What to do when we see bad things in the world? When we see the wars, when we see what the Chinese Communists are doing to Tibet, when we see the poor people suffering, when we see the animals being harmed – how do we make it all practice?
What we tend to do is freak out – get angry, panic, get depressed. Why? Because we don’t have an explanation of why they’re happening.
So what does it mean: apply the teachings?
There are different tools in our toolkit, and we have to learn to use them. A bird needs two wings: wisdom and compassion. There’s the wisdom wing teachings, and there’s the compassion wing: it’s a way of summarizing the entire path to enlightenment.
The wisdom wing: the nuts and bolts: understanding the natural law of karma, why things happen, then abiding by those laws. Then seeing our mind, unpacking and unraveling our delusions, letting them go. It’s very intricate, very precise inner work.
So how to apply this in the face of problems in the world?
First of all, there’s Buddha’s explanation of why things happen, good and bad: the natural law of karma. As soon as we see the war in Ukraine, instead of panicking, remember that the Ukrainians and the Russians are two groups of people with some intense history with each other from the past, from maybe a thousand lifetimes ago, who knows? Their past negative actions have ripened and now there’s this terrible violence between them.
The Russian boys don’t know why they feel angry. Before the war started they didn’t think to go and kill a Ukrainian, and yet there they are. They go off to the army, and then this negativity comes up in them, and they get enraged and angry, and they shoot. They’re more surprised than anybody else – this is the thing about how karma ripens.
So the very first thing to do when we see all this is to analyze it from the point of view of karma, and then instead of freaking out, you go, “Thank you for showing me how not to be.” And then you conclude: “I’m going to never harm, and never kill, and never lie, and never steal, so I will never have to experience that for myself.”
You make it personal, you learn from it: “Thank you, for showing me the nightmare of past harming.” Then you vow to not cause that kind of suffering for yourself by refraining right now from harming others.
You use it as an example for yourself – instead of freaking out or getting angry. Like if you look at a person who’s got cancer from smoking too many cigarettes, you go, “Wow, look at that! Thank you for showing me how not to be. I’m going to give up cigarettes immediately.” You take it as a practice, as a personal teaching.
That’s the first practice: karma.
The next one in the wisdom wing is you look at the mind. You see that clearly it’s driven by anger, driven by violence, driven by aggression, driven by pride. You go, “Thank you for showing me that, I will do my best to give up anger, aggression, blaming and the rest.”
The explicit teaching in the wisdom teachings is to control your body, speech, and mind: abide by the laws of karma, and stop following delusions so you can become more content, you can become more fulfilled, you can become more happy. This is the learning you take first. This already is powerful.
Now you can go to the compassion wing approach and you go, “Look at these poor people, none of them expected this, and now they’re caught up in this nightmare from their past karma, and look at them suffering, look at how unbearable this suffering is.” The worst suffering is that we don’t realize we cause our own suffering, so have such compassion for them: driven by their ignorance, not knowing karma, and not seeing their minds – so much compassion: for both groups.
The next step is called great compassion. Now you think, “What can I do to help?” If you can go and help, then do it.
If not, then think: “I must keep working on myself, keep practicing, so I’ll eventually be capable of helping others.”
Each wing helps the other. They’re utterly connected, but they’re very specific practices. Every time you practice reaching out to another person, you chip away at your own ego; every time you chip away at your own ego, you get closer to other people. They each help the other.
Every time you work on the wisdom wing – abide by the law of karma, work on your mind, which explicitly helps you – it also helps you have more compassion because you’re breaking down the barriers between self and other.
Then when you explicitly practice the compassion teachings – when you want to benefit others, see their suffering, really work to help others – that also chips away at ego.
In this way, everything that goes on in the world becomes grist for the mill of our own practice.