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The Buddha as a Teacher of Action - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 23, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

The Buddha as a Teacher of Action

In the time of the Buddha, he was characterized as a teacher of action. Why would he be called that, and what did he mean by action? That's part of the topic for today. In introducing this, I would say that the Buddha was much more interested in what we do than who we are. In fact, if he was going to define who we are, the Buddha would define it by what we do. A farmer, someone who farms, is a farmer. Someone who's a cook, cooks, is a cook. And so, someone who meditates is a meditator. It's what we do that the Buddha was interested in, how we got recognized and known.

This goes a little bit against some of the popular orientations we have, maybe in the modern West, where I get a sense there's a lot of people who are looking for a message that somehow who they are is perfect, somehow who they are is guilt-free, somehow who they are is okay. Inherently in who we are, we're just fine the way we are. I think that comes from a culture that has really conditioned people to think the opposite for themselves. There's a lot of self-criticism, a lot of anxiety about me, myself, and mine in this culture.

There's a touching story—I wasn't there, but I've been told of it many times by people who were—that the Dalai Lama was doing some kind of teaching and someone asked him a question through a translator. The person asked some question about how to work with, how to deal with self-hatred. The translator translated this for the Dalai Lama, and he looked perplexed. There was a long conversation between the Dalai Lama and the translator. People who didn't know Tibetan didn't know what it was about. But at some point in that conversation, maybe the Dalai Lama understood the question, and he started to cry. It was inconceivable to him—somehow, maybe because of Tibetan culture, maybe because of who he is—that there was a culture of people who have self-hatred. It was unbelievable to him. And when he realized that, he started to cry. Maybe we all can cry for what we have here in this culture.

Because of this, it's often a relief to get a message that you're okay, that you're loved the way you are, that you're fine the way you are. As a relief, as a correction, maybe that's a wonderful teaching. But the Buddha actually emphasized much more than how we are. In fact, how we are was not that important for him. And certainly, the Buddha was not oriented towards a philosophy or religious worldview or idea of ultimacy that there's some kind of core aspect of who we are that's perfect. The Buddha didn't have the notion of a soul, for example. There is no essential kind of heart, and that goes against the grain for a lot of cultures where they have that kind of view. So we have to kind of hold all this lightly and maybe do a kind of cultural translation to really see how it all fits.

But for the Buddha, in his own terms, he emphasized action—what we do. And this is where we could take responsibility. In teaching about action, he taught about action in body, in speech, and in mind.

The Mirror of Reflection

There's a touching story of the Buddha teaching his son. What most people don't know is that Buddha was a father; he had one child. After the child was about six or seven years old, the Buddha was the primary parent. We don't have a lot of stories about what he was like as a parent, but he was already a monk himself, living the religious life, and his son joined him in that kind of religious life, following along.

As maybe it's not too uncommon for children, one day his son was apparently caught telling a lie. I remember when I was maybe six or seven or so, my father saw that we were playing checkers and he saw that I cheated. I guess I was losing, so I kind of cupped my checker pieces under my hand and slipped them on the board. My father did a wonderful thing for me; it affected me for the rest of my life in a certain way. He didn't criticize me, he wasn't angry with me. He just got up and left. And that's all I needed to know. I didn't need someone yelling at me or berating me or criticizing me. It was just like, "Okay, if that's what you do, this is what I do." Action. He didn't tell me I was a terrible person.

So, his son was caught with a lie. His son was already living the life of a novice monk, a novitiate, which is not defined by what you are but how you live your life. It's in action, a way of living. And the Buddha said, "If you tell a deliberate, knowing lie, then your life as a novitiate has as much spirituality or religiosity in it as a bowl full of water that's been turned upside down, so all the water's gone out." I don't know if it's criticizing the son exactly, but this is the action, and this is the consequence of the action in terms of how you're supposed to be living.

Then he went on to say that anybody who is willing to tell a deliberate lie, there's nothing wicked they wouldn't do. Somehow, there's something about telling lies that sets a stage for a lot of other things that cause problems. Then he went on and said to his son, "What's the purpose of a mirror?" And the son said, "Well, the purpose of a mirror is reflection." In the same way, you need to reflect. Your mirror is your actions. If you want to see yourself, study yourself through your actions. See yourself through what you're doing. So don't see yourself in some kind of essentialist way, like, "This is who I am," but learn who you are by what you do.

This is how he said to do it. If you're going to do anything with your body, any physical activity, before you do it, reflect. Look at the mirror. Reflect: "Is what I'm going to do going to harm me? Is it going to harm others? Or is it going to harm both?" That was the first criteria: does it cause harm? Not just to myself; equally important was others, and equally important was both, which I like to think of as the community, all people.

Then he went on to say you should also reflect, "Is this unwholesome, leading to pain?" If it is, if it causes harm, if it's unwholesome leading to pain, then stop doing it. Then he went on to say, "While you're doing something with your body, you should be reflecting." That's the mirror. Look at yourself in the mirror of your actions and see for yourself, "Is it causing harm? Is it unwholesome, leading to pain?" Because some things don't cause harm in the moment, but they cause harm in the future. It has ongoing effects. If you're doing it and in the middle of doing it you see that, you should stop.

And then he said, "After you've done something with your body, you should reflect: 'Have I caused harm? Was it unwholesome, leading to pain?'" And if you see that it was, then you should find a wise person and just talk about it with them. So it doesn't say confess, but there's something about when you've done something that's been harmful or unwholesome, there's something about the honesty, speaking about it honestly, getting it acknowledged. There's something about speaking that is a fuller acknowledgment and recognition of what we've done that helps the mind and the heart to disengage itself from it, not be so identified with it. Then it's a wise person who now knows what you're up to, so it's a little bit more difficult in the future to want to do the same thing.

If, before you do something, you reflect and see it is beneficial to oneself, beneficial to others, beneficial to both, if it's wholesome, leading to pleasure, leading to happiness, just keep doing it, or do it. If it's during, then keep doing it. If you reflect after, then just rest content and happy, growing and cultivating wholesome states. So if what you're doing is wholesome, and you'd finished doing it and you recognize that this was a wholesome thing to do, then continue to develop wholesome states. Wholesome states are developed by what we do.

Action in Speech and Mind

Then he went through the same thing with speech, the same analysis. And it's wonderful, I think, for speech, because many of us find one of the most difficult places in our life to be mindful, let alone be wise and wholesome, is through speech. Here we're offered wonderful criteria on how to reflect on ourselves and be careful how we speak. If we kind of spend time just pausing and looking and thinking about what we're going to say before we say it, with these criteria, we would live in a different world. "Is what I'm about to say harmful for myself, harmful for others, or harmful to both? Is what I'm about to say unwholesome, leading to pain?" If it is, don't say it. I mean, what a great world we would live in if just that was followed. The world would shine. But if what you're about to say is beneficial for yourself and for someone else and for all people, then please say it. If it's wholesome and going to bring benefits and happiness, then please do it.

And for me, I don't know how it is for you, this guideline that he gives his son, I'm actually more inspired by the speech part than I am by the action part, maybe because I'm less likely to harm people with my actions than I am with my speech. Just subtle things we do. So having this little criteria, I find very helpful.

Then the third one has to do with the speech we do in our head to ourselves. We track what we're thinking, we track what's going on in the mind. And if the mental activity, the mental thinking I'm doing, if that is harmful to oneself, to others, or to both, then don't do it. I think there it's particularly true that it affects ourselves. We can harm ourselves tremendously with the self-talk we do. How we harm other people if it's all in the privacy of our own thoughts is not so obvious, but I think it oozes out by osmosis. It oozes out by all kinds of subtle ways of communication to others, and they pick it up. So we look at our own thoughts and we can see, "Is this wholesome, what I'm doing, what I'm thinking? Does it lead to happiness or unhappiness? Does it lead to pain or pleasure?" So here again, we look at our own mind.

These are the three areas of action that the Buddha emphasizes to his son when the son was young. We have three discourses, examples where the Buddha taught his son, and it's marvelous. One was when he was very young, one when he was a teenager, and one when he was just becoming an adult. For the little kid, he was teaching him this kind of ethical teaching. When he was a teenager, he taught him not to be caught up in conceit. But his teaching for how to deal with conceit was meditation, to develop a sense of well-being and happiness through meditation, so that the whole need for conceit begins to dissolve. And then when he was a young adult, the Buddha taught him the insights, pointed to the kind of way of seeing that is liberating.

So you have these three phases. But the first one, which could be called ethical teachings, is really foundational for all of Buddhism. It's not just a teaching to a young kid. All of Buddhism can fit underneath this criteria: is it harmful or not harmful? Is it harmful or beneficial? Is it wholesome or unwholesome? Does it lead to pain or does it lead to benefit, to happiness? The deepest meditators, people who are most skilled in meditation, going deep in states of meditation, the same criteria are the guide for how to go further and further, all the way to liberation. We're getting more and more refined to see subtly the subtlest ways in which our mental activity causes stress and causes freedom from stress, causes tension and freedom from tension. Just that very little criteria, seeing that, is what is onward-leading. We become our own teachers and we find our way.

This is not just the teachings to a young kid; this is a teaching for all of us. There are no metaphysical teachings, no supernatural teachings, nothing you have to believe in, in some kind of religious way, except you have to believe that it makes a difference how you act and what you do. That can't be that hard to believe.

The Wheelbarrow of Thoughts

One of the most difficult places for this is our inner life, our mental life. For some people, that's where we tend to identify strongly with our thoughts, identify strongly with our feelings. We define ourselves by those, and our society sometimes helps us to do that. The analogy I'd like to offer for being caught in our thoughts—we're so caught in the thoughts we think we are our thoughts, we think we have no choice but to think—is like moving along a wheelbarrow full of heavy bricks. It's heavy to push it along, but then you're lucky, you come to a little place where there's an incline, so you can roll it downhill. In the beginning, it feels good. "Oh, good, I don't have to push so much." But the hill gets steeper and steeper, and at some point, the wheelbarrow is in charge. You're just desperately holding on and running after it, trying not to run into all the people on the hill. You're completely invested and caught, and you become the wheelbarrow almost, because it has the momentum and you're just trying to hold on for dear life.

Our thinking can be that way. With a wheelbarrow, it's best just to put it down gently so it stops rolling. Or if you can't do that, it might be better off just to let go of it, because a wheelbarrow is not going to keep rolling down the hill. It's going to tip over as soon as you're not holding it up, and all the bricks are going to fall out.

With our thinking, we can be so identified with it. Sometimes there can be a lot of negative self-talk, a lot of thoughts about danger and anxiety and concern for this and that and trying to figure things out. It's very hard to stop that identification, to stop believing in them because we're living in them. So the Buddha's emphasis was action. He was a teacher of action. So how does action come to play? Well, right now the action is one that's harming yourself, and stopping it might not be so easy. But what can you do? That's the magic question: "What can you do?" As soon as you ask yourself that question, you're already doing something different. Just the question creates a little space, a little pause. It means that part of you is not so invested or caught or lost in the whole swirl of thoughts.

To have enough mindfulness to recognize, "Oh boy, am I caught? What can I do here?" is the beginning of what the Buddha wants us to be doing. To ask, "What can I do?"—does that question cause harm or benefit? It's not so clear yet, but it's certainly not causing harm to ask that question. Maybe it opens a door to figure out what to do that is beneficial.

One of the things we can do is relax. Whenever we're caught in thoughts, there's going to be tension in the body and in the mind, in the thinking muscle. Beginning to relax and soften the thinking... the nature of thinking is that if you're caught up in some big chain or swirl of thoughts, those thoughts are never going to on their own think that it's time to relax. They'll never come up with, "Maybe I shouldn't be doing this." They're very convincing. The authority of our thoughts is powerful, partly because we give them a lot of authority. But as soon as you ask, "What can I do that's different here?" you're breaking the authority of those thoughts. You may not be breaking how strong they are—you're still holding on to the wheelbarrow—but then you can begin to think, "Can I do something else with the wheelbarrow? Can I put it down?"

So we can relax. It takes skill, it takes familiarity to really learn how to do this, how to relax. It means becoming highly attuned to micro-muscles around the temples, the forehead, the jaw, the shoulders. Where can you soften? Where can you relax something that is the very thing that's feeding or keeping the thinking going? Obsessive thinking is reinforced by tension. If you want to stop that reinforcement, you have to look for where you can relax and soften.

Some of you probably wake up in the middle of the night, anxious, caught up in thoughts. There's something else you can do rather than just trying to go back to sleep. Relax. Start doing body scans. Look at the micro-muscles around the thinking and relax. Or I prefer the word "release," because release to me is an opening, it's an expanding. You expand around something, you let go, you open, you relax and expand.

How are you doing that? How are you relaxing? Are you relaxed? It's a question, always questioning, reflecting. "How am I doing this? Am I relaxing in a way that harms me or benefits me?" "Boy, there I am again, harming myself, yelling at myself and prodding myself with sharp mental knives: 'Relax! Come on, you can do it! Oh, you can't, you're not managing it, you're doing it the wrong way. Everyone else knows how to relax but you don't.'" So there you are, harming again. Or are you doing it in a way that's beneficial? What's the beneficial way to relax? Asking those questions—those are actions, mental actions that can lead to benefit. "How do I relax? Can I relax in a soft way, in an easy way? Can I relax without being so focused on being successful?" I just do the best I can.

The same thing applies to emotions. We're caught in emotions. What can we relax? What can we soften? How can we open to this? How can we be with it, rather than being caught in the wheelbarrow of emotions?

Taking Responsibility for Your Inner Life

Rather than being concerned about what the world does to you, be concerned of what you do in return. If you're concerned about what the world does to you too much, you might be forfeiting taking a deep look at yourself. For the Buddha, it's always with your actions that he emphasizes how you become free, how you don't become caught by the world, how you don't believe in the forces that come down upon you that tell you otherwise. You don't believe in the forces of oppression so that you oppress yourself or limit yourself. For the Buddha, it's always, "What do you contribute? What do you do? How do you meet the situation?"

It's not what your emotions are doing to you that's important; what's important is what you do to the emotions. It's not important what your thinking does to you; it's more important what you do in return, in response. The Buddha, being a teacher of action, is pointing to our role as actors in our own life. He's pointing to our own responsibility, our own ability to respond, our own capacity to find our own freedom. If we're looking for freedom to be handed to us from the world, it's never going to be handed to you. We have to find our freedom from within, the deepest kind of freedom, what might be called spiritual freedom.

There's a program that I'm involved in at San Quentin State Prison, and one of the things they teach there—I think it was one of the men who was incarcerated who came up with this phrase—is to "become free while still in prison." The context of that, for me, was quite powerful. To think, even in that kind of situation, to find this freedom and not let the prison guards define who you are and what your inner life is like. To take responsibility.

This is the most radical message of the Buddha. No one else is going to be the caretaker for your inner life but you. Don't outsource the quality of your inner life. Don't expect that there's some person or thing or event that's going to do it for you. At least for the Buddha, you have to insource it. And it's your actions, your activity, what you do. These criteria that we're offered here—does it cause harm or not harm? The fact that that sits at the heart of Buddhism just makes me so happy, given how much harm exists in this world. That this is what's important. And that which is wholesome and beneficial, brings happiness—what a fantastic thing if that could be the primary message for a religious life.

So that's what I was thinking today. I walked down here from home; that was my physical action, to come here and tell you this. And then I spoke, and hopefully that's for my benefit and for all of yours. Thank you.

Q&A

Questioner 1: Hi Gil. First of all, I've been sitting with a slight smile on my face and immense gratitude for your presence and talks. I discovered your talks on a podcast maybe 12 or 13 years ago on the East Coast, and now it's funny, I'm here with one of my best friends in California, living here, a mom. So much has changed in my life. I'm just very grateful for the presence, the perspective, and the peace that you have given to my life. I just want to thank you. My heart is racing from excitement, but I just want to ask you today, in the context of relationships and raising kids, thinking about the emotion which is the feeling that comes outward, how do we communicate that in a wholesome way during the times when it may not be necessarily a wholesome message, while we also keep ourselves free of expressing ourselves and do not let it ooze through osmosis?

Gil Fronsdal: So, when my son was small, I thought I was doing a wise parenting thing. I wasn't going to express anger to my son; I was just going to name how it was for me. So I said to him, "If you continue doing what you're doing, I think I'll become angry." And he looked at me and said, "Dad, you're already angry." [Laughter] So he knew before I knew. It oozes out.

I think one of the things to do is to practice mindfulness out loud, which means you have to figure out exactly how to do it appropriately with children, but to have the children see that you can talk about how you're feeling without it being directed at anyone, attacking anyone. Just say, "You know, that was a hard day today. I was really angry, and so I went for a walk to calm down," or "I went to meditate to calm down." And the kids see that there are ways that parents get angry just like they do, but the parents aren't caught in it and they have a way of practicing with it or dealing with it. You might share examples like, "Today I was really angry or really afraid, and so I talked to my friend and that helped me a lot."

Then the day might come when you're angry with them, and then you might say, "Oh, here I am, I'm angry. You know, I've asked you many times not to walk across the kitchen floor with muddy shoes, and I just cleaned the floor. So now I'm getting angry. But I don't want to be angry. I want to be able to talk to a friend about it. Can I talk to you?" That's going to get their attention.

Anyway, you want to find ways of talking. One of the simplest ways, I think, of being very careful is to try to make "I" statements rather than "you" statements. The other thing I learned when I was a parent of young kids was that kids at a young age will learn from their parents how to be. There was a period of time, very rare, but sometimes one of my kids was kind of difficult for us, and sometimes I would use my strong voice, I thought, to get his attention and have him stop what he was doing. It was like, "No, you have to stop!" with a strong voice. And then one day I heard him use the same voice to his younger brother. And I said, "Oh no, what have I done?" So I learned to be really careful about what you pass on. I don't think I'm answering your question adequately, but maybe I offered little pieces.

Questioner 2 (from YouTube): What about when one takes too much responsibility for others' feelings?

Gil Fronsdal: Well, I think that one of the things to do always is to turn the mirror on yourself, to learn how to look more deeply. First, rather than analyzing or thinking about that you're taking too much responsibility, if you recognize you are, really look and feel what that's like to do that. What's the tension? What's the pressure? What's the heaviness? What's the compulsion? Where does it feel like in the body physically? To start with the body begins breaking up the hegemony of the thoughts, the ideas, the push of the responsibility. When you start feeling it physically, it's also a way of beginning to create some distance from these really strong compulsive attitudes we might have, including being responsible for other people.

As we begin to relax around it and soften it, it gives the opportunity to look at it more deeply, what's going on. The next layer might be to notice what emotions come along when you're taking responsibility for others. Is it anxiety? Is it anger, because you're trying to get everyone to shape up and be just like the way you think they should be? What's going on here emotionally? And then learn to understand them.

Once you understand and see the emotions, you're in a better place to take a deeper look at what you are believing. What's the belief behind it? What's the message you've learned about how to live a life? Did you grow up with parents who took responsibility for everybody, and then you've learned that's what you're supposed to do? Or maybe the belief is that you're the all-knowing one and everyone should just behave properly because you know, and that's why you're responsible. I'm just making things up.

So, do a deep inquiry in oneself, and do it with that mirror of mindfulness. The way that we do the inquiry, the way we study ourselves and are present for ourselves, asking ourselves good questions about what's happening—we do it in a way that is kind, that's beneficial, that's wholesome. We don't do it punitively, we don't do it critically, but say, "Oh, this is how it is. Now let me take a deeper look." So, thank you for the question online. Thank you all very much.