Tag: compassion

  • Compassion in Buddhism: Why does Kuan Yin have so many hands? 

    Compassion in Buddhism: Why does Kuan Yin have so many hands? 

    Kuan Yin is an archetype of compassion in Buddhism. Sometimes portrayed as female, or male, or androgynously, they manifest the impulse to help suffering beings.

    In his celebrated Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot observed:

    Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

    Reality is a lot to take sometimes. One teacher says this practice builds our “reality tolerance.”

    Ours is a sobering practice

    The bare bones of it is to appreciate the “three inconvenient truths”, as the American nun Pema Chodron calls the “three marks of existence” the Buddha taught are intrinsic to reality: impermanence, stress, and interconnectedness.

    It’s inconvenient for us that everything changes.

    For example, just when I’m feeling settled as I sit to meditate, there’s this pain, or that song going through my head and ricocheting off my inner cranium walls, telling me I have been overdoing it with Spotify.

    Deep down we much prefer convenience

    From a Buddhist perspective, the habit energies called delusion come along to satisfy our preference for convenience, controlling the internal narrative, spinning reality in a distorted way, supporting our insupportable preferences for stability and constancy.

    Mostly, we fall for this over and over, until we grasp that our practice is about seeing these delusive habit energies arise in the mind in their many guises and to work through them.

    A milestone in practce …

    is seeing how our conditioned patterns distort our perceptions of reality in real time.

    This practice is sobering because we get intimate with our personal experience of stress and frustration- one of the three aspects of reality the Buddha called dukkha.

    If we don’t clearly see the mechanisms of our own stress and frustration, it’s hard to be happy. 

    When we see this clearly, there is such a relief.

    In the Pali language of early Buddhism, the meditation we practice is called vipassana. “Passana” means to see, and the prefix vi means “in a particular way.”

    As we adapt to regular sitting practice, there’s a deepening sense of calm and inner composure, which helps us see things more clearly.

    A calmer mind is less inclined to fall for the delusive habit energies of desire, aversion or agitation. We can see our stuff more clearly, our hidden motivation and agendas, for example.

    Tranquility allows a healing to happen, a gathering together of all our broken parts, the unfinished business, the parts we have disowned.

    But the practice doesn’t end here, it’s just getting started.

    Kuan Yin: archetype of compassion in Buddhism
    Kuan Yin: archetype of compassion in Buddhism

    We notice that just as we have work to do, so does everyone else.

    We realize we’re all in this mess together. Even when we do not know what to do next, we feel we should at least try to be kind.

    The late Zen master Bernie Glassman tells us “I define realization as the depth to which one sees the interconnectedness of life.”

    Then he adds a corollary, which emphasizes compassion in Buddhism:

    And the degree of your enlightenment can be measured by your actions.

    Here is a Zen koan- a kind of teaching story- from ancient Zen lore about compassion in Buddhism as the the fruit of our sobering practice, of living our interconnected-ness.

    How Does Kuan Yin Use Those Many Hands & Eyes

    Yunyan asks the more realized monk Daowu:
    “Why is it that the Bodhisattva Guanyin has so many hands and eyes?”
    Daowu responds, “It is like someone sleeping, in the night, reaching behind her head for her pillow.”
    To these words Yunyan said, “I understand.”
    When asked what precisely was his understanding he answered, “Our bodies are covered with eyes and hands.”
    Daowu replied, “Almost. You’re eight tenths of the way.”
    Then, when asked what is the more complete response, was told,
    “There are only eyes and hands.”

    This conversation between two monks is preserved in the twelfth century anthology of Zen stories called the Blue Cliff Record. Both monks, Yunyan and Daowu, were students of the same teacher and would themselves each become famous teachers.

    They both deeply realized this interconnectedness. Daowu, it seems, had a deeper understanding than the younger monk Yunyan, who asked why the bodhisattva Kwan Yin has so many hands and eyes.

    In my mind, Yunyan was really asking “What’s the deal with this deity we all talk so much about, who has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes? What’s up with that?”

    Kwan Yin is an archetype of compassion in Buddhism.

    Sometimes portrayed as a man, sometimes as a woman, and sometimes androgynously, Kwan Yin manifests the altruistic impulse to reach out and help suffering beings.

    Daowu says this altruistic impulse comes deeply from the heart without a second thought- like someone turning in her sleep and reaching a hand behind her head to adjust her pillow. 

    He says this natural impulse of compassion in Buddhism is like having eyes and hands all over our body. True, true, says his companion Yunyan. But he adds- that’s only 80% of the answer. 

    The full answer, he says, is realizing “There are only eyes and hands.” I appreciate the writer James Ishmael Ford take on the full answer here:

    Just this. Ends and means, one thing; our interdependence and you and I, one thing.

  • hijacked by my news feed, again

    hijacked by my news feed, again

    My news feed can incline my mind toward fear, confusion and anger. But I can also re-frame my news feed to spark compassion for the suffering of others.

    The news. OMG, how to deal with the news? The horrors in Ukraine, and the suffering of forced migration are just one of multiple national and world crises, many impacting people of color and the LGBTQ communities + disproportionately.

    And yesterday the leaked draft U.S Supreme Court majority opinion that is likely to strike down abortion rights, which may even lead to the banning of contraceptives and interracial marriage in some states.

    Hoe I feel afer my news feed--Edward Burne Jones. Original from The Birmingham Museum.
    Study for ‘The Garden Court‘ (1889)-Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

    What do I do with this anger at the obviously guileful testimony given by Gorsuch and Kavanaugh during their confirmation hearings? Feel betrayed, confused? Ignore it?“

    Feel it mindfully, but most likely get flooded again?

    The Buddha referred to dharma practice as moving “against the stream” of society. These days it’s more like we’re up against a tsunami of collective pain and confusion. It’s so easy to become flooded by this tsunami of fears and anxieties.

    guarding the doors of the senses

    I have great respect for the Buddha’s teaching on guarding the sense doors. The guidance he offers me is not to shut myself off from the world; rather, it’s not letting myself be drawn out of my centeredness while scrolling my news feed, for example.

    Guarding the sense doors is the first step in reclaiming my scattered attention.

    The Buddha gave the example of being a sentinel watching the doors of the citadel of the mind. You observe the comings and goings at the six senses, watchful for anything that can sneak in or leak out to bring about a surprise attack.

    do we install a content blocker in our mind?

    it’s not so much like having a content blocker installed in our mind. It’s more about watching for the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion creeping into the mind on little cat feet.

    By sitting in meditation and watching the comings and goings at my six sense doors (of hearing, touching, feeling, touching, smelling and thinking) I am fully present for what’s needed in the moment.

    I’ve lost my game these past few weeks

    But over the past few months I have lost my game, being too eager to jump into my news feed unprepared. Naturally, I feel overwhelmed and exhausted.

    There’s just no way around it–I need to meditate first thing in the morning before checking my news feed!

    I admit I need a lot more grounding and centering these days.

    Our meditation is called a “practice” because it’s a way to practice meeting the fearful and confusing challenges of our times the same way I meet each breath, sound or distraction on the cushion–with gentleness and ease.

    You cant’s stop the waves of the mind, but …

    The late Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga, has a line, which was appropriated by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

    You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

    Meditation is learning how to surf the waves of the mind; no matter what they seem like to us, they are simply waves–of fear, confusion, or joy, appreciation, relief.

    our meditation is a laboratory

    Meditation is also a laboratory for exploring the many paradoxes of our practice. I appreciate an important one in the words Carl Rogers used to describe his humanistic approach to psychotherapy:

    The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.

    When I find myself stuck in anger and despair, I reflect on these words. I accept I am flooded with despair. I don’t meet despair with inner aggression. But I also reflect that I need to take responsibility, nicely, for getting stuck in its tendrils.

    August Macke's Portrait of the Artist's Wife (1909) famous painting. Original from Wikimedia Commons.
    August Macke’s Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (1909).

    I can do this because I have the agency of knowing how I got into despair in the first place.

    If I give in to despair, which is easy to do–have you noticed?– I’m not really responding to life, I’m wallowing in it.

    “The terrorists are in the cockpit”, as my teacher Shinzen Young would say. My news feed has hijacked my attention again.

    The Buddha pointed out that whatever we frequently think and ponder upon will become the “inclination of our minds”.

    from wallowing to compassion

    My news feed, if I let it, can incline my mind toward fear, confusion and anger at all the crises we face. But I can also re-frame my news feed to feel compassion for the suffering of others. This compassion is really the opposite of wallowing.

    There is a path, and it is a process of discernment vs. distraction in each moment. The mature discernment of responses to each situation in our life, the Buddha taught, leads to the fading of attachment and the bliss of release.

    Carl Rogers on the good life

    I think the Buddha would have approved of Carl Rogers’ statement:

    The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.

    Reclaiming our attention, and using it for mature discernment, is the direction the Buddha advises us to follow.

    It’s what we signed up for.