Why Your Meditation Practice IS Service to the World

I've been contemplating something lately, a theme that consistently emerges in conversations with the meditators I mentor. It's about the perceived division between personal transformation work and our service to others. Over time, I've come to recognize this as a false dichotomy in my own life—though I acknowledge this perspective may not resonate with everyone's experience.

What if our inner work—including our private meditation practice—isn't actually separate from our compassionate action in the world? Whether through our professional endeavors or simply through how we care for others and contribute to peace, perhaps these aspects of our lives are more integrated than we initially perceive. 

I should say this is a question I get a lot from meditators who sometimes start to lose confidence in their practice, questioning if it's doing anything or being useful. It's a tricky thing, this word "useful," because in Buddhism we would kind of say it doesn't need to be useful, but that's maybe a discussion for another time. Either way, I think there still is this real issue where a lot of us who come to Buddhism or meditation practice want to see a better world. We want to see a more compassionate and kind world. I would argue a lot of non-meditators also want to see that—they might have their own versions of what creates that that we disagree with, but ultimately they probably want to see that as well.

For a lot of people I talk to and meet with, there can be this sense that our compassionate action needs to be seen and it needs to have an impact right now, in this very moment. What I've been thinking about lately, mostly for myself although I do share it with people I work with regularly, is this sense that I can only serve others, I can only offer more peace in the world or help the world or better it—I can only do that from my own limitations.

Personally, I have lots of limitations. I'm happy to admit that. I work with them regularly in my practice, and I'm also happy to admit that that's what I think meditation is for. It's not for becoming a perfect person; it's for actually recognizing our imperfections and transforming them into compassion for ourselves and others.

So for me, if I'm not working with my imperfections, if I'm not willing to work with the contents of my mind, heart, emotions, etc., I see that as an extreme limitation for what I can offer to others. I think even the idea of offering to others can sometimes go into a category of what we actually want, which is not an offering for others necessarily. I'm not saying others can't get something out of that, but if we're basing it off some big need or want we have, my question is: is that truly compassionate action?

There's a quote I like to use here, something I've reflected on a lot on this topic. The quote is: "We don't help others because we want to help others; we help others because help is needed." A lot of the times I've noticed that need gets interpreted through what we want or what we think is right or correct. What strikes me with that quote—"we help because help is needed"—is that it also implies we need to be very attuned to others to really understand what's needed.

I don't know about you, but I don't always know what I need. I've noticed some of my teachers, who are much wiser than me, have pointed out things that at the time I didn't really recognize as something I needed, but then as I contemplated it over time, I realized, "Oh, they were really right." They were able to see a need that I didn't even know I had. I thought it was over here, and they were like, "No, it's over there."

I truly believe this comes from their capacity and practice of leaning into their own confusion at some point, leaning into their own experience, their mind, their emotions, and how they work with them. For me, this aspect of tuning into others' needs means we have to be very attuned to our own. We have to be very attuned to what is the actual need, where is the actual stagnation happening in relation to our mind, thoughts, emotions, etc., and how do we liberate that? How do we free that up?

Obviously, this is one of the reasons I teach from the Buddhist path or Himalayan Buddhist lineages—we don't have to invent that. No one's expecting you to know that. There are lots of human beings who have gone through the same thing, and they've also figured out some ways to work with that. So for me personally, I value that. I value crowdsourcing my spiritual practice, you could put it that way.

So about this sense of need, what I've found is it's very difficult to tune into the needs of others because it's also coming through our own perception, coming through our own biases. I really advocate for, and what I do in my own practice is, really keep it on my side of the street for the most part. That doesn't mean we don't help others; that doesn't mean we don't take an opportunity to serve where we can. It just means that we don't have the hubris to assume we know what another needs. Instead, we work with our own experience, and that allows us to develop compassion and wisdom, where we can become more attuned to others and, of course, become skillful in how we communicate with others, how we find out what they need, etc.

Many people will tell us what they need, and, like I said, we should trust what people think they need. That's fine, and some of us don't really know what we need because it's quite deep what relieves suffering, and sometimes we get confused about that.

I've also found that this is a way to sustain our meditation practice in a very healthy way. In the Mahayana Buddhist traditions, we actually work with the intention of bodhicitta quite a lot. There are specific meditations to develop that, which more or less translates as "the mind of awakening." There are specific meditations to develop that, but we also start our practice with a reflection on that. We evoke or invoke this motivation or intention—that's why we're practicing. We're practicing because we want to become more skillful at working with our own minds to serve others.

Bodhicitta embodies a sense of altruism based in compassion. We recognize that until we figure out our own mess, how are we ever going to deal with the mess of another? When we're working with the mind and its complexities, when we're working with ego clinging and how we view identities and self, when we're working with difficult or challenging emotions, this takes time—as many of you know out there who are practitioners and/or meditators. It's not a one-day, a one-week, a one-year thing.

We need time to be alone and to be with ourselves. We need time to dedicate to formal meditation practice, and we need time to dedicate to informal meditation practice. But when the motivation is for others, it becomes for others naturally. As we transform, as we start to open up our own self-cherishing, our own clinging to self, our own idea that we become happy through serving self—when we open that up and we see it's actually relational, that we become more happy through serving others, what are we going to do? We're going to naturally serve others more.

So it's sort of baked into the idea that when we do transformative work and meditation and dharma practice with the right motivation, with an altruistic motivation, the result is going to be altruistic conduct. In one way, this is tough in the beginning because we need to trust that. In another way, I think we can doubt that because it takes time to see results. That's of course where it's not saying we should only sit on the cushion and wait for it to come—no, we should of course serve and help where we can. But we also have to understand there are limits to that. We're going to be doing that from a limited perspective. That doesn't mean it's bad; it just means we have to understand that. And for me, there's the continual aspiration to grow, to transform, to become a more skilled friend to others.

This is one of the ways I think about it—this is more the positive way to think about it. But there's also another way, which is that we can see what happens when we don't respect our limitations—we can actually create more of a mess. I'm not going to point them out—there are many examples in the world of this sort of good intention, unwise conduct. Meaning the intention was to help another or a situation or a group or a particular problem, but the development was still not there, and therefore there wasn't the way to think it out and see the consequences.

Everything's based on cause and effect generally, from a Buddhist perspective. Not saying you have to believe that, but it's difficult to see the intricacies of cause and effect because it looks good on paper. Okay, if I do this, such and such is going to have this outcome. But it's actually connecting to thousands, if not millions and billions, of other kinds of cause-effect relationships, which is going to affect the outcome. So it's very difficult to see over time, because something might even look beneficial in the beginning and then change. If we study history, there are many examples of that.

This isn't to say we should freeze and not do anything ever—obviously, no one advocates for that, including the Buddha. It's just to say we need to merge compassion and wisdom. Compassion and wisdom merge when we work on our own side of the street, when we take the time each day to do that. And again, as I said, this doesn't mean you need to take all the time to do that. You can go into your job to serve, you can serve with your family, you can take on other roles of service in the world for part of your day. But make sure—I would recommend—to make sure to spend part of your day on your inner work, working with your emotions, thoughts, biases, self-centeredness, all of that, and opening that up through meditation and Buddha Dharma.

This really helps, and as we can see, without that approach, it's like going to the house of others to try to clean their house, but our house is totally trashed. Does that make any sense? It doesn't make that much sense to me.

So anyway, I hope this is helpful—just some different ways to think about this. Ultimately, I think it's good news. It's not an either/or; it's just a recognition that we can take joy in our meditation. That's really where I'm coming from in this, because a lot of people struggle. They sometimes feel, "Okay, meditation isn't doing anything, you're just sitting there." Some people even think it's selfish.

Maybe I should say this as a side comment: it can be selfish, definitely. If we're just sitting there to create a feel-good experience, yes, it's selfish. Is it bad? No. Some of us need that in our life just to have a moment of peace, feel a little bit better. Again, no judgment here. But it would not be the same as what I'm talking about. What I'm referring to is really coming from the foundations of Buddhism, which is: aiming our meditation towards genuine inner transformation. And when we're using it to transform, we're talking about transforming into compassion and wisdom that is of service to the world as a natural consequence of our inner work.

So that's just one thing to watch out for. But I would say, if we have a good intention and we're aiming our meditation for that—whether it does that or not in the moment—just trust. Just take joy, rejoice at the end of every practice session. Emphasize bodhicitta, emphasize the motivation of why you're doing it. You're not just doing it for yourself alone, and over time it will start to leak out in a positive way. It will start to affect, probably for the most part, those who are around us the most, those who we interact with.

I've had some friends say one of the most rewarding experiences was with their family, after some time—maybe after they meditated for some years, 10 or 15 years—their family started to comment, "You know, what happened to you? You really changed. What happened?" I think that's a really good sign, because who's going to notice us the most? Those were around the most. 

But we don't have to fake it—we can just practice and let it unfold. That's what this person was saying. They weren't faking it, It just came out of their practice naturally over the years. So that's a good sign. I think the people who are going to notice it the most are the ones who are around us the most, and usually those are the ones we can affect and those are the ones we can help the most.