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Connection of shared common humanity - Tenzin Chogkyi

The following talk was given by Tenzin Chogkyi at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 17, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Our teacher this morning is Tenzin Chogkyi. She's a teacher of workshops and programs that bridge the worlds of Buddhist thought, contemplative practice, mental and emotional cultivation, and the latest research in the field of positive psychology. She first became interested in meditation in the early 1970s, and in 1991, she began practicing Tibetan Buddhism while studying in India and Nepal. She completed several long meditation retreats and took monastic ordination with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, practicing as a monastic for nearly 20 years. Since 2006, she has been teaching in Buddhist centers around the world, and she has taught in prisons for 15 years. She's also a certified teacher of Compassion Cultivation Training and the Cultivating Emotional Balance program.

Tenzin is especially interested in bringing the wisdom of Buddhism into modern culture and into alignment with modern cultural values, such as racial and gender justice and environmental awareness. She feels strongly that a genuine and meaningful spiritual path includes not only personal transformation but social and cultural transformation as well. She loves interfaith collaboration and is a volunteer for the Interfaith Speakers Bureau of the Islamic Networks Group in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. She also finds time to create her Unlocking True Happiness podcast, which you can check out at unlockingtruehappiness.org, where you also find her current teaching schedule. She's currently based on traditional Awaswas Ohlone land in what is now known as Santa Cruz, California. Good morning and welcome to IMC, Tenzin Chogkyi.

Thank you, Martha. How's the sound? Is it working? Yeah. Thank you all for coming. It's nice to be here again. I realized I was just thinking of the last time I taught here, I think it was 2018. It's definitely before the pandemic, and I was still a monastic. My friend Ajahn Chandako and I taught a day-long called "The Bodhisattva¹ and the Arhat,²" comparing the Mahayana traditions, and had a good time. I don't know if anybody here was there at that time. Anybody remember that? No? Okay, too long ago.

So this morning, because my tradition is a little bit different, and the meditations I lead are slightly different, we're going to flip the script a little bit and do most of the Dharma talk before doing the meditation, and then have time after the meditation. Because it might be a different style for you, to have some discussion, question and answer, and so forth. But before all of that, we'll go ahead and settle in. We'll just settle in for a couple of minutes with breath awareness and set our intention for our time together before I introduce the practice.

So I'll invite you just to get into a comfortable posture, relaxed yet alert. These two qualities are complementary, not contradictory. We try and get an alert stance in our meditation, mostly through that nice upright spine, as if there were a cord pulling up from the crown of your head, and then your body relaxed around it. So just taking a moment to settle in, and perhaps moving your attention through your body, noticing if there's any tightness or tension, deliberately relaxing. We often hold tension around our eyes, so noticing your forehead and the area around your eyes and relaxing. And your jaw. Generally, we're breathing through our nose when we meditate, if we can, unless we have some sort of sinus problem or obstruction. But even though our mouth is closed, our jaw is not clenched. And your neck and shoulders is another place we often hold tension, so I invite you if you notice any tightness there to just deliberately relax and release, perhaps releasing on the exhale. Your belly relaxed, your buttocks. And then let's round off this initial settling of the body with three deep breaths, deep diaphragmatic inhalation and exhalation.

And then just turning our attention to the sensations of the breath wherever we can feel it in the body as a way to arrive in this space, in our bodies, in the present moment. It might be full-body awareness of breathing, perhaps the abdomen as your diaphragm rises and falls. Perhaps you can notice the breath more by localizing your attention at the chest with your lungs expanding and contracting. And perhaps that very subtle sensation at the nostrils. So just spending a few moments with either the localized attention or that wide-angle lens of full-body awareness of breathing. And when you notice your attention wandering or you get distracted by another sense object, like a sound for example, just releasing the distraction and returning to the breath.

And now let's take a moment to reflect on our intention, our motivation for being here this morning. In Buddhist practice, we say we get the most out of any practice session, or even a study session or even a discussion, if we're clear about our intention and set our motivation. Thinking of what brought you here this morning. Perhaps you're a regular attendee at these Sunday morning sessions. Maybe you're here for the first time. Maybe you just heard about the center and you're checking it out, curious. Maybe you're going through a hard time in your life right now and looking for ways to help you manage the unwanted experiences you're having. You heard Buddhism has something to offer. Just taking a moment to reflect on your intention.

And we always also try to add an altruistic intention to our motivation. Thinking, "May whatever I experience this morning in meditation, in discussion, in the discourse, may it benefit me. But may I get some insight, some experience that will bring benefit to others as well." So trying to generate that altruistic intention.

Just relaxing your posture and coming out of meditation. So some more people arrived while we were doing that settling practice. And just to say again that we're going to have a slightly different structure this morning. I'm going to be introducing a guided meditation and then leading you through it, and then having some time for discussion and question and answer. So it's going to be a little bit different.

And again, so nice to be in this space. I met Gil actually all the way back in 1992. I was the director of Vajrapani Institute, a Tibetan Buddhist center in the mountains outside of Boulder Creek, and he and Mary Grace Orr just rocked up one morning checking out retreat centers to see if there was a place they could hold their annual retreat. And that became a 33-year relationship that started with them leading 10-day retreats at that retreat center, kind of through the whole decade of the 90s. I think it wasn't until maybe Spirit Rock opened up a residential place that they moved there. And even then, they didn't want to because, you know, we had established such a groove of them coming every year for 10 days to do retreats. So we're old friends.

Connection of shared common humanity

What I want to talk about this morning, and you know, sometimes there'll be something in the air that keeps coming up. I've had no less than four conversations this week with people from different organizations about how to bridge the huge divides that are so obvious to all of us in our communities, in our nation, globally, and so forth, through dialogue, bridging community conversations. And so I think Buddhism has so much to offer to this endeavor. I think we all would agree that, just even speaking about our own nation, such big divides politically, not only between the two main political parties but big divisions about the war in Israel-Palestine, the war in Ukraine, so many issues that are dividing people—climate change, climate justice, and so forth.

And so, what do we do to actually come together and talk? I think it really goes back to using some of the techniques from Buddhism for developing empathy and compassion. We can bring this out of the interpersonal to the community level and even the national level. So I wanted to revisit some of those techniques for how do we generate empathy and compassion for people that we think are "other," right? Are very different from us, and that we may not be even very interested in having empathy and compassion for "those kind of people."

In Buddhist practice, we emphasize what we sometimes call mental cultivation through contemplation. And in the four Brahma Viharas,³ for example, which are found in all Buddhist traditions, there's this idea that we can cultivate qualities like loving-kindness and compassion not just for our loved ones. Easy. Everybody does that. That's no big deal. We don't need to work hard at that. Maybe we need to work a little bit harder to develop compassion for ourselves. That can be challenging, right? A lot of people find that, self-kindness and self-compassion. But what about extending compassion to people we see as other in some way because of their beliefs, because of maybe their ethnicity, because of other differences?

One of the things that we do in Buddhist practice is attune to what we call the common humanity. My teacher, one of my main teachers who ordained me—I lived as a monastic for 20 years and I was ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who I think just about everybody on the planet admires. I mean, there are exceptions, but not many. A very exemplary person. I remember once listening to one of his main translators who translated for him in the early days, especially when he first started coming to the so-called West and needed a translator in maybe the 70s and so forth, Jeffrey Hopkins, a Buddhist scholar. He says, "You know, every time I translated for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, it didn't matter what the topic was, within the first couple of sentences he'd always say the same thing: 'All beings are the same in wanting happiness and wanting to avoid suffering.'" And so Jeffrey Hopkins said, "I could only come to one of two conclusions: either he didn't have anything else to talk about, or this is really, really, really important."

And that's the common humanity. We're the same in terms of our basic human feelings, our basic human needs. And this is just talking about humans. In Buddhism, of course, we expand to the more-than-human realm, but for the purposes of today, just talking about the human experience. We all have the same feelings, emotions, the same basic needs. And so even when there are superficial differences, even when there are really extreme differences—because this doesn't say that all beings have the same lived experience at all, so it's not to erase difference in any way, to say that people don't have very different experiences on the basis of race and ethnicity and gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, all the things that make us different, for sure—but there's a base that we can drill down to that is the basis of that connection across difference. In the way that we can sometimes make the difference so that we dispose of people or discount them, their full humanity, or somehow just refuse to connect to them.

I think holding this interesting dichotomy of "there may be somebody I really disagree with, there may be people that even did something that's really harmful that I'm trying to kind of protest or stop them or whatever," but can I still have compassion and empathy for them as a human? That's the hard balance, right? So it's not giving people a pass for harmful behavior at all or not saying, "Oh, we'll just erase the differences," but it's saying, "Can I have that connection nevertheless to their humanity?" Because that's where real connection and communication that I think can really help us, especially in these divided times.

Now, traditional Buddhist practice just kind of focuses on the interpersonal. And so we have practices, and we'll do one today, of imagining the friend, imagining the stranger, imagining the enemy, right? And that's kind of more the personal person that hurt your feelings or the really annoying coworker or the relative that you have the difference of opinion with. But I think we can generalize some of those practices from Buddhism to social groups we see as friend, enemy, stranger also, right? And try to bridge these divides.

There are a lot of organizations now doing this kind of work, but I just wanted to bring up this idea of connecting to that idea of the common humanity. It's interesting because people who have studied altruism, just psychologists and social scientists who've investigated why people do these altruistic acts even at great risk to themselves for others—like, what's going on there? This common thread. There's a book that I brought with me, and I'll read a quote later on, it's called The Heart of Altruism by a researcher called Kristen Monroe. She interviewed people who'd done these altruistic acts for total strangers. And there's a chapter where she interviewed Gentiles, non-Jewish people in Europe who at great personal risk to them and their families hid Jews. We all kind of, I think a lot of us know the story of Anne Frank, who was hidden in the attic of the family for like two years or some crazy amount of time, and then they all ended up getting carted away. She was asking these people—she did her research in the 90s when a lot of them were still alive—like, "What's up with that? How can you risk..." And she said herself as a mother, she goes, "I can see my husband and myself making a risk like that, but for my children, I would do anything to protect them. I would never do it." So even these people that did that, and they all said the same thing, and the common thread was, "How could we not? They're human beings, just like me." Right? So there was something about these people who were altruists that was a common thread, that they saw and they didn't see "us and them" in the same way, right? And they just were like, "How could I not?"

So there's this idea in Buddhism of our interconnection. And again, it doesn't mean we're all the same, it doesn't mean we all have the same experience, but in Buddhist practice, we really tune into this fact of our interdependence on each other. This idea that's—I mean, I've lived and traveled in all of these countries, and I'll tell you right now, Americans are the worst. I'm telling you, the worst in this hallucination of independence. Like we're just a satellite floating in space with no gravitational pull to anything. And I'm like, "Are you kidding me right now?" I just went to the restroom, as one does, turned on the water. I couldn't even have a drink of water. I don't even know where the water comes from, how does the piping work, where does it go? No idea. Someone did that. Good thing, otherwise I'd be carting a bucket to somewhere... where's the closest stream? No idea, right? My car, don't even get me started. All the things that we depend on others for, everything we do. And often still, it's easy for us who grow up in a culture that even prizes this fierce independence. "Oh, I'm all about it, you know. No, I don't need help. I can do the thing, and I can help everyone else, and I don't ever need to ask for help." And it's just a hallucination, like I said, it's just false.

So connecting in that way and connecting to, you know, at the very baseline of our common feelings and needs. There's a clinical social worker who works a lot with people with trauma, and I really like her work, her name is Staci Haines. Anybody who's taken nonviolent communication classes, which some of you may have done, there's long lists of feelings and needs, and those can be really helpful. She drills it down to three basic needs, and I love her list, very short list, and I think it kind of is an umbrella for a lot of those longer lists. She says: safety, belonging, and dignity or respect. Right? And so everything everyone is doing is trying to fulfill a need for either safety—super basic, right? We all want safety. Belonging—wow, that's huge. How many times have we done something or not done something that we felt like was right because we wanted to belong and fit in? Right? So belonging, so huge, very evolutionary, basic human need. And then dignity or respect, or even to borrow from Dan Siegel, just being seen, right? Just being seen as somebody with some kind of value.

And so that's kind of the baseline that we can drill down to. I teach a training in conflict management skills. I actually did it for Gil's teacher training retreat a couple of months ago. He invited me to come do this conflict management skills training. And in that, we talk about, we kind of show a diagram of two icebergs, and we say above the waterline are the person's positions. Like, you're in a disagreement with someone, and you both have these entrenched positions. And then under the waterline is feelings, needs, values, ideals. And then we have, in the diagram, the two icebergs overlap, and we call that the collaboration sweet spot. Like, you found some shared need or value or interest, and then that's where you can come up with a solution to the problem that's not either one of the first positions, but that's where something new can emerge. And so I think that's true interpersonally too, even when we don't have a conflict with someone.

Guided Meditation

So what we're going to do in the meditation practice—this is going to be a guided practice, probably more guided than maybe you're mostly used to, but again, I've got my Tibetan Buddhist hat on. You can't see it, but it's there. So we do a lot of guided practice with visualizations. And so what we're going to do, and this is very traditional practice for cultivating compassion and empathy, and this is a technique from Tibetan Buddhism that was actually also used to develop Stanford's Compassion Cultivation Training, this secular program that some of you—Robert Cusick, who's a teacher here, is one of the teachers of that training, and I am too.

The idea is we start with a priming step of thinking of someone easy to have compassion for. So we kind of get the juices flowing and get that felt sense of what it's like. And then gradually over time, we expand to first the stranger, the neutral person, who we often will just feel indifferent to. "Who cares whether they're happy or suffering? I don't care. I don't even know them. They just put my groceries in the bag at Trader Joe's, whatever," right? And then beyond that, even the difficult people. And for this practice, especially if it's new to you, don't pick a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 of the most difficult person. Don't pick—it's always the exes, right? The ex-mother-in-law, the ex-partner, the ex-whatever. It's always the people really close to us that broke our heart and betrayed us. Don't do that. Maybe the annoying, irritating coworker. We've all got one of those. Or even if some people say, "Oh, I have no one in my life that I dislike," and I go, "Okay, you can think of a public figure," but again, maybe not a 10 on the scale of 1 to 10. I'm not sure there is one. They're all like zero or 10. There's hardly any, but anyway, yeah, maybe a 12. Maybe a 12.

But you know, maybe a kind of three or four or five on a scale of 1 to 10, because I don't want a room full of really triggered people. And memory is also a trigger of emotion, so we don't want that. And so I'll guide you through. And what we do is if we can get a visual image of the person seated in front of us—some people, it's hard to have a visual image, just in your mind's eye, you kind of imagine the person there and get a felt sense of their presence too. Or instead of the visual image, some people are like, "I just can't visualize at all," and that's fine. Get a felt sense of the person's presence and then kind of tune into what feelings come up. And then we'll try and generate this feeling of the common humanity. Okay? And see how it goes.

It might be hard. I did this practice once, you know, I had a nemesis that was also an ex, and it took me literally years. Maybe it's too discouraging if I tell you this, but it did. Years to shift. But I trusted the practice. So don't expect miracles today, but over time, if you keep doing it, these practices really move to shift sometimes our strong reactions towards people of different groups or people in our own lives. So we'll give it a try, and then we'll have a chance to discuss and see what questions or reflections or experiences come up after the practice.

All right. So I'll prompt you with something to think about. I'll give you kind of an instruction of how to think or visualize and then pause, and then follow the instruction as best you can until I give you the next prompt. If you lose track, as we do when we're doing breath awareness meditation, just re-prompt yourself. You know, you might be like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to have for lunch? And I've got 60 emails." Okay, wait, no, the neutral person. I'm supposed to be thinking the neutral person. So just kind of bring yourself back to the practice. All right.

So I'll invite you to get in a comfortable posture with your back straight again. And if you're sitting down, your legs crossed comfortably on the cushion. If you're sitting up in a chair, just making sure you have a nice stable posture with your shoulders even. If you have your tongue resting on the top of your pallet, your upper pallet right behind your teeth, that can keep you from having to swallow constantly. And your eyes can either be closed or in a slightly open, hooded gaze if that helps you to stay awake, stay alert. But you're not looking. If your eyes are slightly open, letting a little light in, you're not looking at whatever is in front of your eyes. You're withdrawing your gaze.

So we won't do a full body scan, but I'll just invite you for a moment after settling into your posture to check into your posture in your body, see if there's any tightness or tension or constriction, and release, relax. And then just settling with the breath again, wherever you can follow the sensations, perhaps the full-body awareness of breathing or the diaphragm or the lungs or that subtlest place, the air moving in and out of your nostrils. And just release any distracting sounds, any distracting thoughts that pull you away from that awareness of the sensations of the breath. Just release and return.

So for the first step, we're going to practice self-kindness and self-compassion. So taking a moment to think of a time when you felt great difficulty. Maybe you were in some kind of emotional or mental distress, or perhaps it was physical pain. Maybe a breakup of an important relationship or a big disappointment. And if you can imagine that self, your past self seated in front of you facing you, or get a felt sense of yourself in that experience, just take a moment to really feel clearly yourself when you were experiencing that unwanted episode, whatever it was. And as that memory becomes clear, notice how you feel. How does your heart feel? Do you have feelings of care and tenderness and kindness towards yourself?

And attuning to that natural sense of care and kindness and compassion you have towards yourself, I invite you to recite the following verses silently: May I be happy. May I be free from suffering. May I find peace and joy.

Sending those thoughts of care and kindness and compassion out to yourself. May I be happy. May I be free from suffering. May I find peace and joy.

And I invite you all also, as you recite the phrases, if it's helpful, sending out a bright light from your heart. And that light symbolizes that care and compassion you have for yourself. Just imagine it touching that replica of yourself, giving them peace, freedom from suffering, happiness. May I be happy. May I be free from suffering. May I find peace and joy.

And then let the visualization of yourself dissolve back into the space of your mind. And now think of a loved one. So this is someone for whom you naturally feel strong feelings of wishing that they have happiness, wishing that they're free from suffering, that heartfelt care and concern. It just comes naturally with this person. Maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's a relative, someone who really sees you, who really gets you, someone whose company you really enjoy. So again, imagining them seated in front of you, or if it's hard to get a clear visual image, just get a felt sense of their presence. Imagine they're here in this room with you, meditating with you. Taking a few moments to really feel their presence, get that image.

And notice as their visual image and that felt sense of their presence becomes real, notice what feelings arise in your heart. It might be a feeling of warmth and openness. You might feel that you have so much in common with this person, they're a lot like you, so to empathize with their feelings and their needs comes so easily. So letting that feeling arise in your heart and become real, that natural sense of connection and empathy and care you feel towards your loved one. And again, if you'd like to visualize a bright light going out from your heart as you breathe out and recite the following phrases in your mind: May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you find peace and joy.

Sending that compassionate wish out to your loved one. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you find peace and joy.

May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you find peace and joy.

With each out-breath, sending that bright light, imagining that that care and love and concern and compassion frees your loved one from any problems they might be experiencing, any unwanted experience, and gives them peace.

And now I invite you to bring to mind a stranger. So someone you don't know well. You have neither any strong feelings of affection for this person or any feelings of aversion, but it's somebody specific in your life, somebody that you recognize. It might be the barista at the place you get your morning coffee, or your regular Uber driver, or a coworker that you don't know very well at all, or maybe a neighbor. So someone specific, but someone for whom you don't give much thought one way or another, neither affection nor aversion. Maybe you don't think of them at all unless you happen to see them, and then don't even really think much about their life, what's going on for them. So someone specific, and again, trying to visualize them seated in front of you or get a felt sense of their presence, inviting them into the meditation. Taking a moment to build up that feeling of their presence.

And as you get that clear visual image or that felt sense becomes clear, just noticing how it feels, noticing what feelings come up. It might be just indifference, not much one way or the other. You might even notice your attention wandering more. Why am I even thinking about this person?

And now taking a moment to try to tune into this person's experience. You may know nothing about them, you may not even know their name, but just because they're another human being, someone cares for them, someone loves them. They experience love and care for others and wish to be loved, just like you. They felt disappointed, sad, maybe lonely, just like you. They felt anger, frustration, irritation, just like you. They felt joy, laughter, connection, just like you. They need safety, belonging, dignity, and respect. And when they don't get it, they struggle. So even though you don't know anything about this person, you know all of these things to be true, just because they're a human being, just like you. And their life is just as important to them as your life is to you.

And so with that feeling now of a more heartfelt level of connection and empathy and compassion, sending that bright light out to that stranger and thinking: May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you find peace and joy.

By knowing that their happiness is just as important to them as your happiness is to you, their freedom from suffering just as important to them. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you find peace and joy.

Continuing to send out that compassionate wish from your heart along with that bright light with every out-breath, and feeling that heartfelt wish that that person who's a stranger find happiness and freedom from suffering.

May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you find peace and joy.

And now I invite you to think of a difficult person. And again, not a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, not the most difficult person in your life, but perhaps someone who's just hurt you or someone you find irritating and annoying, or someone who's disappointed you, or someone whose views you feel you just don't understand. So thinking of such a person, again, someone very specific in your life, and imagine them seated in front of you, or get a felt sense of their presence. And noticing, even as you begin to bring them to mind, you might notice that aversion arising, the thought that "I don't really even want to think of this person. I definitely don't want to visualize them or feel that they're here in that room." Just notice whatever resistance might arise. Take a few moments to really get clear, get a sense of this person, noticing your response to thinking about them.

We so often perceive people through the lens and the filter of our own relationship with them and what they can do for us, perhaps what they have done to us or for us. But now try to think, for this person too, they have a whole life that's just as important to them as your life is to you. They wish to love and be loved. They're an object of care and concern and love to someone. They care to be happy. They try to avoid any physical or emotional pain or disappointments or stress, struggles, just like you. They feel anger, despair, disappointment, frustration, just like you. They feel joy and connection and happiness, just like you. Their basic needs of safety, belonging, and respect and worthiness are just as important to them as your needs are to you. And just think, perhaps if their needs were met, perhaps if they received more love, they might not be as annoying. Perhaps if they received all that any human wishes, who knows, they might change. Maybe it's all of their disappointments that has made them so unpleasant to be around.

And see if by connecting to that level of common humanity in terms of the feelings, the emotions, the needs, if with that in mind you can send out a heartfelt wish: May you too be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you experience peace and joy.

And sending out that bright light from your heart, even to the difficult person. They too wishing for happiness, wishing to be free from suffering, just like you. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you experience peace and joy.

And notice, it might feel harder than for the other people, the loved one and the stranger, and that's fine, just noticing. But your intention to at least try—it's aspirational. May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you experience peace and joy.

Imagine that bright light going out and imagine that difficult person actually having peace of mind, having happiness, that you're able to actually give them happiness and relieve their suffering.

May you be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you experience peace and joy.

And now think of all three people together: the loved one, the stranger, the difficult person. And thinking, even though you have a different relationship to all three of these people, from their side, they all are exactly the same in wanting happiness, wanting freedom from suffering. And that there's no difference at all, the same as you, the same as each other. So sending that compassionate wish out to all three: May you all be happy. May you all be free from suffering. May you all experience peace and joy.

Breathing out that bright light from your heart. May you all be happy. May you be free from suffering. May you experience peace and joy.

And then expanding that compassionate wish even farther, thinking of everyone seated in this room right now. All of us here, exactly the same in terms of our basic human feelings, our needs, our emotions. All of us wishing for happiness, wishing for freedom from suffering. And so expand, imagine that light from your heart expanding, going out to everyone in this room. May everyone here be happy. May everyone be free from suffering. May everyone experience peace and joy.

Just expanding, feeling that warmth from your heart, that bright light going out to everyone in this room, then to everyone joining on the live stream. And then imagining expanding to all beings. Imagine that powerful, compassionate energy from your heart, there's no boundary. It just streams forth, sending that same compassionate wish to all beings: May all beings be happy. May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings experience peace and joy.

And then releasing the visualization, returning to the breath for just a moment and taking a moment to rejoice in your own practice, your own cultivation of this open-hearted, immeasurable compassion. Just take a moment to feel joy in your own virtue, thinking that even in the level of your imagination, you've been able to bring all the suffering in the universe to an end. And then dedicating the positive energy from our practice that all beings have happiness, all beings have freedom from suffering.

And taking just a moment to relax your posture, very gently come out of meditation.

Q&A

Well, I really feel like that should have single-handedly brought about world peace. Feels that way to me anyway. So we've got about 11 minutes and if there's any questions or reflections or experiences or any epiphanies, doubts, struggles, any of the above, don't be shy. We'll pass the mic around. Anything come up at all? Because I know that was maybe a slightly different type of practice than some of you might be used to. So yeah, there's a question here.

Questioner 1: Good morning, thank you so much. Our son, college-age son, is coming home today, who we love dearly, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the loved one that both of us thought of. But as with all young people today and in the past and in the future, he struggles some with who is he going to be, what is he going to do. He has ADD and needs to deal with that, and recently I found myself stepping back into kind of the executive function role, and I can feel myself getting more rigid dealing with him in terms of, "Have you done this? Have you done that?" And we're both good about conversing about that, but I'm wondering if you have any suggestions about in the moment, are there things that I can be thinking of to stop the mind's—it's all fear-based, right? I just want the best for you and...

Tenzin Chogkyi: ...yeah, exactly, "Let me help you out." I do, as a matter of fact, unsurprisingly, have a couple of ideas. One thing though that your question makes me think of is when I teach the longer course, I teach the eight-week Stanford course, and we have a lot more unpacking of all the steps, including choosing the appropriate loved one. And so we often say teenage children that don't come home by curfew may be a complicated relationship. Clearly you love them dearly and they drive you nuts also. And the spouse who doesn't wash the dishes. And I was teaching in prison, I taught in prison for about 15 years before COVID, and I was doing this in prison. And then there was another example that I hadn't even thought of. One of my students who's experiencing incarceration, a couple of weeks into the class, he goes, "I'm really struggling with the meditation on the loved one." And I was like, "What's happening?" He was thinking of his mother in this little village in Mexico, that he's the oldest son and he can't take care of her, which he's meant to do in that culture, because he's in prison in California. So along with the love he has for his mother comes guilt and shame and all these complex emotions. So just to say in terms of the meditation, we say sometimes just your bestie, that it's uncomplicated. All human relationships are complicated, admitting that, and maybe a less complicated one.

And I think, I don't have children in this life, so I just speak from kind of conversations with people and just my own, you know, but kind of just realizing, I mean from a Buddhist perspective, it's really helped me in trying to help other people is go, "They have their own Karma.⁴ You can be a condition to maybe help them or not, but you cannot live their life for them. You can't force them into choices." All you can do is try to gently seed kind of the field with some suggestions and so forth, and then you really do have to let go. And then sometimes even by letting go, they'll come and talk to you more than they would and you can actually be more effective. You know, they say it's like, there's a sort of, like with meditation practice, like you hang on too hard and try and control your mind too much, you just drive yourself crazy and stir everything up, but it shouldn't be too lax either. And I think that metaphor works for almost everything, including relationships. Like you're holding but you're not squeezing and gripping so tightly. And it's so hard as a parent, I know, because you want their happiness more than anything and you just jump in front of the speeding freight train to save them. And just realizing the boundary of what you can do and what you can't do. And just realizing kind of a realistic boundary of what helping even looks like, and what's actually the best way to help. And often with people, just being more of a listener is the best thing we can do. Like empathic presence and listening is absolutely 100%. People are always going, "What do I do with this person? And they're taking drugs and they're doing this and that." Just ask them questions and listen and listen and listen and listen. And that can be the best way to really be supportive and then maybe regain or establish even deeper trust that then they can will ask for and even take your advice after lots and lots of empathic presence. So that's what's coming up for me.

Questioner 1: Thank you. I had taken the eight-week course about 18 months ago. So the one thing, when my son and I realized that we were falling back in old patterns a couple of weeks ago, I told him, I said, "I'm sorry that I haven't been an active listener, because if we're going to be support for you, if you are going to rely on us to reach out and share your struggles, it means I have to sit in the active listen." And it's hard.

Tenzin Chogkyi: It's hard. The more you care, the harder it is, weirdly, but the more it helps. So yeah, yeah, thank you. There's somebody behind you.

Questioner 2: I really want to break out in song and dance when I get this. Um, oh thank you. In front of everybody. I'm Anya, and I really resonate, I don't know your name whoever just spoke, but I really resonate with the space that you're in, but I will keep that for after this. I'm a mama too. I wanted to share that first of all, thank you. It's such a good one. It's such a good one. If we could just ask that the whole world stop at one moment and do it together. Yeah. That said, I noticed having done this before, that when I got to my person that I felt a little bit of resistance to, I noticed what was going on in my body, that I needed—and granted if we had done this for hours, it might have dissipated—but I noticed my body tighten in a way that I was protecting myself. And I noticed immediately that forgiveness floated up. And I realized in order for me to be truly connected there, there were things that needed to also be there in addition to compassion. Yeah. And it was much easier to step back and be in that space with someone I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I can probably analyze the heck out of that because I'm a therapist, but that said, it was interesting to watch and then just let it be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice. Really just keep opening the heart and sending the light versus really thinking of any characteristics, right, or wishing for them. I just wanted to envelop them in light and space so they could be who they were and I could be. Yeah, right, right, right.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Anyway, and sometimes even, oh, this is such a long, we've got two minutes, what do I even say? When I teach the longer class, I show this diagram that originally comes from education, and you might have seen it, and there's like three concentric circles. And there's the comfort zone, and the growth zone, and then sometimes called the stress zone or the overwhelm zone. And so in the training, you know, whether it's eight weeks or 90 minutes with you guys, I'll kind of introduce all the steps, but then in our practice, we want to push the edge of the comfort zone. Obviously, if you stay in your comfort zone forever, it's just the loved one and it's your bestie and no big deal. So we want to stretch into the growth zone, but not so far. And sometimes we don't know that until, like you, you're in the middle of the practice and you're like, "Too much, a little too," or you need to realize, "Okay, I'll just send a bunch of light out, but I don't want much of a connection to you yet. It doesn't feel safe." And then there's a whole long story about forgiveness that we often mistake forgiveness means reestablishing trust and letting the person back into our life in the same way they were before. And there's a beautiful book by Bishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter, Mpho Tutu, and he's like, "No, you can choose to release the relationship, create a new boundary if the person is really not trustworthy or you just don't want them close. But that doesn't need to prevent your forgiveness." But you're like, "You used to be way up here, I can forgive you, but I want you out here now." And I think it's our thinking that forgiveness and reestablishing trust always go together that prevents us from forgiveness. So that's an interesting thing. Yeah, real, real quick, we're at time, but yeah, real quick to add on.

Questioner 2: Okay, YouTubes, I got you. You can tell I'm old and low-tech because I don't know how this goes. Just quickly wanted to say in that, in our humanity, in our bodies, I think there's a degree of safety, there's an emotional safety piece, and it lives in here. And so even without the thought that forgiveness means trust and duplicating what was, there's still a natural physiological reaction and it needs honoring.

Tenzin Chogkyi: Yeah, absolutely. Here we are. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, and this is, yeah, this would be a whole another session. Yes, no doubt. I'm at time, and I want to finish with a poem, because that's like an insight thing, isn't it? This Tibetan Buddhist has gotten all into poetry since I've been hanging out with you guys.

Closing Poem

There's a poem that I want to close with, and just to thank you all. It's great to be here in this space with you, and thank you for engaging in that meditation. I'll be around for a while if people want to keep talking. I was told that's okay for me to lurk around for a while, so I'm happy to do that. And then just to close our time, this is actually a poem that was sent to me by Bob Stahl, who some of you may know, who was the Insight Santa Cruz guiding teacher, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.⁵ And it's called "Sometimes, Like Today, We Remember."

Sometimes, like today, we remember that everyone—
even the driver in that white Jeep who cut in front of you,
yes, even the elegant woman in the dairy aisle
and the man who seems lost on the library steps
and the child sitting alone on the bench,
yes, everyone—has a story,
fears and hopes and something to learn
and someone they love and someone who's hurt them
and someone they long to hold.
And though their stories are mostly invisible,
they're always more complex than whatever we project
and they're every bit as real as our own.
The woman in the dairy aisle smiles at you,
and though she is wearing diamonds in her ears,
she looks lonely. Or is it you who is lonely?
Is it all of us, all of us longing for someone
to truly see us? And that driver you're cursing—
don't we all sometimes feel as if we need
to move forward any way we can?
And that boy on the bench—
notice the empty seat beside him.
Perhaps you could sit there, too, in the sun.
Who knows what might happen next?

Thank you. Oh, Happy Father's Day, also. I just realized. Happy Father's Day to all the dads and all the families. Great. Thank you so much. Hope to see you again.