Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
——Aldous Huxley
If the individual self is, at bottom, nothing but a conceptualization of the self, then one important part of the spiritual quest will be to improve that self-conception. While there may not be a findable essential “somebody self” to ameliorate—and, remember, the real, oceanic “nobody/everybody” butterfly self is in no need of improvement at all—the personal self that does exist can and should be developed into a better edition.
As we noted toward the end of the last chapter, it is precisely because we are not stuck with the somebody we think we are now that we can upgrade ourselves into a more self-satisfied model.
And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to become a better somebody. Indeed, without a desire like this, we’ll never get to the point where the Great Itchless State becomes possible, and where the peace and tranquility of being nobody can be fully experienced and appreciated.
Because it’s possible, we should definitely strive for self-improvement. Because we’re all really, deep down, nobody, everyone has the potential to become a different somebody. We can choose to continue to embrace a depressed, discontented, and perpetually itchy sense of self, or we can work toward creating a joyful and fulfilled personal identity that is nourished by the deep reservoirs of our true identity.
We can change. We can better ourselves. We can create a happier iteration of the self to replace the needy, greedy, twisted version that’s driving us crazy. But self-improvement will be achieved not through trying to be more special than others, either through foolish pride or through laying claim to an exceptional status due to our suffering.
It’s worth repeating: There’s nothing inherently wrong with being “self-interested.” It’s crucial to build a good, healthy sense of the individual self—not as the final goal but as a necessary platform for the higher work of joyful self-transcendence and integration with the world around us. Enlightened self-interest entails wising up to what will really work to bring about an untroubled and contented personality, somebody who’s ready, willing, and able to be less self-obsessed and self-centered.
Remember, it’s not really “self-improvement” if it’s all about you.
• • •
The “somebody self” is an artifact of how we presently regard ourselves. And this, in turn, depends on the kind of past we think we had (for we are who we think we once were) and our expectations, hopes, and fears about the future (we are who we think we will become). The conceptualized “somebody self” is found at the nexus of two times—the past and the future—that themselves only exist as ideas within the present mind.
This “somebody self” is the product of moral training and positive self-development—or the lack thereof. There’s a huge difference in the self-perception of someone who has cultivated humility, modesty, and an unselfish and charitable attitude toward others and that of someone who is driven by inborn (and reinforced) selfishness, vanity, pride, and aggressive competition with others.
We’ve seen in the last chapter that we can’t change the present in the present. Captain Kirk can’t just dictate that things change at will in the moment, nor can any inner witch or genie work this kind of magic. This means that somebody can’t just in the moment choose to be anybody; the “somebody self” can’t immediately transform into somebody different. We can’t go from zero (selfish, egotistical, and dissatisfied) to one hundred (humble, altruistic, and untroubled) in just a few seconds, or even a few days or weeks or months.
The lower, individual self is an idea of the self, but our self-conception is constantly in flux. This self, we could say, is a process, not a thing. To invoke a very common and ancient simile, the self is like a river—let’s say the Mississippi. What we call “the Mississippi River” is not an entity or a thing; it is only a name we give to a particular flow of water—to a process. As Paul Robeson famously sings, “Ol’ Man River just keeps rolling along.”
We mistake changing things for unchanging things. We assume that, because we have a name or a concept for “the Mississippi River,” the word and the idea must refer to some thing, when all it really designates is a flowing current, a movement, an activity.
Well, our sense of personal identity is just like a river. Every part of what we include in our idea of “me”—every physical and mental component of the self—is changing, moment by moment. The kind of idea I have about “me” deceives me. I think my concept of “me” refers to a unitary, independent, and unchanging entity, when all it denominates is a flow.
And so even what we mean by “me” changes over time, doesn’t it? What Julian Baggini calls the “autobiographical self” provides a sense of continuity to the self: “The unity and permanence we feel over time depends on our ability to construct an autobiographical narrative that links our experiences over time.” “But,” Baggini goes on to observe, “individual experiences and sense of self at any particular time can vary enormously. What is more, the autobiographical self is very good at self-revision. In effect, we are constantly rewriting our histories to keep our inner autobiographies coherent.”1
The self is mutating and therefore mutable. Otherwise what would be the point of a spiritual practice? If we weren’t changing, we couldn’t change! Every authentic spiritual tradition has always assumed that, because the “somebody self” is just a process and not a thing, the process we call “me” can be redirected and differently channeled.
We can transform our understanding and evaluations—not only of ourselves, but also of other people and of everything about our lives. We can train ourselves to change our minds—not in the blink of an eye, of course, but over time. We can gift ourselves with a different set of ideas about both our inner and outer worlds.
And, as we shall see toward the end of this chapter, these two different conceptualizations of our reality—inner and outer—are in a symbiotic relationship.
By cultivating wisdom, we can learn to think differently about both ourselves and the people and things in our outer world (remember, no annoying people or intrinsically tasty ice cream out there). With more awareness of the changing nature of the “autobiographical self,” we learn to direct that change in a more positive way. Wisdom about the externals will help us act, speak, and think in such a way that we’ll improve our sense of self—and this, in turn, will transform our view of the world and the other people in it.
As we saw in the last chapter, we all have a bad case of the “if only” syndrome. We are convinced that if only we could adjust the external events in our lives to our satisfaction:
If only I had a better job, more money, a nicer home, a new iPhone, a holiday in Bermuda . . .
And if only we could figure out how to make other people in our lives change to our liking:
If only my husband or wife were nicer to me . . . if only my boss weren’t so demanding . . . if only I could make that annoying person stop being so annoying . . .
Then, finally, we’d be happy. We’re all pretty itchy, pretty much all the time.
In our ignorant and self-centered desire to work our will on the world, we usually just send Captain Kirk out on the case. We hope that the good old Cap’n will micromanage the external world and the people in it so that all will become pleasing instead of so problematic.
But as we’ve seen, the Captain Kirk self is an ineffectual humbug. It is therefore unsurprising that he is impotent to effect the changes we demand. Events in the outer world aren’t modified at our command, and other people don’t automatically adjust themselves and their actions in accordance with our mandates.
We are perpetually thwarted in our attempts to work the magic that would change the present in the present.
There is, however, a more efficacious method at hand for transforming our lives for the better. We can still hope for a happier future, but we must also accept that there will be a gap between the time of the cause and that of the effect. This gradual method for transformation is what the Eastern traditions would call “changing your karma,” or what Jesus spoke about in terms of “sowing what you will reap,” or what we colloquially mean when we say “what goes around, comes around.”
The basic “laws of karma” can be succinctly stated: “No action in this world goes for naught or brings about a contrary result,” as one ancient Indian text crisply puts it.2
The first principle—“no action goes for naught”—proclaims that every action will have a reaction; everything we do, say, or even think will have future consequences. And the second rule—“no action brings about a contrary result”—asserts that the kind of outcome one will experience depends on the kind of action that produced it. No cause brings about a “contrary result”: nothing bad can come from something good, and nothing good can come from something bad.
These principles are not the creation of any one religious tradition. They are found, in one form or another, in many and various places. In the Yoga Sutra we read, “There is a causal connection between meritorious and blameworthy acts and their respectively cool and pleasurable or scorching and unpleasurable effects.”3 Jesus put forward the same karmic law in more metaphorical terms by noting that you don’t get grapes from thorns or figs from thistles:
You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.4
What makes an action “good” or “bad”? An act (inclusive not just of physical acts but also those of speech and even thought) done with a good intention—that is, with a selfless, kind, altruistic, compassionate motivation—will bring about a good (that is, pleasant) result. Conversely, a bad act is “bad” because it is inspired by an intention fueled by one or another of the mental afflictions, all of which are instigated by selfishness. Such a negative action—motivated by ignorance, self-aggrandizement, or the wish to harm others—will bring an unpleasant consequence in the future.
All authentic spiritual traditions teach some form or another of “karma.” The fundamental principles we’ve just discussed form the very heart and soul of every moral system. There’s no “system”—and therefore no hope for willed self-improvement—if there’s not the assumption that:
1. Every action has a consequence, and
2. The type of result (pleasant or unpleasant) invariably correlates to the nature of the cause (kind or unkind, selfish or selfless).
The first principle denies randomness and therefore empowers us, while the second provides the basic method for governing the direction of one’s karma in cultivating a better life.
So far, so good. But while the fundamental rules of karma are both easy to grasp and universally advocated in every ethical system, the actual operation of karma works at a level different from the one we usually think. The project of knowing how to improve the “somebody self” depends upon a belief in moral causality (which gives us confidence that improvement is possible), but also on an understanding of how such beneficial transformation can really occur.
Karmic management—creating the causes for a more agreeable life in the future—can easily be misconstrued as just another attempt to magically bend the world and other people to one’s self-centered will. When there’s only a superficial grasp of karma, the Captain Kirk self is resurrected, albeit in a slightly different guise:
OK, I get it now! I can still have my way with the world and with other people . . . I just have to be a little more patient! If I don’t hurt others, in the future no one will hurt me. If I am generous, then the boss will someday give me a raise. If I’m patient with my annoying brother-in-law, he’ll eventually change into a friendlier person.
This simplistic, mechanistic, and ultimately narrow-minded and self-seeking understanding of karma is really just the ego grabbing onto a new-and-improved technique in order to once again try to achieve its narcissistic ends. It’s the “if only” syndrome at work all over again: If only others would behave themselves; if only I had more money; if only my brother-in-law were a nice guy.
The sole difference between this view and the usual version of such wishful thinking is that now we have come into possession of this cool spiritual tool called “karma” in order to realize our longings.
No matter what guise the Captain Kirk self assumes, the egomaniacal assumption persists: We will be able to get whatever we want from the world, and we can make other people behave exactly as we wish, if we can just somehow find and pull the right strings.
• • •
There are some presentations of karma that lend themselves to the mechanistic theory discussed above. But even in those versions of karmic causation, bets are very much hedged. For one thing, according to the texts of Tibetan Buddhism, the precise workings of karma are classified at the level of “very subtle” (as opposed to “obvious” or just plain “subtle”) and they’re knowable only to enlightened beings, who, unlike us, are supposedly omniscient.
Futhermore, karmic results—becoming famous through practicing humility, or getting money by being generous—are said to ripen in one of three possible times: in this very life (could be tomorrow, could be seventy years from now), in the very next lifetime (when you’ll be a dramatically transfigured version of “you”), or (wait for it . . .) in any lifetime after that.
The exact time when one will reap what one has sown is as unknowable as the exact form the reapage might take.
There’s a joke that underlines this point. George is magically transported to heaven and meets with God. The visitor is astounded by how dissimilar God’s paradise seems from life on earth.
“Wow, it sure is impressive here! So different from where I come from! Say, God,” George asks, “how much is a million dollars on earth worth in heavenly currency?”
And God answers, “One penny.”
George is, needless to say, quite impressed. Just one of God’s pennies is the equivalent of a million dollars!
So he persists in his questioning: “And how long is a hundred years in divine time?”
God replies, “One minute. One minute up here is equal to a hundred human years.”
George, suitably dazzled but with his wits still about him, makes a request: “Before I go back to earth, could I get one of your God pennies to take home with me?”
“Sure,” God answers. “Just wait a minute.”
• • •
It’s best not to regard self-improvement through karmic management as a matter of manipulating and upgrading outer events and other people. Positive actions of body, speech, and mind will indeed have positive results. But it’s more realistic to think about the fruit of good karma ripening internally, not externally.
As Tolstoy once observed, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”5
Karma is not some kind of magical, mystical technique for genetically modifying difficult people or for physically re-engineering events in the material world. Karmic management is primarily a method for systematically changing one’s self-perception. What we can most effectively, efficiently, and reliably transform is ourselves—and not the world, let alone other people who have their own karma to work out.
In Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, we are given direction as to where to concentrate our efforts when it comes to changing our karma:
And so, although I am unable to exercise control over external phenomena, I will restrain my own mind. What else is there that I can really control?6
This verse points us to a more commonsensical understanding of causation and self-improvement. Karma isn’t about creating the causes for altering the behavior of other people (I’m being nice so my husband will change and stop being mean to me) or directing the processes of the external world (I’m being generous so more money will come my way). It isn’t about changing the data. The data will change all right, but always in unanticipated, unpredictable, and, as the text says, uncontrollable ways.
In any event, whether other people appear to us as “nice,” or whether a particular amount of money is “enough” are subjective interpretations and not objective, measurable phenomena. If one’s subjective perspective changes, one’s perspective on how much money makes you rich or how nice other people are will change as well.
Karma is not like gravity; it is not some kind of invisible external “law of nature.” It is first and foremost an internal law governing our own state of mind. And so, karmic management is really about changing our own frame of reference—“restraining my own mind” from creating negative karma—so that our outlook on others and on life itself is not so distorted by our own mental afflictions. It’s about transforming our perception such that it is conditioned not by our worst tendencies but rather by virtues like forgiveness, compassion, love, wisdom, and a magnanimous spirit.
When we see ourselves struggling to overcome our own negative proclivities and replace them with goodness, we plant “karmic seeds”—a metaphor for what we nowadays would call “memories” (conscious, subconscious, or even unconscious). And as we know, memory does not simply replay what really happened but what we think happened, which can and does change over time.
It is what we think we have done, said, or thought in the past—in a word, our karma—that defines us in the present. Our concept of our personal identity—who we think we are—is a function of who we think we used to be. And both our present sense of self and the memories that constitute it are perpetually changing and therefore changeable.
In the Buddhist texts, a big debate rages over where, exactly, the karmic “seeds” we planted in the past were “stored” until they were ready to ripen. Given that we always come up empty-handed in any “Where’s Waldo?” search for an immutable and enduring individual self, how does karma persist from the time of its creation to the time of its fruition?
The answer is that karma is conserved in the “simple me”—our basic sense of who we are at any given moment. Karma is memory—again, conscious, subconscious, or unconscious—and it is memory that comprises our current identity. If you don’t believe me, try to imagine who you would be if you had no past! As filmmaker Luis Buñuel has said, “Life without memory is no life at all. . . . Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.”7
The “me” who created my past karma is long gone, but the “me” I presently conceptualize is an idea based on my memories of who I once was and the kinds of things I think I once did, said, or thought.
There’s no enduring, abiding self that has karma. The conceptualization we have of ourselves is karma.
The memories that shape our self-image are called vasanas in Sanskrit. They pervade our consciousness in the same way that the fragrance of perfume lingers in a room even after the person wearing it has departed. The “room” that is our present identity is saturated with, and defined by, the aroma of our past karma.
So one way to improve the conception of the self is to rehabilitate the memories we are carrying around. The past is never like it used to be. It is forever undergoing reinterpretation. For individuals as for groups, there’s no history except for revisionist history. As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written, “The past can never be literally true in memory: it must be continuously edited, and the question is only whether we take creative control of the editing or not.”8
Since what we call our “past” is really only some part of our present mind, and since our present is constantly changing, our idea of the past is in flux too. Instead of carrying around—and defining ourselves by—a past replete with bitterness, recrimination, and disappointment, we can work at revising our personal histories in such a way that forgiveness replaces anger, gratitude takes the place of resentment, and acceptance supersedes thoughts of sadness and regret.
People who have made peace with their past will have gone a long way toward improving their present sense of self-esteem. Not only will their memories have been altered and improved, but the very acts of forgiveness, gratitude, and acceptance will have modified their sense of self. Rather than thinking of oneself as an embittered, traumatized victim, one can begin to conceptualize the self in terms of the virtues one has practiced in relation to the people and events of the past.
Karma can, in this way, work both retroactively and proactively. By practicing forgiveness, gratitude, and acceptance vis-à-vis our past, we create the causes that will result, over time, in a better self-image. And in the future, we will remember ourselves as someone who was trying to forgive, to be grateful, and to be accepting of all that has happened.
If karma is memory, and memory is what composes our self-image, then improving our sense of self is a matter of acting, speaking, and thinking such that we will look back at our lives with dignity instead of embarassment: I was the kind of person who tried to live a good life, a life guided by nonviolence, honesty, integrity, charity, and the other virtues. We practice being a better person today (not just in terms of our past, but in an ongoing way as we interact with the world and other people) so that we will think about ourselves in a better way tomorrow.
Furthermore, by paying more attention to our ethical life, we will have also transformed even our present conception of ourselves. If we can generate conviction in the laws of karma, and if we start living our lives in accordance with what will bring us more happiness and less suffering, we will begin to see ourselves differently in the present. We will regard ourselves as a person who is guided by the karmic laws instead of someone who is just unthinkingly going through life on automatic pilot. Our current level of self-esteem will instantly rise when we become more cognizant of the consequences of the actions we take to enhance our future level of self-esteem.
Karma shapes our perspective of ourselves—and the idea of the self is the only self we have ever had. Trying to manipulate and master other people or external phenomena in order to feel better about one’s own life is usually a pretty ineffectual gambit (have you noticed?).
What I can change is myself. And, as the verse says, “What else is there that I can really control?”
So now that we’re acquainted with the theoretical blueprint of how self-improvement really occurs, it’s time to put theory into practice. The secret to feeling better about ourselves and our lives, as we’ve seen, is not to expect the world and others to be different than what they are. It is rather to accept the hand we’re dealt at any given moment, and then learn to play our cards in such a way as to improve our estimation of ourselves as a player.
Here’s a little mantra—words of power—that I’ve found to be extremely helpful for staying focused on the task at hand. It’s a kind of acceptance mantra—an embrace of reality as it is, not as we wish it would be. So let’s call it “the reality mantra,” since it’s meant to keep us concentrated on what is actually happening in reality:
Om, it’s like this now, ah hum.I
Om traditionally marks the start of a mantra. It means, “Here comes a mantra.” And ah hum signifies the end of the incantation. “It’s like this now” are words of absolute truth, and this is one aspect of their power.
Because it is always the case, right? It’s always “like this now,” isn’t it? The hand we’ve been dealt at any given moment is the only one we have to play.
Please note that the mantra is not “It’s like this now, and I wish it weren’t.” That’s the usual spurious mantra of discontentment and non-acceptance. Nor is the mantra, “It’s like this now, and I wish it would stay like this forever.” That’s the fanciful mantra we recite to ourselves in those (relatively rare) times when things are going just the way we want them to.
So the mantra has to be continually repeated, because the “now” in “It’s like this now” is perpetually on the move. If we are to stay in reality rather than drift off into fantasy, we have to keep up with the ever-changing present.
The first element of the actual practice of self-improvement is accepting what is rather than either wishing that it were different or that it would freeze-frame and stay the same.
Now for the next step: Since it’s like this now, what would be my most intelligent response? How to best play these cards I’ve been dealt? Instead of just unthinkingly reacting to situations, we try to stay mindful and rational and think:
What can I do, say, and think in this situation that would enrich rather than diminish my self-image? Will what I do now be something I will regret in the future, or something I can look back on with satisfaction that I did my best?
Because we misunderstand the nature of our “somebody self,” we habitually respond to difficult situations and people with our untrained feelings rather than with an educated view of how the personal, individual self exists—as a constantly changing and evolving idea or conception based upon karma.
We think of the self in an erroneous way, and therefore want always to preserve and enhance the identity we think truly does exist as a unitary, unchanging, independent, and Captain Kirk self. So when faced with difficult situations or people, we respond defensively or aggressively. Instead of using the rationality of our heads and the compassion and love in our hearts, we acquiesce to our selfish instincts and untrained habits.
When someone is angry with us, we respond with anger; when someone hurts us, we feel we must strike back. When we are faced with an unwanted event, we flail about, trying to avoid or change it in the moment instead of thinking about how we could best preserve our present peace of mind and create better memories with which to define our future.
But in order to make the smart choice in any given situation, we have to fight our tendencies to succumb to our selfish negative feelings, our mental afflictions. The guidelines for an intelligent and compassionate response to any situation can be set out as simply as the laws of karma themselves:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.
Just as you don’t want to suffer, others don’t want you to return anger with anger, hurt with hurt, lies with more lies, untrustworthiness with some version of the same. Changing our habitual responses to the events and challenging people in our lives involves shifting the focus from what seems to be “good for me” (and harmful to others) at any given moment and concentrating instead on what will really be the best way to improve my sense of self—here and now and also in the future.
And from the karmic point of view, what’s actually best for us will also be what’s best for the others around us. Om, it’s like this now, ah hum. So how, in every moment, can we act, speak, and think in such a way that we’ll be happier and make the lives of those around us better, not worse?
The way to improve our self-image, the truly efficacious method for upgrading the “somebody self,” is to train ourselves to stop reacting negatively—defensively or aggressively, protecting or promoting the self-centered ego—and instead respond in such a way as to increase our sense of self-worth.
We must use our “best friend” self to overcome our “worst enemy” self. If we really want to improve and help ourselves, we must side with the angel inside of us, not with our demons.
Who else will overcome your unhappy, depressed, discontented self if not you? Who else besides you will make you a better “somebody self”?
Because self-improvement really is possible, it’s our responsibility to make efforts to accomplish it. And it will take effort. It’s naïve to assume that responding wisely and kindly to difficult events or annoying people will be easy. Our contrary habits are deeply engrained. Our habitual responses are like knee-jerk reactions.
When the mental afflictions arise—rage, vanity, lust, jealousy, resentment, annoyance, self-deprecation, and so on—there’s a strong air of inevitability about them. We feel, in the moment, compelled to do, say, or think things we soon regret (or at least should regret). We excuse ourselves or apologize to others by saying, I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t help it!
We all know how it goes. Someone says or does something that we don’t like—something that insults or injures or provokes our “somebody self.” A force is awakened, an energy that seems to have a life of its own. Like in the Alien movies, the affliction feels like an aroused monster that just pops out of our gut.
And then the alien power starts to surge through our being. The negative feeling seems to rise up in us (one old expression for getting angry is that “the ire rises”). Left unchecked, the mental afflictions move from the solar plexus area and make their way up through our tightening chest and throat and quickly hijack our heads.
The negative emotion takes possession of us. We “lose it,” meaning we “lose our temper” or basically go temporarily insane. We become the puppet of the affliction and do, say, and think unpleasant, hurtful, and damaging things.
If we wish to free ourselves from the negative emotions—if we are to change these foolish and self-destructive responses—we must prepare ourselves for battle. Old habits are hard to break. We must gird our loins and train for the Big Smackdown, the Rage in the Cage, with our mental afflictions.
• • •
I was a big wrestling fan when I was a kid (professional wrestling, not the more staid and rule-governed collegiate or Olympic version), and so was my grandfather. We’d watch televised matches between characters called “Gorilla Monsoon” and “Dick the Bruiser” and marvel at the feats of violence: one combatant would jump off the top rope in the ring and smash his elbow into the throat of his opponent lying prone on the mat—stuff like that.
Both my grandfather and I were totally convinced that this kind of wrestling was real. It drove my dad bonkers! We would watch eye gouges, “sleeper holds” (pinching some “nerve” in the shoulder that would render the opponent instantly unconscious), death grips, and elbows to windpipes—not to mention the fully illegal bashing with chairs and attacks with smuggled blackjacks, brass knuckles, and razor blades. All this, my dad adamantly maintained, had to be fake.
You know the adage? Grandparents and grandchildren generally get along so well because they share a common enemy. My granddad and I derived a certain perverse pleasure in the apoplectic response we got from my father as we held firmly to our faith that wrestling was a real “sport” and not just athletic “theater.”
If we are to defeat our mental afflictions, we have to be like the professional wrestlers. We need to get ready for the Big Smackdown. We have to be ruthless and brutal with our negative emotions, for they are our true foes. While our human “enemies” have lots of other things to do when they’re not harassing us—sleep, eat, carry on relationships, tend to business, pursue hobbies—our mental afflictions have nothing else to do but destroy our happiness.
There’s a big misconception about the spiritual life. There is a widespread assumption that the spiritual practitioner should always remain in a sort of otherworldly and catatonic state—tranquilized, muted, and peacefully inert.
But the true spiritual renegade is not some namby-pamby navel-gazer, looking vague and flashing the peace sign at his or her negative emotions. It may come as a surprise to some that many spiritual texts use the language of violence and war in relation to the project of self-control.
The Buddhist classic Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Shantideva, for example, urges us to be “fierce warriors” when it comes to overcoming what the text refers to as our “congenital enemies.” Just like soldiers on the battlefield, we should be brave when it comes to our own personal Rage in the Cage. Knowing that the struggle will not be easy, we should steel ourselves and resolve to persevere no matter how difficult it may be:
In the heat of battle, fierce warriors are able to swiftly kill those who, ignorant and unhappy, will die anyway. Although tormented by countless wounds from arrows and spears, they do not turn away until they’ve accomplished their goal.
When I am intent on slaying my congenital enemies, the causes of all my continuous suffering, why am I now depressed and dejected, even if I must put up with hundreds of difficulties?9
Warriors on the battlefield, boxers in the ring, and, yes, professional wrestlers in their smackdowns get even more psyched when injured. And we too should become even more maniacal when the opposition puts up resistance in our personal struggle with our own worst inclinations.
The Guide also urges us to be not only strong-willed but also merciless when it comes to the Big Smackdown. We all have the tendency to make excuses for our thoughtless reactions. Even worse, we defend, justify, and rationalize our afflictions:
So what if I got angry and yelled? She deserved it! I just had to set her straight!
And worst of all, we go so far as to identify with our negative emotions—and thus define ourselves through them:
I am jealous; I am proud.
In order to live happier lives, we must stop pampering, excusing, rationalizing, and identifying with the enemies of our peace of mind. If we leave the door open even a crack, they will surely rush in. If we continue to mollycoddle these nasty demons, they’ll beat us every time.
That’s why Shantideva exhorts us to get medieval on the little buggers!
Let my guts ooze out and my head fall off—whatever! But I will never, no matter what, bow before my enemy, the mental afflictions.10
Nothing namby-pamby about that, right?
Let the Rage in the Cage begin!
• • •
What are the weapons we’ll need to fight the mental afflictions? What kind of wrestling holds can we apply the next time one of them raises its ugly head? And what sort of “illegal” implements can we smuggle into the Rage in the Cage that might give us a fighting chance in our efforts to defeat our worst enemies?
Recognition
Just acknowledging the mental afflictions as harmful, rather than as necessary or even desirable constituents of our being, will go a long way toward helping us beat them.
A smoker friend of mine refers to cigarettes as his “little friends.” They’re always there for you, he explains. First thing in the morning with your coffee, all day long as you work, with a drink at the end of the day, after meals or sex—you can always count on your “little friends” to help you get through life.
Many of us regard our mental afflictions as our “little friends” instead of our worst enemies. Labeling them more accurately will help get us psyched for the Big Smackdown.
Understanding
Mental afflictions always justify themselves. It is, in fact, part of the negative emotion’s modus operandi to appear to be a reasonable response to a difficult situation. But this is a serious mistake. The mental afflictions are not rational at all; they are harmful emotional outbursts that reduce us rather than lead us to a better self-perception.
I had a student who once told me that she was having a hard time breaking her habit of getting angry. “I get such clarity when I’m mad,” she reported. “With anger, things really come into focus and I feel such certainty.”
And yes, as we all know, there is the sense of great lucidity that comes with a strong emotion like anger. Everything is indeed quite starkly black and white: I’m right; they’re wrong.
But when the spell of the affliction is broken, we often realize that the seeming clarity that came with the negative emotion was actually a distorted, skewed view of the actual situation. A powerful feeling, wholly in service to the ego, was masquerading as a hyper-rational, objective evaluation.
The mental afflictions do not actually bring us real lucidity, and they do not arise out of rational, objective calculation. No one in the cold light of day chooses to have a mental affliction attack. No one, when faced with a problematic person or situation, judiciously, cogently, and reasonably considers their options and then elects to have a big meltdown.
This person just said something I didn’t like. Hmm. I wonder what would be the best thing to do here, for my own present and future happiness and peace of mind? Oh, I know! I’ll increase my blood pressure and heart rate, get all knotted up and tense inside, go red in the face, and say things—maybe really loudly with lots of four-letter words—that I’ll probably regret a few hours from now!
So another major weapon we can develop and then bring into the Big Smackdown is wisdom and understanding. Remembering how karma works to create our sense of self, we remind ourselves that if we want to have a better self-conception we’ll need to avoid the temptation to give in to the siren song of the afflictions. And so we dispel the affliction’s spell of pseudo-rationality.
With wisdom we understand that it is never in our self-interest to be anything other than cool, calm, and collected. It’s never intelligent to capitulate to a mental affliction. Giving rein to our worst inclinations is neither rational nor advantageous.
Self-improvement derives from self-control, not from self-indulgence.
De-identification
Disassociating from the negative emotions gives us more power over them. We are not our jealousy, pride, envy, anger, or depression. A mental affliction may have arisen, but regarding it as an alien power will reposition it as something other than “you.” You will be fighting them, not integrating and identifying with them.
Determination . . . by any means necessary
We’ve already seen how important unwavering resolution is in our battle with our negative emotions:
Let my guts ooze out and my head fall off—whatever! But I will never, no matter what, bow before my enemy, the mental afflictions.
Any other attitude we take with our afflictions will only sustain and invigorate them. The “by any means necessary” determination is perhaps the most powerful arrow in our quiver as we wage war against our inner enemies.
And like the professional wrestlers I used to watch on television, we can’t be too scrupulous about what methods we use to try to win the match. Full nelsons, scissor holds, kicks to the head, but also blackjacks, folding chairs, and razor blades—we have to resort to whatever weaponry will help us emerge victorious from the Big Smackdown.
Once more, we let the Guide be our guide. In order to aid our good intentions, resolution, and determination to become a better, more self-controlled person, the text recommends a truly radical method, one that bends the usual rules. We are told how to smuggle the blackjacks and brass knuckles into the ring.
We are charged to use and direct the mental afflictions against themselves. As in some of the martial arts, we take the energy of our opponent—and make no mistake about it: anger, jealousy, pride, and strong desire have great energy—and we turn it to our own advantage.
And so Shantideva draws a distinction between the mental afflictions that function as our enemies and the very same energies when utilized as our allies. The Guide recommends, for example, that we abandon patience (the usual antidote to anger) and get angry at our anger!
Stationed within my own mind, they are perfectly situated to destroy me. And yet I do not get angry. To hell with this inappropriate patience!
I will be tenacious and intent on revenge! I will wage war against my mental afflictions—except for the kind that are designed to obliterate mental afflictions.11
Get angry . . . about being a slave to anger!12 Be proud . . . of efforts to overcome pride.13 Be envious . . . of those without envy!
And be strongly desirous. Desire the defeat of the opponent in the Big Smackdown, the Rage in the Cage. Desire self-improvement. Desire a better self-image, the reward of self-development through self-discipline and karmic management.
And finally, desire with all your heart the end of desire, the Great Itchlessness that is the end of desire, contentment itself.
• • •
“I count him braver who overcomes his [negative, selfish] desires than he who conquers his [external] enemies,” said Aristotle, “for the hardest victory is over self.”14
It has been recognized since at least the ancient Greeks that it is hard to change self-destructive habits and replace them with beneficial ones. It’s difficult for the self to overcome the self. It’s totally worth doing—and we should fervently desire it—for it’s the only way to really improve our self-esteem. But no one is saying it will be easy.
And so, as we engage in our regimen of self-improvement through karmic management, we have to expect setbacks.
We won’t always emerge from the Big Smackdown victorious. There will be plenty of times when the mental affliction du jour will defeat us, even when we put up our best fight. We may offer resistance, but there is a point of no return where we just capitulate:
Oh, the hell with this! I don’t care if this affliction is bad for me! I don’t care who I hurt—myself or others!
And we give in to the urgent demands of the affliction, and the negative emotion wins that round of the wrestling match.
When we are temporarily vanquished by our own worst inclinations—when we submit to the powerful wrestling holds of anger, desire, jealousy, resentment, and prideful arrogance—it feels like we’re a character in a cartoon. The affliction grabs us by the throat, and we become a rag doll as we are bounced against the wall and swung up and down and right and left for a while. We are in the throes of a force that is currently greater than the potency of the weaponry we are using to combat it.
We then must switch into a defensive rather than aggressive strategy. We cover up and try to protect ourselves the best we can in order to minimize the damage.
The first line of defense is to break our opponent’s hold as soon as possible. Many of us are accustomed to letting our mental afflictions have their way with us for hours, days, weeks, or even months and years. A spiritual warrior will wait until the overwhelming force of the affliction lessens its death grip a bit. But when it does, he or she will immediately shake it off:
OK, that’s enough now. I gave in to my resentment, my arrogance, my anger, or my jealousy, but I will not let it ruin another minute of my life! I may have lost this round, but I will not concede the match!
Freeing ourselves from its hold, we get back on our feet and ready ourselves for the next encounter with the enemy. We go back to the spiritual gym and work out some more. We fortify our weaponry in preparation for the next bout. We recognize that the afflictions are the real and only enemy to our happiness; we understand that self-improvement is a matter of fighting old habits and replacing them with new ones; we de-identify with these nasty tendencies; and we determine to be victorious in the next round of the Big Smackdown.
A second defensive strategy to employ when we lose the Big Smackdown is to not use the setback as just another way to feel bad about ourselves. Regret, yes; but guilt, no—and there’s a difference. Feeling guilty about our failures, like the depression that often feeds on such guilt, is really just another form of narcissistic self-absorption. It doesn’t help, and in fact it saps the energy we need to feel better about ourselves.
Regret, on the other hand, is the acknowledgment that giving in to the mental afflictions hurts oneself and others. Regret always entails the resolve to try harder not to do that kind of thing again in the future. While guilt debilitates, regret inspires us to strengthen our willpower to become stronger and better prepared for the next confrontation.
And a third defensive tack: we (once again) de-identify with whatever mental affliction has temporarily defeated us. We don’t join enemy forces; we don’t surrender to the provisionally victorious affliction and become its prisoner of war.
Even Shantideva, Mr. “Be a Spiritual Warrior,” knows we won’t always win the battle with our bad habits. And so we read,
Whenever you fail, your cheeks should burn in humiliation and you should think: “What can I do so that this doesn’t happen to me again?”15
When you fall off the horse, you dust yourself off and get back up on it for the next ride. This is called “practice.” We renew our efforts and strengthen our will. And this is the only road, rocky as it may sometimes be, to real self-improvement.
Remember the “reality mantra”:
Om, it’s like this now, ah hum.
Given that this mantra is perpetually relevant, we can deploy it also in those times of failure:
It’s like this now. So what can I do now to avoid future defeat at the hands of my mental afflictions?
There is a very helpful spiritual maxim—perhaps the most effective of all the tools we can employ in our laborious undertaking of self-improvement:
If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for others.
There’s a tremendous power in altruism. I’m reminded here of news stories that tell of a small child pinned under a car. The child’s mother, filled with adrenaline due to her panic and desperate wish to rescue her beloved offspring, just lifts up the car by the bumper, snatches the kid out of harm’s way, and then drops the two tons of steel back on the ground.
In the next section of this book, we’ll learn more about both the power and joy of self-forgetfulness. But even in our quest for self-improvement, thinking about others and not just ourselves is ultimately our greatest resource.
Creating a better “somebody self” involves understanding how karma really works in order to gradually give one’s self-image a makeover. And our self-conception begins to change immediately upon making the shift from ignorant self-indulgence to informed self-rehabilitation. We start to think of ourselves as someone trying to be a better somebody rather than as someone addicted to becoming more of a somebody. We begin turning our attention to others and how we can help rather than hurt them.
We focus on our ethical behavior and wage war against our mental afflictions, our true enemies who both destroy our current happiness and plant the seeds for an unhappy “somebody self” in the future. We hone and deploy the weapons of recognition, understanding, de-identification, and determination in our internal battle with our demons, and we do not get discouraged with the setbacks and failures that will inevitably be part of our path. We remember our mantra—it’s like this now—and we play the hand we’ve been dealt with wisdom and skill, remembering that self-improvement is possible and knowing how it will be effectuated.
We try to play our cards smartly, but we should also recognize that the stakes are high. We are in every moment creating the causes for who we will be in the future. For our future happiness, or its opposite, depends on what we do, say, or think in the ongoing present.
But here’s the real rub. Here’s how high the stakes really are. Your world, and all the people in it, will change when you change.
Change you, change the world.
• • •
This, I fully acknowledge, is extremely hard for any of us to believe. It is virtually inconceivable to think that we as individuals have this kind of power, as it is sort of overwhelming to be laden with this kind of heavy responsibility.
It’s one thing to think that we can change and improve ourselves. While most of us assume this is possible, it seems far-fetched indeed that there’s any correlation between an inner transformation and a change in the outer world.
But what we make of our lives has repercussions far beyond what we ordinarily believe. What we do, say, and think defines not only who we are but also what kind of world we live in and what sort of people we encounter. If we truly wish to help others and create a better world, helping ourselves turns out to be the best way to do that.
And if we are to come to actually believe this, we’ll have to very carefully go through the logic for why this is so, and we’ll have to repeatedly rehearse the syllogism.
Ready?
None of us has an objective view of our external world.
When we aren’t actually thinking about it, we all feel that we see things, events, and people as they really are. But this is an illusion, another trick of the egoistic self. Nobody has a “God’s eye” view on reality.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we can’t help but admit that we are human beings and not digital cameras or recorders. And as humans, we’re not like detective Joe Friday in Dragnet, who gathers “just the facts, ma’am.” None of us is privy to “just the facts”; we’re only privy to what we think “the facts” are.
And as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes, “How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences.”16
Since none of us has an objective take on things, each of us necessarily has only a subjective view of the external world.
Because we’re not machines but living organisms called “people,” our respective perceptions of the world, events, and other people come from a subjective, and not an objective, perspective.
Put otherwise, all the data received by our senses is strained through our subjective filter. We don’t see, hear, feel, taste, or touch the outside world in an unmediated fashion. We interpret what we experience in order to experience it.
And the way we interpret things, events, and people is determined by our conditioning, by our karma. There are a multitude of factors that constitute the subjective filter through which all the external data must pass in order to be comprehended. The language we speak and the linguistic categories with which we think, the cultural and historical conditioning and assumptions of our place and time—these form one part of the subjective filter. But additionally there are even more individual factors, such as our personal history, the ideology or belief system we adhere to, our psychological make-up, even how we are feeling on any particular day, and the prejudices and biases that derive from and are shaped by all of these conditions.
The “subjective filter” is really just another name for what we’ve been calling the “somebody self.” And so it is that we see the world not as it is but as we are.
If you change your subjective perspective, you change your experience of the external world.
If you accept the above two premises, then here is the first of the necessary logical conclusions: when you change your interpretive lens, you change your perceptions. Change you, and you’ll change your viewpoint on external events and other people.
We all have experience of this. One day you wake up on the “right side of the bed” and the world looks pretty good—you’re relatively happy with your life and the people in it. But the next day, when you wake up on the “wrong side of the bed,” that same world takes on a different hue.
George Eliot wrote, “Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.”17 Our “somebody self” blocks out much of the range of possibility and permits us to see only a fragment of potential reality. But when we alter the “troublesome speck of the self,” we gain a different perspective on the world around us.
So self-improvement improves not only your sense of who you are, but it also cleans the filter through which you process what’s outside of you. When you feel better about yourself, the world and other people seem more approachable and less problematic.
As we’ve seen, the individual self is nothing other than the sum total of our karma. When we change our karma, we change our sense of self, and thereby also change the subjective filter through which we apprehend the world.
OK so far?
If you have followed me through these first three steps of the reasoning, then here comes the real kicker.
If you change your subjective perspective, you change the world.
Wait a minute! What happened? That couldn’t be. I’ve been tricked!
No, you’ve just followed the logic of the syllogism. Since none of us has an objective view of the external world, and since all of us only experience the world from our subjective perspective, if we change our subjective perspective, we change our perspective on the world.
And the world seen from the subjective perspective is the only knowable world there ever has been, is, or will be for any of us. So we might as well just call it “the world.”
Change you, change the world.
Get it? No? Review the steps. We all need to work through it over and over again. Because if we have even an inkling of how self-improvement goes hand in hand with the amelioration of the world we live in, it will supercharge our efforts to better ourselves.
The stakes are high when it comes to self-improvement. And so, once again, when the going gets tough—when the Big Smackdown with the mental afflictions seems too daunting—remember the maxim:
If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for others.
Action Plan: The Daily Rage in the Cage
Single out your worst negative emotion, your number-one mental affliction. (If you need some help, ask someone who knows you well; they’ll tell you!) Begin your own daily Rage in the Cage with the affliction, employing the techniques we’ve discussed in this chapter—recognition, understanding, de-identification, and determination. Don’t be discouraged when the negative emotion wins the Smackdown. Review the defensive strategies above, and get back into the ring for the next round!
And remember, your indulgence of the mental affliction is not making the lives of those around you more pleasant. Take strength in your consideration for their well-being. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for others.
I. I believe this mantra—at least the “it’s like this now” part—originates with Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, although he may have gotten it from someone else too.