Monday, July 14, we will meet in person.
Go to calendar for our schedule
Address for OHMC meditation space:
3812 Northampton St. NW, Washington DC 20015
Please arrive a few minutes early so we can invite the bell on time. You may also arrive 15 minutes early to practice working meditation by helping us set up cushions.
Dear friends,
This week, we will meet Monday evening, July 14, from 7-8:30PM EDT in person at our meditation space (3812 Northampton Street NW); Wednesday morning, July 16, from 7-8AM EDT online; and Friday, July 18, from 12-1PM EDT in person / online (hybrid).
On Monday evening, Annie will facilitate and we will continue our reflections on Thay’s teaching in his book, The Art of Power. This week we will focus on Chapters 4 (Getting What We Really Want) and 5 (The Secret of Happiness), pages 65-97.
In Chapter 4, Thay writes:
Right or wrong action can be determined by using the single criterion of suffering or nonsuffering. Whatever causes suffering in the present or the future, for ourselves and people around us, is the wrong thing to do. What brings well-being in the present and the future is the right thing. The criterion is clear…
That is why, to be happy, to be a real bodhisattva, we need to take some time each day to sit down, look into ourselves and identify the kind of energy that’s motivating us and where it is pushing us. Are we being pushed into the direction of suffering and despair? If so, we must release this intention and find a more wholesome source of energy. Our volition should be bodhicitta, the mind of love, the intention to love and serve.
There are seeds of awakening and compassion in each of us. In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is someone who is awake, mindful, and motivated by a desire to help others wake up, be mindful, and be happy. Your purpose is to wake up to the reality of suffering and its causes, to wake up to the possibility of happiness. The path of understanding and compassion is the path to happiness.
If you don’t have this strong desire to help people, to liberate, to bring awakening and joy, you can’t be called a bodhisattva and you don’t have a path to follow. But with mindfulness and awareness of our intention, we can all quickly and easily become bodhisattvas, awakened beings committed to the protection of all beings. If you have in you a lot of compassion and a lot of insight and awakening, you can act as a bodhisattva in the form of a businessperson, an athlete, a scientist, a politician, an entertainer, or a parent. The bodhisattva practices the art of living happily in the here and now and shows up in many guises. You don’t have to wear a monk’s robe. You don’t have to have achieved enlightenment or have a certain income. You don’t have to have achieved anything. You can wear a suit and tie or a pair of jeans and still carry a bodhisattva’s joy, happiness, and freedom. And when you have a lot of joy, happiness, and freedom, you can share it with other living beings.
A bodhisattva may have blocks of fear, suffering, and pain within her, so she returns to herself to recognize the blocks of suffering and fear, embrace them, and transform them into compassion, love, understanding, and solidarity. The bodhisattva has the ability to go back to himself to take care of his body and consciousness. Pain is an inevitable part of life, but happiness is possible.
In this section, Thay helps us know what right action is. He writes that if we want to be a Bodhisattva we will be determined to help others wake up, to protect others, to help others find the possibility of happiness in each moment, and to continue to practice to transform our own suffering.
Sometimes we may think that in order to be happy, we need to make our lives as comfortable as possible. We may not feel good when we hear about the suffering of children and adults living in war-torn areas or those struggling to make ends meet every day. And we may think that this protective, angry energy that arises when we look at suffering needs to be transformed or suppressed.
But in a private conversation with the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi last week (you can listen to the public talk he gave here), he shared a different framework with which to consider the strong feelings that often arise when we witness suffering.
Bhikkhu Bodhi described two different types of energies that aren’t often differentiated in our Buddhist teachings. They are usually both named anger. There is the kind of anger which arises when we hear about or witness suffering, which could be called moral outrage. This kind of anger is strong and protective, similar to what a mama bear feels when her cubs are threatened. Her love is so strong that she will protect her beloved cubs using every bit of her life force. It’s the same kind of fierce love described in the Buddha’s Discourse on Love: “Just as a mother loves and protects her only child at the risk of her own life, cultivate boundless love to offer to all living beings in the entire cosmos.” Would you call this feeling anger?
This protective love can be contrasted with what we might call ruminative anger that we chew on when we feel we have been slighted by someone else. Ruminative anger is founded on wrong perceptions and hatred and is meant to serve only our small self. It can hook us and lead us to act violently and generate more suffering. This kind of anger can be transformed by looking deeply into our wrong perceptions and knowing the truth of our humanity and interbeing.
So, maybe our fierce compassion/anger/moral outrage, the kind of anger that we sometimes attribute to activists, is not something to be transformed away or suppressed, but rather seen in a clear light as simply the protective aspect of love. Thay describes the volition of a Bodhisattva as “bodhicitta, the mind of love, the intention to love and serve.” So, a Bodhisattva may appear to be angry when people are suffering, but it’s the kind of anger that serves other beings through protection. It’s the energy that says, “This is not OK and I will help to put an end to it.”
I’ve been feeling this kind of fierce compassion when I watch the news and see the systems that protect my fellow humans being dismantled and bombs continuing to fall in many places around the world. Are we aware of the kind of energy that is motivating us right now? After our meditation period, we will read the above quote from The Art of Power, reflect on these two kinds of anger, and share whether any of this makes sense and what is up for us this week.
I look forward to seeing you then.
With love,
Annie