Should I look after myself or others? (sutra)

AGT; Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly, Sedaka Sutra (SN 47.19, PTS: S v 168), based on Ven. Thanissaro (trans.) accesstoinsight.org

Frying Pan, I take care of you, you take care of me? - No, Master. You do you. I do me.

(America's Got Talent) Don't protect me. Protect yourself. When you're protecting yourself, you are protecting me. And when you think you're protecting me, you're not protecting either one of us.

Frying Pan was right in this case.

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living among the Sumbhas in the Sumbhan town of Sedaka. There the Blessed One addressed the monastics, "Meditators!"

"Yes, venerable sir," they responded. The Blessed One then told them a parable or allegory:

"Once upon a time, meditators, an acrobat, having erected a bamboo pole, said to his female assistant, Frying Pan: 'Come, dear Frying Pan, climb up this bamboo pole, and stand on my shoulders.'

"'As you say, Master,' Frying Pan replied and, climbing the bamboo pole, stood on his shoulders.

"The acrobat then said to Frying Pan, 'Now you look after me, dear assistant, and I'll look after you. In this way, protecting one another, looking after one another, we'll show off our skills, receive our payment, and come safely down from the bamboo pole.'

"But when he said this, Frying Pan said back, 'That won't do at all, Master! You look after yourself, and I'll look after myself, and with each of us protecting ourselves, looking after ourselves, we'll show off our skills, receive our payment, and come safely down from the bamboo pole.'

"What Frying Pan the assistant said to her master was the right way in this case.

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

Lizzo, what's mindfulness?

"Meditators, the [fourfold] setting up of mindfulness is to be practiced with the idea, 'I'll look after myself.'

"The setting up of mindfulness is to be practiced with the idea, 'I'll look after others.'

"When looking after oneself, one looks after others. When looking after others, one looks after oneself.

"How does one look after others when looking after oneself? One does so by cultivating [the practice of fourfold mindfulness or satipatthana], developing it, pursuing it. This is how one looks after others when looking after oneself.

"And how does one look after oneself when looking after others? One does so through patience, through harmlessness, through cultivating a mind/heart of loving kindness, and through sympathy. This is how one looks after oneself when looking after others.

"The setting up of mindfulness is to be practiced with the idea, 'I'll look after myself.' And the setting up of mindfulness is to be practiced with the idea, 'I'll look after others.'

"When looking after oneself, one looks after others. When looking after others, one looks after oneself."

• See also AN 5.20, AN 4.95, AN 4.96, AN 4.99
• AUDIO: Andrew Olendski translation read

COMMENTARY

These two get along.

Elsewhere the Buddha says there are four kinds of people in the world:

1. the person who helps oneself and others
2. the person who helps oneself but not others
3. the person who helps others but not oneself
4. the person who helps neither oneself nor others.

These are listed in order of superiority. But the interesting thing that many Westerners, particularly those with a Judeo-Christian background, like most of us at Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal, is not the first or last. We'd all agree on that.

The surprise is between the second and third. It is better to help yourself and ignore others than to help others and ignore yourself.

Of course, that would be hard to do in actual fact because by helping others you are helping yourself. But the better thing to be preoccupied with is that person whom you can usefully be preoccupied with, yourself. Stop worrying about others. Stop being co-dependent. It isn't helping anybody!

Show some enlightened self-interest: Fix the person you can fix, the one you are responsible for fixing, the one you'll be glad you fixed, who others will be glad you fixed. Of what use is thinking you're saving everyone else when you are hypocritically letting yourself go to pot -- and you're not even saving them? How could you if you haven't saved yourself? It's the blind leading the blind.

Be like Number One, be Numero Uno, who aspires to do both by doing yourself. We used to think it was odd that a gal on retreat didn't care how we were meditating. She only seemed to care how she was meditating.

Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw

And she attained the first and second stages of enlightenment under Pa Auk Sayadaw. How in the heck could that be? we asked. Weren't we the better for thinking of others? I mean, we didn't much meditate ourselves, but we helped others meditate, sort of. I mean, we probably didn't help ourselves or others, but we thought about them, worried about them, talked about them, were busybodies with regard to them.

We didn't meditate much at all. I mean, there was no time to what with all that busy work minding other peoples' bees wax. Yet, we thought we were Mahayana bodhisattvas, Hindu holymen, Christian messiahs (saviors) being so "selfless" (anatta) and enlightened already. We were idiots, doing ourselves a disservice and really not helping anyone.

That gal was not the only one to attain on that two-month retreat. She was young, maybe 27, and another slightly older woman attained, too. She was a youngish professor, Middle Eastern more than Buddhist. And those weren't the only noble ones (arya) there, but they reached what they reached by looking after themselves.

They were a great inspiration to us, and we benefitted by lauding them and then trying to be like them when it was too late (at least for that retreat). Now, on the next retreat, we worried less about what others were doing -- taking the advice of In This Very Life and being like old people:

When others were running around, we moved slowly. When others talked, we didn't hear so well. When others asked, we answered not at all or very slowly and softly. When others did odd things, we didn't see so well. You get the picture. We let them be. There's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend, as the Beatles tell us, no time to try to get you to see it my way ("We Can Work It Out").

Is that enough of an explanation? Here's another one.

My alcoholic dad

Dad, don't drink, or shut up. Your drinking ruined this family (The Cabin in Chiang Mai).

.

Alcoholic fathers need AA but they'd rather not.

Who knows what kind of person my father thinks he was. He kept drinking, and while he did, he told us not to drink. He wasn't helping himself. Do you think he was helping us? He wasn't.

He was neither protecting us nor protecting himself.

Do we have freewill or is it fate?

But as a drunk Christian, he really told himself he was selflessly worrying about us while not caring about himself at all.

What a hypocrite and a fatso, not that he was that fat, but he sure was hypocritical, and we didn't listen to him. We just followed his example instead.

He was our model, not our savior. He could have saved us all if he had stopped drinking. But that was too hard. The next best thing he could have done was help himself. If he had stopped drinking. If he had, he would have helped us all.