Love Your Neighbor

Venerable Thubten Chonyi gives a short talk and leads a guided meditation on how to put the oft-heard phrase "love your neighbor" into practice by developing a sense of care and affection towards all beings, especially those whom we find difficult.

Transcript

This topic,

Love Your Neighbor,

Neighbor is in quotes here.

It didn't occur to me that this was also a Sunday when we were giving this talk,

So I hope this doesn't push buttons for some people.

And yet this idea about loving your neighbor is so universal for every inner spiritual practice.

Every religion has some,

And all humanistic values have this essence of kind of love your neighbor.

So I thought the meditation on this would be very useful today given what's going on in our world.

So let's start first by just doing a little bit of meditation.

And whatever you've been doing,

Bring,

Drop it.

And bring yourself to your cushion or your chair or your couch or wherever you are.

Place your feet firmly on the floor if you're in a chair.

If you're on the cushion,

You know what to do if it makes you comfortable.

Spine straight is the most important thing.

Shoulders level,

Hands wherever you are trained to put them.

In our tradition we have the left on the bottom,

Right on top,

Thumbs together in front of the belly button.

Lower your eyes.

If you can let a little light coming in,

That will help keep you alert.

Feel aware of yourself in this space.

Your connection to the chair,

The cushion,

The floor.

Feel the sensation of that in your body.

Bring your attention firmly inside your body,

If you will.

And let it find your breathing.

And let it feel your breathing.

And let it feel your breathing.

Take a moment to actually rejoice that you are breathing.

And we'll take just a moment to let you follow the breath in whatever way you are accustomed to,

To let the mind settle.

And we'll take just a moment to let you follow the breath in whatever way you are accustomed to,

To let the mind settle.

And let it feel your breathing.

And let it feel your breathing.

And let it feel your breathing.

And let it feel your breathing.

And let it feel your breathing.

And let it feel your breathing.

Let's set a motivation for our short time together today.

Just reflecting that as we calm our minds,

Get in touch with our hearts,

Make the space to open up to our most beautiful aspirations,

Wishing to be at ease,

At peace,

And to cultivate love and kindness,

Compassion,

Wisdom.

As we take the time to do this in our lives,

We feel the benefit of course.

And through just our interdependence with all things,

It has an effect on the people around us,

On the environment.

It has an effect on our future as we set our minds to go in a certain kind of direction.

And if we extend that thought of interdependence to those who know what's called the ripple effect,

All the goodness,

All the positive energy we create,

It goes out.

We may not know what it touches or where it lands,

But the benefit is for others as much as for ourselves.

And if we extend that thought of interdependence to those who know what's called the ripple effect,

All the positive energy we create,

As we set our minds to go in a certain kind of direction,

All the positive energy we create,

All the positive energy we create,

All the positive energy we create,

All the positive energy we create,

Our equanimity.

And let that affect ultimately every living being and bring about our own full potential to be of benefit to them,

Our own full potential to be blissful and loving beings.

Set that as our motivation today.

So this business about loving your neighbor,

In quotes,

As yourself,

I think no matter what religion we were raised in,

It's certainly the idea that philosophy pervades our American culture anyway,

But enacting it is so hard to do.

So we may have the concept,

But if we look around our own lives,

I think it's easy to see that not a lot of people know how to do that,

Or even what it means.

What does it really mean to love your neighbor?

And I'm putting the neighbor in quotes because I believe that when we talk about the neighbor,

This is the representation of everybody that we know.

Everybody that we're ever going to run into is your neighbor.

I mean we know for most of us,

Given the right day,

The right occasion,

It's easy enough to love our partners or we wouldn't stick with them.

We work harder at loving our parents and children because we are related to them.

But beyond that,

If we don't particularly care for the people around us,

And we can talk about our literal neighbor,

What's our option?

We can shut the door,

We can harm them,

We don't have a lot of choices.

I was thinking about how it is with neighbors,

You know,

Sometimes it's really easy,

Literal neighbors.

You borrow the sugar,

They take care of your cat,

Those people are easy to like.

Easy.

But many people,

Many of us live in places where we don't even know the people next door on the left and right.

No,

We hear them come in at night,

We hear them leave in the morning,

We see their muddy boots on the front step,

That's all we know about the people that are neighbors.

And I think this makes people feel quite alone sometimes,

Lonely.

And then there's the neighbor whose dog barks all night,

Or the neighbor who complains because of what you're cooking in the kitchen,

And their smell makes them allergic.

Or the neighbor who's always crabbing about your lawn,

Or is eating the apples that grow on your tree but happen to fall on their side of the lawn,

Well the more the tree grows to their side of the property,

The more apples they're getting.

The disputes between neighbors are numerous.

Lawsuits,

Excuse me,

Between neighbors are numerous.

So in Buddhism we have a similar concept.

It's not stated so specifically,

Love your neighbor as yourself,

It more comes in terms of this practice of equalizing and exchanging self with others.

And it helps us to begin to work with these people who drive us crazy that we're stuck with.

I mean if we keep slamming the door and hiding from the people that irritate us,

Pretty soon who's left in our room?

Me,

And maybe the cat.

That's it.

And the cat is not as always responsive as we want her to be.

So as Shanti Deva has said,

What can we do?

We cannot change the whole world to make them into people that we like.

Just as he says,

If I were out trying to protect my feet from thorns,

I can't cover the earth with leather so that by stepping on it my feet are not harmed.

But I can put leather on my feet.

If I put shoes on and walk around,

Then the ground doesn't harm me.

So in the same way,

If we're dealing with all these people that we have so much difficulty with,

If we actually start to work with our own mind,

Develop our own sense of equanimity and then loving kindness that comes out of that,

Then it's like putting on shoes.

We are at peace and in relationship with everybody that we come in contact with.

So this idea of equanimity is very,

Very important in establishing a loving,

Compassionate mind.

It's shocking,

I think,

To me when we start to look at how much bias we actually have.

I mean,

If you're sitting in an airport,

Let's say for example,

And people walk by,

Have you ever noticed how your thoughts are like,

Huh,

How come they look like that?

Why are they wearing that?

Wow,

That's a weird haircut.

Huh,

That person looks really tired.

God,

You know,

She looks older than I bet she is.

You know,

Whatever our thing is,

We have a commentary running about the people around us all the time.

And what the teachings,

Especially from Buddhism,

Start to tell us is,

Well,

Wait a minute,

Let's turn our mind and look at what we have in common with these people.

Look at what's alike.

And when we start to look at what's alike,

We start to get more even with the people who we like,

The people who we ignore,

And the people we don't like.

So you can also have the question,

Now why would I bother to do this?

There are some benefits,

Definitely some benefits.

One is the more we begin to cultivate this mind of even equanimity that starts to actually see how people are like me,

Then we start to be able to open our hearts to have some warm feeling towards them.

And I don't know about you,

But I feel a whole lot better in my own mind when my heart is open and warm than when I'm like walking around like this,

Protecting myself and the world.

So that's one benefit of starting to cultivate this more even mind that is opening towards a warm-hearted way of looking at other beings,

Including the difficult people.

Another benefit,

And His Holiness the Dalai Lama talks about this,

He says,

If we call ourselves spiritual people,

And I think everybody on this call does,

He said then this is our responsibility.

He said animals like the people that help them and don't like the people that harm them.

Surely as human beings with a spiritual aspiration,

We have a higher aim.

And who makes our higher aim the most challenging?

The neighbor who's frying onions at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Those are the people with whom we do our spiritual practice.

And that's why working to learn like,

Well how do I love my neighbor as myself,

Becomes more and more important.

So to give us a little definition from the Buddhist point of view,

Love simply means wishing someone to be happy,

To have happiness and the causes of happiness.

It's a simple wish.

And it's a warm wish.

To wish someone to be happy,

To have happiness and the causes of happiness.

Even just think about it.

Right now in terms of somebody you like,

Don't like,

Doesn't matter.

Think about it in terms of anybody.

Just the thought I think starts to open the mind if it's applied to a person.

Like may you be happy.

May you have the causes of happiness.

That's the definition of love,

Very simply from the Buddhist perspective.

When somebody's irritating us,

That is not the thought we have.

May you burn in hell,

Maybe where we go.

But may you be happy as something else.

But to get there we need to develop this mind of equanimity that sees us as equal and even.

So this starts with recognizing that every single being wants to be happy,

Wants that wish fulfilled.

Everybody.

Would you agree?

Everybody wants to be happy.

Just as much as we do.

I mean if we go through our day,

What are we trying to do all day long?

Be happy.

Avoid discomfort.

Avoid hassle.

This is why we can't stand the people that are giving us trouble.

We're trying to avoid hassle.

We don't want to suffer at all.

And when we turn our mind to see neither do they,

We start to open the door and go,

Oh we're just alike.

We're just alike.

You want to be happy and free from suffering just as much as I want to be happy and free from suffering.

That's point number one.

And then number two,

We start to look at that whole person.

So if I begin to recognize that you are a person who wants to be happy as much as I want to be happy.

I think frying onions at two o'clock in the morning would not make me happy,

But if that's clearly happening because you want to be happy,

Then I can soften up a little bit.

I can begin to see how it is that we are equal.

If I think a little bit further,

I can think,

Well you know,

Just as much as I don't want any problems and they come,

Well the same is happening for this person.

They're having problems too.

Wow,

May they be happy.

May they be happy.

And then the third thing we can recognize is they have the potential to be happy.

All of our minds are fundamentally pure and clear.

We have the seeds of loving kindness in each one of us,

Which really is the cause of happiness.

We're just alike in that way too.

And then what happens?

All of our irritation,

Our upsetness,

Our jealousy,

Our pride,

Our craving comes on top of that,

Smothers it,

And we can't enact those things just like this person.

So this reflection I want to lead us on here is a way of beginning to open up to the fact that this person who is giving us trouble,

So pick somebody,

It doesn't have to be the biggest trouble,

Pick somebody who is just mildly troublesome as an exercise and see if this works for you.

We begin to see them as a whole person because when we've labeled somebody as difficult or we've labeled somebody as not worth my time,

The neighbor I never see,

Even the people we live close to,

We kind of see them as two-dimensional stick figures.

I see the front of their body,

I see the expression on their face,

That's all I see.

But if I start to think,

Oh,

They're trying to be happy,

Oh,

They're just like me,

Oh,

They don't want any suffering,

And look how much suffering there is,

You can see it in their face.

Wow.

We start to see that this person has a life.

This person has a whole history,

A whole multi-dimensional as much as we do,

And this opens our hearts to them.

So in this reflection,

How to love your neighbor is a little bit of an experiment in using your imagination.

So bring to mind somebody that you would just like to feel closer to.

It doesn't matter if they're a difficult person or not.

See if you can bring that person's kind of energy or presence or face,

Whatever connects for you when you bring somebody to mind,

Whatever seems most vivid.

And first of all,

Specifically think,

This person wants to be happy and doesn't want any hassle,

Just like me.

Then imagine this person is a baby,

Cute,

Helpless.

What could they have been like then?

What was their life like?

Were their parents there,

Not there?

Were they loved?

How was it for this person as a baby?

And imagine them as a toddler or even a little bit older,

Starting to play on the playground and to relate with other kids.

How was that for them?

Imagine them in elementary school,

Starting to learn to read.

That's maybe easy for them,

Maybe it wasn't easy.

How was it in elementary school?

Were they popular?

Were they picked on?

Then entering their teenage years,

We know they were confused because everybody is.

How was that for them?

How was it during the high school time?

Could they stay in school?

Imagine this person growing older and coming into adulthood and dealing with the identity issues.

Maybe they went to school,

Maybe they went to work,

Maybe they went to the street.

How did that life unfold?

And then wherever they are at this point,

We're going to take them all the way through.

So if we pass the age that they are,

Keep going.

Because we're going to look at them in midlife.

If you don't know the details,

It doesn't matter.

Were they married?

Did they marry?

Have children?

Have a career?

Not have those things?

Choose not to have those things?

Knowing though that just the way life is,

In midlife they had struggles.

Sometimes they succeeded,

Sometimes they failed.

And then think of them growing older.

How it is or how it will be or how it was to begin to lose the faculties that they so enjoyed as midlife people.

Aches and pains of the body that begin to accumulate.

At first it seems like they're just a passing thing and then you suddenly realize they're kind of chronic.

And then take this person into very old age.

How it might be.

Maybe supported,

Maybe not.

Maybe healthy,

Maybe not.

And right up to the moment of their death.

And then looking at this entire lifespan of this person that you want to get closer to in some way.

Seeing all the opportunities for difficulties to arise.

All the opportunities for pleasure to arise.

All the opportunities where the pleasure passes,

Where things change,

The areas of uncertainty throughout an entire life.

And see if that doesn't open your heart to compassion.

And see if you can bring a fervent wish,

May you be happy.

May you have the causes of happiness.

And may you be free of any kind of suffering,

Anxiety,

Fear and pain.

Just like me you want to be happy and I wish that for you.

And see if that wish also,

Notice the feeling in your own body,

Your own heart,

Your own mind.

And then as a last step let any feeling of love or kindness or warmth that's in your heart,

Let that extend outside of you to everybody you know.

You can do it slowly or you can do a big global expansion.

May beings be happy.

So do you feel a little different about that person?

It's amazing isn't it?

So this isn't an easy thing to do really.

But one by one if we take the people that are difficult in our lives and run through this,

The people that we don't know but would like to run through this,

Even the people we love very much run through this,

It will open our hearts.

And if we do it as a practice it will really cultivate the mind that sees the good qualities in people.

This is a very good meditation also to do if we find that we have biases about groups of people.

Men,

Women,

Right?

We start there.

Men,

Women,

People who live in cities,

People who live in small towns,

People who live rurally,

People who weigh under 100 pounds,

People who weigh over 100 pounds,

People whose skin color is different,

People whose religion is different.

We have so many different biases and yet always these biases come from this two dimensional view.

It's a cartoon that we're not liking.

So to open up and see a whole person,

A whole class of people makes a big difference.

Especially if we have a lot of judgments about ourselves or feel guilty about things in the past.

To do this kind of,

Of course you know this life story very well,

So the trick is not to get caught up in your story,

Not to reminisce,

Oh I remember this and da da da da da da da,

But to really kind of look at it in third person and go well look,

This person really had this condition going on in this experience.

No wonder.

No wonder.

And this is a great platform for forgiving ourselves actually,

Really accepting ourselves in our past and I think that's a good idea.

Yeah,

Let's take one 30 second thing and dedicate all the good energy we've created here.

Yeah,

Whatever warmth,

Whatever good sense of happiness or well being that came from this or insight,

Imagine it as a light and send it out from your heart.

Send it out to every being,

Every human,

Every animal,

Beings you can't see and may wish them all to be happy as a result of what we've done for this last half hour and may that really come about.

Reviews

Excellent, many thanks