peace – Meditative Man

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.

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.

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.

Healing Relationships

We have talked about relationships quite a bit over the years. But today, I want to discuss how we heal our fractured relationships. We all have relationships that are not where they need to be and we must repair and heal these relationships.

But that starts with improving our relationship with ourselves. We need to accept ourselves, feel good about ourselves, and not identify with our faults and limitations or delusions.

They did a study and asked people out of 10 thoughts they have, how many of those are uncontrolled or unwanted. To my surprise, people said 9 out of 10 of their thoughts were uncontrolled. These uncontrolled thoughts are what Buddha calls delusions. A delusion is a state of mind that arises from inappropriate attention making our mind uncontrolled.

We need to learn to develop happier relationships with ourselves. We need to learn to control our thoughts. We need to believe in our pure nature, our Buddha nature, that golden nugget we keep talking about every week.

So this is the foundation for our ability to make spiritual progress, or any ability to let go of our faults, limitations, and delusions, and any ability to see others as precious, and important, and cherish them. At the moment, if we keep thinking other people are inherently awful, faulty, nasty, and deluded. And that is their fault. And they’re to blame for everything that goes wrong.

It’s very hard to improve our relationships with others when we really can’t stand them. If we think they’re faulty and horrible and awful, it’s impossible to improve our relationship with them.

Improving our relationships with others comes from understanding that others are at heart just like us and that they suffer from delusions just as we do and they want to be happy just as we do. We need to understand when people harm others, they are controlled by their 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 nature to a golden nugget in the dirt. No matter how disgusting a person’s delusions may be the real nature of them is like pure gold.

In the heart of even the cruelest and most degenerate person exists, the potential for limitless love and compassion and wisdom unlike seeds of our delusions which can be destroyed, this potential is utterly indestructible. That is the pure essential nature of everything.

When we meet other people, rather than focus on the delusions, thinking you’re awful, you’re greedy, selfish, you’re this, you’re that. Rather than doing that, we focus on the goal of evolution, I see you, I see your potential, I see that you have a pure nature. So this will not only enable us to regard them as special and unique but also help us to bring out their good qualities.

Another way to improve our relationships with others is to change our perspective.

Geshe-la says to imagine someone whom we regard as especially precious, such as our child, partner, or mother. This person seems to have unique qualities that make him or her stand out from others. We treasure and want to take special care of this person who has good qualities like from their own side is just precious. And even when they’re acting out, even when they’re being horrible. We see past that because we know that they have these qualities. There was a decision that we made somewhere along the line, to love this person, you may be in any different number of factors including Karma that came into play. But at some point there was, you know, I’m just committed to viewing this person in this way.

And we can choose to see everyone as having special qualities as being worthy of love as being worthy of happiness. Alternatively, we see someone and we think they’re horrible and mean and messing with our plans, and unkind and manipulative and whatever however we’re seeing them, then it can be very helpful to think, Okay, I’m seeing them like that, they seem to be filled with horrible qualities. Right? There definitely in the way of my happiness, they are my problem, not my delusions, them. But we can actually look at them from a completely different angle. We can think, for example, other people are looking at this person. It seems someone really special and lovely. This person may have a husband or a wife or dog, who looks at them or their mom looks at them and thinks they’re just the most special, beautiful person in the world. And when they think that mother, for example, that husband looks at me looking at them thinking they’re awful, they’re like, they don’t get it. This person is not awful. This person is lovely. You’ve got it wrong. Whenever we shift our perspective, broaden our perspective. Then our thoughts change, and our whole attitude towards that person shifts naturally shifts.

If we start looking at people who we find have difficulties with through the eyes of someone who doesn’t have difficulties with them, something shifts in our mind. Something loosens up and space opens up in my mind because there is nothing inherently awful about them. If they’re behaving badly towards us, it’s their delusions making them do that. But they’re not inherently awful if they were inherently awful, everybody who looked at them would see the same awful person. But actually, there’s probably no one who sees them in exactly the same way we see them.

So if we understand that we are not our delusions, we can come to understand others are not their delusion. So that’s one way of shifting our perspective and getting on better with other people. Another way is to think that people were inherently awful and deluded everybody would see them that way. But they don’t. And actually, think how this person views them and actually try and maybe put ourselves in the position of their husband or their mother or whatever and look at them through those eyes, actually see what’s happening shift. Start seeing their redeeming qualities. Let the light in.

I Feel Lucky!

We often talk about how our delusions—anger, attachment, hatred, jealousy, and so forth are the root of our problems. We have discussed ways we can eliminate those from our lives and need to do so. Today, I thought we would flip the script on its head so to speak! How about we talk about how fortunate we are to be here and now?

Those of you from Colorado may have seen this advertisement on TV they used to run 20 or so years ago. They would show you beautiful mountain scenes and a voiceover appears saying some people come here for a vacation and you live here. Don’t you think you are lucky? Buy a lotto. And that pretty much sums up my feeling about where we are in life today.

Let me explain. We will begin with the simplest of points. We have this human life. Now if we believe in reincarnation then you know that a human life is not always guaranteed. Why is it advantageous to have a human life? Well, for one thing, we as humans can do something about our unhappiness or our suffering. We have the freedom to make choices that will affect our lives. I had a discussion about this once with a friend who runs an international charity on humane education. She said, given a choice she would rather come back as a dog in a rich family who cared for her. She thought that was better than a human life because she would not need to worry about anything. That’s because she and all of us for that matter don’t know what a dog is going through. He may be anxious all the time and we would not know it at all. He has no choice about his well-being. He is at the mercy of its owners if you will. So coming back to this human life, we have the ability to make decisions that not only affect our current situation but also our future.

Now granted most humans don’t realize how lucky they are to have this human life. I am going to go back to my lottery analogy. Statistics show that most people who win jackpots, lose it within five years. Think about it, within five years, they have lost it all! Some say they go back to their normal. But to me, it is worse than that. Now they are used to a certain lifestyle and they don’t have a way to provide for it. Before, at least they did not have the lifestyle to support it even though they did not have the money to support it. I hope this makes sense. So most people are in this situation. They don’t have a clue how lucky they are to have this human life and they are wasting away.

Let me put it another way. If you believe in karma, to get this human life, we are using a lot of good karma we must have created in the past. Now that karma is used up. If we don’t do anything about it, that would be such a waste. On the other hand, if we take advantage of this human life and create virtuous karma, it will help us in our future lives. So many causes and conditions have to come together for us to be where we are in life. We talked about having a human life. On top of that, we have been exposed to spirituality in our lives. That exposure to spirituality is not by accident either. Again, our karma played a huge role in that. I know so many of us take this exposure for granted. But think about it, out of 8 billion humans on this planet, not everyone is exposed to spirituality. Now let’s take a step further. Of those, who have been exposed, how many of them actually do something about it on a regular basis? Most people go about their day busy with stuff that in the end has no relevance. But at the time it feels so important so people plug it away.

So here you are, spending at least 40 minutes a week trying to advance your spiritual practice. Trying to find the peace within. Trying to make sure not to disturb others’ peace. Trying to help other people alleviate their suffering and so forth. That creates a lot of positive karma. That bank of virtuous actions is going to come in handy in the future. As you know, the thing with karma is that you never know when it will ripen but it will certainly ripen someday. So the fact that you are creating a bank of this good karma is like having a fat bank account, that will allow you to cash in someday.

When would be the right time someone asked? Well, I don’t know is the honest answer. However, I do know that when we die, depending upon our state of mind at the time of our death, specific karma ripens which decides what the next step is for our continuum. So if that is true, then I would rather have more of those positive karma banked sooner rather than later. Because at that point, it’s a game of probability. For example, if there are 100 total karmas to choose from at the time of death, the more positive karma we have, the better our chance of higher rebirth.

So I come back to where we started. We have this human body, we are exposed to spirituality and we are practicing on a consistent basis. That is an incredibly fortunate position to be in. We must be thankful, for our great fortune.