This is a photo of the participants who completed the Shambhala Sacred Path level entitled “Outrageous and Inscrutable” on May 17, 2009. This level was directed elegantly by Ms. Donna Williams, and assisted by Mr. Hill Anderson. Many of those in attendance began together with Level I (The Art of Being Human), and have continued as a core group ever since, referring to themselves as “litter-mates”. A cheerful congratulations to these inscrutably outrageous warriors.

Posted by Hill Anderson:

Friday and Saturday my wife and I went to a packed and inspiring conference in Boston on “Meditation and Psychotherapy” featuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself!

I sat about a third of the way back in a crowd of 500 in the “Imperial Ballroom” of the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, about 50 feet away from the stage on which sat His Holiness and a changing group of panelists who were psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and brain scientists asking him questions. What I recount below is my memory of two days ago, and my imprecise paraphrasing of what I understood His Holiness to be saying. It is probable that some of my descriptions are my limited transposition of bigger meanings that I was unable to fathom. We were told that a DVD of the event might be available in a few weeks, which would be well worth the purchase.

As is often said of him, His Holiness was present, relaxed, genuine, and at times very funny. He was able easily to admit “I don’t know” when he didn’t, and to express an acceptance of the human condition in the face of so many who were looking for techniques to improve it. In introducing him, the speaker quoted him as saying, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

One person asked if we corrupt Westerners couldn’t learn a lot from the Eastern cultures. He said he thought there was no difference between those who live in the East and West, and that human nature had not changed in the 2600 years since the Buddha walked the earth. It was a million years ago that the brain had its last structural change, so we might have to wait another million years for the next model. He went on to say that the West had greater material wealth and that the higher the socioeconomic level the worse off one was, the harder it was to be happy and insightful. The wealthy tended to isolate, the poor were often more easily interrelated and compassionate.

A question asked in many ways was how one could have compassion for perpetrators and torturers. He spoke of “biased” and “unbiased” compassion. We begin by having compassion for lovers or family members, which is good, but that can be “biased compassion” which can rapidly turn into hatred toward someone who might betray it or for those outside its circle. Unbiased compassion includes everyone.

Perpetrators should be stopped, to keep them from hurting more people, and even to compassionately save them from the terrible karma they are generating for themselves. When something is wrong it is OK to say it is wrong.

He spoke of interviews he had had with monks who were imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese. One said that his experience in the Chinese gulag had been a great aid to his practice. Another said that he was most afraid that he was in danger of losing his compassion for the Chinese. A third was red-faced and trembling with anger.

His Holiness told a story about his escape from Tibet. They were hiding by a river and could hear the hoof beats of the horses of the Chinese who would shoot them if they were discovered. He said that was not a time particularly for compassion to ascend, but that what was more called for was wisdom, prajna. It was on the next day that he felt anxiety and anger, a “post-traumatic” response.

He was asked about self-hatred that is so common a symptom in the West. His Holiness said that self-hatred was based on failing our own expectations, and that there was something good in those aspirations in the beginning. The desire to be connected and happy is universal.

One psychologist asked if there were a simple practice we could all use with clients to put them in touch with wisdom and compassion. His Holiness said that no one practice was enough. Experience is too complex and practice takes many forms in different situations.

He spoke on the nature of self. The grasping self was a problem. (He made grasping motions with his hands.) While we could seem to locate our brain and our body, no one has ever been able to find the location of a self. It was a matter of appearance versus reality. There was the appearance of a self, but in reality there was none, and that emptiness left us with the truth of the interrelationship (as opposed to the independence) of all things.

The grasping self was a bad self, but he proposed that a “good self” was needed to muster the required confidence and willpower to dedicate oneself to reducing the suffering of sentient beings.

He said that within the major religions, having faith in God could be an exercise in selflessness leading to the loosening of the self and commitment to helping others. He said Buddhism, however, was non-theistic, believing in the chain of cause and effect (karma) rather than God. But in either case, and also with those who have no religion, compassion was innate. The nurturing bond between mother and child, that “sweet milk”, was the love and compassion and interdependence that characterized everyone’s nature from the very beginning.

Another psychologist asked him how we could know what was “wise behavior,” and he said there were two aspects: the intention and the result. An apparently virtuous act performed with a corrupt intention was not virtue, and sometimes an act with good intention behind it had an unexpectedly bad result. He said that one who can see but has no legs doesn’t get around much, and one who has legs but is blind doesn’t see much. Both eyes and legs were needed.

A psychiatrist asked him about her patients who heard voices and suffered other psychotic symptoms who never seemed to get better, and who had little hope of recovery. His Holiness said that, like a diamond, experience has many facets, and that every life has many perspectives that can be applied to it, not all of them unhappy. He went on to say that when we treat the mentally ill (and prisoners too) as inferior to us we are causing them great suffering and isolation.

Those are some of the highlights of what I can remember of what His Holiness had to say. It was inspiring to be in his presence, and everything he communicated was infused with the depth (and lightness) of a being it is hard to describe in words. He recalled a teacher of his who said that “When you become an object of reverence, that is when you must be the most lowly,” implying the importance of humility and the danger involved in separating yourself from others when placed on a pedestal.

To me, His Holiness seemed to be a master of what CTR called “ordinary magic.” Throughout the conference the dralas were landing everywhere…

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