Buddhist practice:
joy and compassion

I am absolutely delighted to be here. I came to the United States back from Asia about a year ago

I live in a very small town of about 5000 people and my family and I are the only Buddhists. It is just such a delight that I come here and am able to share a Wesak festival with all of you, because it gets lonely out there in the hinterlands. And it is a delight to find other people that are really trying to be mindful, to stay aware and to practice.

One of the things that is interesting for me is living in a small town where there are no Buddhists. One of the reasons that I live in that small town is because it is where my mother used to live and where I grew up. Over the thirty years that I was in Asia doing business things, part of my practice was that I went and tried to acquire spiritual kinds of art objects. Over the period of those thirty years when I acquired an art object I would send it back to the United States and store it in my mother’s basement. Now over thirty years there was a lot of art that was in my mother’s basement. When she was getting older and needed to go into managed care I was left with a dilemma. I had a basement full of religious art objects. I either had to find a place to store all of that stuff, or buy my mother’s house and have it sitting there as storage in a little town in Iowa that I have no relatives living there at all.

We had no intentions of coming back to the United States but through a series of events we came back and now I live in that house that I bought from my mother because the work that I do allows me to basically live anywhere.

We moved all of that art upstairs. We have the equivalent of a little Buddhist temple in Harlan, Iowa. If you walk in there are alters everywhere and pictures and all kinds of spiritual objects accumu-lated over a thirty-year period of time.

What is interesting is that when people come into our house, whether it is the plumber or someone installing the carpet, you get a very interesting reaction from them when they walk in. They go in and there is a nine-foot Buddha in the hallway. It is interesting because most people don’t look at it. They look down.

Usually after they have been in the house for a while questions start to come. Now I’ve learned a couple of things being back in American and one of the things is that by and large, Americans have very short attention spans. So, when they ask you what is Buddhism you haven’t got very long to keep their attention. A real tricky thing to do is to describe what is Bud-dhism in about the 60 seconds slot you have that you can actually maintain their full attention. That is kind of a practice I have been doing. I describe Buddhism as a practice, just that. It’s not a religion. It’s about being conscious about how we live our lives.

One of the things that was a part of many of the traditions that I studied in was that we took some time and we stopped for a moment and we started to look at our practice. What is your practice of Buddhism? What is it that you at this moment, are trying to stay mindful of?

A lot of times, it is easy for us as Buddhists to define our practice as how often we sit. To me, the meditation is just the preamble; it is the exercise that I do in order to help my practice.

My practice is how to go through my life changing those unwholesome behaviors that are a part of my personality and are just automatic. A lot of times I do mean things, but I don’t mean to be mean, I just do them because that is the pattern of behavior that I have gotten in. When I get defensive I might say something like “Arrggh” and a part of my practice is how do I stay conscious? How do I stay aware of “hey, there is nothing that is worth getting angry about”?

Probably a lot of you are a lot farther along in this than I am. What happens is a little bit of aggravation, or a little bit of annoyance, or a little bit of plain insensitivity gets in the way of me being a practicing Buddhist. Sometimes what happens is that I lose my sense of joy in living. And one of the things that is an integral part of my practice is staying in that space where there is joy in every moment. That place where we start to realize the wonder of our lives and how lucky we are to be in this moment and sharing it with each other.

This is Wesak. This is the time for use to look at ourselves and say, “wow, we are practicing Buddhists”. And we look around at the people around us and we say, “wow, this is my sangha today. These are the people that are helping me practice. They are helping me practice by helping me to stay mindful, conscious and aware. They acknowledge and share with a smile or a look, the wonder of this life that we all share together.” It is an incredible thing to think about, and it is a part of what we need to bring into our lives.

How do we live a life where there is joy in every moment? Most of us have those pre-programmed, automatic behaviors such as “when I’m bored or when I am upset, somehow it is somebody else’s fault.” The nice thing about joy is that joy is a quality that starts on the inside and then radiates out. It has nothing to do with the outside; it just has to do with the inside. I ask you today, as a practicing Buddhist, are you radiating that kind of joy? Are you the kind of person that when you walk into a room there is just that sense of “wow, that person is really here, that person understands the miracle of every single moment that we exist”?

Part of my practice is to remember that, because I forget it. When somebody cuts me off in traffic [growl] and I’m not there any more. Sometimes I get bored and sometimes I think my work is too hard, and sometimes I don’t like my son and sometimes my wife has got me annoyed and I forget those things. But the practice for me is joy in every moment. If your life is not filled with joy what do you do?

I think the message for us is really quite clear. What we do is that within ourselves we start to radiate that joy. We start to find things that we are joyful about. One of the best ways to express joy is to express it in relation to other people. That is real service—to be joyful about you or others and their joy; to take pleasure in other people’s accomplishments’ rather than our own; to actually move into a place where we are looking for good things to say about each other. We are trying to find ways to say “Wow, that man is an arahant, he’s a boddhisatva. I am so privileged to have him in my life.” You don’t say this in a way that is phony or isn’t connected with our hearts—but to actually feel it.

I have the most wonderful wife in the world. I have an incredible son. The more that I practice that kind of feeling the happier their lives become and the happier my life becomes. I have the most wonderful job. I have the most wonderful house. I have a car that is a wonderful car because it just moves me from here to there. That is all I need. Every time that I remember to be appreciative, to be grateful and to be thankful, joy follows.

Compassion is a part of our practice. How do we really love everyone? I spent time in India with Mother Theresa, she was a very good friend. That is what she did, just loved everyone. When ever anyone comes, just love them.

How do we create that kind of compassion in our lives day by day? How do we really remember to if we don’t genuinely care about that person? If I don’t create that as a part of my practice then what happens is my mind gets caught up in those old patterns of judgements and wanting them to be somebody they are not. That is what we do to the people who are around us. How do we work on the practice of how to genuinely care about you? How do I start those thought patterns?

We know from our meditation practice that the thoughts just come up and they float away. They are not real. So why not create in the depths of our own soul, in our vibration here, that kind of loving compassion that just pops out as a vibration, and impacts everyone around us. And then people say, “wow, all of those people have such good hearts”.

How do we cultivate the ‘good heart’? How do we learn to love ourselves? Most of us have all these ‘shoulds’ in our lives. It is what we beat ourselves with. I should be this or I should be that. Somehow we think that by creating disgust in our emotions and in our mind it will help us lose weight. Or it will help us change whatever behavior it is that we want to change. Well, you know what? You don’t become a loving, compassionate person by behaving yourself. You take yourself, as you are, big fat stomach and all. I love the person who said “I wear my defilement’s out here where everyone can see them.”

What we have to do is we have to love our defilements too. We have to love the struggle that we are going through in our lives. We have to see that it is just struggle. It just is what it is. It’s a part of life. Underneath all that there is some-thing that we can take joy in, because there is a teaching behind all of that. There is a lesson; there is something that we can grab from this experience.

I just had one, an airplane experience. I was on my way here, to Chicago. I went to the Omaha airport and there were storms in Chicago, so we didn’t get on the plane for a couple of hours. Then they took us out on the runway in Omaha. By the way, this was the actual Wesak day. And we sat on the runaway for four hours. People don’t get nice in airplanes on the runway after four hours. You could feel the tense vibration on the plane. You are all boxed in on this little tiny plane. I’m trying to be all balance. It’s Wesak, it’s holy day and I’m being assaulted by all of these vibrations. That was my Wesak, all of these frustrated people who are not going to make it to their plane connections in Chicago. Everybody’s plans were ruined.

I had a choice. I could have said “Wow, this is a terrible Wesak day” and I could have been sucked into the vibration and been that for the day. But I thought, “Wow, what an opportunity for me. Can I sit in this plane and be the one place of joy and compassion and try and be nice to everybody and love all of this energy that is going on?” I tell you what, it is the hardest I’ve worked for a long time. But it was a wonderful lesson. It was something that brought me the real meaning of what Wesak is. Which is, when we are walking out there in that world with people that basically have very limited awareness and very limited mindfulness, how do we actually become the energy and the vibration that makes people stop for a minute and go “Woe”?

We have the most amazing teachings in Buddhism that I only begin to understand. I find new inspiration from them every day. This is after working with them for thirty years. Now this is all very simple, none of this stuff that I’m saying is anything new to any of you. How do we inspire ourselves and each other to practice? How do we look at that teaching continuously and keep taking it back and applying it to the practice of our lives? How do we make it a part of us? Until we get enlightened that is what our task is. That is what we are here for. That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to just see it as it is.

I have a wonderful job. My job is that I work with senior level executives at multi-national corporations. I tell them what I am doing is executive development. But secretly I am doing transformations. Secretly I teach Buddhism. Now I never say that word because that becomes denominational. But I just take the same lessons that I am applying in my own practice and in my own life and apply them to a corporate situation with executives and what happens is that they become leaders of a different ink.

Instead of being demanding they become inspiring. Instead of getting caught in their own sense of power they start to be able to team and create high trust relationships. We call it inspiration but the vibration is that “I genuinely care about you as a person. I want to know you well enough and focus my attention on you so that I’m not just hearing the words that you speak but I’m actually feeling a dimension of you that allows me to connect at a deeper level, because I care. I care.” These are radical ideas in terms of corporate America. This starts to allow people to be who they are rather than who you think they should be. It is how to lead by inspiration rather than by demand. You know what? It’s successful business-wise. And it makes them happier people.

I have the most wonderful wife in the world. I have an incredible son. The more that I practice that kind of feeling the happier their lives become and the happier my life becomes. I have the most wonderful job. I have the most wonderful house. I have a car that is a wonderful car because it just moves me from here to there. That is all I need. Every time that I remember to be appreciative, to be grateful and to be thankful, joy follows.

That is exactly what we are doing in terms of practicing Buddhism. We are taking a set of very simple, but very profound teachings, and continuously making an application of them in our lives. So what I do with my clients is that I help them to define their practice. They say, “You’re a Buddhist? What is your practice right now? What are you working on?” I get a little grumpy in life and I decide for the next two or three months I’m going to bring that into consciousness and awareness. I’m going to see it. Most of us function on pre-programmed behaviors. We don’t think about how we are going to behave. We behave the way we behaved in the past.

You do this with a wonderful little mechanism you created for yourself called a personality. Your personality keeps you consistent. It is totally illusionary but we think it is solid and who we think we are and that makes us consistent. We have pre-programmed reactions to things. That happens without us consciously thinking about of it. As we start to become more aware with our Buddhist practices we see things as they are rather than how we want them to be, rather than how we have patterned ourselves to think.

Most of us, because of our training, can walk into situations and see what is. We are not caught in our own vested self-interest. We understand the dynamics of what is going on in a family situation or even in a simple situation such as the check out counter at the grocery store. We see somebody and can feel them in our hearts if we are open in our hearts. We can feel that the person behind the counter is suffering. We don’t know the reason for that suffering but we feel it.

A lot of times when we are suffering we have a tendency to project that on other people around us. They might be angry or snappy or annoying or don’t give us the service we want. But if we can see whatit really is those are moments that we can actually connect and be of service, because we are aware. That is the real practice of Buddhism. Can we stay awake? Can we be that person that is suddenly able to feel and say the right things that actually start to smooth those things out.

I have a Buddhist practice of parenting. I have a twelve-year-old son. My model of parenting is scare the crap out of them. But that doesn’t fit with my spiritual teaching. Yet as a parent you want to have influence with your children.

You want to be able to make sure they do the right thing. We are already into judging what is the right and wrong thing. One of the things I learned in my Buddhist practice as a parent is that I project all of my own struggles onto my son. I’m a little over weight and I worry about it and so is my son. It is easier for me to be food police for my son than it is for me to be food police for me. It makes me feel good about doing it for him. I don’t want to have him struggle with being fat all of his life like I did. It is all my stuff and I am just projecting it out on my son. I am probably creating a bigger neurosis for him than if I didn’t say a thing and just let him come to his own solutions and his own way of dealing with that as an issue. But no, I jump in because of my insecurity.

If you are going to do a Buddhist practice the best ally that you have is fear. It will tell you where you need to practice. It will be fear that starts to distort your behaviors. It will be fear that will disconnect you from the essence of the teaching. Think about what it is that you are afraid of…and go there. As you start to make friends and get comfortable with those fears they no longer control you. Fear is the thing that controls those pre-programmed, automatic behaviors. They just flip in. We aren’t even conscious of feeling fear because most of us shut down that part of ourselves. We just behave in a defensive way because it is just that quick. So if somebody says something to us and we take it personally and we snap back at them there is no conscious process going on, it just happened. Can part of our practice be to catch that as it is happening?