Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. This guided meditation by Thubten Chodron leads practitioners through the visualization of equalizing oneself with all other beings. Rather than viewing some people as more worthy of help than others, the teaching develops the recognition that friends, strangers, and difficult people all equally want happiness and wish to avoid suffering, using vivid examples like hospital patients with different illnesses and travelers on a plane. Chodron traces how we have received boundless kindness from countless beings throughout our lives, argues that the relationships between friend and enemy are temporary and circumstantial, and explains how even the distinction between self and other is merely nominal, not inherent. The practice concludes by cultivating genuine equanimity rooted in this understanding.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 33 GM.mp3
UUID: 7535a2fc-8192-4044-a7c3-e7070f29595e
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~1,230
We began the bodhicitta cycle of meditations by first generating equanimity between friends, disagreeable people, and strangers, and then by contemplating their kindness to us. Now we’re going to do a meditation in which we equalize ourself with others. And the purpose here is to feel from the depth of our being that ourselves and others are completely similar in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering, and therefore, it’s suitable to help everybody equally. So begin by contemplating the fact that we already know, but generally don’t feel in our heart that everybody equally wants to be happy and to avoid pain. So think not only of your friends and how their wish for this is as intense as your own, but also think of strangers and think of the people that you don’t get along with too.
That their wish to be happy and their wish to avoid suffering is just as intense as our own is. So make specific examples from your life and think about this. There’s a good example that can help us understand how not only friends and strangers and disagreeable people people are equal in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering and also how we’re equal with all of them. So think of ten patients in the hospital. They all suffer from different illnesses, but they all equally want to be cured no matter what their suffering is, no matter what their illness is.
So in a similar way, we may all have different problems in our life, but we all equally want to be free of them. And then think that ten beggars all may need different things, but they all equally want to be happy. So these examples of thinking about the ten patients who suffer from different diseases but equally want to be free of them and the ten beggars who need different things but equally want to be happy. This is analogous to all the various beings, ourself and others, who equally want to be free of suffering and have happiness. So it would be very unfair to discriminate in our attitude and help some beings and ignore others because everybody’s equal in that respect.
So think about it deeply. Not only how your friends and disagreeable people and strangers are equal, but how you’re equal with all of them too. Try and feel that in your heart. So it’s often helpful to reflect upon this using specific situations. For example, a party where people don’t know each other, But ourselves and others are equal in feeling a little bit nervous and equal in wanting to feel at ease.
There’s no reason to just focus on our own apprehension. Or when we’re traveling on a plane, everybody equally wants to have a comfortable trip. So it would be quite unfair just to try and get the best seat and be most comfortable oneself and ignore everybody else. On top of this, all the beings have helped us so much. So here, reflect upon the previous meditation where we thought about the kindness we’ve received from friends and relatives, from strangers, and also from people we’ve had difficulty with.
So recall that feeling of having received so much kindness and benefited so much from your interactions with others. Sometimes our mind says, well, yes, Others have been kind to me, but they’ve also harmed me. So here, compare the amount of harm you’ve received from others with the amount of help. Remember all the help you received as an infant, as a child, your whole education now, how many people are involved with our having just food and clothes and shelter, let alone all the enjoyment objects that we have, and compare that with the amount of harm you’ve received from others in your life. Which is greater?
When you think about this, remember that often much of what we consider as harm inflicted on us was not meant as harm by the other person, but was interpreted that way by our own mind, or it was a result of a misunderstanding not because others really wished us harm. So really compare the amount of benefit you’ve received from others in your life with the amount of harm. So when we compared the amount of harm we’ve received from others with the amount of help we’ve received, there’s almost nothing to compare. And even if others have harmed us, what’s the sense of holding a grudge against them? When we hold a grudge, we remember over and over again what another person did to us just once.
But each time we remember it, it’s like we’re doing it again to ourselves. So it’s better just to put the past down, let go of our grudges, and free all that energy that we’ve tied up in anger and hatred and use it instead to reach out and connect with others in a healthy way. Another reason that ourselves and all others are equal is that the relationship of friend, disagreeable person, and stranger aren’t fixed. They all change very easily, very quickly. So today, we may feel that one person’s happiness is more important than another person’s.
But the next day, that person who was our friend may be an enemy, and the stranger may now be a friend, and we may feel that person’s happiness is more important. So if we think of our long period of time, we see that these relationships aren’t fixed. And so, therefore, it’s inappropriate to hold that some people’s happiness is more important than other people’s or that some people’s suffering is more important than other people’s because these relationships can all change very quickly, very easily. And when you think from the perspective of a Buddha, a Buddha doesn’t see one person as more valuable than another. A Buddha doesn’t even make the discriminations of friend, difficult person, and stranger.
So if a Buddha sees everybody as equal and a Buddha understands reality perfectly, then our own discriminations, seeing some people as more important than others, are valid or not. And even the distinction between self and others is not an inherent distinction. It’s a distinction that exists only nominally and dependently. When we’re on one side of a valley, we say this side and the other is that side. But when we cross the valley, what used to be that side becomes this side, and the other one becomes that side.
So in a similar way, when we look from the perspective of this body and mind, we say I and other. But from the perspective of the other person, they say I and we become other. So again, to say I’m more important is completely invalid because what we label I is only a nominal distinction. It’s not an inherent difference between self and others. So as a conclusion to this meditation, try and let go of the attitude that considers our own happiness and pain more important than others, And let your mind rest in the attitude that feels that yourself and all others are completely equal in wanting happiness and wanting to avoid pain.
And therefore, it’s appropriate to work for the happiness of everybody and to work to alleviate the pain of everybody in an equal way. There’s no reason to cherish ourselves more than others. We’re very equal.