Practicing With Fear In A Polarized World

In this dharma talk, we explore the problem of evil and how we practice with the tendency to label others as the enemy. Buddhism offers a path that leaps beyond the dualism of good and evil. This is a tool that can be of great benefit in a polarized world that inflames our tendencies toward delusive certainty.

Transcript

Tonight,

I want to talk about what has been on my mind,

And I think so many of our minds.

This sense of dread,

This sense of uncertainty about what's happening in the world.

In our last practice discussion,

There was so much feeling about the difficulty of managing all that's happening now in our lives.

And what I find myself struggling with is the problem of evil,

Of good and evil,

And how our way deals with it.

Because it is a very big problem that every spiritual tradition somehow has to address.

And I found a story in the Buddhist tradition that surprised me,

And I want to share it with you.

It's about a serial killer in the time of the Buddha.

And as you know,

These are apocryphal stories,

They're handed down in the oral tradition and eventually written down.

And this story is about someone called Angulimala,

And he was a bloodthirsty murderer who terrorized villages where the Buddha taught.

And the story goes that the Buddha was begging for his daily fare,

As he did as a monk,

And then he turned toward where Angulimala lived,

And he walked toward the murderer.

And local farmers and shepherds were saying to him,

Don't go there,

Don't go there,

Danger.

But the Buddha just kept walking very calmly in the direction of this killer.

And when Angulimala saw the Buddha coming,

He was all set to make him his next victim.

And so he ran after him,

And the Buddha continued to walk slowly,

But no matter how fast Angulimala ran,

He couldn't catch up with the Buddha.

But Angulimala called out to him,

Stop,

Stop.

And the Buddha replied,

I have stopped,

Angulimala,

You stop.

And Angulimala was puzzled,

He said,

How have you stopped?

And the Buddha replied,

I have stopped once and for all,

Having cast off violence toward living beings.

You though,

Are unrestrained.

That's how I've stopped,

And you haven't.

And as you can imagine,

The story goes that Angulimala was very moved by the Buddha's words,

And he gave up violence and joined the Buddha's community and took up a more righteous path.

And it's one of those stories that teaches the lesson that even the worst of people can turn toward the right path.

But there are other things in this story that I find more startling.

First,

The story makes a point to say that the Buddha kept going toward this man.

And everybody tried to warn him away,

And he just kept going.

And then the Buddha said,

I've stopped.

You haven't stopped,

But I've stopped.

The Buddha was saying,

That violence that's in you,

It's in me too.

But I have stopped acting.

What's so important here is that the Buddha turns toward what seems evil.

And he says,

I've got this inside of me too.

What I notice in myself,

And I will only talk about myself,

But perhaps you will notice this as well,

Is that it feels great to be one of the good guys fighting the bad guys.

I look at the news every morning,

And I feel so righteous when the good guys seem to be winning.

And I feel so downhearted and angry when the bad guys are winning.

It's addictive.

And we know people who can't put away the news because it is so addictive.

And yet,

We know there's a long history of good people fighting evil in just wars that create more and more and more evil and suffering.

And that's the dilemma that all of us face in this life.

It is so addictive to be in a place where there's no middle ground,

Where you're either one of us or you're against us.

I do at times look across the political divide,

And I look at those people who I find evil.

And I see that what they are hearing across the divide is just what I'm hearing on my side,

Which is that the world is going to collapse unless we vanquish this evil.

Everybody believes this,

All of us,

On these two very polarized sides.

Last week,

I saw one of my friends who is leading a movement called Unite.

It's Unite.

Us.

And they are talking about the loss of dignity that we ascribe to each other.

What they are trying to point to is the way we other each other,

The way we demonize each other,

And the terrible consequences of doing that.

So they have a dignity index,

And I can send it around if you'd like to see it.

I'll send around a link.

But it's just a scale from one to eight,

But they've spent a lot of time working on it.

And eight is the best.

And the scale,

The number eight,

If you get a number eight in the way you talk about and think about people on the other side,

It goes like this.

Each one of us is born with inherent worth,

So we treat everyone with dignity,

No matter what.

And if we're lucky,

That's how we talk about each other.

And I'm going to take you down to the bottom of the scale,

To number one.

They're not even human.

It's our moral duty to destroy them before they destroy us.

Have you ever been a one?

I have.

And then there's the middle of the scale.

But even as you edge to the lower end,

It's,

We're better than those people.

They don't really belong.

They're not one of us.

This is asking us to look at how we think about each other,

How we talk about each other,

And obviously how we behave.

David Loy,

The Zen teacher and philosopher,

Writes about our sense of lack,

That at the deepest level,

We are terrified by glimpses that there is no fixed self.

There is no independent Bob,

Independent of everything else that abides through time and will persist when I'm no longer alive.

We're desperate for some sense of realness,

Some sense of permanence.

And he argues that this othering that we all do,

That feels so good,

In part feels good because it makes us feel more real.

And he writes that Buddhism offers another view,

An alternative to good versus evil.

That Zen teaches that there is delusion and then there is liberating wisdom.

And delusion includes delusive certainty,

The certainty that makes me not just other people who have different political beliefs,

But to be sure I know exactly who they are and to paint them all with the same brush and the same color.

Our way also asks us to look at the roots of what we call evil,

And the roots are the three poisons,

Greed,

Hatred,

Ignorance,

On all sides,

On my good guy's side and on their bad guy's side.

And the real challenge is how do we address these roots?

How do I address my own ignorance,

My own delusive certainty,

My own hatred,

When I sometimes wish these people harm,

And my own greed,

Wanting to have it my way?

This practice allows us to see through these dualities.

It doesn't mean everything's the same.

It doesn't mean it's all relative and it doesn't matter what we do.

It does.

And when I'm not on the cushion,

Some of what I do is work really hard for what I see as the good that I want to live in the world going forward.

But seeing the groundlessness of my delusive certainty,

Of my othering,

Helps me at times to get beyond the trap,

The addiction of good versus evil.

And that's where practice comes in,

And that's where talking about this together,

And knowing our own willingness to ascribe evil intentions and lack of dignity to other people,

Becoming more intimate with it,

Means that like the Buddha,

We will stop.

We won't act.

And so I had us tonight read the Bodhisattva's vow,

Which reminds us that everything is Buddha nature.

How can we be ungrateful to anyone or anything?

Even though someone may be a fool,

We can be compassionate.

If someone turns against us,

Speaking ill of us and treating us bitterly,

It's best to bow down.

This is the Buddha appearing to us,

Finding ways to free us from our own attachments,

The very ones that have made us suffer again and again and again.

And then it ends,

May we share this mind with all beings so that we and the world together may grow in wisdom.

Thank you.

So now,

Please sit comfortably.

Reviews

Wonderful. Would you post or forward the link to Unite.us and their dignity scale? Thankyou so much.