Oct 9, 2006 Monday, Southern Dharma Retreat
Barbara’s talk on Kalyana(Buddhism), Samyutta Nikaya/Upaddha Sutta, Ajahn Sucitto, Right Effort, Nasrudin, Brahamvaharas
Barbara: The dharma is sometimes called “that which is lovely in the beginning and the middle and the end.” John spoke last night about certain aspects of dharma, the Four Noble Truths and suffering. These are very real parts of dharma. The deep truth of the cessation of suffering is a very beautiful part of it. It will cease, but no argument, there’s suffering, it’s real.
We also need to attend to the beautiful side of dharma. The word kalyana means lovely or beautiful in Pali. It’s not loveliness so much in the sense experience but a spiritual kind of loveliness, the very beautiful qualities of spirit and heart. This is a vital part of the dharma. How do we awaken these in us?
Sitting today down by the waterfall with all of you, doing dzogchen, sun shining, leaves fluttering down, so beautiful, and my heart deeply opened. This is dharma too, to share a moment like that together. It’s inspiring; it’s beautiful.
The word kalayana is used in two major places, kalyana dhamma and kalyana mitta, the spiritual friend who reminds of this loveliness, and the sangha that reminds us. We see other people’s beautiful qualities much more readily than we see our own. We’re hard on ourselves, so we see this beauty in others and it inspires us. It’s not just the qualities of lovingkindness and compassion and so forth, but also just the willingness to do one’s practice. This is a beautiful quality, to express the faith that to take something very painful and just rest in the practice and not be moved into a place of hatred or rage. This is beautiful.
Again, reading some sutras to you tonight…
From Samyutta Nikaya, number 45 part 2. It’s called “Half of the Holy Light”
Samyutta Nikaya XLV.2 Upaddha Sutta Half (of the Holy Life)
Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
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I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was living among the Sakyans. Now there is a Sakyan town named Sakkara. There Ven. Ananda went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to the Blessed One, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.”[1]
“Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, he can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path.
He goes on to explain how he develops Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action. He does this based on his friends, companions, and colleagues, and through this line one may..
“And how does a monk who has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, develop & pursue the noble eightfold path? There is the case where a monk develops right view dependent on seclusion, dependent on dispassion, dependent on cessation, resulting in relinquishment. He develops right resolve … right speech … right action … right livelihood … right effort … right mindfulness … right concentration dependent on seclusion, dependent on dispassion, dependent on cessation, resulting in relinquishment. This is how a monk who has admirable people as friends, companions, & colleagues, develops & pursues the noble eightfold path.
“And through this line of reasoning one may know how admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life: It is in dependence on me as an admirable friend that beings subject to birth have gained release from birth, that beings subject to aging have gained release from aging, that beings subject to death have gained release from death, that beings subject to sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair have gained release from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. It is through this line of reasoning that one may know how admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.”
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As AN VIII.54 points out, this means not only associating with good people, but also learning from them and emulating their good qualities.
Without this, how does one get started? We can’t do it alone.
In Theravada Buddhism, the teacher is not an authority as it is, for example, in the Tibetan or sometimes in Zen practice. But the phrasing kalyana mitta, spiritual friend, is used, one who walks the path with you and reminds you of the beautiful qualities of heart and spirit. The beautiful qualities that help to develop practice.
Ajahn Sucitto, a monk who is a wise, loving man and a wonderful teacher, has a book called Kalyana. He’s speaking about the words kalyana mitta. I’m reading from his book.
From Ajahn Sucitto in his book, Kalyana:
On Kalyana mitta:
These words indicate an ongoing process in cultivating the Eightfold Path, and that it has a continually gladdening aspect. Something inspires so you draw close, you’re interested – this is the first sign of the lovely. Then you get involved; also a lovely quality. You practice; and even struggle with yourself, not from a negative position but because you really want to pull out of dullness and delusion. So this energy is also beautiful. And as much as anyone else can inspire, advise or encourage, once you’re involved, you have to find the kalyanamitta in yourself. You have to develop the moral qualities and conscientiousness in yourself. An external kalyanamitta can remind you of that spiritual friend in yourself, by helping you attune to your own core values. The spiritual friend reminds you of things you know and hold dear in your own heart.
We can see this clearly. If these qualities didn’t resonate for us, we wouldn’t be attracted. If the qualities you see in John and me as teachers didn’t resonate, if we were both bitter, angry, critical, vengeful people, you’d probably never want to come to another retreat with us again! You also wouldn’t be inspired to practice. That doesn’t mean we’re always kind and loving, we’re human, too. Our role is not to be someone you emulate so much as to remind you and empower you to bring this forth in yourself. I’ll come back to this in a little while.
The other meaning of kalyana, the other way it’s used is in kalyana dhamma, a sutra that says this dhamma is lovely in the beginning, lovely in the middle, and lovely in the end. “In the beginning” refers to the inspiration, the intention to practice. It’s what gets us into practice. “In the middle” is where you are now. Working to nurture these qualities of patience, lovingkindness, mindfulness, not qualities that you’ve got to go out and get somewhere but qualities the seeds of which have been either lying fallow or already starting to blossom in yourselves.
Remember the other night, the phrase I quoted, “Cultivate the good. One can cultivate the good. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.” We’re cultivating the good. We’re gardeners. We have all of these seeds growing, some big thistle bushes here and there, lots of thorns, and also many beautiful flowers, some of them just little seedlings. As any good gardener does, we have to ask ourselves, what will help to make the beautiful seedlings grow? How do I nurture the seedlings? Since the weeds may be thick, if I go in there with a hoe and start to hack out the weeds, I’m probably going to kill most of my seedlings. It’s a very good metaphor. If we practice with anger and aggression, we can’t possibly nurture the beautiful qualities because these qualities cannot be nurtured with anger.
“Hatred will never resolve hatred; only love resolves hatred.” This is the beginning of the Dhammapada. A very beautiful phrase and very clear statement: hatred will never resolve hatred, only love will resolve hatred.
So how do we attend to the weeds? We’ve really got to go in there with a little tiny spade and look at the weed and see its root structure and how its growing, and how we can snip it back gradually without disturbing the beautiful flowers, until finally the weed just shrinks itself and dissolves and the flowers grow. This is our practice. This is the dhamma that’s lovely in the middle. We’re practicing loveliness.
Lovely in the end. Even if we’re not fully enlightened, we seek fruits of our practice. In the small group meetings, all of you have discussed positive things that are coming out of your practice. We look back and we see we have a little bit more patience than we had 5 years ago, with others and with ourselves. We’re a little less frantic when things are not going right. We don’t become angry as quickly. We start to see there is a fruit here. It’s not the end yet, but it’s also not the middle. There’s a really tangible fruit and the first of the fruits of liberation. Whether it’s complete, the liberation of the arahat, or a beginning level of liberation, it’s still liberation. When somebody speaks abusively to me and I don’t have to punch him in the nose, that’s freedom. Seeing how I don’t personally go around punching people in the nose, still when somebody speaks abusively to me and I don’t become angry, that’s freedom. Instead, I might feel compassion. It’s very powerful. It’s dhamma that’s lovely in the beginning, lovely in the middle, and lovely at the end.
So we practice this dhamma. We nurture it. Again, what I read to you the other day, what is right effort?
Saccavibhanga Sutta/ The Exposition of Truths
Majjhima Nikaya, 141: 29
29: And what, friends, is right effort? … He awakens zeal for the arising of unarisen wholesome states and he makes effort, rouses energy, exerts his mind, and strives. He awakens zeal for the continuance , non-disappearance, strengthening, increase and fulfillment by development of arisen wholesome states, and he makes effort, rouses energy, exerts his mind, and strives. This is called right effort.
It’s not easy. We’re in the habit of telling ourselves stories, avoiding looking deeply at ourselves, and when these difficult mind states arise, we tend to want to get away or to fix them. But we can’t fix them, that’s getting the hoe and slashing at it. And we can’t run away forever. How do we attend in a loving way?
A statement that I often make, and people often don’t catch on the first time, so you’re going to hear me say this a number of times during the retreat, “That which is aware of anger is not angry. That which is aware of fear is not afraid.” Consciousness arises, the mind reverberating with anger, tense and fearful. That which knows, “This is the experience of the mind filled with anger,” is not angry. Anger has arisen in this mind and body. But Awareness in itself is not angry. It may be very clear and calm. We get so caught up in the anger and its stories that we fail to notice this calm, spacious aspect of mind.
Look at the image, if you will, of the window here. There’s clear glass, and you can see out to the trees beyond. If we threw mud all over the window, you couldn’t see out. Is the window in itself stained or affected in any way? Do we have to replace the glass? No. We just wash it off. The glass is clear. The glass is like the innate quality of pure awareness in ourselves, that innate purity, goodness, lovingkindness. It cannot be stained or spoiled. Its innate clarity is not something we have to get; rather, it’s something we recognize, nurture and develop. And then we look at the mud and we attend to the mud. We hose it off.
That which is aware of anger is not angry. That which is aware of fear is not afraid. That which is aware of greed is not grasping. This instruction means that we need to go deep in ourselves when we experience an emotion like anger and not say, “How do I control anger, how do I fix the anger?” But rather to know, right here with the anger, here is lovingkindness.
When we open our hearts, we find that these qualities exist in ourselves. Going back many years, early 1960’s, a sit-in in a little lunch counter in the South. We, the group sitting in, were arrested and thrown in a jail cell in town. I was angry. I was about 20 years old. I was pacing up and down the cell, stamping my feet. Two hours went by; I was really cultivating my anger. How can they be so bigoted? Bigoted idiots! Blah blah blah!
There were a half dozen women in the cell. This wonderful black woman, at that point she seemed old to me but she was probably younger than I am now, maybe 60, with a lovely dress, and she still had her hat pinned on. Finally she walked up to me. She said, “You’re so angry.” I said, “Of course I’m angry. Aren’t you angry?” And she said, “Yes, of course I’m angry, sweetheart. But I also love them, and they are so afraid.”
Wow. “Of course I’m angry, but I also love them and they are so afraid.” This is a woman who had a lot more to lose than I did. I didn’t live in that town; I had come down from the north. I wasn’t black. I wasn’t being persecuted. But she lived in this town. This was her home. She was the one who rode in the back of the bus. She was the one who couldn’t go into lunch counters, or restaurants, to eat. And yet she was able to open her heart, go past her anger, recognize the power of love, and see deeply into another person’s fear.
We all have this ability. The question isn’t whether we have it but whether we’re going to choose to nurture it. And this is where the lovely dhamma comes in, because we start to see the power of these beautiful spiritual mind states, and we start to see the suffering that’s caused when we hold on to anger and negative mind states. Then we have a very clear choice: do I really want to hold on to this anger or not?
Years ago, I was waiting for an appliance delivery. Our refrigerator had died. Sears was supposed to deliver it at 9 o’clock in the morning. At 2 o’clock I was supposed to pick up my 10-year-old son from school and take him to a music lesson. You can guess what happened: no Sears…no Sears. Back then, I couldn’t just pick up a phone and call. Now I can because they have new telephone systems for the deaf. But then I had to walk down my country dirt road and find a neighbor who was home, who would make the phone call for me. I did, and Sears assured me they were on their way.
And the lunch hour passed, no Sears. 1 o’clock came. Again, Sears assured me at 1 o’clock they’re on their way. Finally I had to leave to pick up my son, and I was so angry. We had 3 kids, I had no refrigerator for 3 days, I needed the refrigerator. Where are they! How dare they!
So I got to the end of the road where it connects into the bigger street and just there I saw the Sears truck turning on to my road. I followed them back. I had a choice. I could have stopped them and said, “I’m sorry, you’re too late, come back tomorrow.” I made the choice to follow them home. “How long will it take?” “Oh, just 10 minutes.” Okay. Well of course it’s going to take more than 10 minutes: they’ve got to unload this thing, get the old one out, balance this and get it centered on its legs. An hour later they were driving away and I was just in a rage! There was no way to call my son and tell him what was going on. I knew he was just standing outside his school waiting, wondering, where’s my mom?
Half way into town, finally, I caught on. I stopped the car. This little thought occurred to me, I’m enjoying this anger. I really was attached to it. I was feeling so powerless in the face of Sears’, what I deemed negligence, and my anger gave me a feeling of power. I didn’t want to let it go. And it was clear to me it wasn’t helping me; it wasn’t helping anybody. It had probably caused them an extra 20 minutes that I was stomping around the kitchen, refraining from verbally making noise but stamping my feet and looking impatient.
Right there in that moment there was just the awareness, I can let go of it. Right here with anger are equanimity, patience, and compassion. What do I choose to cultivate? So we can do this. It’s not always easy, but we can do this. What is the deepest intention?
Theravada Buddhism has many lists of beautiful qualities that we can work with. The first, of course, are the Brahma Viharas that we’ve talked about. We’ve done metta and karuna meditations. Mudita is sympathetic joy, real joy for another, even when the other person is getting something you wanted. Can we be joyful for that person?
So with mudita we watch any jealousy or grasping that comes up. Watch the wanting mind, spinning its stories. And we can really move into a direct meditation practice, wishing the other person well-being. “May you be happy;”—not trying to create an artificial idea of happiness but really touching on that in ourselves which is genuinely happy for the other person. It may be just a little spark, but we can nurture it.
And the fourth Brahma Vihara is equanimity. When we’re feeling a lot of turmoil, we can look for that which is inherently peaceful right there with the turmoil. We don’t look someplace else. We have to look where the turmoil is. But sometimes it’s dark there and we want to get away from it.
In the Sufi tradition there’s a wise fool whose name is Nasrudin, and there are some wonderful stories told about him. In one story, Nasrudin is kneeling on the ground under a light post; somebody comes along and says, “What are you looking for?” “My keys.” “Where did you drop them?” “Over there,” and he points to the dark under a tree. “Well, why are you looking here?” “It’s easier here under the street lamp.”
We don’t want to look in the place we have to look for these qualities. We tend to think, “If I’m filled with turmoil, I’ve got to either escape or kill the turmoil first before I can finally find peace or equanimity,” instead of looking right there inside the turmoil. We don’t want to look in the darkness; we want to look under the lamppost where it’s light. But that’s not where we’re going to find it. It’s there in the darkness. It’s right there with the anger and fear, right there with the grasping.
So metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha, metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha… We did that chant at least once and will do it more. It’s a beautiful chant, just a reminder. Sometimes when I’m feeling a lot of turmoil, I like to just chant this to myself. I find it helps. It’s just a reminder. It’s like asking myself, right now where is metta? Where is karuna? Where is mudita? Where is upekkha? Right now, where is it? Allow myself to invite it in.
We have these famous, or infamous, Theravada lists: the Ten Perfections, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, the Five Spiritual Qualities, endless lists. The perfections: generosity, morality, energy, wisdom, renunciation, lovingkindness, truthfulness, equanimity, patience. The spiritual faculties: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom. The factors of enlightenment: joy, energy, investigation, mindfulness, tranquility, concentration, equanimity. Some of them are repeated in several lists.
These are the precious seeds that we work to nurture. There are many ways to do this. The most important is simply to remember our purpose. I spoke about Clear Comprehension the other night, clear comprehension of purpose and of suitability. If my purpose is to be powerful at all costs, to be right, to force others, I probably don’t want to open to these beautiful qualities. But if my purpose is to live my life with more harmony and lovingkindness in the world, then I have a clear choice to make. And it’s never impossible to connect with these qualities no matter how deep in the mire we are. We just have to remember they exist and allow ourselves to be open to them. We have to see the stickiness of the angry and fear based qualities and make the decision not to reinforce them.
Years ago I went with my son’s class on a camping trip to a place in Canada, near Michigan, a long peninsula of land that runs out into Lake Erie. The campground is in the middle of this finger of land. Just a few hundred yards away are beaches, rocky beach on one side and sandy beach on the other. The peninsula juts out maybe a mile into the lake. At the end, it’s no wider than 10 feet. Part way down, it’s no wider than this room. But where the campground is, a few hundred yards wide.
There used to be a path that went from the campground to the sandy beach. But that year it was blocked off and the sign said, “Take the road to the beach.” The map showed me it was going to take about maybe a mile and a half to get to the beach, way down and then circle around, and then back this way. And I said forget it, it’s a hot day, I’m going to the beach.
I walked in a ways on an old trail and I came to a patch that looked like mud. I stepped into the mud and whoosh! I was literally up to my chest in mud. A BIG mud-hole. And there were some sticks and things on the surface, and I grabbed as I felt myself falling, plopped over so my face was in the mud. My whole body was in the mud, my feet not touching bottom, and fear coming up.
So I managed to inch my way forward and crawl out onto the other side of the mud-hole. Now the camp was behind me, the beach was ahead of me. I started to walk, but immediately came to a huge patch of thorns, a solid wall of thorns. There was no way past. I walked up and down and I couldn’t get through. Turned around and there was the mud-hole, and I figured, well I’ll go around it. But there was no way around it. I went 20 yards, 50 yards, north and south, feeling with a stick; all mud. No way around it. Fear came up. I was only 200 yards from camp. Maybe they could hear me if I screamed, maybe not. But it was September, it’s not too cold. It was probably going to be cool at night and I was in a bathing suit, but I wasn’t going to die out there. I wasn’t lost in the wilds of Canada, I’m simply in a populated park with a mud-hole and thorn break.
I tried every way I could, pushing from a place of fear. I considered just walking through the thorns and getting cut up, and decided not to. I had the sense finally just to sit down on the ground. I gave up. Best thing I could have done. I just started to breathe and to meditate, quieting myself, allowing that deep wisdom and openheartedness to emerge. As I sat there, a bunny rabbit went through, and he went right where it seemed there was mud. Hop hop hop and through. And I watched him and I could see what looked like a deer trail there. So I got up with my stick and I tapped: mud, solid, Mud. Only mud 6 inches deep in the middle.
So I tapped my way across. It was only about 10 feet across. Tap, tap, tap, follow the deer path. To do it, I had to stop running ith the fear and its stories, open my heart, be present. Maybe there would not have been a deer path. Maybe I would have just sat there. Eventually somebody would have said, where’s Barbara? They would have come out looking for me. If it got late enough I would see their flashlights. They would have figured I was somewhere around. They would have found me.
We can open our hearts to our situation in any moment or we can act out our fear, our anger, our negativity. We always have a choice.
As you work with your practice this week, see what nurtures these beautiful seeds within you. See what defeats them. Ask yourself, what is my purpose here? You’re not doing this dhamma practice for power, for success in the world, to be a somebody, you’re doing it from a place of love. Trust this beauty in the self, the seeds of lovingkindness and the open heart. It will take you where you want to go. Trust it and cherish it, allow it to grow. Where will you put attention, on the negative, and thereby further energize it, or on the Kalyana, the lovely?
Thank you.