Just Doing the Best I Can

During the group meditation practice tonight, I did the usual guidance that I did, never knowing if it is useful or not. I suspect that most practitioners don’t really need very much guidance. The one newcomer to the group today remarked at the end that she didn’t really listen much to the instructions, and just went directly into her practice. The confusion for me was that she had mentioned she wanted more instruction at the beginning of the class! What this points out, for me, is that one really never knows what another person really needs, unless they can see deeply into that person. And that requires a lot of mind training and patience as well.

I start to acknowledge in my reflection that most of what human beings do is really for their own benefit, not for anyone else’s. This might sound counter-intuitive from a Buddhist perspective. What I actually mean is that mind is only interacting with itself. It gives rise to intentions, but the intentions never go past mind itself. I remember the Venerable using this example on the recent Five Day Meditation Retreat: when I send an email to someone and receive a reply, from whom do I receive the reply? Is it really someone else that I interact with, or my own thoughts? It is not so easy to say, particularly when the email is fairly neutral. But if I see an email and start to have angry or irritated thoughts, am I irritated with a real person? Is it ‘their words’ I am irritated with, or the words created in mind?

If I apply this principle to the example of guiding meditation: if I only measure what I do in terms of its presumed impact on someone else, I might end up limiting what I actually do. It might even be a bit discouraging to realize that the majority of our efforts often don’t receive the same level of recognition or acknowledgment that one puts into it. This is a sad reality for all beings on the planet. Even animals, I surmise, put far more effort into trapping their food and securing it from other animals, than actually enjoying their food.

The way I understand Buddhist perspectives on nature is that results are often the result of many, many causes. Why we have affinity with one person and not another is a very mysterious process which likely results from the karmic connections I have developed with people over many lifetimes. With this perspective, it is hardly surprising (or at least shouldn’t be) that what works in some situations might not work in others. It is for the reason that the myriad conditions ripened in one spot, but not in another. But the sun ends up shining on all patches of ground, meaning my intention needs to be consistent, coming from an original source in mind. That is why one has to keep trying to develop affinities with all beings, even if those relationships are only seeds in this lifetime. In the long run, those small intentions do go a way in helping others in their paths.

But from an ultimate perspective, are there separate beings after all? The only way to understand that (which I don’t) is keep using the huatou or other practice method to question what is that which is all things? From this perspective, the only one who makes me sad is my previous thought. And it doesn’t need to make me feel sad, any more than I need to go to my bed post and stub my toe against it! When I ‘do my best’, am I really doing my best for someone else? Who else is there beyond the experience itself, as it is unfolding in awareness?