Mind Training – Step Two: Experiencing the whole body
I was standing on the train, when someone behind me said
“What the fuck you looking at?”
I turned around to see what was going on. One passenger, his face a mask of menace,was challenging another passenger who, it seemed, had gazed in his direction. He was intimidating, and imprisoned in paranoia.
If this guy is enraged by a glance, how would he react to a harsh word or a threat?
How easily are we disturbed? How do we interpret an inadvertent glance in a public place? How do we respond to temptation? Seduction? The lure of an ad? The threats and promises made by a boss, a coworker, a political speech? A bad driver on a dark road?
Avoid it? Roll with it? Dig in? Flip out?
We encounter some of that, every day. We train to deal with it.
The guy who was challenged by the nut on the train just opened his palms for a second, said “Nothing, nothing” looked down and moved on. Was he therefore a weenie? Maybe next time someone will shoot someone or tear up their body in a savage rage. Would that be tough?
The Buddha said:
“Dear Monks, if a person does not get angry or form a hateful mind even when he is dragged, placed upside down… and cut with a saw, he is indeed a disciple who recalls my advice.”
(from the Kakacupama Sutta, The Simile of the Saw, Majjhima Nikaya 2)
Jesus said:
“…do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.”
These traditions share an ideal of forbearance under provocation. But in both traditions there is a spectrum of response to violence.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war…
…However, “as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.”
The same spectrum is apparent in the gulf between the Kakacupama Sutta and the Dalai Lama’s comment on the right of self-defense:
“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.” (Seattle Times, May 15, 2001).
While individuals may not always have the spiritual capacity to fulfill the ideals of their tradition, the ideals function like kata, as a goal toward which to strive. As we make effort to do that we refine our lives and increase our skill.
As the story goes, over the course of millions of lifetimes the Buddha worked tirelessly and suffered willingly, accumulating the virtue that would lead him to complete perfection and fulfillment of his mission. With kindness and generosity the Buddha sacrificed his blood and body, his fortune and power, his kingship, family, house and property, he clung to nothing that could bring benefit to living beings.
One great sage is said to have given his eyes to a man who asked for them. We might not want to imitate an act like that as a beginner. But people do give blood, and bodily organs, wealth, property and years of service because they want to do some good in the world.
But most of us cannot start with heroic sacrifice on a grand scale. If we tried it, it would backfire. It is wise to start small and train up. Just as with physical training, you keep going step by step and improve. Soon you can accomplish what you could barely imagine when you began.
The process works the same way when we train in generosity. One woman who was so moved by hearing a sermon in praise of giving that she gave the speaker her house. She regretted it. She became poor. She had to live in her car. Instead of collecting the results of generosity it seems she collected the results of egotism, haste, magical thinking and impulsive action without training.
For training in generosity, we start with what we can give wholeheartedly. Vegetables from the garden. We can train in forgiveness as well. We work on it consciously, first in small matters, minor irritations and inconveniences. Then we can build our skill.
We can see what happens when people cultivate the opposite: Intimidation, raiding and killing are celebrated as virile, and as right. Intoxicated by the prospect of victory and the spoils of war, this path leads to squalid lives and broken societies. It is proven by totalitarian states, feuding tribes and gang cultures who valorize cruelty, avarice and violence.
Back when I was a detective our squad met for a briefing every morning, where new cases were assigned. There was bad news every day. The innocent suffered. We tried to see what we could do to assure that the wicked wouldn’t prosper. Every morning we read the reports, reviewed the facts, looked for patterns and people we knew. I didn’t much follow the news about crimes happening far away. But I heard about one that stood out to me.
One spring morning in the town of West Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania, in Amish country, a man walked into a village school. He sent the boys and the young mothers out. He barricaded himself in the classroom with a group of little girls, and held them hostage.
Two of the girls asked him if he would kill them first, and let the other girls go. People said later that these two girls were trying to delay the killing, hoping help was on the way. The presence of mind of those girls is hard to comprehend, isn’t it? Soon help arrived. The police set up in the parking lot outside the school. As the state troopers began hostage negotiations, the man in the school shot the girls, and then killed himself.
On the day of the shooting, a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, “We must not think evil of this man”. Another Amish father noted, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he’s standing before a just God”. Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren Community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained: “I don’t think there’s anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts”.
It was not the cruelty of the crime that stood out to me as I read about it that day. At my desk, dozens of case files stacked, marked with sticky notes; wearing a gun, badge, handcuffs, the appurtenances of manhandling one takes for granted in that job; preparing documents for court, writing up interview notes, getting ready to start calling witnesses, the lab or the boss, I would see the headlines as the day began.
Stories of outrages made the rounds every day. It was the response in that Amish one that stood out. Clear and bright. Noble and good. The example of decent people, so uncommon, and so moving. A purity of heart that comes from training the mind to distinguish what is right and what is wrong, what is good to do and what is to be avoided, placing life in a context that extends beyond life and the world. I was witnessing the lives of people who trained to live in purity. And prepared to die, righteously, whenever they may be called.
They were following Jesus’ instruction in forbearance:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.”
The fairness of the eye for an eye, the Hebrew code of justice, was better than rage and revenge, but fairness is not a high ideal. It resembles the pre-Christian European custom of wergild – blood money – paid by a criminal to the family of a murdered man, or by the losing side in a war, as compensation to the families on the side of the victors, for the lives of those killed in battle. Each of the winner’s dead had a price, according to their rank – a fortune for a duke or a prince. Pennies for a peasant. The cost was totaled up and collected, as justice, to settle the account, as retribution after the war, or to commute responsibility for the murder. Each life had a price. Like objects, animals or land. Fair enough.
But calculating mere fairness as a basis for relationships in a family, or in any human community, diminishes the relationships. It is better than unfairness and exploitation. But to be “fair” each person gives only as much as they have to give. As in any transaction people are incentivized to give the least and to try to get the most. 50-50 is the best you can do.
To give everything to the people you love, care for, and live with is a better way. Families and communities, guided by this higher ethos, thrive and prosper to a degree and in ways unimaginable in a world limited to businesslike fairness.
By training we become strong, confident, and clear minded. We can overlook the faults of others if we want to. We can decide to turn the other cheek as an act of will. There is no virtue in turning the other cheek if you are compelled to. Then you are not making a wholesome choice. In that case you are a victim.
Both Jesus and Buddha used similes in their teaching. The technique is useful, to make a point without resorting to theory, or to emphasize a point by letting an extreme example represent a spectrum of possibility. Neither spoke like lawyers or Pharisees. Both spoke plainly and also used poetic language. The other cheek and the simile of the saw can be understood literally but also to represent a range of responses to a range of confrontational, aggressive, rude, challenging or belligerent behavior.
The I Ching is a Chinese classic rooted in Taoism, but widely interpreted through the lens of Confucian thought. Translator Richard Wilhelm comments on hexagram 43 “Resolution”:
…The struggle (with evil) must not be carried on directly by force. If evil is branded, it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favor of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end, because this we find ourselves entangled in hatred and passion…
It is interesting to note that Wilhelm was working on this translation at the time of the Anglo-Japanese siege of the Chinese port of Tsingtao, which at the time was a German concession. He lived there at that time. He was familiar with war, rumors of war, and the inclinations of the human heart and mind under threat. He noted the consonance of the I Ching’s advice with Christian values, although the I Ching was compiled millennia before the Christian era. Some wisdom seems perennial, doesn’t it?
A classic Buddhist presentation of the first level of hell describes the beings born there as appearing fully formed in adult bodies. On arrival they are on fire with rage, seeing everyone they meet as a hated enemy. Immediately they pick up anything they can use as a weapon – a stick, a rock – and in a hate-fueled frenzy begin to smash and destroy the bodies of whoever is nearby.
We can see an emulation of this spirit of hell in the group violence on city streets and in war zones in this world. It is reflected in the escalating caustic tenor of the public discourse today.
The West Nickle Mines shooting was brought to mind by the stabbing deaths of three little girls at a ballet class in England recently. Different cultural contexts, but identical suffering of innocents. The West Nickle Mines shooter was dead, the threat was ended, when the grieving families and neighbors responded with the good they had learned. The case in England was different. The threat remained. No remorse. No unified community response. No peaceful aftermath for reflection. For most there was no prospect of justice, temporal or ultimate. They had no way to calm the hearts of the grieving friends, families and neighbors. This yielded a different response.
It is useful for each of us – on a train, in a school, at a community event, anywhere – to remember that forgiveness is not passivity. It is not acceptance of abuse, indifference to disrespect, or tolerance of crime against you, your family or your neighbors. Forgiveness has an essential application and function. But it is not ignorance. It is not crime prevention.
Forgiveness is not something you can pretend to do. Or command someone else to do. Or can do perfectly without training, especially for those who are living in family and community life, with all the reposnsibility you have to care for and protect the people who are depending on you. Forgiveness is an ideal toward which to strive, to protect the well-being of your own heart and mind, and to prevent the spread of poison.
It is good to stop a threat before it arises. By protective measures, by strength and dignity, by cultivating a decent and peaceful culture. It is good to capture the criminal and prevent them from repeating their violent, selfish acts.
We all know that Iago tricked the gullible Othello into believing that his innocent and beloved wife Desdemona had betrayed him with a lover. We know that Othello, moved by jealousy, killed her, as Iago planned. We understand Othello. We don’t understand Iago. There is speculation: envy in being passed over for promotion. The blind hate of spurned love. Arrogance. Delight in causing suffering for its own sake. Coleridge described Iago’s deceit as “the motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity.” He did it because he felt like doing it. Like the threatening outburst by the nut on the train.
If there were armed guards at the Amish school maybe the killer would have been deterred. If Othello was self-confident enough and poised enough to check both sides of the story maybe he and Desdemona would have lived happily ever after.
If governments, companies and trillionaires conspired to spend even a few billion dollars encouraging people to do right, valorizing kindness, generosity and patience instead of enmity, intoxication, and excess, maybe there would not be so many miserable people, violent deaths, and cultural convulsions. What if the technosaurs finally saw that more and faster was not going to help? They could apply their genius, their brilliant employees’ talents, their wealth and influence, to finding the way that leads to peace, love and understanding, instead of hurtling to Mordor, herding us toward the leading edge of a big black hole.
What if? But, here we are. It is up to us. To train well. To do right. To eradicate the darkness in our sphere of influence and in our hearts. That will only happen if we train our bodies and our minds well.
Today in our mind traianing session we took the next step as we practiced, extending the awareness of the whole body from our attention on the breath. The sensation of the breath as it moves in and as it moves out at the center of our awareness. Noting in and out breaths. Noting when the breath is long that it is long, and noting when the breath is short that it is short. But keeping the awareness on the sensation of the breath as it moves, at the nostrils, at the upper lip, wherever it you feel it moving as you breathe.
Our ability to stabilize the mind on the breath in this way is based on the cultivation of our own moral and ethical conduct. The clarity of mind we develop as we train allows us to detect more and more subtle conditions of the mind, and so to eliminate the unwholesome and cultivate the wholesome.
Now we extend the awareness of the breath to the whole body, experiencing the whole body,
as we place our attention at the single point where we mostly distinctly feel the breath, as we inhale and exhale.
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Post Copyright © 2024 Jeffrey Brooks, MountainKarateNC.com, Yamabayashi Ryu, Mountain Karate, Saluda, NC
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