Radiating Love

Welcome to this talk. Massive audience here today. Let's just begin by sitting quietly together for a couple of minutes just to land in the space. And you might want to notice how you are in this moment, any physical sensations in the body, places of tightness, places in the body that are more relaxed. And you might want to notice how you're feeling, what you're carrying in your heart as you arrive here. Good, thank you. Open your eyes in your own time. So the talk's called Radiating Love, which was just a phrase that came to me when we were planning these months ago. And sometimes we are in a place in our lives where that feels like it's coming very naturally to us, and it is often, you know, loving kindness, compassion, two of the higher virtues in Buddhism, things that we're supposed to aim towards. So I thought I'd begin with just thinking about why, why are we supposed to be being kind to each other, why are we supposed to radiate love. And maybe I'll just bring to mind my experience of being in a place where that was coming quite easy to me. If I'm in a space, and this is often something that we don't notice at the time, so I'm sort of having to go back in my mind to think, oh, when's a time when I'm in reflection I was radiating that? My body tends to be relaxed. If I'm feeling friendly and kind towards people, my body tends to be relaxed. I'm not carrying any tension there. Things aren't as tiring when I'm naturally being kind and loving towards people. It's not about— when I'm really radiating love, it isn't about working hard. It's just something that happens easily. Someone once said to me, "Oh, you're very patient." And I didn't think that was true at the time, because actually I only experienced myself— I think it was when I was working in retail, I only experienced myself being patient when there was a difficult customer and I had to kind of go, "Oh yes, sir, I'm really sorry to hear that, sir. Let me see what I can do about that, sir." And you can see the customer's face is getting redder and redder and their fists are starting to clench. In those moments, I felt like, "Oh, now I'm being patient." But actually, I was just naturally being patient when my friend noticed. And when we're really radiating love, we don't— we're not conscious of it. It isn't a self-conscious activity. It's not something we strive for. It's something that happens spontaneously and easily, and it feels good physically. It feels better to be in that state. It isn't as tiring. We're less likely to have health problems when we're naturally in that state. And our minds, when we're radiating love, our minds aren't busy, they're not— we're not in conflict with ourselves, we're not in conflict with other people, and it just feels— that just feels nicer, it feels more natural. And my experience of being in that place is, oh, this is how I'm supposed to be as a human being. When I'm in conflict with myself, when I'm carrying tension, when my thoughts are frenetic, those feel like the aberrations rather than the natural state. And yet, whilst it's true that sometimes we find ourselves in a place where it's very easy to be loving, Sometimes that isn't true. Often the mind is busy, we are carrying tension, we are divided against ourselves, we are upset with other people. That's how it is to be human. As I mentioned in the service this morning, this week, Satya Robyn and amid the climate crisis, activists, and I have been following the news from home, and she's been writing about it most days. And many, many of the people who respond to what she's writing are responding in a loving, kind, supportive way, even moved to tears sometimes by some of the things that she's shared. And some people are responding from a place of anger and ill will because they're perhaps frightened by climate change, or who knows what. Maybe they've had a bad day and they just need to take it out on somebody, so I'm going to type it on my keyboard because that person's really far away and it's easier to do that than actually have a conversation with somebody. Whatever it is, You get these hateful comments underneath things that are posted online. And it's very easy for me to feel kind towards the people who are writing nice things, and it's much harder for me to feel kind towards the people who are writing hateful things. And I've moved in and out of those, and sometimes this week I've been able to do that. I've been able to feel kind and loving towards the people who are writing hateful things, and sometimes I haven't. And at one point somebody was writing a response to something I'd written and they were just infuriating me, so I just lost my patience and deleted the comment and blocked that person. Well, actually, that felt like I was protecting them in a way, because if I'd lost my patience more, things might have gone 'Worse than that hit.' And then on a different day I could read the same thing and feel really sympathetic to the suffering of that person. So part of what I've been wondering about is what is it that makes the difference between those two states of mind? How is it that on some days I can feel sympathetic to somebody who is who on other days would really get underneath my skin. And one of the things that makes a big difference is being honest with myself about the sort of person that I am, looking into my own heart not just at the things that meet the Buddhist ideals, but particularly at the things that don't. Looking at the things in my own shadow. Remembering the times when I have felt angry at the world or to the people. And remembering that when I felt angry, usually it was because I felt hurt underneath on some level. And also remembering that when I felt angry, I was desperate for somebody to be able to listen to me, and yet communicating in a way that made it really hard for people to listen to me. So then the hurt becomes deeper. Remembering those times when I felt ill will, harmful thoughts, and tracing that back in my own mind to my own experiences of being hurt or wounded, or not wanting to admit some grief or suffering that I'm experiencing on some level. The more deeply me, I come to understand my own greed, hate, and delusion. I don't like using the word hate because sometimes I think people don't like to identify with it because it seems a really negative quality. It's one of the three poisons in Buddhism, and some people translate it as ill will, which has got a much softer sound to it. And yet Very occasionally, what is in my heart isn't ill will, but it's hate, because I'm feeling protective of myself or of somebody that I love. And that's— as a Buddhist priest, that's quite a hard thing to admit to. And yet— Not to admit it begins to give those things power over us, and admitting it begins to allow us to feel sympathy for other people and for ourselves. Because if I can really understand how it is for me to be a person and why my own hackles rise in certain situations, then I can begin to understand how it is to be the person standing opposite me whose hackles are rising. And that's when the possibility of real connection and communication starts. Without an attempt to understanding each other, real communication isn't possible. And often what happens in my experience is I'll meet somebody or read a comment from somebody or see something happen that looks like it's coming from a place of anger, for example, and my anger comes up in response. And then I remember all these things that I'm talking about, how it is to be 'human being,' and something softens in me. And it— my whole body softens and relaxes. And often the place that I land in then actually is a place of sadness about the suffering of the other person. And sadness can be a part of radiating love. It's a part of sympathy, being deeply moved by another person's plight, or by our own plight. So self-understanding, very important. But in a culture that is shaming, self-understanding can be quite difficult. As I said, you know, for a Buddhist priest to admit having hate It's quite unusual, probably not for pure land Buddhists, but for Buddhists of other schools where they're really striving hard to— I don't know, maybe it's not unusual, I don't know if it's in Earth Buddhist schools, but it feels like in me there's the potential for feeling ashamed when I name those things. That is what gets in the way, and the reason I'm able to name those things now is because I trust that there is something that isn't shaming, that receives me. So years and years of my practice of taking refuge in something greater than myself that is radiating love all the time supports me to look into my own shadow. Because the fear is, if I name these things that are in my heart, I'll be overwhelmed with shame, people will reject me, no one's going to like me anymore, I won't be allowed to stay in my community. And of course there are real ways of behaving that we might fall into that do get us expelled from communities because human, let's say, other human beings are vulnerable. And yet there is something in the universe that is robust and has the capacity to receive me, whatever state I'm in. It's that analogy of deciding to push away from the side of the swimming bath and trusting that the water will hold you. And in my own life, I've experienced pushing off, both literally and metaphorically, pushing off from the side of the swimming baths and being held by the water. Moments of deep conflict in me where I was struggling to manage a volunteer here, or, you know, being in relationship with somebody was bringing up something painful for me, and I just wanted to push them away and didn't want to work through the, through the conflict. These feelings of anger coming up. First impulse is in me is to isolate myself. Yourself in those moments. Second, or maybe third or fourth or fifth impulse, is to come into the shrine room or into my office, light a stick of incense, make an offering, and make that connection with the Buddha, with the spirit of the Buddha that is still available to us to this day. And sometimes in that process of lighting the incense and put it in the offering bowl and sitting in front of the Buddha statue, there is an experience of being received and settling in. Ah, actually I can be myself completely here. Whatever is in my heart I can sit here, and that's okay, because regardless of whether I am able to radiate love or not, the Buddha is doing it. And sometimes I'm so wound up that that doesn't happen straight away, and yet I am able to trust that even if my own strong feelings mean that I'm pushing everybody away, even the Buddha, The Buddha isn't accepting my rejection. He's still sitting there radiating love. The Buddha of Infinite Light is the friend that always stays by your side regardless of how badly you treat them. And in that act of trusting my own shame is undermined, my own self-criticism is undermined, and it becomes more and more possible for me to have the experience of accepting, 'Ah, this is the sort of person I am.' And strangely enough, In those moments, it's like landing in a space, an empty space in the center of your own heart. And kind of, you might look around and go, 'Oh, well, there's anger, there's frustration, there's hurt, but here I am in the palm of the hand of the Buddha being lowered into this empty space.' in the middle. All those things are still there, but somehow I'm not being controlled by them, I'm in a different relationship to them. And part of what facilitates that is accepting that they are there, not trying to cover them up. And this is why Dharmavidya called his most recent book The Dark Side of the mirror. He was thinking of that experience where it's nighttime, you're outside a house, and of course I always picture Darlene's place in France when I imagine this, and the lights are on inside the house so you can see through the window to what's happening, and then somebody turns the lights off and the window becomes a mirror, and you see the full moon reflected in the dark glass of the mirror. In this analogy, we are the house, um, and the light turned on is our own ego telling the story of, 'Oh, I'm this sort of person, I'm not that sort of person, I'm good, look at me, I can do all these things, and don't look at— don't—' When that light of ego, of denial, of conceit is turned off, naturally we become mirrors for the Buddha's love, and mirrors for the world around us, so we can more easily see the suffering of other people, however it's presenting itself, whether it's presenting itself obviously as suffering, or whether it's presenting itself as upsetness. And we can also see that when that ego light is dimmed, when that conceit is dimmed, we can see the Buddha's light shining on us and shining on everybody. So when I reflected on the title Radiating Love, the image that came to me was of a stone that sits all day in the sun taking in the heat, and then at night it gives the heat of the sun. And it's a bit like that, really. Really, when we allow ourselves to be warmed by the light of the Buddha, we start naturally radiating that heat and that light back out into the world. And what is the shield that we put up? It's the shield of pretending that there's something So this is the two things that support us to radiate love: self-honesty and trust that there is something that receives us just as we are, which facilitates self-honesty. And the thing that I experience in that moment is often a sense of relief, actually. There's a, you know, there's a part that likes to pretend it can be strong and can be loving in all situations, and that I'm never going to be triggered and I'm a perfect priest. And then I read something that upsets me, and I spend minutes or hours ruminating over it. And then I come into the shrine room and make an offering and feel loved. And in that mode of being loved, there is a deep acceptance of my own limitations, which of course is what I was avoiding feeling. Part of me doesn't want to be the sort of person who gets upset by things, and And yet paradoxically, in landing in the reality of how it is to be me, somebody who occasionally gets upset by things, there is a deep sense of relief. I'm much more grounded suddenly. There's often a feeling of tiredness that comes because it takes quite a lot of work to pretend to be something that you're not. And there is a feeling of being vulnerable. And there is a feeling of being loved. And from that space of landing in my own quote-unquote weakness, um, from the outside it will look like I am naturally radiating love. So I suppose this isn't about trying to be the perfect Buddhist or the perfect Buddha, or working hard to get in a place where you're completely patient and completely loving. It's about beginning with the reality of, 'Oh, this is 'This is who I am now.' And in saying that, and accepting that, and feeling the Buddha's deep acceptance and love of you in that moment, 'This is how I am now,' that's when the— to return to Dalai Lama's image— that's when the ego light goes off, and the light of the Buddha can shine through. And actually in those moments we don't necessarily, as I said right at the beginning, we don't necessarily know that we're being loving. In those moments we probably just feel a bit easier, a bit vulnerable, a bit tender-hearted. Those are the moments when the Buddha's light is shining, reflecting from us the brightest, and it looks to the outside world world, like suddenly we've become Buddhas. No moment of it. Just checking my 4 bullet points I wrote down.

Don't you think though, with patience, um, it's, um, not something that one thinks, "Oh, I'm going to be patient." It's somehow a naturally born thing that you're born with. I think so, yeah. Because I was ordinarily just primary school teacher training college trained, but I happen to have a lot of slow learners and people from difficult backgrounds in my class, and I was always very successful with the Slovenian learners, not because I was thinking I must be— it came naturally, you know. And the same as I taught 2 mornings a week art workshops in care homes for 4 years. I was okay with those with learning difficulties, I was okay with the stroke victims, but I was most successful with the dementia people. And my art tutor said to me, 'You've obviously got patience,' she said. I haven't. I said, 'Well, it just sort of comes naturally.' And the way I went about it, I mean, one man they persuaded to come and join the group, because I had a group of no more than 8, I asked for. Because that was enough to cope with. And they persuaded this one man to come and sit down, and he never spoke, and he sat there, and I gave him a coloured pencil to colour a frame, and we were doing a bonfire picture, and he put it down and walked round the group, and I gave it to him again. He just looked into space. I gave it to him the third time, looked from the other side of the group. He was not only colouring in his flame, he was talking to the lady next to him. And the activities lady at the home noticed, and she called her colleague and she said, "Look at Ray, isn't it marvellous?" And I said, "Why?" She said, "He's lived here for years and it's the first time he's ever spoken or joined in with anything." I think you're right.

I think I'm right.

It wasn't anything I did. Absolutely. The way I went about it was inborn, something natural I got.

Yeah, absolutely.

And in the end, you know, he came the next week and the next week, then he was missing. And some of them sometimes were because they had a hospital appointment or a relative came to St. Martin's. So in the end, I asked, what's happened to Ray? She said, 'Oh, he's left.' She said, 'He's gone to a care home.' This was at Davenham. 'He's gone to a care home the other side of Worcester where there's a lot more things he'll be able to join in with.' Well, I mean, it wasn't really anything I set out to do. It just was something natural in me.

And that's why I said the times when it's coming, we don't notice ourselves, other people notice it. And some groups of people, for me, will be really easy to be with, but for the person next to me will be really difficult for them to be with, because they've got different buttons that get pressed. Yeah. You know, that's why I think it's good in your life to have— to spend time with people who it's very easy and natural to be patient with. Because, because we need that. And every now and again it's good to spend time with somebody who pushes your buttons, because then there's a learning opportunity. But you're right, we are, we're all born with that capacity for patience and loving kindness, and it gets knocked out of us in different ways. That's how it is to be human. And some of us, unfortunately, for some people it gets knocked out even before they're born because of you know, the circumstances of family life, even in the run-up to the birth. But I do believe that there is an innate capacity in human beings to be loving or to reflect the Buddhism, however you want to put it. And sometimes it comes easily and naturally, like in the story you described. Yeah. And the times when it doesn't are really interesting and useful learning opportunities.

Because probably if someone was trying extra hard to be patient and it wasn't really their inborn natural them, it probably wouldn't come over the same.

Absolutely, yeah. People are very good at picking up on mixed motivations, which isn't to say that we shouldn't try to be patient, you know. When I was talking to those when I felt like I was trying to be patient, when I was talking to that customer who was really upsetting years and years ago, if I'd just sort of gone, "Oh, I can't handle this, you just stop being an idiot," I probably wouldn't have helped the situation. So there is a value in restraint, there's a place for that, and it's really important when you notice that, you know, those times when I fit when you feel like, oh, I'm having to work hard to do this, it's usually a sign that there's something to get curious about at some point.

It was very, very strange yesterday. I thought of you. I walked through St. Thomas car park to go shopping to St. John's, and there was a little corner— they'd obviously asked if they could do it— of two men and a woman with Watchtower and all that, you see. And as I walked past, he said, "Ah, can I stop you a moment, really? Are you interested in this?" etc. And I said, "No, actually, I'm a member of the Amida Buddhist. I go to the temple at Melbourne." And he didn't know anything about Buddhism, so he was asking me about it.

It's really nice when somebody's open to having a conversation.

Yeah. And then he said, "Well, I've learnt a lot," you know. It was funny. Really funny, I thought. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, well, thank you both. I did say there was a massive audience at the beginning. There's two human beings here in the room with me. I was saying to David the other day when it was just the two of us, years ago I used to be really sort of— I'd read the beginning of a Mahayana sutra and it would describe I'd describe all these invisible creatures gathering to listen to the Buddha's teaching, and I would scoff. And now, not that I've got a strong sense of invisible creatures appearing, but I do have a sense of trusting that even if there's just me giving a talk to an empty room, somehow something is receiving that intention or communication. But as a human being, I do particularly enjoy having human beings to talk to. So thank you and namaste to you. Namaste.