Gabi, a therapist and Pure Land practitioner, explores self-power versus other-power through Buddhist teachings, the 12 Steps, and Internal Family Systems. She uses personal stories about house-buying and habits to show how relying entirely on either approach can fail, and offers practical tools like Nembutsu and the God box for finding balance.
Chapters
Hey, so welcome again if you're here with me, and welcome if you're here at a different time, um, to this talk which is about self-power and other power, one of my favorite topics. Um, and we usually begin— I, I was speaking to a Buddhist, a Buddhist colleague yesterday, and she runs lots— she, all of her stuff is online. And she said that it's taken her quite a long time to train her students in seeing this space that we create between us as a zendo. She's Zen, so it's a zendo for her, but we, we can call it a shrine room, I guess. So just a reminder to us all that, that that's the space that we're creating here, and that can be harder online, especially if you're watching later, um, because, because of, because of the internet. So just wanting us to all, to all bear that in mind that we're We're creating this little sacred space for the next hour, and, uh, happy to have you with me in the virtual shrine room. And we'll begin as we usually do with a centering breath, just so we can all land here together. Thank you. So, other power. I'm going to say something now that I don't think applies to— oh, somebody's just arrived. Hi, Alia, lovely to see you. Welcome. I haven't started. You came just at the right time. Okay, so, I'm, I don't think this applies to anyone who's here, but it may apply to people who are watching later. Some of the words, some of the language I use today may be triggering to parts of you, especially if you've had bad experiences with religion or maybe Christianity. So if I use a word that doesn't, that doesn't land for you, It may be the word Buddha, it might be the word God or other power. Please feel free to just kind of make a little internal substitution. So instead of Buddha, you might just want to think of nature or the best of humanity or something, something that makes sense to you. And yeah, and be curious about any reactions that you do have. I think if you don't have any reactions at all to a talk, then it's probably probably needs to be a bit more, a bit more edgy. So I wanted to start by really— this won't be a surprise to people that know me, but just by naming that I am a very self-power person. And I'll go on to talk about what self-power and other power mean. But just to kind of hold my hand up to that right at the beginning, that all of my life, because of my particular, the particular family I was born into, the particular conditions that I grew up in, I learned very young to value my self-sufficiency, my independence, my competence, my kind of a not, not needing to lean on other people, not needing to ask for help, not needing to not needing to be, to not know. It was important for me and my safety to be, yeah, to be independent, to be self-sufficient, to be competent. And so it was a massive surprise to me to find myself so interested in and blessed by other power. So yeah, you might want to think about where you are on that, on that scale, especially as we carry on and talk about different, the different ways of doing things. And also, not just me, but our culture, most of us live in a culture that's very individualistic. Self-sufficiency is praised and And I think that a lot of people take comfort in the idea that they can keep themselves safe, that they don't have to rely on other people. So that's the kind of the context within which we're having this discussion. And I think especially in the UK, I think you, I might be wrong, Paul, but I think that in America there's more of a an interest in or a comfortability with other power, maybe because of Christianity, I don't know. But certainly us Europeans like to stay very self-sufficient. So what is self-power? Let's begin there. For me, self-power is whenever we are trying to change something, through an act of self-will. And whenever I think about self-power, I think about— someone else has just arrived— whenever I think about self-power, I think about the 12 Steps and the— this quote, the little bit of the quote that comes to me is self-will run riot, which is, I think, just a beautiful description of not just alcoholics, but most people. And so I wanted to read you a quote from, from the Big Book, from, from, uh, from the AA book, because I think it's just— it puts something really nicely. Um, and, and the, the quote that that self-will run riot comes from is just extracted: the alcohol— the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot. Though he doesn't usually think so. Um, so welcome, Bailey, nice to have you here. So the first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis, we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show, is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. What usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well. He begins to think life doesn't treat him right. He decides to exert himself more. He becomes on the next occasion still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. I definitely go to gracious. Other people might go to demanding. Still, the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker, even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if only he manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not their— his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Our actor is self-centred, egocentric, as people like to call it nowadays. Selfishness, self-centredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. So, this is language from, I can't remember how long ago, but quite a long time ago now. And the that word selfishness is a word that I like to translate in my head into self-protectiveness. That when we are selfish, when we are doing something to try and control something else, we are doing that because we feel unsafe or because we feel like we need to, we need to protect ourselves somehow.. And I think that that's a softer way, a kinder way of thinking about it than selfishness, which feels it's got that kind of judgment in it. And I think that I kind of smile when I read that paragraph because I just have a lot of identification with how insidious the need to control everything is in, in me. Um, you might all be different. You might all be perfectly selfless, uh, in which case that you won't have any identification at all. I'm reading at the moment, uh, rereading a really lovely book by Rami Shapiro, um, uh, a Jewish, um, writer who— a rabbi who is called Recovery, and he's writing about the 12 steps from different religious perspectives. And he talks about us all needing to recover from believing that we are God, believing that we can control everything. He said that that's the kind of the basic addiction that's behind all of the other addictions that we fall into. And that takes us to Step 1, which is we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, everything, that our lives had become unmanageable. So, so really, um, AA came out of the problem of alcoholism, but we could also see that it, it, it came from the problem of self-power. It came from that experience that people had of trying to fix something for very long periods of time and getting into kind of worse and worse messes. And I think that that's why there's such wisdom, in my experience, from that programme or from the people that have practice that program for a long time because they really get the limits of self-power, that they get that in a really tangible way of, and often, you know, an extremely painful way. So the limits of self-power, the limit that we only know what we know, that, that when I encounter problems or situations, all I have is what's inside me. And what's inside me has over time formed in a particular way that, um, that, that was necessary to keep me safe. And I'm just, I've just got this kind of image, I guess, as I'm talking, that all of the things that keep me safe kind of shut things down one by one. It's like there's, rather than there being an open space that we can walk out into and decide where we go, that we're funneled into various cul-de-sacs or single-line tracks because of our experience and because of our trauma. You know, big T trauma or little t trauma, the things that happen to us that we want to not happen again. And so the ways that we try to prevent those things happening again. Maybe it's helpful to give a little example here. Well, I guess a very, a very minor example is that, that it's really important to me that my environment is tidy, um, and clear. Um, and that kind of helps me to feel safe, um, because then it's not sort of chaotic craziness. Um, but that means I miss out on chaotic craziness and all the good things that that could bring. So, when I approach something, I approach it from that sort of ordered, tidy, get everything tied up kind of way, which maybe doesn't allow for the kind of creativity that other people might have. Um, and as well as the limits that, that are in us because of our childhoods, we're also limited by our parents and our parents' childhoods and their parents' childhoods and, you know, ancestors stretching back and back and back and back. And we're also limited by our culture. The people that we are around. So, there's all these things that both keep us safe and limit us. I guess it's maybe a little bit like a suit of armour. I don't know what it's like to wear a suit of armour, but when I see it, I just think, you know, how can you even get around in it? The heaviness of it, the sort of the rigidity of it, that we've all got our own, there's like a Jean suit of armor and a Paul suit of armor and a Clatty suit of armor that are all shaped for us and allow us to do certain things but not other things. So, what is other power? So, other power is a phrase that you will hear a lot within the world of Pure Land Buddhism, and not necessarily other forms of Buddhism. And within the world of 12 steps, you'll hear the word higher power. Um, and I guess that it's one of the reasons why it felt like it was right for me to do this talk from the edge of my house today. I'll let people see the outside, if you haven't seen it. It's very— so that, that there's something about other power, which it's like it's out there. It's not just in here. And from here, I can see the Malvern Hills. I can see the clouds. I can see our beautiful copper beech tree all covered in little nuts. Other power is not me, and other power knows better than me in my experience because it's not wearing armor. And, and I think that we can see other power as being inside us or outside us. So again, in Pure Land Buddhism, we speak quite a lot about Amitabha Buddha, the Buddha of infinite light, who is out there and who we can have a relationship with. But we can also think about, um, the, the— I'm a therapist, and the form of therapy I practice, Internal Family Systems. Uh, Ralph wants to go outside. Go on then, off you go. No, he just wants to sit next to me. There's no room, Ralph. So internal family systems, I'll give a very, very brief description of the idea is that inside of us we have different parts of us that have different jobs, that have relationships with each other, much as a family does in outside. There's like a, there's a family inside. And all of these parts have self-protective roles. So we've got a self-critical part maybe that criticizes us so we don't mess up and get shamed by people. We've got a part that likes to eat chocolate to stop feelings coming up. We've got all kinds of different parts. And the, the best bit about internal family systems is that we don't just have parts, we have something that is not a part. In fact, in Internal Family Systems, this is called a word that's terrible for Buddhists, which is Self with a capital S. And this Self energy is— we know it's Self energy because it's not got an agenda. It doesn't have a self-protective agenda. It's not trying to keep us safe. It just is, and it's calm, it's steady, it's compassionate naturally, it's got clarity in it, it helps us to connect to things. There are 8 words that start with a C, and I'm not even gonna try and remember what they all are because I can never, can only ever get to about 6, and then I have to Google the other ones. But the idea is that this exists in everybody. It's like the sun behind the clouds. And we can access it. And Dick Schwartz, who founded IFS, talks about self-energy, capital S-E-L-F, which is the stuff that's kind of inside us. And then he talks about Self with capitals as the stuff that's kind of outside us. And that it can be like a particle or a wave. It's, it's available from, from within us, and it's available from elsewhere. Um, so when we are connecting with this energy, I would say that that is other power. And, and other power has a, a wisdom and a depth of compassion and steadiness that is beyond anything that I can do. So this is where it gets, I guess it gets a bit sort of woo, as someone I know would say. And really it's helpful to check back in with our own. Anything I say, you know, you just need to check with your own experience and it may or may not resonate for you. All I can do is share my own experience. So in the 12— just to go back to the 12 steps, the idea is that when we encounter the limits, when we really encounter the limits of our self-power, when we are experiencing real massive problems in our lives and we're throwing everything we can at it, and people who are in addiction have more self— who have more self-will and have more willpower than anyone else, but it's still not working. That's the point at which we become available to being helped by another power. Maiko's looking at me and whining. She's my other power right now. And this is when we begin to be open to wisdom that comes from somewhere else. Um, because as Step 2 says, we come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Um, so I guess that my experience is that there is such a thing. Um, but it's a, it's a really deeply personal question whether or not there is such a thing as another power. Um, and, and what we're asked to do in the 12 steps is to just keep an open mind and to act for a little while as if there might be a higher power and just see what happens. So I always remember my sponsor telling me many, many years ago that, that someone she knew had their radiator as their higher power, and they were just, uh, they'd, they'd kind of share their problems with their radiator, or they'd ask their radiator for advice ice and then just wait and see what happened. And their experience is that they received wisdom that didn't seem to come from inside them. Whether it actually came from the radiator or not, who knows? But the idea is to become open to something that is beyond ourselves, something that is beyond what we know, and just stay open to that. Probably my biggest experience of thinking that I knew best about something, and if you've been to practice within the past 2 years, you've heard about this till the cow's come home already, so sorry, Jean, and when we were buying our house, the house that I'm in now, and in 2 days' time, it's our year anniversary of being here. But a few years ago, we started trying to, a couple of years ago, we started trying to move. I'm a little bit crazy when it comes to things like buying houses or getting new dogs, or I just go a bit crazy. So, I probably looked at 3,000 houses online in great detail. We went to look at 14, 15 houses, and we found what we thought was our absolute dream home. It was in this little space where there were ponies in the middle of the, the, the kind of the road, and, and, um, it backed onto a golf course. It was all green out the window. It was nothing like anything that I'd seen on the lists. And, um, so we started to sell our house, and, uh, very long story short, we— the person that was buying our house, it took, I think, about 10 months to fall through. Basically, he couldn't buy it, and the people that we were buying from eventually, understandably, they were incredibly patient, sold the dream house to someone else. And I was so heartbroken. It was just like I couldn't bear it. I thought, we're never gonna find anything like as— anything as nice as that house. Um, and then maybe 4 or 5 weeks later, we came to look at this house, uh, which, which is just so amazing. Every day I think, how did we get this house? That we both have offices where we see our therapy clients with amazing views of the hills. We've got a garden that's maybe 10 times as big as the one in the dream house. And it's quirky and it's, you know, it's not kind of what we imagined, but it suits us just down to the ground. There's a cemetery just out the back, which is really beautiful to walk around. So I thought I knew best. I thought I knew what our dream house was. And somehow I didn't. There was something different that was waiting for us. And maybe if I'd been less stubborn and let go of that first house earlier, it might have been a smoother ride. But maybe, yeah, who knows, maybe that was the lesson I needed was to, um, to just, just to keep reminding myself that I don't always know best. Um, so I'm gonna talk briefly about the potential pitfalls of an other power approach, and then we get to the good bit, which is where you get to ask me questions. So, potential pitfalls. One of the stories I really like about other power is that story of a man who's in a flood, and he, all of his neighbors start leaving the neighborhood to get away from the rising waters, but he's determined that God is going to save him, so he stays in his house, and the water rises up. And a boat comes and he says, "No, go away, I'm fine. God's gonna save me." And he ends up on the roof of his house and a helicopter comes and he's like, "No, no, no, God's gonna save me." And I can't remember, I don't think he actually drowns. I'm not sure if that's how the story ends. But he says to, you know, he doesn't get saved by God. And he says to God, "What's going on?" And God said, "I sent you a helicopter." Like, what are you doing? There's a danger that if we, if we put all of our faith into another power, we might fall into this trap of thinking that we don't have to do anything, that, that it's all going to be sorted out for us. That is not the way I understand that it works, um, that we need to put in the— we need to put in the footwork. And we might ask for some kind of guidance about what footwork we we put in. My guess is if that man had asked God how he was going to be saved, God might have said, "I'm just sending a boat." Okay, I'll get in the boat. Yeah, don't fall into that. Don't fall into that trick of not putting in the work. Another potential pitfall is that a part of us pretends to be a higher power. And tricks us. So, um, oh, uh, I really should, uh, I don't know, not help that person because my higher power says that I shouldn't. Um, rather than, uh, realizing that there's a part of us that's kind of invested in us not doing something. Um, and the other, and the other thing that I think is a big pitfall is that we listen to other people as if they are our higher powers. So, and that includes Buddhist teachers, maybe especially Buddhist teachers, you better be careful about them. That if we, if we imagine that our higher power is speaking just through someone, then we're leaving out the, that they're human. And I think that as human beings, Certainly for me, I like the idea of other people having authority because then I can just kind of not work things out for myself. And it is important. It's also important to lean into people, wise people or wise groups. But we do need to be careful to hold on to our discernment. And I think that those are maybe the final two things that I want to say. Is that we should hold on to our discernment. That's really important. And that includes parts of us that are skeptical. I think skeptical parts are really precious because they just keep an eye on some of this stuff. And if they, they are skeptical about something in particular, then we should listen to them and really pay attention to them. And I heard this a long time ago and really liked it, that we should also check if we feel like we're getting guidance, we should check, we should always check that guidance against the precepts. So, so does the thing that we're, we're called to do mean that we're not going to harm other people or, or take what isn't given, or, um, you know, that, that does it align with an ethical framework? Does it, does it, um, does it, does it mean that we're being kind to other people and to ourselves? Um, and, and also I think we do need self-power. I think that it's important that we use our self-will sometimes, or maybe often, um, because otherwise We wouldn't get anywhere. We wouldn't do anything. You wouldn't be here if you didn't have some self-will that got you to stop what you were doing and turn up. So, I think that personally we need both. That they kind of support each other. I said the last thing I was going to say was the last thing I was going to say, but I'm just going to say one more thing. A few practical tips for things that you could do to help your self-power or to help your other power. Connection. Self-power things that help me with my spiritual practice. It's good to do, to develop good habits, to use scheduling, to join in with other people, to be realistic, to keep things small. Can you hear my dog whining? Or is it just me that can hear it? Oh, good. Thank you, Paul. She's decided it's dinner time. She's really, really— she's using all of her self-power right now to try and get me to come away from the screen and pour her biscuits onto the floor. I know, it's very, very difficult, isn't it? And also to connect with other people who want to do good things, other power things. I think saying the Nembutsu as a Pure Land Buddhist, but little things like saying grace before meals, staying open to messages from other people and from the universe. I really like something called a God Box where you've got a box, a little box where if you're really stuck with something, you just write it down, you put it in the box as a way of handing it over. And then you just, if you think about it again, you just hand it over again, just to wait for something to come. And also, we don't need to worry about any of that, because Amida, Amida's love, nature's love, wherever you want to see it as coming from, is working on us all the time. And I'll just finish with one of the wassans from Shinran's writing: The light of compassion illuminates us from afar. Those beings it reaches, it is taught, attain joy of Dharma. So take refuge in Amida, the great consolation. So thank you for listening so patiently to me. Maiko's licking my left hand now, which seems to be stopping her from whining. So, that hopefully will work for a while. So if anyone has anything that, any straightforward questions or anything that kind of niggles them or anything that they want to know about anything I've said, do just unmute and speak. And this is the bit that will be on the video and then I'll stop the video. In a little while. No such thing as a silly question.
I'll come in, if I may, Satya Robyn. Please do. I came many years ago, I came across an expression which actually totally spoke to me about what other power was. And so I'll just say it now very briefly: there is no self-power, there is no other power, there is only Other Power with a capital O and a capital P. Because the problem is, if we try to attain other power, it's just self-power operating in another slightly more subtle way. So for me, I tend just to wait for other power, or I try— even that's self-power, of course— I, but I try to be open to other power just happening, and it either happens or it doesn't happen. But that's other power for you. Anything else is self-power. Anyway, I thought I'd just throw that into the mix.
Thank you, Ian. And, and you— and that's, that's a really, um, big topic of debate within Pure Land Buddhist circles. Is, is, is there even ever— is there such thing as self-power? We think it's self-power, but, but is it?
Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, it's, it's a, it's an interesting question, isn't it? And this idea that that even when we say Nembutsu, it's, you know, even when we say the name of the Buddha, it's because of the causes and conditions that have led us here, which is really nothing to do with us. So that there's just a gratitude that we receive rather than feeling that we've had anything to do with anything, anything at all, anything good at all.
I must say, when I say the Nembutsu, I say it out of remembrance, just to remind myself, and out of gratitude. But that's the whole point about the Nembutsu, isn't it? It just happens.
Yeah.
People say it, or they don't say it, but underneath that is the underlying absolute assurance that I, whatever that I is, always has been, and always will be in Amida's Pure Land.
Absolutely.
And so the Nembutsu is just a sense, a reminder to me that that is the case.
It's already true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. And it's lovely to hear your faith as you speak, that also communicates that. Yeah, I don't think people always are in that place of faith, but I guess that even if we've had a glimpse of something that is looking after us, then we can at least remember that we've felt it once. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Satya Robyn. Thank you.
Anyone else have anything they want to ask or say? I'm gonna stop the recording now, so thank you for watching. And, uh, my name is Gabi.
