This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Recognizing Harm and Benefit; Non-Violence (2 of 5) Avoiding the Cost of Violence. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Knowing What Harms and What Benefits; Dharmette: Non-Violence (2 of 5) Avoiding the Cost of Violence - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 24, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Knowing What Harms and What Benefits

Good day everyone, and welcome. As we did yesterday, today I'd like to again offer a different approach to our morning practice. The emphasis is not on the usual purposes of meditation—which might be to become more calm, settled, or peaceful, to become more concentrated, to see more clearly in a certain way, or to have some pleasure, joy, or even bliss. Sometimes in meditation, we can put those ideas aside to learn a skill of mindfulness which is realistic, one that teaches us a lot and is very useful for guiding us as we live our life.

That is to imagine two baskets, one on each side of you. Whatever is going on for you—whatever you're thinking, whatever you're wanting, whatever you're not wanting, whatever your impulses or your attitudes are, whatever is happening to you or arising out of you sitting here in meditation—discern whether it is good for you or not good for you.

The terms "good" and "not good" are vague. Ask yourself: is it beneficial or not beneficial? Is it healthy for you or not healthy? When you're not sure, maybe it's neither, then just leave it alone. But if it's healthy or beneficial for you, or has a rightness to it, put it in one basket. If it's unhealthy for you, if it brings an "ouch" for you, or feels like it diminishes you, brings stress, or brings some kind of feeling of not being supported, or being critical and harsh, put that in another basket.

Just put them there in these baskets. Maybe at the end, you have some general sense of which basket is most full. This ability to discern between them is invaluable. That's what I recommend for this sitting.

To begin, you would maybe lower your gaze or close your eyes. Consider whether hearing these instructions for what we're doing today feels good to you. Does it feel healthy for you, or like it inspires you in some way? Or does it contract you, bring up judgments, or disappointments—something which doesn't feel that good? It may be reasonable to have those things, but still, it doesn't feel so healthy to have them. So put them in one basket.

As you continue, just consider and notice what you're thinking, what you're wanting, not wanting, what you're doing, what you're intending, and how you're reacting to anything that goes on here and now. Then, put them in one of the two baskets. Put aside any pursuit of staying with what's beneficial, holding onto it, or intentionally doing more of it. Just allow things to unfold as they do, and as they occur, put them in one basket or the other, or just leave them alone if they're neither beneficial nor not beneficial.

Notice how you are and what you're doing as you sit here quietly. Is it wholesome or unwholesome? Does it allow what's best in you to open up, or does it close you? Does it bring stress, or does it bring a sense of well-being?

This can be very subtle. Notice the quality, the manner in which thoughts are thought, or what you think about. Notice the subtlest wants and aversions—what you want and what you don't want. If there's no wanting or not wanting, no thoughts, nothing that seems obviously beneficial or harmful, just let be without a need to do anything. Be fresh and available to notice when you're involved in doing something in the mind, the heart, or the body which is either beneficial or not. If it is, put it aside into these two baskets, and be fresh and available to see what comes next.

And even if what you're thinking about seems nice, maybe the degree to which it is a distraction from being aware and here is seen as not beneficial.

If it helps you stay on track with this exercise, you can very peacefully and quietly identify with the thought, "beneficial" or "not beneficial," as you put things aside into the respective baskets.

Our body and mind are very fine, sensitive instruments. They have the capacity to pick up and register when what we're doing is wholesome and when it's not wholesome. They register when our thoughts, motivations, and attitudes harm ourselves in some way—even in the very subtle ways that undermine us, deflate us, or limit us. We can also register when our thoughts, attitudes, and feelings are more on the inspiring side, the beneficial side, bringing an alert and good energy. Even the very most subtle ways, we can pick up and register.

We can know what to let go of and what to stop doing, so we can know and see how to be present in a beneficial way, a way that leads to happiness and freedom. All the signposts for freedom and happiness are found here in our own body and mind.

As we come to the end of this sitting, wish well for this world that we live in. For the people we know, the strangers we'll encounter, the people all over this world—wish them well. Because we wish them well, we want to be a person who does well in the world. We want to be a conveyor of safety, well-wishing, and goodwill. We ourselves contribute to the welfare and happiness of others, even just because we respect them. We are safe for them; we bring a calm or a smile.

May it be that this practice we do supports us to enter this world in an easy, light-handed way that genuinely contributes to the welfare of all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Non-Violence (2 of 5) Avoiding the Cost of Violence

This week, the topic for our discussion and consideration is non-violence. I think one of the fundamental ethical principles of Buddhism is not to harm. It is represented by the very First Precept¹, which is usually said to be "not to kill," but it's a little bit more comprehensive than that. It is not to physically harm any living being.

This is such an important thing in the world that we live in. I believe that as we meditate, it becomes more and more obvious. Our orientation becomes one where we do not want to cause harm. I can think of many reasons for this.

One reason is that as we meditate, we develop a heightened sensitivity for what the cost is to ourselves when we harm others intentionally and deliberately. It is very stressful for our own system. It involves a diminishment, a narrowing of our scope. It involves being caught up in anger, greed, ill will, and delusion. It even involves stirring up stress. Once we start meditating, we start feeling the effect that unwholesome, harmful behavior has on ourselves. Part of the motivation not to be violent and not to cause harm to others is that we see the cost is too high for ourselves.

Another reason is that we see the cost is too high for others. We start feeling a kinship with others. There is something about sitting quietly and having the thinking mind become quiet—the mind that objectifies, the mind that is caught up in thoughts and ideas about people, projections into the future, and all kinds of conceits that interfere with our body and heart's capacity for sympathy, empathy, and understanding. We put ourselves in other people's shoes and get a sense of what their suffering is like. We feel how terrible it is for people to be harmed, and how devastating it is for some people when violence is committed towards them.

At some point, it almost feels like a violence to oneself—the knowledge and perception of seeing harm being done to others, especially being done by ourselves. So a kind of shift begins happening when people spend a lot of time meditating and doing mindfulness practice. There tends to be a movement towards wanting to live a life of non-harming.

In the teachings of the Buddha, one of the definitions for what it means to be a fully enlightened person is that such a person will not deliberately harm any living being and will not kill any living being. Someone who is fully enlightened is incapable of killing. If that's what enlightenment is, do you still want it? Is it still attractive to you, or do you have some other idealistic idea about what enlightenment is? Do you feel like enlightenment is only a kind of freedom from your own suffering so you don't suffer, but you've never thought about it as something that changes your relationship to other people?

If you take this Dharma path, what will happen is that you'll grow in your ethical sensitivity. You will increasingly become someone who lives more and more ethically, even in subtle ways. One of the manifestations of this is not only not wanting to harm anybody, but becoming incapable of deliberately doing so. Someone who is well-developed on this path² would not be capable of being a soldier, for example, if that meant needing to kill others or go into fighting. If it means being a medic, driving an ambulance, maybe that's very different. Maybe that's something a soldier could do.

The rationale and reason for non-violence in the most personal way is not logical. It comes from this deeper sensitivity we develop. You would have it, for example, if you have a young baby. Of course, you don't want to harm the baby. You'll do everything you can. If you've ever received a newborn baby in your arms, the care and tenderness with which most people will hold that baby—not wanting to harm it in any kind of way, being very gentle—is phenomenal. That is just kind of built into our system. That sensitivity can be spread and developed towards all beings everywhere.

Then the question becomes: what about when there are terrible things happening? Someone attacks you, attacks your family violently, even comes to kill them. Shouldn't you be able to kill them back? Shouldn't you be able to defend yourself?

I have a little problem with this kind of rationale, this pushing back around the value of non-violence. It suggests that the choice is only between being violent or non-violent. But there's another possibility: the choice is between being violent and learning to develop oneself to be skillfully non-violent. Taking the time to train ourselves in non-violent forms of communication and non-violent forms of behavior so that we can defend ourselves without having to resort to violence.

Many years ago, a woman came to me in Palo Alto. She lived in Palo Alto, which is a relatively comfortable, safe town. But even back then, there were some dangers. She told me she was thinking of getting a gun to make herself safe. I didn't want to be in a position to decide whether she should or shouldn't get a gun, but I did tell her that I thought it was very sad to get a gun. First and foremost, there are a lot of trainings a person can do in self-defense that don't require a gun. Maybe those forms of self-defense don't work 100% of the time, but neither does a gun work 100% of the time.

Being well-trained in non-violent forms of self-defense, or maybe self-defense that only strikes out in order to escape from someone so we don't have to resort to guns, takes time and effort. For a country to avoid war in defending itself takes a lot of preparation. To set up sophisticated non-violent forms of defense and live in a world where we don't have to resort to violence takes decades of planning.

The first time I gave a talk on the Buddhist teachings on non-violence was in the early 1990s, during the first Gulf War. Periodically, it happens again and again—war and war and war. War has been part of my life, my whole life. I've never really been in a war zone, though I could see the country at war from a little bit of a distance; once I saw a mortar explode. But it has been part of my life. My parents experienced violence during World War II; my mother did. My parents-in-law were Jews in the concentration camps in Germany and barely survived; they lost their parents in the camps.

The Vietnam War was huge growing up in the early '60s. We had to do these ridiculous duck drills in school in first and second grade because it was supposed to protect us from the nuclear holocaust that was supposed to happen when the Russians and Americans went into nuclear warfare. The violence that had a huge impact on me personally and shaped me was the Israeli bombing of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in about 1982. I read about that and saw pictures of it when I was deep in meditation practice, doing Zen retreats. That changed me. It was one of the reasons why I wanted to become a Buddhist teacher—in order to respond to the world with non-violence, to try to make a better world for all of us, and to respond to the suffering we have so there can be alternatives.

But you can't just expect alternatives. Closing the gate of the corral once the horse has gotten free doesn't help. To begin thinking about non-violence when the violence is already full-blown doesn't work. There has to be planning ahead of time, lots of it, and preparation. Non-violence takes time, preparation, and even struggle.

One of the things I've seen is that sometimes violence and violent speech can have an immediate effect. Sometimes it gets the effect the person wants; it stops what's happening, or we get what we want. But the repercussions and the consequences we have to deal with for years afterwards are not taken into account and are very expensive, very difficult.

With non-violence, the difficulty is ahead of time, before the problem. Then, if you find a non-violent way of dealing with a problem, there aren't the same repercussions. There's not the after-effect of having to clean up and deal with it afterwards. For generations, people suffer when there is war. The children who experience it, and their children, experience it. My children knew their grandparents who survived the Nazi concentration camps, and it had a big impact on them. They were born many, many years after World War II, but it still has an effect on them. It has an effect on me. People in the United States are still dealing with the repercussions of the Civil War. People are still dealing with the repercussions of World War I even. All these things go on and on.

Violence is an easy solution, the obvious solution for immediate survival. Non-violence is a fantastic solution, provided it's done in a sophisticated way, in a caring way, where we do the work upfront, not paying the cleanup cost afterwards.

If you go back and look at the Buddhist teachings, you see that over and over and over again, the Buddha emphasizes non-harming. This is a central feature of what he's teaching and what he's getting across.

I'll read a couple of things before we end:

"One who neither kills nor gets others to kill, neither conquers nor gets others to conquer, with goodwill for all beings, has no hostility for anyone at all."

Somewhere else, in the Dhammapada³, there's the verse:

"Victory gives birth to hate; the defeated sleep tormented. Giving up both victory and defeat, the peaceful sleep delighted."

"All tremble at violence, all fear death. Having likened others to yourself, don't kill or cause others to kill. All tremble at violence, life is dear to all. Having likened others to yourself, don't kill or cause others to kill. Just as you want to live, just as you don't want to be harmed, so others don't want to be killed, don't want to be harmed. Care for them instead."

We ourselves are instruments that can discern and feel the negative costs of violent and harmful action, and we can feel the tremendous benefit from action which is not harming—action which is beneficial and caring for others. May we choose the latter.

Thank you.