October 16, 2010 Saturday Morning, Venture Fourth, Part 2
Part 2: Emptiness and Form and Sambhogakaya;A Short Definition of Access Concentration;Attachment to Views: View, Belief, Duality, Intention;Attachment to Views and Saying No With Compassion
Barbara: Continuing later on Saturday morning…
Aaron: So we continue. I am Aaron.
Q: I have a question. The last intensive, the image of access concentration being sambhogakaya bridge between dharmakaya and nirmanakaya, is this the same thing that most of us observed in the last 2 days, where emptiness is nirmanakaya and the parade of words, or nama, as you’re watching it, is sambhogakaya, and everything going on around you is nirmanakaya?
Aaron: I’m not sure I’m completely clear on your question. It would be easy to say that dharmakaya is emptiness and nirmanakaya is form. However, form is emptiness and emptiness is form, so right there in the dharmakaya of emptiness we have form, and right there in the nirmanakaya of form we have emptiness. Sambhogakaya is the bridge between them. Sambhogakaya is the space where you find the form in the emptiness and the emptiness in the form.
Q: Okay…
(laughter)
Aaron: Are you familiar with the Heart Sutra, do you know the Heart Sutra? I don’t mean, do you know it by heart, but you’re familiar with it? (Q: Yes) I would like to suggest you read the heart sutra daily for awhile. Don’t try to figure it out, just read it. Let it sink in.
What does it mean that form is emptiness and emptiness is form?
Q: All appearances are pervaded by space. <inaudible>
Aaron: I’m getting the words but not the whole sentence.
Q: I said, all appearances are pervaded by space.
Aaron: Yes, okay. Pervaded by; I thought you were saying provided by– it was not making sense to me.
Picture a vast, empty sea. Some of you may have looked out at the lake this morning in the mist when you couldn’t see the other shore. There was water, there was sky. There was no line between the water and the sky. One could not say that’s sky and that’s water. And yet if you looked up, there was sky, and if you looked down at your feet, there was water.
In the same way, form and emptiness merge together. Into the inherent condition of emptiness, objects manifest because of conditions. So there is this inherent emptiness, everything empty of a separate self, merged together and literally free of conditions.
The wind blows the mist away and suddenly you see the other shore for just a moment, and then the mist comes in again. Water and sky merge again. Because you live in this karmic world of conditions, because you are not arahant, not fully liberated, there still is a karmic stream and the flow of conditions.
Objects will arise when the conditions are present for them to arise, and when the conditions cease, they will cease. You know that. Each object that arises and the conditions that lead it to arise is empty of any separate self. It’s just the outflow of conditions. If the wind blows and blows the mist away and the other shore is seen, and then the wind ceases, the mist falls back in place again and the other shore dissolves. There’s nobody doing it. We can say, well it’s the wind blowing, but there’s no self to it, and the wind arises because of many conditions. You cannot come to a first condition and say it’s because of this. It’s because you live in a world with an atmosphere. What are the conditions that created a world with an atmosphere?
The Buddha says it’s not useful to try to find the first condition. Our work is to transcend this flow of conditions and learn to rest in the spaciousness while simultaneously attending skillfully to the conditions.
In the world of conditions we find the nirmanakaya. In the world beyond all conditions we find the dharmakaya. And yet like the lake this morning and the sky, they cannot be separated. That place where they come together is the sambhogakaya. You can get to know it as an energetic field, literally.
It’s the place where the wind blows the fog away. It’s the place where the wind blows the fog back. How does that feel? That place where you rest between complete clarity of emptiness and the stirrings of the self, and the stirrings of the self are seen clearly as simply conditioned arising, empty. And yet they must be attended with compassion.
Q: Is that what I was saying/seeing?
Aaron: I don’t know if that’s what you were saying; that’s what I am saying.
Q: No, seeing…
Aaron: Seeing? Is that what you were seeing. I think you were seeing that place where the wind blows the fog away, yes.
Q: Sambhogakaya?
Aaron: Sambhogakaya. But don’t make a difference between nirmanakaya and dharmakaya. Simply see the nirmanakaya emerging out of the dharmakaya and the dharmakaya as the ground for the nirmanakaya. And rest in that bridge, sambhogakaya, that holds both, without losing either.
Q: One more quick question. It’s related. So the experience of watching thoughts arise and cease while working is access concentration?
Aaron: I can’t say definitively that it’s access concentration. If one sees thoughts arising and ceasing but gets caught up in stories that come with the thoughts, then it’s not access concentration. If the thoughts are seen as arising out of the dharmakaya, simply arising from conditions, and there’s no going out to them, no contraction around them, no story that comes with them, and they simply self-liberate– poof! they’re gone! –and awareness returns to simply resting in spaciousness but present, there’s not a body dissolution, you’re aware of your surroundings, but it’s not me and my surroundings, there’s no story of this one’s a weed and that one’s a flower, this one is good or that one is bad, there are no value judgments, there are no stories, there’s just full presence with everything just as it is, that is access concentration.
There are a number of things I’d like to touch on today and tomorrow but I want to continue with Chapter 6 right now. But later today let’s talk a bit about deepening your understanding of the distinction between access concentration and pure awareness. We’ll talk some about that this afternoon.
Chapter 6. I’m going to read here one page of notes that comes mostly from one or another of your journals.
The exercise on page 121, <> of your views. We’re going to look at that together later. What views do you see as predominant in your life? I had asked you to do this as part of your homework. Even if they are a “good” views such as, we should be kind to people, do no harm, is there a subtle statement there that people who do harm or act with less kindness are “bad”?
How do we live our lives, how do you live your life, without views? How do you intend anything if you don’t have a view? In other words, if you have a view that it would be preferable to live your life with non-harm, is that a view? What happens when you impose that view on others and create a duality of good one who is not harmful and bad one who is harmful? Aren’t you then slipping into being harmful?
Some thoughts that came from some of you, in no particular order. These are primarily from Pam and Dan, is it okay to use your names here as I read them?
Pam says:
The interface between effort, intention, and allowing, non-grasping, being present, how do we manifest without grasping? How do we hold an intention without views? Also, what is the place of enthusiasm?
Pam quoted this, I’m not sure what this quote is from, which book, perhaps you remember, perhaps not. Let me read it. Is it from that book?
The balanced combination of effort, inner detachment, and genuine equanimity helps us to come home within ourselves and arrive a feeling of inner peace and oneness. This great letting go and letting be brings forth the soulful wisdom of allowing, of being precisely where you are, who you are, and what you are, beyond running to or away from anything. All this running to and fro is a symptom of attachment and aversion and is unfulfilling in the ultimate analysis.
Dan speaks about views “center around my children, that I act on daily.”
Don’t beat on your brother. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Finish your homework. Flush. All of these are supported by a scaffold of beliefs. How do we live I this world and not get caught in attachment to these beliefs?
We do need to teach our children. We do need to have rules by which we live. How do they not become beliefs?
Dan said:
I’m not sure beliefs can be jettisoned. Attachment to beliefs, on the other hand, is a more subtle and trickier things, especially when <as> beliefs cannot or even should not be renounced.
Pam:
Right effort is not always goal and achievement oriented, it also includes the subtler virtues of non-doing, of yielding and going with the greater flow. When we identify the conceptual mind, we live as a reflection reacting to the other reflections. Taking the reflections for reality, chasing the illusions.
Let me quote from the book:
We can come to know the natural mind as a state that is beyond concepts like effort or non-effort.
So we have a lot of different thoughts here. There have to be, let’s call them guiding truths. I would say that love is a guiding truth. Love is something you can feel and experience. To say, you should love, is a belief. To say, I rest in love, is the statement of an experience. To say, “Finish your homework,” is a belief, it comes from a belief system that says, “One should endeavor, do one’s schoolwork, do what is asked of one, try to be successful.” We can’t say it’s a good or bad belief, it’s simply a belief. It serves many people but it also can do harm. Probably many of you were scolded when you were young for not doing good enough.
To say, “I hold the value, personally, of the mind that is more fully open to the world and understands the world, because my own experience is that from that place of broader understanding, I can live more skillfully in the world without doing harm,” well, it takes us back to, is non-harm a belief? That it’s better to be non-harmful?
It gets very sticky. If we say, love is a truth, can we say, non-harm is a truth? That to endeavor, to live with non-harm. Some might say to you, “No, I have the God-given right to kill people who think differently than me.” To their way of thinking, that’s not harming them because if they think “wrongly” they need to die.
We need to get out of the place where there’s any room for argument and into a place that asks simply, if everyone functioned as you are recommending we function, in your mind would the world be a better place? If everybody killed everybody who disagreed with them, we’d all be dead. Is that what you aspire to?
So not, “Don’t beat on your brother,” but, “Is this leading you where you want to go in your life? And if not, what changes do you want to invite?” Don’t beat on the other party’s political candidates. Does badmouthing people lead me closer to where I want to go in my life? It takes it out of belief and into really practical reality. What brings us to where we aspire to move?
There are difficulties even here because one being will say, “Where I aspire to move is into a place of power, where I am safe.” We just keep asking the gentle question, if everybody aspired to move to that place of power, would anybody be safe? You cannot argue views, “Your view is wrong, your wanting power is wrong.” But what are the logical outcomes of what you feel and state you want? “I want power, I want riches, everybody else be damned.” What is the logical outcome of that view? We can only invite people to look at their views and then respect their right to hold views that oppose our views.
How do we intend anything? We do this same process with ourselves. What is my highest intention in this moment? Get the wood stacked. Is that truly the highest intention? I’m going to get the wood stacked so that if somebody else falls down with a heart attack you’re going to just step over her? What is your intention?
We keep refining it. Okay, to do what’s in front of me and to be present. So I’m stacking the wood and somebody is sick, I stop and take care of them. Okay, that takes it a step further in clarifying the intention. Then, what if you’re exhausted? Your body is trembling. Are you going to keep stacking the wood and taking care of other people?
We keep refining it. The highest intention to act and speak with as much love as possible and without harm. And then to watch whether there’s any attachment that says, “If you’re not doing what I just said, you’re bad.” Am I attached to my view? What if I do act and speak in a way that leads to some harm, am I then bad?
There have to be views of some sort in order for there to be intentions. The views themselves are not the problem, the attachment to the view is what leads to trouble.
Barbara did not bring it down, in the Tiep Hien precepts that we’re going to go through tonight, one that I find very beautiful is, Do not be attached to any views. It goes more deeply into it, the statement of, let me see if I can remember the exact phrasing: Remember that the knowledge that I presently possess is constantly changing. What I think I know right now is going to change. We can say, “Oh, it’s good to bring the wood out of the forest and to stack the wood,” and then a forestry truck and rolls up and says, “Oh, leave that wood out there. It’s dangerous to burn that wood. It’s got some kind of pollutant in it.” Take the wood back to the forest.
One’s not attached but one has to have some sense of direction. Can that sense of direction come from the deepest place in your heart and a place that is not attached and willing to let go of it when something changes?
Q: I’ve got a question. I’m hearing what you are saying about view but what about the idea of taking a stand? For example, taking a stand against racism. As in when you were riding the buses. Like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, they took a stand. How do you reconcile taking a stand with lightness of view?
Aaron: This takes us back to satyagraha. One takes a stand and states one’s view with the awareness that others may have an opposing view. You have the need to state your own deepest truth but you cannot do harm in the name of your own deepest truth. To insist that another holds your view is a violence to that person.
You take the stand, how can I best phrase it? It’s what we were doing at the last intensive when we went through that exercise taking turns blocking the beach. “You may not come to the beach.” “I will come to the beach.” People who are A’s are inferior to B’s and they may not come to the beach, they will pollute the beach, so A’s were stating one view, B’s were stating another view. And what we tried to demonstrate in that exercise is that anger does not promote sharing of views and opening to a deeper sense of compassion about views.
That which can deeply hear the other person with compassion is much more able to state its own view without judgment of the other, and therefore without violence against the other. There comes a place where people must hold to their deepest truth, even be willing to die for that truth. Should one be willing to kill for that truth? What do you do with that? I don’t have answers for you there, you have to make your own answers.
If you are, I’m using a situation Barbara found herself in at times, on a Freedom ride or on a picket line where there was violence, the intention to non-violence was not simply a practical move, although certainly it was practical. But rather it asked each participant who was opposing the views of racism to look into their own hearts. You cannot invite somebody to look into their own hearts by shoving them or hitting them. Eventually if you hold the space, they will look into their hearts. They may kill you first. Then somebody else will come and sit in your place.
There’s not an attachment, though. There’s not an attachment to make the other agree with my view, there’s not even an attachment, “My view is right,” only, “In this moment this is what I perceive as truth. I stay as open-minded if I can, and if I see that something else shifts that view, I’m willing to acknowledge that.”
Many of your views are simpler ones. This is that inventory of views that you did with Donald’s book. “I should help others. I should be kind. I should not be lazy. I should wash. I should turn out the lights. I should brush my teeth.” The idea being, if I don’t do these things somehow I’m a bad person, and if you don’t do those things you’re a bad person.
If I believe I should face a certain direction and kneel and pray to Allah every day, and if I don’t do that I’m a bad person, then if I see you not doing that, you’re a bad person. That separates us. Can you then listen to the other person who says, “I don’t do that. What I do is, I sit quietly and in my heart I connect with the divine.” “Oh, that’s your way of kneeling and facing that direction and bowing to Allah. We each have our own way of doing it.”
We get into a whole different issue here and an important one that we will hope to do some talking about today. We’re back full circle to states and stages of consciousness. The stages of consciousness especially because that’s where we live. We can enter different states of consciousness but they may not be stable. But we live from the stages of consciousness.
Mythic consciousness. Fundamentalism in any religion is often deeply mired in mythic consciousness. “I am right. My view is right. This is how it is.” We see this in young children. “My parents are Republicans. Your parents are Democrats. They don’t know anything.” “Well my parents are right. My parents are Democrats.” The child has no idea what a Republican or a Democrat is, simply this is the God, this is what we obey. These are the views we prescribe to. We’re part of this clan, and they’re not that clan. And my clan is better than your clan.
The world lived with that mythic consciousness for literally not just hundreds but thousands of years. That replaced an archaic consciousness was an even lower vibrational consciousness. The archaic consciousness is much more caught in beliefs of, “The world is flat. If we have an eclipse it’s because the gods are angry at us.” So it’s more of a magical consciousness, or pre-magical.
Consider how long the western world has had to shift into rational consciousness and even to begin to emerge more into vision logic consciousness. Consider parts of the world, I’m thinking here of parts of, for example, Afghanistan, that are still very much in a mythical consciousness and were more in an archaic consciousness until fairly recently. You can’t expect a whole culture to shift in a few decades through what it has taken the western world centuries to shift through.
We look at them and say, “They’re wrong. They’re barbarians.” Well this is the level of consciousness they’re at. When a 4 year old hits another 4 year old and says, “That’s my toy!” you don’t say, “You’re bad because you won’t share,” you understand this is the level of consciousness of this child. You talk to the child about it and help them find a way to let go. You don’t shame them. But your society seems intent on shaming those parts of the world which are not yet at the level of consciousness that you as an average are at.
How do you deal more skillfully with those places in the world that are not at that the same level of consciousness? And what about those that are at a higher level of consciousness than you? What fears does it bring up in you? Fears and grasping, both.
You look at me. You’re not afraid of me. I know you love me, you know I love you. But part of you is a bit in awe of me. But I am nothing that you are not. You just have not yet realized it. So I’m stable in a non-dual stage of consciousness and that’s a bit awesome and a little bit frightening to you. What if you really could live from that level of consciousness?
What if I shamed you and said you’re bad because you don’t realize non-dual consciousness? Would that make it any easier? How do we take the brothers and sisters by the hand all over the world that are caught in a lower stage of consciousness and guide them in the same loving way you would your 2 year old, into a more mature consciousness?
Q: My problem is not how to take them by the hand and lead them, my problem is that they have guns and knives to kill me, or kill my family…
Aaron: How do you say no with compassion? How do you say no to a 4 year old who is very angry and picks up a stick and is threatening a sibling?
Q: It’s a different level.
Aaron: It’s a different level but it’s the same principle. When you learn how to do it skillfully with a 4 year old, then you have some clues how to do it in the world. I cannot tell you what to do. You are running your world, not me, not spirit, you, the humans, are in charge here. You have to figure it out.
Yes, if you don’t say no to them, they want to kill you, there’s an enormous amount of hatred generated in some parts of the world. They’re not ready to hear or understand reason.
Have any of you ever been with somebody who was so angry were breaking things, throwing dishes, hitting? What works? What do you do with such a person?
If there were several infants in the room who really could be hurt by this violence, you can’t just step aside and say, “Go ahead, break all the dishes.” What are you going to do?
Q: I leave.
Aaron: Leave. And leave the babies there?
Q: No, take them.
Aaron: Take them. Let them destroy the room. What else? What else might you do?
Q: Call the police.
Q: Restrain them and talk to them.
Q: Talk to them and help them understand the consequences of their action.
Aaron: What if they’re so filled with hatred that they won’t listen to you? They’re simply screaming obscenities while you’re restraining them. What if they’re bigger than you? (something about restraining) This is about your karma. Can you restrain somebody with love who’s violently angry? What’s going to happen within you as you try to restrain this person who’s violent and screaming obscenities and trying to get to his knife or gun?
Has your consciousness evolved to the point that you can restrain that person with love? Not take his diatribe personally? Feel deep compassion for him? And yes, literally restrain him until he is calm enough to hear you? How long will it take before he’s ready to hear you?
I’ve told a story on occasion of a past life in which the being I was wanted to be a monk. He wanted to live a spiritual life. Somebody was found killed and it was believed he was the murderer. He was captured and not given what you would consider a fair trial but they simply said, “Yes, the murderer looked like him, and look he has what looks like blood on his clothes,” not asking where it came from.
So I was thrown into a hole in the ground, a hole about the size of this carpet with steep sides. This was what they used as a prison. There was some small piece of thatching that gave me a bit of shade. Once a day food and water were lowered to me. Once a day a pot of some sort with my body wastes was lifted out. Once a week I was lifted out of the hole, water thrown over me as a quick bath, and lowered back in the hole. I was so angry I was bound as I was pulled up.
Months went by and eventually more than a year. There was so much anger. This was so unfair, I was innocent. Finally I realized what I wanted most in life was to become a monk, to live in solitude. Simply to have my needs taken care of, my very simple needs of food and shelter, so that I could spend my time in meditation. This was being given to me. And these people who were guarding me, they were not evil people, this was simply their work for which they were paid and it gave them a means to feed their own families.
I developed a much kinder attitude. They had not spoken to me because I was so filled with hatred and anger. But as I mellowed I began to ask the jailor, where do you live? Who is your family? What do you do? How does it feel to be up there when I’m down here? We began to talk. We developed a friendship.
This happened within me as well as within them. In the beginning they hated me and I hated them. As I was able more fully to open in compassion to my own situation and to their situation and to respond with compassion, this dialogue developed. Then they began to bring me extra food. They began to leave me sitting up there under a tree for several hours after a much longer bath. They would sit down and eat with me and talk with me. When it was nearing dusk, they would apologetically lower me back down into my hole. My baths became 4 and 5 times a week. True friendship developed. How did it happen?
We’re back to what we spoke of this morning, developing compassion for yourself. When the “other” is filled with hatred, murderous hatred, there’s going to be fear. This calls forth the part in you that feels it has to protect itself. It creates separation, and as long as you hold separation, you can never communicate with the “other”.
When you open your heart deeply to yourself, your own fear and pain, and there’s a deep level of compassion, the outer appearance may be the same. You may still be restraining this person. Can this person be restrained with a deep sense of compassion that no longer separates him and you? Feels his desire to be safe, to be respected for his views, to be heard, and your own desire to feel safe, heard, and respected? This is the only way to begin to heal the division, the hatred, and eventually to raise the consciousness, because more kindness will allow that growth in consciousness.
How to do that practically? The only thing I know is hatred– the Buddha says it so well, “Hatred only engenders hatred.” How do we bring forth love?
Would I kill in a situation, we’ve used this example many times. There’s a man with a machine gun threatening a nursery school class. You’ve come in by a back door. You have a gun. You’re right there behind him. He doesn’t know you’re there, there’s a curtain. You can see him through it, a sheer enough curtain that you can see but he doesn’t know you’re there. You know he’s already killed some people to get into this nursery school classroom, but he’s getting his gun ready to shoot. Are you going to pull the trigger?
People have asked me would I pull the trigger. Yes, I would. However, I feel I could do that with love and without hatred, and asking his forgiveness. And knowing there’s a certain karma in killing him just as there’s a certain karma in letting him kill the children. It’s something each of you have to decide for yourself.
What is violence? Is violence just the act or is it what’s carried in the heart?
Q: I’m not sure how to work with this. When the ones that I feel anger and hatred towards, I don’t <> directly. For example, I have felt that towards the Taliban in Afghanistan, <for> extreme oppression and brutality towards women. And I recently saw a photo of a young woman who had her nose and ears cut off by her husband, who was abusing her, and she ran away. I felt rage, I felt hatred. And I don’t know how to really be with that because I’m helpless in the face of that to do anything about it.
Aaron: I also saw that photograph and it was a haunting picture. Barbara was very pained by that photograph. <The way we suggested that she deal with it,> and at first she had some resistance but she understood the reason behind it, was to hold not only this woman and her sisters but also the men who had done this to her into the heart of compassion. To work with both lovingkindness, <>, and forgiveness and karuna, compassion meditation.
You must understand that this woman is a victim but the men who have harmed her are equally victims. They’re victims of their cultural conditioning. They were babies once, sweet loving babies. And they were conditioned by a culture to grow up into an idea of hatred, prejudice, and violence. How can there not be compassion for such a child who’s forced to grow up in that situation?
Forgiveness is perhaps the most powerful. Turn it from them to yourself, recognizing that in some past lifetimes you have harmed others. In meditation, ask, “Whatever beings have harmed me, I offer forgiveness. Whatever beings I have harmed, I ask forgiveness.” Let your meditation take you there. Just recently, the other night, after seeing Mother Meara, Barbara said she had some very powerful meditations that night and the next morning. She had asked during the darshan for Ma to help support her opening her heart and moving into the deeper interconnection with all beings.
As she was sitting in meditation she began to see horrible images of violence surrounding her, not necessarily happening to her or from her, but surrounding her. And I suggested that she just sit and breathe with it, hold space and send loving energy to it.
Then the image deepened. She saw herself literally pounding stakes into another being’s shoulders and nailing him to the ground with the stakes. And then she saw the same thing being done to her. She could feel it in her shoulders where she has so much pain.
She began to invite the release of those stakes both in her own body and the bodies of all those she had likewise brutalized, that all beings might be released from whatever damage has been done to them through so many lifetimes. She spent several hours just extending forgiveness and asking for forgiveness. She felt the heart opening so much, and she literally felt the release of those painful pieces of wood that she’s been carrying for lifetimes in her shoulders.
This is the only solution I know, lovingkindness and forgiveness. Do you know Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, Please Call Me By My True Names? Reread it. It’s a powerful poem. Talking about that poem, Thay says, for those who have not read it, it’s about a 12 year old who is raped by sea pirates and then throws herself off into the sea and drowns, she cannot bear what’s been done to her. He says it’s easy to condemn the sea pirates but if you had been raised in a violent village where those that you must model yourself on were sea pirates, then you might become such a sea pirate, capable of raping a 12 year old girl. It’s not so easy to condemn yourself.
How do I find compassion for that part of me, that if I grew up in that setting, might be no different? Can I forgive that part of me? And at the same time can I say no to that in the world, but with compassion and not with anger? Or not with hatred. Anger and hatred are not the same thing; there may be anger but it’s a compassionate anger.
Q: There’s a voice in me that says, when you talk about this, it’s too much to ask. It’s just too much to ask.
Aaron: If you decide it’s too much to ask, you don’t have to do it. What are the consequences? At what point to you let go of the view it’s too much to ask? How far are we able to go?
Q: When you talk, I also had this feeling of doom because our culture, we react with guns and missiles. So it’s a very vicious cycle that seems so <endless>.
Aaron: That’s a view. Where does it take you? If you hold on to that view, what’s the logical outcome? Is that where you want to go? If not, what might help to release that view, to transcend that view?
Q: Lots of things that impact me… I find that I can recognize the fear in these situations. I think I’m able to hold a vision of these people’s higher selves and now I’m wondering whether that’s just an escape for me.
Aaron: I don’t think so, I think that’s real. I think that is accurate and I think that’s real, and it’s one way of dealing with the situation. Remembering that beyond this raging brutally violent being there is a divine light, a holy spirit. The human being may be angry but that essence of the being is not angry. Putting it this way, how can we see God in everyone? Even when they’re not manifesting much of that divinity. How can we remember that that’s there? Because that allows us to treat them with more respect and to hear them, even as we are restraining them and doing what needs to be done to make sure they don’t do harm. It’s not kind to allow somebody to kill you. It’s bad karma for them.
If you can restrain them, fine. If you have to kill them, that is much trickier because it’s very hard for most beings to kill with love. Then you’re caught in the karma and simply returning hatred for hatred.
Q: I think that seeing the divine in another can stop them in their tracks. Now, there are levels of violence here. But I have seen that happen at some levels.
Aaron: Barbara speaks very movingly about a sit-in that was very likely to turn very violent. An angry crowd gathered outside. The week before, they had beaten up the group that was sitting in that restaurant. That the group of them sitting in the restaurant sat for a period of time until they were all feeling centered, feeling a strong sense of compassion for those who were jeering and taunting and screaming outside, and then they walked out the door.
She speaks at that point of really seeing the souls of those people, not seeing the angry mob, but loving them. And she knows that the 3 who were with her were also loving them. And the crowd just parted and allowed them to walk out to their car. They had bricks and stones and sticks, but they simply fell aside and let them walk through. This is very powerful. It’s not easy. She knew, they all knew that they could have been badly hurt or killed.
Q: What are some ways, when it is difficult to see the souls of people, what are some ideas that might help us to do that with difficult people?
Aaron: My own favorite through many lifetimes in dealing with a very difficult person is to imagine that person as a nursing infant. How that person was as a baby. To imagine, perhaps, the mother pushing the baby away, not giving the baby the attention he or she needed, so that the baby became needy and angry. It’s very easy to have compassion for that baby.
Q: It occurred to me that the book I’ve been so fond of mentioning, Your Soul’s Plan for Your Life, where agreements are made in the interlife between individuals to harm each other out of love, when you use that as a way of looking behind a vicious person’s behavior or attitude, it certainly disarms the hostility, rather neutralizes it so you can, it makes it easier to have compassion for it. Could you speak to that in terms of escape…
Aaron: Yes, it goes both ways. This person may have incarnated specifically with a soul plan to serve as a catalyst to you. The spouse who never flushes, speaking figuratively, literally dropping the shit all over you, and anger coming up. Part of the plan was for them to be a catalyst for this anger in you so that you learn compassion for yourself and how to speak your needs in a clearer and kinder way without hatred.
The other half of it is that you are a teacher for them as well. That if they have incarnated–Rob doesn’t go into this in as much depth in this book as I would like and I’m hoping in book two that this can be brought out more. I’m one of the ones who are contributing to the book so I’m trying to bring this out, that it goes both ways. And as this person catalyzes anger in you to help you learn to have more compassion, this person also has his or her own karma. And part of that karma may be to figuratively shit on people and that as you learn how to say no in a compassionate way, you help them to resolve their karma. So that this person is not just here as teacher to you, you are here as teacher to them, and it must come together.
Q: I’m addressing the part in another conversation we had this morning, where you could use the elements to avoid something or to fix something. I would assume that this method of imagining some kind of pact that this person made as a device to make it easier for you to be compassionate, to fix the situation by being compassionate.
Aaron: Will you hold that question for after lunch? I want to respect their mealtime here. We’ll come back together later.
What I want you to do after lunch, inventory of your views. What views do you see as predominant in your life and how are you working with them? I want to divide you into, shall we say 3 groups? … Two groups of 8. At 2 o’clock I want you to meet separately. Spend about an hour. We’ll meet back in here at 3 o’clock. So 2 groups of 8 meeting separately at 2 o’clock…(count-off for groups)
Do you all have a group? Yes, okay. You decide where you will meet. Please do take your lunch break and then start at 2. Spend one hour discussing, what are the predominant views in my inventory of views? How am I working with them? What ideas can I get from my sangha here of ways that will help me be less stuck in there views?
(group planning)
I’m going to leave the body. I will see you at 3 in the meditation hall. If it’s beautiful, we may choose to sit outdoors. We’ll see how it is at 3. Thank you.
(session ends)