9 Perspectives for a Positive Attitude toward Ourself

Review

In our discussion about how to equalize our attitudes about ourselves, we have covered the various exercises to help us to develop equanimity – equanimity specifically aimed at ourselves in terms of what we’ve done in life, in terms of how we regard ourselves and treat ourselves, and in terms of various aspects of our body and personality. When we speak about equanimity in this context, what we’re referring to is a state of mind that is free of disturbing attitudes or disturbing emotions. That’s referring to a state of mind that’s free of aversion or repulsion (we don’t like ourselves, we have a negative attitude), on the other hand also free of attraction (we’re in love with ourselves, “I’m so wonderful”), and free of naivety as well, with which we consider ourselves a nothing and we ignore our own needs. But we must be careful not to misunderstand this as meaning a state of mind that is totally without any emotions. We don’t mean that at all.

The problem here is with the conceptual framework. In our Western languages, we have the concept of emotions, and we include a lot of things into this category “emotions.” But in the Sanskrit and Tibetan traditions, there is no equivalent conceptual category of “emotions.” There is no word for emotions. Instead we speak in terms of mental factors. These include almost mechanical types of things, like attention, concentration, interest. Then we have disturbing states of mind, destructive ones such as anger or greed, and constructive ones such as love, patience or perseverance. We have these types of categories. Some elements of these categories – the constructive, destructive, and disturbing attitudes – we would consider emotions, and some we wouldn’t, like indecisive wavering, indecision. “Should I do this; should I do that?” Is that an emotion? What would we call that in our Western conceptual framework? Because of this different scheme for analyzing our minds, it’s confusing, because when we hear the word “equanimity,” we think that means no emotions at all.

In our discussion about developing equanimity toward ourselves, we’re not talking about ridding ourselves of what we would call positive emotions, like patience, enthusiasm, love, compassion, generosity, and so on. These things are fine. They’re not the troublemakers, although of course they could be mixed with disturbing emotions. Together with love, we could also have attachment. So we need to differentiate here constructive emotions and the destructive ones – and more specifically what we would call “disturbing emotions.” No need to get into the technical difference.

If we look at these three troublemakers that I mentioned – which are basically anger, attachment, and naivety – we have here, with attachment and anger, an exaggeration. With anger – and here we’re talking about directing it at ourselves (“I really dislike myself”) – what we’re doing is exaggerating negative aspects (for instance, failure, or shortcomings in our personality, or bad moods that we’re in). We exaggerate them, we make them into something solid, and make them almost into some sort of monster, and we completely lose sight of all the positive things that would counterbalance them – our successes, for example, or the strong points in our personality.

When we have attachment – and we have too high an opinion of ourselves, and so on – then we do just the opposite. We make into a solid thing our good qualities or the positive things that have happened in our life, and we exaggerate them and ignore the negative aspects.

When we have naivety – considering ourselves a nobody and ignoring our needs – we go to the other extreme and deny any qualities whatsoever of ourselves, either positive or negative. We even deny that we are a human being and have certain rights.

With equanimity, we try to have a more objective view of ourselves, our lives, and so on, without exaggerating or denying any aspect. We accept that this is our reality and none of these aspects is solid, frozen and will last forever. We can work on ourselves, we can improve; but first we have to accept what is the actual situation now. Having this more objective view of ourselves doesn’t in any way block having positive emotions, like love, kindness, compassion, patience, and enthusiasm, etc. In fact it makes it much easier to have these positive feelings, because when we have these disturbing emotions, particularly directed at ourselves, it makes a block. When we have anger toward ourselves, when we don’t like ourselves, that can block having a warm feeling toward both ourselves and others.

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