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Everyone as a Friend
Jeffrey Hopkins explains the Buddhist logic of embracing our enemies as our friends.
In meditation, take individual persons to mind, starting with your friends. Reflect on how close your best friend is—recognize your attitude, for example, when your friend needs your concern, like when she’s ill. This is an appeal to common experience—to how we already naturally react to close friends. Then, in meditation, extend this feeling to more beings.
First you need to recognize people as having been friend, enemy, and neutral person countless times over countless lifetimes— or at least you can’t say that there isn’t anyone who hasn’t been a friend, or you can’t say there isn’t anyone who hasn’t been an enemy, or you can’t say with surety that there’s anyone who hasn’t been neutral. Once you recognize this, it’s possible to begin to recognize everyone as friends.
To consider ourselves dear we usually do not have to enter into meditation. We cherish ourselves greatly. When we see ourselves suffering, we have no problem in wishing to escape that suffering. The problem lies in not cherishing others. The ability to cherish others has to be cultivated. In meditation:
1. Visualize someone you like very much and then superimpose the image of someone toward whom you are neutral. Alternate between the two images until you value the person toward whom you are neutral as much as the friend.
2. Then superimpose, in succession, the images of a number of people toward whom you are neutral, until you value each of them as much as the greatest of friends.
3. When you have developed facility with those two steps, it is possible to extend the meditation to enemies.
For me, it’s much more disruptive to think about my friends as having been enemies than it is to think about my enemies as having been friends. No matter how difficult it is to think of a hated enemy as having been a close friend in a recent lifetime, it’s more disruptive to think of my close friend as having been an enemy. With regard to neutral people, it’s shocking, a whole new perspective, to think, “Just two lifetimes ago, we were very close friends, and now by the force of our own actions we don’t even know each other, don’t even care about each other, we neglect each other, we’re indifferent.”
Is it convincing to base subsequent practices on this notion of cross-positioning over the course of lives? I think it is, but success in changing attitudes certainly isn’t easy to achieve, since it depends on either a belief in rebirth or a willingness to play out the rebirth perspective. Nevertheless, both of these provide a strong foundation, whereas if the appeal were to an abstract principle or because Buddha said so, it would be all right for a day or two but would not be profoundly moving.
The other approach—that doesn’t rely on rebirth—is merely that we’re all equal in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering. And if it’s worthwhile for me to gain happiness, then it’s worthwhile for everyone else to gain happiness. Noticing this similarity makes us close. The late-fourteenth-century yogi-scholar Tsongkhapa says that in order to generate compassion, it is necessary to understand how beings suffer and to have a sense of closeness to them. He says that otherwise, when you understand how they suffer, you’ll take delight in it. For example, so-and-so enemy just got liver disease, and you think, “Good riddance. She’s getting what she deserves.”
Thus, in order to care for other beings, it’s not sufficient merely to know that they suffer, because knowledge that a person is suffering this way might make you happy, especially if that person is an enemy. “May this person be run over.” We all have such thoughts due to a lack of intimacy. Not only must we know the depths of their suffering, but they must be dear to us.
In short, for compassion to develop toward a wide range of persons, mere knowledge of how beings suffer is not sufficient; there has to be a sense of closeness with regard to every being. That intimacy is established either through merely reflecting that everyone equally wants happiness and doesn’t want suffering, or through reflecting on the implications of rebirth, or both, with the one reinforcing the other. Both techniques rely on noticing our own common experience and extending its implications to others. ▼
Jeffrey Hopkins served for a decade as the interpreter to the Dalai Lama. He is Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia. From Cultivating Compassion, © 2001 by Jeffrey Hopkins. Reprinted with permission of Broadway Books.
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
This has resonance with me because it reminds me of the confession from the Episcopal prayers of the people, I.e. "things done and left undone"... Thanks for the words from the clearing ceremony.
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.