WSW 9: Physical Pain, Mental Suffering

Now we’re up to verse 10, and this is where we begin a whole long section of various aspects of karma. We are experiencing various sufferings, and we look at the karmic cause for why that is happening to us. Then we deal with that in terms of two things. One is to avoid committing the karmic cause again – in other words, stop continuing to produce this karmic cycle – this wheel of sharp weapons that just keeps on coming back and cutting us. Then we add on top of that tonglen – taking on that similar type of suffering and problem from others. So, it’s a twofold approach that we have here. 

Karma is the impulse with which we act in a certain way – an impulse of energy or it could be a mental impulse that brings us into a certain type of behavior. When we act in a certain way like that on the basis of that impulse, then it leaves certain aftermath that follows from that – certain legacies on our mental continuum. These are various tendencies – various positive and negative force tendencies – that will be to repeat the action. It will ripen in certain circumstances in feeling like repeating the action. We’d like to repeat the action – that’s what comes from it; and then on the basis of feeling like doing that, there is the actual impulse that brings us into the action – that’s the next karma. But also what happens is that, from this ripening of these tendencies, we experience situations in which something similar happens back to us. That also is the ripening of karma. 

If we want to stop this cycle from recurring and recurring, we need to understand voidness. That’s the deepest antidote because if we understand voidness, then we will not have this grasping for a solid “me,” which will cause the karma to ripen in the first place. But before we have that, we need to use provisional strategies for it. So, the first one would be to stop repeating the action that is causing this syndrome, in a very sort of initial level motivation, which is to restrain from acting destructively. If we restrain from acting destructively that is causing this cycle, then that will help us to stop creating more karmic legacies from the small tendencies. Then if we do the tonglen practice on top of that, that helps us to overcome the self-cherishing, which then can help us to overcome, as well, the grasping for the solid “me.” But really, we need to have some understanding of no solid “me” before we can really successfully do this tonglen practice – taking on the suffering of others. But that will further weaken the whole process because, at minimum, what it will do is build up a tremendous amount of positive force to counter the negative force. As a result of that positive force, we’ll be able to understand voidness more easily. 

We have these verses, and it’s going to continue for some time in the text. What I think to do is to go through each of these individually. We can do a little bit of meditation practice with each of them, thinking in terms of our own experience with this type syndrome. 

Verse 10 is: 

When our bodies are aching and racked with great torment of dreadful diseases we cannot endure, this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Till now we have injured the bodies of others; hereafter let’s take on what sickness is theirs.

“Our bodies are aching” – we have pain in our back, a pain in our knees, a pain wherever – and we are “racked with great torment of dreadful diseases.” In other words, we have a lot of suffering from terrible diseases, whether it’s just a simple cold, or flu, or all the way up to whether it’s cancer or whatever, and we can’t endure it, and it’s really terrible. When we are experiencing this bodily type of problem and suffering, it says that “this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done.” This is a ripening of karma; in other words, we are experiencing something similar to what we have done to others happening now to us. What is the karmic cause of it? It’s that we have injured the bodies of others. We’ve hurt others, and by causing others physical pain, then we experience that physical pain. Then for tonglen, it says, “Let’s take on what sickness is theirs.” We’re imaging taking on the sickness and physical pain from them and thinking, “May it ripen on us, and may we be able to give them not only happiness and freedom from this but also freedom from their negative habit of injuring others.” This is the basic structure that we have here. I think that we can do this in steps. 

We had in the sensitivity training course an exercise about restraining from destructive behavior, because a very basic issue, in sensitivity training is to refrain from doing something that is going to hurt somebody else or which is going to hurt ourselves. We looked at various types of destructive behavior patterns that we might have, and tried to recognize them – recognize their destructiveness, their negativity. We tried to think in terms of when others have acted like that toward us, how we didn’t like that, and so nobody else likes that when we act like that way toward them. Then we make the strong decision that we’re going to stop acting that way. I think that with each of these – and starting here with this particular example – we can examine within ourselves, first of all, do we feel, do we experience body pain, and have we hurt others physically? I think we can use our imagination to think of many ways in which we could hurt others physically, besides just punching them in the face, which will cause physical pain to others. We can think, do we still have that type of tendency of hitting others, of striking out at others? What have we done? Then we try to connect it in our minds with experiencing physical pain ourselves, and make the decision to try as much as possible be aware of when we might do something like hitting somebody else. Even if we do it just as a joke, it can still hurt somebody. It could be as simple as hitting our children, or it could be getting into a fight with somebody. Let’s think about this karmic pattern first. 

Also, obviously, if we have caused physical harm to others, and we can see that we’ve had this pattern – maybe we don’t do it so much now, but maybe we did it when we were a child – then we can try to apply the opponent forces of regret, trying not to repeat it. We counteract it with positive things. By the way, it doesn’t have to be that we’ve only done bodily harm to other human beings; we could have killed an awful lot of flies and mosquitos in our life as well. I know in my own case, I certainly have killed an awful lot of insects in my life; particularly when I was young, I was quite into that. 

Do you see the connection between hurting others and self-cherishing, grasping for a solid “me?” When we think in terms of a solid me and “I’m the most important one,” then anything that disturbs me, like a fly or a mosquito, I want to get rid of it. Or anything that I don’t like, I hit out at. Or sometimes, when we just are very frustrated, we’re thinking so much “me” and “what’s happened to me in life is unfair,” think of people who have had very terrible homes and were pretty much deserted, or beaten, or whatever, and then turned criminal. Usually, they think, “It was so unfair what happened to me” – they think in terms of “me,” and then that anger just comes out, and they hurt anybody just to express it. That’s what happens, isn’t it? 

Participant: I always have a problem with one point in this argumentation. Is there a principle of justice, which gives you back what you did to others? 

Dr Berzin: Is there a system of justice here and somebody giving punishment or reward? We can see how a habit could continue from one lifetime to another lifetime, but what about getting into situations in which something similar happens to us? First of all, from a Buddhist point of view there is no judge. There is no judgment. There isn’t an external source that’s giving reward or punishment; it just happens, in a sense, mechanically. Now the question is, why does it happen mechanically? That’s not a very easy question to answer. I’ve thought about that quite a bit. The image that I find helpful with that is, if a has diarrhea in its diaper, then although there will be a continuing tendency to continue to go to toilet in their diaper, they have to live with that dirt, they have to live with the mess that they create. So, if you create a mess – not necessarily dirtying your pants, but if you create a mess – then you have to experience that mess. I think it’s a little bit like that. I can’t think of any other explanation that would make any sense. Carrying on from one lifetime to another – if you don’t have that then the whole thing falls apart because that doesn’t make sense in terms of looking just in one lifetime. We might not have done the things that would correspond to what we experience. But usually there are some tendencies that are there, even if we hadn’t done a lot of very strong things. 

I think of this one friend of mine, who a psychiatrist, and spends her whole life helping people. She gets so much physical suffering, with pain, and sickness, and accidents, and these types of things – it’s always happening. Well, here is somebody who’s spending her whole life trying to be kind and helping others, and this is always happening to her. Does not make any sense? But I’ve also seen with her that she can get very angry in certain situations, with her husband specifically. She could get to the point where she might even hit him, which she would never do with her patients. But there is that tendency that certain things that her husband will do annoy her so much that she has this instinct of reaction. So, usually you can find some slight tendency in ourselves; it’s going to manifest somewhere. It might not be very big, but there is a little bit left over that should be there. That in a sense reconfirms the theory that both these things ripen: that we experience something similar ourselves, and we are continuing the habit. You have things like people who have a very low self-esteem, will often get into relationships which are doomed from the very beginning to failure. They fall in love with somebody that’s absolutely impossible and can’t return that love, somebody who is going to leave them, somebody who can’t commit themselves to them or whatever, and in a sense, it then reconfirms that they are no good. I think we find this; even Western psychology recognizes this type of syndrome. It’s like that. Is that a punishment? No, I don’t think it’s a punishment. I think it’s just two sides of a type of behavioral pattern.

Once we have recognized behavioral patterns in ourselves – “Okay, I have hurt others” – do I continue to hurt others? Well, we might not be continuing to do it, but we certainly may have done it in the past. As I said, examining myself, I certainly was into killing, even torturing, insects when I was a little kid – not something that I’m very proud of, but I certainly had that tendency, and I certainly have a lot of back pain. So, one can recognize these things. Am I going around doing that now? No, but one can look at various, various things that remind one of this type of thing. Taking a place to sit and letting other people stand, for example – causing physical discomfort to others and taking a more comfortable seat myself. There certainly is that tendency. These are very helpful things to recognize within ourselves. Are we ready to stop it? Well, certain levels we may be more readily able to stop than others, but at least you’ll be aware of it. 

Then we do the tonglen practice. It’s actually very difficult and very advanced – as I have said all along – to do it sincerely. But the idea here is that when we have physical pain to think, “May everybody’s back ache come on me, I will take it.” We, of course, need a prepared state of mind to be able to do that, and then be able to dissolve that in terms of our understanding of voidness: it arises from cause and effect and so on, there’s nothing solid about it, no solid “me” that’s experiencing it. In this sense, you can just quiet down, and then in terms of giving to the others, give them also the same thing that we needed, which is not only freedom from that pain but the understanding to stop acting destructively and stop hurting others as well. This is how we do that. Well, this is not very easy. I was speaking with somebody today whose computer crashed, and their hard disc crashed, and they lost a lot of stuff. To approach it in terms of thinking, “May more computer crashes come to me and ripen on me, may everybody’s computer crash come to me – that’s really difficult to do sincerely. It’s nearly impossible for most of us to really mean it. But that’s something to work on. As I said, this tonglen is incredibly difficult to do on any sort of sincere level – to really mean it. What we can just work on initially – and this is what they say is an important component of it – is fighting the resistance that our big “me” puts up; “I don’t want to do this.”

Now, you can’t actually take the karma from somebody else. In most cases it doesn’t work, and when it does work – because there are examples when it actually does work, but that’s very rare – is that by your practice you provide a positive circumstance for somebody else’s positive karma to ripen. You overcome it and, by you doing this practice, it can also act as a circumstance for your negative karma to ripen. So, it’s not that you actually take a karmic potential from somebody else into oneself; what you’re doing is just providing circumstances. When it works, it works like that, but there has to be some super karmic connection with the other person, and what you’re doing has to be really sincere. But I know an example like that because my teacher, who was one of the teachers of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, did that with the Dalai Lama, and in that case it actually worked. But these are incredibly advanced people; for most people, it wouldn’t work. For most people, the emphasis in it is fighting the ego resistance. That’s where you can do the work and develop courage – courage to actually deal and take on other people’s problems, and to take it seriously, take it very seriously. 

For instance, I have an old aunt, ninety-four and a half years old, and she is in the hospital now. I spoke with her, and she really is ready to check out of the hotel of her body – she’s had enough and is ready to go. Other people in the family are very upset about that, and don’t want to hear that, and yell at her when she says things like that, which doesn’t help at all. When I’ve spoken with her, I have said, “Well, I can understand your point of view”. I wanted to give her some support, some sympathy in this, because it is very understandable. She is just struggling to breathe and even if she recovers, her life is not terribly exciting; it’s mostly struggling to breathe. When you think to do this type of practice, what you try to do is to really imagine what it must be like for her, and to really think in terms of experiencing that, and what would the best thing be to give her. So, you think of that. It’d be peace of mind, basically. She has to go at some point; ninety-four and a half is a pretty long life, and she’s not that sick; it’s old age, everything is failing in her, coming apart, breaking. This practice helps you to take really seriously other people’s suffering. Here in particular what we’re doing is, when we have that suffering ourselves, then instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, broadening our perspective and thinking of everybody who has this same type of problem.

If you remember, Shantideva said, “Suffering has no owner, suffering is to be removed not because it’s your suffering or because it’s my suffering, but suffering is to be removed simply because it hurts.” You get into problems with this tonglen practice if you think, “My suffering, my sickness, and now I’m taking on your sickness; so, I’m taking on something that belongs to you, and now it belongs to me.” Whereas if you think of suffering as not having any owner, then we’re just dealing with suffering. It’s only when we identify with it – “Oh, now I have taken on your suffering;” “Oh, I have even more suffering, poor me” – that we can’t really do the practice.

This is why I was saying that I don’t really think that you can do this tonglen practice so easily without some understanding of voidness to start with. Although they do describe that you can do this type of thing before you get a strong understanding of voidness because it helps, in a sense, to punch the ego by the resistance that you have of taking on dirty substances and so on inside you, and so as the courageous bodhisattva you are going to do it anyway. I think that’s a little bit too difficult for most of us. You do have this image – it comes up later on in the text – that Dharmarakshita repeats over and over again: “Trample him, trample him, stamp on the head of selfish concern,” in which you have this very strong thing of thinking, “If raise your head again, I’m going to just smash you” – this ego grasping type of thing. 

So with tonglen, imagining all sorts of filthy substances coming in, representing the problems of other people, you smash the selfishness, but that works on a very emotional level. They always say that there are two approaches. Either you develop bodhichitta first – love and compassion first – and then the understanding of voidness, or the other way around. For some people, you need to understand voidness first, and then you can develop bodhichitta – love and compassion – more easily. There are pros and cons of each of these. If you develop the love and compassion first, and bodhichitta builds up the strong positive force, which will allow you understand voidness; without it your mind is just too unclear. For emotional type of people, this is better. But for more intellectual people, if you understand voidness first, then you understand that the mind is void of true existence, it’s not inherently stained, and so it is possible to achieve enlightenment, it is possible to actually help others to achieve enlightenment. On that basis, then you can develop bodhichitta more easily. I think it’s similar thing here with the tonglen – that there are two ways of approaching it. But if you already have some understanding of no owner of suffering – there’s no one that owns it – then I think it’s much easier to take on the suffering of others without freaking out. I know I find it very difficult to be sincere about this – that I – “me,” solid “me” – am now going to experience the whole world’s backaches or the whole world’s computer crashes? It’s very difficult to have that on any sort of level of sincerity if you’re thinking in terms of a solid “me.”

The standard way that we do tonglen is that first we need to calm down. We have to get into the proper state of mind to be able to do this, so first we have to imagine that the mind is relaxed, we’re free from worry, free from mental wandering, free from dullness. We breathe that out; we imagine we have just come out of a fresh shower so our mind is fresh and alert, and any sort of worry and anxiety we breathe out. Then we also need to have this equal attitude – the equanimity that we spoke about, of not being attracted to some, and repelled by others, and indifferent to others, but open to everybody. If we’re going to do this tonglen practice, we want to have it toward everybody; and then develop interest in other people’s problems, and empathy – to try to feel like what they have; and then compassion – that wish for them to be free from this. It’s only on the basis of that that we can think actually to take it on. 

When we imagined the problems of others coming into us in various forms – the least heavy one is just in the form of what’s usually just referred to as black light, but since light can’t be black we can think of black smoke or something like that coming into us – we have to be not afraid to feel whatever pain that they are feeling. We have to even not be afraid to feel our own pain – it’s only a sensation. We saw with the example – we used this in the sensitivity training – that if you tickle your palm of your hand and scratch it very hard and just hold your hand, what’s the difference? It’s just a sensation; it’s no big deal. The same thing with emotional feelings: there is no big deal; it’s just a feeling; it’s just a sensation. We’re willing to feel that pain – willing to feel the pain of the computer crashes – and in this case the pain of others’ physical sicknesses, and have that come in, feel it in a sense, experience it. We used a very simple example of waves on the ocean; it doesn’t disturb the depth of the ocean of mind. Eventually it quiets down. 

We can also think more actively in terms of voidness – that there is no true owner of the thing; that these things arise from causes and conditions. There is nothing solid about them; they pass. There are many ways in which we can think of this suffering so that we don’t freak out, we don’t just hold it inside us, and quiets down. Then on the basis of this, that same solutions that we want to give to ourselves – which is to stop hurting others – we send that inside out. We send that decision out to others as well – for them to stop to doing that; and the wish for them to be free of the back pain as well – which would include ourselves, of course. Because if nobody is the owner of the suffering, nobody is the owner of the happiness either; no solid person – it’s everybody. 

Now, unfortunately there are many steps in this, but we can do it just briefly, without making it a huge thing, because it will be the same thing for all these verses. Eventually we’ll get into the custom for doing this. We think to quiet the mind by using the letting go method – that as we breathe out, we let go. We imagine tension, worry, and speediness leaving us with our breath, and we imagine that dullness leaves us by feeling that we’ve just come out of a fresh shower. Then we calm down feelings of attraction to some, or repulsion from others, or indifference to others. We think how everybody is a person like us – they don’t want to be clung to, or rejected, or ignored. Likewise, we let go of being overprotective, or frightened, or feeling that we’re too busy by letting go with that, as we breathe out. Then we think of this problem that others are facing, including ourselves, which is – it says in the text – physical pain, pain from sickness. Nobody likes it just as I don’t like it. We develop interest – that we’re all interrelated with each other and this pain of everybody has to be removed just because it hurts. We develop compassion – that just as we want this pain and sickness to end, so does everybody else. Just as we would like others to help us, everybody else would like us to help them, all the same, so we develop willingness to get involved. It’s just a sensation, whatever their pain might be, so it’s nothing to be frightened of. 

Then we imagine taking on this physical pain and sickness that they might have – that everybody might have – as we breathe in. We imagine it leaving them in the form of black smoke. We imagine it coming into us as we breathe in, and dissolving at our heart, like we feel it. It sort of makes some ripple on the surface of the ocean of the mind, but it eventually quiets down. We then slowly breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, and then after a while let it settle. So, we stop thinking in such a limited way just about my back ache, or my cold, or my flu, and think of everybody’s. It has no owner, and whatever pain there is – it’s just pain. We can experience it, but we can experience it with equanimity – it’s not upsetting. If there is a big, strong, ugly ego “me” that doesn’t want to do this, just do it anyway; try to dissolve that thought and feeling of a solid “me.” Then the whole thing settles down like waves on the ocean. We give to the others – which includes ourselves, of course – not just the freedom from the pain but freedom from this habit and tendency to actually physically hurt others. Then when we become a little bit used to this, we can do it all together. As we breathe in take away that pain, let it settle; as we breathe out, give them freedom from that, and the understanding, and restraint to stop hurting others. Then we let the experience from the practice settle and focus on the breath. 

Verse 11:

Depressed and forlorn, when we feel mental anguish, this is the wheel of sharp weapons returning full circle upon us from wrongs we have done. Till now we have deeply disturbed the minds of others; hereafter let’s take on this suffering ourselves.

Here the suffering, the difficulty, is being depressed. “Forlorn” just means feeling really down and that nothing is going to work. We feel mental anguish – so again that’s real sadness and so on. This is wheel of sharp weapons, and so what we had done; the karmic cause for that is disturbing the minds of others. If we have disturbed the minds of others, then our own minds get disturbed and we feel depressed, and hopeless, and sad and so on. We want to do a similar process to what we did in the previous verse – to think in terms of how we might have disturbed the minds of others, made them sad, made them depressed; and how our feeling depressed, and sad, and hopeless ourselves is the result of that. Then we wish not to repeat that, and then think in terms of tonglen – taking on the same type of problem of others and giving them likewise the discipline and freedom from acting in this way. We can go through these steps ourselves for a few minutes, thinking about this example. 

So, that’s this verse. Why don’t we end here, and we’ll continue with this type of practice and process next time. We think whatever positive force has come from this, whatever understanding has come from this, may it act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.