a combative tone, cultivates friendliness and kindness.
Abandoning abusive speech, one speaks words that are soothing to the ear, affectionate, that are polite and appealing to people at large.
This process has effects both internally and externally. Even just refraining from harsh and divisive speech—the silence can be very supportive and healing. As Gil Fronsdal says, “Does what you say improve upon silence?” Refraining from false, harsh, and divisive speech has an effect externally in that it doesn’t add conflict to the situation. It has an effect internally in that it helps us to see the motivations that would tend us to create that kind of speech. It’s supportive for ourselves and others. The very act of following the precept is a gift to others, but it is also a gift to ourselves. It gives us the gift of freedom from remorse.
There’s another set of teachings, in the third passage, framing how speech is well-spoken.
When speech possesses five factors, it is well-spoken. It is blameless and irreproachable among the wise. What five? It is spoken at the proper time. What is said is true. It is spoken gently. What is said is beneficial. It is spoken with a mind of loving-kindness.
This points to cultivating a mind of non-conflict when speaking to others. Two of them are about what we say: what is said is true (not deceptive) and it is beneficial. Beneficial, in general, is what increases the wholesome and decreases the unwholesome. Wholesome mind states are those not based in greed, aversion, and delusion. The way it is spoken is gently, with a mind of loving-kindness, and at the proper time.
Speaking at the proper time is an investigation for ourselves: “Am I going to say this at a time when I’m balanced, when I’m not going to get triggered? Am I established in the quality of loving-kindness?” And as best we can, speaking at a proper time for others: “Is the other person going to be able to hear what we’re saying?” This is a pretty high bar, and it’s a practice.
We might think that refraining from harsh speech means we never say something that somebody would find displeasing, that we don’t criticize other people. And yet, the teaching on encouraging others to maintain the precepts points to an encouragement to speak when people are not engaging skillfully. The fourth sutta passage points to this. The Buddha asks which of four persons is most excellent. One person says the one who speaks neither praise nor dispraise is best, because equanimity is the highest thing. The Buddha’s response was:
“Of these four, the one I consider the most excellent is the one who speaks dispraise of someone who deserves dispraise, and the dispraise would be accurate, truthful, and timely… and who also speaks praise of someone who deserves praise… For what reason? Because what excels is knowledge of the proper time to speak in any particular case.”
Here the Buddha is pointing to needing to hold each other accountable, to speak praise where praise is due, and to speak dispraise—to criticize, to call out—someone who is not engaging skillfully.
There are teachings on how to do this, how to reprove somebody. It encourages us to establish ourselves in the five qualities: speaking at the proper time, truthfully, gently, in a beneficial way, and with a mind of loving-kindness. The fifth quote also points out how somebody should receive being reproved: they should be established in two things, in truth and non-anger.
If others reprove me… I should be established in truth and non-anger. If I know there is such a quality in me, I tell him it exists… If I know there is no such quality in me, I tell him it does not exist… Without anger and with truth.
So we acknowledge the truth, whether or not the person is speaking skillfully.
The simile of the saw basically points to maintaining non-anger and loving-kindness even to people who are doing something that is creating harm. The simile says even if somebody is sawing off your limbs, you should maintain non-anger and loving-kindness. It’s a very high bar, but it’s a deep encouragement.
The seventh sutta passage points to two different kinds of speech: covert speech (spoken behind someone’s back) and overt sharp speech (something someone does not want to hear). The encouragement is, if it’s not true, correct, or beneficial, don’t say it. But if it’s true, correct, and beneficial, and it’s a proper time to say it, then you can say it. There’s nuance here. If you’re talking about someone who’s not here to organize help for them, that’s not for the purpose of division; it’s for support.
The final passage I want to discuss, from the exposition on non-conflict, brings in how we might speak dispraise. It gets more detailed in terms of what is beneficial. It points out that rather than saying a person is wrong, we should speak to the state of mind.
When one says, “All those engaged in the pursuit of the enjoyment of… sensual desires… are beset by suffering… and they have entered upon the wrong way,” one disparages some.
This is saying, “People doing this are doing it wrong.” Likewise, praising those who are disengaged is extolling them. The Buddha says both of these are not helpful. Instead, he suggests:
When one says, “The pursuit is a state beset by suffering… and the pursuit is the wrong way,” then one teaches the dharma. When one says, “The disengagement is a state without suffering and it is the right way,” then one teaches the dharma.
What’s being pointed to here is that rather than saying the person is wrong, it’s pointing to the state of the mind. The state is not helpful; the state is suffering. It’s not attacking the person, but speaking to the consequences of actions and states of mind. This is what it means to speak what is beneficial. This requires a deep understanding of what is helpful and what is not, how greed, aversion, and delusion lead to suffering, and how compassion, kindness, and wisdom lead away from it. It’s about taking the personal, the ad hominem5 attacks, out of it and speaking to causes and effects, to conditionality.
Papañca: A Pali term that refers to the tendency of the mind to proliferate thoughts, concepts, and perceptions, often leading to a distorted and complicated experience of reality. It’s associated with craving, conceit, and wrong views. ↩
Ajahn Amaro: A British-born Theravada Buddhist monk and teacher, and the abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK. He is a senior figure in the Thai Forest Tradition. ↩
Dukkha: A fundamental concept in Buddhism, often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” “dissatisfaction,” or “unease.” It refers to the inherent unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned phenomena. ↩
Sutta: A discourse or sermon attributed to the Buddha or one of his close disciples. The Suttas are collected in the Sutta Piṭaka, one of the three “baskets” of the Pali Canon. ↩
Ad hominem: A Latin phrase for a rhetorical strategy where one attacks the person making an argument rather than the argument itself. ↩