In times of conflict, a practitioner will back down

Rinpoche exhorts practitioners when faced with conflict to stay the course of their dharma path, and honor the commitments of their bodhisattva vow, by self-reflecting on their own self-attachment rather than escalating a divisive situation.

This is a lightly edited version of Rinpoche’s 2021 Losar Talk in the Sangdo Palri Temple at Longchen Jigme Samten Ling Retreat Center, Crestone, Colorado.

It is a new year, the year of the Tibetan Female Ox. And in this new year I would like to extend my warmest greetings to you all, and to make strong, strong aspirations for all of us who are part of the Mangala Shri Bhuti sangha to make a good, firm resolution to stay on course, to be decent, conscientious, kind, and compassionate to all beings, particularly towards each other in our own lives, and to those with whom we have relations. Of course, we are human beings, and human beings do come with flaws, as we all know. A lot of times we have strong emotions, such as being attached to our self and to our own ideas, views, and agendas. And that can make it seem almost impossible for us to change, or that we could be different, that we could let go. Letting go of these things might seem like letting go of yourself altogether, totally, to the point that you don’t know who you are.

Now, if we manage to keep these attachments to ourselves, then since they do not actively create conflict with others, they do not cause much harm. But, as it is often the case, let’s consider what the outcome would be if our attachments are in opposition to others’ strongly felt views and identities and agendas. What if no one backs down? What happens when no one steps back to review what the outcome will be if both people continue to hold strongly to their views? Is such stubbornness going to achieve a greater good? Definitely not. Only reasoning based on wisdom will allow conflicts to subside and harm not to prevail.

Practitioners and non-practitioners alike have a self to which we are strongly attached. Now in the world of non-practitioners, meaning those who have not benefited from an education in dharma that emphasizes self-reflection, the unquestioned self remains strong, the self sticks to its attachments. How can anyone tame the self without understanding that attachments to one’s ideology, one’s biased views and biased agendas are personal obstructions to seeing the truth? This is where practitioners must take the high road. This is where practitioners who know that the self is the root of the problem must act differently. In a situation of heightened disagreement or conflict, this is when practitioners must back down. 

Why insist on being stubborn when a whole lifetime of education in dharma makes clear how the self and attachments to the self pose a threat, life after life? Practitioners know how these kinds of attachments are what have done so much wrong to us, life after life, and are the cause for our still being in samsara! After a lifetime’s work of supposedly taming the mind and the self to be more malleable, more reformable, how could practitioners fail to acknowledge that the very source of samsara is our stubborn and unyielding attachment to the self? Therefore, it is imperative for us to keep a bigger perspective and make the small sacrifices that allow us to remain on the course of dharma and on the course of pacifying our mind and our emotions.

Protecting your bodhisattva vow is the key point

Now, you may be tempted not to back down because it may feel like you are being weak. But as Shantideva points out, if you are  in a situation in which you are about to lose your life, but instead you lose a limb, how should you view that outcome? Favorably or unfavorably? Favorably of course, because although you lost your limb, you saved your life!  Saving your life in comparison to losing a limb is a small matter. Like that, as a student of dharma, no matter how tempted you are to feel that your emotions, view, and agenda should not be compromised, that your very self should not be compromised, saving and protecting your bodhicitta is the key point. 

When we take the bodhisattva vow, we commit to not lose the equilibrium of love and care for all beings; to feel compassion not just for those who suffer externally from a lack of food or a lack of facilities but even more for those who are suffering internally with views and attachments to ideologies and agendas that preoccupy them day and night; to feel compassion for those who have no sense of peace, no sense of liberty, no sense of happiness until and unless they achieve their agendas in this short human life. With that as our commitment, consider that if we fight for our own ideologies when they conflict with others’ and always have to prevail over others, if we always have to come out being right and feel we have the upper hand, ruling the affairs of the world—then there is no time to be practitioners. There is no time to have solitude. There is no time to have the peace of mind that comes from working on accomplishing the dharma on the cushion. You will always be like some revolutionary, distracted and going off to find where you can engage yourself in heated conversations and win arguments. These activities are for conventionally-wise people, conventional leaders who are in the business of making a difference in the government or in the affairs of the world.

We are not of that class. We are just citizens who vote but after voting we are done with what we can do. Then we focus on our own spiritual path, which means to pacify our mind and to continue our mind of equilibrium, our mind of peace. Based on the peace that we feel inside, we extend loving kindness and compassion toward all, especially to those who oppose us. Especially to those who do not mean us well. Extending compassion to those so-called adversaries or enemies is the spiritual path. Otherwise, there is not going to be any distinction between non-practitioners versus practitioners, between education in general versus education in the dharma, or between conflict and the approach of nonviolence in the face all of challenges. We aim to practice nonviolence not just when all is good, but especially when we are threatened. So to stay on course we need very firm resolutions about what is most important to us.

Make a firm resolution to let go

This year, resolve to let go. It doesn’t matter if you made that resolution last year and you are making it again this year, or if you have been making that kind of resolution for the last thirty or forty years. What is important for myself, and I think it should be the same for you all if you are to follow in the footsteps of the masters of this lineage, including myself as a teacher of your’s, is this firm resolution to work on letting go. Letting go becomes challenging in various ways because our attachments don’t allow us to let go. But if you don’t take the opportunity to turn these attachments into the rich soil to grow your seeds of bodhicitta into greater crops of liberation and peace, when can we sow the seeds of the bodhicitta?

So as more challenges arise in the world, with the instabilities that we have felt in recent years—with the pandemic and with heightened emotions all around the globe—this is the time for practitioners to be examples. If you cannot be examples to the world at large, be an example to your children, be an example to your friends, be an example to whoever looks up to you. To be an example, you cannot succumb to the confusions of the masses. You cannot become the confusions and take part in them. However passive a bodhisattva’s way of life might seem, it’s not passive to work with one’s own attachments to the self, and to train the self to be malleable and tamed and peaceful, and to tame the attachments in the face of what threatens the self. As a bodhisattva we commit:

• to not succumb to empty divisiveness and aggressions, 
• to not employ biased views, 
• to not use language and concepts that make anyone feel excluded, lesser, or stupid, 
• to have an equal level of love and care and kindness to all who are either in agreement or in disagreement with you, or who feel marginalized and excluded, so that instead they feel welcomed and embraced by your love and kindness and respected for their own wisdom, even if their wisdom and your wisdom are not the same. 

Respect others’ views

As bodhisattvas, we don’t fall prey to believing that just because somebody disagrees with you, they don’t recognize your wisdom and are therefore stupid. That kind of thinking is emotional bias. It does not honor your own deeper understanding of wisdom. Rather it reveals that someone who opposes you makes you feel threatened and that you are responding to that feeling. In contrast, our respectful approach to wisdom should be like that of the great masters of the past who had different  philosophical points of view about the tenets, but who personally had the utmost respect for each other. Like Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche with Je Rinpoche. Like Karmapa Rangjung Dorje with Je Rinpoche. Je Rinpoche’s view differs from than that of Karmapa Rangjung Dorje. Or Mikyo Dorje’s. Or Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche’s.

But they had immense respect and veneration for each other. Their different views about the tenets didn’t interfere with their respect or love for each other. If you exclude others who do not follow your line of thinking and reasoning or your view, what are you going to do when your child doesn’t agree with you? When your spouse doesn’t agree with you? When your brothers and sisters, dear friends, do not agree with you? It becomes a thorn in your heart. It becomes a gnawing thorn in your heart.

That gnawing thorn in your heart is not due to your views being different or better. Rather it comes from not being able to respect others’ points of view. Not being able to respect others’ points of view when they are different from yours comes from your ego attachment to your view. That attachment produces emotional reasoning, not intellectual reasoning. Although they arise in the context of a disagreement, the feeling of conflict and the sense of rejection and isolation actually all come instinctively from the self. If we live our lives based on the emotions of the self, our lives will never be secure, our lives will never be peaceful. We will never be friendly and congenial with anyone except those who suck up to us. Though you might find one or two — sycophant is the word I’m looking for — you might find one or two sycophants here and there, would you want to spend your time, the whole of the rest of your life, surrounded by sycophants?  What does that say about your state of mind, the stability of your state of mind, the intelligence of your state of mind, your ability to work with your mind and your emotions in any kind of situation where you meet with opposition?

I assume the world is going to be in a period of greater challenge for some time. This is the perfect opportunity for staying firm and resolute in order to find equilibrium and peace within these challenges and conflicts and global chaos. In times of great need, we should have a greater zeal to practice patience, to practice loving kindness and compassion for all, and in particular for those who differ from you and who have strong overwhelming emotions. 

Utilize the power of compassion

Compassion empowers us not to be scared but to remain compassionate, not to be fearful but remain compassionate; not to feel threatened but remain compassionate, not to reject but remain compassionate, and to embrace in your heart how others must feel inside. The way to know anyone’s mind is only through knowing how it feels when you experience a similar strain in your own mind.  The window to know humanity is to know your own mind and your own emotions. In knowing your mind and emotions you can discern what a painful experience of mind is and what a peaceful experience of mind is; what a blissful experience of mind is and what a tormented and tortuous experience of mind is.

So whenever you are faced with the overwhelming presence of someone’s thought or someone’s emotions, go back on the cushion and analyze: how would that feel in your mind? How would you feel if you had that thought, in your mind? How would that emotion feel if you had that emotion in your mind? Try to recall in the past when you had such emotions. How did that feel when you had such strong thoughts like that? And then clearly commit to not engaging in conflict and argument. Rather, you could be patient, you could embrace that person with loving kindness and compassion, more so than ever before. Unless you do, you will fuel a sense of alienation from one another. One thought will turn into five thoughts and five thoughts will become twenty-five, and then a hundred thoughts. And by the time one hundred thoughts have accumulated, someone as close as your own son, your own daughter, your own father, your own mother, your own spouse, your own sisters and brothers, your own dear best friends could feel like a total stranger! Like a totally scary opponent opposed to you and your life and your world. 

The way to overcome that alienation is to bypass the proliferating thoughts that make the gap of understanding grow bigger and bigger and bigger and instead to embrace everyone with loving kindness. As it says in the teachings of bodhicitta, everyone wishes to be happy; everyone longs to be free of suffering. Based on that kind of reasoning, no matter how many differences there are, in the core of the human being, in each of us as a human being, is the constant wish to be happy. We all constantly long to be free of suffering and in that way there is no difference whatsoever.

From that ground of finding yourself in common with others who are identical, with absolutely no differences whatsoever in the wishes to be happy and free of suffering, extend your love. Just as you extend your love to yourself, extend your love to others. As Shantideva states, extend your kindness and kind feelings toward others, extend your compassionate feelings towards others.

In order to retain and strengthen that commonality, you’ll have to bypass the differences. If you’re not able to bypass the differences, what is hanging you up? You may say it’s the differences, but the differences are always there; they don’t have to be a conflict for you.  When a difference rises to the level of a conflict, we have to be clear that it does so because it poses a conflict to your ego, it poses a conflict to your self, to your own self attachment being more important than anything else in the world.

If tightly holding to the self is not something that a practitioner can see as worthy of letting go, then that practitioner has no standing as a practitioner. To be a practitioner is to seek malleability, change, transformation, shedding of one’s own obscurations so that your own obscurations do not imprison you in the same old habitual way of being or existing. So flexibility, not gullibility; flexibility based on wisdom, malleability based on wisdom, changeability based on wisdom, transformability based on wisdom is the premise of being a practitioner of the dharma.

There’s no need to save face

In that process of transformation, there’s no need to save face. There’s no need to save your pride. There’s no need to save your identity. If there’s some reason to save your face, save your pride, save your identity, Prince Siddhartha would never have left the palace and would never have found enlightenment. That kind of ego—ego’s face, ego’s pride, ego’s identity—for a practitioner, that is the worst impediment to progressing on the path. So just as the great Kadampa masters have stated, “leave the circle of humans and enter the circle of dogs” and come out being a divine, free being. This is what the Buddha has done, this is what all the masters of the past have done, and this is what we should be doing, too.

I urge you all to make that firm resolution, commitment, and aspiration to stay on the course, the course of being practitioner and then in this year, just like last year, try your best. And if you have failed in the last year in some areas, try to re-affirm your commitment not to fail this year. So, beyond that, my warmest wishes for all you to be healthy, for all your families to be healthy and happy and prosperous, and to really make immense progress in the life of being a practitioner of the Nyingtik, to find the great liberation in three ways: either in this life, or at the time of the dissolution, or in the celestial realms. These are aspirations but these aspirations have to be supported by your endeavors. Just aspiration alone is not going to do; it has to be supported by one’s endeavors. And in those endeavors may you have great success. Thank you all very much.

Watch the original video of this talk