Is Meditation Selfish? Advice From The Acrobat Sutta

Most of us tend to grapple with what is considered an ancient human torment: the challenge of trying to balance a need for self-care, along with a strong sense of feeling responsible for helping others, and the world in general – a particular push and pull that can often be so painful. Happily, the Buddha was also aware of this struggle, 2600 years ago, and offered us some very sage advice about how to work with it.

This talk explores one of his most famous sermons, the Acrobat Sutta, which addresses how we can find a more harmonious and peaceful balance between these two needs.

Transcript

So last week I was really grateful to be able to lead another five-day retreat on one of my very favorite subjects which is the Buddha's four foundations of mindfulness which is also known as the four Satipatthanas.

And this particular sutta is considered the most important one in the entirety of the Pali Canon mainly because it's the Buddha's basic instructions manual for us if you will for how we're being asked to practice.

And so as you might imagine you know we could probably spend an entire year or more on each one of the four foundations or Satipatthanas and our learning would truly be endless and also constantly evolving as more and more and more is revealed.

So in other words until and unless we become enlightened there really is no end to our study of that particular sutta or sermon because again it's truly our whole practice.

And I bring this up because during so many of the private interviews that I was having with students what kept coming to mind over and over was another much shorter sutta that seemed to apply to almost every single person that I was speaking to even though all their you know personal struggles looked a little different.

In almost each of these struggles the common theme or thread seemed to involve the challenge of trying to balance a need for self-care along with a very strong sense of feeling responsible for helping others or helping our world in some way.

So for instance many students told me they were feeling a lot of distress about not being able to help the people in their own personal circles who are struggling in some way and others expressed that they were just feeling completely overwhelmed about wanting to alleviate all the different suffering that is happening in our world right now and many many others confessed they were carrying a lot of grief and despair about not being able to do more.

And of course this is such a common push and pull for so many of us feeling like maybe it's just way too much and it's just not enough all at the same time.

And as many of us know the struggle can often just be so painful.

And for me as I've continued to explore this particular urge to help over the years one of the things that's been really helpful is the knowledge that I am NOT alone.

In fact I've never been alone in this.

People have been struggling with this particular push and pull for thousands and thousands of years.

It's truly kind of an ancient human torment if you will.

In fact it's so ancient that in his day 2,

600 years ago now the Buddha himself was very aware of the struggle and happily he offered us some sage advice about how we can work with it in many different ways.

For this particular talk I wanted to explore just one of his teachings on this which is a sutta or sermon called the Bamboo Acrobat Sutta which is the one that kept coming to my mind over and over last week.

The Acrobat Sutta is actually one of my very favorite sermons from the Samyutta Nikaya and my hope is that hearing it might be helpful not only for you who's listening but also honestly as a fresh reminder for me because if I'm honest I confess that I still need to reflect on the truth of this teaching quite a bit.

Before I begin I want to mention that the Buddhist suttas or sermons are often named after the locations where he was said to have first offered these and so this particular sutta was given at an Indian town named Sadaka and so if it's helpful to remember it's also known as the Sadaka Sutta.

So the story in the sermon is about two street acrobats who are performing together and the first one is a man who is kind of a master acrobat and the second one is his apprentice and here I want to step back for a second admit that one of the reasons I dearly love the sutta for so many reasons but one of them is because the apprentice is a girl okay and unfortunately this is a kind of rare thing to find in the Pali Canon which as you might imagine so often focuses on the monks and other men who were around during the Buddhist time and also for some odd reason which I haven't yet been able to discover this girl has a really odd nickname which is frying pan.

If anybody knows the answer to that please tell me because I've been looking but instead of just explaining the sutta to you I thought I'd read to you directly from it and the version that I like the best is from the teacher and scholar Andrew Olenski who translates it this way.

Once in ancient India a bamboo acrobat set up his bamboo pole in the center of a village climbed up the pole with great agility and balanced carefully upon its tip.

He then invited his young assistant to scamper up and stand on his shoulders saying to her you look after my balance my dear and I'll look after your balance.

With us thus looking after one another and protecting one another we'll show off our craft receive some payment and safely come down the bamboo pole.

The girl said no no master that will never do you must look after your own balance and I will look after my balance.

With each of us thus looking after ourselves and protecting ourselves we'll show off our craft receive some payment and safely come down the bamboo pole.

And the Buddha said what frying pan the assistant said to her master was the right way in that case.

And by the way Buddhist nuns as you might imagine tend to love this Sutta because in this case the girl is right the girl is right.

In explaining why he thought the girl was right the Buddha told us this looking after oneself one looks after others looking after others one looks after oneself.

How does one look after others by looking after oneself?

By practicing mindfulness developing it making it grow.

How does one look after oneself by looking after others?

By patience non-harming loving-kindness and caring.

I'm going to repeat that.

Looking after oneself one looks after others.

Looking after others one looks after oneself.

How does one look after others by looking after oneself?

By practicing mindfulness developing it making it grow.

How does one look after oneself by looking after others?

By patience non-harming loving-kindness and caring.

So on its face this might seem pretty simple to understand but as we all know it's often really difficult for us to put into practice or to really truly understand more fully.

A lot of this comes from a cultural misperception that tells us that if we focus on taking care of ourselves we are somehow being bad or selfish or self-centered or maybe even narcissistic which honestly in my opinion is a word that's been thrown out a bit too much lately and used as a kind of shaming tool because it's not that there isn't a strong tendency towards narcissism in our Western culture in particular because of course there is we can see this everywhere but the problem is when this term is overused and over employed sadly it can have the effect of keeping us from truly taking care of ourselves in ways that are healthy or in ways that are going to in fact lead us to less harm for others less harm to ourselves.

This is a really important point because shame tends to have a particularly strong effect on us and so of course it's something we all want to try to avoid because none of us want to wants to feel this.

Shame is also linked to a sense of identity and because many of us grew up with a strong belief that in order to be a good person we need to be really selfless or to care more about others than we do for ourselves caring for ourselves can sometimes be a real challenge for so many of us mainly because again we don't want to be given those kind of shameful labels of selfish.

When it comes to the Buddhist teachings actually one question I hear a lot is if there's no self in Buddhism doesn't this mean I should be selfless?

This is also a big misunderstanding when the Buddha talks about the concept of no self or anatta in Pali he's pointing to the fact that we cannot locate a permanent constant pin down animal self that is unchanging.

We also can't find a self that is separate from everything else a self that doesn't affect or is not affected by all the rest because we're all interconnected.

The Buddha also never said that we aren't actual beings because this just wouldn't be true right so we all have names we all exist we're all living in this world and interacting with other people and affecting everyone and everything around us through our actions.

What he's saying is that this is really the only thing that we have control over in this life our own thoughts actions and behaviors which relates to the idea of karma that what we do and say and how we show up in this world really does matter and it affects everything else.

So all of that being said the truth is that if we're not focused on taking care of ourselves this is not only harmful to ourselves but it's also truly harmful to others because again we're all interconnected and basically we create this kind of harm in two different ways.

The first and main way that we tend to not take care of ourselves is probably the easiest one to see.

This is when we act in ways that are harmful or unskillful without really caring about how our actions or behaviors are going to affect ourselves others the world etc.

That's fairly transparent.

The second main way that we tend not to take care of ourselves it's not always as clear obvious.

This is when we are in some way believing that we need to sacrifice our own care and well-being and even happiness for the care and well-being and happiness of others or when we believe somehow that our feelings our happiness our well-being is not as important as the feelings well-being or happiness of others.

And here I often like to remember these words from another sutta the firebrand sutta where the Buddha tells us quote one who is bent on the benefit both of self and another is the chief best topmost highest and supreme.

I'll read that again.

One who is bent on the benefit both of self and another is the chief best topmost highest supreme.

And so here I hope you see the idea of balance the quality of this.

We're not more important and we are also not less important.

We're balanced.

We're all equally important.

And speaking of fire there's another phrase that I love that I remind myself of often even though very sadly I still for the life of me cannot confirm the author although I do know it's probably not the Buddha even though I also believe it really applies to his teachings.

It's another short one and it's also a kind of affirmation for us which you may have heard which is you do not have to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.

Love that.

You do not have to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.

So the idea here is that we are being asked again to follow what the Buddha called the middle way and really include ourselves in our circle of care.

So again it really needs to include both ourselves and the other and we get to examine that.

In the example in the Acrobat Sutta we might imagine that if both the acrobat and his assistant are focused only on taking care of themselves at the cost of not caring about the other then they're both going to fall down right.

On the other hand if they are each focused simply on paying attention to and taking care of the other at the expense of not being mindful about their own balance again they're both going to fall.

And so what the Buddha is suggesting is that the two acrobats need to be mindful of balancing in such a way that quote by taking care of oneself one takes care of the other and by taking care of the other one takes care of oneself.

I just have to pause here for a moment and say that one of the reasons the Sutta is again one of my favorites is not only because it's so rich but because it's just such a good image and example for us.

If we think about it the Buddha is using the imagery of two people who are precariously balanced on a pole to describe how difficult this whole dance can be and how mindful skillful and attentive we need to be in order to establish and then maintain a sense of harmony and not just let the whole relationship topple or spill over.

And of course this relates to our relationships on all different levels right the relationship we have with ourselves with other people the whole world.

So for instance if we think about it even a simple casual conversation with someone so often requires this kind of skillful balance so that it doesn't topple over into unkind or unskillful speech that might for instance break or make the whole relationship.

And of course we might imagine this extending out even further to things like working towards social or environmental change which I know so many of us are involved in right now.

In writing about the Sutta the famous German-born monk Nana Ponica told us this,

If we leave unresolved the actual or potential sources of social evil within ourselves our external social activity will be either futile or markedly incomplete.

Therefore if we are moved by the spirit of social responsibility we must not shirk the hard task of moral and spiritual self development.

Preoccupation with social activities must not be made an excuse or escape from the first duty which is to tidy up one's own house first.

The first duty to tidy up one's own house first.

So in this Sutta of the Acrobat when the Buddha is pointing to the importance of balance he's also pointing to the quality of equanimity which is considered the fruit of our whole practice equanimity.

So first he's pointing to the theme of physical balance which relates to our practice being about embodiment rather than an out-of-body experience that's not tethered to the body itself.

In the Sada Bhatana Sutta which I mentioned our first Sada Bhatana or foundation is the body it's the first one it's where we experience our whole world and it's what we want to work with.

Through our practice as we become more and more aware of our bodies in the present moment what we're learning is to be more centered in ourselves centered in ourselves in our real homes more balanced calm and focused and awaken aware of everything around us rather than being distracted by lost in the dream world of distracted thinking that might topple us.

When we're centered in our bodies and have practiced being in our bodies and not somewhere else we're going to be better able to recognize for instance when we're maybe starting to feel and study when we're losing our balance.

So for instance maybe we recognize that sting of anger and realize that we're about to say something snarky or unkind.

We can then work on mindfully bringing ourselves back home to the heart to center and to our intention to offer more kindness and compassion and calm.

Another example is maybe we notice that we're really running you know and we're just going too fast maybe we're even banging into things and dropping things.

In that moment we might recognize that we're afraid or distracted and we really need to slow down and focus before we do something that might be harmful to ourselves or to others.

But if we're too interested in taking care of someone else or too focused on what someone else is doing or so preoccupied with how they should be living their lives maybe even blaming them for something right being focused on how angry we are at them we're not going to be able to notice what's going on in our own bodies.

And when we're not taking care of our bodies the places where we live when we're letting them get run down or tired or unhealthy or maybe even doing harmful things like you know filling the body with alcohol or drugs we're not going to be very helpful to ourselves or to anyone around us actually right.

So we're going to be literally unbalanced like a person who's drunk trying to walk a straight line or maybe even like a person who's driving drunk which we can all recognize is a strong example of putting both self and others in danger.

And so the same goes for our caring about our inner balance which means cultivating a balance or centerness of our own heart and mind that will hopefully keep us from acting out on our more primitive impulses of greed,

Aversion,

And deluded thinking those things you might recognize as the three poisons.

So those three greed,

Aversion,

And delusion have also been called the three harmful roots and I really like the way Nana Ponika talks about working on our own inner balance as a way of protecting other people from these three harmful roots.

He told us this,

If we permit the three roots to take a firm hold in our heart then their outgrowth will spread far and wide like a jungle creeper suffocating much healthy and noble growth all around.

But if we protect ourselves against these three our fellow beings too will be safe.

They will be safe from our reckless greed for possessions and power,

From our unrestrained lust and sensuality,

From our envy and jealousy,

Safe from the disruptive consequences of our hate and enmity which may be destructive or even murderous,

Safe from the outbursts of our anger and from the resulting atmosphere of antagonism and conflict which may life unbearable for them.

As to the third root,

Delusion or ignorance,

We know very well how much harm may be done to others through the stupidity,

Thoughtlessness,

Prejudices,

Delusions,

And delusions of one single person.

History shows us that great and destructive mass delusions have often been kindled by a single individual or a small number of people.

Self-protection through wisdom and knowledge will protect others from the pernicious effect of such influences.

I read that last part again.

Self-protection through wisdom and knowledge will protect others from the pernicious effect of such influences.

And so the idea in the Sutra is that as we work on protecting ourselves from the pain of our own greed,

Hatred,

And delusion,

What we're doing in essence is protecting everyone else from that type of negative karma as well.

And so it's truly not selfish in any way.

As Nanaponika explains it,

Someone who is patient,

For instance,

Towards others quote,

Will protect himself better than he could with physical strength or with any mighty weapon.

And just for a second here I want to pause and remind us all that we are human,

Which means we are all going to lose our balance.

We will.

We are all going to lose it and do something unskillful that we're likely going to regret maybe every single day.

We're human.

We might even notice for instance that we're much more inclined to do something unskillful or maybe harmful during those times when we've somehow lost our balance or center,

Right?

So you might notice that when we're really stressed out or not feeling well or tired that we tend to fall back on old habits or behaviors that tend to cause either ourselves or others harm.

And we also tend to more quickly react rather than calmly respond from a more balanced center.

Which is why again the Buddha is really emphasizing this idea of balance,

Really practicing being calm and steady.

Especially when we find ourselves carrying something heavy or unstable or unpredictable.

Andrew Oleski describes it this way.

He tells us,

Mindfulness is a tool for looking inward,

Adjusting our balance and staying focused on the still center point upon which everything else is poised.

The quality of the present moment of awareness,

That bamboo pole upon which we all hover,

Can be calm,

Stable and focused.

And what it is,

Our well-being and that of all those who depend upon us is well protected.

Well protected.

So along with practicing being balanced and centered we also need to be mindful of constantly trying to cultivate a sense of caring for both ourselves and others.

By very consciously and very deliberately again practicing patience,

Non-harming,

Loving-kindness and compassion for both.

For both.

One of my teachers Bikyo Nalyu says that when we're practicing the teachings of the Acrobat Sutta,

What we're really doing is practicing Dana or generosity.

In the sense that we are offering or giving others our patience,

Kindness and compassion along with an assurance that we aren't going to harm them.

That is what we're offering.

Which is really the opposite isn't it?

Of offering others our greed or offering others our aggression or our deluded thinking.

So here we're offering them a kind of trust and as we practice interacting with others we might focus on this intention and to practice these things within ourselves so that we can offer this out to others and eventually be that calm and that balance.

There's actually a wonderful quote about this that comes from the late great Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh who wrote about the more than 1 million people in his native country who took to the China Sea from 1975 to 85 in small boats to flee the communist regime in South Vietnam.

These were people who had very little to no seafaring skills and they were sailing in really tiny boats that were easily capsized and they were filled way beyond their capacity.

And so as you might imagine these boats were really easy targets or prey for pirates.

And Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about this quote,

When the crowded refugee boats met with storms or pirates if everyone panicked all would be lost.

But if even one person stayed calm it was enough.

It was enough.

It showed the way for everyone to survive.

Just love that.

And so again the idea is that we want to become that one person who can stay calm and show others the way.

We want to become that balanced,

Kind,

Compassionate,

Centered presence.

And the more and more we do the more people are going to begin to trust us.

For instance they're going to become more willing to stand on our shoulders if you will trusting that what we're going to be able to offer them is a calm steady presence and trust that we are going to do our very best not to harm them.

Remembering again that this does not in any way mean that it's now our job to save them.

What we're offering is our patience,

Our kindness,

And our care.

And the rest really is really up to them as it's up to all of us to do our own inner work.

In the Sutta the Buddha calls attention to the fact that sadly we really can't control the balance of other people.

And he suggests that trying to do so is actually just not going to work.

So while we can have deep compassion for someone who is currently unbalanced or struggling or who maybe isn't a very good acrobat right now,

We can't carry them at our own expense.

The only control we do have again is over ourselves and our own practice because this affects everything else.

As an example,

If the master acrobat in the Sutta is constantly wobbling and tiring himself out in his attempt to control his assistants balance,

She's more likely to wobble off herself right?

But if he works to maintain his own sense of calm and balance and focus it is absolutely going to affect the balance of his assistant and that is what he's offering.

He's also constantly working to maintain his own balance and response to hers and she to him.

And so when the two are doing this mindful dance together that is when there's true harmony.

Dharma teachers whenever they're discussing the Sutta often point to the relationship between parent and child and you know sometimes parents can lecture their children over and over about what they should do or how they should be but nothing is going to influence the child's development more than the parents own example.

So when a parent is practicing being patient,

Non-harming,

Loving and caring,

The child learns to trust in those sturdy shoulders if you will rather than just trusting the words or the rules that are spoken which are often not exemplified by actual actions.

So a vivid example of this came to my mind when I was writing this which is something I remember as a young teen growing up in the late 70s when everyone including my mother seemed to be smoking and I remember that it was the summer and it was during one of the many parties that my parents they were young and they used to host a lot of parties at my house and I was caught smoking a cigarette with a friend.

I remember it was actually my very first one and my mother scolded me in front of the whole party in front of everyone with a cigarette in one hand and what was probably her fourth glass of wine in the other.

I will never forget that.

And so speaking of parenting we can also of course sometimes take on the role of parent for other adults in our lives and we can do this in many ways maybe by trying to fix someone in some way or trying to control how we think they should be living their lives or maybe by trying to save or rescue them again maybe at the expense of our own lives and well-being or balance.

As I was doing some research for this talk I came across an article by Eileen Cohen who is the author of When It's Never About You The People Pleaser's Guide to Reclaiming Your Health,

Happiness,

And Personal Freedom and what struck me was this line I finally realized that if I kept taking on other people's anxiety as my own they would never change and why would they after all they got lots of relief from me stepping in and resolving things but at what cost at what cost as it relates to the sutta we might imagine how difficult it would be for the master acrobat if he continued to try to take care of his apprentice as she was doing all sorts of things that were causing the two of them to become even more unbalanced.

You might imagine how much of a toll that would take with her on his shoulders and him putting in all the effort trying to keep the two of them balanced all by himself.

You know he really wouldn't be able to do the important work of balancing himself and to quote Andrew again he said life itself is a balancing act where each of us perched upon a precarious pole trying to stay centered in a swaying breezy world it is difficult enough staying safe ourselves let alone trying to keep track of all the things stacked upon our shoulders and finally before I want to offer you a short meditation I'd like to leave you with another image from the Jataka tales which tells a story about a monk who was traveling with a caravan and when he and the caravan camped for the night he couldn't seem to sleep and so he decided to practice walking meditation throughout the night and what he didn't know was that robbers who were intending to rob the caravan thought that he was a watchman and they left and didn't attack so the idea here is that we never really know what the karma of our own self-care is going to produce we just need to trust that when we're nurturing our own balance this really cannot help but produce good karma out there in the world for others as well and so as you're ready I'd like to invite you into meditation on this practice if it's available for you and so if you're at home listening you might want to find a comfortable seat close the eyes gently if you're walking you might want to become more embodied attention to the breath and also to the feet connected to the earth the act of walking you're driving you might feel your hands on the steering wheel your seat and the seat cushion maybe also paying attention to the breath and for everybody maybe taking a nice deep breath in filling the lungs slow exhale letting go pull around to these on your own just to become more embodied more centered in the body finding more stillness in the body you might drop the shoulders noticing the tummy letting the tummy be soft noticing the hands letting the center of the palms be soft open noticing the jaw teeth slightly parted letting all the little muscles the face soften maybe allowing the breath now to just be natural in the body aware of each inhale each exhale just allowing the body the mind to settle clearing the mind a bit for some contemplation some questions as you're ready you might consider what or maybe who might it be carrying on my shoulders that's taking me away from nurturing my own balance what or who might be on my shoulders that I'm carrying that's taking me away from nurturing my own sense of balance as you're considering this notice how you've been carrying this maybe imagine this actual struggle balanced on your shoulders how does it feel in the body as you're ready now you might also consider how could I begin to find even more balance for myself in my life or with this particular person or situation how could I begin to find even more balance for myself as you're ready now you might consider in what ways could I practice extending even more patience kindness and compassion out not only for myself but for others in what ways could I practice extending even more patience kindness and compassion out for myself and others and finally with the eyes still closed just listening to these words from Thich Nhat Hanh who tells us you are me and I am you isn't it obvious that we inter are you cultivate the flower in yourself so that I will be beautiful I transform the garbage in myself so that you don't have to suffer I support you you support me I am here to bring you peace you are here to bring me joy namaste and blessings

Reviews

Thank you so much for that teaching❣️