What Does it Mean To Stand Up?

Venerable Thubten Chonyi offers contemplation on what it means to stand up for our values from a Dharma perspective and guides a meditation exploring this topic. She explores how being socially engaged relates to the practice of the six perfections of generosity, ethical conduct, fortitude, joyous effort, concentration, and wisdom.

Transcript

Thank you,

Suzy,

And thank you everyone.

Welcome for coming tonight.

I wanted to get right on this idea of standing up.

So we're going to meditate for a little bit,

But even as we do that,

Just settling our mind,

I want you to hold internally this idea of what does it mean to stand up.

So let's take a few minutes just to get ourselves in meditative posture and bring ourselves present to this daily daughter of my gathering here tonight.

So feet flat on the floor,

Or if you're on your cushion,

Your back straight,

Whether you're in the cushion or chair.

Shoulders level,

Hands placed wherever you do them.

In our tradition,

They're in your lap with your thumbs touching.

Lung behind your top front teeth,

Lips closed and eyes lowered,

Allowing a little bit of light to come in if you can.

If that's too much of a struggle,

That's okay too.

Just begin by being aware of your body in the space,

Aware of your physical connection,

The sense of yourself on the cushion or in the chair,

The couch,

Wherever you are.

Noticing any sounds,

Smells,

Tastes.

Not so that you're captured by these,

But just that you allow them to pass through and there,

Just aware of the sensations around you.

Take three good deep breaths in through the nose and out the mouth.

And then move your mind to your breathing.

Just enjoy breathing for a moment.

And let's set a motivation for our time together tonight.

First,

Rejoicing that we are breathing and rejoicing at how fortunate we are to have the opportunity to come together with daily Dharma gathering,

With like-minded friends and with a real genuine intent to calm our minds and open our hearts,

To cultivate some skills,

Some tools to make our lives happier and richer,

Richer in a spiritual way,

Which then makes us more available to be of benefit to others.

And whatever brings us to this meditation tonight or whenever you watch it,

Whatever it is that we hope to gain for ourselves,

Let's expand that motivation to include as many beings as possible.

Aware that whenever we take time to cultivate our own good qualities,

There's an immediate effect in ourselves,

But also the people around us.

Just by the law of dependent arising,

Whenever we are cultivating good qualities,

There is a ripple effect that has a benefit far beyond our imagination.

So let's set that motivation tonight that our time together will bring benefit to all beings.

Plant the seeds of our own full potential to be realized so that we can be of even greater benefit.

Set that very strongly.

I go back to this very idea about standing up.

It's been on my mind a lot in the last few months as people are speaking about,

You know,

What stand up for what we believe in and speak out and,

You know,

Stand up.

So I wanted to investigate what that actually means to stand up and more to the point,

What does it mean to a Dharma practitioner?

How do we hold that idea of standing up for what we believe in,

You know?

So I mean,

Simply stated,

Standing up is the opposite of sitting,

Right?

Even though we're all sitting now,

Probably.

But colloquially,

It means to hold firmly to a particular opinion or belief.

So when we stand up for something,

We're giving it our wholehearted support.

I think that's probably a generally agreeable definition.

So some people say that sitting is passive.

Now as a Dharma practitioner who's working on meditation,

We know that that's not actually accurate.

But there is still this sense of standing up that has some kind of power to it.

You know,

Some,

Like,

An example that we use when people rise spontaneously in a worldly way.

So let's say we all go to a basketball game.

We're sitting.

You're sitting on the bleachers or maybe your stadium has actually nice seats.

Wherever you're sitting,

You start sitting.

But as soon as there's a drive down the court to the basket,

Everybody,

What?

They leap to their feet.

There's this sense of rising up in excitement.

Or like if you're more arts-oriented,

If you go to a concert where any kind of style of music where the performer has just done something amazing that,

You know,

Sometimes you get this thrill in your body.

At the end of the performance or sometimes even in the middle,

You'll see people just and we've all done it,

Rise to your feet in appreciation and applause.

So the standing ovation feeling.

So what would it be like to stand up in that same sort of spontaneous way for our Dharma values?

To sort of internally stand up and cheer and rejoice at the things that are most meaningful to us as practitioners.

So I believe if we are following this Bodhisattva ideal,

If we think of ourselves as Bodhisattvas in training,

Then we have a lot of possibility for standing up.

And the Bodhisattvas really embody this and give us an example.

So a Bodhisattva is a being who is so compelled by their compassion and care and love for other living beings that they want solely to work for the benefit of others.

It's a huge,

Vast motivation which most of us have only a little bit of maybe admiration for it,

A little bit of capacity to be able to really act on it.

But if we're training to want to become like a Bodhisattva,

Then we pay attention to how do Bodhisattvas do what they do and how do they stand up?

So for me,

When I was thinking about this is where the six perfections come in as a practice.

Bodhisattvas stand up for generosity.

Bodhisattvas stand up for ethical conduct or ethical discipline.

They stand up for patience or fortitude.

They stand up for and with joyous effort.

They stand up even when they're sitting,

Standing up for concentration.

And they stand up for wisdom.

So like how does that work?

How does that really work?

So we think of the practice of generosity then simplified.

If you joyfully give our protection,

Joyfully giving our possessions,

Joyfully giving our virtue to those in need,

To anybody who asks,

Whatever we do that,

It's like to have this sense of standing up and giving with that spontaneous rising to our feet.

It brings in the quality of joyous effort,

But it also then as we look around and we see generosity in the world around us,

We also have this sense of really appreciating it.

We're standing up for generosity as a value we hold.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So the same thing with ethical conduct.

No,

That's our second perfection,

Ethics.

Principally not harming.

There are,

You know,

We can go into more detail about how we don't harm,

But principally not to harm,

To be of benefit when we can,

And to cultivate our good qualities,

To cultivate our aspiration to become like the bodhisattvas actually.

So to stand up for ethics,

Every time we refrain from doing a negative action when we could,

We're standing up for that.

Every time when we are met or see around us someone else standing in their ethics strongly and we appreciate that,

We're standing up for that.

And if we stand up for ethics,

Even that alone,

What kind of impact does it have on the world around us if non-harming is the fundamental basis of our ethical standing up?

It has a huge impact on our world.

Even our own little life,

Not so,

We don't think we're so special,

We don't think we're so important,

But to have that as a view has a big impact.

Or if let's say we're practicing patience or fortitude,

That means we're working on cultivating how to overcome our anger,

Working on how to accept or be okay with the suffering or the difficulties that we need in life.

Working means that we're working on how to be okay with the difficulties of practicing the path.

So what's a difficult practice?

No question about it and also tremendously valuable.

So if we have this sense of I stand up for,

I stand for patience.

This is a value I hold that is worth standing for.

Sometimes I fall off,

Sometimes I sit down,

Of course sometimes anger arises,

But as long as I'm working on a way to oh,

Comment for my own peace of mind and for the benefit of others,

That's a major act of standing up.

Then the fourth one,

Joyous effort,

Is the way we translate it,

Joyous effort,

Practicing with joy.

So the sense of standing up,

The spontaneous arising that comes like right out of our gut into our heart with joy.

Joyous effort itself is standing up if we do it with that kind of mind.

And then we infuse our other practices of the six perfections with joyous effort as well.

And that gives us the impetus to quote stand up for these things.

And standing up helps us overcome our laziness around,

You know,

Wanting to do our spiritual values,

Wanting to practice.

The laziness that's a little bit,

You know,

Wants to sleep late,

Even our discouragement is a kind of laziness because we're not,

It means we don't get off the couch.

We think,

Oh why bother?

I'm not good enough.

But with joyous effort,

That move to stand up,

Then we're definitely good enough.

Whatever we do is good enough.

So we stand up for concentration.

Now what does that mean?

You don't stand up for concentration.

Yes,

You can stand and meditate,

But not effectively really.

Better you sit.

But the idea that we stand up for concentration,

Well that means we make time to meditate every day.

We value this idea that if we look at our own minds,

Calmer minds,

Cultivate our good qualities in meditation,

It's going to be a benefit to ourselves and others.

So by sitting down,

We're standing up.

By finding the cushion,

By finding our meditation corner,

We're really standing up for that value.

And then we stand up for wisdom by remembering the interdependence of every living thing.

Not every living thing,

Every single thing.

The calling,

The interdependent nature,

Dependent arising,

How things come,

And you know,

Dependent on causes and conditions that come together makes our mind much broader,

Helps us see the bigger picture,

Keeps things in perspective,

And also therefore if our mind is broader,

Open,

Things are more in perspective,

Then we actually can act with more wisdom.

So we stand up for wisdom in that way.

So this idea of standing up,

Then if we look at the larger world,

You know,

Many people are going on for marches these days or carrying signs or writing letters and all of that is great.

If we're coming from a place that's standing up for our values,

It has a really different flavor than if we're coming out of our anger or we're coming out of a sense of outrage or we're coming out of a sense of hatred or a fear even.

But to infuse those actions with this sense of I'm a bodhisattva in training,

I stand up for these values,

Then these six perfections become a real guidelines,

A real platform upon which we can stand with confidence because the Buddha gave these to us.

The Buddha taught these and if we stand with that,

Then our confidence in ourselves and in our potential can't waver.

So I'm a little bit rallying tonight for our capacity to stand up for our values as bodhisattvas.

So just take one minute,

We're running a little long on time,

But just take a minute here and let's reflect.

If I.

.

.

And this is a real kind of physical,

Internal feeling.

For me it starts right in my belly solar plexus area,

So calm,

Calm,

Take a breath or two and then be aware of that sense in the belly.

What makes me stand up?

Do I stand up for generosity in my own life when I see it around me?

How does it feel in my mind to stand up for ethical conduct?

How does it feel to stand up for fortitude or patience?

How does it feel to stand up with joyous effort,

Joyous perseverance?

What does it mean to me to think about standing up for concentration in my meditation practice?

And what does it feel like,

What does it mean to stand up for wisdom?

So,

As we feel these things in our own mind and our own body,

See if you can find a place in your life,

A place at work or maybe within the family where this idea of standing up for those values can really support your practice and make a determination with that spot wherever that point is,

Just one,

But to really practice,

Try on the idea of standing up,

Standing up for your practice and see how that sits.

Yeah,

Okay.

Short,

But a little journey.

Yeah,

Good.

It definitely is an uplifting thought,

Isn't it?

It just kind of,

It turns everything,

It's like it's a tilt to the universe,

A way of completely looking at things.

I mean,

Not differently,

But it changes the lens.

Yeah,

Yeah.

There's an internal feeling about it and I think,

I know that this is true,

That it's,

And sometimes we have to really protect our practice.

There's so many things to pull us away.

You know,

Work is busy,

Family is busy,

Sometimes people want us to do things when we know we really want to go sit,

All these different distractions,

But to have this sense of,

Well,

I'm really standing up with this,

I'm standing up for this,

This also protects our own mind and helps us put our practice in the place of our priorities where we want them to be,

But you know,

It's so easy to get pulled off.

So I think that also gives some energy for that.

It's very beneficial.

Let's dedicate the merit just quickly.

Yeah?

So recognizing again that that tremendous positive energy has spent this time together just from thinking in this way,

Changing our minds,

Changing the way we think,

And from that positive energy we can be extremely generous,

Actually giving away all of the goodness that's generated,

Wishing to share it with everybody,

All beings everywhere,

So that they too can have the same kind of opportunity,

The same kind of thought and mind that happiness arises from this for them,

And may all the causes of suffering disappear as a result of our time.

So thank you very much.

Reviews

Wonderful reminder to stand up NOW. Take some responsibility for change for good!!!
Thank you- now I have some standing to do🙏🏼
Cher

Very uplifting, centering and inspiring. Thank you ...