Equalise yourself and others

See plainly that everyone, like you, wants happiness and does not want suffering, so there is no principled reason to put yourself first.

Pourquoi ça marche

In Patrul Rinpoche’s step-by-step guide to the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the first bodhicitta meditation is the equality of self and other. The reason is that “we are the same as others in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering.” He then walks through Śāntideva’s arguments (8.97–99). We protect our future self from pain even though it does not hurt us now. The hand removes a thorn from the foot though the pain is not its own. So the line drawn around “mine” is narrower than the way we already behave. Undercutting that boundary takes away the justification for self-preference while leaving care intact.

Comment faire

1. Recall a recent moment of your own happiness, and wish from the heart: may all beings find such happiness and its causes.
2. Recall a recent moment of your own suffering, and wish: may I and all beings be free from suffering and its causes.
3. Bring to mind one specific person and reflect: they want happiness exactly as much as I do, and dread pain exactly as much.
4. Consider Śāntideva’s question in your own words: why do I protect my future self, whom I cannot feel now, but not this person?
5. Let any felt sense of equality settle, without forcing yourself to feel more than you do.

Données probantes

The meditation and its quoted verses (Bodhicaryāvatāra 8.90, 8.97–99) come from Patrul Rinpoche’s Brightly Shining Sun, which places equalising before exchanging. Patrul’s Essential Instruction lists equalising and exchanging among the precepts of aspiring bodhicitta. Koopmann-Holm and colleagues randomised 74 people to compassion meditation, mindfulness meditation, an active control class or no class for eight weeks, then asked them to write to a convicted murderer. Only the compassion group wrote more optimistic letters, and there were no significant differences in empathy, sympathy or forgiveness. That is a narrow but real signal about compassion toward someone hard to relate to. The study tested compassion meditation in general, not equalising. (anecdotal)

Patrul himself notes that his way of presenting equalising and exchanging resembles Sakya Paṇḍita’s and differs slightly from most commentaries. Different lineages order and frame these steps differently.

Sources

• Patrul Rinpoche. The Brightly Shining Sun: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditating on the Bodhicaryāvatāra, trans. Adam Pearcey (2004; revised 2007 and 2019). Lotsawa House.
• Patrul Rinpoche. An Essential Instruction on Refuge and Bodhicitta, trans. Adam Pearcey (2004). Lotsawa House.
• Koopmann-Holm, B., Sze, J., Jinpa, T., & Tsai, J. L. (2020). Compassion meditation increases optimism towards a transgressor. Cognition and Emotion, 34(5), 1028–1035.

Erreur fréquente

Turning equality into self-erasure, as if your own happiness no longer counts. The reasoning is that you and others count the same, which still includes you.