So nice to see you all again. This is the second of a four part series on the ethics for the new millennium. And we talked a lot the first time about the basis for an ethics for the new millennium and that basis was fundamentally that each and every being wants to be happy and to be free from suffering. The relationship between this basic desire and ethics is that ethics involves having to judge between what’s right and wrong. Right and wrong are like this and that.
They’re relative to each other. They’re not absolute and they need to have a context right and wrong in relation to what. His Holiness is suggesting that it’s right and wrong with respect to this basic wish to be happy and to be free from suffering. So there’s no question of deciding whether I want to be happy or not that’s already there. That’s something we’re working with fundamentally.
It takes no reason. It just arises intuitively. Where the choices come is how are we going to go about doing it? How will I be happy? How will I avoid suffering?
And it’s with respect to this question that we have to judge right and wrong those actions or those things that are presented to us as causes for happiness or actions that will bring happiness and actions that will avoid suffering like that. His holiness presents this as a basis for generating ethics because he has found that there is a spiritual kind of vacuum which he is trying to fill. By spirituality he means cultivating inner qualities such as loving kindness, patience, generosity, inner qualities. That’s what he means by spirituality. So he is not presenting this system of ethics based upon the Buddhist religion.
Religion he distinguishes from spirituality as a canon of scripture, of rituals, of a set of beliefs that underlie and give both support and motivation to action. He says that all religions are spiritual but not all spirituality is religious because a person does not have to subscribe to any particular religion to cultivate inner qualities. And so he thought it was worth composing this book because in his experience of being in the West he has found that there is not as much conscious cultivation of spirituality as would characterize a healthy society. And he has seen signs of a lack of health in our society due to a neglect of our spiritual side. And he proposes it in the form of a system of ethics because just talking about spirituality is insufficient.
It needs to be put into practice and that’s where ethics is involved. Ethics is involved in those practical everyday decisions of should I or shouldn’t I. And one of the great advantages of this system of ethics based upon this wish to be happy and to be free from suffering is that we can look to our own experience as a guide as to what to do. Okay. So that summarizes what we did last time.
And one place where that I remember that we arrived was talking about cultivating inner qualities. Happiness is something that arises from positive states of mind or I can just say states of mind. Positive because they produce happiness. Positive having no other meaning than those states of mind produce happiness. And so then a practice of ethics would depend upon cultivating those states of mind.
In fact, they would out of necessity if you were following this system of ethics then you would naturally have to cultivate positive states of mind and avoid giving rise to negative states of mind. Because that’s where those are the causes of happiness and the causes of unhappiness. So sometimes we start with a system of ethics by looking outside us. Should I do this or should I do that? Should I avoid that?
Should I practice this? It’s outside ourselves, but in dealing with happiness, achieving the goal of happiness, it begins within. And there’s many reasons for that. Just to refresh your memories, generosity is said to be one is a state of mind. Okay?
It’s a state of mind. It’s the thought to give without any restriction just to give. Just a pure act of giving begins with the mind, the thought to give. And generosity is not defined by the action of placing one object in the hands of another because it may not be a generous attitude that’s doing that. It could be an attitude of trying to profit, an attitude thinking, Well if I give this person this, then I can come back later and ask for all of that.
That could be happening. So that action is not genuine generosity because in this case, in this context, generosity is the name of a state of mind actions that are motivated by that state of mind would be generous deeds or generous speech, different kinds of generosity such as the generosity of friendliness, the generosity of protection, the generosity of good advice, and then there’s also material generosity. But they all would have to arise from this thought to give in order to be qualified as generosity. And the thought to give itself feels good. It just makes the mind happy when one is practicing it.
That would be something that’s why it’s considered to be a positive state of mind. And then of course, it’s shared. The happiness is shared. The state of mind itself produces happiness within the person that has that state of mind. And then of course, those who directly benefit from those deeds also derive some happiness from receiving something that they want or need.
So we looked at several states of mind and I want to look at several more states of mind that constitute practices that one would engage in out of a sense of ethics to do what is right and proper to produce happiness and to avoid what produces unhappiness. So to begin with, it’s generating positive states of mind and avoiding negative states of mind. So for example, if a person is making if a person like very recently a lot of people in this country were confronted with ethical dilemmas that occurred in filling out our taxes. So one of the fun a person who’s practicing this code of ethics would whenever confronted with the ethical dilemma of should I include this or shouldn’t I include that or shouldn’t I include it would first look at their state of mind. And they would say what is involved here from the state of mind?
That’s a secondary matter about what to do about the less money or more money that’s a secondary issue. The first issue is the state of mind. If I don’t declare it, will I be lying? Will I be deceiving? Like that.
How does it feel to deceive others and live in the state of fear at possibly being found out. Do I like that? Is that something I want to do or not? So it begins at that level. And how does it feel to be free of deception being completely open and not worrying about anybody looking over my shoulder?
How does that feel? These states of being have value. So and it may be that they have a lot more value than other secondary considerations about whether I have an extra one hundred dollars which could disappear in one night for two people at a good restaurant. Or whether a state of mind with no worries for a whole year regarding taxes and more, who knows, they can come after you years later apparently. So there you go.
Okay. But the point of that example was just here is looking at the state of mind and making the determination of whether to do or not do something. And so it’s not sometimes there are ethical systems where there are some lists of do’s and don’ts that are almost like carved in stone in some mountain and they’re out there. And it’s some sort of a code and well, whether you believe maybe they’re only well, I don’t believe in that code and I don’t believe in that mountain and so it doesn’t matter. But this system of ethics is something that you can look right inside yourself in each moment and make an assessment.
How does this affect me? And of course, the more sensitive you are to your state of mind, then the more skillful you can be. The more control you can have over even subtle quick decisions that we’re making all the time. Because you can you know you have a greater sensitivity to the impact that that decision will have on your state of mind. So that’s one of the advantages of cultivating a practice of introspection.
I could use the word meditation but it has so many meanings. Just cultivating the ability to look at your mind. A friend of mine uses the term presence and describes himself as a teacher of presence, being present. So that’s being right with your state of mind, being aware of that state of mind. You may also be aware of all the content that’s going on but being aware of the general state of mind.
What is it doing rather than being dwelling on plans for the future or recalling experiences from the past. Thinking about that whole process that’s going on right now, not just thinking about it, observing it. Like for instance, take public speaking. I have to engage in that from time to time and sometimes I approach it and wonder, what am I going to talk about? And then I think, well, what’s important?
What do you regard as genuinely important? And is this of use of value to the audience? And if I believe it is, then I don’t have fear anymore because I feel like I’m providing something that’s of value and there’s no point to be afraid of that. One of my teachers once said when I expressed some reservations about teaching, he said, What are you afraid of? Creating non virtue?
You’re afraid of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisiveness, harsh speech, senseless conversation. Is that what you’re doing? No. What are you afraid of? Those are the things to fear, he said.
Seems to me that if you’re going to talk about something about dharma, about reality, about training the mind that that’s beneficial. So I had no argument. So then it’s just fear for the sake of fear, that’s useless. So you drop those sorts of things. Now one of the things there was a question that was asked about the practice of detachment because involved in this practice of ethics that begins with cultivating positive states of mind and avoiding negative states of mind.
That’s a practice of ethics because you’re involved in a judgment, right and wrong. Should I entertain this state of mind or should I not entertain this state of mind? And one negative state of mind was clinging attachment. So positive state of mind that’s an antidote to that was detachment. And we talked about how there’s some advantage to practicing detachment and how it simplifies the life and gives you a sense of freedom and serenity.
But then I said that could be one focus of practice but there’s another focus that His Holiness recommends which was that of altruism. And I said that I wanted to explore that next time, which is now, now. So here I want to talk about altruism in relation to this wish to be happy and to be free from suffering. So when you’re presented with a genuine cause of happiness and you’re somebody who wants to be happy then you have to take it seriously. This is what I’m about.
This is the real thing for me. And if the argument is such that it makes perfect sense to engage in that, then you might do yourself harm to not practice it. So we’re venturing into dangerous ground here. Not because anybody else is going like holding a club over you or trying to make you feel guilty. It’s because your own mind will be involved in an assessment here.
And if it assesses that this is genuine, this is a cause for happiness, I can do it. I can’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t do it. Oh boy, here I go. And your state of mind is the cause, your state of mind right now that you put into action is the cause or the creator of what you become. In the Lankavatara Sūtra, the Buddha said, there is no outside creator.
He said, the mind is the creator. So it’s the state of mind that you cultivate and act on that becomes your source of activity then that’s what you become. It’s like you’re this I don’t know how to say it to differentiate the agents and whatever. But it’s like the mind is the potter, particularly the mind of will or intention is this the potter and your being is the wet clay that’s being molded by intention. And intention which is this thought to do something that takes you from one object to another object arises from the general state of mind which can call the motivation or just state of mind.
And that state of mind, the state of mind that’s characterized as an altruistic state of mind. We can say in some sense that that is the general creator and then will become what it creates. Well, we don’t have to worry too much because what could go wrong? Let’s have a look at it. Altruism is basically the attitude that wants others to be happy.
It takes other living beings as most important. It is the opposite of egoism. It’s called egoism or egotism which is basically an attitude that’s focused on me and says I’m the most important. That’s what egoism is. The opposite is altruism which focuses on others and says they’re the most important.
So there’s a choice here. The attitude that focuses on oneself and says I’m the most important is also inspired basically by the wish to be happy and to not suffer. And the thought is that, well, if I just work for me, it’s going to be a lot more efficient and I’ll get the job done. Whereas if I work for everybody that’s extremely complicated and there doesn’t seem to be any end to that work. So best to consider myself.
I have no guarantee that anybody else is after all. So I’ll just take care of me. And the egotistical attitude in particular then goes to extremes in which it doesn’t really care about others and except in using them as assets for one’s own happiness. That’s the direction that that state of mind goes. And look at some kind of consequences.
What does that state of mind create? Well, it creates what’s known as selfishness It would cause us to become a selfish person known throughout the land as an egotist and selfish. Somebody that doesn’t care about anybody else only cares about himself or herself. So it would give us that kind of a reputation which is not a good reputation. It will eventually end up in making us lonely because nobody would want to have much to do with us.
Oh yeah, I remember the last time I hum out with that person. They didn’t do a single thing for me and they expected me to do everything for them. No, thank you. I’ve got better things to do. I remember that person.
All they talked about was themselves. All they did was pat themselves on the back and I didn’t hear one single compliment for me. No, thank you. There’s other people I like to hang out with. That’s what would happen.
A person becomes completely lonely. Do they like to be lonely? Well the attitude of egoism which takes oneself is the most important, which focuses on just oneself that prevents one from seeing others. So you could even be in a crowd of people and you wouldn’t see others. So that attitude of egotism will make you lonely because you only see yourself.
It also becomes a justification for insensitivity or it undermines our natural capacity to empathize with others. Empathy of course is to be able to feel others experience. But a person who is committed to egoism would not want to do that because the more sensitive they are to others the more likely it is that they’ll forget themselves and start using themselves as a resource for others. So that wouldn’t be good. So one would naturally have to kind of turn off to the experience of others.
So it doesn’t matter whether they like to help me or not. That’s their job to help me. It doesn’t matter if they’re getting exhausted. I’m not done with them yet like that. So empathy is an extremely important quality, something that we all have to some extent.
And by means of it, it provides the basis for genuine open communication. And it’s important to communicate. As I mentioned last week, even our most private thoughts are composed in a language whose ultimate purpose was to communicate with others. So in some sense, we’re never alone even with our most private thoughts. So if we follow the path of egoism, that’s the direction that we go.
It becomes a basis of so if it can can overwhelm our empathy thus desensitizing ourselves to others then there’s very little to resist an impulse to harm others. For example, it always happens that we run into people who get in our way, who compete to get the very same thing we want, who are unwilling to give us what we want or who just play the wrong darn music. And of course it could be worse. They could actually hold beliefs that you don’t like. And those beliefs might contradict your own beliefs and thus give one cause to doubt one’s own beliefs.
So it’s best if they didn’t hold those other beliefs. And also they’re different from me. They’re just shapes with color because we’re desensitized to their experience so they’re just shapes with colors that make noise and bad smells. Whereas me, I’m rich with an inner life of experience, of memories, of knowledge. And yet they are competing for these limited resources with me.
And they won’t stop when I tell them to stop. The only solution, wipe them out. Wipe them out. And so that gives rise to everything from some guy who murders a neighbor because of property disputes and to war between among people of the same country to of course war between different nations. So that’s those are the directions that we go in if we follow egoism.
And what does egoism look like? Egoism looks like, what do I want? The hell with anybody else. That’s what it looks like. Altruism now.
What does altruism create? Altruism is looking at others and wanting them to be happy. So with altruism, it gives incentive to increase one’s capacity for empathy. That is the best of all bases for communication. So now it enables you to become in touch with others.
You find out what their needs are. You find out what makes them tick. You take an interest in helping them achieve what they want to achieve. So very quickly, you’ve just created a lot of friends. An altruistic person has lots of friends.
That means that you end up getting a lot of things that you want because the things that you want are the things that will enable you to help others. And others are willing to help you get the things you want because they benefit from it and you benefit from it. So now there’s a lot of cooperation taking place with you and others benefiting. That means fewer problems. That’s an advantage.
So now we’ve got a happiness which is the happiness of fewer problems. We’ve got the happiness that comes from the attitude of cherishing others. These are positive states of mind. There is a state of mind called the good heart. And it’s basically when you look at another living being, you like what you see just because it’s another human being.
Has nothing to do with their shape, with their color, with their race, with their sex. It has nothing to do with it. It’s just it’s another human being because you relate to others from that core of wanting to be happy and to be free from suffering. So when you see delight, a natural affection that arises. How does it feel?
Sweet, pleasant, blissful, where? Right there. What’s the limit to it? None. It can grow and grow and grow.
Warm, sweet feeling. That’s an effect of this attitude known as the good heart or loving kindness or altruism. That’s what it feels like. What are the advantages of that? Don’t have to say anymore, but there are other advantages.
It will keep you healthy. You’ll have less You probably won’t die of cancer. I don’t know. I’m just told by certain people that there are many cancers and many cases of heart attacks that arise from anger. So when you have this state of being, you don’t have anger.
So very good for health, very good like that. And then with that state of mind, there’s a lot of serenity. So when you have a peaceful state of mind, you have a good concentration, you can think about things without being distracted, looking for solutions to problems for instance, increasing your knowledge of something. For example, if you let’s say you’re not an accountant and there’s a book on accounting on the shelf and you happen to be interested in reading? No, maybe it’s in the dentist’s office.
You’re there sort of waiting and there happens to be a book on accounting. There’s also people magazines and all kinds of other things there. And you’re not an accountant and you have no particular interest generally in improving your knowledge of accounting, the odds are you’re not going to pick up that book. And somebody said, Here, you should read this. That would be really like work.
No pictures. But if you have this mind of this good heart and there’s some need for a knowledge of accounting then then you could pick up that book and just start learning from it. Because in fact you don’t need to read something to feel good. You’ve got the good heart that makes you feel good. So then you pick up magazines and books and so on to learn something.
And what’s the overriding direction of learning. It’s learning something that helps others. So the good heart also will help you be a good learner. So and as you increase knowledge, then you increase resource of happiness as knowledge is a resource of happiness. And it also actualizes one’s capacity to learn which is the ability to learn is one thing that distinguishes us from perspective, the human realm and the animal realm are two different realms.
Because our capacity to learn is so much greater than the animals that it puts us into a whole separate category. Physically, we could be looked at in the animal realm and from that point of view, we’re nothing but easy food. But due to our incredible capacity to learn, we’re in charge rather than being easy food. So we’re in a separate realm from Buddhist scriptural point of view. So to have this special capacity of learning, it’s great if you use it.
If you don’t use it, then it’s difficult to justify being in a whole separate realm. So the good heart gives us the ability to actually make use of that capacity. So it justifies our being born as a human being. It justifies the nine months of labor that our mother and that was just the beginning. It justifies all the work that everybody who has helped us along did because it’s causing us to become more existence becomes a source of happiness for more and more and more beings.
Just multiplied by their numbers. It’s like sometimes people form families because just because it makes them feel more meaningful than just taking care of themselves. So then they form a family. Others work for organizations, altruistic philanthropic organizations because it makes their existence feel more meaningful. Like that.
And we see in a lot of whether it’s from the side of religions, they’re always promoting altruism, aren’t they? They always seem to be promoting altruism. Seems like the message of all the saints is generate loving kindness. Then also even our therapists are saying the same thing. Get a cat, take care of a cat.
We’ve just done a study and of Wall Street traders. And we gave half of them cats or dogs depending upon their wish and the other half no pets. And the ones who had cats and dogs now feel a lot better about themselves and have less stress in their life than the other ones. So you came to me originally because you had a stress problem. What do you want a cat or a dog?
I just decided to open up a pet store. Like that it’s coming from all directions. People say that we have bad health because of our anger. Antidote to anger, altruism, care for others like that. So it’s not just gardening.
Gardening won’t do it. Look at how angry you can get in the garden. Those damn insects, those rabbits, those snails. What kind of poison can I buy today to get rid of those snails? This one says that these snails will shrivel up into tiny little pellets that you can blow away.
So what kind of a state of mind is interested in that product? So just gardening won’t necessarily solve your stress problem. It won’t get rid of your anger. It’s more of trying to nourish something. You try to nourish something that helps your state of mind.
That makes you more peaceful. Something that’s simple to nourish. Maybe if you have a garden of dandelions. Otherwise it seems pretty darn difficult. But in any case, nourishing something.
But if you have a state of mind of nourishing this and killing that then they cancel each other out. So the most important thing is that state of mind that brings about a positive state of being which not only is a mental state but even physical. The physical and the mental are related. And even those who say they’re one and the same thing also say that develop that chemical of loving kindness by whatever means you can because it’s good for you. We’ve done studies which show that those people who are engaged in philanthropic activity generate a certain kind of hormone more than others.
And they pass our stress tests in flying colors because of it. So generate that hormone by whatever means such as thinking about the advantages of it, cultivating that warm towards somebody that are through which it arises easily and then extending it. That is an actual exercise that you do. If it’s so useful, if this attitude is so useful then why wait until you’re in circumstances where it naturally arises like when you’re with your kitty or when you’re with your beloved parents or child whatever. Why wait until then?
Why not just remember that person and let that spirit arise and then extend it to others because others are equally deserving of it. Why? Because others too want to be happy and to be free from suffering exactly like my beloved. Exactly. So then you can extend it and extend it and extend it and extend it and hold your that state of mind for as long as you can.
Accustomizing yourself with that state of mind, becoming so familiar that it doesn’t take any effort anymore to generate it. That’s just the way you are. You just walk around with that kind of warm glow in your heart like you’ve got a candy bar there. Whatever. And so that and what with that state of mind when you come into a situation where there’s conflict happening between two people, how do you respond to that conflict?
You try to mediate. Come into a situation where somebody is competing with you for the same limited resources. How do you deal with that situation? Try to find a compromise. Come into a you’re in a situation where somebody blows up at you and says that you’ve been using them, you’ve misunderstood them, that the relationship is entirely one-sided.
You evaluate and think they may be right. I never thought of it that way. Tell me what I can do to change. Let’s see if that will work. That’s kind of attitude would come from that state of mind.
In situations where there’s conflict like The conflict in Little Havana, you’d look at the situation and see, These people are suffering. Why are they suffering? What’s the cause of this suffering? Where does it come from? How can so many people be suffering about one small family problem?
Where is the problem here? Let’s look for the real solutions. Let’s look for the root of it. Let’s try to end this problem. And looking for the long term to bring the happiness that comes in the long term.
So it’s the opposite of all of the divisiveness and violence and so on that comes from the scenario that I described with egoism. It’s the opposite. There is a verse in a text called the Lama Chöpa which says, What the difference between egoism and altruism? Look at the difference between a selfish child and a Buddha. That’s difference between egoism and altruism.
Who has accomplished the most? Who’s the happiest? So the selfish child is just the one who’s spoiled rotten and can only think of itself. And due to its selfishness, it hasn’t even learned to read yet. Then you look at the Buddha who dedicated himself to the path of altruism and had to learn to read in a billion languages for the sake of the billion sentient beings pervading space billion countless like that.
So it is that’s one and Buddha is just some human being who developed all his potential, who the same potential that we have right now. How does altruism sound? Take ten. So can you imagine making a conscious decision to cultivate altruism to develop the good heart or egoism. Oh, I’ll do neither.
Okay. What’s in between? There’s nothing in between yourself and others. There’s nothing. So you can’t focus on nothing.
Why would you focus on nothing? To be happy and to avoid suffering. So to be happy, so to increase happiness, will that increase happiness? And now this an interesting question. A Buddhist poet by the name of Śāntideva pointed out that the reason why we like happiness is because it feels good.
Very deep. The reason why we don’t like suffering is because it hurts. It has nothing to do with my or yours. Which you can add to a sentence, my happiness and your happiness. But the reason why happiness is worth striving for is not because it’s mine or yours, it’s because it feels good.
So the mine or yours is secondary. That’s secondary. Mine or yours comes up as just language conventions like this and that. This side of the room and that side of the room. What side of the room are you sitting on?
Say it. This side of the room. No, you’re not. This is this side of the Purely relative. And my and your are also relative.
Me and you is also relative just like that. You are all your from my point of view. I’m included in the category of your from each of your points of view, purely relative, not that important. The reason why happiness is so important to achieve happiness feels good. So if it’s worth achieving then it’s worth achieving wherever it can be achieved, it can be achieved, the more the better because it’s worth achieving, because it feels good.
And somebody says, well, I can’t feel somebody else’s happiness, so it’s not important to me. I can feel my happiness. Is that true? You can’t feel another person’s happiness? Not so true.
When we watch the Olympics and see some champion win, we feel so happy for them when we watch how happy they are. Empathy. When we see some dog get beaten, we hurt because of empathy. So it’s not the case that we don’t experience the joys and pains of others, we do. And then one could think, but if I take on the problems of the world then I only increase my own problems.
True. That’s true. There’s always a downside. You increase your own problems, but you create the ability to endure them because it’s a little bit different. It’s not exactly your own problem.
When we experience our own problems, it’s so heavy and it can kind of cause us some depression. Other people’s problems don’t affect us like that. We’re more open. We’re more kind of flexible. Our minds work a lot easier than theirs does.
Like for instance, if there’s somebody who’s going to be out of work and they’re in some kind of stress about where they’re going to find their next job and they talk to you about it. You can come up with like ten or fifteen great ideas and there they are can’t even think of one thing. So other people’s problems for you, it’s not the same exactly, is it? Sure it complicates your life a little bit to actually take an interest in other people’s situation and want to help them out. But it makes life a lot more interesting, a lot more interesting.
How long can you stay in front of a TV doing nothing? How long can you stay on a beach in Crete? I was I had to get out of there after two weeks. I couldn’t stay longer than two weeks. I just got so bored.
I tried everything. I even thought that I’d spend the rest of my life there, not. I didn’t want to just be a fisherman. I wanted to do other things. There are all kinds of things I wanted to do.
And just being there was okay. It was very pretty. Water was a little bit too cold in April, but it was very pretty. Had all those great red poppies and green grass and all those ancient olive trees and the snow mountains in the background and it was all so pretty and all that Retsina and Raki and learning Cretan dancing and developing macho like those Cretans do and the black bandanas, the big leather boots and the Zorba, the Greek. So for a little while it’s fun but eventually you feel like you have to whatever it is that moves you, you become aware of after you’ve relaxed and are not as stressed out.
You become aware of other things that move you. So even to just sit alone by yourself, you’ll go nuts. First you’ll get bedsores if you don’t get up. And then you’ll need somebody to talk to. You’ll be lonely.
You’ll start feeling your brain atrophy and you’ll have to get up and do something. You feel like you’re wasting your life. You feel like everything’s passing you by. You’ll occasionally run into somebody who in the last year while you’ve been sitting there watching TV or sitting on your beach in Crete looking at the waves. They’ve learned the whole language in the meantime.
They’ve read five books. They can tell you stories of things that you’ve never heard of. And you, you’ve already forgotten twenty five percent of your vocabulary. And your mind is so dull that they make comments like, you’re just not with it anymore, are you? I thought I would invite you to the party.
You used to be the life of the party. Now you stumbled over your own words, you can’t even speak, you’ve forgotten how to talk like that. So it’s difficult. We can’t develop ourselves at all if we don’t take an interest in others. And you develop the ability.
I met somebody yesterday who was leaving Santa Cruz and he was moving to Sacramento because he was tired of living in an apartment. A shack in Santa Cruz cost at least three hundred thousand dollars these days. A shack that somebody built in nineteen fifty as just their summer place for nothing now costs three hundred thousand dollars So he’s going to move to Sacramento where no money down and you can get a house. Just some escrow expense expense for first time homebuyers. Two of his friends from San Francisco did it.
One got the house and he didn’t even have a job. He got it on the basis of the job he left behind in San Francisco. So he’s gone and I said, what about the one hundred and twenty degree temperatures after being used to sixty five degrees? He said, well, I’ll just tell my boss to bear with me while my body acclimatizes. And I’ll have air conditioning hopefully in the truck I drive.
So isn’t it interesting how we are capable of getting used to things and after a while it’s normal. He was born in Sacramento. It’s like Br’er Fox. I was born in the Br’er Patch. But he you forget, you don’t stay used to one hundred and twenty degrees, but you can get used to it again and even if you’ve never been there.
And how many people move to California from Chicago? I mean, how can you get used to spending your winters without it being minus twenty degrees? Takes forever. So getting used to being concerned for others, cultivate the abilities to tolerate their problems which become stimulants to make your life more interesting. Motivation to develop qualities within you that you never guessed you had.
Energy to learn things when the most you’d ever been able to do was learn how to in the last fifteen years is to learn how to work your VCR to record some television movie while you were away. So all kinds of energy to do things because of taking an interest in others. So this is using altruism as a basis of the spiritual path. So spirituality being the cultivating of good qualities within oneself and as part of the practice of ethics in being able to decide what to practice and what to avoid, what is right and what is wrong, looking at egoism and altruism and their meaning of me as most important or others as most important. Now of course, you can start off with how about all equal?
Well, that’s a great step over me being most important. Let’s all be equal here. But usually as part of a method to overcome selfishness, you just take the very same state of mind of being only concerned with one’s own state of mind and using others to help me, take that very same state of mind and just turn it around. Just turn it around. All of the same plots, conniving, ways of manipulating and so on, just turn it around and now others become the beneficiary and you’re using yourself, conniving, manipulating yourself to work for others.
Very easy, just flip for a moment. You can even imagine it for a moment. And if you can imagine it for a moment, how many moments are there in a day? Just increase the number of times. Sustain it for two moments, for three moments, things like that.
Like I’d be waiting in line at a I don’t know for lunch and there’d be a buffet and I’m at this end of the table and at the end of the table where the desserts are there’s a banana and it’s the last banana. And I hear myself thinking, I hope nobody takes that banana. I want that banana. And then I just flip it. Just flip that state of mind around and think that I means everybody else like that.
And everybody else is thinking, Pende don’t take that banana because we want it like that. So you can use your own attitudes to just imagine how others are and it gives some kind of guidance on how to act. Driving along, thinking I got to get in that lane, nobody’s in that lane, quickly if I get into that lane. I wonder if somebody else is thinking the same thought. It might save your life.
But also if somebody else is thinking that thought next then you won’t get in their way. If nobody else is going to get in that lane then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get in that lane right then. Okay, but at least you’re thinking of others then instead of just oneself. And of course on that highway you have to think of others otherwise disaster. So that’s another good example of why altruism is better than egoism.
It’s just like life on the highway. You have to think of others or you have accidents. You dent your new car. You dent your head. You might even kill somebody.
How would you feel if you killed somebody? I haven’t done that yet. I don’t know what I would do. That would be difficult. If they don’t mean anything to me, what do I care?
The fact that it worries me means it must mean something to me. Most people are like that. So that’s just another bit of evidence of how much others mean to us. So it’s important and it’s some people think that that’s weird thinking that you read on the cover of these books that’s I don’t know, I can’t even remember them anymore, but it’s something like take care of number one and this sort of attitude that’s very prevalent in the West of mainly take care of yourself, promote yourself and so on. But there’s different ways of thinking.
If you’re doing it altruistically for instance, if you have something of value to offer others then you have to let them know it. So you can say that you’re promoting yourself just because that’s conventional expression. But in fact, you’re trying to help others by letting them know that you have something that they can use. Same actions, right? It involves the same actions, the same advertising, the same telephone calls, the cards, all the actions are the same, but one is done out of a state of mind of altruism and another is being done out of an egotistical state of mind.
So the one who’s doing it out of a state of altruism benefits from it. Okay. So there was one other point and that is that if you are dedicated to the practice of altruism then the first thing that you become aware of is how anger is a tremendous obstacle. How it biggest enemy that you have is anger because it’s exactly the opposite of that state of mind. Exactly the opposite.
So that means that if you’re dedicated to the path of altruism, whatever other faults you might have, the most important fault to safeguard against is this ill will or anger because and you can feel the loss immediately. So you generate this good heart, affectionate warmth towards other living beings and even imagine what that feels like. And then imagine what anger feels like. That warmth is not there at all. In one’s heart there’s pain and it’s tight, totally the opposite.
And even ignoring for a moment the disadvantages that the anger has on others around you. Right from the beginning, it has a huge disadvantage on yourself. It causes you the loss of this the benefits of this altruistic affectionate warmth that you’re cultivating. So that’s why those people who dedicate themselves to the path of altruism take regard anger, ill will, hatred, whatever you want to call it. They regard that as their worst enemy and they protect themselves from it.
So part of the practice of ethics involves the ethics of restraint. So restraining those actions that cause harm. So there’s two things that I mentioned tonight that one could restrain from. One would be egoism after all those disadvantages I talked about. But that was all part of generating a case to cultivate altruism.
And then once you are on that path of altruism then the main thing to restrain from is anger. Now next week it’s next week that I’m there’s no more weak gap here. Okay. Next week, the fourth of May, the fourth and the eleventh.
So next week, I want to show how to meditate on patience as an antidote to anger and how to meditate in a way of cultivating equanimity towards all beings because another obstacle to cultivating altruism is favoritism where you have a bias. You have this warm heart towards this group, but not to that group. So that’s also important. And then we look into further things from this book. Tonight, I didn’t read summaries of chapters like I did last time because I wanted to focus more on the case for altruism.
Because I mentioned at the end of last week that well next week we’ll talk about the basis for ethics being altruism. And I thought, I have a lot to say about that subject. I don’t need to refer to this book. But it would be unfair to talk about the ethics for the next millennium based upon His Holiness’s book without further reference to this book. So there are sections of that that I want to get into.
And certainly on the last on the night of the eleventh, I want to talk about the ethics in society that section, the third section of the book ethics in society. And then even to talk amongst ourselves about difficult decisions, ethical decisions like what do you do if that kind of thing because it’s one thing to talk in generalities or platitudes in those moments of meditation where we’re using imagination to cultivate positive states of mind. But when we’re in actual difficulties of trying to make a choice and being split in two minds about it and even we know better supposedly but we’re still stuck in that isolation of this or that then it can be useful to get different points of view on that. So I’m going to try as much as I can to represent the point of view of coming from my Buddhist studies. But I think that it would be useful to look at the ethical dilemmas that occur in society and that includes us.
So we can look at some of that as well. So last week, I had the thought in my mind that this went until nine thirty but that wasn’t the case. It’s actually supposed to go till nine No, but I wanted to keep to that time tonight. Once again, I spent the whole time talking. Hope you don’t mind.
So I hope that you’re able to remember what I said. A good exercise to do right after a talk is to try to recall everything that was said. And if you’re here with a partner then you have an advantage of with trying to recall with each other and then you might recall something in the opposite way which is great because then that produces a great discussion. And then next week, we can even begin with question answers. You have any questions or kind of insights that came out of tonight’s talk that you tried to put into practice over the week then it would be interesting to try to clarify or answer those questions and even share some of those insights.
Thank you.