By Guy Newland

Kindness, Clarity, and Insight is a collection of talks that the Tibetan Buddhist Dalai Lama gave in the USA and Canada more than forty years ago. With this and later books, the Dalai Lama brought Tibetan Buddhism and the situation in Tibet into prominent international awareness; he went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

Kindness, clarity, and insight––a curious sequence of words. What lies behind this title is the Buddhist practice of mind training. The Dalai Lama advises that anyone can take up Buddhist practices that they find useful without needing to become Buddhist or being religious at all. Yoga, by comparison, is a body-focused system of training from the Hindu religious tradition, but it now benefits people of all religions and no religion. Likewise, some Buddhist mind-training practices—including mindfulness and lovingkindness (metta) meditation––have been adapted for the wellbeing of millions of people far beyond the bounds of Buddhist religion.

So, one can see the Buddhist tradition as a library of practices and techniques, for changing our minds and transforming consciousness. This library has three main sections: practices for opening the heart, practices for calming and clarifying the mind, and practices for seeing into the nature of reality.

Climate change, political upheaval, racism, gun violence, sexism, and pandemic: the world seems a snarl of pain and stress. Sometimes it may feel as though our best efforts are useless—or are even making things worse. Buddhists call this “cyclic existence,” our grasping minds leading us around in painful and futile circles.

Once the Buddha was asked this question: “The inner tangle and the outer tangle—this generation is entangled in a tangle. Who succeeds in disentangling this tangle?”

He replied: “When a wise person, established well in virtue, develops consciousness and understanding, then as a practitioner ardent and sagacious, they succeed in disentangling this tangle.”

This means that we disentangle our heart-minds—and contribute to the healing of the world––by dedicating ourselves (“ardent”) to training in virtue, mental power (“consciousness”), and wisdom. In other words, kindness, clarity, and insight.

Underlying these practices is the idea that we all suffer needlessly because we aren’t awake to ourselves, to others, and to the world. We don’t see things as they are. If we can train our minds to be steady, sharp, and clear, we will see things more realistically and create fewer problems for ourselves and others. What now seems murky, alienating, and stressful will shine forth as transparent, peaceful, and intimate. Our actions will be spontaneous, sure, and graceful. This is awakening (bodhi), or as we used to call it, enlightenment.

But again, even if you don’t buy this underlying idea, you may still find benefit in some Buddhist practices. It is said that the Buddha’s teaching has a “come and see” (ehi passako) quality. All are welcome to try things just to see if anything is helpful.

The Buddha is often compared to a good doctor; like a good doctor, he gives different medicines to different people; there are a great many medicines in the pharmacy of his teachings. Here we will just briefly outline a few of the mind-training practices of Buddhist tradition.

Kindness

The Dalai Lama says, “While I am a Buddhist, my true religion is kindness.” He advises us to open our hearts by any means necessary, relying for inspiration on our own traditions or on practices from other cultures. Kindness is the true source of our own happiness, our welfare, and that of others.

One important practice is to make a commitment to ourselves, in presence of whatever we hold sacred, to minimize the harm we do to ourselves and other living beings. Ahimsa, nonviolence or non-harm, is at the heart of the Buddhist tradition. Taking this seriously means recognizing that we really can never be perfect in this regard. Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, says that the principle of non-harm is like the North Star. We guide our lives by it, without ever expecting to reach it.

Going beyond non-harm, there is the practice of extending lovingkindness (metta) to ourselves and to other living beings. It must start with genuinely wishing well for ourselves, loving and caring for ourselves. Then we train in extending that sense of care outward, one specific person at a time, as far as we can. The Buddha taught this ideal:

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Let none through anger or ill-will wish harm upon another. Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, radiating kindness over the entire world: spreading upwards to the skies, and downwards to the depths, outwards and unbounded.

We find it extremely challenging to extend this kind of loving care to certain people; we have resentments and grudges extending in many directions! The tradition gives many different suggestions about how to deal with this. Just one example: consider how harboring resentment is painful for you and does no one else any good. Others may have harmed you, but holding a grudge only adds to that harm!

Clarity

The world is chaotic because our minds are chaotic; they seem naturally to leap about from one thing to another. Buddhist teachers sometimes compare this to the way a monkey jumps about. The Christian teacher John Cassian said that our minds are driven by random incursions, wandering from object to object as though drunk. In other words, the world is murky and confusing because we struggle to calm our minds down enough to bring things into focus.

Meditative practice involves choosing an object of attention––our breath, a single word, an image, or even an idea––and seeking to stabilize our minds on it. Very quickly we become distracted––and when we notice this we immediately and gently bring our minds back to the chosen object. It is just like learning any new skill; we are persistent but gentle with ourselves, and gradually we improve. As our minds settle down a bit, as they become more peaceful, they also become clearer and sharper. And so, they are more useful for whatever we want to do.

Insight

Evolution, or karma, seems to have given us strong tendencies toward certain misapprehensions. We know that things are constantly changing, instant by instant, but we normally speak and act as though this were not true. In other words, it usually feels to us as though we were stable selves, existing independently of the world. And it somehow seems natural and right that we prioritize our own desires over those of others. Upon reflection, with introspection, we can see that—like a river—we are constantly changing and constantly interacting with the rest of the environment. In fact, just as there is no single object or moment that you can pin down and point out as “the river,” it is the same with us. We are bundles of shifting feelings, sensations, and thoughts; we are bodies with countless parts intricately woven.

With clarity of mind and motivated by kindness, we can understand, and then experience, our intimate relations with every thing and person we usually take as “other.” Then, an act of care is not a chore or sacrifice or duty, but a natural reflex whenever we see pain and have a chance to help.

Guy Newland is a professor who has taught Asian religions at Central Michigan University for 34 years; he also teaches a course called “The Meaning of Life.” He translates Tibetan texts and has studied with many Tibetan teachers in the US and in India. He has taught at about a dozen Buddhist centers across the United States, including Jewel Heart in Ann Arbor. Newland’s publications include A Buddhist Grief Observed (Wisdom Publications, 2016) and Introduction to Emptiness (Snow Lion/Shambhala, 2009).