Category: Cogitations
- Created on 18 February 2008
- 15 October 2010
Non-Violence And The Self-Cherishing Mind
By: David Edwards and Matthew Bain
On 2nd December 2007 Media Lens were presented with the Gandhi International Peace Award by Denis Halliday, former UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq and himself a recipient of the award in 2003. Here Matthew Bain, a friend of the Gandhi Foundation, asks David Edwards about the relationship between Media Lens’ work and the Gandhian principle of satyagraha.
Matthew Bain: How is Media Lens influenced by the ideal of ahimsa or non-violence?
David Edwards: It’s really at the core of what we believe. Gandhi wrote:
“Non-violence... is a conscious, deliberate restraint put upon one’s desire for vengeance.” (Homer A. Jack, ed, The Wit And Wisdom Of Gandhi, Dover Publications, 2005, p.100)
To understand why non-violence in this sense is so powerful, I think we need to look more closely at the whole issue of altruism and self-restraint.
First, it’s important to recognise that it’s not at all obvious what brings about progressive change in society. We often take for granted that it’s the result of the dissemination of facts about injustice, of direct action such as campaigning, protests, and so on. But where do these come from? Why do they arise to the greater or lesser extent that they do?
By progressive change, I mean the move towards a society based on compassion rather than greed and hatred; a society in which the capacity for reason has been liberated from the distorting lenses of greed and hatred. This version of progress contains several assumptions. It assumes that, to the extent that an individual is dominated by self-cherishing - by a restricted concern for his or her own welfare (and for a small circle of loved ones) - that person’s rational capacity will tend to be biased, distorted. It also assumes that people experience psychological suffering proportionate to the intensity of their self-cherishing.
One way of getting a sense of why this should be the case is to imagine the mind as a kind of space, an arena, in which problems appear. We can imagine a mind dominated by unconditional compassion for all sentient beings as a vast space, like a huge landscape. In this kind of context our own individual problems would appear very small, very manageable. By comparison, a mind limited to concern for ourselves is a very restricted space, like a small box room. In this context our individual problems seem enormous; they fill our minds completely.
The point is that problems don’t exist as concrete phenomena of a given size and intensity; they are perceptions of the mind, appearances to mind. Our problems, quite literally (in relative psychological terms), shrink as our sense of concern for others expands. The Buddhist writer and teacher Alan Wallace comments:
“Like Einstein’s theory that physical space is warped by bodies of matter within it, it sometimes feels as if the space of awareness is warped by the contents of the mind. At times, when we become fixated on something, our minds seem to become very small. Trivial issues loom up in our awareness as if they were very large and important. In reality, they haven’t become large. Our minds have become small. The experienced magnitude of the contents of the mind is relative to the spaciousness of the mind.” (Wallace, The Attention Revolution, Wisdom Publications, 2006, pp.99-100)
The self-centred mind, then, is a small space crowded with personal problems, ambitions and concerns. It’s a painful, claustrophobic state of being - our problems seem of enormous severity and importance.
This self-cherishing mind also has no room for facts and concerns that conflict with, or are irrelevant to, our self-concern. It’s very noticeable, for example, that corporate executives primarily focused on their own welfare, and deeply dependent on their highly-paid jobs, are unwilling or unable to make space in their minds for radical analyses that challenge the whole basis of what they’re doing. We’ve often quoted Upton Sinclair‘s splendid observation:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Erich Fromm also commented on “man’s capacity of not observing what he does not want to observe; hence, that he may be sincere in denying a knowledge which he would have, if he wanted only to have it”. (Fromm, Beyond The Chains Of Illusion, Abacus, 1989, p.94)
To take another example, a key characteristic of romantic infatuation is that we tend to perceive only good qualities in the target of our infatuation - she seems beautiful, charming, interesting, perfect. Even her ostensibly ‘bad’ habits are attractive - she’s late because she’s lovably eccentric; she’s angry because she’s got a marvellous, passionate temperament.
According to Buddhism, in this case our desire has distorted our perception to a truly astonishing degree - it has persuaded us to perceive this person in three key ways: as pure, permanent and solely pleasurable. Although we would never consciously declare that we believe this, we in fact are operating under these assumptions. In other words, in the grip of infatuation, we really do see our beloved as pure, as unchanging - she will always be as pure as she is now - and solely as a source of pleasure in our lives. This is why it is such a disaster when we lose the target of our infatuation - it's not just that we've lost a flawed, changeable source of mixed pleasure and pain, a mixture of good and bad; we feel we've lost a source of perfect, unchanging happiness.
Given that desire has the capacity to distort our perception in this really fundamental way, it’s easy to imagine how the self-cherishing mind might easily dispense with mere political and moral challenges to our infatuations more generally. Perhaps we’ve set our hearts on career success, on the attainment of great wealth and prestige as the answer to our problems. We may have invested decades in building towards these goals. Someone might then come along and describe how this version of success is wrecking the climate; they might detail how the corporation employing us is responsible for terrible suffering in the Third World. But this is a bit like a friend advising us that our romantic idol is not to be trusted - we just don’t want to hear it. We find it fraudulent, objectionable or absurd.
It's all too easy to push the suffering of others aside - our suffering and our self-centred 'answers' to that suffering are so immediate, potent and real - political crises are at best mildly diverting by comparison. The misery of others finds no space in the self-cherishing mind - their suffering can easily seem unreal, almost fictional, as if it didn't really exist at all.
Similarly, it’s not that responses like, ‘Well, I can’t do anything - the individual has no power to change the world,’ are based on any kind of reality, on any deep insight. It’s that we passionately +want+ to believe this is the case because it suits our self-cherishing priorities.
In fact, individuals have plenty of power to change the world. We know this because the world has changed enormously: we no longer live in caves; 100 years ago there were no such things as the civil rights, environmental and peace movements. Any progress has been the result of the thoughts and actions of mere individuals. There are no superheroes to pull humanity forward - it’s down to ordinary people like you and me. Howard Zinn wrote:
“There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.” (http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/ Content/2003-09/29zinn.cfm)
It’s down to us and no-one else. That’s undeniable, but the infatuated, self-cherishing mind has us fantasising about the impossibility of changing anything, or about someone else out there who is able to change things - it’s their responsibility, not ours, so we can leave it to them. Again, this should be no surprise - desire has the power to make other human beings appear pure, permanent and solely pleasurable against all the available evidence; so of course it can deal with mere politics.
There’s a problem here, isn’t there, for anyone interested in promoting progressive change? If the self-cherishing mind is able to reject unwanted facts about truly fundamental aspects of reality, how can we hope to change the world? Gandhi wrote:
“There are only two methods of doing this, violent and non-violent. Violent pressure is felt on the physical being, and it degrades him who uses it as it depresses the victim, but non-violent pressure exerted through self-suffering, as by fasting, works in an entirely different way. It touches not the physical body, but it touches and strengthens the moral fibre against whom it is directed.” (Gandhi, op. cit., p.101)
But how does it touch “the moral fibre”? The ultimate foundation of this argument is the belief that a life based on generosity, kindness and compassion is far happier than a life based on self-cherishing. The point is that this truth is best communicated, not through facts and argument - which are easily deflected by the selfish mind - but through an experience of generosity and compassion +exactly+ when we would normally expect greedy, angry or violent responses.
So while the self-cherishing mind might be immune to rational argument, the experience of ahimsa, or non-violence, is able to communicate the liberatory potential of compassion and kindness, of a mind freed from claustrophobic self-concern.
I have to say that I find this overwhelmingly true from my own experience. I’ve encountered individuals who have inspired me deeply with their self-restraint and generosity. For example, maybe we do something harmful to a friend - it can be incredibly inspiring if they choose to respond, not with anger and revenge, but with generosity and patience. We can actually feel our hearts open up and lighten - the example of kindness has expanded our psychological horizons, transforming the tiny space of self-cherishing into a huge expanse. We immediately feel the happiness and freedom of that. So the example directly communicates an experience of the compassionate mind liberated from self-concern and we are changed by it. Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, explains:
“The source of the Bodhisattva’s power to instruct living beings lies in his [or her] ability to uplift awareness and aspirations through generosity and self-sacrifice... The power of virtuous action untainted by personal concerns is clearly felt by all beings in his [or her] presence, who are often inspired to lead more virtuous lives.” (Tulku, foreword, Aryasura, The Marvelous Companion, Dharma Publishing, 1983, p.xvii)
A bodhisattva is an individual whose every thought and action is focused on the welfare of others, rather than on self-interest, with equal, unlimited compassion for all (an extraordinary orientation even to contemplate, but one which is said to be achievable).
To give one small example from the past that sticks in my mind, a manager had to decide if I could take a short holiday at a particularly busy time of year. I had asked, I think, for three days, or two days if that wasn’t possible. Neither seemed very likely; it was the worst time to be asking. This was a situation in which he had the kind of control over me that some people really like to exploit - they make a big meal of their decision-making power. This manager, though, came back a few days later and said that it was a very busy time of year but, in the circumstances, he thought it would be best if I took the whole week off. He did this with such evident pleasure that I’ve never forgotten it. Moreover, it was entirely typical of how he behaved with everyone all the time.
What was so clear to me was, not just his rejection of egotistical indulgence, not just the sincerity of his delight in helping someone out, but also my own feeling of being inspired by this kindness. You immediately know when you experience it that this generosity of spirit is a very real source of happiness, not just to the recipient of the kindness but also to the person being kind.
Well this is an astonishing reversal of the self-cherishing assumption - that happiness is best achieved by putting ourselves first, by getting what we want and shoving everyone else out of the way. Normally, we divide the world into a small group of people we like; people who get in the way of what we want (people we dislike); and everyone else, to whom we are mostly indifferent. What these examples of kindness, of ahimsa, communicate to us is that everyone can be a source of profound happiness to us - if we are willing to be +kind+ to them. Every sentient being provides us with the opportunity to expand our minds from tight, stifling prisons of self-concern to enormous expanses created by generosity, compassion and affectionate love.
Gandhi’s reference to “self-suffering” makes the same point - responding with selflessness in the face of suffering and physical threat, presents a potent challenge to the deep-seated conceits and illusions of the self-cherishing mind. This is why compassionate protest is so powerful. One might imagine that marching as part of a crowd achieves nothing much - walking along a street does not magically transform state policy. But protesting in the cold and rain, perhaps under threat of state violence, can communicate to everyone witnessing it, with real power, the inspiration of selfless generosity and concern for others.
For example, to see protestors marching out of compassion for the victims of war being beaten by police, and to see those marchers refusing to respond with violence, has a huge impact on the self-cherishing mind. Every refusal to retaliate amplifies the authenticity of the protestors’ concern to everyone watching or even hearing of it. The reality of this compassionate concern is directly communicated to people who might otherwise assume that self-concern is all there is or could be.
Again, the mind of the normally cynical, self-cherishing person can be expanded by this example of selflessness to a much larger, compassionate expanse. This person's problems then, perhaps only for a brief moment, shrink in their own minds and this is experienced as a liberation (Buddhists call it "the liberation of the mind that is love") - this is what we mean by 'inspirational'. I don’t mean to suggest that this has the power to transform the minds of leaders. I mean that it has the power to generate tremendous, inspired support and sympathy in the wider population.
The key is the sincerity and depth of the protestors’ compassion. Because anger is the direct psychological opponent of compassion, this sincerity should really involve a complete renunciation of violence and even anger. Ironically, the protestors who shout angry slogans on marches are undermining the one extremely potent force available to them - their example of compassion. It is the clichéd anger associated with Western protest that is so uninspiring, so demotivating. If dissent is rooted in authentic compassion, then it has really enormous power. Incidentally, this appears to be understood on some level by state power which often plants agent provocateurs to provoke violence, for example against the police, and so discredit protest movements.
All of the above applies equally to media activists writing to journalists and posting their exchanges on websites. Even the most hardened hack, or reader, can be given serious pause for thought by challenges rooted in rationality and genuine concern for others, rather than anger.
As discussed, this kind of self-restraint also has profound liberatory potential at the level of individual relationships. It is very tempting to rage at other people’s failings - their selfishness, cruelty, indifference - in hope of helping them change, just as we are tempted to rage at government policy. But according to this argument, the most powerful response is to react to harmfulness, perceived failings and so on with generosity, compassion and self-restraint. Because it is the very +example+ of kindness that is the best antidote to the self-cherishing mind, and it is this selfish mind that is the ultimate root of all harm, of all failings. Geshe Lhundub Sopa explains in a discussion on how best to deal with angry people:
“They need our help, not our hostility. We can reduce their anger by being patient and showing them love and compassion. Then the food of their anger will be exhausted. They may then become stronger and their internal enemy [anger] may become weaker.” (Geshe Lhundub Sopa, Steps on the Path to Enlightenment, Volume 3, Wisdom Books, 2008, pp.366-7)
I think this is incredibly important because one of the great empowering factors behind anger is the belief that fierce challenge is to the benefit of, say, someone we love. In fact, anger may actually begin with our feeling angry at ourselves for holding our tongues - we feel we’re harming them by avoiding confrontation. We get annoyed at ourselves for being selfish in choosing the easy option by +not+ fiercely challenging them. Of course, harsh speech may sometimes be justified - shouting at someone to warn them of some imminent danger, for example. But as with the protestors, it is often the example of compassion that has the power to expand the cramped space of the self-cherishing mind.
Bain: In his struggles against oppression, Gandhi sought to break down the barriers between oppressors and oppressed, seeing them all as victims. Whereas the oppressed often suffered from physical or economic degradation, the oppressors suffered from moral degradation. Is this theory relevant to Media Lens’ work?
Edwards: The great Buddhist sage Shantideva said the “ancient enemies” of living beings, the real enemies, are greed, hatred and ignorance. These are the three causes and effects of the self-cherishing mind described above [See Part 1]. It is greed, hatred and ignorance that lead people to believe their own suffering and happiness matter more than everyone else’s. This leads us to put ourselves first and to ignore the consequences for others. Many of the miseries of the world are rooted in this fundamental willingness to subordinate the interests of others to our own.
It’s tempting to see particular groups of people as the cause of all problems. But actually we’re all afflicted by the “ancient enemies”. So, for example, people are outraged if someone expresses racist or sexist prejudice - these are rightly seen as sources of immense suffering. But there is a far more deep-rooted prejudice - the bias whereby we see ourselves as far more important than all other people. Geshe Lhundub Sopa does a good job of explaining what we know but don’t really recognise in ourselves:
“We think everything should focus upon us - all services and good things should be for +me+. Then of course we try to gain enjoyment, fame, wealth, and everything else that we feel is necessary for this +me+. We become angry if we see that something might prevent us getting those things or if anyone else gets something better. These feelings make us think, act, and speak in negative ways. Everyone is subject to this problem: we all act from selfishness.” (Geshe Lhundub Sopa, Steps on the Path to Enlightenment, Volume 3, Wisdom Books, 2008, p.111)
We are almost always massively prejudiced in our own favour. We feel virtuous when we have one or two compassionate impulses, but it’s actually shocking how many of our thoughts are concerned with squeezing just a little more pleasure into our lives. Not into other people’s lives, into our own. We want the best for ourselves; we’re the centre of the universe. The human universe never was heliocentric, it has always been egocentric. Racial and sexual prejudices are sub-divisions of this ultimate bias.
Shantideva delivered his amazing “J’accuse!” to his own selfish mind as far back as the eighth century:
“O my mind, what countless ages
Have you spent in working for yourself?
And what great weariness it was,
While your reward was only misery!“The truth, therefore, is this:
That you must wholly give yourself and take the other’s place.
The Buddha did not lie in what he said -
You’ll see the benefits that come from it.” (Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, Shambhala Publications, 1997, p.132)
He added:
“And so it is that if I want contentment,
I should never seek to please myself.
And likewise, if I wish to save myself,
I’ll always be the guardian of others.” (p.134)
Shantideva was here doing nothing less than rejecting his own favouritism towards himself! And this was not some kind of gesture or stunt - his work, The Way of the Bodhisattva, is a precise, step-by-step guide to actually achieving this result. When he advises that we "take the other’s place," he means that we should work for the benefit of others as though it were our own, rather than working for our own benefit.
That this aspiration can emerge in a product of nature “red in tooth and claw” is astonishing. In my opinion, Shantideva’s words constitute the ultimate revolutionary statement - the complete rejection of self-interest out of concern for the welfare of others.
Shantideva was not advocating this as a matter of righteous, hair-shirted stoicism. His point is that we need to replace the inevitable misery of the self-cherishing mind, of the “ancient enemies”, with the almost unimagined happiness of the compassionate mind liberated from greed, hatred and ignorance. Of course the self-cherishing that Shantideva rejected is at the heart of all individual exploitation and of all exploitative systems of power. It is self-cherishing that causes us to build and participate in these systems.
This leads to a very important point. Because anger is one of the key supports of self-cherishing, when we get angry at other people who are motivated by self-cherishing, our own self-cherishing increases as a result. As discussed above, anger is the most powerful psychological opponent of compassion, which is itself the psychological opponent of self-cherishing. Compassion, after all, is the desire to help and protect others, while anger is the desire to harm others.
The claim is that thoughts pretty much obey the laws of Newtonian physics - they build psychological momentum in the absence of an opponent force. The more we are angry, the stronger our anger becomes. On the other hand, the more we are compassionate, the more anger dissipates. There is a marvellous quote that sums up the logic of self-restraint in a discussion on training the mind to become more patient: “It is not productive to one’s practice to become impatient with those who are impatient.” (Sopa, op. cit., p.284)
What we’re trying to do is to increase compassion in the world, to decrease self-cherishing. This is achievable when we perceive greed, hatred and ignorance as the enemy. When we perceive particular individuals as the enemy, we tend to achieve the opposite result.
Bain: Gandhi named his active method to combat oppression ‘satyagraha’, meaning struggle for truth. Satyagraha looks for the moral levers in the oppressor’s own psychology or mythology, and then discovers a way to pull them. Gandhi was successful in pulling the levers in the British psychology. As rulers of India we considered ourselves to be upholders of righteous constitutional rule, so when Gandhi allowed himself to be imprisoned by us he forced us to look in the mirror and see that we were not acting in accordance with our own self-image. Do you believe that there are elements of satyagraha in Media Lens’ work?
Edwards: In his book, Web Of Deceit, the historian Mark Curtis showed how the mainstream media promote one key concept above all others: "Britain's basic benevolence." (www.medialens.org /alerts/03/030603_Basic_Benevolence.html) This provides an obvious lever for challenging exploitative power - the challenge to live up to the hype.
For example, in 2002, journalists like David Aaronovitch and Johann Hari claimed their real concern was for the welfare of the Iraqi people. So we investigated how this compassion has manifested itself during the subsequent catastrophic occupation. We examined to what extent they have drawn attention to the suffering of Iraqi refugees, to the patients dying in hospitals for the lack of the most basic equipment, to the small children dying from a lack of basic sanitation, and so on. (See: www.medialens.org/alerts/08/ 080110_david_aaronovitch_a.php and www.medialens.org/alerts/04/ 041029_Siding_with_Iraq.HTM)
The claim of humanitarian intent is a very powerful propaganda weapon for systems of concentrated power, but it does allow dissidents to offer a challenge in that moral arena. And power is under pressure to provide credible answers, to be seen to live up to its own claims. The fact is that people in our society +do+ need to be persuaded to support violent interventions on humanitarian grounds. If these claims are shown to be bogus, then powerful interests have much greater difficulty in waging war - they can’t railroad the population completely; they can’t afford for democracy to be exposed as a total sham.
Government support for the Iraq war went ahead against overwhelming public opposition in several countries in 2003, but at a very high political cost to the likes of Blair, Aznar and Bush. It’s fair to say that Blair’s career was ruined by his mendacious campaign to manipulate Britain into war - his reputation has been demolished. It’s hard now to remember just what a source of optimism he was for many people (liberal journalists in particular) before 2003.
By contrast, totalitarian systems of power don’t have to claim humanitarian intent or compassionate motives - they can just lock people up or kill them. So that is one very real lever for dissident thought and action in our society.
Bain: Media Lens can only do so much. What other ‘moral levers’ are out there, that you would like other people to pull?
Edwards: Especially on the left, I think people need to look to the moral levers in themselves. It’s so easy to place all our trust in facts and rational argument to win the battle of ideas, to convince everyone of the need for progressive change. But as discussed, the self-cherishing mind is highly adept at simply deflecting these facts and arguments from awareness. We should also be seeking to strengthen the capacity for kindness, compassion, love, patience and generosity in ourselves and others. We need a compassionate revolution, as opposed to a bomb-throwing revolution. Basically the left needs to start meditating on these subjects.
People often think this means sitting cross-legged on a cushion and emptying the mind of thoughts. But fully one-half of Buddhist meditation is called ‘analytical meditation’. This type of meditation involves simply reflecting on these issues exactly as we’ve been doing here. What +are+ the disadvantages of the self-cherishing mind? Have I ever felt self-obsessed, really greedy for pleasure? What was the impact of indulging these thoughts on my sense of well-being? Where did they lead? Have I ever felt coldly indifferent to everyone else who just seemed to be a damned nuisance? How did I feel in those moments? Have I ever been really generous? Have I given something to someone solely out of an intention to make them happy with no thought of reward? How did I feel in those situations? How did other people react?
A good place to start in this internal analysis is Matthieu Ricard’s book Happiness (Atlantic Books, 2006). His lecture here is also well worth watching:
Geshe Lhundub Sopa gives an idea of how the mind can be trained:
“The way to meditate on love is similar to the manner of meditating on compassion. Where compassion is wanting sentient beings to be free from misery, love is wanting them to possess happiness, enjoyment, and bliss. So here we look at sentient beings, beginning with our relatives, and see that they do not even have worldly happiness... Go back and forth, first thinking that sentient beings lack a specific thing and therefore they suffer this or that type of misery, and then wishing that they have the cause of happiness. Think this way again and again and you will come to feel like a mother whose dear child is in need of many things. A mother wants her child to have the things that will make him or her happy; she sincerely desires to help her child obtain these things.” (Sopa, op. cit., p.89)
This kind of repetitive practice gradually moves the momentum of the mind away from ruthless, unrestrained self-cherishing, towards kindness. We can sensitise our minds to the suffering of others, to compassion. Matthieu Ricard points out that this is not rocket science:
"You simply have to do it again and again. It's not so sophisticated. Imagine someone you already love, wish for her well-being and gradually extend that feeling to others. This should include people you may think of as enemies.”
The next step is to extend that feeling of compassion to all beings, letting the feeling grow: “Eventually it becomes easier, faster and stronger the rest of the time too, not just when you're meditating. It's like riding a horse. In the beginning you have to be very careful not to fall off, but pretty soon you even forget you're on a horse.” (http://psychologytoday.com/articles /index.php?term=pto-20060828-000001&print=1)
Attempting this kind of practice is quite revealing. While not complex or difficult, it does require that we take time out from saturating ourselves with pleasure, and so it can be quite a challenge to make time for it. We might find that we would rather be listening to music, watching a DVD, chatting to friends - we get an insight into just how self-obsessed we really are. But if we can stick with it, this training brings real benefits. These results are increasingly being confirmed by serious scientific analysis. (See: Daniel Goleman, 'The Lama in the Lab,' Shambhala Sun, March 2003; http://www.shambhalasun.com/index. php?option=content&task=view&id=1611)
Many of us think we’re prevented from trying harder to help others because of indifference. But this couldn’t be more wrong. The problem is not indifference; it’s our passionate dedication to serving ourselves. Our problem is not laziness but that we’re working so hard to satisfy our desires, to indulge our egos, to get everything we want.
It’s noticeable, for example, that many media blogs are full of people who argue endlessly, in infinitesimal detail, about media issues. But quite often these people show almost no interest in writing to journalists - the people who are doing enormous harm, who really need to be challenged - and they rarely produce coherent pieces of written work that might clarify these issues to help other people. The reason, I think, is that they are fundamentally ego-driven - their prime motivation is to humble their opponents, to prove themselves superior in a public arena (the public component is crucial to them). And so they’re endlessly butting egos with other posters.
The problem here is not a lack of energy or commitment - far from it - but a lack of concern for others. The ego is like a giant magnetic body - as it expands, it throws off our moral compass. The result is that our priorities and actions become personally crucial but humanly crazy and destructive.
But the response to the self-cherishing habit is not to somehow just try harder, to whip ourselves into being more committed people. Our self-cherishing minds will certainly not tolerate this for very long - it’s far too much like hard work. We might manage for a while but pretty soon we’ll decide all this suffering is deeply unfair - ‘It’s not my fault the world’s full of suffering, and anyway what can one person really achieve?’ - at which point we’ll likely disappear off to have some fun.
And if we’re acting out of an angry motivation, that will also not last long. Not only is anger extremely painful but, as discussed, it empowers the self-cherishing mind. Anger actually increases the psychological propensities that make us more likely to abandon concern for others out of self-concern. We shouldn’t be surprised if angry lefties rage about the state of the world in their youth, only to perform a complete ethical volte-face in later life, slotting in as privileged members of an exploitative elite.
The solution is to challenge the false claims of the self-cherishing mind and to investigate the liberatory potential of the other-cherishing, compassionate, mind.
And there are real surprises here. The principal one being that focusing primarily on our own happiness guarantees suffering for ourselves and others. Curiously, happiness lies in exactly the opposite direction.
Category: Cogitations
- Created on 09 April 2009
- 15 October 2010
The Art Of Seduction And The Art Of Loving
By: David Edwards
The Power Of Pain
In his book, The Art Of Seduction, Robert Greene outlines a strategy for conquering romantic "targets":
"The greatest mistake in seduction is being too nice. At first, perhaps, your kindness is charming, but it soon grows monotonous; you are trying too hard to please, and seem insecure. Instead of overwhelming your targets with niceness, try inflicting some pain. Lure them in with focused attention, then change direction, appearing suddenly uninterested. Make them feel guilty and insecure. Even instigate a break-up, subjecting them to an emptiness and pain that will give you room to manoeuvre." (Greene, The Concise Art Of Seduction, Profile Books, 2003, p.167)
It is no secret that "emptiness and pain" can provoke desire. A key theme of advertising is the manufacture and exploitation of shame. If our hearts can be made to sink at the thought of our sagging bellies, our "Here comes pizza face!" complexion (the words were used in an actual advert), our personal hygiene - "Could you be cleaner?" - we can easily be made to crave the proposed solution.
In sexual, consumer, and political seduction it is crucial that the true intent be camouflaged. Greene explains that we should use "spiritual lures":
"Play up your divine qualities; affect an air of discontent with worldly things; speak of the stars, destiny, the hidden threads that unite you and the object of the seduction. Lost in a spiritual mist, the target will feel light and uninhibited." (Ibid., p.161)
This also describes the art of political seduction - Clinton, Blair and Obama know all about these "lures".
Greene's strategy of seduction is doubtless successful within its own terms. The method is simple: on meeting an attractive woman, say, for the first time, one should direct a focused beam of flattering conversation, smiles and interest in her direction. She should be made to feel deeply interesting and welcome. One should then suddenly switch attention to some other person and ignore the first woman as if she had ceased to exist. The idea is that this sudden indifference will be experienced as a wounding loss - she will feel out in the cold - and this will create a needling urge to regain the lost attention. At this point, the "target" has begun to desire the seducer.
Alas, no matter how effective the strategy, relationships rooted in manipulation and pain must ultimately suffer the fate of all pleasure-based activities - boredom. If discomfort and its relief (pleasure) are the main focus, then the relationship will quickly be revealed as empty and hollow.
Moreover, the use of pain to manipulate desire and control will surely generate resentment. The Indian mystic Osho commented:
"There is constant fight between lovers and the reason is that you cannot forgive the lover because you know you are dependent on him or her. How can you forgive your slavery? You know your woman makes you happy, but if she decides not to make you happy... then? Then suddenly you are unhappy. Your happiness is in her hands and her happiness is in your hands. Whenever somebody else controls your happiness, you cannot forgive them." (Osho, The Buddha Said..., Watkins, 2007, p.292)
Greene's strategy comes as no surprise in a society that systematically treats human beings as means serving "higher" ends. It is a matter of legal fact that corporations the world over are obliged to prioritise shareholder profits above all other issues, including human and animal welfare - the reduction of pain is not allowed to impede the maximisation of profits. Anyone who thinks we live in a free society based on humanist values should try suggesting, in a business environment, that these priorities be reversed, and observe the reaction.
The exploitation of human "targets" for self-gratification is not particularly extreme by our society's standards.
The Art Of Giving
By contrast, in his classic work The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm defined a loving relationship as one based on "care, responsibility, respect and knowledge". We care for someone by responding to their needs based on our understanding of, and respect for, them as unique individuals. Fromm wrote:
"In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily +giving+, not receiving." (Fromm, The Art Of Loving, Thorsons, 1995, pp.17-18)
Although in our corporate culture we are trained to believe that receiving is far preferable to giving - the assumption underlying Greene's approach - this is badly mistaken. Fromm wrote:
"Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness." (Ibid., p.18)
What exactly is given in this sense?
"He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life... he gives him of that which is alive in him: he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humour, of his sadness - of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself an exquisite joy." (Ibid., p.19)
Greene writes that "The greatest mistake in seduction is being too nice." This is correct, if we accept the standard misuse of language. Greene is in fact referring to greed +posing+ as "nice" - giving to get. An infatuated teenager may well shower phone calls and gifts on his beloved. But this will very often be motivated by his concern for the happiness the girl can provide +him+. This is 'generosity' as investment, a form of trade, rather than giving motivated by concern for the happiness of the other person.
It is certainly true that "being too nice", in this sense, is a mistake. Who would not feel aversion for self-centred manipulation masquerading as 'love'? When we consider Fromm's key characteristics of authentic love, we can see that this attention will often have nothing to do with generosity, care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. Our ardent teenager may not give a thought to any negative impacts he might be having.
On the other hand, Greene is wrong if he believes that it is a mistake to be too "nice" in the sense of giving out of generosity and kindness. To be genuinely loving is to desire the happiness of another person: to feel happy about their happiness, delighted by their delight, and distressed by their sadness. To be "nice" to someone, in this sense, is to give out of concern for their welfare. This obviously does not mean bombarding them with attention regardless of their feelings. The attention will respect their needs for peace and privacy, and will be non-possessive, rooted in the awareness that no-one enjoys being imprisoned, not even in the name of 'love.'
Equalising Self And Other
This is not to suggest that a loving person will be completely selfless. She will of course also be concerned with her own happiness. The point is that this will not all be one way - she will +also+ feel a genuine interest in making the other person happy, will feel happy about that prospect. In my opinion, few words are more beautiful or revolutionary than those spoken by the 8th century Buddhist sage Shantideva when he asked:
"Mine and other's pain - how are they different?
Simply, then, since pain is pain, I will dispel it.
What grounds have you for all your strong distinctions?" (Shantideva, The Way Of The Bodhisattva, Shambhala, 1997, p.124)
The last line resonates across the centuries. To all the killers, torturers, racists, nationalists, religious fanatics, bigots and chauvinists, Shantideva asks: "What grounds have you for all your strong distinctions?" What is the basis for an Israeli feeling that the life of a Palestinian is worth so much less than the life of an Israeli (and vice versa)? What is the basis for the clear media presumption that the suffering of an impoverished, brown-skinned Iraqi is less important than the suffering of a wealthy, white New Yorker? It is nonsense: all happiness is equal. All suffering is equal. No person is more or less important than any other.
And this applies to ourselves in our personal relationships: what grounds do we have for thinking that our happiness is more important than our partner's happiness? I believe that if even a glimmer of recognition lights up in our hearts at the reasonableness of this question - though it involves taking the side of others +against+ our own self-interest - this is a wonderful moment in our lives. I believe we can transcend blinkered self-interest in the understanding that our happiness is not in fact more important than the happiness of others. We can come to see that this is simply crude prejudice. We can actually come to take the side of others against our own selfishness. Shantideva asks again:
"I indeed am happy, others sad;
I am high and mighty, others low;
I am helped while others are abandoned;
Why am I not jealous of myself?" (Ibid., p.133)
When I know others suffer as I do, when I know my happiness is no more important than theirs, how can I simply revel in my good fortune? How can I not feel aggrieved on their behalf?
When we accept and act on Shantideva's premise, we can treat people with the same care, responsibility, respect and knowledge that we rightly afford ourselves. It is not that we treat ourselves with contempt - the important thing is to equalise our concern for self and others:
"Just as I defend myself
From all unpleasant happenings, however small,
Likewise I shall act for others' sake
To guard and shield them with compassion." (Ibid., p.125)
An interesting question arises. How do others respond when we place their happiness on a par with our own? What happens when we reject Greene's strategy of maintaining interest through pain? What happens when we devote ourselves to making the other person happy? Do we become sorry doormats - the victim of every rampant ego?
This, in my view, is the second great wonder associated with the equalising of self with other. Our lives are full of difficulty, confusion and suffering - we are all seeking answers to the problems facing us. To find someone who genuinely cares for us - who feels happy when we are happy, who truly aspires to relieve our suffering - is an extraordinary boon. Most sane people treasure this human quality above all others. As the Ekottarika Agama noted so well:
"When you have found a true friend,
you have found the best thing in life
and life will no longer seem so evil." (Hsing Yun, Being Good - Buddhist Ethics for Everyday Life, Weatherhill, 1999, p.103)
And this commitment to kindness creates the supreme foundation for mutual love. The 4th century Buddhist poet, Aryasura, wrote:
"For so it is that the brilliance of the virtuous [the authentically loving] attracts the peoples' love as strongly as does their most beloved friend or relative - just as the smiling autumn moon in the heavens, showering its beams freely in all directions, wins the love of all." (Aryasura, The Marvelous Companion, Dharma Publishing, 1983, p.333)
Our society gives us endless advice on how to become more loveable: get a clearer complexion, earn more, get smarter, dress better, tidy up the wrinkles, add a couple of inches to the penis. In truth, the best way is to equalise our concern for the happiness of self and other. Nothing is more loveable. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has commented:
"If you make yourself available to others, regarding them as of primary importance and trying to help them by all possible means, everyone will regard you as a friend and hold you dear in their hearts." (The Dalai Lama, Awakening The Mind, Lightening The Heart, Thorsons, 1997, p.121)
And there are clear implications for the many quarrels that bedevil so many relationships, particularly those dominated by self-interest:
"Increasing like the moon, lovelier than moonglow, virtues [kindness, generosity, compassion] appease the ferocious, the jealous, the angry, and the proud - no matter how deeply their selfishness is rooted in hatred." (Aryasura, op. cit. p.209)
A friend of mine, a Buddhist monk, told me of how he lived in a house with 50 other monks. Because they were all devotees of Shantideva's philosophy, each of the monks was genuinely focused on working for the happiness of the other 49 people in the house. My friend said it was a wonderful place to live and invited me to imagine the opposite scenario: where all 50 people were strongly devoted to making themselves happy with no regard for the other 49!
So many couples consist of two armoured egos waging a kind of trench warfare for their own happiness. But the war itself is a disaster and trenches are a miserable place to live. The tragedy of the metaphorical battle for the TV remote control is that, if the concern were reversed - if both desired the happiness of the other - the tiny loss of a particular TV programme would be offset by the huge benefits of a virtuous circle of kindness and happiness. In Tibetan Buddhism this is called "giving a hundred to gain a thousand". The Buddha said:
"Victory over a thousand thousand enemies is not as valuable as victory over oneself." (Hsing Yun, op. cit. p.14)
The rewards from any amount of selfish 'victories' are utterly trivial beside the triumph achieved in equalising self and other in our minds. If all couples fought for the happiness of the other, how different their lives would be.
As discussed, authentic kindness has the power to inspire love. To perceive another's joy at our happiness is a transforming moment - we naturally feel inclined to return that love. Fromm wrote:
"... in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him. Giving implies to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life. In the act of giving something is born, and both persons involved are grateful for the life that is born for both of them. Specifically with regard to love this means: love is a power which produces love; impotence is the inability to produce love." (Fromm, op. cit. pp.19-20)
It is easy to understand how there can be no more stable foundation for friendship than the shared awareness that both individuals are strongly committed to the happiness of the other. What room is there for jealousy, anger and resentment when we know that our friend or partner is deeply committed to making us happy? When we know he or she values our welfare as much as, perhaps even more than, his or her own happiness? Who inspires greater confidence in us than the person who truly believes that they gain more from kindness than from greedy self-indulgence?
As with so much that matters in human life, the issue revolves around where we locate the true source of happiness. Our answer cannot be faked: if we believe that self-interest delivers, that everything else is naïve wishful thinking, then that will certainly be reflected in our behaviour.
If this is what we believe, then we should attend more closely to how we actually feel when we prioritise ourselves over others. How do we feel when we win and others pay the price? How do others feel and react to us? And how do we feel in the moments when, in giving, we make someone else happy? How does this warmth, tenderness and joy compare to the chilly, diminishing return of self-interested pleasure-seeking?
The answers are clear, but only if we pay close attention to our reactions: to what is actually true as opposed to what we +imagine+ is true. This is particularly vital in our society, which never tires of persuading us that grabbing, getting, taking and receiving are everything. After all, what use does a corporate system have for the idea that kindness - which cannot be monopolised or bottled - is the key to happiness?
Category: Cogitations
- Created on 14 October 2010
- 14 October 2010
Heart Murmurs - Beyond The Tyranny Of Compulsive Thinking
By: David Edwards
It is one of the wonders of the internet that anyone can communicate with pretty much anyone, more or less instantly. Over the last decade, we at Media Lens have received thousands of emails from readers, supporters and critics all over the world. We can’t help noticing trends in the flood of human communication passing through our inboxes.
Surprisingly perhaps, we tend to receive more criticism from people who fundamentally agree with us than from people who think we’re ‘loony lefties’ (we don‘t get much emailed criticism from the right). Among these critical supporters, some of them very reasonable, we encounter a small number of a broadly similar personality type. These are intellectuals (by which I simply mean people who clearly spend a large part of their day thinking and writing about intellectual problems) - their analyses are meticulous, detailed and articulate, but also (from our perspective) wildly irrational. They might best be described as clever rather than intelligent.
Their style of communication is relentless, insistent and cold, characterised by an almost complete lack of human feeling. The sense is of people who live entirely in their heads - they are thinkers, analysts, above all else. It is as though their minds have been completely hijacked by their egos. And the ego’s primary concern, as we all know, is to be ‘right’, ‘the winner’, ‘special’.
Thinking is of the ego, feeling is of the heart. The reason I’m mentioning these critics is not to hit back at them, but because they indicate a risk in activism, dissent, and intellectual work generally, especially in the age of the internet, to which I also am not immune. If we live too much in our heads, if we devote our lives to thinking, analysing, to writing endlessly critical commentaries and emails, the emotional supply lines to our hearts can become stretched, strained, even broken.
Excessive thinking has a constipating effect on our emotions: there is a dry, lifeless quality to it. Just as our digestive systems need fruit and vegetables with a high water content to work happily and well, so our souls need juicy emotions and feelings. If we live in our heads all day, every day, we can become rational monsters - mechanical, cold, relentless, almost inhuman.
Read more: Heart Murmurs - Beyond The Tyranny Of Compulsive Thinking
Category: Cogitations
- Created on 10 March 2010
- 15 October 2010
Into The Abyss
By: David Edwards
What lies at the heart of man? Anything? Nothing? Nothing much? Many of us believe that the human heart is a wasteland, a kind of abyss into which we might fall. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote:
"The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes."
If we direct our focus to the heart of our "robot vehicles", what will we find? Well what +could+ we possibly find? Just transistors, microchips, hydraulics. When we look into the eyes of our loved one and she smiles, we feel a warmth in our heart, but it is only the surge of some reproductive control centre. If we look behind her eyes, we won't find 'love' in any meaningful sense of the word - we will find optical sensors, USB cables linking to central processing units. If Dawkins is to be believed, there is no beloved to be found, not really, just a patterned mass of wires that by some weird accident of nature is given to reproducing itself.
And when we consider evolution, when we consider our closest biological cousins - other mammals, primates - we can hardly bear to imagine what might lie within. Surely at the heart of man is a bloodthirsty beast, a will to power, domination and conquest. Perhaps a repressed reptilian lust for mayhem. This, after all, is the theme of innumerable novels and films - the thinnest veneer of civilisation separates us lords and ladies of the flies from our ugly underneath.
There must be horror inside rooted in a meaningless parade of lifeforms randomly reproducing and killing throughout eternity - who could bear to look deeply into such a heart? Better to put on The Simpsons.
There is, by the way, an interesting conceit contained in the last paragraph. Who are we to declare life "meaningless"? Who are we to make any kind of final judgement about the cosmos and our place within it? "Meaningless" compared to what exactly? There appear to be only two possibilities regarding the origin of the universe: either it exploded into being from nothingness, or it has always existed without beginning. As both alternatives appear to be logically impossible, a certain humility from our logical minds would appear to be demanded. Indeed this conundrum makes a nonsense of any existential despair we might feel. Despair is based on certainty - not 'Everything +might+ be meaninglessness', but 'Everything +is+ meaningless'. That certainty just does not exist.
In rare moments when we are not distracted, entertained, we do indeed glimpse an oppressive emptiness inside. Taking a much-needed break from the distraction of mundane work we are surprised to find, not the expected relief and relaxation, but a void opening within. Like existential astronauts, we protect ourselves from this inner vacuum with high-tech insulation: MP4 players, iPhones, computers, DVDs, video games. And it is the thought of being consumed by this nothingness that drives us to lose ourselves in work, ambition, busyness - anything to keep us occupied.
But perhaps all is not as it seems. When it comes to physical pain we know we're better off removing our finger from the candle's flame - leaving it in the flame really doesn't help. But when it comes to touching painful emotions with our minds, exactly the opposite appears to be the case. Could it in fact be that removing our attentional finger from the emotional flame is the whole problem?
A Fear Of Feathers
Cognitive behavioural therapists know that phobics are not really frightened of feathers, birds and open spaces. Well they are, but the real fear is of death. Sudden alarming experiences - a trapped bird thrashing around our kitchen as a child, crashing into windows - establish a powerful fear reaction. Later, when the memory of the incident is triggered in some way, the panic surges again. The fear is intense causing the panic-stricken to rapidly distance themselves from the trigger. As a result the anxiety of course subsides.
But this 'solution' comes at a high price. What phobics take away with them is the lesson that, at the time they escaped, the fear was surging and only stopped surging when they fled the scene. The subconscious message being that, if they had +not+ escaped, the fear would have continued to increase, their heart would have raced ever faster. Perhaps they would have had a heart attack. Perhaps the fear would have killed them or caused some other catastrophic event. Having learned that terrifying lesson, the sight of a bird, or even a feather, can generate intense fear for their safety, their sanity - this is the root of the phobic reaction. The fear is perceived as superhuman, non-survivable, and so phobics literally run for their lives from it.
Most of us respond in a similar way to feelings of inner emptiness. Even a glimpse of this darkness and we rush to fill it with light - pleasure, entertainment, distraction. We know that the problem has only been suppressed, not solved, but at least we can avoid it. And society encourages us in this response with a huge campaign of propaganda. Not only does it train us to assume we sinful, fallen, robot vehicles are empty inside; it insists that everything good is outside - we have to go and get it. Society does not say to us: 'Sit still, do nothing, buy nothing, produce nothing, go nowhere, and have a wonderful time!' The suggestion looks like madness in a consumer culture. And yet this is exactly the claim made, for example, in zazen meditation. It is the meaning behind the famous Zen proverb:
"Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
The "spring", here, is bliss. Consumer logic is turned on its head: it is +searching+ for bliss 'out there' that takes us away from the here and now, from ourselves, where bliss is really found.
As with phobics, we learn the lesson that there is an awful darkness, an emptiness inside, and that we can save ourselves by escaping from it. This reinforces our belief that, if we had not escaped from the cause of our distress, we might have been overwhelmed by anxiety, despair or depression.
The great cure for phobia is exposure - more precisely, exposure without running for the nearest exit! I remember a wonderful BBC documentary featuring the cognitive behavioural therapist Paul Salkovskis, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Applied Science at King's College London. Salkovskis treated a woman who suffered from a crippling fear, not just of birds, but of feathers, caused by a traumatic childhood experience of the kind described above. Her anxiety was such that she had been virtually house-bound for years.
The solution was as simple as it was challenging. Salkovskis produced a feather in his office and urged the woman not to run away. Instead, he asked her to be aware of her feelings, to notice her increased heart rate, her fear levels. He asked her to rate her fear from 1 to 10. At first, her anxiety scored the full 10 points. After a few minutes though, crucially, her adrenaline rush subsided and the fear began to decrease - something she had never before experienced with a feather nearby.
Salkovskis suggested that she was not frightened of the feather; she was actually frightened of dying. She was afraid that her fear would become more and more intense and kill her. But as she could see, the fear did not continue rising; eventually it came back down. Indeed, as Salkovskis pointed out, she had already endured the very worst her fear could throw at her many times in her life. She had just not experienced that it would stop increasing, and then fall, because she had always run away from the problem. The real solution lay, not in escaping, but in staying put. Salkovskis moved the feather a little closer. Again the woman's fear sky-rocketed. But again it came down.
The realisation of the harmlessness of fear - that something 'really terrible' would not happen - caused her phobia to vanish. In reality, the phobia was an illusion, a superstition. Like all illusions it was supremely vulnerable to the truth, to what really is. By the end of the session, the woman was calmly holding the feather.
Under The Dirt Floor
The renowned Buddhist teacher and monk, Lama Yeshe, once observed:
"You are like beggars living in a shack, ignoring your poverty. Meanwhile, just under the dirt floor, there is a treasure of immeasurable value. You just need to scrape off the dust and you will find it."
The claim of mystics ancient and modern is that there +is+ a treasure. But where is it? It is hidden precisely within the "dirt" of sadness, boredom, fear, emptiness, the feeling that our heart is an abyss.
Like the phobics mentioned above, we feel that we know all about our inner abyss. We feel sure that escape is the answer. Tirelessly, we run from sadness, boredom, from a sense of futility, into distraction. The one escape we have never tried is to stay put, to leave our attentional finger in our emotional flame.
We know that if we do not escape from fear but stay with it and watch the rise and fall, it evaporates. So what happens when we don't react to boredom, when we don't leap to fill the hole with pleasure and excitement, but simply sit and watch and feel boredom? Is it something we have ever even considered? What happens when we stand up to this mighty force that has the power to propel us to the ends of the earth, to tolerate any job, any romantic partner, any dreary friend rather than be alone? What happens when we stay still and watch the sadness that would normally have us cramming the darkness with food, pleasure, drugs and booze? Does the sadness get worse? Does the boredom rise to infinity and consume us whole?
The Indian mystic Osho described the results of watching thoughts and emotions:
"It makes you aware that you need not be afraid of your inner abyss. It is beautiful, it is blissful. You have not experienced its bliss and beauty because you have never gone into it, you have always been escaping. You have not tasted of it; it is nectar, it is not poison. But how are you going to know without tasting it? You are running away from something which can become your life's fulfilment. You are running away from something which is the only thing worth achieving. You are running away from yourself."
Osho recommended that we watch all our emotions and thoughts in the same way:
"Whenever you feel sad, sit by the side of a tree, by the side of the river, by the side of a rock, and just relax into your sadness without any fear. The more you relax, the more you will become acquainted with the beauties of sadness. Then sadness will start changing its form: it will become a silent joy, uncaused by anybody outside you. That will not be shallow happiness, which can be taken away very easily.
"And getting deeper into your aloneness, one day you will find not only joy - joy is only midway. Happiness is very superficial, depends on others; joy is in the middle, does not depend on anyone. But going deeper you will come to the state of bliss - that's what I call enlightenment.
"Use anything and you will come to enlightenment - but use something authentic, which is yours."
This is a strong theme in Buddhism and also in the Western contemplative tradition. The monk Saint Symeon (949-1022) described the art of watching the emotions:
"To start with you will find there darkness and an impenetrable density. Later, when you persist and practice this task day and night, you will find, as though miraculously, an unceasing joy. For as soon as the intellect attains the place of the heart, at once it sees things of which it previously knew nothing. It sees the open space within the heart and it beholds itself entirely luminous and full of discrimination."
Eckhart Tolle writes:
"Be present as the watcher of your mind - of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react... Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don't make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher."
Thoughts +will+ carry us away. Our minds initially react much as a wild animal does on having a rope thrown around its neck (in fact our minds have always been quite turbulent, we just didn't notice). But we can observe rather than follow the thoughts and gently return to watching our emotions, to feeling.
And then, for example, behold! Looming vast and magnificent in the blackness of inner space: an incandescent ball of jealousy. Ignited by a couple of random, perhaps completely nonsensical, thoughts that sparked through our all too flammable mind - 'Was she flirting with him? Did he give her his phone number?' - we can only be amazed at its scorching intensity, as if a hole were being burned in our chests. Normally, we would fight the emotion - 'This is ridiculous, nonsense - I'm not a child - I've no reason to be jealous.' Normally, we would do everything to extinguish the fire, to smother it, just get rid of it. But now we are watching it as we would any natural phenomenon; not avoiding, not rejecting. And the pain is real - we are burning.
Surprises are revealed. As we continue watching, feeling, we notice there is pleasure hidden in the pain of jealousy (is there something here, then, that also +excites+ us? Is this what makes jealousy so maddening?) Are we feeling pain now or pleasure, or both? And slowly, over time, as we continue watching, the jealousy melts, is transformed, and we feel bliss, delight, joy.
Likewise, when we focus deeply on sadness we do not simply become more miserable. The experience of sadness +is+ intensified, illuminated, but much is gained from that.
First, our awareness of the sadness is deepened. By obvious implication, our awareness of the sadness of others is also deepened - and this is the basis of compassion, one of the key components of human happiness. We may often think about sadness and compassion, but feeling them directly, intensely, has a very different impact on our minds and hearts. As discussed, we normally rush from the experience of sadness into pleasurable distraction and a torrent of thoughts, and so we are seldom fully present with the sadness at all.
When we watch sadness, anger, boredom and fear rather than being carried away on the usual river of sad, angry, bored and fearful thoughts, we cut the energy supply driving these emotions. Watching the emotion breaks the vicious circle whereby thoughts ignite emotions, which fuel more thoughts, which generate more emotions.
Also, the act of observation communicates the powerful realisation that the observer cannot be identical with the observed. The very fact that we are observing the emotions reveals to us that we are separate from them. We are +not+ our sadness, anxiety, despair, jealousy and anger; we are watching them. They and we are therefore separate.
If this sounds obvious, recall that we in fact normally +do+ identify with our emotions. We become so utterly possessed by sadness and anger because we say and believe with total conviction, 'I'm sad' and 'I'm angry.' It makes all the difference when we come to realise instead that, 'There is sadness' and 'There is anger.' If we slowly erode our conditioning, we see that we can be watchers observing the problem. This disidentification, this subtle separation, pulls the plug on the negative emotions.
When we stop identifying with the abyss, stop reacting to it - when we stand over it and simply watch - the sadness, anger and emptiness begin to melt. But this is not all. Our society teaches us that a heart without disturbing emotions must be a barren place, like a room with no furniture. In fact a peaceful heart is full of bliss. This is the experience of all who have watched their thoughts and emotions: sadness turns to bliss, anger turns to love and compassion.
Further Reading
Osho: Awareness, St. Martin's Press, 2001
Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now, Hodder Mobius, 2005
B. Alan Wallace, Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity, Columbia University Press, 2009
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