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9. The Power of Paradox


There are those who discover they can leave behind confused reactions
and become patient as the earth;
undisturbed by anger, unshaken as a pillar,
unperturbed as a clear and quiet pool.


Dhammapada, verse 95


Question: How do I balance social action with dispassion and acceptance of things as they are? A sense of injustice is often the motivational force to act and persevere. Given that it is my job to challenge core practice in organisations how do I balance these different aspects of my practice? Not to act feels like collusion in wrongdoing, plus I’d probably lose my job.

Ajahn Munindo: It is true that we can feel caught in a conflict between, on the one hand, actually doing something about the ills in society that we live in and, on the other, the way we hear the Buddha’s teaching about cultivating dispassion. It feels like a paradox – a painful paradox – and it seems there’s some sort of contradiction. We hear the teachers telling us, ‘It’s just the way things are’. Perhaps you feel angry and frustrated about this. Perhaps you say, ‘This isn’t good enough.’

The world we live in is full of injustices, and there are things going on that are simply wrong. Most of us have a clear sense that there is right behaviour and wrong behaviour. What we struggle over is how to honour the values we hold at the same time as deepening our contemplations. What I find helpful is to appreciate that the consideration of the rights and wrongs of the world – the outer world – is happening in one particular dimension of our minds. Yet there are other dimensions in which we are not necessarily thinking in such a discursive manner. Probably you have experienced what it is like when the mind is silent and yet there is still a clear knowing operating. In this dimension of our minds we are called to consider in a different manner. Here we can learn, for example, to recognise the underlying views that we hold – the views that inform a lot of our more surface thinking. We need to be aware at these deeper dimensions so that there can be a readiness to respond confidently in any given situation. Much of our formal practice is concerned with creating suitable conditions for becoming acquainted with the underlying views and tendencies of our minds.

Compulsive judging mind

I was speaking earlier today with somebody about an underlying tendency that most of us have – what I call the ‘compulsive judging mind.’ There is a tendency in the mind to be always taking sides for or against things. It is like a sports commentator incessantly going on: ‘This is good, this is bad; this is right, that is wrong; you’re doing well; you’re making a fool of yourself, you should be like this; you shouldn’t have said that, he shouldn’t have said that, he should have said this, she should be here…’ It is an endless stream of ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’, and the tendency to think like this has been there for so long that we probably don’t know how all-pervasive it is.

When we are on a retreat we have the good fortune of practising in an ultimately simplified situation. There are almost no distractions. It is conducive to the inward focus of our attention, its becoming increasingly subtle through the medium of quietness. If we pay careful feeling-attention in the right way and at the right time, we can identify this tendency to judge everything, and begin to look at it objectively.

To take an example, let us say a desire arises in the mind to seek out praise or recognition. You feel it is about time you were recognised for your talents and qualities and you wish to hear someone praise these attributes. So you think, ‘I’ll just go off and perform in front of somebody so that they give me a little praise.’ Now, perhaps I’m putting things a little crudely, but the fact is, our minds often work in such ways. So this desire arises, but then when you recognise it you start thinking, ‘Oh how awful! That shouldn’t be happening; I should be beyond wanting affection and praise. I’ve been practising all these years and I’m still having this kind of state of mind.’

Once when I was complaining to Ajahn Chah about how unfortunate I was with all the health problems I was having, hoping to gain some sympathy, he said to me sternly, “If it shouldn’t be this way, it wouldn’t be this way.”

Everything that happens in our life happens as a result of causes. There are causes for every phenomenon that arises, inwardly and outwardly, so without doubt those phenomena should be there. There are causes for you to think those thoughts. There are causes for you to feel those feelings. The curious thing that we neglect to understand is that our problem is not that we are having such thoughts – the causes for which lie in the past over which we have no control – but that we are judging ourselves for having them here and now. By saying to ourselves, ‘I shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts or feeling these feelings,’ we are putting obstacles in the way of our self-knowledge. We are, in effect, polluting our awareness.

So in order to understand what is going on at the deeper level of our minds we can use a retreat situation to get subtle and refined enough to go into that dimension and see it in a different way to that which we are used to. If we are careful and skilful enough we can learn how to undo those habits which are a cause of affliction for us.

This is an example of addressing the underlying view we have of life; the way that we approach life. If we go through life with a compulsive judging mind, it keeps us in a divided state. We will always feel like there is a challenge; we have no inner peace. This tendency has been conditioned so deeply into us that we think it’s natural. But it isn’t natural; it is something that we have learned to do. And, fortunately, we can unlearn it so that it no longer consumes our energy in such an unproductive, unhelpful way.

Judgement-free awareness

There is a church in the middle of Newcastle that has painted on the front doors, ‘Hate all Evil. Love all Good.’ If you were brought up with that sort of conditioning, as many of us were, you will inevitably have been led to this inwardly divided state. According to this teaching – which I am sure is entirely contrary to the Way of Jesus – God loves good and hates evil. The good ones he embraces and takes up to heaven where they have a good time forever, and the bad ones he chucks into hell where they have a bad time forever. With this kind of conditioning, when, in the face of recognising our faults we want to be virtuous, we start playing God; we set up this almighty tyrant in our minds that’s sitting in judgment all the time. We end up eternally taking sides for and against ourselves – and it is terrible, it tears us apart.

The good news is that taking sides is not an obligation – we don’t have to do it. We don’t have to follow these compulsions. With simple, careful, kind, patient attention we can recognise them as a tendency of mind. They are not the mind itself! They are not who and what we are. And having seen them, little by little, we are less caught up in them. As long as we don’t start playing their game by judging the judging mind, saying, ‘I shouldn’t be judging,’ we take away the counter-force which gives these tendencies their vitality. We come to know the judging mind as it is. The judging mind is just so. There is nothing inherently wrong with the judging mind. Its ability to evaluate and discriminate is an important part of the intelligence that we as human beings use for our safety and survival. The problem is that its influence has become disproportionately large in our day-to-day living, and it never wants to be quiet! Through careful feeling-investigation we can come to see this hyperactivity for what it is and allow the discriminative function to resume its proper place. We experience whatever is happening with our full attention but with calmness and some degree of equanimity. In each moment that we see the judging mind objectively – just as it is – we purify the underlying view that we have of life.

In the deeper dimensions of our being there’s this kind of work to do. I would suggest that if we have the agility to move in and out of these various dimensions we will become adept at addressing very complex issues. In our daily life we can usefully set time aside, perhaps thirty minutes each day, to sit in formal meditation, and this agility will grow. Even ten minutes of well-spent sitting, being still and going back to the basic feeling of a total non-judgemental relationship with life, to perfect receptivity to the moment, can be of great benefit. Call it meditation, call it contemplation, call it whatever you like! It is a way of putting some time aside to value this part of life, to keep this faculty alive. And I trust that, as we emerge into the more mundane workaday activity of our lives, in which we engage with people in situations and make decisions and so forth, we will find that we have a firmer foundation. The decisions we make will be informed by an underlying clear view.


Opening to paradox

And so, even though there can appear to be a paradox or conflict, somewhere within us we know that it’s an apparent paradox, and that with mindfulness and restraint we can allow it to be, without feeling driven into a reactive way of trying to solve it. This is why it’s so important to purify our awareness of compulsive judging tendencies. So long as we’re still habitually judging everything that comes up into our awareness, chronically judging, ‘I shouldn’t feel this way, I should feel that way,’ we are significantly obstructed in our ability to contemplate anything clearly. Even if our thoughts go in the opposite direction, if we’re having a good experience and the mind is rejoicing, ‘This is wonderful! This is how it should be I’m doing great now,’ if we don’t see this running commentary for what it is, then it’s only a matter of time before we swing to thinking, ‘It shouldn’t be like this,’ and become lost again.

So long as we’re caught up in the compulsive judging mind, our capacity for meeting the paradoxes of life with clarity is very limited. Paradoxes will inevitably arise in our lives as human beings and if we haven’t discovered the heart’s capacity for judgement-free awareness then we are likely to turn towards outer forms for support. We will remain overly dependent on conventions and techniques, club membership and beliefs. But with a real interest in developing our hearts and minds and freeing them from the type of conditioning that I have been describing, we won’t shy away from what others might call a dilemma. We will approach it with a view to finding the awareness that can receive the experience – an all-embracing, non-reactive awareness. When we come across a paradox, instead of automatically turning to some external structure, or clinging to some particular point of view to make us feel safe again, we actually engage with the paradox in a manner that increases the capacity for accommodating frustration. Frustration leads us to finding that increased capacity. Frustration is our friend in practice. If we get that message early on, it’s a great blessing. Because sooner or later all of us, not just once but probably a good number of times, will reach a point of utter impossibility, where it seems there’s nothing we can do about our situation. We reach a point where we feel all our techniques have been exhausted; we can’t fix it and yet we can’t stop trying either.

Ajahn Chah wrote a letter to Ajahn Sumedho after he’d been in Britain for a year or two. In this letter he wrote: “The Buddha Dhamma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This, Sumedho, is your place of non-abiding.” That’s a truly helpful teaching. The numerous forms and techniques that we are taught have their place, but they are limited. If we don’t understand the relative function of forms, and we give them too much value, we run the risk of feeling betrayed by practice. We might think, ‘I’ve been keeping my precepts and meditating. I’ve been going to the monastery and going on retreat, but I just can’t help feeling betrayed and let down by it all. Buddhism has failed me and well, it’s a foreign religion anyway, I shouldn’t have messed with it in the first place!’ I’ve heard this said on more than one occasion. The truth of the matter, however, is that Buddhism is not a foreign religion. As you encounter Buddhism, you will undoubtedly find conventions and cultural forms that are Asian in character, but the outer forms are not the point. The point of Buddhism is truth. And truth is neither Asian nor Western.

As we become acquainted with this possibility of living life without always taking a position on everything, a correspondingly increased sense of freedom emerges. To the degree that awareness is liberated from compulsive conditioning there is an increase in the feeling that we have more room in which to move. And with that we can think more clearly and feel more sensitively. The mind is not always afraid of being wrong or obsessed with being right. We have learned that those two go together and feed off each other. This somewhat more liberated mind can welcome difficulties and frustrations, seeing them without judgment as the natural way of the world. Such awareness knows where and when to skilfully apply structures and when to trust in the spirit of practice.

Unobstructed wisdom

Regarding this specific question of knowing just when to act and when to sit still and go inwards, we will find that gradually we develop the possibility of allowing such conflicting concerns into the mind, acknowledging them fully, as they are – with all the power and passion contained in them – and waiting until our own clear confident resolution appears. And we will not feel compromised in the process. We will feel that we are doing what we can do. We won’t feel driven to get it right. In our hearts we know we already want to get it right so we can trust in that. With strong developed awareness we are free to let the tension build. In fact, the energy generated by allowing these two apparently conflicting possibilities simultaneously into awareness, is the energy that slowly but surely drives ‘me’ out of the picture.

The view I find most constructive is that the wisdom that knows the right action in every situation is potentially already here within us. Unobstructed wisdom is not something that we have to get. Such wisdom is the natural activity of our hearts when obstructions have been removed. I believe we can afford to trust it. What creates obstructions is the sense, that comes out of fear and confusion, of ‘me’ and ‘my’ trying all the time. It sounds strange to say, but we need to learn to genuinely respect that which challenges us. Patiently allowing utterly frustrating dilemmas to be present in our here-and-now, judgment-free awareness – this is the path of purification. This practice will gradually lead us to a very different, yet perfectly natural, way of viewing the difficulties of our lives.

Thank you for your attention.

 

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