Helping Others

In the Buddhist tradition, masters make different statements about helping others. Some warn that improving the world should always start with oneself, because until one helps oneself, one cannot help others. By acting from a disturbed mind, we harm rather than help. The Tibetan yogi Milarepa said of helping: “If there is not the slightest degree of self-interest in such earthly matters, this is acceptable”. He didn’t say that helping is recommended or useful, but only that it is sometimes acceptable. In our culture, against the background of our habits, this may seem shocking. 

On the other side we have Roshi Bernie Glassman, who actively gave help and attracted others by his example. He opened a bakery, employing people in distress for various reasons, e.g. the homeless or former drug addicts, who found help there to find their way in life. He organised street meditations, the fruits of which were brought into the service of society, and retreats at the site of the former Auschwitz Nazi camp. Vietnamese master Thich Nhat Hanh was involved in the peace movement, and likewise to some extent Shifu Sheng Yen. 

This dual Buddhist approach to helping others is also reflected in visual symbols. The Bodhisattva of Compassion has 1,000 pairs of eyes to see people's miseries and needs well, and 1,000 pairs of hands to help effectively. Buddha, on the other hand, sits motionless, his eyes downcast, his hands held together by his lower abdomen, supported by his feet. He does not look like he is about to move into any particular action. 

We are influenced not only by the dual Buddhist suggestions for helping, but also by our native Western tradition, which became ingrained in us as we grew up. According to it, helping is strongly recommended and evasion is reprehensible. This is one of the important criteria for judging people in our society. 

How do we find ourselves in all this? Some of us engage in helping with different motives for doing so, but others don’t, mindful of the cautions heard in many zendos to help ourselves first. Both attitudes carry certain dangers. 

 If we decide to repair the world and actively alleviate suffering, it is very often the traditional approach to helping that appeals to us, which we have had the opportunity to imbibe from an early age. In the process of socialisation, we learned to behave according to the prescribed social model. 

We were praised and valued for helping, we gained a good reputation in the eyes of others or even in our own eyes. Refusing to help exposed us to criticism and negativity. We may want to help in order to gain merit or, to put it in more contemporary terms, to gain social capital. We may hope for gratitude, for a return, for some kind of gratification, for a religious reward such as going to heaven or obtaining an auspicious rebirth. This approach probably occurs in many cultures. Suffice it to mention the Chinese Emperor Wu, to whose court Bodhidharma – a famous and admired sage from India – arrived. The emperor first of all informed Bodhidharma of his contribution to the development of Buddhism in China: he supported monks, built monasteries, initiated translations of the sutras – but the most important question posed afterwards was, “What merit have I gained?” Let the master make the spiritual conversion rate available, let the emperor find out how much his actions are worth in spiritual currency. Or perhaps, under the pretext of the question, he simply wanted to boast to Bodhidharma. We are not so straightforward as to ask directly what merit we have gained, but we may tacitly expect appreciation or respect.

It may also be that we are motivated by a sensitivity to suffering and a desire to put the world right, but it escapes our notice that it is our own shortcomings that we project outwards. We think that we are disturbed by the misery of others or the bad device of the world, while we are really disturbed by our own baggage. So we intend to put our surroundings in order. We set about doing this diligently, so that things will finally be as we think they should be. In doing so, we neglect to turn inwards. Interestingly, with such motivation, even successes in fixing the world don’t bring the expected relief or satisfaction.

On other occasions we are pained by someone else’s pain, but this is different from the Buddhist compassion. We are motivated by a desire to relieve our own pain. We say: “Something has to be done about it, because I can't bear to see them/him suffer.” 

Finally, the motivation to help may be a desire to dominate and exercise control. We may then find it difficult to accept help in order not to fall into dependence on others as the recipient. The fear of infirmity in illness or old age may be accompanied by a desire to spare relatives the trouble, but it may also be underpinned by a desire to avoid being dependent on others. Financial support for relatives may be combined with special expectations of them. This motivation sometimes goes hand in hand with the belief that I know better what is good for the world. (There is an old joke about three scouts who report to their leader that they have taken an old lady across the street. Why so many as three? Because she didn't want to and it took all three of them to persuade her).

All these impulses to help others can be strongly rooted in us and more or less consciously come to the fore. At the same time, we hear in places of practice that we should start with ourselves. This can cause a certain split: on the mat we sit in the conviction that here is the right place to start to improve the world, while in our daily action we follow social expectations and our habits. This is not conducive to the integration of practice with life – yet a mature practice cannot be separate from life. 

At other times, we take cautions such as the one from Milarepa firmly to heart and consciously refrain from acting on our surroundings. We wait until we are spiritually ready enough. This attitude, in turn, brings other dangers. We may discover the charms of sitting quietly, away from the commotion and needs of the world. We can see that becoming preoccupied with another’s unfortunate plight and helping out sometimes disturbs the peace we are meant to cultivate on the mat. Thus, for the sake of practice we distance ourselves from helping. 

Simon Child once said that the refusal to help explained by the need to attend to spiritual training first is sometimes an excuse for laziness and selfishness. It is nicer to sit away from the hustle and bustle of the world in an incense-scented room than to help someone stressed and irritable who instead of thanking us, is even nagging us. Master Chi Chern, Shifu’s Dharma heir, once addressed the retreat participants: “You are so urgent for enlightenment that you would be most happy to pass on your vexations to others.” John Crook used to talk about the two wings of practice: wisdom and compassion. Using only one wing results in going in circles. In a similar vein, a Chan practitioner, who later became a monk in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in California, used to say that cordoning ourselves off for meditation from other people's needs builds a wall between us and them, and it can then be very difficult, if not impossible, to work in solitude to break down our sense of self-isolation. 

So how do we get into a situation where both helping and holding back can have negative effects? Very simple advice is given by Shifu Sheng Yen: there is no one set path, different actions are good as long as their motive is compassion.¹ He cites the story of two kings who ruled two neighbouring states in ancient times. Both had spiritual aspirations. Each was strongly determined to attain enlightenment, but also strongly compassionate towards the people. In both kingdoms, the subjects were committing evil acts instead of caring for each other, and this negatively affected their daily lives. They were leading a difficult and bad lives.

Each of the two rulers chose a different path to help people. Sarvajnasiddha, later Buddha, vowed to quickly attain Buddha State to liberate all beings. He recognised that subjects needed to practice and meditate in order to abandon a harmful way of life and move away from suffering. But in order to help them do this, he first had to do it himself.

Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, on the other hand, vowed to liberate beings from suffering so that they could live in peace and attain enlightenment, even before he himself crossed the threshold of enlightenment. He wanted to help them in ordinary matters, bringing order and harmony to their lives and taking care of their basic needs so that they would have a better starting point for serious meditation. Moreover, to make their practice more effective, he wanted to encourage them by his own example on how to serve others. 

Such was Shifu’s speech about the two ways of the two kings. Was one better than the other and is one of them more worth following? Shifu puts it simply: it is a matter of individual aspiration. Neither way is better or more effective. Rather, they are two sides of the same coin. One must look within oneself and see what one’s vocation is, what one aspires to – as long as compassion is the primary motive. This is an essential point. In a similar vein, St Augustine said: “Love and do what you want.” For both kings, the starting point was concern for the situation of others rather than interest in their own spiritual achievements. Similarly, as a young monk, Shifu Sheng Yen felt a strong determination to study the Dharma in order to then make it available to the people. 

So compassion is the most important thing. However, there are two pitfalls on the road to compassion, which sometimes occur together. The first is that all selfishly tinged reasons for helping can appear in the mask of compassion – and we then succumb to the illusion that it is compassion that motivates us. The second is to take the idea of compassion for compassion itself. 

This is also true of other states of mind, such as e.g. the state of oneness: we hear what it consists of, we form an image of it, and from this we are convinced that we experience it. Similarly, it is possible to be guided by an image of compassion, rather than by compassion itself felt in the heart. Since much is said about compassion in Buddhism and many words are spoken about it, it is very easy to dwell on the idea of it. 

In the Diamond Sutra we find the following passage on the distinction between compassion and the idea of compassion: “Subhuti, what I just said about kindness does not mean that when someone is being charitable they should hold onto arbitrary conceptions about kindness, for kindness is, after all, only a word and charity needs to be spontaneous and selfless, done without regard for appearances.” And a little before that: “Practise kindness and charity without attachment and you can become fully enlightened.” ² 

Teachers who see into the state of mind of their students can help in unmasking the idea of compassion as something that is not compassion itself. In ancient China, a certain high-ranking governor became a disciple of a Zen master. He took a long spiritual holiday from his administrative duties to stay near the master and practise under his guidance. When he was about to return to his ordinary life, strengthened by the results of his training, the master asked as a farewell: “How will you govern the people in your province?” The governor replied: “With wisdom and compassion, of course.” The master concluded: “So then they will all suffer greatly.” 

If we don’t get trapped by the idea of compassion, another difficulty may await us. Namely, we may discover that we lack genuine compassion. For example, we catch ourselves looking for excuses to evade helping. Or there are flashes of compassion, but with a significant admixture of egocentric motives. This can be a shocking discovery! What then? Various Buddhist ways of developing compassion can be used, but the most important thing is to see very clearly what is going on in the mind. We deal no differently with any thoughts or emotions that arise during meditation. We don’t need to remain in their power. We don’t have to either cling to them and follow them, or try to fight or suppress them. In both cases, we are giving them our energy. Even if they become quiet for a while under our pressure, in the long run we strengthen them in this way. 

Instead, we can impartially, without getting involved, be aware of them. They then become one more phenomenon in the field of our consciousness, as harmless as listening to the rain falling. 

Whenever we adopt a thought in this way, it dulls its blade and it weakens. It weakens even more the next time, and the next... This path was shown to us by the Buddha, saying: “Mara, I see you.” He didn’t say: “Hm, what are you saying, Mara? I'll answer you in a moment!” Nor did he say: “Shut up! Get out!” Nor did he say: “Admittedly, you are a nuisance, Mara, but I hope you will finally go away one day.” Just: “Mara, I see you.” Nothing more is needed. 

What do we turn away from when we sit with our face to the wall? Not from others and their needs. Rather from our habits, from blindly following them. From reactive thoughts, emotions and actions. We turn away to gain more space, silence and stillness. If we take this opportunity to courageously meet Mara and review his tricks - including those for helping others – we don’t need to bother whether to help or rather meditate. Wholesome decisions then make themselves. 

Notes

1.  Chan Magazine, Vol 39, No 2, Spring 2019. https://chancenter.org/en/publication/chan-magazine
2. The Diamond Sutra, trans. Alex Johnson https://www.lifelonglearningcollaborative.org/silkroads/articles/diamond-sutra-translation.pdf access from Jun 10, 2024