Skillful Means: Compassion & Wisdom

To be of benefit to others and the world, it is necessary to develop facility with skillful means. To speak and act in ways that are both true and useful, that combine compassion and wisdom. To see things from another person’s perspective, and to meet them there, rather than expecting them to meet us where we are. To develop skillful means, we must come to terms with impermanence and suffering, and learn to see their necessity and usefulness.

This track contains a 25-minute talk followed by a 20-minute guided meditation.

Transcript

Today,

I would like to talk about lies,

Suffering,

And diamonds,

And not in the ways you might think hearing those words together.

The primary concept I would like to explore is what's called Upaya in Sanskrit,

Which is a Buddhist term that is often translated as skillful means or skill in means.

This is a concept that I really appreciate because if you understand it,

It really helps to shed light on so many of the experiences of being human and what we can truly do to be of service to our fellow humans and to the world.

There's a lot happening in the world right now,

And I think that throughout history,

It's pretty typical in the human experience.

It's part of life.

There's a part of us that would like everything to be stable and calm,

Certain,

But the nature of life is that it's impermanent.

It's continually changing.

It's complex.

And so to understand how to best be of service in the current moment,

It's necessary to open our minds to a diversity of perspectives.

This is where the lies come in because ultimately,

Every perspective that we have is only a partial truth.

It's a story that we tell ourselves individually or collectively about our experience of reality and what's occurring.

And we get very attached to our perspectives.

It ties into the fight or flight response and the need for us to be able to very quickly suss out if there is a threat.

And so we have perspectives to interpret all that we experience and to separate into good and bad and right and wrong,

So then we can try to avoid the bad and gravitate towards the good.

But ultimately,

Each of these perspectives is not the full perspective,

And so it's a partial truth and a partial lie.

And they're useful.

There's no need to try to get rid of all perspectives.

Ideally,

As we grow,

I believe that we have stages of development in our level of consciousness,

And our ability to perceive things can broaden if we allow it to.

And to be of use to others in the world,

We have to be able to see things from their perspective,

To see where they're coming from,

And to relate to them in a way that they can understand.

Because we could say something that is a truth to us or to somebody else that another person may not be able to hear or understand in that way.

And often,

It's just a difference of words,

Of how we associate certain words and their meanings.

And in Buddhism,

This is where the idea of skillful means comes in.

Because the Buddha was known for sharing many stories and parables and metaphors that were not always exactly accurate,

But they were intended for a particular audience at a particular time.

Because in his wisdom,

They say that he knew that some people were not ready for the absolute truth.

It's a lot to take in,

And we have to often open our minds in stages.

And so sometimes we use a perspective to help someone move from where they are at to grow beyond where they are currently at,

To just open a little bit.

And so what matters in skillful means is that it is both true and useful.

True in the sense of being true to that individual's experience,

Because the absolute truth cannot be spoken.

It can only be experienced.

And that it is useful to help them move along in their journey,

To help alleviate their suffering.

Because ultimately,

The goal of,

I think,

Many various spiritual and religious traditions,

Philosophical systems,

Medical systems,

And even economics and education,

The underlying goal or hope,

When it's not contorted,

Is to help us suffer less,

To help us become more integrated within ourselves,

To help us experience the fullness and beauty of life.

And so skillful means is a way of working with people where they're at and meeting them where they're at,

Not expecting them to meet us where we're at,

To accommodate our perspective,

But for us to meet them where they're at,

For us to become malleable and flexible,

To loosen the grip on our perspective and see it from another's.

You know,

As a practitioner of Oriental medicine over the last 15 years,

This was one of the skills I learned from one of my primary mentors,

William Morris.

I would follow him around as he was supervising different student interns,

And he would go into four different rooms in the course of 10 or 15 minutes.

And every room he would go into,

He would greet the person and assess where they were at,

And he would change how he would speak,

The tone of his voice,

How he would relate to them in order to meet them where they were at in a way that put them at ease and opened them up to receiving his advice and insight.

And so over the years,

That's something that I often would try to do,

Which entails putting aside all the things that I think I am,

Setting aside spiritual beliefs,

Political beliefs,

Thoughts and opinions about the economy or what's happening in the world,

And to become a blank slate to meet the other where they're at and to see what is truly useful for them.

Because it doesn't do any good for me to tell somebody else how they should be or to try to mold them in my image.

What I can do is meet them where they're at and help them become more fully who they are and what they're here for.

The key to skillful means is having the combination of both compassion and wisdom.

Often when we want to help others,

We think that we just need to be a fount of compassion and that we should just hold space and give people what they want and that that's going to help them.

In some cases,

That can be exactly what people need.

Sometimes people need to just be accepted exactly as they are and held and given space to let that happen.

But if we only give compassion without having it combined with wisdom,

In many cases that is not useful for the other.

It doesn't necessarily help them to grow.

And this is where wisdom comes in.

We have to have the wisdom,

Which is knowledge that comes through experience,

Often through self-knowledge,

Of being aware of ourselves and cultivating our awareness of others and their perspectives.

And the wisdom allows us to see what is actually useful.

You know,

A good example of this would be,

You know,

For those of you who have kids or know kids.

You know,

When they're young,

They might just want candy all the time.

And if we don't give them the candy,

Then they're going to cry and be upset.

And it seems like they're really suffering.

But it takes wisdom and experience to know that if we just let them gorge on candy day in and day out,

It's not going to alleviate their suffering.

In fact,

It's going to bring them even greater suffering.

And so sometimes,

To truly be compassionate,

We need to know when to allow others to suffer,

To not give them what they want,

Or to push them in a certain way that might be uncomfortable for them.

And this is a gift that most of the great teachers I've ever met or interacted with or read have learned over time.

It can be a nice edge balance sometimes,

Figuring out how much to hold space and how much to push a little bit.

And it takes wisdom to know what is ultimately going to benefit that individual.

And when I say individual,

This is also something that applies to ourselves.

When we have enough self-awareness to be aware of our experience and all the different voices that are going on inside,

There's going to be voices that want something or want things to be a certain way and wants to strive to make it that way.

But deep down,

We all have another voice that has the wisdom to know that maybe that isn't what's best for us.

Suffering is hard.

I don't think there's many people in the world that would say they want to suffer.

And yet suffering is often what brings about the greatest transformations in who we are,

If we allow it to.

If we don't repress it or attach to it and make it part of our identity,

When we can just hold it at the pivot of our being and experience it fully as it is,

Recognizing that it is impermanent,

And when it is time to let it go.

And that will lead to the transformation.

You know,

It's sometimes likened to the alchemist fire.

You know,

It's through that fire that you transmute metals into gold by removing all of the impurities.

Suffering has a purpose in life.

All of the pain,

All of the challenges,

All of the difficulties and struggles,

They have a place,

And it cannot be different than that.

It is not meant to be different than that.

And so to work with suffering,

That of ourselves,

That of others,

That of the world,

It can help to remember that it is not inherently bad,

And to work towards learning to take our suffering a little bit lighter,

To not take it so personally.

It can be very easy to attach to our suffering,

To see it as a symbol that there is something wrong with us,

With the world,

And when we can open to seeing it as potentially something that's here to teach us,

To guide us,

To bring out the virtues of patience and humility,

It actually becomes easier for it to work in that way.

You know,

In Buddhism,

The word for suffering that they translate as suffering is dukkha.

And so the first noble truth is translated as life is suffering,

Or life is dukkha.

And the etymological roots of the word dukkha,

One of them,

Referred to the axle wheel on a chariot,

And it was conveying this idea that when you're in a chariot,

And you can imagine roads 2,

400 years ago,

Being on dirt roads,

Some of you in the mountains might still be having this experience,

But there's all of the ruts that occur from rainstorms and everything else.

And so you're in this chariot,

Which is not nearly as comfortable as many of our automobiles today to begin with,

And every time you are on the road in this chariot,

There's these constant jarring sensations.

And so what they were trying to convey is that that is what life is.

That life is not intended to be smooth.

There are moments when it's very smooth,

And then there's lots of times when it's jarring.

And when you're in that situation,

If you fight against the jarring,

And you tighten and tense,

That tension in your body actually amplifies the jarring sensation.

Whereas when you breathe and relax and allow it to move through you,

You actually suffer less.

So my wife Heather and I went to the front range.

We drove from Telluride to Denver on Monday to go collect some things from the storage unit and take care of some other appointments.

In the ride there,

We took the back roads,

And it was super smooth.

There was very little traffic,

No construction.

We made in about five hours and 45 minutes.

We drove back today,

And we left at about seven,

I think,

And seven in the morning.

We were like,

Okay,

It should be about five hours,

45 minutes,

Or six hours.

And we came the same route as we went two days ago,

And yet it was a completely different experience.

There was probably ten times more traffic.

There was construction on,

I don't know,

Six or eight different places along the roads that we'd just been on two days ago where there was no construction.

And there were a lot of moments when things seemed to be a lot bumpier.

And that's the trouble with expectations or expecting consistency.

But that's also part of life,

Is the impermanence,

That it always changes.

And that's what's hard for us often as human beings,

Is the fact that it changes,

That it's not the same,

And it creates this jarring,

Unexpected sensations in our body,

Because reality in the moment is different than we expect it to be or would like it to be.

And yet,

It's through that continual change that we grow and we learn and we become more adaptable if we allow ourselves to.

If we do not fight against it,

But instead relax into it and open to it and say to ourselves,

Okay,

What is this here to teach me?

As I reflect back on my life,

In hindsight,

It can be easy to see how so much of my suffering I brought onto myself by my desires and aversions,

By what I wanted or didn't want,

By not allowing life to be as it was and thinking that I knew better,

That I knew what my life should be.

I knew what it should look like and what it should feel like,

And then striving so hard to make the external reality accommodate that.

And time and time again,

I was slammed down.

I was humbled.

I was taught that I did not know what was best for myself.

And as I allowed myself to be humbled and open to the possibility of not knowing,

I learned.

And I'm grateful for all of those experiences.

And I've come to believe that a lot of times,

Suffering can be considered a form of divine skillful means,

That it's the all,

God,

The Tao,

Oneness,

Reality.

It's its way of teaching us,

Of refining us,

Of humbling us and allowing us to bring forth our beauty.

This is where diamonds come in.

Because suffering,

As I said,

Is like the alchemical fire of transformation.

It's intense.

It can be overwhelming at times.

But when we allow it,

It has the ability to refine and purify us.

In that sense,

It can be likened to the process of the formation of a diamond that is formed through the compression of carbon molecules.

So much pressure.

I think it's said to be up to 725,

000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

It just squeezes and compresses.

And through that process,

Removes all of the impurities and gives us this example of perfection,

The diamond.

The cultures all over the world are drawn to.

There's something about it.

And in many traditions,

It's used as an example of perfection.

And that is something that we all have within us.

And we may not like it,

But often it comes about through that extraordinarily intense pressure of suffering.

There's a very delicate balance between allowing ourselves to experience the moments of pain,

Of misery,

Of loss,

Of challenge,

Of difficulty.

Allowing ourselves to experience it completely on the one hand,

And in the other,

Getting caught by it.

Following it,

Becoming attached to it,

And thinking that it's part of who we are in our self-identity.

And we must learn to become very skillful with ourselves and our experience.

To have enough compassion to allow ourselves the space to experience those things completely,

And have the wisdom to not let ourselves get attached to it or overwhelmed by it.

It's extraordinarily subtle.

And yet the more we can move towards that pivot and stay right there in that middle place,

Not only will the experience of difficulty and pain move through us more quickly,

But it will integrate and become a part of us in new ways where it brings forth new gifts.

The wisdom that arises from having lived through such suffering,

Having grown from it,

And being able to share that with others through seeing others in their suffering and their attachment to a certain perspective,

And helping them by holding space for them while offering another perspective that might help them shift.

It's not for the faint of heart.

And as I've said with other things,

Being human,

Many of us will fail time and time again.

And that's why it's called a practice.

Just as with treating patients,

There's a continual practice for me.

Knowing when to push a little bit,

When to leave space,

And sometimes being wrong.

And with myself as well.

And that's how we learn.

And I truly believe that that's what we're all here for,

Is to learn and grow and make mistakes and experience challenge and difficulty.

But the more we grow,

The greater our ability to experience the fullness and beauty that life has to offer us.

And the more we can bring that into the world and share that with others.

So that's practice.

We may not make diamonds today or tomorrow,

But each time we sit and still the mind,

That helps us to use that fire of transformation.

Because whether we like it or not,

We are all suffering pretty much every moment.

We can use it or not.

You know,

I have a Sufi teacher that I've studied with,

And he said once that death is like a bee sting.

Life is like a thousand bees stinging you all the time.

It takes courage to live,

To live fully,

Because we have to open to that continual suffering.

But if we do,

It will transform us.

So if you will please take a moment to find a comfortable posture for meditation.

You can be lying down if you prefer.

If you're seated,

Make sure that you have a stable base,

That your knees are below your hips,

Your torso and spinal column are rising up towards heaven,

The natural curves of the spine,

The shoulders are relaxed back and down,

The head situated over the neck and torso.

Begin to become aware of your breath.

Simply observing the natural flow of inhalation and exhalation.

As you breathe,

Begin to gently scan the body,

Starting with the head,

Moving all the way down towards the feet.

Bringing your consciousness through each part of the body and noticing if there's any unnecessary tension in any part of the body,

Use the exhalation to gently release it.

As you scan the body,

You may become aware of areas that have tension,

Discomfort or pain that does not release.

If so,

Allow your awareness to rest in this area without judgment,

Without trying to change it,

Just becoming fully experientially present to the moment-to-moment sensations in that area.

First the mind may resist,

For it does not want to be present to the discomfort.

Gently guide it back and examine it with curiosity.

Maybe asking yourself,

What exactly is this that I'm feeling?

Not looking for a verbal response,

But an experiential response through the sensations of the body.

As you move closer to it with your awareness,

You may notice that it is not static.

There are small,

Minute changes that occur in the sensation.

If you notice that the mind has any stories,

Or any thoughts,

Or any thoughts that are stories that come up around it,

Or judgments,

Or wishes for it to be different,

Hold that with compassion and also with wisdom and firmness to guide it back to just following the sensations,

Letting the mind rest for a while.

Cheers.

And you would now becomes Billionaire,

Check in with the breathing.

Occasionally checking in with the breath.

Occasionally checking in with the breath.

Using the breath to keep you present to the moment by moment experience of your body.

Now release the awareness from that area of your body.

Begin to scan through your inner landscape once more.

This time being aware of the various emotions.

And whatever the general flavor of your emotions might be right now.

Simply try to observe and experience it within your body.

Whether it's sadness or joy,

Anxiety,

Worry,

Hope,

Anger,

Or a combination thereof.

Just begin to hold them in your awareness.

And as you did with the physical body,

Internally ask yourself the question,

What is this that I'm feeling right now?

Without trying to label it with words,

But letting the question guide you into experiencing it.

Moving closer to it,

Even if it might be uncomfortable.

Occasionally checking in with the breath.

As you observe the internal state of the emotions.

Be continent.

Now,

Turn your awareness to observe the mind itself.

And as with the body and the emotions,

Make space for the thoughts and the mind to be just as they are.

And try to feel the experience of them within the body.

Asking yourself the question,

What is this that I'm feeling?

And waiting for the experiential answer.

Asking yourself the question,

What is this that I'm feeling?

Asking yourself the question,

What is this that I'm feeling?

Now,

Holding this awareness of the physical body,

The emotions,

And the mind,

Become aware of the stillness that underlies all experience.

Focus on the stillness.

Focus on the stillness.

Start to become aware of the felt sense of the body as a whole.

Feel the solidity beneath you,

Supporting you,

And holding you up.

Become aware of the air around you in which you are immersed,

And the movement of the body,

Connecting within and without.

And when you are ready,

Maintain a connection to the still,

Spacious presence within.

And as you gently and slowly begin to open your eyes and take in the world around you.

Sometimes,

The most compassionate thing we can do for another is to allow them the space to experience their suffering fully.

Sometimes it's to offer help or a different perspective.

Sometimes it's to push them a little bit.

Takes wisdom and practice to know which.

Every human being has the privilege of being alive,

And every single one of us also has unique challenges,

Unique pain,

Unique suffering.

This is part and parcel of life.

It is not meant to be different than this.

It is the challenges that are unique to each individual that offer the opportunity to bring forth their unique beauty and unique gifts.

Suffering is the great catalyst that breaks open the heart,

That clears away ignorance,

That shatters the illusions of the ego and its desire to impose its will on the world.

It is suffering that humbles and illuminates us.

As Rumi wrote,

The wound is where the light enters.

We all have the ability to practice this,

Making space within our experience for all that we're experiencing.

And as we do,

Our container will grow,

And we will gain in wisdom and insight and know ourselves on deeper levels and move towards being the highest benefit for others in the world around us.

Thank you all for joining me today.

Reviews

Namaste🙏✨....And Thankyou once again...😌
It’s such a beautiful talk and meditation…Needed..My heartfelt thanks to you once again Thomas..🙏💞

So many emotions came up with this talk and meditation. Lots to ponder.
Thank you

Thank you for this helpful teaching and meditation. 🙏🏻

Another beautiful experiential practice of connection with self guided by Thomas with incredible insight, wisdom, and compassion. Thank you 🙏🏼 💗

I love this talk, it contains so much on many layers and it was the perfect talk today Advent III. Thank you 🕊️✨🙏

Thank you 🙏
Making space for ourselves and others...
Compassion and wisdom for ourselves and others are the true spiritual practice of being human... it starts with remembering that everyone is at a different place on their path and I need to be tolerant and patient ...
Such wisdom. Gratitude
Love and Light always
Sue

Fabulous talk on the paradox of being human and allowing it all...

As a therapist of 30 years I found this enormously helpful and healing. Thank you Thomas 🙏🏼