Compassion For an Annoying World
In the play, “Huis Clos” or “No Exit” French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre introduced three characters that represented a kind of social three-body problem that uncovered the basic instability of human interaction. The nature of this dynamic encouraged the edges of each personna to trigger the others. That dynamic continued in vicious rounds ultimately leading Sartre to famously conclude “hell is other people.”
I once wrote an unlove song that went “people suck, and you’re one of them.” Yet life with the irritations of other humans may be worthwhile simply because we have no choice. It is an existential situation that we can either choose to see or turn away from. Sartre’s play was an existential glimpse of a human condition that left us with no alternative, hence the idea of hell. The Buddhists say the cycle of suffering, referred to as l samsara, is endless. And, yet the Buddha predicted that suffering can nonetheless cease if we understand its cause. Our experience of that endless sea of suffering is enacted by the clinging attachment to the straws of life we feel will save us from drowning. Instead of flowing though life with an open sense of discovery, we grasp to the things we love and struggle to get away from things we hate. And in the turbulence of yes and no, wanting and not wanting, we become blind to the rest of our life.
The Buddha’s remedy for this struggling blindness is to train the mind to settle in the present so that it may develop an objective awareness. Awareness of the things we cling to, awareness of the things that trigger us and eventually awareness of all that we’ve missed due to these obsessions. This is not easy. The deeper we see, the more we feel. And feelings …. well … can suck. In this regard, it is said that irritation is the vanguard of awareness. And as the old song (almost) said, “waking up is hard to do”. Just like the groggy eye-rubbing crankiness many of us experience in the morning, becoming aware of our world can be an uncomfortable and unsettling experience. And yet, should we bring awareness into the hell of our world, we might see that hell itself is a construct. And any construct is a thing, and all things are temporary.
So, why do we suffer? We become comfortable with the familiar. Seeing what we see, knowing what we know, doing what we do supports our sense of security. As we are social creatures, we search out our clan and dance with the partners we enjoy. However, we can unknowingly become attached to what we know, and experience antipathy toward that de don’t. We assume our point of view is self-existing and inviolable. Humans nestle into comfort without looking into that or beyond themselves. Chogyam Trungpa likened this process to creating a cocoon. Cocoon, in this case, is a womb of repetitive patterns, societal norms and bounded thinking in which we find protection but entirely take for granted. We separate ourselves from the dangers of disparity by surrounding ourselves with the familiar. Each of us has our specific style of protective cocoon that makes us feel safe. Ironically, those who flaunt danger sometimes find solace in the familiarity of repetition of their unsafe behavior. A daredevil approach feels brave, but once we’ve learned how to navigate the danger, it becomes a pattern.
We use repetitive patterns as a self protective strategy, even when they are not serving us. But even when they have served us, cocoons by nature are temporary staging areas. Should we fail to move on, at some point, we are not growing. Even if our cocoon is academic study and research, are we able to see beyond our mode? The late Physicist Richard Feynman noted that his colleagues were learning “more and more about less and less.” Many of us are proficient in the things we know, but don’t recognize, or value what we don’t know. The spiritual problem here is that we are limited by that which we don’t see. It’s like the mass of “black” matter in the universe. There is a preponderance of mass in the universe that we can measure, but cannot see. Some scientists rather describe this as unseen or unknown matter, indicating there is something there we are yet to understand.
The brain is happiest and therefore most efficient when it is leaning new things. So, developing awareness in our lives is developing our minds. Developing our mind enables us to develop greater awareness. While being nurtured in the safety of our comfortable environment is essential for our physical health and survival, seeing beyond our comfort points is essential for our mental and spiritual health. Spiritual growth = spiritual health. The more we see, the more we understand. This is developing awareness and is likened to “waking up.” And as we said, waking up is not always pleasant. And so there is a tentative balance between safety and growth. It would be impractical to throw off all caution and engage the world without discernment, but when discernment turns to judgement, we are limiting ourselves. The struggle between stepping out and back to the cocoon is a necessary dynamic for growth.
It is essential for the butterfly to struggle through its cocoon in order to develop the strength to fly. Likewise, it is essential for those on a wisdom journey, to work with the discomfort of waking up. The Tibetans refer to “lakthong” or clear seeing. Lakthong is seeing beyond our reference points and likened to “waking up. When faced with the discomfort of seeing more clearly, a common tactic is to find fault and assign blame. We can deflect the pain of our burgeoning awareness onto a projection of another object. However, this freezes us in place. Once we pinpoint a problem, then it becomes a scapegoat. We are no longer looking, because we are seeing what we believe. Smart people are very susceptible to irritation and blame. People of high intellect can often become impatient with those moving on slower cycles. It’s natural to value our world from the vantage of our own values. Sometimes this conflates into a rigid false binary. Some people are good and some are evil. Assigning a value of evil may be more about pushing away something you find uncomfortable than an absolute value scale.
Those of us too sophisticated to believe in evil, might instead just find other people annoying, irritating or unworthy. And, in truth, some people put up a good case for that. Nonetheless, the more clearly we see and the more we step from our parochial perch, the less protected we are from irritation. It is said that “meditation is not a vacation from irritation.” And in truth, just because people are irritating to me doesn’t mean they aren’t valued by those their own clan. If they exist in the world, then waking up to the world would indicate connecting to some are unavoidable.
So, how to work with this?
- Knowing that there is no right or wrong to the situation. There are points of view that, in fairness, are susceptible to change.
- That said, acceptance of our feelings as valid is important step in waking up. However, understanding that our feelings are subjective are very important. Feelings don’t make us right. They are part of the landscape.
- Being willing to set aside judgement and investigate means everything. Why does it irritate me? What does it mean to me? Did my caregivers do this? This means not making global assignments or judgements. Just being humble enough to ask why am I uncomfortable.
- Having the confidence to NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY. I am not obligated to feel a certain way about anyone else’s behavior. Non-co-dependence or interdependence means that we are willing to stand on our own without feeling swayed for or against. When I am triggered by someone, they are MY triggers! My mind is all I can effectively change. No one is keeping me from doing that.
My friend Sarah suggested that we could have disintegration rays like in Tim Burton’s movie “Mars Attacks”. She feels they would be compassionate by painlessly eliminating asshooles for our life. Hahaha. Although admittedly a provisional view of compassion, the idea that we could painlessly cut the attachment we have to feeling judgement or obligation to the assholes we endure is appealing. As Christ said, “you will always have the assholes with you.” He went on to say “you will not always have me.” I think it is not up to us to find goodness in our own hearts and endeavor to see others through that.
All of us have wisdom and all of us have neurosis. It is up to us as to which lens we use to see our world.