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Guided Meditation: Non-Harming; Dharmette: Ten Protectors (6 of 10) Dharma Love - Gil Fronsdal

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

Guided Meditation: Non-Harming

So, warm greetings on this Monday morning, and welcome.

And to introduce the meditation, if there were anthropologists from Mars who came to this earth of ours to study the people here, and the question was, "What are they committed to? What is it they really like to do?" There are times and places where they would say people are committed to anger, hostility; they really like to be hostile. And some of them are hostile towards others, some of them are hostile to themselves. But then they would find that there are some people who are committed to being not hostile, non-harming, and that there's a remarkable difference between the two. One seems to be always tense, the other seems to be calm. The first doesn't seem to be oriented towards helping others, except for those maybe who are closest to them, and the other seems to be oriented towards helping others.

When they meditate, the one dedicated towards hostility finds that sometimes even the meditation strengthens the hostility. The one dedicated to non-hostility, to non-harming, seems to be able to be resilient, to manage to be calm in the midst of the storms of life. So in Dharma practice—in meditation and Buddhism—the reliable commitment, the love that is the basis of doing meditation practice, maybe the basis of Buddhism in general, is non-harming, non-hostility. And this is considered to be universally applicable. If you want to have a commitment that's deeper than just a commitment to mindfulness, deeper than a commitment to meditation, it's a commitment to non-harming, to non-hostility. And so to meditate with that kind of commitment, to have that be the foundation for meditation—the foundation that maybe provides much more benefit to us than having mindfulness or awareness be the foundation, unless the two are considered inseparable.

And so in this meditation that we do today, if you would like, see if you can have it be a commitment to non-hostility, to non-harming. And some of that will be towards anybody you think about where you meditate, and some of it will be towards yourself, to what's happening here. You might still have impulses to hostility, to anger, to criticism, to irritation, to aversion to what's happening. Those things might still happen, but don't be committed to them. Don't believe in their value for the purpose of meditation. Instead, believe in the value of meeting it with awareness that's non-hostile, meeting it with non-harming. It doesn't condone it, it's not an acceptance of it, it's a peaceful non-participation in it. Letting it be, letting the flames of anger, the flames of hostility blow themselves out because they're not being fed. So a constant coming back to non-hostility, non-harming, and maybe with every breath.

So to assume a meditation posture. And perhaps, if it's possible, a posture that manifests a degree of confidence, a kind of confident presence. Lowering the gaze, if it's comfortable to close your eyes. And as if you're holding a little wounded bird that you don't want to harm in any kind of way, very gently holding it cupped in your hands, a kind of gentleness with which you would maybe hold a baby. Gently take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Maybe two-thirds full, and gently relax on the exhale.

And letting your breathing return to normal. And continue with a very light touch, a non-assertive touch. As you exhale, relax different parts of your body.

The attitude of non-hostility, non-harming, has no weight, has no force in it. It's gentle, light, but like the air, it can pervade everything.

Each act of relaxing in the body is a suffusion of non-harming.

And then settling into the experience of the body breathing.

With every breath, remembering the possibility of non-harming, non-aversion towards whatever arises. A non-aversion which is a non-participation with whatever is harmful, or hostile, or aversive.

Whatever is known through mindfulness, let it be known peacefully. Let it be known with an attitude of non-harming.

Anything, with the care and the gentleness with which you might hold a newborn baby. Softly, lightly, everything that you know, let it be known with non-aversion.

To meditate with an attitude of non-harming, non-aversion, means that whatever we know, whatever is known here and now, is safe. Safe from our hostility, our aversion.

And perhaps whatever is known, in feeling safe, it can relax.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to consider whether this emphasis on non-harming touched anything important inside of you. Is there a value in you within, a feeling, a knowing, a wisdom regarding non-harming? And now to imagine that that wisdom, that knowing, that attitude can radiate from you. Spread from you out into the world as a gentle suffusion of peace, of kindness, of non-harming, so that others might get a taste of the power of non-aversion, non-violence, of peace.

May all beings live without experiencing hostility. May all beings be free of harm. May all beings live in peace. May all beings be freed from all forces of harm and suffering. May they be free.

And may our commitment to this peace help support peace wide, far and wide. Thank you.

Dharmette: Ten Protectors (6 of 10) Dharma Love

So good day on this Monday. And the topic for this week is to continue with what's usually called the Ten Protectors, the ten supports, supporting things that help, the ten helpers. And today's protector is love of the Dharma, Dharma love.

But then, what does Dharma mean here? And I'd like to propose that the essential meaning of Dharma, more than the teachings of the Buddha, more than anything else, is non-harming. And so a love of non-harming, that's the protector.

And it seems a wonderful coincidence to emphasize this on the day that the United States celebrates Indigenous Peoples' Day. People who have suffered hundreds of years of harm by the European colonialists and settlers who came and sometimes committed tremendous genocide even right here in California. And also, the Monday after this weekend where there was horrendous violence in Palestine and Israel and the Gaza Strip.

And we have so much experience as human beings with the endless cycles of violence and the endless cycles of hate. When two people hate each other, then the only solution is to kill each other. The cycles of hate just escalate and then it just continues on and on. And I think the 60 years or more now—70 years, 80 years of violence in Palestine—has shown that violence doesn't provide a solution. And the horrendous damage here to the Native Americans in the United States and Canada, much of Latin America, has also shown how much harm can be done that gets continued for generations after the big harm has been caused.

There has to be another way. And the way that the Buddha taught is non-harming. A radical commitment to non-harming. So the love of the Dharma is not a love of the teachings—that's possible—it's not a love of the practice, but love of the very foundation of what the teachings and the practice is about. And that is a life of non-harming.

The Four Noble Truths are all about not harming, where the word for harm is dukkha¹, usually translated into English as suffering. And in the Four Noble Truths, it's usually applied to oneself, that we're looking at suffering within ourselves, the causes of suffering that we have within ourselves, and the ending of that—we could say the harm we experience from ourselves and the ending of causing that harm. But also, the Four Noble Truths can be equally applied to the world around us. There are no pronouns in the way the Four Noble Truths are taught, so they apply equally to the world around us. To understand the suffering, the causes, and to meet it with an attitude, a way of life which is non-harm. A life of non-harming that's primarily represented by living the Eightfold Path, and non-harming is embedded in the whole Eightfold Path enterprise.

And so the love of the Dharma, dhammakāma²... in the description of it, it talks about one of the protectors is loving the Dharma, having affectionate conversations. I love this idea: affectionate conversations with others right after loving the Dharma. And being inspired by the practice and the way of life. Here the word for practice is Abhidhamma³ and the way of life is Vinaya⁴, which for the monastics is the life of restraint, but for the non-monastics, the life of restraining from harming.

And so if we want to have a love which is reliable, universal, profound—the love of non-harming—it doesn't mean naive nonviolence. It doesn't mean that we are being hostile to our own tendencies to hostility and hate, but we're not committing ourselves to the impulses of hate and hostility. We're not committing ourselves to the impulse of violence. But rather, we allow those to surface, we see them clearly, and we see them with non-harming. We see them with non-participation. We see them without believing them or without believing we have to act on them. It's a hard belief to come by, because sometimes it seems like we have to harm others in order to protect ourselves.

The Buddha said something similar for monastics. He said that a monastic is allowed to strike out against an attacker for the purposes of escaping, provided that the monastic has goodwill, has mettā⁵. So it's not just, "Only sit there quietly and have non-harming." There is a time and place to act, but how that act is done is mostly not to harm other people, but for the purposes of avoiding getting hurt. Exactly how that applies in all kinds of situations in life is, as you know, the huge question. But non-harming is not naive. It's not just allowing other people to roll over us, but it's profound to live a life of non-harming.

There are many people in this world who have never experienced safety. And to feel that someone is really safe for them—and this is part of the value of monastic life, is that it's a public life that kind of gives the impression to people who see monastics that this is someone who's not going to harm and is not going to live with aggression, anger, and hostility. And so there tends to be a relaxing around monastics, that they can walk in all kinds of circumstances in life and people receive them because they clearly represent a very radically different way of living than many people have experienced.

But what I want to emphasize today is the love part. That there can be a delight and inspiration, an affection for the Dharma, for practice, that can be a great love. It can be, for some people who like to anthropomorphize these things, our beloved. It can be something that we really take up. And one of the interesting ideas about the beloved, loving the Dharma: some people will love the Dharma more than anyone else. And then our partners might get upset, like, "What, I'm second best to the Dharma?" Then you might explain to them it works this way: that with having the Dharma at the center, love of the Dharma, our ability to love others increases. So yes, they're kind of second, maybe, to your commitment to the Dharma, to practice, to non-harming. But if you didn't have the Dharma, your love for them would not be as clear, or pure, or open, or rich, or forgiving, or something. And so they get more love if they allow you to love the Dharma even more. And so everyone benefits. And in the end, I don't think that there's conflict.

But this ability to have this heartfelt warmth and affection for something that's really profound, and have it be the most reliable form of love and affection because it is—as I keep saying—maybe a universal non-harming. That's the essence, that's what the Dharma is. And everything else about the Dharma, all the different teachings, are attempts to kind of expand on that basic premise or to really study how this applies or how this is supported in all kinds of different ways: not harming ourselves, not harming others.

And to be a liberated person, to be an enlightened person, means it's an ethical transformation. It means becoming a person who is incapable of intentionally wanting to harm anybody else. Someone who's fully awakened is incapable of killing, incapable of stealing, and incapable of wanting to cause harm. So if you feel like you need to be committed to the possibility of harming others, then maybe the Dharma is not going to be so good for you, because if you really take it all the way, you're going to be incapable of doing that.

But on the way there, there is a love of the Dharma, the love of non-harming. And even if you decide that it's necessary to engage in something that's harmful, and violence as a form of self-protection or something, don't let that diminish the possibility of really loving non-harming. And in this teaching, the love of the Dharma is a protector. So it protects you from the forces of harm from within yourself and from others. Living a life of peace, living a peaceful life of not harming. People tend—and the operative word is tend—tend to relate to us very differently than if we walk around angry.

I've known people who are very aversive, who just feel that everyone else is just mean all the time without them realizing that people are challenged and maybe aversive to them because of the aversive way in which they show up. And so it's a self-fulfilling prediction: "People are mean, so I show up being mean, and then of course they're mean back." If we show up non-harming, loving, caring, attentive to others, they respond in a different way to us.

So to love the Dharma as a way of making ourselves safe, and as a way of protecting others from ourselves, and as a way of protecting our Dharma practice. It's difficult to remember to practice. It's difficult to stay inspired in the Dharma and this way of life. But to keep coming back to that inspiration, maybe from these affectionate conversations we can have about the Dharma. This is a way of keeping the momentum, the inspiration, the motivation here, to really refine the tremendous value and wisdom of living a sophisticated life of non-harming. Not a naive life—non-harming, loving that.

So it makes me very happy to consider this wonderful idea of loving the Dharma, of living a life of love. And a love that I hope is contagious and that spreads peacefully throughout this world that needs it desperately. Because violence, I hope the violence soon enough is going to be seen as completely counterproductive to the welfare and happiness of everyone. Thank you.