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Balanced Relationships
Ven. Sativihari

There is a story that the Buddha tells in the Samyutta Nikaya about two acrobats, one was a Master and the other was an apprentice, a student.  They used to do a very difficult show for the public, where the master would take a very long, thick, bamboo pole and, hold it firm on the ground, like this.  Then the student would climb up the pole and stand on the shoulders of the master.  Then, the master would lift the pole up and place the end of it over the base of his throat, resting it on the sternum, this thick bone right here. And hold the pole steady  with both hands, like this, and keeping his eyes fixed at the top of the pole to maintain balance.  And then, the student would climb from the shoulders of the master up the pole, bit by bit, until he reached the top,  and then, very carefully he would sit down on the top of the pole, making sure his weight didn’t shift too much from one side to the other, and then, he would remain seated, motionless, while the master would walk around for a few minutes, parading in front of the crowd with the student sitting on the top of the pole.  And finally, he would come to a stop, get his balance again, and the student would carefully stand up and climb back down the pole onto the shoulders of the master, and jump to the ground.  Then the master would drop the pole. And the show was over.  The crowd would applaud.  And the two would walk among the audience and collect their fees.

Not an easy trick.  It requires extraordinary concentration and balance.  .

Well, one day, when they were performing this show, the Master said to his student,  “come, climb the bamboo pole and stand on my shoulders”.  The student said, “yes, Master”, and climbed up the bamboo pole and stood on the Master’s shoulders. 

Then, the Master said to the student:  “You focus on me…make sure I’m safe, and I’ll focus on you, and make sure you’re safe.  Then, we’ll each be safe, and we can do the show & collect our fees, without any worries.”

When the student heard that, he jumped off the Master’s shoulders back onto the ground, and said to the master… “wait a minute… That’s not the way it’s done. You have to protect your own self, Master.  And I have to protect myself.  In that way, when we’re each self-protected,  we’ll each be safe.  Then, we can do the show and collect our fees without any worries.”

What a selfish apprentice!  He’s more concerned about protecting himself than his Master. His Master asks for help, and he refuses! 

Well, the Buddha said that, in this case, the Master was wrong & the student was wise.

We can understand why the student was correct just from the perspective of physical gravity. We each have our own center of gravity – that helps us maintain balance as we navigate through the world.  If we lose awareness of our own center of gravity, we fall out of balance.  The job of the student in that act was to pay attention to the signals he was receiving from his own body, remaining balanced as he climbed, adjusting if there was any wind, until he arrived at the top. His focus had to be on protecting himself. If he focused on the master, he wouldn’t be able to maintain his balance, and they both would get hurt. The job of the master was to hold the pole firmly,  and to look constantly at the top of the pole.  If he focused on what the student was doing, he’d lose his balance and drop the pole.  So, when the student is mindful of his own experience, he protects both himself and the master.  When the master is mindful of his own experience, he protects both himself and the student.  Their first job is to remain mindful of their own experience.  If either one neglects that job, they’re in trouble as a team.

Human relationships are a lot like acrobatic acts.  And that was the purpose of the Buddha’s telling this story – to reveal this important spiritual law of relationships:. that  Only to the extent that I care for my own mind am I truly in a position to care for someone else.   Healthy relationships require a great degree of individual mindfulness  within each partner.  

What made the Master’s request unwise was that he was not taking care of his own mind.  He was trying to give that job over to the student.  Fortunately, the student realized that the only way they could be successful was if each of them, individually, was taking care of his own mind.

If I’m insecure, if I feel inadequate, if I don’t have positive regard for my own life – the solution to that problem is not  to find someone “out there” who I can attach to, who will make me feel good about myself.  If I do that,  I’m on the wrong track, just like the Master acrobat was.  I’m trying to give what is my job to someone else.  I’m trying to make someone outside of myself responsible for my personal stability.

If you’re insecure, that’s o.k.!!!   There are good solutions for those kinds of problems, and we can help you find them.  But the solution is not  to latch onto someone “out there”, hoping that they will provide for us what we lack within ourselves.   That is the perfect recipe for an unhappy relationship that prevents the growth of both parties.

We need our own independent center of gravity.   Not just in a physical sense.  But in a mental sense as well.  We need to learn how to be aware of, how to take care of,  how to be responsible for our own minds.  Learning how to do that is the heart of the Buddha’s teachings.  The better we learn how to do that, the more our inner experience becomes one of security, and adequacy, and positive regard for ourselves and others. Then we become capable of having strong, healthy relationships.  That’s why we’re here.  Learning how to care for our minds.  That’s why we learn how to meditate.  That’s why we come and listen to teachings, like tonight.

The foundation of a healthy relationship is two people  who are individually committed to taking care of their own minds.  When two people with that sort of commitment come together, the relationship can be a great source of happiness and growth.  But how many people are really that mentally prepared when they get into a relationship or a marriage?  Very few, if any.   Usually, we enter relationships with that same kind of bargain in mind that the Master acrobat proposed – “you solve my problems, and I’ll solve your problems, and everything will be great!”  It feels wonderful and romantic, but it doesn’t work in the long-run.  And so, just like unskilled acrobats, we often end up having little accidents, or sometimes big accidents.  Our relationships get into trouble.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the position of the unwise Master in the story:

Maybe he was scared.  Maybe he saw the size of that pole and the size of the crowd and felt the weight of the apprentice on his shoulders… and he panicked.   And he had a very natural reaction—he grasped the closest human being in sight and pleaded, “take care of me!”    It’s easy to understand how he must have felt. When our mind is full of difficult emotional reactions, our tendency is to run to others – to try to get others to make these feelings go away.  That’s understandable.  But, it’s precisely at moments like those that we can develop a great sense of competence in caring for our minds.

When we’re feeling insecure, the temptation is to grab at someone around us, and say “Make me feel better!   Do something that will fix my mind! ”  That’s what the Master acrobat did. It’s understandable.  But when we do that, we lose a great opportunity.  We never discover how great it feels to be able to take care of our own minds.  The truth is -- I can calm my mind.  I can become mindful of the many thoughts and feelings that may be spinning around in my mind. And by learning how to quietly relax the mind and observe the mind, the emotional reactions diminish. The mind becomes more stable. And we become more secure.  Then we start to really understand things – we start to realize that the only person that can really solve our insecurities is us.

Of course, when our mind is full of  problems, sometimes the last thing we want to do is practice mindfulness – we want to get away from our mind, not get closer  to it.  We want to focus on an outside solution, not an inside solution.   We want to find someone out there who can take care of this problem for us.

Now, it’s true that sometimes we need advice.  Sometimes we need support.  Sometimes we need a hug.  But we can never give over the responsibility to care for our own minds to someone else.  It just doesn’t work.  No one can do that for us.  And the best advisors are the ones who lovingly teach us how to solve our own problems, how to care for our own minds. Then, instead of becoming dependent on them, we become secure within ourselves.  And, of course, that was the Buddha’s approach.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the position of the student in the story:

It can be very seductive  when someone asks for your help....  when someone sees YOU as the answer to their insecurity.  That can make you feel pretty important.  The temptation is to forget about your own stability, and to forget about their need to care for their own minds, and to just do whatever pleases them.  Pleasing someone feels good. Especially if it’s someone important to us.  Fortunately, the student in this story understood the Dhamma and resisted that temptation.

It can also be very seductive to escape our responsibility to care for our own minds – by trying to help someone else instead.  Sometimes rather than face what is in our own mind –  our own insecurities, stress, anger, sadness –  we would much rather focus on helping others with their problems.  Helping others is an important spiritual practice, but not when its an escape or an alternative to caring for our own minds.

Many people in this world need our help... and very few of them understand the subtleties of these teachings.  They just want help.  They may be like the Master acrobat in the sutra.  Not seeing things clearly.  Full of difficult emotional reactions.  They just want relief.  So it’s up to us to understand these teachings. It’s up to us to be like the wise apprentice.

Relationships can be a great source of happiness and a vehicle for spiritual growth – if we remember that I am truly in a position to care for someone else only to the extent that I am caring for my own mind.