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Everyone as a Friend
Jeffrey Hopkins explains the Buddhist logic of embracing our enemies as our friends.
So how should we view sentient beings? If they have all been in every possible relationship with us from time without beginning (and time has no beginning in Buddhism), should we consider them to be enemies? Everyone has indeed been the enemy—the person who wants me to trip, fall down the stairs, break a leg. My first teacher, Geshe Wangyal, said that one problem with this outlook would be that you’d have to go out and kill everybody.
Difficult to do. Everyone has also been neutral, like the many people we pass on the streets; we may even know some faces, but we don’t have any open relationship with them. They are just people working here or there; we may see them often, but there is neither desire nor hatred. Should we consider them to be neutral? Or should we consider these people to be friends?
The answer given by popular early twentieth-century Tibetan lama Pabongka is provocative. It is not an abstract principle, but refers to common experience. To render it in my own words: If your close friend became crazed and attacked you with a knife, you would attempt to relieve him of the knife and get his mind back in its natural state; you would use the appropriate means to take the knife, but you wouldn’t then kick him in the head.
Pabongka himself uses the example of one’s own mother: If your mother became crazed and attacked you with a knife, you would relieve her of the knife. You would not then proceed to beat her up. That’s his appeal: Once there’s a profoundly close relationship, the close relationship predominates. Why is a friend acting so terribly? Why is she turning against you and attacking you? It’s due to a counterproductive attitude—a distortion—in the person’s mind.
Indeed, if your own best friend went mad and came at you with a knife to kill you, what would you do? You would seek to disarm your friend, but then you would not proceed to beat the person, would you? You would disarm the attacker in whatever way you could—you might even have to hit the person in order to disarm him, but once you had managed to disarm him, you would not go on to hurt him. Why? Because he is close to you. If you felt that everyone in the whole universe was in the same relationship to you as your very best friend, and if you saw anyone who attacked you as your best friend gone mad, you would not respond with hatred. You would respond with behavior that was appropriate, but you would not be seeking to retaliate and harm the person out of hatred.
He would be too dear to you.
Therefore, in teaching compassion, Buddhists do not choose a neutral person as the example of all sentient beings; they choose the strongest of all examples, their best friend. Your feeling for that person is the feeling you should ideally have for every sentient being. You cannot go up to the police officer on the corner and hug her. But you can, inwardly, value her, as well as all sentient beings, as your best friend.
So if everyone in the past has been close, then there is good reason that closeness should predominate. And this becomes a reason—in addition to the similarity between oneself and others—for meditatively cultivating love and compassion, rather than hatred and distance, with respect to everyone. It is not sufficient merely to see that sentient beings are suffering. You must also develop a sense of closeness with them, a sense that they are dear. With that combination—seeing that people suffer and thinking of them as dear—you can develop compassion. So, after meditatively transforming your attitude toward friends, enemies, and neutral persons such that you have gained progress in becoming even-minded toward all of them, the next step is to meditate on everyone as friends, to feel that they have been profoundly close.
I think we all dislike ourselves at times for the suffering our attachments cause us and others. Although I can't truly empathize with a recovering addict, I did manage to kick the smoking habit nearly thirty years ago, and I understand the mechanism. Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede in the Retreat: "The Precepts as Practice" talks about a clearing ceremony. If I have it right, it goes "For all suffering I have caused, in this life and all others, through actions of body, speech, and mind; for reasons of greed, anger, or delusion, I now know shame and repentance." It is repeated aloud or silently prior to sitting, which at least for me, clears the air a bit, helping to still the "monkey mind" that insists on living in the past or worrying about the future. The best part of my studies in Buddhism, and I'm just a beginner, is to know in my heart that we are all part of the same spirit. The ego-mind that masquerades as us and helps the body indulge in non-virtuous activities is an illusion, albeit a powerful one. I believe Namaste is loosely translated "The divine spirit in me recognizes the divine spirit in you." If we, as a sangha, cherish you, and we do, then you can mirror that within yourself. Just as the Lotus rises from the mud, but is not sullied by it, so can your essence rise from the difficulties of your physical life, and be as beautiful as a morning sunrise. The part of you that you hate is composed of emptiness; what is really you is composed of basic goodness, and can never die. Be well, and when things seem dark, use the sixth chakra, your third eye, to look inward to see your true self.
Sabbe sattha sikhu hontu.
K
Hi Jennifer ... I took his statement as "how it works for most people" -- the ones I call "normal people"; however, there is a great swath of people who don't cherish themselves. For example, most addicts loath themselves ... I know because I'm one and all the people I meet in recovery say much the same about themselves. For us (and I'm sure the group is bigger than just recovering addicts), we wouldn't dream of treating anyone else in the same horrible manner that we've dished out to ourselves 24/7 for several decades in some cases.
When I started in recovery, I absolutely could NOT do a metta meditation -- I nearly strangled on the first part when I was to treat myself with loving kindness. For people like me, I needed to force myself through that meditation for weeks in order to "meet myself" and learn to treat myself with compassion and in the words of the author, "cherish myself".
The point is -- I'm not "normal". I have decades of addictive behaviour colouring my every thought. I also appreciate that there are loads of cultures out there that do not understand the concepts of "low self-esteem" or "self-hatred". I don't think they have any problems with cherishing the self. But for people like me, that's step one. So I guess that's my convoluted answer -- being able to cherish oneself is probably normal for "normal people" and most addicts aren't "normal". We have to learn the concept -- often through meditation. Other groups might as well... I only speak of addicts because that's the peeps I know.
Namaste,
Kate
Respectfully, I acknowledge the credentials of the writer, and his position as interpreter to the Dalai Lama is taken with great respect. However, the statement that we do not have to enter meditation to cherish ourselves, gave me great pause. It did not resonate. It seems to me, humbly, that much suffering is in fact because some of us do not hold ourselves dear, and without that basis, how can we cherish others? I think there is a difference between being self centered and cherishing self. This may just be a matter of semantics and i may be misunderstanding the writer, but I think our petty thoughts when one looks at them deeply, often actually arise from a lack of self love. Then again,it is likely different for different people. I welcome clarification or even disagreement, as i am just trying to understand. Thank you.
The world is cluttered with divisive labels: white, black, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Asian, Mexican, and on and on, ad infinitum. Stripping away the labels to see what lies beneath, the Tribe of Man, is a daunting task. The labels are glued in place with decades, maybe even millennia of "wrong view". To go even further, to the very root of sentience, is a veritable impossibility for the average human. Meanwhile, we act on the image projected by the labels, encumbered by the wrong view of our parents, peer groups, and the collective stains of our environment, upbringing and education. Our "civilization", as it exists, is unsustainable. Somehow, we must find our way through the fog of divisiveness to begin to live in a more "tribal" fashion. Only when we fully support each other can we hope to get to the next level. Where do we start? The only advice that comes to mind is Gandhi's "You must be the change that you hope to create in the world." It's a tough assignment.