This weeks FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Who Benefits?and#8220;, is a revisit to last weekendand#8217;s full talk podcast, and#8220;Brahama Viharas and the Key Momentand#8221; by Kulaprabha. In this extract, Kulaprabha reflects on who benefits when we engage in a process of cultivating loving kindness through the Brahma Vihara meditation practices.
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Who Benefits?
[Music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [Music] So, all of that, all of those are reflections from being on other retreats. And that does bring me back to what I said at the very beginning of this, which is about that question from being on, when I was on retreat, while Twin Towers in New York were being destroyed. And so, you know, the world was in shock, and it was on the brink of war. And there was I sitting, meditating for hours every day, you know, a lovely old building in Tuscany. Why was I meditating? Why was I meditating? Who benefited apart from me? Who could benefit apart from me? And I don't know that I really got left with a distinct and definitive answers to that. I think it really just threw up questions from quite a deep level of my practice. Now, I'm not to tell you about it in order to tell you what the answer is. In any case, there will only be my answer. And I think those sorts of questions we have to find our own answers to. So, I don't even know that I've got an answer from myself yet. I did think that something, I did think it through a bit, though. It did keep being in my mind. And I thought, well, say there's no effect beyond myself on this. Obviously, I have a suite of concern in my mind when I'm meditating, but say there's no effect beyond myself. That's still worthwhile doing. That doesn't mean that I am striving to make at least my mind the kind of mind that does its best to respond with kindness and a bit of patience and a bit of understanding. That would be helpful. That is helpful. That would be helpful if everyone else was doing it. And then, because once you enter into that sort of reflection, then you get to the point, well, if everyone else was doing it, we would be able to be in a deeper kind of communication with one another. We'd have that response that we got yesterday from the mayor of Paris saying, "We're all Londoners today." He was just saying, "We know what you feel, actually. We're as heartbroken about it as you are. We're as upset about it as you are. We're as horrified as you are." So it's not that we'd be worthwhile doing it because of that further effect. But so all of that's fair enough, I think. I'm sure you can come to your own reflections on that. It's worthwhile thinking about it. But it does come back to the question, does actually anyone else benefit why am I actually addicted? Now, I think there's something to be said that's quite important here about Paris, because sometimes you can do this kind of practice and think, "When I'm actually thinking about, say I have shape of you, I'm in the same stage of the practice." I'm thinking about a friend, so I think about bringing it to mind. Do I actually have an effect on shape of you doing that? No, I myself, I'm skeptical about that. I don't think I do. I think next time I see the woman, we have rooms next door to my list, so that's quite frequent. If I've had her in a metabravna or another bar of art, I'm much more likely to respond, I'm much more likely to smile at her. And being a human communication more immediately when I am in her company, and that would work for herself, she'd had me in her meditation. So it has that effect subsequently. I'm absolutely certain of that, and I know that for a fact. It doesn't have an effect in the moment. I think your answer to that, I mean, I do tend to think that I can't see them, I can't see how that could happen. I really can't see how that could happen. Mostly that's what I think. Other people have different approaches to that, and don't feel it's so impossible. So it's worthwhile thinking about just what you think's going on when you meditate. But at least it affects our own mind. It certainly affects other people once afterwards when we come into contact with them. It could be the beginning of a chain reaction if we were all doing it. And on that particular retreat, the one which September 11th fell in the middle of, yeah, in the middle of... I must say I did have an inkling every now and again that there is a level of connectedness that we are about us, a human beings and other beings, that is very mysterious. Certainly not something that I understand. It's not something I tap into very often. But I think I did a little bit on that retreat just because of the shock effect, actually, of it all. And partly because I was one of the few people in the situation that knew it had happened and we were in silence and so on. So I think it did actually give me a bit of an inkling about that there is a further effect. There is a much more mysterious subtle effect that we could all be engaged in, the sort of the network of connection that we could all be engaged in in this way that the Brahma-Bahar is evokes and creates. But it is mysterious. I think that the other levels of the effect of the Brahma-Bahar is, or maybe the ones that require the most effort. I mean if there is a further level of interconnectedness, well there is. And therefore engaging in the practices will have an effect on that. If there isn't that, then it won't have that effect. But certainly we can't really know that quite. For short of insight I think we can't know that. But we can know that it affects us. We can know that it affects our next door neighbour when we see them in the morning. And we can know that if everyone was doing it, it would create a bit of a chain reaction. All those are very good reasons for engaging in the meditation practices. And if there is even more benefit, then that's great. So just finish off then with just repeat what these definitions have already said. First of all is Buddha-Gosha. The best, most immaculate attitude towards beings, to benefit them, unstained with self-interest. Then Sangerachta, the most rational of emotions because the most appropriate. And the other way that they are described as is the four great catalysts of being. Certainly of my being and your being, and possibly also for those for whom we feel concerned and connection. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]