Eightfold Path - Wise Speech

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We continue our series of talks from the book, Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das, and this morning I’ll talk about the third component of the Eightfold Path- Wise Speech.  I was having lunch a few years ago with some work colleagues.  There were eight of us sitting around a large round table at a restaurant, and across the table I heard one of the manager mention that his mother had been asking for a special birthday present.  He said that she wanted a port-o-pottie.   I thought what???  I asked to confirm, “She actually wanted one?”  “Yes,” he stated, “She had been asking for one for years.”  I was surprised.   “Where was she going to keep it?” I wondered.  He replied, “Oh, they have a large backyard--plenty of room!”  I just couldn’t imagine why someone would want a port-o-pottie in the backyard!   I finally quizzed him again, “she wants a port-o-pottie?”  Now, he look perplexed.  “No! She wants a border collie!”

What we say and what we hear are critical to how we perceive ourselves and the world.  It’s critical to how we create the sacredness within and around us.  As Lama Surya Das encourages, “everything you say can express your Buddha-nature” even the things you don’t.  Our words can be a tool for us to nurture ourselves and to serve others.  Thoughts and emotions arise, and we have a choice as to how and even if to express them.  Words have power, and yet so often, we throw them around as if they were worthless.  Words have value, as we can all attest to, if someone has ever said something to you that was very helpful or hurtful.

Words are often used to reinforce our ego, who we think we are.  What our story is all about.  I’ve been thinking about words a lot this last week as I prepare to go on a siltent retreat and say nothing for next seven days—it often seems difficult to survive without words.  Who would you be without your words, without your stories? 

The Buddha encouraged us to see Speech as part of the path of enlightenment.  We are encouraged to infuse our words with kindness and wisdom, using them to help, to support, to nurture.  The Buddha taught about talking in the following four ways:

1.       Speak the truth, tell no lies: How often do we assess if what we are about to say is true?  We can start with those outright lies and explore why they seem necessary.  Then, as we stay on the path of truth, we start to look at subtle ways that we lie to ourselves and to others, maybe not outright perhaps but in ways that serve our ego.

Listening is a key component of wise speech.  How can we listen more carefully, with more awareness, to better understand the truth.  One of the seven habits of highly effective people is “Seek first to understand, before being understood”.

2.       Use words to help, not harm:  I always think about Soap Operas when I think about wise speech;  basically soap operas could not exist if everyone was required to tell only the truth and to say only words that helped, not harmed.  Think about it.  If Sally told Jim that she was still married to Bob and was having Bob’s baby, and she told him that before she agreed to marry Jim.  there would be nothing to stay tuned for.  How are we unnecessarily stirring things up by the words that we use?

There is often judgment in our words that are used to serve our purposes.  Last year when we were studying the Lojong teachings, there was a slogan that said, “don’t talk about injured limbs”.  If we are all inseparably interconnected, then talking about another’s faults or weakness, is like talking about our own broken leg.  Of what value does it serve?

There’s a simple practice of focusing on using words to help, looking for an opportunity to praise someone for positive actions.  Think about this last week and the words that you said, and the effect they had.  When you told someone that they were doing a good job, that they looked great and gave a great presentation or told a great joke, whatever the sincere compliment might have been.   What if we made offering honest positive encouragement a part of our to-do list every single day?

3.       Don’t gossip or tell tales:  When the Buddha had all those monks and nuns living in close quarters, he had to create many rules that instructed them to not spend time gossiping about each other.  Lama Surya Das calls gossip, “junk food for the ego”.  Don’t we all sometimes get a little pleasure out of discussing the woes of others?  Maybe we’ve decided that they deserve it because of their past actions.  I often hear myself thinking when my friends screw up--if they had only listened to me!  Or maybe other people’s woes make us feel better about ourselves.  Well, at least I don’t have THAT problem!

We talk a lot about what stories we tell about ourselves.  It’s also helpful to look at these stories you tell about others.  Think about someone who annoys you.  How do you describe that person to others?  Why do you do that?  Think for a moment about your motives?  How might it feel different to say nothing or to look for the good?

4.       Avoid harsh abusive language, speak kindly:  There have been several research studies on partner relationships, and how harsh words can lead to harsh actions, and kind words can lead to kind actions.  Whenever you live with another human being, you both have the opportunity to annoy the heck out of each other.  We are constantly faced with choices about what to say, when to say it, and what the result will be.   We always have a choice about what we focus on.  The research shows that if a partner spends time looking for the good, focusing on the good, and praising the good, that is usually what they get more of.

Margaret Paul is a PhD who specializes in relationships.   She’s written a gazillion books and been on Oprah, and her message is one of simple kindness.  It is as simple as beginning by looking for the good, and examining our emotions before we respond. 

Lama Surya Das includes a great quote from Shantideva, who was an eighth-century Buddhist scholar and teacher. 

            Whenever I wish to move

            Or to speak,

            First, I shall examine my state of mind,

And firmly act in a suitable way.

These teachings on Wise Speech are not about being a doormat or never showing anger, but as Shantideva puts so well, they are encouraging us to examine our state of mind before we speak or act.  With presence and perspective, we will find wise speech within us.  And then we firmly act in a suitable way.

This week, you might try thinking of your cellphone as a spiritual tool.  Just by simply being aware of what you say AND being aware of how you listen. 

EIGHTFOLD PATH: Wise Intentions

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So what is this tool called intention?  Has anyone heard the saying that the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions?  It implies that our intentions are irrelevant and that our actions are the most important demonstration of our lives.  Actions are important, but this common saying doesn’t take into consideration where actions come from in the first place.  If someone takes a knife and stabs someone, is that action unskillful?  What if the person wielding the knife is a surgeon?  It could be a criminal who stabs the person and they die, or it could be a surgeon trying to save them, and they die anyway.  The outcome is exactly the same, but the motivation for the action was extremely important to understanding the situation.  I would offer that the intentions, the thinking, are more important than the actions

There is a discussion of this important tool in the Dhammapada, a collection of sayings by the Buddha,

The thought manifests as the word;

The word manifests as the deed;

The deed develops into habit,

And habit hardens into character;

So watch the thought and its ways with care,

And let it spring from love

Born out of concern for all beings…

As the shadow follows the body,

As we think, so we become.

Jack Kornfield says that the intentions are the seeds you plant in your heart that grow to become how you live your life.  The stories you are telling yourself about your life are the foundation of how you experience life and how you react to ANY situation that you find yourself in.  If you wake up in the morning, and something goes wrong, and you decide that it’s going to be a crappy day—then you’ve set your intention to find the crappiness in life.  And we usually find what we’re looking for.  In the eightfold path, Buddha recognized the power of intention.  In the New Testament of the Bible, Paul said that we shall reap what we sow.  And sowing actually begins with our thoughts and intentions. 

So, in this very moment, ask yourself the question, what is your primary intention in life?  Why do you get up in the morning?  When you think about getting older and reflecting back on your life, what do you want to see? In Buddhism, we are encouraged to start with a clear intention, not allowing ourselves to just sleepwalk through life reacting in old conditioned ways.

-Pema Chodron, from Comfortable With Uncertainty (Shambhala Publications)

Breathing in, breathing out, feeling resentful, feeling happy, being able to drop it, not being able to drop it, eating our food, brushing our teeth, walking, sitting—whatever we’re doing can be done with one intention. That intention is that we want to wake up, we want to ripen our love and compassion, and we want to ripen our ability to let go, we want to realize our connection with all beings. Everything in our lives has the potential to wake us up or to put us to sleep. Allowing it to awaken us is up to us.

When we’re feeling stressed or depressed or anxious or happy or cheerful or silly or whatever state of mind might arise, in that moment we can recognize these states of mind, and we can ask ourselves:  “What is my intention?” “What do I want to put into life and what do I want to get out of life, and?”  Allow that deeper level of honesty with yourself.  We can leverage the rising of any emotion or thought to better understand ourselves and recognize the power of clarifying our intention.  An emotion or thought is NOT who we are!  We each always have a choice about how to respond to anything and anyone in our life. 

Bring to mind a time in your life when you felt stuck in a bad situation, that feeling of having no choices, that there was no way to escape some particularly difficult situation.  And when you think about those times, even when things  seemed at their worst, even in those moments, we still have the ability to set our intention towards waking up, to be curious about the situation, to not judge ourselves for whatever we’ve done in the past, to give ourselves the gift of forgiveness, the gift of clear seeing, the gift of clear intention. 

There will be times when we have to admit that we have fallen back asleep, that we didn’t act with wise intentions, or even times when our intentions were kind and compassionate, but the outcome was still not what we wanted.  Even in those times, we have this incredible tool of mindfulness, to set our intention to waking up, get back on track and just gently bringing compassionate attention to each moment.

Sometimes it might seem like too much effort.  Our limited minds might tell us that it’s just easier to keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them.  Living a life without any intention to wake up can at times seem very alluring.  Let’s just smoke that cigarette or have that drink or eat that doughnut.  Let’s watch TV until our brains turn to mush.  Who cares?  In those moments, when mindfulness seems like too much trouble, that is the most important moment to ask what is our intention.  That is the moment, to take a slow deep breath and try to remember why we might want to choose another way of living. 

–Joanna Macy, from “Schooling Our Intention,” Tricycle, Winter 1993

Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it's an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts. This flow-through of energy and ideas is at every moment directed by our choice. That's our role in it. We're like a lens that can focus, or a gate that can direct this flow-through by schooling our intention. In each moment our intention gives this energy direction.

The process is: First, in each moment, we can set our intention.  Second, in each moment, we can remind ourselves of why it’s worth making the effort.  Third, we can identify the choices that we are making in our lives.  Fourth we can choose differently.   It can often seem like there is just one answer, the old conditioned response, to whatever is happening in our lives.  But that simply is not true.  We live in arguably the free-est country on this planet—and yet we can fool ourselves into thinking that we don’t have choices.  Maybe the real issue is that we have too many choices.  How on earth are we supposed to narrow down what to do with our lives with all these options!?  The Buddha taught that setting our intention to wake up in each moment, that intention helps us focus our energy on what has value.  We then have a litmus test against which choices can be evaluated.  In fact, it’s helpful to recognize that we do have choices, and can choose consciously.  Each of us here today can decide what we want our life to be about, and can then choose our thoughts and actions based on that intention. 

A few years, a friend of mine was facing some very difficult challenges in her life.  I asked her if it was okay for me to share some of her story—she said wholeheartdely yes!  She had always been a good saver and smart financial planner, but then she found herself in financial crisis when she and her husband both lost their jobs, and found themselves having a mortgage that they were struggling to pay, savings that had been depleted, and no end to the struggle in sight.  As she and I talked about the dire circumstances, I was struggling to find a way to help relieve her pain.  But then, my friend made this very clear statement: she was ready to explore all the options, even ones that had once seemed inconceivable to accept.  She said that she knew bankruptcy and foreclosure were an option.  That she could live in her dad's basement and start her own company a an option.  She had taken off the blinders of what was possible and found there to be possibilities that she would not have previously seen as positive. She talked enthusiastically about the joy of moving in with her dad, and starting fresh.  Our intentions color the stories we tell ourselves.  In the face of the worst financial situation of her life, she knew she had choices, and that it was up to her to decide.  Life was not happening to her.  She was creating the life she was living, and no matter how dire things seemed, she could set her intention on making new choices, set her intention on seeing the world as a place of possibilities and those new choices could include joy and happiness. That is the power of intention.  And this was a few years ago.  And it actually has a Hollywood ending—she’s now very successful at a new job that she loves even more than the old one, and she has a strong sense of resiliency that she can handle whatever happens in life.

Each of us gets to choose--not once in a lifetime or once a year--we are choosing in each and every moment how we are going to live our life.  We are choosing whether we live with clear intention or whether we allow ourselves to get dragged down in the mire of old habits and old ways of seeing the world and old ways of seeing ourselves.  It is a choice. And no matter how many times we might think that we fail, we always, every one of us, have a new moment to start fresh.

There’s a wonderful William Blake quote that says, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it actually is—infinite.” 

We can be encouraged that the work of waking up is an opportunity to see the world come alive.  We can wake up to this truth, we can recognize our unique gifts and manifest those gifts into our everyday actions.  We can recognize the flow-through of energy from intention to action.  #1:  We can recognize that every moment is a moment to start fresh.  In each moment, we can set our intention to living our true purpose, #2 we remind ourselves what our true intention is.  #3 identify all the options we have, #4 we choose differently.

EIGHTFOLD PATH - Wise View

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As we continue our series of talks from the book, Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das, we’ll start on the Eightfold Path, which is the Fourth Noble Truth.  This is the medicine that the Buddha gave for enlightened living.  If you are suffering, this is your prescription.  The eight components are view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration.  In some translations, you’ll find the adjective to describe all these teachings as “Right” (Right view, etc.),  but that word "Right" is too black and white, too absolute. A better translation might be Beneficial or Wise.  Whatever is beneficial or wise for relieving suffering.

The first component, Wise or Beneficial View, is seeing things as they truly are, not through the filters of our past experiences.

This first step is critical to the practice of all the other steps.  It’s taught first because it’s an excellent place to start the journey.  We begin by waking up to the fact that we are causing our own suffering.  I think of it in the same vein as the first step of the 12-step program, when people admit that they are powerless over some old conditioned unskillful behavior.  And, along with this fact, we also have the view that it is possible to relieve our suffering, that others have done it and we can as well.  Confidence, even the smallest amount, can be cultivated.

The other day, someone said to me that they were waiting to do something they really wanted to achieve until they got their ducks in a row.  I can really relate.  No matter how many things are going right in my life, I’m often focused on the one or two things that aren’t going so well.    I sometimes seem to be solely focused on getting all the ducks in a row.  Five of the ducsk are doing just fine, and I still have two that are running amok.  I get the last two in line, the another one goes out of whack.  I have started to see how my clinging to things being a certain way often ensures that I’m never completely happy. I’m subtly trying to get those ducks in some arbitrary row that I’ve made up. I make to do lists of all sorts, subconsiously feeling like once everything is done, then I’ll be happy.  For me, the first step of the Eightfold Path, Wise View, reminds me to honestly examine why I want things to be different in the first place.  

In his teachings, the Buddha was trying to point out that getting the ducks in a row is not the purpose of life.  If we do happen to get the ducks in a row, it will probably be fleeting because, before we know it, those pesky ducks will be running amok again OR we will desire new ducks or all the other ways that our thoughts and emotions can be scattered.  Before we start chasing after the ducks again, we could try a new approach.  We can try using mindful awareness to examine more closely what is actually happening, seeing more clearly our thoughts, our motivation and our actions from a fresh perspective.  

“If only…”  Lama Surya Das encourages us to identify those subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we hide from the truth, by identifying what we’re wishing for.  “If only….”  How would you finish that sentence?   Most of us, we continually consciously or unconsciously defend the stories that we repetitively tell ourselves, about our childhood, our family, who or what we are.  In Buddhism there is a Sanskrit word called, “Samsara” that is literally translated as “perpetual wandering”.    It is the symbol of this cyclic conditioned existence that we find ourselves in. We often keep doing the same things, telling ourselves the same stories about it, and having the same frustrating outcome.  Wise View helps us get off the hamster wheel.

A Zen proverb says if you cling to nothing, you can handle anything.  So, we can take this opportunity right now to be more honest with ourselves, to practice seeing things more clearly.  

Exercises to practice Wise View are:

1.       I don’t know.  Even if you think you know, it’s extremely valuable to rest in the place of not knowing.   Imagine yourself being in your situation for the very first time.  What would it feel like to let go of our previously held beliefs about ourselves, and about others and start from a place of not knowing?

“We’ve enclosed ourselves in a relatively small space by thinking life is only one certain way. It binds us in, and we’re not aware that we’re living in a tiny, cluttered room.  BUT with the practice of mindful awareness and quiet reflection, it’s as if the walls of the room are torn down, and you realize there’s a sky out there.”   Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing (Spring 1998)

2.       Self-inquiry.  What am I holding on to?

What are you clinging to?  What are you not being honest with yourself about?  In this moment, finish this sentence, “If I were being completely honest, I would tell myself….”  What would you say? How can we commit to dropping the old stories, dropping the old way of explaining things or people or past events or even ourselves.  

If you are in an accident and you break your arm, ignoring it, not looking at it, will not fix it.  It’s only when you face the reality of the wound, only then you can begin to take appropriate action to heal. 

3.       Let go of any sense of struggle 

Who or what are we fighting with or against anyway?  How can we try to surrender to the moment, to the deep truth in the moment?  Imagine that life isn’t about struggling at all, that life can be about being in the flow of living.  Letting go of this sense of struggle, having a sense of surrender can be incredibly powerful.

4.       Cultivate compassion

The practice of seeing clearly is what finally moves us toward compassion. Seeing, again and again, the infinite variety of traps we create for seducing the mind into a struggle, seeing the endless rounds of meaningless suffering over lusts and aversions (which, although seem so urgent, lusts and aversions are not the source of happiness).  We begin to feel compassion for ourselves. And then, quite naturally, when we feel compassion for ourselves, we then start to feel compassion for everyone else. Start with yourself!  We can know, as we have never known before, that we are all stuck with bodies and minds and instincts and impulses.  We can surrender to this fact, and that is the first step out of the suffering.

It is often pointed out in the Buddhist teachings that compassion and wisdom go hand-in-hand.  True compassion for yourself AND others is NOT mutually exclusive. 

With Wise View, we commit seeing ourselves and others with insight and compassion.  Tara Brach, in Radical Acceptance said, “In any moment, we can take refuge in awareness.  When we get lost, we need only pause, relax open to what is here, what is now and re-arrive in the natural presence that is our true home.” We can give up the struggle, embrace the ducks wherever they are, and allow ourselves to be at peace.  This is the first step towards true transformation.  

We practice seeing things, ourselves and all others as if for the first time.

How to get the most out of meditation

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We are continuing our series of talks from the book, Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das.  Let’s dive into the chapter on Wise Mindfulness, one of the steps on the Eightfold Path.  Mindfulness and meditation are the primary practices of the Buddhist teachings.  It gives us a clear road map for transforming our lives.  This morning, we'll focus on meditation.

The list of three’s: 

Why meditate?  What is meditation?  How does one meditate?

What are the three stages of meditation?

What are the top three questions about meditation?

To begin, ask yourself why would you want to meditate in the first place?  Why do you care about meditating?  It’s important to be very clear about why you are interested in meditation.   Often, people are vague about their motivation, then consequently fail to make significant changes in their behavior.   We can think about this problem in terms of our present self and our future self (given that Buddhists think that “self” as just a combination of conditioned phenomena).   In the present moment, our present self may dream about losing ten pounds, or quitting smoking or some other improvement.  Our future self is what we will become in the future.  However, we are creating our future self in this very moment.  Our responses in this moment are what lay the foundation for our future self.

And yet, in this moment, we are being bombarded by our thoughts and emotions that are often looking for an immediate payoff.  The doughnut that shows up in this moment may seem too yummy to resist.  However, if we are motivated to grow into the future self of our dreams, we must find the motivation to resist an unskillful response in the present moment. 

So, why meditate?  When the going gets tough, you will need to be clear on why you want to sit down and be still.  Meditation can be a powerful transformer, but it doesn’t work to just read about it or hear about it.  It requires actual practice.  Therefore, it is helpful to be very clear and precise about your motivation and intention. 

Second, what is meditation?  Meditation in all its various forms has one objective, to train the mind.  The mind is the most powerful tool that we have.  We are constantly thinking and processing the world around us.  Think about a stranger you saw recently.  Now recognize some judgment you may have had about them.  What opinion did you form about them, just based on their appearance?  It seems so real, these opinions and perspectives that we have, yet they are built on our conditioned habits of relating everything we see, feel, experience with something we previously saw, felt or experienced.  Mostly, they are just stories.  Sometimes, these pre-conceived ideas are helpful, but oftentimes, they cause us to not “see” what is really happening in the moment. 

Meditation helps us recognize these stories for what they are--just stories.  We have the power to transform our lives by identifying our stories, seeing things and ourselves more clearly, then responding differently in the future.  

One of the most common questions people have about meditation is:  How do I stop my thoughts?  The good news is that we are NOT trying to stop our thoughts.  Thank goodness!  Anyone who has tried to meditate even once knows the frustration of trying to stop thinking.  The more we try to stop, the more it seems we think.  Our mind is like a little puppy running around with too much energy, running from one thought to another, sometime with very little connection.  We spend most of our time either rehashing the past or fantasizing about the future, either can be pleasant or painful, but both the past and the future take us away from being fully present in this moment.  Meditation is training the mind to see ourselves and the world more clearly.  So, we begin by making friends with our mind, with our thoughts and emotions, not pushing them away, not cling to them, not ignoring them.  Let them rise and fall of their own natural process.   

So, we know why we meditate, and what is meditation.  How do we do it? Lama Surya Das breaks down the meditation process into three stages:  

First, arriving and centering.  We leave behind the busyness of life and come to a place of stillness.  We can give ourselves cues that it is time to settle down.  Playing soft music, sitting in a certain position, reducing external distractions—these are all physical cues that encourage our mind to calm down.   This is why it’s helpful to have a place in your house or apartment that is just for meditation, even if it’s just a corner of a room.  It helps to put together a chair or cushion, an altar or whatever helps you get centered.  Taking a few slow, deep breaths is also a good signal to our body that it is time to relax. 

Stage two is Intensifying and Focusing:  We use the breath as a tool for bringing our awareness to a single point.  We also use chanting to give our brain something to focus on to help still the mind.  Chanting naturally brings you into the present moment. This focusing process is called Shamatha in Sanskrit, calm abiding.  We’re paying attention.  Another great tool for intensifying and focusing is visualization.  We imagine in great detail having qualities like a Buddha.  The loving-kindness practice, the point of peace, forgiveness practice, offering practice—these are all visualization tools to focus the mind on a greater level of being.     

Stage three is Releasing and Allowing:  The main point of the meditation is to release even the object of meditation and just be.  We open ourselves to whatever is happening within us and around us.  Just sitting--not doing, not fabricating, not distracted.    

Leave it as it is and rest your weary mind.

                  -LONGCHENPA Tibetan Buddhist Teacher 

No place to go, nothing to do, resting in the natural perfection of just living.  We make things a whole lot harder than they need to be. In Dzogchen, a particular Buddhist tradition, it’s call the Natural Great Perfection.  Seeing the innate perfection in things left just as they are.  Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist teacher, says that 50% of meditation is simply self-acceptance.  Carl Rogers, a noted psychologist, says we must first accept ourselves, before we can truly change.

A second question I get quite often is:  How am I supposed to find time to meditate?  I don’t have time!”  I completely understand.  Our days seem filled with so much busyness and activity, and our minds have been trained to stay busy.  Here are some baby steps to creating a more mindful life:  First, find the missing moments. We all have them.  We’re standing in line at the grocery store.  We’re waiting for a red light.  We’ve arrived early for a doctor’s appointment.  Imagine that instead of being irritated when you had to wait, you thought, Yippee!  I now have time to meditate!  It might be as simple as taking three deep breaths, or just focus on your breathing for a few moments.  Over time, these moments become minutes, and minutes become a daily meditation practice. 

The third most often asked question I get is that people think they’re not doing it right.  Many people think that everyone else is getting it right EXCEPT for them.  I have certainly had this experience as well.  Early in my meditation practice, I read a book by Herbert Benson, entitled The Relaxation Response. And in it, he studied people before during and after a meditation exercise.  He took cortisol levels and blood pressure and interviewed them about their experience.  What he found was that often the subject didn’t think they did the meditation correctly, but even if they just tried, that was enough to lower their stress levels. Just trying to meditate had a positive impact on their physical condition.   This simple research gives me great hope when I sit down to meditate and feel like it isn’t going well.  There is no litmus test for a single meditation session—merely that you showed up, sat down and tried. 

Meditation works on the body and the brain in subtle ways.  Over time, it works its magic and enables us to live a peaceful and joyful meditative life.