Review
We are going through the stages of the graded path to enlightenment, which deal with how we generate the proper motivation to progressively achieve more advanced spiritual levels.
The Three Levels of Motivation
The first level motivation, the initial level, is to avoid worse rebirths and to try to ensure that we have better future lives, specifically precious human lives, so as to continue on the path to liberation and enlightenment.
The second level of motivation, the intermediate level, is not just to avoid worse rebirths and the sufferings that would be involved but also to see that any type of rebirth, even a better rebirth state, is ultimately not satisfying. This is because our so-called worldly happiness and pleasure never satisfy and they always end. Also, if we continue to indulge in something that brings us worldly pleasure, we end up experiencing pain and discomfort instead, like when eating too much of our favorite food. So, we are aiming, on this intermediate level, for the state of liberation – to be free from uncontrollably recurring rebirth.
On the advanced level, we think about how everyone else is in the same situation, how interconnected we are with all of them, and how our very lives depend on what they do to contribute, just in general, to what happens in the world. So, we call that their kindness. Whether they are actually motivated by kindness or not is irrelevant; the point is that we are totally dependent on and interconnected with everybody else. Just as we want to be happy and not to suffer, they do too. So, we take responsibility to try to actually help them to achieve liberation and enlightenment. We see, though, that we can only really help them if we achieve enlightenment ourselves. Therefore, we have bodhichitta aimed at our not-yet-happening enlightenment, which can happen on the basis of our Buddha-nature factors, and we strive for enlightenment. This is the advanced level of motivation.
Initial Scope
On the initial level, we first try to recognize the precious human rebirths that we now have and the temporary freedoms that we have from the worst states in which we would have no opportunity for spiritual development or practice. Not only that, our lives are enriched with wonderful opportunities to study and practice. This is something that is very precious. We looked at the causes for that and the rarity of attaining it. It’s very important not to take such a rebirth for granted and waste it, to naively think that we are going to gain such a rebirth so easily in the future.
Then we looked at death and impermanence and tried to become aware, not in a morbid sense, but in a very realistic sense, that this opportunity that we have now, the precious human rebirth, is not going to last. We are all going to die someday; that’s for sure. But we never can tell when that might happen; it might happen one minute from now. What will be of help at the time of death will certainly not be how many material possessions we have, how much money we have in the bank, how many friends we have, or how many “likes” we have on our Facebook page. That won’t be of help at all. The only things that will be of any benefit to us are the positive habits that we have built up on our mental continuums by having taken the preventive measures of the Dharma that will shape our future lives. This is very, very important to do to prevent a downfall into some worse rebirth situation.
We looked at what those possibilities might be. We looked at rebirth in the so-called hell realms, the joyless realms. “Joyless” is what the word in Sanskrit (naraka) connotes. The Tibetan term for it (dmyal-ba) has the connotation of “very difficult to get out of,” so it’s going to take a very long time. It’s like feeling trapped in a joyless situation. How absolutely horrible that would be. Then we looked at the possibility of being reborn as a clutching ghost. That’s translated into Chinese as “hungry ghost,” but it’s more than just being unable to enjoy or to take in any food or drink; it’s also being tormented by paranoia and being very, very tight and miserly. How horrible that would be. Then we looked at what it would be like to be reborn as an animal. When we think of an animal, we should think of some creepy-crawly thing on the floor that everybody just wants to step on, or insects that are eaten alive, bitten in half by other larger insects, or animals that are eaten alive by other larger animals or exploited or hunted by man for fun, for our horns, or something like that. How absolutely pathetic that would be. We certainly don’t want that. So, we develop a genuine dread and fear of that. We’re really afraid that that might happen. It’s not a paralyzing type of fear that makes us feel helpless and hopeless, but rather one that makes us feel that we really don’t want that to happen.
With this healthy sense of fear, we take a positive step to avoid that happening, which is to go in the safe direction of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, so-called refuge. We saw that there are many qualities of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha that can indicate the direction that we want to go in. However, on the deepest level, what it really refers to is (1) the state in which all the causes for suffering and the sufferings themselves have been completely stopped and eradicated forever and (2) the state of mind that brings about and that results from that permanent removal of all the deluding factors. That refers to the third and fourth noble truths, true stoppings and true paths (true pathways of mind). That’s the Dharma on the deepest level. These true stoppings and true pathways of mind exist in full on the mental continuum of a Buddha, who is the one who teaches all these methods, and they exist in part on the mental continuums of the Arya Sangha, who help support us and who give examples by their way of being that are a little bit easier to relate to.
We saw that to go in that safe direction, the first thing that we want to do is to avoid worse rebirths and the so-called the suffering of suffering, which is the suffering of unhappiness, pain, and so on that is so prominent in the lower rebirths. To do that, we need to avoid the cause, which is destructive behavior. That led us to the whole presentation of karma, of how unhappiness and pain is a result of destructive behavior and so-called worldly happiness is the result of constructive behavior. So, if we want to have more worldly happiness, at least to start with, so that we are in a state of mind and a rebirth situation that’s more conducive for Dharma practice, we certainly need to refrain from destructive behavior and engage in constructive behavior. We also looked at all the factors that affect the strength of what we will experience as a consequence of our actions. That concluded the initial scope.
Intermediate Scope
On the intermediate scope, we looked at the so-called better states of rebirth, which have more happiness than unhappiness. However, we saw that even that so-called happiness, the worldly happiness, of these better states is problematic. It doesn’t last, it never satisfies, and we never know what’s going to come next. It also changes into discomfort if it goes on for too long. So, these higher realms are disappointing.
We looked at the specific sufferings of each of these three better states: the suffering of humans, the suffering of the gods, and the suffering of the quasi-gods, or anti-gods, or demigods (however you want to translate the asuras) who are always jealous of the gods. We also looked at the general sufferings of samsara: we never get what we want, things happen to us that we don’t want, we have no security, and so on. This is quite awful.
If we want to overcome all of that – which is the first noble truth, true sufferings – and the rebirth basis that perpetuates this up and down suffering, we need to eliminate the causes of suffering, which is the second noble truth, true causes.
We’ve already dealt with karma, so now we are looking on a deeper level at the disturbing emotions, which are what motivate our destructive behavior. Some of them, like naivety, even motivate our positive actions.
The Six Root Disturbing Emotions
So, we went through the six so-called root disturbing emotions. The first five of them are not associated with any outlook, and the sixth one, which is divided into five parts, is associated with an outlook.
- Longing desire – we exaggerate the good qualities of something, and if we don’t have it, we feel that we have to have it; attachment – if we have it, we don’t want to let go; and greed – we have it, but we have to get more and more.
- Anger and hostility – we exaggerate the negative qualities of something, and then we feel we need to get it away from us, to forcefully get rid of it.
- Arrogance, or pride – we inflate some aspect of ourselves and think, “This is so wonderful.”
- Unawareness – we either don’t know and are closed-minded about the effect of our behavior (cause and effect) and how we and everything exists, or we misknow these things.
- Indecisive wavering – specifically about what is true. We are indecisive: “Is it correct? Is it incorrect?” This primarily deals with the various truths of the Dharma. A subcategory that is not actually discussed in the text but that would fit here is indecisive wavering about anything – not being able to decide what to wear, what to eat, what to do today, etc. That can cripple us.
- Deluded outlooks, of which there are five. The strongest one, the primary one, is the deluded outlook toward a transitory network. “Transitory network” refers to our aggregates – body, mind, emotions, etc. – that are changing all the time. It seeks and latches onto something in our experience – body, mind, emotions, what we perceive, what we experience, etc. – on which the accompanying conceptual cognition is imputing the interpolated conceptual framework of “me” or “mine.” There are many consequences of that: “That’s my territory! Don’t go into it,” and the dog barks. Something like that. We sometimes tend to act like the dog, don’t we? “That’s my computer! Don’t touch it!” Then we bark and growl at somebody.
The Auxiliary Disturbing Emotions
We’ve started our discussion of the secondary disturbing emotions, the 20 so-called auxiliary disturbing emotions, which are subcategories of the three poisonous emotions of longing desire, hostility, and unawareness. We have gone through nine of them. Now we are up to number ten, cruelty.
Cruelty – The Three Types
It’s interesting that the term “cruelty” in Sanskrit, when used with a negative particle in front of it, is the term that’s usually translated as “nonviolence,” a-himsa (Skt. himsa). However, here it is without that negative particle, so it refers more to cruelty than to violence, in a sense. It’s part of hostility and has three forms.
If we go through the three forms, I think we will understand why we would call it “cruelty.” I’ll just list the three, and then we can go into them one by one: hooliganism, self-destructiveness, and taking perverse pleasure. Schadenfreude – is that the word in German for taking perverse pleasure?
Participant: Schadenfreude is taking pleasure in somebody’s pain.
Dr. Berzin: OK. All of that comes under the category of cruelty.
[1] Hooliganism
What is hooliganism? It’s a cruel lack of compassion with which we wish to cause mischief or harm to others.
“Non-compassion” is the literal translation of the term – not compassionate. Compassion is the wish for others to be free from their suffering, and this is the wish for others to have suffering. Do we ever have that? We might get very defensive and think, “No! I never have that!” But think about it. I’m thinking of when we very lightly – or perhaps not so lightly – say to somebody, “Go to hell.” What actually is the thought behind that?
Participant: That he or she might suffer.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Let’s think about when we might have thought that. We don’t have to think in terms of very violent examples. How about the people ahead of us in a long queue? We are very impatient, and we wish that they would just sort of disappear, that we get our turn first and that they should wait. That could be a lighter version of this. Or we could be stuck in traffic, having similar thoughts about everybody else. Or we hope that somebody else will take the bad seat in front of us in the movie so that we get the good seat. Or one that, I must confess, I sometimes experience at the local bakery: There is only one piece of the bread that I like and want, and there are others in front of me. I’m certainly wishing very strongly that they don’t take that piece of bread, that particular roll that I like.
How about wishing that they don’t take that parking place? That’s a common one. “Oh, you go ahead and take the parking place. That’s OK. I’ll find another one.” Not many of us do that with great joy. But, certainly, when we are feeling this, we don’t have peace of mind, do we?
Participant: I’m wondering, Alex. The examples you gave, those lighter ones, are rather a lack of compassion or just not wanting them to have something nice. But when I translate “cruelty,” it’s much stronger. I really want to put the knife in people’s arms and really stir it around.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, but what I am saying is that often people who are into the Dharma will say, “Oh, no, no, I’m never like that.” They will deny that they ever have thoughts like that. “Maybe when I was a kid, I thought like that, but not now.” So, we don’t even consider this disturbing emotion. That’s why I am giving lighter examples. They can at least make us receptive to thinking about this state of mind and examining ourselves a little bit more honestly.
Certainly, we would have this attitude toward pests, insects. We really want to get rid of them. We don’t want that mosquito to be happy and to enjoy a nice meal of our blood, for example. Or a fly that’s buzzing around in our room at night – we really don’t wish that fly well, do we? No, it’s keeping us awake. Maybe those are stronger examples and ones that most of us must have experienced. Or we have cockroaches in our house, or bed bugs. They have a big problem with that in New York these days. One certainly does have cruel thoughts toward them.
Hooliganism, I know, does sound like going around doing graffiti and scratching people’s cars. That’s really the connotation of hooliganism. So, maybe that’s not the best term, but I can’t think of a better term. That’s what a hooligan is: someone who turns people’s garbage cans over so that the road is filled with garbage, someone who causes mischief.
Now, this is not in this category, but I think that we need to consider it, which is indifference. What about indifference to other people’s suffering? I was on the S-Bahn today, the above-ground subway system, and a blind woman came on and just stood there. A person who was sitting next to me got up and said to the blind woman, “Would you like to sit down?” and then helped her to find a seat and to sit down. Everybody else, including myself, I must confess, was quite indifferent to this blind lady standing there. Indifference is not really wishing the other person to suffer, but it certainly is a lack of compassion, not actively wanting to help remove their suffering.
Participant: We’re still in the intermediate scope. Don’t be so hard on us!
Dr. Berzin: Well, I am not being hard on you: this is the list. These are the disturbing emotions. The whole point of this is to want to get over them. The only way that we can get over them – the first step – is to recognize them in ourselves, to be honest with ourselves and to recognize when we have these.
The definition of a disturbing emotion is that we lose peace of mind and self-control. Do we lose peace of mind when we are indifferent to others’ suffering? I don’t know. We watch all the suffering on television these days – the tsunami victims in Japan, people in wars, and so on – and feel nothing. I think that’s quite common. We feel nothing. Is that a lack of compassion? It certainly is. Does it make us feel uneasy and lose self-control? In a sense, yes. We become numb. And it makes other people uncomfortable with us if we just feel nothing and don’t respond, doesn’t it? Does that mean that we have to be over-emotional in a Latin type of way? No, because that can scare people. That can be artificial as well, as I learned when I did more intensive seminars in Latin America. In many cases, it’s hiding what we really feel inside. We’re just putting on an act, doing what’s expected, but it’s not really sincere. It’s a cover.
How indifferent are we sometimes? It’s not so comfortable to examine.
[2] Self-Destructiveness
The next variety of cruelty is self-destructiveness. It’s a cruel lack of self-love with which we wish to cause mischief or harm to ourselves.
We don’t necessarily have to think of people who cut themselves or get body piercings in order to experience something because, otherwise, they have no feelings. So, having intense pain from body piercings or really dangerous sports will make us feel something. That’s one aspect. Another aspect is always getting into sick relationships, sabotaging our own relationships, our own happiness, by acting in a really objectionable manner that will ensure that the other person will reject us. What’s that all about?
Our lifestyles can be very self-destructive, in terms of diet, exercise, stress, pushing ourselves too hard, being overcritical of ourselves. That’s a hard one, isn’t it? The opposite doesn’t mean being in love with ourselves, being totally self-centered and self-cherishing. Still, being self-destructive is being just as obsessive with ourselves as being self-cherishing, isn’t it? We’re basically focused on me, me, me, and “I’m not good enough,” or whatever.
Participant: Would self-pity fall into that?
Dr. Berzin: I think, for want of any other place to fit it in, yes. “Poor me” is sort of a judgment of ourselves, isn’t it? It’s not just “poor me.”
Participant: It’s “Oh, I’m so bad.”
Dr. Berzin: “I’m so bad.” “Poor me, nobody loves me.” Is that being cruel to oneself? It’s certainly self-destructive in the sense that it prevents us from doing anything to try to change our situation in a constructive way. In that sense, it’s self-destructive. Is it wishing harm to ourselves?
Participant: It’s not wishing harm, but it’s preventing us from changing.
Dr. Berzin: It’s not actually having negative thoughts toward ourselves. However, I think that “poor me” has something negative about ourselves in it. It’s certainly self-centered.
Participant: But with “poor me,” I become the victim, and I bring myself into situations where I am a victim.
Dr. Berzin: And by considering ourselves the victim, we act it out in that we cause other people to treat us in ways that are not very comfortable. “Poor me” is usually, “Nobody loves me.” Then it’s, “Why don’t you love me? Love me! Love me! Love me!” which usually frightens anybody away.
Participant: I think it’s like the difference between compassion and pity. Rather than having compassion for myself, I just feel pity.
Dr. Berzin: This is interesting. Compassion and pity are directed at somebody else. Pity, usually, is looking down on a person. We are, in a sense, superior and looking down on “poor you.” Compassion – compassion toward ourselves – would be, for example, “I have been working too hard today. I should take a break and eat something. I haven’t eaten anything all day. I’ve just been in front of the computer.” That’s compassion toward oneself. However, self-pity is looking down… Is it looking down on ourselves? Is there a dualism of a “me” that’s feeling pity for another me, for the “poor me”? What is the position of the one that is feeling pity?
Participant: I wasn’t thinking of this kind of dualism but rather of doing something to resolve it, if possible, instead of saying, “Poor, poor, poor. All is so terrible.”
Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good point. Compassion is not only the wish for others to be free from suffering, it also has an element of actually doing something, if possible. Pity, on the other hand, is not doing anything; it’s just “poor you.” Similarly, compassion for ourselves would be, “I’m in a rough situation, so I’m going to do something to change the situation.” So, we force ourselves to go to the fitness club to exercise or something like that because it’ll be good for our health. Self-pity is not doing anything constructive for ourselves. Certainly, that’s in there as well. However, there are so many different ways of being self-destructive, aren’t there? Can you think of any that we haven’t mentioned?
Participant: Reading all night until the eyes burn.
Dr. Berzin: So, not knowing when to stop. It can be not knowing when to stop anything, as in going to an all-you-can-eat buffet, which I did on Sunday with you. I certainly ate far too much, not knowing when to stop. That’s self-destructive, isn’t it? In theory, I’m on a diet. But then I pig out at the buffet because it’s all-you-can-eat, and we have to, of course, try everything at the buffet; we can’t only take one or two of the things that are offered. That’s self-destructive.
There are many, many things that we do that are self-destructive, especially in relationships. We say things that we know we shouldn’t say and know that the other person will get annoyed with, but we can’t help ourselves – for instance, being critical all the time of the other person. In the end, that’s actually self-destructive, isn’t it?
The whole point of this is to recognize when we are coming under the influence of a disturbing emotion. There are many Dharma methods for dealing with this. There are many more than what we find in the karma section, which is where we train to have the strength to deal with disturbing emotions. There, we refrain from acting destructively. So, when the impulse comes up to act in a destructive way, to yell at somebody or whatever, we see that if we act on this impulse, it’s going to cause big problems for ourselves. We want to avoid those problems; therefore, we exercise self-control and don’t do it. “Remain like a block of wood,” as Shantideva would say.
If we have trained ourselves on that level, then, when a disturbing emotion like anger comes up, we would be able to say, “I don’t want to go down that road” – as the American idiom goes – and just, in a sense, reset our frame of mind, reboot. Now, that, of course, is very difficult to do on an emotional level. If we are trained in mahamudra and various other methods, we can do that, but that’s very, very advanced. So, there are other methods. Initially, though, we would at least want to recognize that “if I continue with this state of mind, I’m just going to make myself miserable. I have enough problems as it is. Why do I want to make myself miserable?”
Participant: “I am right.”
Dr. Berzin: “I am right” is an obsession with “me.” That’s ultimately what we need to see – that all of this stuff is coming from an obsession with a false “me,” a “me” that exists in an impossible way: it’s the center of the universe. So, we should always be right, and we should always have our own way. That’s just on a superficial level. On a deeper level, that “me” exists by its own power. It’s unaffected by anything and is separate from the body and the mind. It’s sort of inside and uses the body or mind, possesses it like a home or a machine.
There are, of course, temporary, provisional methods as well for dealing with these things. For instance, with self-destructiveness, we can think, “I want to be happy. I don’t want to be unhappy. So, why make myself even unhappier?” With cruelty towards others, we can think, “They’re human beings. They want to be happy just as I do. Everybody is equal,” etc. There are many thoughts that we can use to provisionally help us to at least dampen these disturbing emotions. With longing desire, especially sexual desire for someone, we can imagine what’s inside their body or imagine what they will look like when they are 90 years old and in an old age home, etc. We can also imagine what they looked like when they were a baby and then picture them as a whole continuum – their whole lifetime – from being a baby to being a really, really old person, in order to see that the way they look now is just a very temporary phase. View their skeleton. Then imagine if we were glued to this person. Is that really what we want – to be with them all the time?
There are many provisional methods for dealing with each of these disturbing emotions that we can learn and use. Actually, the lam-rim doesn’t go so much into those methods. It’s in other teachings where we learn those.
[3] Taking Perverse Pleasure
The third type of cruelty is taking perverse pleasure. Schadenfreude is the German word. It’s cruelly rejoicing when seeing or hearing of others’ suffering.
Do we ever have that? I think of an example. I have a friend who is a doctor. When his son was a teenager in college, he got a stud through his tongue, which absolutely horrified my doctor friend. After a while, the son got an infection in his tongue, and my doctor friend rejoiced, “It serves you right! Ha, ha, ha. Now suffer for doing something so stupid as to put a stud through your tongue!” That’s an example of taking pleasure in somebody else’s suffering.
Participant: In the comics, in the movies…
Dr. Berzin: Sick humor, exactly! Look at cartoons. Children’s cartoons are so violent. An anvil falls on Road Runner and things like that. That is a very interesting thing: one, who thought of this as being good for children, and, two, what kind of mentality was that? Why do kids like that? Do they like it?
Participant: Yes.
Dr. Berzin: And do we like it? Why do we laugh when, in a TV program, somebody falls down?
Participant: Cars explode in the American movies.
Dr. Berzin: Well, we don’t find it funny when cars explode, but we do find it funny when somebody falls down. Slapstick humor. Tibetans have that as well. Their sense of humor is very slapstick. Why is that funny? Does anybody have any idea?
Participant: In Nepal, I saw people laughing because somebody fell down from their bicycle.
Dr. Berzin: They’re carrying goods, and all the eggs break on the ground, and everybody roars with laughter. Yes, it seems to be multicultural, not just our culture.
Participant: It is often that people are rather embarrassed when something happens to them or to others. It’s not this Schadenfreude.
Dr. Berzin: Ah! That’s an interesting insight – that it’s about being a little bit embarrassed. It’s like a nervous laughter. They don’t know what to do, so they laugh.
I know that one. My teacher Serkong Rinpoche’s name for me was “Dummy” in Tibetan. I had asked him – it was sort of my contract with him – “I’m such an idiot. Please make a donkey like me,” using the classic line, “into a human being.” I gave him permission, basically, to do this. He never failed to point out when I was acting like an idiot and to call me “Dummy.” This was very, very helpful for me. My response was always a nervous laugh. Part of the contract is that we will never get angry. We give permission to somebody to do that, and the agreement is that we will never ever get angry at the person, because they are doing it for our benefit. He used to do this in front of so many people when I was translating. “Idiot!” As I say, my response was nervous laughter. So, this is a similar type of phenomenon. In real life, perhaps, that would work, but cartoons? Television shows?
Participant: I think that sometimes it’s that you feel good about not being the one who makes all these mistakes.
Dr. Berzin: So, it’s good that they suffered and that I didn’t. Good that they fell off their chair and that I didn’t? Good that in the Tom and Jerry cartoon, the mouse got chopped into pieces and that I didn’t? That’s a little bit far-fetched. But there are many other examples.
Does it mean that we should not laugh at sick humor? Slapstick?
Participant: They sometimes look funny. But it might be Schadenfreude.
Dr. Berzin: It looks funny, despite the fact that there is this Schadenfreude, the joy in others’ pain. There’s a television program where people send in their funny home movies. Usually, they’re of a small child falling off a bicycle or somebody getting squirted with a hose. Everybody thinks it’s so cute.
What’s the difference between that and everybody laughing while somebody gets burned at the stake or stoned to death? That’s interesting. How much does the other person have to suffer before we no longer find it funny?
Participant: I find those kinds of feelings, like finding something like that funny, to be self-destruction. For example, when there is an accident, lots of people like to stop and watch.
Dr. Berzin: How is that self-destructive?
Participant: Because it develops in you a feeling that is unstable. I can imagine that when you laugh at something that could be tragic for the person – on TV, for example – there’s a mixture of finding it funny and, at the same time, identifying with the suffering because you know that’s a human being. So, I think it’s disturbing.
Dr. Berzin: You’re saying that it’s self-destructive in the sense that it’s an uneasy state of mind. It’s like looking at something as a spectator; so, it’s not really real. If we were to take it as real and relate to the other person’s suffering, it would be too painful. So, in fact, we just view it like a movie.
Participant: I thought also about catharsis. When you are afraid of something and you see it happening on a film, it gives you a bit of a way out. Seeing this thing happening in a context that is imaginary and that involves someone else gives you this catharsis.
Dr. Berzin: Catharsis for what?
Participant: For your fears.
Dr. Berzin: The thing that I was thinking was that we laugh at the cartoon or the television show because we know it’s not real. However, if somebody falls off a chair in our home… actually, we usually do laugh then as well. Our initial reaction might be to laugh. But that’s a nervous reaction. But if we see that it is for real, that they really are hurt, we do something. It’s very, very weird, I think, that people naturally seem to find it funny.
Participant: Laughing when it happens to the other person and not to me might be a kind of relief. I remember that there is this prayer to a saint – I think the name is Saint Florian – who helps when a house is burning: “Please prevent my house from being burnt; make it the house of the neighbor.”
Dr. Berzin: That’s this cruelty, this hooliganism as well – wishing harm to somebody else.
Participant: I think it also depends on the motivation for laughing when someone just falls down but doesn’t really hurt himself. It’s also like not leaving the person alone in the situation.
Dr. Berzin: So, when somebody falls down, you can, in a sense, laugh with the person. I don’t know. Some people laugh when they fall down; they find it funny. But some people don’t: they cry, because it hurts. Sometimes we do laugh when we ourselves are in pain. I do. For example, I had a root canal some years ago, and it was terrible because I couldn’t stop laughing. I couldn’t imagine that somebody could put that many instruments into my mouth at the same time. I found it hilarious, even though the whole thing was incredibly uncomfortable. I kept thinking, “How ridiculous this is!” So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be somebody else’s suffering that we are laughing at. Maybe I’m strange. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s being masochistic. I just found the whole thing absolutely ridiculous.
Discussion
Participant: I read something that you once said about not grasping to the solid “me” that is having pain.
Dr. Berzin: Sure. I certainly wasn’t thinking me, me, me. “I’m having this pain. Poor me! When is it going to finish?!”
Participant: Where are all these emotions coming from? Sometimes, for example, I cry, and there is nothing that is making me feel that.
Dr. Berzin: Right, so now, we get into a whole different topic.
Sometimes we have sadness, and we cry – a deep sadness, existential angst, or whatever we want to call it, that just makes us feel sad for no apparent reason. Well, Buddhism would say that that unhappiness and sadness is the result of destructive behavior. Anything could trigger a feeling of unhappiness. It could be something that we dislike. It could be something that we actually like, but because we’re in a bad mood, it annoys us today. Sadness unaimed at anything is the result of an incredible number of negative things that we have done. It’s the ripening of the negative potentials that have been built up from that.
This is what’s so horrible about samsara. We have built up a lot of negative karmic potentials and a lot of positive karmic potentials. We know that we have built up positive karmic potentials – which is why the so-called collection of merit, this network of positive force, is part of Buddha-nature: we always have that. If we hadn’t built up positive potentials, we couldn’t have been born as human beings. So, that proves that we have some. However, because we have so much of both, we experience the ups and downs of being happy/unhappy all the time. It’s constantly going up and down, different levels of it. Or feeling nothing.
Is Feeling Nothing a Destructive State of Mind?
What is feeling nothing? I think it’s really a block. It’s a dissociation of a “me” from any feelings. We disassociate so that we don’t feel them. I don’t think that that’s a neutral state. I’m not quite sure. What is it when we feel nothing? Is it that there is actually some feeling but that we are repressing it?
Participant: Do you mean feeling nothing at all?
Dr. Berzin: Feeling nothing at all. Like there’s a shock, an emotional shock, for instance. That happens, certainly. After an accident or some other horrible thing happens, we’re just in shock, and we don’t feel anything. Well, you’re a doctor. Both of you are doctors. Isn’t that some sort of physical thing that happens when you’re in shock?
Participant: Psychological.
Dr. Berzin: But isn’t there some physical shock? There is a physiological basis for it, right? I don’t know what the basis is, but there is a physiological basis. When the person has gone into shock, you put the warm blankets on them and stuff like that, don’t you?
Participant: Yes, there is a biological shock with blood going everywhere but to the brain.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But we were talking about what the causes of feeling nothing could be. One cause could be shock.
Participant: Do you mean being unconscious or almost unconscious?
Dr. Berzin: No, I don’t mean being unconscious or almost unconscious, but just being in shock, not feeling anything. Either something very good or something very bad happens, and for a while, we just don’t feel anything.
Participant: Is this what is normally called indifference?
Dr. Berzin: That’s something else. Indifference is not feeling anything, for instance, when we see all the suffering on television.
Participant: I think that if you are overwhelmed, you are overwhelmed by something.
Dr. Berzin: My point is, is there actually no feeling at that time? The aggregate of feelings – feeling happy/unhappy – is there all the time. We are always somewhere on that spectrum. But I don’t know that we would say that not feeling anything is exactly in the middle – in other words, neutral feelings. I don’t know the answer.
Participant: Depression is so…
Dr. Berzin: Depression is another biological condition in which we just feel nothing. I don’t know. That’s a difficult one. What in the world is depression? Is it self-destructive? Certainly. But for all of these, we could ask, is there a physiological basis for these? Certainly, something physiological is going on when we are feeling anger and these sorts of things.
Participant: It also might be a kind of protection; otherwise, you cannot act. If you are in danger, you cannot react well. So, protecting yourself by not feeling anything might help you to act clearly.
Dr. Berzin: Right, not feeling anything might be a protective measure. For instance, if we are a doctor or a nurse in a war zone or some kind of disaster and we start feeling, “How horrible,” and getting really emotional, we can’t do our job. In that situation, feeling nothing is a self-protecting mechanism that allows us to do our work more effectively. Certainly.
Participant: But I think we have to be a bit more precise. If I say I’m feeling nothing, does that mean that I don’t feel any emotion or that I don’t feel any pain?
Dr. Berzin: What I am talking about is the aggregate of feeling. The aggregate of feeling is simply the dimension of happiness and unhappiness. That is a different dimension from pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain are physical.
Participant: Is it really sick to think that there are stages where you feel nothing? In a coma, you most probably don’t feel anything. I think that in a war zone, people feel something, but they repress it to be able to function. But in situations where you don’t feel anything at all, I think this is a coma situation or…
Dr. Berzin: So, when you don’t feel anything at all, you would have to be in a coma, deep sleep, under anesthesia, or something like that. I have no idea. There are dream states where we feel happy or unhappy. That’s something else. Often it is, as we say, self-preservation not to feel anything. Now, if we want to tie it in with our discussion here, when we feel nothing about ourselves, or about what’s going on in our own lives – is that self-destructive? I think that’s depression, one aspect of depression. “My life is so overwhelming, so horrible, and I can’t face it. I don’t feel anything.” Is that part of depression?
Participant: Yes, but I think that in depression, you have a lot of emotions and feelings.
Dr. Berzin: Well, there’s a difference between, “Today I’m depressed” and being clinically depressed. Those are different things. Again, I have to ask our doctor friends.
Participant: If you have the normal ups and downs, having very positive and very negative feelings, you would have a zero line. In a way, depression is just a bit below the zero line, and there would only be minimal, if any, changes.
Dr. Berzin: So, our doctor friend is saying that, normally, our emotions – and now we are not talking just about happy/unhappy but about any sort of emotion – go up and down. There is a lot of variation. Whereas in clinical depression, feelings are not exactly at the zero line but a little bit below that and have only very slight variations. I have never experienced clinical depression, so I have no idea what’s it’s like. Is it self-destructive? Again, there’s a physical basis for it – the chemicals in the brain, perhaps. However, just to feel a general state of depression, not clinical depression – is that self-destructive? I think so. I think it’s in the category of self-pity, isn’t it? It’s not as internally vocal as self-pity.
Participant: At least it might turn into self-pity. It could also turn into self-destructiveness.
Dr. Berzin: What is depression, just regular depression, like, “Oh, I’m depressed today”?
Participant: OK, that’s not clinical depression.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Not clinical depression, ordinary depression. The outlook is very bleak, very negative outlook: “Everything is bad; nothing is good. It’s gray, it’s raining, the sun hasn’t shone for a month,” and so on.
Participant: It is a sort of self-pity.
Dr. Berzin: That is self-pity, and that is self-destructive, actually. It’s not that it’s actively wishing for us to suffer, but it’s certainly not doing anything positive about our state. It’s just sort of wallowing in it.
Participant: Or drinking alcohol. Taking something to feel good.
Dr. Berzin: Taking something to lift us up.
Anyway, we have spent the whole class on cruelty, and this comes to the end of the class. There are a lot of things that are involved here, aren’t there? We have discussed hooliganism, causing mischief and harm to others, wishing bad for others in all its forms, being self-destructive, and taking pleasure in others’ suffering and unhappiness, like laughing when somebody falls down, etc. All of this is cruel, cruel to ourselves, cruel to somebody else, and so on.
Participant: “He deserved it.”
Dr. Berzin: “He deserved it,” right. Somebody loses… ooh, that’s a very interesting one.
Participant: Like the votes we had recently in Germany.
Dr. Berzin: You just had a vote in Germany. The ones that were in favor of nuclear power got voted out, and the Green Party won. So, they deserved to lose the vote. Now you have Schadenfreude: you are rejoicing in their unhappiness at being kicked out of office. And everybody here in the class is rejoicing and laughing. Yes, that’s a good example. “And they deserved it” – that’s Schadenfreude.
Participant: I think this is the point that he deserves it.
Dr. Berzin: Is that a disturbing attitude that we would want to get rid of?
Participant: Well, we should get rid of, but we don’t want to.
Dr. Berzin: What would be the alternative? Could we rejoice in the Green Party’s success and still feel compassion for the poor people who got voted out?
Participant: We are still at the first level.
Dr. Berzin: You’re not a bodhisattva yet. Think how terrible these people must feel. They lost the vote, lost their jobs.
Participant: I was thinking that even if somebody does some harm to you, you should be able not to wish them harm in return.
Dr. Berzin: In theory, we should not wish them harm in return. A criminal, a mass murderer – they “deserve” to be imprisoned for their whole life; they “deserve” to be killed in countries that have the death penalty.
Participant: Instead of, “they deserve to be transformed.”
Dr. Berzin: What does that mean? Go to a re-education camp like they have in China? That could be even worse.
Participant: I mean more spiritually.
Dr. Berzin: Like rehabilitation. There are a lot of Dharma teachers that go into prisons to teach Buddhism.
Participant: Well, if you keep them alive, then there is a chance that they can change.
Dr. Berzin: If we keep them alive, there is a chance they will change, whereas if we shoot them, it’s finished. This is the thing of wishing others harm. And this is very difficult, really, in a legal system. We want to prevent them from continuing to commit crime, but do we want to punish them? What is the whole idea of punishment? We didn’t even get into that, but that really falls into this category.
Punishment Versus Discipline
What about punishing our children? We don’t wish them harm. That’s an interesting question: Do we discipline our children, or do we punish them? “You’re grounded; you can’t go out. You can’t watch television for a week.”
Participant: “If you’re not going to eat your broccoli, go to your room.”
Dr. Berzin: Is that wishing them harm? These are tough questions. Well, anyway, we are well past the time. I think these are interesting things to consider within ourselves. When we punish our children, do we do it on the basis of a disturbing emotion? It’s necessary to teach them… well, I was going to say, “Teach them a lesson! I have to teach them a lesson.” That could be in a negative sense, that of punishment, or in a constructive sense. Sometimes we have to be a bit strong and forceful.
Participant: I think that a mass murderer, for example, cannot control himself. So, you have to protect the society. But the motivation is different from thinking that he deserves it.
Dr. Berzin: Right, the motivation is different in the sense that society needs to be protected. The person needs to be protected from committing more crimes, so we lock them up as opposed to thinking, “They deserve to be tortured.”
Participant: I think that with ta child, you want to protect them from wrong behavior.
Dr. Berzin: So, do we take television privileges away for a week as a punishment?
Participant: I did that yesterday. I thought it was a good idea.
Dr. Berzin: You even rejoiced in it! You took pleasure in your child’s unhappiness.
Participant: It depends on the intention. She did it with a good intention. She didn’t mean to cause harm.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s one of the big points of karma: there is no way of guaranteeing the results of our actions. There’s no way to guarantee how the other person will experience what we do for them and what will happen as a result. The classic example is giving somebody a large amount of money, and then the next day, they are robbed and killed for that money. My point is that when we discipline our children, we need to examine: is there a disturbing emotion there? That we can tell in terms of our internal energy – if we’re really upset by this. I think it’s really hard not to be upset. And if we are upset, there is probably some sort of disturbing emotion there.
Participant: Even if I have the disturbing emotion, I still might need to do something.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, that’s right. That’s because unless we are arhats, we are going to have some disturbing emotions.
Participant: Otherwise, the child might harm itself.
Dr. Berzin: “You didn’t do your homework, and you’re doing terrible in school. So, no television for a week. Stay in your room and do your homework” – this type of thing. So, even though we might be upset and have some disturbing emotion going on, we still have to act. But the point is to at least try to recognize that a disturbing emotion is causing us unhappiness and probably making us act in a way toward our child that might not be the best way of acting. “I have to do something, but my judgment is clouded if I am really upset.” Still, we have to do something, but then we try to calm down. These are difficult things, especially when we are dealing with our children.