Self-Love

Last night, I saw a documentary on the comic actor, director, and producer Mel Brooks.  At one point, he says that his comedy comes from knowing how much we each love ourselves.  I suppose it could be added that comedy arises because we love ourselves and don't really know it -- because comedy requires a disjunction of some kind. 

Adyashanti interprets the Biblical passage, "Love another as yourself" not as it's usually interpreted -- as an admonition -- but as simply a fact:  because we are in fact one, we cannot do other than love others as ourselves.  But perhaps the more usually interpretation also is profound because in fact, we usually are not aware of how very much we do love ourselves.

We are taught very early that being narcissistic is bad.  This is part of socialization.  "Don't take all the cookies for yourself:  give Johnny half of them."  If we weren't taught that, I don't know if we would learn it anyway as our brains matured, or not.  But the way that lesson is conveyed can make a difference.  The nonverbal message, "You are a selfish pig," can easily be slipped into the overt message about sharing.  And then we start to dislike ourselves.

I'm not sure it's that simple, but it is patently observable that babies love themselves, so self-hate seems to be learned.  And once we learn that we should not even be dedicated to our own selves, all hell breaks lose.  We worship others or ideas outside ourselves, and at the same time we hate anything in the world which seems to reflect our own self-hate.

Really, all love starts right here at home, in my own heart, and it starts with loving myself.  And if I can't do that, nothing else I do is going to benefit anyone. 

Two Kinds of Unity

Lately, I've been thinking about two different psychological processes.  One is the process of identification with others.  For example, children identify with their parents.  As young adults, we often identify with someone we admire, or even worship.  But although the admiration is conscious, the identification is less so.  Thus, we may find ourselves adopting ideas and attitudes of this people even when those ideas and attitudes have nothing to do with the reason we originally admired them.  It is as though we unconsciously imagine that if we become like them, we will also acquire the wisdom or beauty they have.  And once the psyche really does believe that these attitudes are its own, it is virtually impossible to un-do the process, even when it becomes clear that those ideas or attitudes don't serve us. 

The second kind of unity is when we realize that we in fact are one with someone (or everyone) already, that it is our basic nature.  In this kind of unity, the self doesn't take in something from the outside; rather, it sees itself in a new, expanded way.  Oh, I'm so much larger than I ever imagined!  It's as though the self, instead of taking attitudes or characteristics in from the outside to make itself bigger, realizes that it already is infinitely large and doesn't need any additions.

And, I suppose that the motive for the former process could be said to be the desire for the latter.  That is, we want to be larger than we experience ourselves, and if the only way we can imagine to do that is to identify with others, then that is the way we will do it.  But it never satisfies; only the second kind of unity satisfies.

The Awake World vs. Waking Up

 If the absolute has not been experienced, or if it is only touched on but its nature not completely understood, there can be the idea that what is true in that world should be true in the relative world as well.  Thus, for example, a friend with whom I was having a dispute sent me this comment:

"Adya says: When we abide in Truth, there is no judgment, or blame, or regret."

Well, I suppose that is something Adyashanti would say, but it is easy to misunderstand the intention.  He is not saying, "You should not judge or feel blame or regret."  In fact, such ideas are counterproductive and keep us from actually realizing the world of which he speaks.

The "way in," so to speak, is to accept everything.  A second way (which is really the same path, just another way of conceptualizing it) is to take the "backward step," as it's sometimes called, whereby we realize that we have been trying to have an experience other than the one we are having, and just rest in "what-is."  And what-is includes anger, blame, or whatever is arising at the moment.  The lack of judgment is the result of this acceptance, not the way to get there.

And lack of judgment is only a bit of what we get when we are able to do this.  To truly accept all of what we are means to accept all of what everyone else is, and to say "yes" to all of what life is as well, and it's very close to bliss.  

Mantras and Fundamentalism

When I was young, I lived in a temple in the Japanese countryside which had a mantra as its main practice.  The mantra is called Nembutsu, and the words are namu amida butsu, which means something like, "I call the name of Buddha."  This is the chant used in Shin Buddhism, which is one of the two main chanting sects in Japan, the other being Nichiren.  Recently, I was doing some internet browsing and came across a blog by a Nichiren Buddhist.  In Nichiren, they chant the name of a sutra, and this writer said that for Nichiren Buddhists, Nembutsu was anathema. 

I wasn't raised in a chanting environment, and I admittedly never really understood the power of Nembutsu, but I always assumed that mantras get their power from the intention of the believers who recite them.  But maybe I've missed something.  Maybe one also has to believe the chant is the one way to Buddha's heart.  If that is the case, then one would feel obliged to vilify any other mantra that claims to have the same power.

This is a kind of fundamentalism, isn't it?  I mean, the chant means nothing in itself and yet it comes to be considered a literal path to enlightenment, much like a literal reading of the Bible is considered requisite in fundamentalist Christian sects.  I hadn't expected to find this in Buddhism.

The Bodhi Tree Myth

I don't know how much of the story of the historical Buddha's enlightenment is apocryphal.  But even if it's true, I know it was misleading in its attractiveness to me -- especially when I was young.  This guy wanders in the forest for years with no realization of his True Nature whatsoever, and then sits under this tree, vows to stay there until he realizes Truth, and finally does.  In one fell swoop -- complete.  Nothing left to do. 

OK, so maybe it happens.  But how many of you know of people who woke up that way?  I have met some people who claimed this is how it was for them, but if I talk to them for a few minutes, I see that they still have plenty of ego left.  Nothing wrong with that (except, maybe, the self-deceit part), but the way they function doesn't really look to others the way it appears to them.  And I sometimes wonder whether they, like myself when I was younger, have been deceived by the Bodhi Tree myth into thinking that this instantaneous, complete and total awakening is the way it always is, and so have superimposed that belief onto their own experience.

For most people, including myself, it's not about one moment of transcendence which becomes the final  realization of ultimate Truth but a series of awakenings and a gradual shift in the way life is experienced and seen.  It is true that that first awakening is very marvelous -- there is, in fact, nothing so wonderful.  But those realizations that follow take you deeper into a more complete understanding of your True Nature.  Ego keeps functioning and all -- but now there is an understanding of its more limited role -- to keep the creature safe and functioning well.  What we really are, though, encompasses not only our ego and all that we as form are, but all that everyone and everything else is as well -- that's what it is important to know.  We don't transcend our lives in a moment, but rather we come to see more and more how the Eternal is always present in everything.

Judging Self and Others is the Same Thing

Christ says, "Judge not that ye be not judged."  People interpret this differently.  Perhaps (I'm not sure since I'm not one) traditional Christians think that it means that God is keeping track of our judgments against others and will judge us for them, now or when we die.  New Age people might say that this is just a universal law -- that the accounts are exact and if you judge others, the universe will put people in your life who will judge you.

My experience is something different than both of these.  First, there really is no "inside" and "outside."  That's a fiction the ego creates.  So, it must be, then, that inner and outer judgment don't differ.  Judgment is just judgment.  We judge ourselves to the exact extent that we judge others.

Sometimes people are uncomfortable with their judgments against others because they believe that such judgments get in the way of compassion and understanding.  That is true enough.  But I've found that the place where judgment does the most damage is when it's directed toward myself.  If I start there and really feel into the way I have betrayed my own life by judging myself, I can sometimes find the compassion for myself that is the way out of judgment.  When I find that compassion, I find that, miraculously, the judgments I had against others have disappeared.

Perfection and Judgment

A passage in an article I was reading this morning caught my attention:

"I was to learn how to see the world as perfect and lacking for nothing, even for all that it might not seem to be so.  In order to do this, I needed to apply the Brillo pad of nonjudgment to all my accustomed habits and perceptions.  I needed to act, to work, to think, and to observe, and I needed to do so without ever asking things to be other than just as they were.  If I did this long enough -- and perhaps even if I did it for just a short while -- the world, or my perception of it, would eventually change." 1

 Hmm.  I believe this is a version of "fake it till you make it."  And I wonder how many people have found this actually works.  The fact is, I don't see how it can work because there's an inherent contradiction here.  After all, it is the self who is making all of this effort, is it not?  And it is also the self that does all the judging.  It is only when we fall out of the self and into the larger reality that we discover perfection and non-judgment.  And the poor "I" who tries so hard just can't get there through effort.  But something in us wants this so badly.  Maybe that is where the attention should go:  what is it that desires this perfection? 


1 Ptolemy Tompkins, "What Kind of Errand?" reprinted in Best Spiritual Writing 2002, originally published in  Parabola.