Milarepa's Song on the Six Perfections: Verse 2 (Honesty)

[Bill Gardner]

For morality, nothing to do,
Other than stop being dishonest.

This is a wonderful teaching. Part of Buddhist morality is avoiding harm to others, nevertheless, I am presently engaged in many patterns of living that cause harm.

There are many reasons why I harm others, but one is that I sustain patterns of behavior that harm others by blinding myself to those harms or, when I see the harm, to my responsibility for causing it. This is dishonest. And I blind myself so that I do not have to experience the horror of the harm that I do. And how the effort to change will deprive me of what I am attached to.

Conversely, seeing things honestly, I see that the only alternative to horror is to engage in change. Moreover, seeing honestly means seeing through all my self-deceptive substitutes for change. These include reviling or punishing myself. Self-harm disables change. It is just another form of self-blinding via the pretense that being cruel to oneself compensates others for the damage that you have done. Similarly, seeing honestly requires rejection of despair about not changing myself quickly enough, or about relapsing into harmful patterns of behavior that I thought I had overcome. Seen honesty, despair is just another reactive pattern that sustains harmful behavior by relieving me of the responsibility to change. Finally, seeing honestly means rejecting the excuse that I need wisdom or equanimity first. These virtues should be earnestly cultivated, because they will help me change as they grow. However, really seeing honestly means accepting that if I am striving to abolish suffering, I have to stop making others suffer. The time to engage is now, not when I am wise or calm. Serious attention -- to the harm I cause, to how I can change, and to how I construct a self to subvert that change -- will lead to wisdom, just as much as wisdom will promote my capacity to change. So, just see things honestly and change. Nothing extra.

[Franklin Cook]

Your thoughts on this resonate with the instruction I am listening to on the Eightfold Path, especially with an observation about Right Intention: The teacher says one way to concentrate on Right Intention is to focus on authenticity rather than on image. He points out that a key building block of authenticity is honesty about motivations. The idea of being honest about my motivations struck a deep chord in me, for the self-talk I am aware of when I am in a strained or uncertain situation or when I am being strategic for some reason has to do with factors such as
* being angry (about something in the past) and needing to follow up on that anger (through some form of revenge or oneupmanship)
* being fearful (about something in the future) and needing to ensure a certain outcome
* being hurt and needing to be understood (or to be right or to put the other person "in his place" or to "set the record straight")
Aren't these clearly related to motivations? It seems to me that they are among the causes of my justifying declarations that are less than honest in many ways.

This is especially important right now in a business relationship involving a very old wound that has never healed. I am now acting in response to renewed negative behavior from the other party (or so I would judge it to be) that feels very threatening. My response, from my point of view, needs to be strategic, or I and worthy interests I believe in will be seriously threatened. I stopped interacting with the other party four months ago, and have just now begun taking assertive action to counter what I see as this threatening behavior, but in planning and executing the strategic actions I'm taking, I am experiencing anger, fear, and hurt in the way I outlined them above. I suspect that there is some dishonesty growing out of this stressful situation, and I feel that I am in two battles: one, to keep from being hurt further (and to prevent the cause I believe in from being damaged) and, two, to keep from being Machivellian in my approach to the situation. The best path I have found is to disregard the other party totally in all that I do, but there are serious limitations to that (because in a way, at least in some practical ways, we are direct "competitors").

So your observations about change are very helpful to me. You articulate a number of "substitues for change" that have given me some insight about my own patterns of thinking and behavior. namely
* the function of self-harm as self punishment that is itself dishonest,
* how despair "excuses" me from the work needed to change, and,
* in the words of some anonymous teacher, "allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good."

So thank you.

[Bill Gardner]

Franklin,
Thanks! Who is the teacher you are listening to?
I share your struggles with afflictive emotions like anger and fear in business situations. All I can suggest is that if you are really clear to yourself about your intentions -- to serve your legitimate interests, rather than to exact revenge -- then you can ethically act strategically from that viewpoint. And if you in close touch with those motives and your actions, that can perhaps help you pursue your interests in a fair and constructive way.

I wonder if disregarding your competitor is the best idea. My first marriage ended when my ex-wife left me for a work colleague. That man remains in my life as the stepfather of my kids. For a long time, I just stamped down on my feelings toward him. The feeling was rage, and rage is really about killing. Important parts of my life were shaped by the need to avoid any contact with him; an impractical goal. Seeing what I felt, and letting it go -- which took a long time -- really opened up a large, free space for me.
cheers
Bill

[Ann Braun]

I spent years ignoring the rage I felt towards my mother, and then after finally acknowledging this, I then began raging at myself for not being able to feel warmly towards her. It can go on and on and on. In Then and Now (and elsewhere too) Ken pointed out that a teacher is somebody you'll listen to even when you're crazy. I was crazy with anger and self-righteousness, and not able to be honest about this -until being hit over the head with it repeatedly by teachers. You say it took a long time, Bill to see what you felt and then to let it go. Was time the teacher? How did the teacher arise in your experience?

[Bill Gardner]

The primary teacher was my wife (not my ex), who is Methodist, a psychiatrist, and someone with her own issues of betrayal by an ex-spouse to work through. I listened to her, and she listened to me, when I was crazy. Dharma training helped, although indirectly, I have never used dharma teachers as psychotherapists.

Time helped. Maybe most important was finding great happiness being with my kids as a single dad with joint custody. My ex-wife is a wonderful mother, and I was a young academic chasing tenure. I think I was a good enough dad, but nothing like as engaged as I became when it was just me and a little boy and girl in a house I could no longer really afford. We ended up having a wonderful time. Then I remarried, and that also worked really well. Anyway, I became happy at the core, and that evaporated the sense of injury that fed the rage. So at some point my wife asked me what the point was in treating my ex-wife's husband like someone whom I was letting live on sufferance. And it was obvious that there was no point.

[Franklin Cook]

Bill: I've been following the discussions in this read, but I've been writing a proposal, so I haven't had time to contribute for awhile. I'd like to return soon if I can and respond to several things that have been quite helpful to me, but that will have to wait for another day I did want to tell you the teacher I'm listening to is Rodney Smith, I believe of the Seattle Insight Meditation Center, but that just may be where he was speaking from in the tape series I'm listening to ... Sorry to rush ... Franklin

[Franklin Cook]

"this thread" not "this read"

[Janet]

Bill, I want to thank you for this lucid discussion of morality and honesty. I have been enjoying what you wrote since you posted it.

You suggest: The time to engage is now, not when I am wise or calm This statement shook me, really. I must say that it's a noble ideal to plunge in whole-heartedly. Still, there are occasions where Shantideva recommends remaining like a log of wood, refraining from action. I'm sure you'd agree not all engagement is wise engagement.

This point is highly personal to me. Since I began to see how much suffering my habits inflict on others, I have curtailed certain activities that I feel will spur my reactivity. Previously a combative attorney, I now avoid most adversarial interactions. I absolutely want to wait until I am wiser and calmer. I want the ability to see clearly and live peacefully. Maybe a time will come when I engage in any kind of conversation. But right now, my skills are limited. I know that. It's a bit like an addict knowing to avoid hanging out with users.

[Bill Gardner]

Janet,
Thanks for this valuable perspective. I have rethought my 'Honesty' post several times. I completely support the tactic of disengaging from an interaction when I sense rising anger within. I have sufficient skill at this now that usually I only need to step back briefly. But I will step back for as long as it takes.

So why did I say The time to engage is now, not when I am wise or calm? When I look honestly, I see things that I feel, urgently, that I need to change. For example, I have in recent years been able to open to my mother's needs and feelings. I have complicated feelings about her -- who doesn't? -- and I want to understand what I feel and why. But the most important thing is that she is old and lonely and I need to get on the airplane and see her. When you open a corner of your life, you see these needs, and seeing these needs, you see your responsibility. It also works the other way -- by taking responsibility for what's out there, you can open your life to include it.

Milarepa's verse was "words addressed to my condition" (Thoreau), and I responded intensely, and perhaps without proper balance. But there needs to be a balance based on a wise view of your situation and capacities. For example, a depressed person should not (NOT NOT) ruminate on his moral failings. And if you can't engage in a way that actually helps, the honest course is to acknowledge just that.
Thanks for the response, Janet.

[Janet]

Bill and Ann,

Both of you added some very helpful depth here. When we look with honesty, we recognize parts of situations that were obscured to us when we were caught in extremes of anger or self-hatred. When we see more clearly, new possibilities become vivid. In my case, as I work to detox from years of ineptly seeking approval by rigidly insisting on certain beliefs as true, the horizon expands. The possibilities increase of moving gracefully, fluidly, because we are seeing what is called for.

As Bill said, "When you open a corner of your life, you see these needs, and seeing these needs, you see your responsibility." Yeah. We open to the situation and the suffering -- ours or others -- and act accordingly. And we learn from what we do, and from the totality of responses to it.

[Bill Gardner]

...as I work to detox from years of ineptly seeking approval by rigidly insisting on certain beliefs

On brief & virtual acquaintance, you seem well past that, Janet. Would you care to respond to Ann's question? What / who was the teacher, and how did it arise in your experience?

[Janet]

Would that it were so, friends. Much more dying to reactive patterns is needed in my case, because the roots of these patterns turn out to be far deeper than I ever supposed. "More suffering needed," as Suzuki Roshi is supposed to have said to his recalcitrant students.

The best teacher for me is seeing the messy outcomes of experiences that were well-intended but went awry. The sorrow/regret of seeing how I sewed seeds of suffering without intending to makes me recognize that something was not as I imagined it to be. As Bill said at the outset, "I see that the only alternative to horror is to engage in change." Or at least, I embark on the process of change, which is a steady, iterative process, with no vacations.

[Bill Gardner]

The best teacher for me is seeing the messy outcomes of experiences that were well-intended but went awry. The sorrow/regret of seeing how I sewed seeds of suffering without intending to makes me recognize that something was not as I imagined it to be.

The "what the hell was I thinking?" moment. (Or, speaking as a US citizen looking back on the last decade, "What the hell were we thinking?) I want to try to remember moments like these, when you see so vividly how your mind creates dream worlds.