Friendliness to the Self
By
Abbess Taitaku Patricia Phelan
Once, when I was a student at the San Francisco
Zen Center, I asked my teacher, "How can I practice with the parts of myself
that don't want to practice?" I meant the squirmy, restless part, the part
that wants to have fun, and the part that is tired or lazy and just wants to sit
down and drink a beer or watch a movie and forget about everything else.
The
path of Zen practice is sometimes referred to as a long iron road, and I expected
him to say something like "You must strengthen your resolve and persevere",
or "Develop your self discipline to get past resistance or past the part
of yourself that is sabotaging your practice." I had heard him say things
like this before, but instead he said, "There is no part of you that doesn't
want to practice." This response stopped me because it had never occurred
to me before that there was no part of me that didn't want to practice-I thought
in order to practice, I had to struggle with the weaker parts and the parts that
resisted practice and overcome them. When I heard his answer, I felt overjoyed
because he was my teacher and I believed him. I didn't understand it, but I believed
that somehow it must be true. After that when I felt like I wanted to sleep in
and skip early morning zazen, I reminded myself that, "There is no part of
myself that doesn't want to practice," and it became a kind of koan-a way
of examining "What is practice?" If there is no part of myself that
doesn't want to practice, and I'm feeling this way, then what is practice, anyway?
To
practice fully, we need to integrate all the parts of ourselves, integrate the
driven, achievement-oriented part, the irritable part that gets angry or constantly
judges how I am doing with the part that is more open and accepting. Integration
comes about first by becoming conscious of and getting to know all the parts of
ourselves-by bringing awareness to these different aspects of who we are and what
we experience. It may not be easy to get a feeling for how to practice with the
angry part or the rebellious part that wants to escape or that's resisting practice.
I've noticed that some people who have developed a regular zazen practice seem
quite steady and disciplined. But sometimes self discipline can be overdeveloped
so that it can slip into a way of controlling experience. People like this may
feel like they need to step away from practice and do something like drink a beer
in order to relax or enjoy themselves. If you find this happening, you might examine,
"Can practice be fun?" "How do you bring fun to practice?"
or "How do you practice when you are having fun?" Is this even possible?
Practice
isn't the same thing as being serious. The more we get to know and accept all
the different aspects of ourselves, the bully and the part that is bullied, the
fun-loving parts, the angry or competitive parts, the threatened and defensive
parts, and so on, the more we can practice with whatever we feel as just another
state of mind. I've found working with self acceptance has been one of the most
important aspects in learning to sit still or sit without moving in zazen.
In
the 1980's when I saw the movie Elephant Man, I was reminded of this. Elephant
Man is based on the story of John Merrick who lived in nineteenth century England.
He had a disease in which 90% of his body was covered with fibroid tissue and
tumors including a large tumor at the back of his head which was the size of a
normal person's head. The movie is based on the writings of John Merrick's doctor,
Dr. Treeves, and on the writings of Ashley Montegue called The Elephant Man, A
Study in Human Dignity.
Recently, I saw a documentary about John Merrick and
found that part of the movie was fictional. John Merrick supported himself by
touring England presenting himself in side shows as a freak or curiosity, rather
than having a cruel master who showed him, treating him very cruelly, as the movie
depicted. Early on in the movie, Dr. Treeves found John Merrick and got his permission
to take him to the hospital in order to study his condition.
In the movie,
as the character of John Merrick develops, we are shown a metamorphosis from a
creature that is barely recognizable as being human into a very kind, sensitive,
gentle person. His character is especially apparent in his relation-ships. He
was befriended by the nineteenth century actress, Mrs. Kendall who became a close
friend, as did Dr. Treeves and his wife. At some point in the movie, he began
referring to Dr. Treeves as "my dear friend." His voice, or at least
the actor's voice, had an incredible quality to it that seemed to express complete
friendliness and goodwill toward this other person. In this study of human dignity,
I am struck by the relationship between John Merrick's capacity for friendliness
and goodwill and his own dignity and self respect. This reminds me of a verse
spoken by Buddha. It begins, "I visited all quarters with my mind."
This means that, with Buddha's clairvoyance, he visited the four quarters of the
universe. "I visited all quarters with my mind. Nor found I any dearer than
myself; Self is likewise to every other dear; Who loves oneself, will never harm
another."
Reading this verse, I realized that Buddhist practice includes
a kind of self-love which is very close to, if not the same as, self acceptance.
Each time I read this last line: "Who loves oneself, will never harm another,"
I wonder, what kind of love is this that once you have it for yourself, you will
never harm another? This verse is in a 9th century text called the Vissudhi Magga
and it introduces the teaching on the Four Brahma Viharas which teach friendliness
to the self as Buddhist practice. The Brahma Viharas are the practice of friendliness,
compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
"Brahma Vihara" means
Measureless Meditations or Boundless or Unlimited States. They are considered
the ideal way of conduct toward living beings. This practice is taught in Theravadin
Buddhism and it was also taught and practiced in all the other religions in India
at the time Buddhism was developing. The first, friendliness or loving kindness
is maitri in Sanskrit and metta in Pali as in Metta Sutta. It means wishing well
for others or the wish to provide others with what is useful. Sometimes metta
is translated as "love," but it doesn't include the aspects of craving,
desire or passion that are sometimes associated with love. The second, compassion,
means wishing to relieve the suffering of others. Sympathetic joy means feeling
happiness at the good fortune of others. Sympathetic joy is characterized by freedom
from despondency, and it is considered an antidote to depression. So, feeling
joyful at the good fortune of others is a way to work with depression, or maybe
to help prevent depression. The Fourth Unlimited State is equanimity or even mindedness
toward all. Sometimes people confuse equanimity with its near enemy, indifference
or detachment, but equanimity does not mean withdrawing from others; it is having
equal regard for all beings. One of the purposes of practicing the Four Unlimited
States is the breakdown in barriers between self and others.
The traditional
example used to illustrate this breakdown in barriers is, if there were a person
out in the forest with three other people, one person who is a very good friend,
one person for whom he has no strong feelings either positive or negative, and
another person toward whom he feels hostility; and if a band of robbers came upon
them and demanded that they be given one person; and when asked what they needed
a person for, they were told to make a blood sacrifice to the spirits of the forest,
and if our original fellow were to think, let them take this person or let them
take that person, then he has not accomplished the breakdown of barriers between
self and other. Or, on the other hand, if he were to think, let them take me and
spare the other three, then again he still would not have accomplished the breakdown
in barriers because he is regarding the welfare of the other three only and not
his own welfare. Only when one has equal regard toward each of the four, including
oneself, has the distinction between self and other been removed.
The practice
of the Four Unlimited States begins with the cultivation of friendliness or loving
kindness. Friendliness is developed first toward the easiest person, ideally a
teacher. If you don't have a teacher, then a good friend but not someone you are
sexually attracted to or someone who is dead. After perfecting loving kindness
toward a teacher or good friend, next, direct loving kindness toward someone for
whom you have no strong feelings, a neutral person. This could be someone you
don't know but have seen occasionally such a grocery clerk or someone who collects
a bridge toll-someone you have no immediate reaction to. After you have perfected
friendliness and goodwill to your teacher or good friend and a neutral person,
then direct friendliness toward a person for whom you feel hostility or have difficultly
with. In this way, you progress in the cultivation of loving kindness by beginning
with an easy person, a more difficult person and so on. But actually, the instructions
say that friendliness should first of all be developed towards oneself again and
again and again.
The traditional way loving kindness or friendliness is cultivated
is by repeating these phrases: "May I be happy. May I be free from suffering.
May I be free from anxiety, free from affliction. May I be well. May I dwell in
peace." The practice is to radiate friendliness to yourself, pervade yourself
with loving kindness. This is done so that you will have first-hand experience
of loving kindness so you will then be able to take yourself as an example. Then
proceed with the phrases: "As I want to be happy, as I am adverse to suffering,
as I want to be well, as I want to dwell in peace, may my teacher or good friend
be happy, be free from suffering, be well, may my teacher dwell in peace."
After you cultivate loving kindness for the three types of people, then radiate
loving kindness to all beings: "As I want to be happy and free from suffering,
may all beings be happy and free from suffering." The ideal is to feel friendliness
for all beings at all times. But, again, the instructions emphasize first of all
perfecting loving kindness toward oneself. After perfecting friendliness for all
beings, then systematically proceed in the same way with the cultivation of compassion,
sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
Before I knew about this group of practices,
I stumbled onto my own version of friendliness toward the self. At the time, I
had been sitting zazen daily for seven years, including three years of practice
at Tassajara, and I was living at the San Francisco Zen Center where my boyfriend
also lived. After awhile I noticed that he had a growing interest in a friend
of mine who also lived at Zen Center. And before long, I was feeling threatened
and jealous and a strong fear of being rejected. At that time I thought one of
the goals of Zen was detachment; and I reasoned that if I was feeling jealous
then I must be attached; and if I was attached, then I must be a failure at Zen
practice. Not only was I feeling the pain of jealousy from the relationship, I
also felt guilty and embarrassed for feeling jealous in the first place. My response
was then to reject myself out of disgust for my own jealous feelings.
I was
really miserable, and we broke up and I was still miserable, everyday for months.
During this time, one day in zazen I spontaneously began doing a visualization
practice in which I visualized each part of my body starting with my toes and
moving upward to my head. I would visualize my toes, then I would visualize my
feet, then my ankles, my lower legs, my knees, taking each part separately up
to my head. As I visualized my toes, I directed these phrases to my toes: "I
love you, I care about you, I completely accept you." I repeated these phrases,
directing them to each part of my body. One thing I found was how many parts I
didn't like or thought were imperfect or inadequate. One of the benefits of doing
this exercise was I become conscious of my attitudes toward my body, and it gave
me a way to consciously work with accepting all the parts of myself, just as I
was.
Buddha's verse says: "Who loves oneself will never harm another."
It doesn't say, "Whoever is enlightened, or whoever is a pure or a perfected
being and loves oneself, will never harm another." It just says, "Whoever
loves oneself will never harm another." I don't know if this is true or not,
but in Buddhism, the challenge is to find out for yourself.
Friendliness
to the Self, Part 2
By Abbess Taitaku Patricia Phelan
According to Buddhist
cosmology there are six realms of existence: the hell realms, the realm of hungry
ghosts, the animal realm, the human realm, the realm of the jealous gods and the
heavenly realm of gods and goddesses. These realms of existence are taught both
as realms beings are born or reborn into as well as states of mind which we enter
and leave throughout the day. It is considered quite rare and quite fortunate
to be born as a human being because the human realm is generally considered the
only realm in which Buddhism can be practiced.
So, if Buddhist practice is
for human beings, if Buddhism is a human endeavor, then we have to be able to
practice with all aspects of being human-not just our positive or uplifting qualities.
We have to be able to practice with everything that makes up human character and
experience. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing-that is what we have to practice
with. It doesn't work to try to purify yourself or perfect yourself, to overcome
your anger or desire or whatever so that then you'll be able to practice. Whatever
we feel as a human being is completely acceptable for practice. However, this
doesn't mean that because whatever we feel is acceptable, that it is OK to express
our feelings or to act on them. The activity of being aware of our feelings and
accepting them is quite different from the activity of acting on our feelings.
The
Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Trungpa Rimpoche, taught that the way to work with our
negative emotions is not to repress them and not to express them. This was an
ongoing question for me for several years. If we don't repress our emotions and
if we don't express then, then what are we left with? When we don't repress or
express our emotional states, we have the opportunity to just be present with
them looking fully and directly at them without distracting ourselves by making
a response to them. Trungpa said, if we follow our emotions and escape them by
acting on them, that is not experiencing them properly. He said that the other
way we try to escape from our emotions is by repressing them because we cannot
bear to be in such a state. Trungpa talked about Milarepa, an important early
Tibetan Buddhist teacher and yogi. Milarepa did a lot of solitary meditation in
caves, and at one point in his training whenever he tried to meditate, he was
confronted by a gang of demons, who interrupted his practice or who he felt interrupted
his practice. He tried everything he could think of to get rid of them. He threatened
them, he scolded them, he even tried preaching the dharma to them. But they would
not leave until he stopped regarding them as "bad" and just saw them
for what they were, just another form of distraction.
After I had done the
visualization exercise for a couple of months, one day when I had finished, something
else happened. It was as if my emotional terrain or emotional geography appeared.
And I called up my jealousy by recreating how I felt when I was in a jealous state,
and I directed the same phrases toward my jealously: "I love you, I care
about you, I completely accept you." Before this I had always hated my jealousy,
hated myself for feeling jealous, and the idea of accepting my jealousy or accepting
myself as a human being who is sometimes jealous was completely new to me.
Next
I called up my comparative thinking, my judgmental faculty, and instead of trying
to stop it, I directed this same attitude of acceptance toward it. I tried to
accept myself as a human being who sometimes judges and criticizes. Not long after
that, I noticed that sometimes when I was sitting zazen, I would have an uneasy
or unpleasant feeling in my gut. I had been pushing this uneasiness aside for
so long that I was barely aware that it was even there. When I brought my attention
to it and tried to be present with it, I found that it accompanied a low level
of comparative thinking, in which I was comparing myself to someone else or comparing
my practice to some external standard or ideal, and when I compared myself in
this way, I had the unpleasant sensation that accompanies feeling inadequate.
So I just tried to accept this-that judging or comparing is an aspect of being
human; and it is completely acceptable for practice-as something to practice with-only
when I judge, I feel uneasy. But it's OK to feel uneasy sometimes. I've found
that when I treat the parts of myself that I don't like with friendliness and
acceptance, they become much less powerful, and they lose their strength to push
me around.
Once someone who had been sitting zazen for about twenty-five years
and who has a strong temper told me that he had never been angry in zazen; while
I, on the other hand, have experienced pretty strong states of anger while sitting,
without even trying. When I experience anger in zazen, often it sneaks up on me
or comes out of nowhere without warning so that I'm suddenly seized with anger.
I think if you sit zazen long enough, sooner or later, you will experience in
zazen just about every state of mind you have experienced anywhere else. One of
the ways that zazen is misused is to block out feelings and emotions. I think
it's easy to confuse letting go of thoughts with freezing or repressing our emotions
in zazen. The experience of suddenly being enmeshed in anger comes from ignoring
the physical and psychological processes leading up to full-blown anger. Mindfulness
of body and mind is the antidote to being taken by surprise by emotions.
Thich
Nhat Hanh said that anger is a part of ourselves, and, if we fight our anger,
we are fighting ourselves. I would encourage you to find whatever way you can
to welcome and cultivate the attitude of embracing the parts of yourself that
aren't so uplifting, the parts that you are ashamed of or disgusted with or are
a kind of taboo. So, for example, when I feel myself becoming jealous, I try to
welcome it with the attitude, "Here's my old friend jealousy" and I
try to open myself to it with a friendly attitude and try to feel what it is,
what it feels like throughout my body and mind. To do this, you need to be willing
or devoted to not moving away from what is difficult. This reminds me of being
with my extended family when I was a child at Thanksgiving. Some of my cousins
were really good friends, but one used to twist my arm behind my back and I hated
it. I had my favorite aunt and there was an uncle who was sort of annoying, but
they were all part of the family.
Similarly, all of our mental and emotional
states are part of ourselves and are something to practice with. We may not enjoy
all states of mind, but nevertheless, we can practice with them. Having the ability
to work with emotional states in zazen makes it easier to work with emotions in
daily life. Through awareness and acceptance of whatever mental states arise,
when we no longer try to avoid or ignore what we consider unpleasant, we then
get to practice with all the parts of ourselves. When all these parts are supporting
our practice, it becomes a much fuller practice, allowing us to just sit, without
moving.