Exchanging Self with Other #177

Today’s episode is a powerful meditation called exchanging self with other. I led this meditation for our Train a Happy Mind community a couple of months ago. For nearly a thousand years, this was a secret practice that Tibetan Buddhist teachers only recently opened up to everyone, after China’s invasion of Tibet. If you enjoy it, I invite you to join our Train a Happy Mind community that meets Sunday mornings. You can become part of it for free or by donation.

Scott Snibbe: We’re doing an extended series on love and compassion, which is one of my favorite topics. Most of us like love and compassion. Compassion can be a little scary because you open yourself up to other people’s suffering. Love can be scary too because you take down your boundaries and open yourself up to people. 

In the last three sessions, we did meditations from the book. We did equanimity, love, compassion, and universalizing, which is where you use every experience in your life as a way to generate love and compassion. As a reminder, if anyone missed that, it’s quite a nice practice. As you’re eating a sandwich, you can just think, Oh, if only everyone in the world had a sandwich and food to eat and so on. Then if something bad happens, say you stub your toe, instead of, Poor me, my toe, think of all the other people who are hurt, who are sick right now, even people on their deathbeds: may their pain be eased, may their illnesses be healed, may their toe feel better.

Am I a Bodhisattva?

Today we’re doing a practice that combines a lot of these. A bodhisattva is a being who dedicates their life to benefiting others. They cultivate a quality called bodhicitta. Citta means mind, and bodhi means enlightenment. It’s striking when you realize that when we say enlightenment, in this form of Buddhism, it’s synonymous with altruism, that the two things are basically the same state. Developing your mind to its highest state of development is to be completely altruistic, to want to take away all of other people’s suffering, and want to give everything to everybody that they need.

I’ll tell you, I was a little naive when I first heard about this. My brother took me to a teaching by the Dalai Lama 25 years ago, and he was teaching about this, and when I left, I was thinking, I like people, and I want them to be happy, so maybe I’m almost a Bodhisattva? But it turns out, it wasn’t as easy as I thought, because when you start really getting to understand your mind, you’re going to see the more subtle ways that you may not feel equal about people. 

I like people, and I want them to be happy, so maybe I’m almost a Bodhisattva?

I never felt that angry at most people, but what I started to realize is I do have bias. I’m biased towards some people and against others. There are many people I don’t really care about at all, that I pass on the street, or I see on television. Sometimes even tragedies, I would kind of feel indifferent, like, or just “lucky it’s not me.”

What is real happiness?

Also, the sense of separateness is another kind of obstacle to caring about everybody. That you feel isolated from others. That somehow my happiness, our happiness, could be disconnected from other people’s happiness. The Buddhist view is just they’re totally inseparable. It’s not quite possible to have a selfish type of happiness. It’s not real happiness. 

It’s not quite possible to have a selfish type of happiness. It’s not real happiness. 

Then I also started to realize that the people I often get the most angry at are the ones who love me the most, which I think for people listening, might ring true. Who do I get angry at the most: my partner, my parents, my siblings. It’s funny, I laugh a lot at these things, I think laughter is a very good way to process things like this. But it’s quite painful.

There are all these methods, systematic methods to help us get past the kind of bias that we have that prevents us from loving everybody in a healthy way, with boundaries, and having compassion for everybody. There’s one called tonglen where you use your breath and you breathe in and take in people’s suffering and breathe it out and offer happiness. 

At first, they sound simple, but to really practice them, but they work quite gradually, over the course of years, and then eventually decades. It’s not something to be disappointed about, it’s something to look forward to because I think it keeps opening your heart. 

Then when I look at people who really effectively followed them—His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a great example. You can see there’s no limit. There’s no limit to their effect on you if you’ve ever met him or somebody like him, whoever’s in front of them. They get all of his attention all of his love all of his compassion It’s amazing being around somebody like that. If you ever have the chance, it doesn’t have to be the Dalai Lama, there are actually a lot of people like this and they’re not all Buddhists, some of them are nurses, mothers, caretakers, or friends. 

But if you really follow those instructions, they seem simple, but they really work to transform your mind to always thinking about others and transforming all of your experience into compassion. I’ve mentioned this a few times, most of these methods for love and compassion were very secret until quite recently, like 50 or 60 years ago. It’s a tragedy for the Tibetan people because they lost their country and a lot of their freedom to practice in it. But it’s been a treasure that was released to the world as these practices were opened up to everybody and made into forms that you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice.

I take a very secular non-religious approach to all these teachings. I myself am a Buddhist, but I teach in a way that you don’t have to be a Buddhist, which my teacher said, the Dalai Lama said, Go beyond religion. He has a book called Beyond Religion that was the inspiration for adapting to teachings like this. 

I’ll explain this practice a little bit, and then we’ll do the meditation. It’s really important to actually do the meditation, not just read about it. Like I said, it doesn’t sound that complicated when you think about it. The key is just to do it. It’s five steps. This is a five-step sequence, and it’s called exchanging self with others. 

The five steps of exchanging self with other

I’ll describe the steps, it’s actually nice to hear them described before we meditate.

Step 1: equalizing self with others

It begins with equalizing self with others. To explain it simply, it’s to think how we’re all equal. One of the simplest ways is just that everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants to suffer, just like me. That phrase, just like me, can be particularly helpful. Especially, when you’re really angry at someone or you see someone in the world, you just really think is doing awful things it’s particularly helpful.

Because the bias, even against the people doing the worst things in the world is an obstacle to our own love and compassion. Although it might be the last step you’re able to take, equalizing yourself with others is the first step. Even that one might be kind of hard to practice fully at first.

Step 2: think of the drawbacks of selfishness

Then you think of the drawbacks of selfishness, the second step. That one may not be immediately obvious, because it’s different from taking care of yourself. It’s important to take care of yourself and be compassionate to yourself. But what are the drawbacks of selfishness?

It’s nice to really think about it without just going through some rote program, but try to live one day totally selfish and then live the next day totally altruistic and see how you feel at the end of each day. Or try to remember doing something very selfish and how you felt about it, how you still feel about it, or doing something very kind and altruistic, and how you felt. 

Step 3: think of the benefit of cherishing others

The third step is the benefits of cherishing others. You think how nice it is to cherish others and how good it feels. Some of the things I really feel best about in my life were selfless things that I did, and I didn’t have to do. Maybe it was for someone who wasn’t immediately related to me or that I would get something back from. I felt really good about it, it helped develop my character in a good way. Especially, if there was a sacrifice involved.

Step 4: exchanging self with other

Then the fourth step is the one of exchanging self with other. That’s where you actually picture everyone around you, everyone in the world and think, do I really want to live a life where I take everything they do for me, all for me, me, me, me, me? They’re manufacturing my products, making my food: me, me, me, me, me. Or does it make more sense that I try to benefit them? That somehow, to whatever extent, I make their lives a little better. And as a side effect, it makes you quite happy.

Step 5: love and compassion

Then the last step is love and compassion, to practice love and compassion to whatever extent you can. It’s interesting when you hear it broken down into these steps, they are discreet and slightly different from one another.  Anyway, let’s do the practice. 

Exchanging self with other meditation

Get yourself into meditation posture, if you’re on the ground cross your legs and raise your seat onto a cushion. If you’re in a chair, don’t cross your legs, just have your legs out and straight down.

You can put one hand on top of the other, your thumbs touching, and then straighten your spine, and that’s the most important part. Tilt down your head and almost close your eyes if that feels comfortable, which helps you go inward without falling asleep. But feel free to change any of these elements of posture if it makes your body more comfortable and alert. 

Relax the muscles in your mouth. Relax your shoulders, your neck, your face.

Just with that, you should be able to feel more alert, a little bit more connected to yourself.

Remember for a moment what meditation is from in Buddhist tradition, which is bringing out our best qualities. To start the meditation, we can just have that motivation of bringing out our best qualities. 

Bringing out our best qualities

My daughter’s name is Samaya, and that’s a vow you have in Tibetan Buddhism. It’s your commitment to do certain practices and behave in certain ways every day. She asked what her name means, and at first I would say, Oh, it means a commitment, a vow. Then my wife came up with this great way to explain her name, which is, It’s your promise to be your best self. That can be a nice motivation.

The second step of a meditation session after posture is just to have a motivation that however much time we spend on the cushion, that it’s a way to connect with ourselves and bring out our best qualities. 

One of the perspectives on the mind, from this tradition, is that our minds are fundamentally good. And that delusions, disturbing emotions, are shallow, on the surface. Deeper within each of us is kindness, love, compassion, generosity, and patience. The more we see that in ourselves and others, the better life we lead, a life of integrity and happiness.

It can be useful to think of other beings more evolved than we are. Whoever that is for you, if you’re Buddhist, it can be the Dalai Lama. If you’re a Christian, it can be Jesus, Mary, or God. We can just think of ordinary people who are patient and calm, generous, and wise.

From this tradition’s perspective of the mind, we can become like them, and it’s by doing exactly what we’re doing right now, just by going inward. This is really one of the very best forms of self-care. Self compassion is to spend some quiet time going inward to figure out who you are beneath stimulation, entertainment, relationships, and even beneath your personality. There’s something very subtle and alive within all of us that is fundamentally good, that we can recognize and connect with.

Self compassion is to spend some quiet time going inward to figure out who you are beneath stimulation, entertainment, relationships, and even beneath your personality.

Stabilize the mind

Then bring your mind to your breath, just for one minute, to stabilize the mind. You can focus on the breath as it comes in and out of your nostrils, it’s cooler as it comes in.

Then pay attention at a pause.

And then as it goes out, a little warmer. 

It’s totally natural to get distracted. And when you do, just kind of smile. You don’t need to feel bad about yourself. Just direct your mind back to your breath and let whatever distraction it was, whether a pain in your body or a plan, or memory, fade away.

Thoughts naturally fade away if you don’t feed them, or don’t pay attention to them.

Just one minute to focus on the breath.

Step 1: all living beings want to be happy

Now, we meditate on how to generate this expansive state of mind with a method called exchanging self with other. It’s a thousand years old, comes from the master Atisha—who was one of those who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the 11th century—Lama Tsongkhapa, the founder of this Lamrim lineage that I based the How to Train a Happy Mind Meditations on. And it’s stayed pure down to the present day through great teachers.

The first step is how much all living beings want to be happy. Put yourself in the shoes of your partner, your parents, your friends. Think how they just want to be happy, just as I do. Gradually expand to include people around you, because it’s nice to think of the people actually around you, like in the houses next door, in the town or city where you are.

They all want to be happy, they don’t want to be, want to suffer.

Gradually expand to include all living beings, including your enemies.

You can think of your personal enemies if you have them, people you’re in conflict with. Many of us are lucky enough not to have someone we would call an enemy in our everyday life.

But most of us have enemies in the greater world, people we consider to be harming the world in some way, starting wars, stoking hatred, destroying the environment.

Try, if you can, to see that those people you consider your enemies, also want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer, just like me. It can feel a little painful opening up like this, but it’s hard to debate it isn’t true.

Try, if you can, to see that those people you consider your enemies, also want to be happy.

Then broaden even beyond people to animals. Pets are quite easy to start with, if you have any or know any. Fish, insects, they all have the same right to be happy as I do. They flee from pain. They move toward what’s pleasant.

Even if you look at a little amoeba under a microscope, you put a little drop of sugar, they move toward it. And if you poke it with a pin, they run away.

You could imagine yourself in the body of a pet or a bird and think how they all have the same rights and aspirations to be happy, of course with a slightly more primitive mind. But still, they feel pain, they have some sense of enjoyment of what feels good.

In the middle of these infinite living beings, I’m just one. Yet instead of thinking about making all of them happy, I spend most of my time thinking about making myself happy.

Second step: the disadvantages of being self-centered

That would even be okay if it actually worked, but by being so self-centered, I don’t even achieve that goal. That’s why in the second step, we meditate on the disadvantages of being self-centered, which is different from genuine self-care.

Think of all the actions that are motivated by self-centeredness, killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, divisive speech, and just thinking badly.

When you really look at them, they’re all motivated by this self-centered attitude.

When we look at the people who do these selfish acts, in ourselves, when we act selfishly, do these actions even make us happy?

You can decide for yourself, but in general, the conclusion is no. The result is that we create the cause of our own suffering.

When we’re self-centered, we make our partner and children unhappy because nobody likes selfish people who think mostly about themselves and use other people and things for their own happiness.

Think about someone you know like this who is self-centered, who acts selfishly. People don’t tend to like them very much. They usually don’t have that many friends. People don’t enjoy their company. But even from a worldly perspective, it’s hard for that person to be happy.

Selfish people easily become impatient with others when they don’t do exactly as they wish. Just like we do when we’re feeling that way.

It’s quite difficult for a person imbued with self-interest to make spiritual progress, to evolve their mind toward the genuine causes of happiness. And to whatever extent you’re able or feel this is true, just think for a moment about all the shortcomings of being selfish.

It’s quite difficult for a person imbued with self-interest to make spiritual progress, to evolve their mind toward the genuine causes of happiness.

Step 3: advantages of cherishing others

Then you think about the advantages of cherishing others, as they say, of being altruistic. Living with a good, kind heart, caring for your partner, parents, or friends. Just hearing that sentence, you might smile. See how it makes you feel good even thinking about being kind.

When you live with the attitude, when you cultivate it in your mind like this, then you naturally act that way. You don’t harm them. You avoid lying, harsh speech, violence, all these nonvirtues. You practice the opposite: patience, generosity, and kindness.

You naturally create virtue, the causes of happiness to a loving, kind person. Often the people around them are very happy and relaxed and they behave kindly in return. People naturally want to help you to repay your kindness. Quite often these people have few obstacles in life because everyone around them wants to help.

If we live with a loving, kind heart, people appreciate us, they’re kind to us. We live in a happy environment. People want to help us when we need things. Just from a worldly perspective, the more we’re kind and generous in helping, the kinder people are toward us. It’s this intelligent selfishness that the Dalai Lama talks about.

We want to be intelligently selfish and cherish others. By being kind and generous, we awaken these qualities in the people around us. It’s contagious. We naturally do very few negative things. And even when we do, it’s usually by accident or misunderstanding.

We want to be intelligently selfish and cherish others.

It’s nice to remember this word “virtue,” that we can live a life of virtue, a happy life that results in happy relationships, and eventually at the end of your life, a happy death.

Great Master Shantideva wrote a book called A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. He said to look at the difference between an ordinary being who’s selfish, and those who have evolved their minds at some point in the past, they were similar. They’re not just born in a saintly way or in a devilish way. They evolve their minds. They form habits. 

You can see this if you’ve known people for decades. I’m in my 50s now, so I look at people I’ve known since I was in elementary school, high school, or college. Think for yourself, people you may have known for decades, if you’re older.

Classmates from elementary school, middle school, high school, or in your families. You can see how siblings turn out differently as they grow up with slightly different attitudes. When one person started just being a little bit selfish, the other a little bit more generous. You see this in your classmates and you can see how it grows and grows and grows, how one person becomes more and more compassionate, another less and less satisfied.

Look at the differences in the people you’ve known for decades who started out in similar places and how their lives evolved with slightly different attitudes.

The thoughts like these can help you reflect on the shortcomings of being self-centered and the advantages of being altruistic.

Step 4: exchanging self with other

Then we come to the centerpiece of this meditation at the fourth stage, which is imagining yourself in the middle of a huge assembly of people, like a big music concert or a sports game if you’ve ever been to one, but even bigger, billions of people surrounding you. Imagine all the people in there.

All alive, breathing, with their own, somewhere along the arc of their life. Think, Should I use all these people to make me happy, as if I’m the center of the world?

When you put it that way, it looks pretty absurd.

No, it’s better to use my energy to make all of them happy. Instead of using them for me, I use myself for them. Because there’s so many more of them than me. Countless other beings.

If you can just imagine mustering the courage right now that the purpose of my life is to make all beings happy through my body and speech and mind.

Just imagine it. No one’s forcing you to do it later. Just imagine it right now for a few moments. See how it feels, because this is the state of mind of exchanging self for others, exchanging the attitude of caring for oneself with caring for others.

Step 5: love and compassion

Then you come to the training in love and compassion. You can do them in either order and today we’ll start with compassion.

Imagine this sea of living beings around you and think of all their problems and suffering and that you have the capacity to take all their problems away. You have to imagine yourself like a superhero. Imagine stopping the wars, famine, anger, and bickering, which might be one of the worst forms of our personal suffering, self-centeredness, and materialism.

Out of compassion, you imagine that you have the capacity to stop it. Imagine taking away all the suffering, war, and all the other problems of the world. People in hospitals, in poverty, whatever you can imagine. And there’s a bit of heaviness in your heart when you think this way.

But with courage, think that you have the power to alleviate them. Just imagine that your mind is vast, that it encompasses all living beings, and that you take away all the problems of all human beings.

Then even taking away those of animals too, pets, different creatures, creatures being raised to be eaten, birds, insects, and so on.

That’s compassion.

Then imagine giving beings whatever they need. Whatever they like and love, food and drink, to those who don’t have them, friends, to those who are lonely, houses, to people who don’t have them, jobs, wealth, whatever they need and enjoy. Imagine giving it all, freely, out of love, to all living beings,

Again, imagine giving them whatever type of spiritual teacher they need. Some are religious, some are not, teachings, places to go on retreat, books, podcasts, or friends who influence them in a positive direction.

Gradually imagine that you lead them to whatever personal development, spiritual realizations that they need.

Imagine that you teach them this practice.

Then at the end of the meditation with the dedication, you just aspire that some of these thoughts infuse our daily behavior. Of course, it’s not possible to take away everyone’s suffering, and give everyone everything they need. But having that vast attitude will help you to aspire to do whatever you can, whatever small things you can, just with your smile, speech, maybe a few dollars if you have a little extra to help someone.

Inspire to see yourself in the best light.

Inspire to see yourself in the best light.

It’s impossible to be a great support to others without really loving yourself, accepting yourself for who you are right now, and always forgiving yourself, making amends for anything you regret, any harm you’ve done, without shame or guilt, sincere regret, and moving on to trying to be your best self. 

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