Fault Finding

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

The Way to the Ultimate is not hard;
simply give up picking and choosing.
Just by not giving in to hatred and craving
will your heart and mind be as clear and bright
as the realm beyond the opposites;
Let but a hair’s breadth of discriminatory thought arise
and you have made Heaven and Earth
strangers to each other.

(From the “That Which Is Engraved Upon The Heart That trusts In The Eternal” Translated by Rev. Hubert Nearman, M.O.B.C. in Buddhist Writings)

Over the last couple of months I have been reflecting on how corrosive the habit of fault finding can be, both in our own mind and heart and to the minds and hearts of those around us. Fault finding is a subset of the activity of the discriminatory mind and, broadly speaking, it is usually focused on three important areas: finding fault in our own self, finding fault in our community (our friends, family, coworkers and those who live in the world around us) and finding fault in our Sangha or our spiritual community. I realize that this third area is part of our general community, but finding fault in our Sangha has particularly unfortunate results, so I put it in an area of its own.

Like other aspects of the discriminatory mind, the problematic type of fault finding is tricky to deal with because it is related to that aspect of our inherent wisdom which has the potential to perceive and understand that which creates suffering. In other words, when we look at our own behavior, or the behavior of others, we have the potential ability to see that an action or thought could cause suffering and we turn that basic perception into another layer of suffering by giving in to the mind which criticizes and finds fault in a judgmental way. The fault finding mind has an insidious way of convincing us that a small suffering is much greater than it actually is.

There are a number of reasons why we might be in the habit of giving in to this criticizing mind and it will be slightly different for each of us. Mostly though, it seems to be an attempt, colored by fear and anger, to protect ourselves from the disappointment and suffering brought about by our own or others weakness and humanity. What we don’t realize is that instead of protecting us, this criticizing mind creates this other layer of suffering which is like a hard shell of self that separates us from our own deeper wisdom. Interestingly, this fault finding mind can be one of the creators of the feeling of separation and isolation we might feel with regard to our community.

In reflecting on my own criticizing mind, I realized that I cannot think of a single instance where that fault finding habit has made a lasting positive contribution to my life or to the life of those around me: Instead of protecting and helping me, it has just made matters worse.

The alternative to the fault finding mind is acceptance: the way we find the reason for our own entanglement in the fault finding mind is to recognize it, let it go and work on accepting the thing which we are critical of. This could quite possibly be a struggle because, usually, the fault finding mind is given energy by trying to avoid something painful in our own heart or mind, something which we would really rather not see. Perhaps ironically, this training in acceptance for me has meant learning how to accept the criticism of others, both when the criticism is based on a true reflection of my actions and also when it is based on a mistaken perception of my actions. I should say that I find this training very difficult and is an ongoing effort but is very fruitful, less because it has helped to clarify my many shortcomings (which it has) and more because it helps me to see and have the humility to accept my own doubts, fears and misgivings about myself.

Also, let me be clear, when I am talking about acceptance I am not talking about passivity, capitulation, resignation or complacency. Letting go of the fault finding mind and moving toward acceptance can feel like a defeat, but really we are just aligning ourselves with the reality of preceptual life, and allowing ourselves to see more clearly by letting go of the distorting effects of hatred and judgmentalism.

In my youth I once had the job of releasing a rattlesnake that was being held in captivity for a while in order to teach some kids. I quite liked and respected that snake even while being a little afraid of it. It was clear he (or she, I don’t know which) was not happy about being imprisoned and it would be quite happy to bite me if the opportunity arose. I was quite careful in catching, transporting and releasing that snake and I hope I was doing it from the place of acceptance, even though it felt like the snake was pretty angry; I certainly had a lot of sympathy for it having been imprisoned and gawked at for some time. I can imagine myself, out of fear, giving rise to my own indignation and defensiveness and giving in to the fault finding mind: “that snake was really angry and shouldn’t have been, I was just trying to help!” etc. etc..

(I have captured and released a number rattlesnakes who found themselves in places where unwary humans might tangle with them and I have never encountered any that seemed as angry as that one I moved from captivity.)

The kind of thing I am talking about regarding acceptance of difficult circumstances in our lives is like dealing with that snake. We can find within ourselves the ability to deal with difficult, even dangerous, circumstances without giving rise to the fault finding mind which amounts to giving in to fear and ill-will and hatred. The first step to finding this ability within us is working on acceptance.

A Dharma friend who is a nurse once shared a story of working a night shift. She said that it was quite common for nurses working at night to grumble and complain and one night she was working with someone who, every time she encountered her, would complain bitterly about the patients or their employer or whatever else caught her attention. My friend said she would just listen and try to be still, letting the fault finding words go past. At some point late in the shift, my friends coworker seem to wake up to what she had been doing and, in tears, said something like “oh, I am so sorry, I have been spewing such negativity and it doesn’t really help does it?” I think after that they were able to talk more constructively to sort out what was really bothering the coworker.

It we are able to sit still with our own complaining, fault finding mind, just letting the vitriol go by, we can see and help what the underlying trouble is, we can bring it to peace. By seeing and accepting our own underlying difficulty, we are more likely to see the external things we complain about more clearly and have a greater possibility of taking constructive action.

Another thing that is very helpful in this is the mind of forgiveness. There has been much said about forgiveness and perhaps the simple thing is in the definition of the word forgive: “to give up resentment of or claim to requital for”. Whenever this fault finding mind has been present and active in my own mind, there has been a tinge of anger and ill-will (which is resentment) in the thing and perhaps that addition of anger is what distorts our own inherent wise discernment into the problematic fault finding.

And further, there is the insight in the word definition about the desire for requital: we all get the consequences of our own actions for good or ill so what is this desire and is this thing we desire an appropriate thing?

When we voluntarily give up the anger and ill-will, the resentment, the fear and the desire, we can see the situation more clearly and treat ourselves and those around us with sympathy, kindness and compassion. And this sympathy, kindness and compassion do not stand in the way of taking action in the world to help prevent harm or to promote good.

(Next month I’ll try to talk a little about why complaining about the Sangha is problematic in its own special way.)

 

Dana Paramita

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by
(From the May 2016 Newsletter)
By Rev. Leon

When we have something, anything really: a bike, some food or money, love for another, or love received from another, we can tend to see that thing, in a practical way, as being limited, finite and transient. Mostly, this is a useful view, since it gets us to be careful with what we have. A problem arises when, because we like a thing (or inversely, through disliking a thing), we cling to it or a notion about it. That problem is that through the clinging, we distort our perception of the thing and the sense of it being finite and limited increases even while we try to convince ourselves that by clinging, we can make the thing less transient.

In one sense, you could describe our Buddhist practice as learning how to swim in a really big sea of impermanence. We train ourselves how to not panic and how to function in the medium of impermanence: practicing the paramita of generosity (Dana) is one specific way that can help us find our way in this sea.
The practice of generosity is really the entry way into a deeper spiritual relationship with our own life. What I mean by generosity is the willingness to give of ourselves without expecting to get anything in return: when we do this, it opens our heart.

To take a thing that we have and we like, and maybe we cling to a little, and to give away part of it, is to accept that the thing is finite and limited and therefore valuable and to align ourselves with its impermanence. But it is also to align ourselves with a deeper reality of existence: part of what keeps us afloat in this existence, is the quality of giving and receiving that embraces us and all beings.

Just notice your breath. On a very basic level, our life depends on breathing: breathing in and breathing out, giving and receiving. We come into this world and, for most of us, all we have to do is squawk to find out that we can breathe and that there is something to breathe. A somewhat miraculous mystery if you ask me. I certainly don’t deserve to receive the benefit of this mystery in any objective way: it is just a gift of this life.

Part of the mystery of breathing is that we breathe out carbon dioxide which just happens to be what plants breathe in. Plants breathe out oxygen which just happens to be what we breathe in. I quite realize that there are good scientific reasons for this to happen and still, it is pretty wonderful to me in a way that is not encompassed by the scientific explanation. (Of course, that we have science and the ability to understand in that way is its own wonder, but maybe we will take that up on another day.)

So, this breathing, that we all need to do, and for the most part can do, is one part of the basic web of giving and receiving that we all live suspended in. Things would get pretty unpleasant if we decided that we really liked our breath and, not wanting to give it out to the world, we decided not to exhale. But this is what we often do with the many things in our lives.

The Buddha observed that, somewhat improbably, when we give, the spiritual consequence is freedom from want, is sufficiency. In giving, we are aligning ourselves with the basic fact of impermanence and also with this other somewhat mysterious thing of giving and receiving: we are in harmony with the deep cycle of which breathing is one basic example, we are in harmony with the basic compassion of existence itself. When we give, we are opening ourselves to the basic giving and receiving of life itself.

Being somewhat fearful and weak creatures, we humans tend to emphasize the getting side of this equation. If we take a minute and reflect on where that has gotten us, both individually and collectively, we will, I think, find that it has had limited success, eh?

What we can do to gradually change our emphasis, is to find small practical and realistic ways to make a practice of giving in our lives: a kind word here, a dollar or so or some food to someone in need there, and see what the consequences of these acts are?

Because this area of life has to take into account our tendency to be distorted by greed, I find it helpful to think about the practice of contentment in conjunction with Dana. The practice of contentment is our way of acknowledging and accepting the limited and finite nature of things in the world. If I give away a part of my lunch, realistically and practically, I am going to have less lunch. I can accept that and make part of my offering my own practice of being content with less food for myself.

I am not suggesting that we starve ourselves or that we forsake our responsibilities (sometimes it may be that it is unwise to give away part of your lunch) but I often know for myself when I can do with less than I want, and I am willing to explore the line of what I actually need.

Interestingly, love is a thing that is not limited or finite or transient, although our experience of it can be transient, especially when we limit our conception of its source to one or two people. When we feel unloved, we can always give love (that kind word?).

When we give of ourselves it can be that we are giving up a bit of greed and this is how giving can address our feelings of fear. Fear and desire share a root and when we let go of one, it helps to lessen the other.

As I have mentioned, my mind tends to get all caught up with concerns about whether others will like me. As a consequence, I can enter an interaction with another person with an unintended, even if palpable, sense of wanting something from them (approval, liking, acceptance?). This can negatively affect the interaction and just be a nuisance for the other person in question. I have found that if I can think ahead of time “how can I enter this interaction with the intention of giving to this person” it can make a big difference. I often don’t have in mind any particular offering, it is more the attitude of mind, and the main offering is training myself to interact with people without wanting something from them. This training is an offering of its own.

Of course there are times that we do actually need something from another and we need to ask for that thing. This is part of the deal, we breathe in and we breathe out. If there is difficultly around asking for this kind of help, here is a great opportunity to look at the mind see what is there. Often for me, the reluctance to ask comes, at least in part, from the disappointment of having asked in the past and not gotten what I wanted or thought I needed. Whenever I have looked closely at this, there has been something offered to me by way of help or learning: sometimes it is a difficult truth, but it is there and If I make use of it, a way forward appears.

In my youth, I once found myself between jobs and I wanted to change what I did for a living; I was generally working as a baker at the time, and I found the early morning hours to be quite difficult. I was looking for work and in the mean time my rent was overdue. Happily my housemates were patient and kind and able to extend me a little slack, but I could feel that there was strain there. I went to my dad and asked him for help to cover my rent.

To my initial disappointment he said no. Fortunately, I had a pretty well established practice at the time and in addition to asking my dad for help (and my older brother as well, if I remember correctly) I was also asking the Buddha and Kanzeon for help and guidance in terms of how to find my way (I probably also asked a monk for advice). As I meditated with the situation it became clear to me that it actually would not have been good for my dad to give me the money and it was very difficult for him to say no: he had a lot of difficulty managing his money in his life and had the harmful habit of giving people money that he didn’t have – I think he did this in hopes that they would like him better for it. So I could see and appreciate that him saying no to me was a step he took in truth.

As things came together, and I looked closely at the situation, I saw that I had to be responsible for myself, I had to pay the rent. At the same time, a potential job as a carpenter fell through and I was offered a job as a baker which turned out to be a pretty good job for me. Somewhat ironically, the hours at this bakery job actually got worse, since I had to work at night initially and every now and then over the time I worked there, but it was still a very good job for me to take.

And, also somewhat ironically, a few weeks after I had taken the bakery job and made a commitment there, I received a call about the carpentry job: they wanted me to work for them since the person they had hired instead of me didn’t work out. I had to say I couldn’t take the job since I had made a commitment and the carpenter said he wished he had hired me since the person they had hired just didn’t show up.

It is hard for me to describe how important it was to me to have training during all this. To be able so see that I did get what was needed even if it wasn’t what I wanted in a short term way. To be able to make use of the circumstance to see and accept my own greeds and expectations and work on letting them go. To be able to find and give compassion and understanding to others. And to be able to come to recognize with a deepening trust that I am held within the compassionate embrace of giving and receiving and of the Buddha mind.

Some Thoughts On Training With Fear

Portland Buddhist Priory Posted on by

(From the April 2016 Newsletter)

By Rev. Leon

As I look at my own mind, and what others seem to be going through during this time of significant change both at the Priory and in the wider world, it seems good to say a few things about training with the arising of fear in its various forms. Training with fear has many facets and I will try to take them up as they come to mind over the next while. In this article, I talk a little about how I work with fear in terms of meditation practice.

As I embark on this new project of being Prior here in Portland, I mostly feel quietly confident and optimistic. On occasion, though, I see my mind wander over into anxiety and worry about various things: will they like me? Will I be able to meet the needs of the temple? Will my health limitations get in the way? Will my inexperience put people off? Will they like me? Will I be enlightened enough? Will they like me?

At the risk of over-sharing, I thought it might be useful to go through, in some detail, an example of how I train with this. The other day I was feeling particularly out of sorts, all anxious in a buzzy kind of way and not quite able to settle. Throughout the day, I just kept trying to bring my mind back to what needed to be done and doing what seemed to need doing; by the end of the day, the feelings had not yet dissolved, although I had learned a little more about how acting out of fear doesn’t really work so well. The next morning when I woke up, I noticed the anxiety again.

(As an aside, there is an interesting thing of importance that I have noticed over the years, about that brief twilight period just as I am waking up. I have often observed a mind state move in like a cloud bank and settle in, in a way, like what I am going to be dealing with that day has arrived and I get the opportunity to work on sitting still with it, and sometimes below it, and I get to work on keeping myself from getting tangled up in it right at the very start of the day.)

So, this anxiety arrives and I notice it, and I work up a little resolve to sit still right in the middle of it. I work on that right through my morning activities and meditation, putting a little extra effort (gentle effort) into being still (by being still, I mean not doing anything with the fear, not trying to get rid of it, just accepting it, just feeling it). From this resolve and effort to sit still and feel that fear and let it go, I sort of get to a place in myself where this little nugget of holding on appears: I want things to go well so that people will like me and from this liking me, I can get a little more evidence that really, I am ok. And so, we get to the heart of the matter, the question “am I really ok?” and the fear that somehow, all my weaknesses and limitations mean that I am not ok, I am not part of The Great Buddha.

And there is the fear that if I let this go, let go of my attempts to grasp after various ways of proving externally that I am ok, I’ll discover something terrible. (The irony is that though I can spend a lot of energy trying to avoid the terrible, it is only knowing what the truth about myself is, no matter how terrible it might be, that enables me to take steps to change myself, if necessary: so I say to myself “let’s find out the truth”.)

From the outside, I know that this whole situation is based on a couple of mistakes: the Dharma, our practice and the teachers teach that we are fundamentally Buddha, we are fundamentally ok, fundamentally not separate, even while we have faults, weaknesses and shortcomings which call out to be trained. Knowing this is a little helpful at the point of being confronted by letting go of something we are familiar with and stepping into the unknown. This knowledge about the teaching can help me to generate the courage to take the next step. Really, the thing that needs to be done is to sit still, look up and let go. For me, in this case, it means sort of saying, “ok, I am willing to not be liked, to be embarrassed, to die, even, but I am going to let this go, give it up to the Buddha.”

Interestingly, when I do this, and this happened in the case I am talking about, the fear dissolves and I return to a more normal state of mind. The process I have described above is one aspect of what we call converting karma and the process is the same whatever the fear or confusion or misunderstanding that underlies our present feeling is. For me, in this case, it is the fear that if I look to closely, I will finally discover the proof that there is something fundamentally wrong with me. For each of us, it will be something slightly different and we discover it for ourselves by doing the process of practice.

The process is to notice and be aware of the feeling, take responsibility for it (notice how I didn’t get all wrapped up in thinking that it’s everybody else’s fault that they don’t like me or whatever, it is just a feeling that arises in my mind that is probably produced by me), try to be still in it and feel it, allow it to arise and pass away. Be still with patience and kindness until I see it clearly and let go of the cause of the thing or until it dissipates on its own.

I recognize that this is the thing that we are doing, with “gentle kindness and friendliness”, together, each in our own way, and whether I am liked or disliked, or adequate to the task or not, I am fundamentally ok and the practice is a sound refuge.

At the heart of the thing, helping people find this fundamental ok-ness is what the temple and my job are all about and I can and will do that.