Start Where You Are

Compassionate Action

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we “grin and bear it.” This approach is a lot more
playful than that—like dancing with it. We realize
that this separateness that we feel is a funny kind of
mistake. We see that things were not dualistic from
the start; we can wake up to that realization. The
basis of any real kind of compassionate action is the
insight that the others who seem to be out there are
some kind of mirror image of ourselves. By making
friends with yourself, you make friends with others.
By hurting others, you hurt yourself.
Another slogan says, “Always abide by the three
basic principles.” The first basic principle is always
to abide by any vows you have taken—the refuge
vows that you take to become a Buddhist and the
bodhisattva vows taken later as an expression of
your wish to benefit others. The second principle is
to refrain from showing off, or from outrageous con-
duct. The third is always to cultivate patience. So
these are the three basic principles: keeping the
vows you have taken, refraining from outrageous
conduct, and cultivating patience.
Keeping the vows you have taken. The first principle,
to keep the vows you have taken, speaks specifically
to those of us who have taken the refuge vows and
bodhisattva vows, but it may be helpful for everyone
to hear a little bit about these vows. The refuge vow
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is basically about making a commitment to become a
refugee, which in essence means that rather than al-
ways trying to get security, you begin to develop an at-
titude of wanting to step into uncharted territory. It’s
a vow that you take because you feel that the way to
health and becoming a complete human being is to
no longer hold so tightly to yourself. You long to go
beyond that situation. You are no longer afraid of
yourself. You can become a refugee because when
you aren’t afraid of yourself, you don’t feel that you
need a protected place to hide in.
The image of the bodhisattva vow could be, “Not
afraid of others.” When you take the bodhisattva vow
you open the windows and doors and invite all sen-
tient beings as your guests. Having understood the
futility and pain of always holding on to yourself, you
want to take the next step and begin to work with
others.
You might think that you are working with others
because you are much more sane than they are and
you want to spread that sanity. But a more profound
insight is that you realize that the only way to go 
further is to open those doors and windows and not
protect yourself any more but work with whatever 
arrives. That’s the only way to wake up further. The
motivation for making friends with yourself becomes
wanting to help others; these two work together. You
know you can’t help others if you’re not making
friends with yourself.
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Refraining from outrageous conduct. The second
basic principle is to refrain from outrageous conduct.
If you have this ideal of yourself as a hero or helper or
doctor and everybody else as the victim, the patient,
the deprived, the underdog, you are continuing to
create the notion of separateness. Someone might
end up getting more food or better housing, and that’s
a big help; those things are necessary. But the funda-
mental problem of isolation, hatred, and aggression is
not addressed. Or perhaps you get flamboyant in
your helper role. You often see this with political ac-
tion. People make a big display, and suddenly the
whole thing doesn’t have to do with helping anyone at
all but with building themselves up.
In the seventies there was a famous photograph in
which the National Guard were all lined up with
their guns at an antiwar rally. A young woman had
walked up and put a flower in the end of one of the
guns, and the photo appeared in all the newspapers.
I read a report in which the soldier who had been
holding that gun—who later became a strong peace
activist—said that he had never before experienced
anything as aggressive as that young woman coming
with her flower and smiling at everybody and making
this big display. Most of those young guys in the
National Guard were already questioning how they
got on that particular side of the fence anyway. And
then along came this flower child. She never looked