Enemy of My Enemy

I attended a meditation retreat over the weekend. During the retreat, the teacher mentioned something that got me thinking. He said we often think that people are our enemy. However, our real enemy is our delusions. So if our real enemy is our delusions and other people’s real enemy is delusions as well then other people are our friends since we have the same enemy. Let’s dig in.

Often we consider other people as our real enemies. Someone who cut us off in traffic for example. This is how road rage starts. Someone cuts us off intentionally or otherwise. All of a sudden, we are all riled up. Some people even chase the other car putting themselves and everyone around them in danger. All because they perceive the other driver as their enemy. Funny thing is that the other driver may not even realize that they cut us off and may be just driving without giving it a thought. Now, we have given rent-free space to that driver in our head. We get angry and in that state of anger, we make decisions that are not prudent to say the least. This angry state of mind also affects our health. It increases our blood pressure, affects our heart health, affects our memory and so forth.

And this is true for all of our delusions. Whether it is anger, attachment, hatred, jealousy, and so forth, each one of our delusions affects us negatively. It affects our mental health, makes us anxious and even depressed, and all of that drama usually plays out in our heads. Shantideva an Indian scholar said and I am paraphrasing here, that we must fight our real enemy—our delusions with everything we have. We must destroy our delusions. We must not give delusions time of day if you will.

Instead, we think other people are our enemies. That driver who cut us off. Or even people who we think we love. They did not take the trash out or did not greet us properly or were upset with our behavior and so forth. But if we think about it, they all suffer from similar plight. They all have the same delusions that we are going through. It reminds me of a story about this airline passenger. There was a father and son traveling. The kid was upset and was not behaving properly. The passenger next to him got irritated and told the father that he should try and control his son. The father goes you are right and I am trying but his mom passed away recently so he is having a tough time. All of a sudden passenger felt empathy for the kid instead of anger toward him.

And this is true for anyone we think of as our enemy. They all have their own delusions they are battling with. That coworker who you think is always bothering you may have some personal issues they are going through. Because we put our comfort and our needs first, often we don’t even try to think about what may be going on in someone else’s life. This putting ourselves first is what we refer to as Self-Cherishing. Since beginningless time, we have been conditioned to think about our needs and our comfort ahead of everyone else’s. As a result, anytime someone gives us the slightest discomfort real or perceived—often it is perceived—but that is a topic for another day, we tend to regard them as our enemy. Look at our social fabric. If someone disagrees with our point of view, they are our enemy. We can’t even have a civilized conversation about our political views anymore. If we take time to put our self-cherishing aside, we will realize that everyone else is in the same boat. They all have the same delusions that we are fighting.

And if all of us have the same delusions, the same enemy if you will, then does it not make sense to think wait, they are my friends? We are all battling the same enemy here. Why don’t we team up? So empathy towards them. Realize they are not our enemies. The real enemy is within us—our delusions. If we put all our efforts into fighting this enemy, we can make a difference. Because we all have this Buddha nature. This is pure potential. This ability to be happy and peaceful all the time without getting disturbed by external events. No person or thing can make us unhappy because as they say, agony and ecstasy are within us. What happens out there should not be able to disturb what happens within us. What happens in here is entirely up to us. If we realize that, we will no longer take on the world as our enemy and resulting peace will help us become more happy, peaceful, joyful, and otherwise nicer human beings.

Power of Wisdom

Before the break, we talked about how compassion and wisdom are the two pillars of Buddha’s sutra teachings. So today, let’s discuss wisdom. If you think about a relationship, that’s it, isn’t it? If you can remove disharmony using wisdom, your relationships are perfect.  

One of the verses goes when I associate with others, I will consider myself lower and hold everyone supreme. So the best way to do this is to familiarize ourselves with Cherishing all living beings by putting our determination to cherish them into practice.

So, through thinking about the kindness of others, the benefits of cherishing others what happens is we make a determination I want to cherish others, I want to love others. We have talked about this before, that what we end up doing every day depends upon what we wish for. It all starts with intention. If we develop that wish to love everyone then we will slowly start practicing that and grow our love for other living beings. It just will happen naturally.

It is perfectly possible to do this because we have the seed of universal love. We have Buddha Nature, which means we’ve always had the potential to grow our love, expand our love, and deepen our love, to every single person.

The main reason why we do not cherish all living beings as explained in the book Mirror of Dharma, is we’re so preoccupied with ourselves. This leaves very little room in our minds to appreciate others.  So therefore if we wish to cherish others sincerely, we have to reduce our obsessive self concern.

Sad to break it to you but our self-cherishing, obsessive self concern is the source of all disharmony.

Everywhere we look, our mind is polluted by this surface of self-concern. It just alters everything we see. You know, we can’t actually see what’s going on because we’re so obsessed with ourselves. And that’s just reflected in our minds. So why is it? Why is it that we regard ourselves as so precious, but not others? I am just one person others are countless. Why are we so obsessed about it? Me? Me, me?

One major reason is we’re so familiar with thinking about ourselves, it’s a familiarity of habit.

And the Geshe-la says, Why because we’re so familiar with self-cherishing we’re very familiar with an attitude that puts ourselves first. We have been doing it since beginningless time in our lives, which is why we’re still circling in suffering. Since the beginningless time we have grasped at a truly existent I this is the root of it. So a truly existent I is an I that exists from its own side. But basically, we have two ego minds that are the very kind of root of all our problems. And one is called self-grasping, meaning we’re grasping at a self that exists from its own side.

We think there’s a real me or real I and we think everyone else is not me or either other or self or there are also other or them or you know, him or her or something like that. We have done this experiment before. Show of hand where is the me in this room? Everyone of us think we are that me and everyone else is something other than me right? Now if the I was inherently existent, it would be same for all of us. But it’s not.

So it’s only our ignorance that thinks I’m really me, and everyone else is really other. Because I have this sense of real me, I then think that this me is more important than all the other me’s. So I’m more important than you just as simple as that.

We spend so much time contemplating our real or imagined good qualities that we become oblivious to our faults. So, in reality, our mind is full of gross delusions, but we ignore them and may even fool ourselves into thinking that we do not have such repulsive minds, like pretending there’s no dirt in our house after sweeping it, under the rug. So when we think about our own faults and delusions, the reason we do this is with the view of getting rid of them right not to feel bad about ourselves. Because these faults and delusions, as most of you know, are not intrinsic to our mind, these delusions are like salt, for example, salt, in salty water, they’re not the actual nature of the water, we can get rid of them. We don’t want to identify with our faults and limitations. We do have to realize our faults and limitation but not identify with them if that makes sense.

But Geshe Geshe-la says it is often so painful to admit that we have faults that we make all types of excuses rather than alter our results view of ourself, and one of the most common ways of not facing up to our own faults is to blame others. For instance, we have a difficult relationship with someone. We naturally include that it’s entirely their fault. That’s true, isn’t it? They should really change, you know. And then we’ll be so happy. Anyway, good luck with that. Because you know, it’s hard to change even one person, it’s impossible to change anyone other than ourselves, to be honest, and it’s definitely hard to change everybody.

So we naturally conclude it’s their fault, we’re unable to accept that it is at least partly our fault when we have difficult relationships. So instead of taking responsibility for our actions, or making effort to change our views or our behavior, get rid of our faults. We argue with them insists as they who must change an exaggerated sense of our own importance thus leads to a critical attitude towards other people makes it almost impossible to avoid conflict. And I think we’re seeing that in the world today, too. So the fact that we’re oblivious to our faults does not prevent other people from noticing them and pointing them out. But when they do we feel that they’re being unfair. So unfair.

This is self cherishing. That arises from self grasping ignorance. Our inherently existing self. This is the source of all our disharmony. If we learn to remove that, our relationships become easier. Life becomes frictionless. It just flows all of a sudden.

The 16 Breath Meditation

Today I want to talk about what is known as 16 breath meditation. Buddha taught this meditation in his early days and they say if you follow it, that has all the ingredients to be liberated. It is also known as Full Awareness of Breathing meditation. It allows one to generate mindfulness and develop awakening.

Here is how we practice this:

The First Breath: Breathing in a long breath, I know I am breathing in a long breath, breathing out, I know I am breathing out a long breath.

The Second Breath: Breathing in a short breath, I know I am breathing in a short breath, breathing out, I know I am breathing out a short breath.

Explanation: These two breaths remove forgetfulness and unnecessary thinking. This generates mindfulness and allows us to be in the present moment.

The Third Breath: Breathing in, I am aware of my whole body. Breathing out, I am aware of my whole body.

Explanation: This breath puts us in touch with our body making us aware of every part of our body.

The Fourth Breath: I am breathing in and making my whole body calm and at peace. I am breathing out and making my whole body calm and at peace.

Explanation: This breath allows us to realize the calmness and peace in the body and puts body and mind in harmony.

The Fifth Breath: I am breathing in and feeling joyful. I am breathing out and feeling joyful.

The Sixth Breath: I am breathing in and feeling happy. I am breathing out and feeling happy.

Explanation: These two breaths create joy and peace that nourishes body and mind. Happiness and joy arise naturally within you. By being mindful, you are able to transform neutral feelings into joyful feelings.

The Seventh Breath: I am breathing in and am aware of the activities of my mind. I am breathing out and am aware of the activities of my mind.

The Eighth Breath: I am breathing in and making the activities of my mind calm and peaceful. I am breathing out and making the activities of my mind calm and peaceful.

Explanation: These two breaths allow you to look at all the feelings that arise within you whether pleasant, neutral or unpleasant. They enable you to look at these feelings deeply into their roots and nature and make your feelings calm and at peace.

The Ninth Breath: I am breathing in and am aware of my mind. I am breathing out and am aware of my mind.

The Tenth Breath: I am breathing in and making my mind happy and at peace. I am breathing out and making my mind happy and at peace.

The Eleventh Breath: I am breathing in and concentrating my mind. I am breathing out and concentrating my mind.

The Twelfth Breath: I am breathing in and liberating my mind. I am breathing out and liberating my mind.

Explanation: With these four breaths, you recognize all states of the mind—perceptions, thinking, discrimination, happiness, sadness, and doubt. It allows you to observe the activities of the mind and release obstacles of the mind.

The Thirteenth Breath: I am breathing in and observing the impermanent nature of all phenomena. I am breathing out and observing the impermanent nature of all phenomena.

The Fourteenth Breath: I am breathing in and observing the fading nature of all phenomena. I am breathing out and observing the fading nature of all phenomena.

The Fifteenth Breath: I am breathing in and concentrating on liberation. I am breathing out and concentrating on liberation.

The Sixteenth Breath: I am breathing in and focusing on letting go. I am breathing out and focusing on letting go.

Explanation: With these four breaths, we observe true nature of Dharma. First with observation of impermanent nature of phenomena, then with observation of fading nature of phenomena, then contemplating liberation and finally contemplating letting go. Hope this all makes sense and as we develop your practice, you are able to perfect this over time.

Karma & Dharma

We have been talking about Karma for more than a month now. One thing that keeps coming up is what happens if you do something as part of your job. Does it have a negative effect associated with it? In general, the answer is yes with a few caveats.

Let’s talk about the exceptions first. If there is an imminent danger to living beings and doing harm to one person protects many lives, then there is no negative effect of Karma. There are examples of these in spiritual texts. One example is of Buddha. In his previous life, Buddha was traveling on a boat full of merchants. Through his clairvoyance, he saw that one of the passengers was about to kill the rest of the merchants. To save all of those lives and to save that one passenger from getting negative karma for killing all of those people, Buddha killed the one passenger.

In today’s world, it would be equivalent to knowing an imminent terror threat and neutralizing the terrorists before they could attack. But barring an imminent threat to many lives, there is no justification for negative actions that I could find in the textbooks.

Now it is debatable whether simply working somewhere generates negative action or not. For example, let’s say someone works as a bookkeeper at a slaughterhouse. I am not sure that they generate negative action of killing just by working at the slaughterhouse. Because for negative actions to occur four conditions have to be present as we discussed last week.

So let’s talk about another exception which is what if something is part of your job. The so-called “dharma” we keep talking about. In ancient times, a soldier on a battlefield who followed certain rules and only fought with someone of their equivalency was an exception. This soldier was not affected by his actions. However, in today’s world, modern warfare is such that there are hardly any rules. Everyone is killing everyone else without discrimination and that is certainly not considered an exception. Also, if someone is following an order but knows that the order is morally wrong, then we have a duty not to follow that order otherwise negative actions are attached. Also, continuing killing after someone is no longer a threat has negative actions attached to it. Another thing I want to point out is that a soldier has a duty to avoid collateral damage. If trying to kill one bad person ends up killing 10 innocent people, then there is a negative action attached to it. Again, I refer back to the four conditions we discussed last week.

Now let’s come back to real life. For those of us who are not soldiers, if our job makes us compromise our moral standards, in my opinion, if possible, we should find another job. Let’s take the example of the bookkeeper in a slaughterhouse. Even if they are not collecting any negative karma, the fact that it is against their moral standards would keep bothering them. It would become stressful at times. And it makes sense in that case to go find a different place to work. If for nothing else then for our own sanity.

Buddha said that ” … a lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison.”

So those five professions one should avoid for sure. Beyond that, a lot of this comes down to our own moral compass and what we are comfortable with. For example, as a rule, I have stayed away from investing in properties where tenants sell alcohol or marijuana. This is a personal rule with the logic being that if I don’t want to consume something then I should avoid making money out of the consumption of those substances.

While doing research on this topic, I came across Laxmi Tantra (one of the five panch tantras). According to Laxmi Tantra, one should avoid making a livelihood through

1. Living off other people (begging for example)

2. Loan sharking

3. Bribery

4. Living by a profession or industry which directly or indirectly causes suffering to other beings such as the meat and leather industries, munitions industries, or brewing and selling of alcohol or drugs.

5. Superintending mines and factories is also forbidden because it can lead to corruption, harshness, and exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. It also leads to the depredation of the environment through deforestation and pollution which are considered sinful activities by the Shastras.

The seven legitimate ways for a spiritual aspirant to make a living are:

1. daya — inheritance

2. labha — profit from honest commerce and trade.

3. kraya — purchase of land and assets for the purpose of speculation.

4. jaya — winning prizes or money in a competition

5. prayoga — through the application of learning and skills to benefit others – through counseling, advising, teaching, etc.

6. karma yoga — through a profession or a vocational job serving others.

7. satpratigraha — the lawful acceptance of gifts — that is, unsolicited donations.

So I hope this clears up a lot of confusion around the issue and hopefully, I have not made the matter worse!

Freedom from Self Consciousness

We all tend to get self-conscious every now and then. So today, I thought we will discuss how to free ourselves from being self-conscious. Let’s begin with why do we get self-conscious?  In general, we get self-conscious because we feel people may be judging us or we are worried about how we will be perceived or we worry about upsetting others.

Self-consciousness is a mental state where we are pre-occupied with our self-image. That’s it. There is nothing more mysterious than that. Excessive self-consciousness causes us to be not present in the moment. Because we are thinking about what the other person is thinking of us or if they are judging us. So rather than being fully present in the conversation or the event, we are not participating. We are there but we are not there if you will. Our uncontrolled thoughts have taken over and we are in some distant place.

These uncontrolled thoughts are what Buddha calls delusions. A delusion is a state of mind that arises from inappropriate attention making our mind uncontrolled.

Everywhere we look, our mind is polluted by this surface of self-concern. It just alters everything we see. You know, we can’t actually see what’s going on because we’re so obsessed with ourselves. And that’s just reflected in our mind. So why is it? Why is it that we regard ourselves as so precious, but not others? I am just one person others are countless? Why are we so obsessed with it? Me? Me, me?

One major reason is we’re so familiar with thinking about ourselves, it’s a familiarity of habit.

Gesla says, Why because we’re so familiar with self-cherishing we’re very familiar with an attitude that puts ourselves first. We have been doing it since beginningless time in every life, which is why we’re still circling in suffering. Since beginningless, time we have grasped at a truly existent I this is the root of it. So a truly existent I is an I that exists from its own side.

We think there’s a real me or real I and we think everyone else is not me or either other or self or there are also other or them or you know, him or her or something like that.

Now, let’s talk about what we can do to reduce our self-consciousness in our day to day lives.

There are a number of things we can do. One of them is to stop comparing ourselves with others.

Often we find ourselves comparing ourselves with other people. Deep down all of us know that it is not worth it but we end up doing it anyway. As Teddy Roosevelt said, Comparison is the thief of joy.

To stop comparing ourselves with other people, what we need to realize is that when you are comparing yourself with someone else, you are comparing to their best version if you will. You don’t know what goes on in their life. You know what they have projected outwardly. Sometimes you only know what you see on their social media feed. Trust me, never believe what you see on social media.

If you have to compare, compare yourself to your past self. See where you were and how far you have come. This allows us to realize abundance in our life. It also allows you to realize your own strengths. This will hopefully, make you take actions that speak to your strength as opposed to someone else’s strengths.

Another way to stop yourself from comparing yourself to others is something we have talked about a lot here. We start every session with a gratitude attitude. If you are grateful for what you have and truly practice that, you will not feel the need to compare. Gratitude allows us to be joyful and joyful people tend not to compare themselves with other people.

One other way that helps in this situation is contentment. Again, we have talked about this a lot. If you are content with what you have then there is no reason for comparison. Also, remind yourself that money doesn’t buy happiness it never did and never will.

Another thing that helps with self-consciousness is developing a positive mindset.

Have you noticed that a lot of times when life gives us lemons, we tend to complain about the sourness of those lemons? A very few people are able to make lemonades out of those lemons that life throws at them.

Another helpful thing with self-consciousness is knowing that grass is not always greener on the other side.

What do I mean by that? Well, let’s look at our social media habits to begin with. We start looking at Facebook, Tik-Tok, LinkedIn and whatever else that we spend our time on half our waking hours.

People put exaggerated self of themselves on social media. I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn the other day. It says someone passed their driving test. Now, it is a simple thing and people go through that routinely in their lives. But they post it on LinkedIn something like, I want to thank my parents, my teachers, my friends, for helping me achieve this milestone in my life. I am humbled by the opportunity to perform at this exceptional level and all kind of nonsense like that. Now it is a little over the top but reality is not too far from it.

But that is reality. So don’t believe everything you see and hear. Don’t put people on pedestal based on their personas. You don’t know what goes on in people’s lives.

Another thing that helps with self-consciousness is the fact that we don’t identify with our delusions. In the book How To Transform Your Life, Gesla says that we need to stop identifying with our delusions. Gesla says delusions are distorted conceptual thoughts that arise within the mind like waves on the ocean, just as it is possible for waves to die down, so it is possible for our delusions to end.

Buddha compared our Buddha nature to a golden nugget in the dirt. No matter how disgusting a person’s delusions may be the real nature of them is undefiled like pure gold.

And it all starts with our relationship with ourselves. Our sense of self has to be based on an authentic experience. Our sense of self is based on an authentic understanding of who we are, which is based on this experience of a genuine feeling of peace, even if it’s only relative peace compared to our normal lack of peace. And on that basis, we can become a peaceful people with the potential to grow, the potential to get wiser and freer. I am not a person who hates other people, but I have empathy and love other people, delusions get in the way of me, but they’re not me. I’m a loving person. I’m a compassionate person.