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Non harming is the Dharma - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 16, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Non harming is the Dharma

I'm going to tell you a tale about a monk, and I want to dedicate the tale to a wonderful monk that I met many years ago named U Silananda¹. He was the monk responsible for the Burmese temple back in Daly City; eventually, he moved down and built the temple that is now just south of Half Moon Bay.

Back then, the so-called temple was just a small, regular-looking house in Daly City. When I was going to practice in Burma, I heard about this monk, so I called him up and said, "Can I come visit you?" He said sure. I took a bus, walked some way into the neighborhood, and knocked on the door. The remarkable thing about how he received me was that I immediately felt like I'd been his friend for decades. We were like old friends—that was the best way I could describe how he received me, even though he had never met me. He brought me in, and we sat and talked. The kindness, warmth, and friendliness that he offered was outstanding given that we were strangers. So, this tale is dedicated to U Silananda, and hopefully, he will approve.

There was this Buddhist monk who was traveling around, and he came to a town where there had never been any Buddhists before. People hardly knew what Buddhism was. He stayed there for some days, and the people in the town liked him. He seemed to be remarkably calm and peaceful, and people felt really safe with him. Actually, some people started telling him their life stories, what was going on with them, and their challenges. It was just so nice. He didn't seem to have a lot to tell them, but they left those encounters with him changed, just because he was so friendly, kind, and receptive to what they had to say.

A local professor of religion heard about the monk and was interested in Buddhism. Having never met a Buddhist before, she saw a chance to learn something. She came to visit him to find out what Buddhism is. She asked him what seemed to her like the obvious question: "What do you believe?"

He answered, "Long ago I believed, but now I act."

She was a little confused by this answer. Don't all religions have beliefs? Couldn't he have just told her? So she asked again in a different way: "What teachings do you rely on?"

"Long ago I relied on teachings. Now I rely on what I know."

But of course, he was a Buddhist monk, right? So she tried again: "Aren't you devoted to the Buddha?"

"Long ago I was devoted to the Buddha, but now I am devoted to non-harming."

"But what do you have faith in?" she asked, trying again with all the ways she understood religion.

"I don't have faith. I have confidence in non-harming action."

"But what is your ultimate truth?"

"The end of doing harm. The end of doing any harm to myself or to others."

But this was nothing like religion in her mind. "But then you are left with no desire for a good life hereafter?" For many religions, that is an important part.

"I have no desire for a life hereafter. I desire a good life now; the rest will take care of itself."

"But what is the good life now?"

"A life lived without any deliberate act of body, speech, or mind that harms self or others."

She had heard that in Buddhism you are not supposed to have any desires, so she thought she would finally ask a Buddhist question. She was so confused by this time. "Do you have no desires?"

"No, I desire a world committed to non-harming."

He answered her questions so kindly and calmly, without any sense that she was wrong or any hostility. She was left confused because he didn't fit any of her ideas of what religion is, but she left transformed in some way. Changed.

I offer that tale as a way of suggesting that Buddhism has a radically different orientation than what most people think about as religion. This idea of non-harming lays at the center of what Buddhism is, and perhaps it is the ultimate goal: to not harm. Some people will feel that's not good enough because religions have ultimate truths, ultimate purposes, ultimate goals, and ultimate experiences of enlightenment. Wouldn't that be nice, to be enlightened?

What is enlightenment? It is to be so fully transformed that a person will have no deliberate attempts to harm anyone in the world, including themselves. That is what enlightenment is.

But we don't usually say that, because people don't get so excited by non-harming. If you said, "The ultimate goal is to realize the truth," that seems pretty good! Or, "The ultimate enlightenment is to realize the highest possible human liberation." Then I get liberated—that's really great, isn't it? Don't you want to be liberated? So that's exciting. But to realize non-harming? That is a transformation. It is a liberation from doing anything at all that causes harm.

One might ask, "Isn't enlightenment about something for me?" Well, you stop causing harm to yourself. Isn't that pretty good? You might say, "I don't harm myself that much, I just suffer."

Then the monk would say, "Well, in that case, you should look more deeply to see what you're doing."

The core teachings of Buddhism, often called the Four Noble Truths², don't have the word "harm" in them. They have the word dukkha³, which is usually translated into English as suffering, but literally means pain. The causes of that suffering and pain are our activities. What we're focusing on is not what the world does to us, but what we do to ourselves. If the world does something unfortunate to us, that's unfortunate, and we have to do our best to figure out what to do. But if because of that we now want to hate, or harm others, in that momentum we are harming ourselves. Hate always harms the hater. Intentional violence always harms the one who is violent. It can't not.

But often we're not paying attention that way. That is why we study ourselves to see what's going on deeply. If you go really deep, you also see that the suffering we can have some role in transforming arises from our own attachments. To cling is to harm ourselves. It is not necessarily an ethical issue—we often think of harming others as being unethical, but being attached is an issue of whether you are happy or whether you suffer. There is a way in which attachment is the root way we harm ourselves, and chances are it is the root reason why we harm others.

At the heart of the Dharma is this non-harming instinct. But is it ultimate? Shouldn't religion be about ultimate things that you can't really know for yourself, but that you take on faith because they come from scriptures, from the Buddha, or from your teachers? People involved in religion like ultimate things. Partly it's because religious people tend to put a lot of themselves into the religious life; there's a commitment to something bigger than themselves, and for that level of commitment, people really want to know that this is the best, that this is ultimate.

In the earliest teachings of the Buddha, he explicitly was not interested in ultimate truths. Now our professor is even more confused! The pursuit of ultimate truth was a detour. The task, he said, was to let go of clinging, let go of craving, and let go of attachments. Having ultimate truths is for some people just another attachment, another detour, and a distraction from doing this deep work.

But isn't just letting go of my attachments kind of a small thing? How can that be so great, wonderful, and ultimate? I don't get a lot of credit among my religious friends when I tell them our ultimate goal is just letting go of clinging. That doesn't seem very good. So I think the best thing to do is to grant them that it might not be that ultimate.

However, it might be the greatest thing you can do with your life. It is the fundamental thing we should do in our life; it's the beginning of what we should do. We should at least live a life of non-harming. At least find a way not to cause harm to ourselves and others. Do that important work. Our world will be transformed if we did that. We will be transformed if we do that. Once we learn how to live without causing harm to self and other, once we learn to live without clinging and craving, once we have that level of liberation—well, then if you're still interested in ultimate truths, help yourself! Please, that's good. Maybe you have some wonderful ones that are inspiring, poetic, fun to read about, and be amazed by. Yes. But let's do this first thing.

Not a few Buddhists have discovered that doing the deep inner work of becoming free in this way is pretty ultimate and fantastic. The level of peace, well-being, and safety that it provides is astounding. On the way there, there starts to be an appreciation of how difficult and deep this work is. It's the task of a lifetime to really settle and find what I like to suggest is a really good fundamental place for all of us to begin.

The Buddha said that if you cling and you crave, you can't really see what's true. If you're in a religion and craving and clinging are a part of it, it might obscure your ability to even understand what your religion is talking about. Buddhism is not the only religion that talks about non-clinging and non-attachment. Mystics in religions of all kinds emphasize this. There are beautiful teachings by a Catholic mystic named Meister Eckhart⁴ who talked explicitly about the value of non-attachment and non-clinging in ways that would be completely at home in Buddhism.

It's not a surprise, because seeing something beautiful here in this world is so fantastic when we do this inner work. In Mahayana Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, there is a teaching that goes something like this: "When your mind is pure, the world is pure." When the mind is pure, you see the world with a certain kind of purity.

We do this work on our own heart and mind—understanding it, seeing how it is, recognizing where the harming is and how we harm ourselves, and finding a way not to do it. For many of us, part of that work is to deal with all the "lawyers" in the mind. There are some really clever lawyers in there who will make a really good case that it's okay to harm sometimes. "It's okay to harm other people; they deserve it! How else am I going to take care of myself? What other choice do we have?" And sometimes the lawyers represent you: "Of course I have to harm myself, I'm such a terrible person. I deserve it."

Part of the task in this practice is to question the lawyers. When the lawyers come, remember: don't harm them. Receive them as old friends. Receive them calmly and kindly. Listen to them, but don't believe them. Believe in non-harming.

Finally, I'd like to offer a thought around this idea of "believing." Many of us believe things that maybe we shouldn't be believing. Recently, I talked to someone who said, "I don't believe I'm capable of doing something that needs to be done. That's my belief."

When that occurs to you, change your language. Don't say, "This is what I believe." Say, "This is what I'm believing." And if you want to get extra credit, say, "For right now, this is what I'm believing."

The difference is huge. If you say, "I believe," it's like a solid, truthful statement—this is how it is, and who's going to find a way out of that? But if it's an act of believing—"Right now this is what I'm believing"—then it's not so solid. It's just an activity of the mind. The focus in Buddhism is not on belief, but rather on the activity the mind is doing. It turns out that when there is a belief, there is an activity of the mind happening called "believing." That puts the mirror, the mindfulness, back onto the nature, quality, and characteristic of that act.

"What do you believe? Long ago I believed, now I act." We're always acting.

"What teachings do you rely on? Long ago I relied on teachings, now I rely on what I know." What can you know? Maybe you don't know ultimate truths, but if you pay attention, you can know the actions that you're involved in. If the action has to do with thinking, then you know, "Oh, I'm thinking something. I'm thinking about an ultimate truth. I'm thinking that I believe this is ultimately true." The action of thinking is happening. We often overlook the action because we get caught up in what we're thinking about. We overlook the fact that we're believing because we're caught in the belief. "This is what's true. Now I'm believing this. Now I'm reacting to this. Now I'm feeling this. Now I'm wanting this to happen." There is always an action.

So, what teachings do you rely on? "I rely on what I know." And what you can know are the activities you're involved in. That is a core, central activity that mindfulness brings attention to.

"Aren't you devoted to the Buddha? Long ago I was devoted to the Buddha, now I am devoted to non-harming." Once you start tracking the activities of the mind, speech, and body, you can start noticing, "Oh, this hurts. There's an ouch in this. There's harm in this for me, and maybe there's harm for others." Then we can question: Is this how I want to live my life? Is this the activity that I want to be part of?

Then the lawyer comes and says, "It has to be this way, there can't be any other way!" Oh, that's a clever lawyer. But the lawyer is not the judge who has to decide. Don't let the lawyers decide.

"What do you have faith in? I don't have faith, I have confidence in non-harming action. What is your ultimate truth? The end of doing any harm to myself or others. What is the good life now? A life lived without any deliberate act of body, speech, and mind that harms self or others."

"Do you have no desires? No, I do have desires. I desire a world committed to non-harming."

It's fine to have desires in Buddhism. But as you're desiring, desire in a way that doesn't cause harm. Find a way to have desires that actually can be nourishing, supportive, and helpful. Some desires are helpful, healing, beneficial, and inspiring. Any desire that has to do with living a life of not causing harm—living a life with love, care, and respect for self and others—desire those in ways that are inspiring and that don't cause more harm.

Someone might have the desire to be non-harming, but they approach it by saying, "God, I have to get on with it! I'm such a lousy person. I need to desire non-harming so I can be the best non-harming person on my block." The very act of wanting to not harm is now harming them.

We're always looking: In what way am I acting here? In what way am I thinking here? In what way am I intending here? Does the very way in which I'm intending and wanting inspire this inner beauty of non-harming? We're always tracking this and looking at it. Over time, it has phenomenal results. Over time, it creates so much inner well-being, peace, space, and goodness that maybe you'll be the Buddhist who goes into a town where there have never been many Buddhists, and the religious professor will come to you.

"What do you believe in?"

"I believe it's important to notice how I'm believing."

Now you understand why that's an important answer. I believe it's important to study how I'm believing so that I believe in a way that doesn't cause any harm, but does the opposite. It's nourishing, supportive, and liberating.

Those are my thoughts for today. Now, what do the lawyers say, or what questions or comments might you have?

Q&A

Questioner 1: This topic was spot-on for something I'm struggling with right now. I realized that I am harming myself through perpetuating suffering over a loss I've experienced.

Gil Fronsdal: So you harm yourself by perpetuating the suffering?

Questioner 1: Yes. I realize it's coming from clinging. A wonderful friendship I had is not wonderful at all anymore, and I keep clinging to what it was. The Buddha was so wonderful at giving us lists, but I don't find a list for how to let go. I think that's just the hardest thing for me. I need steps. I need 12 steps to learn to let go. It's repeatedly my biggest problem.

Gil Fronsdal: Well then, I'll give you four steps: be mindful of your body, be mindful of your feelings, be mindful of your mind states, and be mindful of the activities of your mind. Those are the Four Foundations of Mindfulness⁵.

When you have this particular suffering, go through that checklist. If you're not recently familiar with the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, study them a little bit. It takes a lot of familiarity, a lot of mindfulness, a lot of looking at it and seeing what's going on here. Not analytically, but asking, "What's the clinging? What are the activities that are happening now in the body, the mind, and the heart?" You have to spend a lot of time just being mindful of it.

Also remember that "mindfulness" is not quite a good word. We are "mindful-ing." We're practicing the activity of mindfulness. Then the question is, how are you being mindful? Are you doing it holding on for dear life? Are you doing it with greed, or with aversion to what's happening? Do the "mindful-ing" in a way that feels good.

Questioner 1: I must be missing something because I'm actually doing a practice so similar. I catch myself—I wake up almost every morning with these thoughts: "Oh, I wish I had said that," or "It hurts so much when she said this," or "Oh my gosh, that was so wonderful when we were friends." I catch it, I stop, I look, and I say, "Oh, I'm saying this." I check in with my body and my breathing, but every damn morning it comes back.

Gil Fronsdal: I don't know you that well in this regard, but I suspect that you're doing all this from the neck up. Find a good posture, and really let your belly be deeply relaxed. Then do the work. Do the practice once your belly is really relaxed.

Questioner 1: I will try that—from the bottom up rather than the top down. I think you're right, I'm doing it as a mental construct. I'm going step one, step two, step three. That will be weird. Thank you.

Questioner 2: Isn't having expectations of others always harming them and harming yourself? If you have no expectations, then you are all alone.

Gil Fronsdal: I think having an expectation when there's been an agreement is reasonable. If someone promises something and you agreed together on what you are going to do, that's one of the functions of an agreement. Now we can expect that something will happen; we can trust something will happen in a particular way. If the agreement is broken, we feel kind of hurt.

But if there has been no agreement between the people, we have to be very, very careful about expectations, because then we're projecting something onto the situation that other people haven't agreed to. We're bringing our values and putting them on other people. There might be implicit agreements in our society. For instance, when the traffic light is red, we don't drive through it. We have an expectation that that's how we all agree to drive, but you never asked the other driver to promise not to drive. We have all kinds of implicit agreements. So I think when there's an agreement, it's reasonable to have some expectation, and then people are accountable to the agreement. You can say, "I expected that, what happened?" and have something to talk about.

Expectations of oneself and of others are also a source of a lot of suffering. We hold ourselves and other people to standards that are much higher than they can actually live by. It can be oppressive and harmful to have unreasonable expectations. This is why we practice mindfulness to look at the action of expecting. When you are expecting, what's going on for you? What do you want? What are you attached to? What are you hoping for? What are you afraid of? This gives you enough to think about!

Questioner 3: What if it's a complicated situation? I'm thinking of an example. Let's say I have a pond, and I have some fish in it. Then an invasive species comes to live in the pond that's killing my fish. If I don't harm that species of some sort, my fish will all die. Then what should I do in that case?

Gil Fronsdal: First of all, I love it when people ask that question! I welcome so much that they're asking rather than immediately going to get poison to kill the fish.

The question is, "Let's think about it. Maybe let's do some research and find out what we can do." Maybe there is something to be done. Maybe there are traps you can put in that can trap the fish and take them where they belong, which is maybe expensive, but maybe that's nicer than just killing them. Maybe your fish are really small, and that's a really big fish. If you take a large net through the pond, you can get all the invasive fish on one side and let all the small fish stay on the other side. Let's figure out what we can do. Maybe they can just share the pond together that way. Or maybe you realize the reason why the big fish are eating the small ones is because they're hungry, but they actually have a preferred diet. So you bring in their preferred diet, and they leave the small fish alone!

I'm just making up ideas, but it's possible by thinking about it and exploring. Sometimes killing them seems like it takes care of it really quickly. But because you killed them, maybe your fish now think, "Oh, killing is right!" and they start killing each other for the slightest little thing! [Laughter] They've learned that killing is possible in this pond. You don't know the repercussions that killing has.

It could also be that the person didn't read the news and didn't realize that bringing in a particular kind of feed had invasive fish eggs in it. "Oh, but it's so much work, who cares about doing that?" And so there's no preventive work done. If you have the equivalent of a pond with fish in it, think ahead. Notice what's happening. Set up a situation so in the future there's not that problem.

People who want to live a non-harming life need to be proactive. They need to set the conditions in the present so that in 5, 10, 20, or 50 years, there aren't problems. To only look at the present moment is very myopic when it comes to living a life of non-harming.

Questioner 4: When I'm thinking about invasive fish and a fish pond, I'm thinking about Israel and Gaza. I don't know how to think about it, and I wonder if you have any suggestions.

Gil Fronsdal: Yes. The talk today was partly a response to that without mentioning it explicitly. One of the reasons not to mention it explicitly is a story about Thich Nhat Hanh⁶. He lived in Vietnam during the war between Northern Vietnam and Southern Vietnam. He lived right in the area where the conflict was most active, with battles back and forth in nearby fields.

He was dedicated to doing it a different way. Not fighting. He was dedicated to non-harming. He had a whole group of monastics—women and men—who were out there trying to support everyone on both sides of the conflict and offer a different approach to it all. Because of that, neither side trusted him. The South Vietnamese didn't trust him because he was trying to help the Northern Vietnamese with medical care, and vice versa.

The situation in Gaza and Israel is awful. There is so much pain. To take a middle view—a middle way that really wants the best for both sides—is kind of difficult to say, because people on either side get upset. They feel you don't understand how terrible it is for them, how much they've been violated, or how much they've been forgotten by the world. Not talking about it directly is also very difficult, because then people say, "You're ignoring my people. I don't feel safe." When there are people on both sides who feel that way, it's a very difficult position to be in.

For me, the middle is not being aloof or indifferent. It is having a heart that is really concerned for everyone involved and is dedicated to finding, the best we can, a way of non-harming, without projecting expectations on what people do.