This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Not Personal; Compassion (4 of 5) Compassion & Not-Self - Kodo Conlin. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Not Personal; Dharmette: Compassion (4 of 5) Compassion & Not-Self - Kodo Conlin

The following talk was given by Kodo Conlin at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 09, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Not Personal

So greetings, welcome. Good moment to you all. It's morning on the West Coast, and as I was waking up this morning, I saw out the window the waning moon was rising and Venus was leading this bright light in front of the moon. And I couldn't help but think of the closing metaphor from our time together yesterday. The four Brahmavihārās¹ is like the sun at different phases of the day, and equanimity is like the cool light of the moon. That was touching to wake up to this morning. I hope you're all well.

So the theme of compassion we will continue, and today we will get into what I think is a useful topic: compassion and not-self. We can hold that in the background for some time while we settle and meditate together.

In this meditation, what I will invite us to do is first to include some mettā², some loving-kindness or benevolence, into our settling process. So as the body and the mind are actually starting to settle, including the attitude of benevolence in whatever way feels right for you. And then after some time of settling with mettā in this way, we will call to mind a specific being to whom we would like to offer compassion. Maybe not someone who's having the greatest difficulty, but someone who this morning, when you check in with yourself, it feels right for you to wish them well—that they may be free from suffering.

And then the third piece of the meditation this morning, we'll let go of the image of another person and simply let the attitude, the feeling, the wish of compassion radiate in all directions. So just a bit of explanation before we get started. Let's find our way into the meditation posture.

And right from the start, as we're settling in with the body and the breathing, inviting this attitude of goodwill. If it's helpful, directing it to yourself, maybe with a reflection: May I be happy.

And letting ourselves be nourished by any goodness that comes from that wish.

Settling, bringing the posture into balance, letting the breathing come into its own balance. And wishing well: May I be happy.

Every breath like a wish for well-being. Breathing kindness.

Now a gentle shift in focus. Calling to mind someone you would like to offer compassion to. An offering that's within your capacities for this morning, to whom you would like to offer the wish: May you be free from suffering. May you be free from harm.

Practicing making that intention, making that wish, offering it. And then registering what happens in this body and mind.

And then again: May you be free from suffering and harm.

May we be free from suffering and harm. Practicing this wish, staying mindful throughout so that we can offer peacefully and clearly.

Knowing.

May we be free from suffering.

And now letting go of this specific person or being. Sensing the attitude, the felt sense, the intention, the wish of compassion. Rather than directing it to a specific being, opening ourselves to let compassion radiate in all directions.

Shining like the gentle light of sunset.

Shining the gentle light of compassion on all beings in all directions. To the front, the right, behind, to the left, above, and below.

And in the last minute of this sitting, breathing ease into the body, breathing relaxation into the heart and mind, letting this being here be nourished by our practice.

May all beings everywhere know ease and have the causes of true happiness.

Dharmette: Compassion (4 of 5) Compassion & Not-Self

So welcome again. Thank you for practicing together. My mind feels quite still and wanting to appreciate, wanting to stay in the meditation of compassion. But now is the time to reflect on the Dharma together.

Suzuki Roshi³, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, is quoted as saying that when the mind is compassionate, it is boundless. In Pāli, the word is appamāṇa⁴, boundless, without boundary, without measure.

So the far enemy in the Visuddhimagga⁵, the far enemy of compassion is cruelty. It's its direct opposite. Compassion is the wish that beings be free from suffering; cruelty is the wish that another being be harmed. And chances are rather high that if one were to look clearly into a heart and a mind when it's in a state of cruelty, you may find what we colloquially call some measure of othering, some self-concern, some dominance of the concept of self. And in contrast, in a mind in a state of compassion—in one that wishes that no harm come to any being—there's this sense of openness and connection and care, and even love.

So maybe a more subtle and perplexing topic is the meeting of compassion and not-self. We practice compassion in harmony with not-self. This is a question I sometimes feel when practitioners learn about the teaching of not-self; they start to think, "Oh, can I practice both of these at the same time? Can I be nobody and love all beings? Wait, but if I'm loving all beings, am I making beings?" It gets confusing quickly.

So to start to clarify this, we'll take a short excursion into some not-self teachings, and then I would like to share just two examples of what, for this morning, I'm going to call "empty love"—that's love that's empty of self-concern, compassion that's empty of concepts of self. So let's move first into this teaching on not-self.

It's important to clarify because there's this really common misconception about not-self. And I appreciate again Venerable Anālayo⁶ here. He offered this teaching that I'm going to summarize for you, that the teaching on not-self very easily edges over into being misunderstood as nothingness—that there's nothing here, there's no one here, nothing here. And this is a misapprehension.

So instead, he offers not-self to be understood this way: that in this body and mind, there is no permanent entity that we can find. If we look at our body, if we look at our mind, we look at our heart, there's nothing permanent we can put our finger on, and there's no one in complete control. One small and sobering example is that however much I might wish it to be otherwise, this body of mine will age, and soon enough it will pass away. There's nothing permanent here, and nothing in complete control. I can't stop the aging from coming.

So is there no "me"? The question he poses. While there's not a permanent entity, not something that's in complete control, what continues is a process of causes and conditions. And this process isn't nothing. In the process, there is a continuity, and actually, this means that I have some responsibility.

So a good example: let's say that a few minutes ago I said something harmful. I said something that hurt someone. The "me" of right now is responsible for those words. I can't simply say, "Oh, no self here, wasn't me, there's no self here." There is a continuity, and I'm responsible.

Venerable Anālayo likens this continuing flow of causes and conditions to a river: flowing, changing, no essence, but a continuity. And our mettā and compassion practice are just like that, too. There's no essence to them, but we feed this river of wholesome intention and wishing for the well-being of others.

To really drive this point home about not-self, a second example he offers is that we know in our contemporary understanding that what we perceive as solid matter is actually largely empty space. So I just knocked on my desk—because of Zoom you can't hear that—but it's mostly empty space, this desk. But it doesn't mean that I can walk through it; it's still functional, so it feels hard. The second piece is that I could, in theory, take this desk and chop it up into teeny bits and turn it into dust, and I would never find the core, the essence, the "desk-ness" of this desk. It's functional, and just a matter of causes and conditions.

And this is precisely the teaching of not-self. It's both emptiness—nothing essential—and there's a continuity of conditions. Emptiness and conditionality. This is the teaching of not-self, two sides of the same coin.

So this understanding is presented in the context of early Buddhism. And of course, the Dharma has been a long and complex conversation, so understandings have changed over time. So I will say this morning that our compassion doesn't require an attachment to a self. Our compassion actually doesn't require selfing activity. But interestingly and beautifully, our compassion heals selves. Our compassion nourishes selves and nourishes beings. So I think this understanding shines a very different light on not-self and compassion.

It seems very clear in looking at the teachings that the Buddha asks of us to work at the practice of seeing clearly, but the Buddha never asks us to be a nothing.

So what might empty compassion look like, compassion that's freed of self-attachment? I love offering the example of the Buddha himself, in that the Buddha was confident, he was strong, he was clear in speech. The Buddha was meticulous in his actions, and he worked diligently for the benefit of all beings. The Buddha was certainly not a nothing, and didn't see himself as a nothing, even though he saw not-self to its depths.

And compassionate! The Buddha was compassionate. After his awakening, he is said to have taught or responded to teaching requests out of compassion. And then interestingly, he gives two reasons why he continued to go on retreat after his awakening. One was for a pleasant abiding here and now, and the second was out of compassion for future generations. I love this. I'm inspired by this notion that we can conduct our lives in a way that's a gift to future generations, even distant ones.

So I see in this, I see in the model of the Buddha, someone who was compassionate, someone who was confident, someone who was really effective, and totally free. Totally free of entanglement with self-reference. He offered a sort of care that wasn't overshadowed by "I" and "me" and "mine," and the light of his compassion wasn't darkened by clinging and demand and expectations. Rather, his sort of empty, brilliant love, sort of free compassion, he offered radiant and even joyful. And what a blessing it is to be this way in the world.

And then one more example of when I think of empty compassion, I think of Suzuki Roshi. There's a story from a short collection of stories about Suzuki Roshi called Remembering the Dragon, and it's anecdotes about Suzuki Roshi by his students. And I want to share one with you.

It makes reference to a couple of things that should be explained first. One is it makes reference to something called a shosan⁷, which is a formal Q&A public ceremony, usually at the end of a retreat in a Zen context. And the other thing that should be explained is it talks about serving meals in the zendo⁸, serving meals in the meditation hall. And this is a reference to the monastic style of formal eating, where you serve food and eat food in a way that allows you to stay in meditation, continue in your meditation. So you'll hear those two references.

And this story comes from Ed Brown. And you'll see in this little anecdote—or I see in it, in Suzuki Roshi's way—a sensitivity to other beings and such skill and care along with a clarity of vision and a confident compassion. It's the bringing together of just these two things.

So here's Ed Brown: "When I was at Tassajara⁹ in the 1960s, I was having a lot of trouble with anger. Actually, I was not having much trouble with it; other people at Tassajara were having trouble with my anger. [Laughter] I thought it was good to be sincere, and if you felt angry, then be angry. Don't cover it or repress it. Then one time I was talking with Suzuki Roshi in his cabin. He said, 'Well, Ed, you can get angry if you want.' Then, after an impeccably timed pause, he politely added, 'But don't.' I felt permission to be who I was while being instructed to rein in my anger."

Suzuki Roshi was, for the most part, quite polite. Once at Tassajara, a student asked him, "Why haven't you enlightened me yet?" Suzuki Roshi answered politely, "I'm making my best effort."

And Ed Brown continues: "I remember that once during a shosan, a public formal Q&A ceremony, a student asked, 'What do you feel when I serve you food in the zendo?' And Suzuki Roshi answered, 'I feel like you're offering me your entire being, your most perfect love. Your entire being, your most perfect love.'"

So my hope is that we carry this question with us today: How can I practice compassion in a way that's free of the entanglements of self-attachment? And may it be so. And may this river of causes and conditions spread care and compassion for all beings without exception.

And tomorrow we will turn to some teachings about compassion and awakening. Be well. Thank you so much.