React or Respond

by Friends of Godwin

To have this quality of equanimity – to be cool but not cold – is extremely important when helping others. Sometimes in helping others we create suffering for ourselves because we are reacting instead of responding. When we react in the course of helping others, we get emotionally excited and stirred up. Responding is trying to do something while keeping a clear mind. It is important to learn to respond and not to react in any situation. But as you are still human, it is possible that you will react instead of responding. In that case you can reflect: “Why am I reacting?” It is possible to learn from this experience of reacting and hopefully, ideally, remind yourself not to react but to respond next time.

Normally we react because we are surprised. Again it is human that we are surprised, because we all have a model and expectations about how things should be. When something happens which goes against this model and our expectations we are surprised and react to it. It is quite human to have ideas and models, but at least when you are reacting, you can reflect on it. Ask yourself what the model is, what the expectation is that you are having.

But don’t have the idea, I will not react. Because if you have this ideal of not reacting, then when you react, you will be reacting to that. When you react, make friends with it and try to reflect on it in a very gentle and friendly way, otherwise you will be giving yourself minuses. This is the important thing. We all make mistakes. When we make mistakes, try to make an effort not to give yourself a minus. Though not giving yourself a minus doesn’t mean that you just allow such things to happen; you do not indulge in them.

Always in the Present

by Friends of Godwin

One aspect of a mirror-like mind is that it always functions in the present. A mirror cannot reflect something that is going to happen in the future; it cannot reflect something that has happened in the past. The question arises, is it possible always to be in the present in everyday life? So what does it mean to be in the present? We need to clarify this. Experiencing the present moment is like seeing the candle in front of you now, hearing the cough now, being aware of the breath and the sensations in the body now. But in everyday life we need to use the past and the future. This is a real challenge we have: how to use the past and the future, and still reflect them just as they are.

If you completely let go of your past you will not be able to go back to your homes: this shows that we need to use the past. If you don’t think about the future, if you don’t plan, you would not have been able to come here. When we think about the past, when we are recalling, and when we are anticipating the future, we are doing it now. We must realise that when we are thinking about the past, and when we are thinking about the future, we are always doing it in the present moment. The only thing is that we give a reality to the past it doesn’t have. We don’t realise it cannot be changed and we allow the past to create negative emotions and suffering for us. This is also how anxiety about the future can arise. The future has not come yet, but while in the present we think certain things will happen. In this simile of a mirror-like mind all this thinking about the future and about the past is happening now.

Relationships

by Friends of Godwin

I think the question of relationships is the greatest challenge human beings have. Because no human being can avoid relationships. Even a hermit living alone by himself or by herself has to have relationships. Relationship to nature. Relationship to the environment. Relationship to themselves. So in this sense no one can avoid relationships.

Now, the first point about relationships is to find out how you relate to yourself. Some of you might have heard of the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. He has written a play about relationships. And in this play he made the statement: Hell is other people. Do you agree? What is the Buddhist response to that statement? Hell is inside us. So this is why in Buddhist teachings it is very, very difficult, because you are considered to be responsible for what you are doing. It is very easy to blame other people. But when we blame other people we never try to work on ourselves, so that one can continue to blame other people and not really look at oneself.

So it is very important to find out how you relate to yourself in the sense: Do you see yourself as your best friend? Or do you have a tendency to be hard on yourself, to give minuses? Do you have no trust in yourself? If you do not have trust and confidence in yourself, you can never have trust and confidence in others. This is why in the Buddhist teaching what is called self-understanding, self-knowledge, is so much emphasised. To find out the way you are relating to yourself.

So for this you have to make a connection with yourself. You have to learn to observe your behaviour. You have to find out your real motives, your intentions prior to your actions. You have to learn to be very objective about yourself. You have to be very honest, sincere, and authentic about yourself. So in relationships this is, I would suggest, something very important to be clear about.

And also be clear about your own expectations, about your own idealism, about your own models. Because if you have very unrealistic models about other people, about yourself, about how the world should be, you will always be disappointed. And if you suffer from a kind of void in you, then whatever other people do to you, giving affection, giving attention, it is not good enough.

Being Human

by Friends of Godwin

As I often emphasise the importance of being human, I would like to suggest that as we are still human there are moments when we like and moments when we dislike – such reactions can still be there. So here again I would suggest that if you are reacting, just to realise that you are reacting and then to find out in your own experience, when you are liking something, when you are holding onto it, how it creates suffering for yourself. And when you are resisting something, when you are disliking something, how it again creates suffering. So from our reactions, from a reactive mind, we can also learn.

When you are reacting, just know that you are reacting, to take that as a learning experience and learn not to react to it. And when you are not reacting just know that you are not reacting, and see for yourself the results, the benefits of it. So if you can really learn to be open to both the reactive mind and the non-reactive mind and to see the difference between the two, that can be considered something very important.

This is how we can try to practise when we are doing formal meditation. Now learning to do this in everyday life as well may be more difficult, but this is the practice. So if you can be observant, if you can be aware in everyday life, you can catch yourself: seeing how in certain situations we like certain things, we want them to continue, we like to give them plusses; and in other situations we don’t like them, we want to get rid of them. Just as when doing formal meditation so in everyday life, when you like something, when you identify yourself with something, see for yourself what happens to you, what it does to you.

Then you will realise – and it is a very important discovery that you’ll make – that we can’t always be demanding how things should be. What we are doing is making demands of ourselves, how we should behave, how we must behave; making demands of others, how they should behave, how they must behave; and also demanding from life, how life should be, how life must be according to our own expectations. Making demands is one thing, but reality is another thing. This is a simple way of seeing how we create our own suffering. So here again, it is very important in everyday life just to see how we create our own suffering with the demands we are making.

Understanding our Mistakes

by Friends of Godwin

One aspect where we need to use loving-kindness is learning to relate to our shortcomings, our weaknesses. When we make a mistake, how do we relate to that using loving-kindness? Because we are all human – and it is very nice that we are all human – but as we are human, we are bound to make mistakes. And when we make mistakes, how can we use loving-kindness is such a situation? What do we do when we make a mistake? Immediately give a big minus?

So hereafter, when you make a mistake, please don’t give yourself a minus, and without giving yourself a minus, you can start to reflect. This reflection is a very, very important aspect of meditation. I will emphasise that, introducing it as we go along in this retreat.

Relating to yourself as your best friend, you have a dialogue with yourself: Now what happened to you? What made you do that? What made you say that word? You must ask this question in a very friendly, gentle, kind way so as to just come to understand yourself. Then you learn to see different aspects, different accents to your actions. So in this way it is something very beautiful that, rather than suffer, rather than beat ourselves, rather than feel guilty, we will learn from our mistakes.

So please realise this: that this is not a matter of giving into that mistake. But rather understanding our mistakes and then learning from them, and then effecting a kind of natural transformation from that. If you can relate to your mistakes in this way, you will never carry them as wounds, which can be something very destructive, to hold on to these wounds, hold on to what has happened in the past.

In this way, when you see the mistakes of other people, when you see the faults of other people, then you can relate to them in this way with understanding, with loving-kindness, and this can also give a lot of understanding: without getting angry, without developing hatred, we develop more and more understanding about human nature, in whichever way it arises: whether in relation to ourselves, or in relation to others. So in this way we learn to forgive ourselves and to forgive others. This is a powerful way of healing those wounds that we carry in relation to our mistakes, and in relation to the mistakes of others.

Reflection

by Friends of Godwin

If we can develop the quality of reflection we can see the Dhamma in any experience in life; any experience can be a meditation. It can be a sickness, it can be some disappointment, it can be some frustration, it can be some happiness, it can be anything, but just learning to reflect, to contemplate, to understand, is very important.

In this connection I would like to suggest a technique which you can practise in everyday life. In the evening after work when you go back home, I know everyone who goes home is tired, but please try to recover from that by maybe taking a shower or something similar, and then just for a few minutes take your mind back and reflect on how you spent the day.

From the time you woke up to the time of that reflection, just try to go over all the things. See now, how many times did I get angry during the day, what were the occasions when there was stress, were there situations when I lost control of my emotions? You are not doing this as if you were a judge, trying to beat yourself, but in a very friendly, gentle, understanding way, just going over what happened.

And what is more important is also to reflect on the times when such disturbances were not there. Reflect on the good things that you have done, the generous things you have done, the friendly things you have done, the nice words you have used. You should also include these. This is more important or at least equally important.

If you can be more open to these positive things you’ll be surprised to know what a good person you are. So this type of reflection will enable us to know more about ourselves, to know about our behaviour in a very objective, clear way and when you do this a natural transformation will come in your behaviour without your trying to do anything.

A Beautiful Way to Live

by Friends of Godwin

Using a technique like focusing on breathing we learn to develop awareness, we learn to develop a non-reactive mind, we learn to be open, and once you know that now you are fairly stable then you can open up to whatever is happening. And what is beautiful in this technique is that even when there are times when you don’t have a spacious mind and when you are reacting, when you have some emotion, then that becomes an object of meditation, you learn about it, you investigate it. So if you are unable to do it at that time when it will not be very easy, at least later on you can reflect on what happened and can learn from it.

So our mistakes, our failures, they’re used as our teachers, they’re used for our spiritual growth. It is a very beautiful way to live. Usually when we make a mistake we give ourselves a big minus, we feel guilty, we suffer from anger, all different reactions. But in this way there is no need to have such reactions to our mistakes, instead you learn about what happened to you, so it develops self-knowledge and you feel grateful for these emotions and reactions that you have had.

I would like to emphasise this very much because I know in this culture there’s lots of suffering as a result of our failures, our mistakes. So hereafter please don’t suffer as a result of them, make them the object of meditation, make an effort to learn from them, because we can use them as a mirror showing us where we are. So please be very clear on this point. Then you come to a state that whether these unpleasant emotions are there or whether there are pleasant emotions it makes no difference. No big plus when pleasant experiences are there, and no big minus when unpleasant experiences are there. As the Buddha said: We learn to see things just as they are.

Don’t be Surprised

by Friends of Godwin

In everyday life sometimes we are forced to deal with people whom we consider to be negative, maybe starting with your husband or wife, or more probably the boss. So what do we do when we have to relate to such people? Fortunately or unfortunately, we can’t avoid them, so we can’t escape from them. Then what do we do? I will give some suggestions.

First suggestion is, don’t be surprised. Why? Because they are unenlightened beings just like yourself. So it is very important to realise that we are living in a world which is full of imperfect human beings, including ourselves. Putting it in stronger language, according to the Buddha until we are enlightened we are all crazy. We are crazy in the sense that no-one can claim that they can always see things just as they are. We all see things subjectively, not objectively. In this sense we are all crazy, and so we are living in a crazy world. So when you see imperfections in everyday life, whether arising in yourself or in others, please don’t be surprised.

The second suggestion is that when you see imperfection in others, try to remind yourself: I am also imperfect like that person. Otherwise we have a self-righteous attitude: I am perfect, the other person is imperfect. I am positive, the other person is negative. Is there anyone who is always positive? Are you always positive? So just to realise: Now the other person is negative, so I can also sometimes behave like that. Then you become more and more humble.

The third suggestion is to try to see them as your gurus, as your teachers, as your masters. I would like to mention now that I have been called a master but I would like to see myself as a spiritual friend and not as a master. But when you see negative people, please see them as masters. Why? Because the master is showing you a mirror. So what to do when you are getting angry? Use the mirror and look at your face reflected in the mirror. Whichever way the master is behaving, look at your own emotions. What are the emotions that are coming? I’m giving that person a minus. See I’m getting angry, I’m getting annoyed, I’m getting agitated. See all the emotions that are arising thanks to the master. The function of a good master is to try to test whether you are good meditators. So this master is testing you whether you are a good meditator.

And then one thing that is very difficult but very interesting to do is: can you see the master as if for the first time? Sometimes we come to a conclusion that this person is a negative person. So everytime we see that person we relate to him with that conclusion, with that prejudice, with that bias. Sometimes we see what we want to see. So poor master, even if the poor master is behaving in a positive way we think how negative that person is: see the way that person is looking at me! Because we only see what we want to see.

And the last suggestion is to ask the master what are the negative things you can see in me? That will be very revealing.

Continuous Thoughts

by Friends of Godwin

As we all know, from the time that we wake up in the morning up to the time that we go to sleep there are continuous thoughts going through our mind which never stop. If you become aware, if you become mindful of the thoughts that go through your mind, then you’ll realise that most of the time the way we use thoughts is in this habit of giving plusses and minuses. So when you see this clearly, then the power that we have given to them may become less.

Then you realise that sometimes it is just an innocent thought that comes: Maybe the other person doesn’t like me; maybe the other person is giving me minuses; maybe the other person thinks that I’m silly or ridiculous, and so on. So if you are mindful you’ll realise it is just a thought that you’re having; who knows whether that thought corresponds to any reality? There is a strong imaginary aspect in our thoughts. This imaginary aspect and the reality are two different things. With awareness, with mindfulness, exploring, investigating, this may become clear to us and this will help us to work with and handle such thoughts, and their power will become less.

Self-Confidence

by Friends of Godwin

This feeling of warmth is very important because now human beings are for various reasons becoming more and more cold. With mechanisation human beings are becoming more and more like machines, and one aspect of this is that they lack feelings. So having this warmth, having feelings for other people and for ourselves, is something very important, very beautiful.

Another point which might be relevant to some people is that loving-kindness can develop a sense of self-confidence.

We lose self-confidence when we consider ourselves as unsuccessful, worthless, useless, always failing. So it is a very negative self-image we have of ourselves, mostly as failures.

With more and more loving-kindness, especially towards ourselves, we can see how it works: we can see our own potentialities and we can become more and more self-reliant, and this can give us a lot of self-confidence in the sense that we can handle whatever arises. So it is not that difficulties will not arise; anger will arise, problems will arise, difficulties will arise, but you have the confidence if they arise: I know how to handle them, I know what to do.