The Multi-Faceted Road to Freedom

With the current president in office and the dysfunctional political climate in the country, it would be easy to focus on nothing but our current problems and how to move the country back to a state of sanity and rationality.  While that is of utmost importance and so must consume much of our time and effort, we/I would be negligent if we did not also continue to reflect on the larger issues that impact our society.

Human history has been a story of the powerful and the oppressed, the haves and the have nots.  The drive for survival focuses man on gaining power, the more the better, since when you’re fighting for survival one can never be secure enough.  And since having power by definition means having power over others, that sets up the age-old dynamic of human society.

This power dynamic is evidenced at all levels of human interaction.  Even within the family, while usually not oppression, there’s often a power struggle between husband v wife, sibling v sibling, or parents v children.  In school it’s mean girls/bullies against those they consider “lesser” beings.  In the larger world, it is or has been men v women, Christians v Jews, WASPs v Catholics, whites v blacks.  Go to any country and you will find the same dynamic, even in Buddhist Myanmar.  The list is endless.

In our society we have tried to lessen the impact of this dynamic, to free people from oppression, through the establishment of rights.  The effort has not been to change the oppressor’s mindset in any direct way, but to change his or her way of interacting.  To end discrimination.  And to provide a legal recourse for those who are discriminated against.

This has been a worthy effort to make our democracy and human relations more just.  But the effort has two major shortcomings.  

First, we can pass all the legislation we want, but if we do not change people’s attitude towards the group in question, discrimination will still occur on a regular basis.  It’s true that giving people rights has had some impact on the oppressor’s mindset, but there has been little fundamental change, especially where the bias runs strong and deep or the oppressor feels threatened by the oppressed’s potential.  Yes, there will be less overt discrimination, but much will still exist and only that which is called out through a law suit will be stopped.  

The fact is that we have not even discussed the underlying mindset that creates these problems.  We as a nation have never really had a discussion about race or women.  We’ve had a bit more discussion about sexual orientation in recent years and are starting to have a discussion regarding gender identity.  Until there is a nation-wide, humanity-based, discussion about these issues, nothing fundamental will change.

Second, while the passage of rights laws has been a critical necessity, we have done little to assist the oppressed to improve their lives regardless.  It is a maxim of spiritual teaching that we each have the power to change how we experience life, regardless the circumstances.  Thus, for example, the serenity prayer, with my exposition (…), says, “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change … which is the way my life is right now at this moment.  The courage to change the things I can … which is how I relate to myself and the world around me.   And the wisdom to know the difference.”

The first part of the prayer is usually met with substantial push-back from anyone who approaches it.  We don’t want to accept the way things are.  But the prayer does not mean or require that you don’t attempt to change the environment in which you live; it just means that you accept that right now at this moment it is the way it is.  It is an essential step if one wants to experience peace in the moment rather than mental stress.

The second step of the serenity prayer as it normally appears, “The courage to change the things I can,” is usually just greeted with a shrug.  Because it is interpreted as meaning changing the circumstances we live in and having the courage to do that.  That is a tall order in many if not most circumstances.  And so it leads many to feel that they are failures because they don’t have that courage or ability.

Yet this is not the real point of the second statement at all.  The universal spiritual teaching is that all we have the power to change is how we relate to ourselves and the world around us.  That is what gives us the power over whether a situation causes us stress and unhappiness or whether we are at peace regardless.

Before going further and discussing this powerful teaching, let me first talk about the word “peace” which I’ve used several times.  It’s not a word that we usually think of as possibly applying to ourselves in any practical way.

As an example, let me quote from my forthcoming book, How to Find Inner Peace:

“Peace. What a completely foreign concept this was to me. How can anyone be at peace or serene unless they’re a saint? Since I was a young child my life had been filled with inner turmoil, despite an outwardly happy home and relationships. And in looking around at my peers and family, and at the images of the larger culture, I didn’t see anyone who was at peace. … Yet I knew in my gut that peace and happiness, a life free of suffering, was a rational, reasonable goal. The question was not whether but how? 

…

“First then, what exactly is peace?  Peace is the absence of fear, anxiety, hatred, guilt, shame, doubt and confusion … or better put, it’s not the absence of these emotions but not being controlled by them. It’s also being free of an intense desire for things you don’t have or to be someone other than you are.”

So how do we as individuals and as a collective group change the way we view ourselves and the world around us so as to experience peace and happiness, rather than fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, etc.?  Books have been written by many, including me, to answer this question.  But let me try to answer it briefly by looking at some specific examples.

Feminism:  The founders of feminism understood that if the lot of women was to improve, it was not just a matter of gaining certain rights vis a vis men; women had to change their attitude about themselves, what was possible, not be controlled by the confines that men had set for them.  So even without or before gaining rights, women could improve their life experience by changing their self-image.

Blacks:  At the turn of the 20th century, well before the real push for civil rights, Booker T. Washington led a movement to improve the lives of blacks through self-help, both in education and business.  But because he did not confront the oppressive regime, his was a one-pronged approach and he fell out of favor and influence.

Later, while the push for civil rights was going on, there were others in the community that were addressing how blacks could improve their life experience by changing their self-image and stop resorting to destructive behavior both towards themselves and other blacks.  They sought to build a supportive community.  One such movement was the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH and PUSH-EXCEL.  The other movement was the Nation of Islam.  

While the central goal of Operation PUSH was to improve the economic position of Blacks through various means, in his weekly sermons Jackson preached the uplifting of his people.  Nina Simone’s song, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” became an anthem of the movement.  And through PUSH-EXCEL he sought to improve Black and minority student performance in inner city schools and help them stay out of trouble.

A more divisive, although in many ways effective, approach was taken by the Nation of Islam.  It believed that Blacks could only improve their lives if they disassociated themselves from the surrounding White culture.  Instead, it sought to have Blacks adopt the strict morality of Islam to improve their lives and support one another.  While the Nation achieved many good things for its people, it was unfortunately built upon hatred of the white man.  And nothing good spiritually develops from hatred.

LGBTQ: For the LGBTQ movement, the spiritual emphasis, while pursuing legal rights, has been changing the self-image from one of shame to pride.  And as more and more LGBTQ people responded to that message and came out to family, friends, and colleagues, people found out that LGBGQ were a part of their everyday lives, that they were in essence no different from themselves, and so more people came to support the movement for equal rights.  Coming out created the environment for equal treatment, not changes in the law.

The point of these group examples is that regardless what the rest of the world is doing to you or how they are reacting to you … and this applies to individuals as well as groups … you have the power to change your life experience for the better.  By believing in yourself, by treating yourself well, and by having the courage to move forward with the things that makes life meaningful for you, that speak to your heart.  

In my post, “The Next Wave of Feminism,” I discuss the need for each woman to enter into an exploration of who she really is,  as opposed to who they’ve come to think they are based on their life experiences and our culture, so that she can truly decide what is best for her.  Every group must help their members free themselves from the confines that the rest of the world has placed on their narrative story.  

With women, for example, it’s not a simple matter of saying “no” to motherhood or being a housewife; that is more a statement of rebellion, not of deep inner exploration. One must be truly free of the past in order for each individual to decide what choice is best for them … for some it will be being a housewife and mother; for others it will be going into business or the professions.

There will always be lots of obstacles, with or without legal rights, but if you are true to yourself you will always be at peace.  For you will be one with your heart, and you will not allow anyone to take that feeling away from you.

Stop Complaining - You Do Have a Choice

In my previous post, “Changing Free Will from a Harmful Illusion to a Life-Affirming Fact,” I argued that we are programmed by our learned experience to act, and react, in certain ways and thus do not have free will in the way that term is normally understood.  But, if we were properly nurtured, even as adults, we would be able to free ourselves from this programming.and act with real free will in a way that would be of benefit both to ourselves and to the rest of society.

Unfortunately, the likelihood of such a fundamental change happening in our society is next to zero  Instead, it devolves to the individual to become aware that they have been programmed and to free themselves from that programming.  You can’t change the world around you, but you do have a choice to change how you relate to yourself and that world, and thus end your doubts and confusion, your fear and anxiety, your anger and negativity.  This is the fundamental teaching of Buddhism.

To free yourself from this programming, to change your habit-energy, is a choice we can make.  Without question, it is a choice that is very difficult to make and carry out because our ego will fight making that choice with all its power and cunning.  But it is a choice that people have made and that we can all make.

Let me restate two critical steps.  First, one must come to recognize that you, and all others, are a function of the environment of your upbringing, all your learned experience, and that this experience has programmed you to act in certain ways.  That is something that most people can accept after some thought.

It is the second step which is the kicker.  You must come to an awareness that all your learned experience, being dependent on what you’ve been taught, is thus empty of any intrinsic existence ... the point being that you think the way you think because you were taught that way, whereas another person thinks quite differently because they were taught quite differently.  Where does reality then lie?  

People generally claim to have access to the truth, to reality ... they know ... whereas they don’t in fact because all they know is what they’ve been taught and reality cannot be taught.   It can only be experienced directly, which means free of the intervention of the ego’s thinking mind.  NOTE:  I am talking here about how we view ourselves and the world around us, the judgments we make, not the facts of the physical world or mathematics.

All your feelings, perceptions, mental formations ... indeed your entire consciousness ... are empty of any inherent existence.  It is just in your head.  Strange though it may seem, despite the all-too-real problems in your immediate and the larger world, the direct cause of your suffering, your unhappiness or frustration, is not the state of things you must contend with, but how you relate to yourself and the state of things.

Are you unhappy with the way things are?  Are you suffering because of that unhappiness?  Do you want your suffering to end?

The first thing you must do then is decide, if in fact what I posit is true ... that all your suffering is a function of how you relate to yourself and the world around you, not the actual state of things ... do you really want to change, not who you are, but how you relate to yourself and others.   I emphasize the word “really” because the next question is whether you are willing to go deep within yourself, to do the work which has been hinted at above, in order to free yourself from the way you’ve been programmed?  If the answer is “yes,” read on.

How does one bring about this change in oneself?  How does one unlearn the lessons of a lifetime?

The first thing one must do is find a mechanism to enable you to step outside of yourself.  To be able to look objectively at yourself and the world and how you relate to things.  Slowly, you will begin to discern the disconnect between your learned experience and reality and begin to see things as they really are, free of labels, thus bit by bit freeing yourself from your programmed mind.  Ultimately, you will be able to make the choice to find peace and happiness and end your suffering.

This is not surprisingly a complex process that demands discipline and commitment over an extended period of time ... years.  Such awareness does not come in a flash.  But there is a path to follow.  It is set forth in detail in my various books and discussed further on my Buddhist blog.  For a summary, you might want to read the post, “End of Suffering Cheat Sheet.”  For more information please go to, www.thepracticalbuddhist.com.

The Mendaciousness of the Responsibility Game

We are brought up in this society to think that we have control over our lives.  That if we do this or do that, if we work hard enough, if we go to college, etc., that the desired results will materialize for us.  And if things don’t work out, it is our fault.  In its crudest form, this has been expressed in recent years by Republicans in Congress who have stated bluntly that if you are poor, if you haven’t made it up the financial ladder, it’s your fault; you’re lazy.

This perspective on life is totally an illusion, a lie.  While we do have control over whether we work hard, whether we study hard, how we treat other people, whether we get married, etc., we have absolutely no control over whether those actions bear the desired fruits, which for most people are security, success, money, and as a result ... so we are taught ... happiness.

In truth, all we have control over is the way we relate to ourselves and to others, to the world around us.  Whether our actions bring about the desired result lies in the control of others  or is just a matter of good fortune, happenstance.  

Everyone will understand when I speak of the control of others.  But what about happenstance.  In common parlance, the phrase, “being in the right place at the right time,” is an example of that.  So many of the breaks that people receive in life, while often in part the result of careful planning, are really a result of everything falling into place, which is a function of happenstance.  

For example, let’s say you set up a meeting with several people and you learned of a great job opportunity and made a great contact.  Had the meeting taken place two days later, the discussion could have produced nothing, either because one person didn’t show or because an opportunity that was present on one day wasn’t there anymore two days later.  This is part of the vicissitudes of life.

Unfortunately, people who have “made it” tend not to be aware of how they have been blessed by happenstance.  Their ego tells them that it was all because of their hard work; luck or fortune had nothing to do with it.  And so they lack any compassion for those who haven’t made it, whether they are poor or struggling middle class or a lower level executive who isn’t going anywhere.  They’re not aware of the saying, “They’re but for good fortune (or the grace of God) go I.”  A preeminent example of this, perhaps, is Justice Clarence Thomas.

And so those who haven’t made it are made to feel by our culture that they are at fault.  They haven’t tried hard enough.  This internalized self-blame is very demoralizing.  People may often blame a particular individual for some opportunity not materializing or a venture failing, but they rarely get the larger point that the whole concept of control is an illusion.

Most of the frustration and pain we experience from trying and not succeeding comes from this illusion of control.  The lesson we as individuals need to take from being aware of the illusion of control is to let the idea of control go, to accept that all one can do is the best one can, but ultimately the result depends on many factors outside your control.  To have any peace, one must have the attitude, “If it works, great.  If it doesn’t work, that’s OK too.”

For those who are in government, the lesson is to understand that what our society deems “failure” is most often not a matter of someone not having tried.  It’s a result of growing up in an environment over which one has no control, whether it’s being born in poverty, having addicted parents, going to a school that doesn’t teach, growing up in an atmosphere of drugs and violence, the list goes on and on.  This is not an excuse; it is a fact of life; it is reality.

Or alternatively, it’s a function of all of a sudden the floor dropping out from under a successful life, often because a job has gone abroad or because of  major illness that leads to bankruptcy, which can start a cycle of long term unemployment, loss of house, and even homelessness.

Everyone who as a public servant is sworn to uphold the constitution needs to remember that the purpose of government, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, is “to secure these rights” ... namely, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This places several responsibilities on government.

The first is to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve those goals.  And equal opportunity isn’t just a matter of ensuring that there is no discrimination in employment, housing, etc.  Real equal opportunity means that the playing field is leveled by ensuring that all children have access to the same level of quality education, something that is definitely not the case in this country.

The other major government responsibility stemming from this task is providing a safety net for those who are in need.  Whether someone is homeless or living in poverty or disabled, or at risk because they are old or unemployed, government needs to have programs that help people in need and provide them an opportunity to lift themselves up.

That this essential function of government has been so trashed by the Republican Right makes a travesty of our democracy and of their claim to be the defenders of the Constitution.

The Self-Help Scam

The self-help industry is huge.  Although numbers are hard to come by, in 2008 Nielsen Bookscan reported that 13.5 millions self-help books were sold in the U.S.  The self-help industry is said to be worth around $11 billion annually, including seminars, DVDs, etc.

Obviously, lots of people are crying out for help.  They feel miserable or frustrated about their lives in various ways, whether it’s their relationships, work, family, or personal development.

And it’s no small wonder because we live in a culture which is extremely competitive and which is constantly sending us messages, whether through the media or through family and peers, that we need to be more than we are, we need to have more than we have.  We live in a culture which creates feelings of insecurity from almost day 1 after birth.  As insecure people, we cannot develop and maintain good relationships.  And we cannot be satisfied with anything we achieve; regardless how successful or powerful, we always want more in order to remain happy.  Our culture has created a collective monster.

This is the context within which the self-help industry thrives.  And it is the context in which it ultimately fails the people it supposedly is trying to help.  The problem is that as soon as you fall into the trap of feeling there is something about yourself that needs “fixing” or “improving,” there is no hope because you are buying into the culture’s hype.

And that is why, despite the tens of millions of people who read and are otherwise drawn to the advice of self-help gurus, nothing really changes in their lives or in the world.  Yes, a few “make it.”  But the vast majority get nowhere even if they faithfully follow the advice given.  If these books worked as advertised, the world would become far less dysfunctional and vast numbers of people would feel better about their lives.

No, the problem lies not with individuals, it lies with the culture and the way it impacts everyone in it.  No one can escape it.  We are all a product of our learned experience ... whether from family, peers, or the larger culture.  But it all comes back to the culture.

Our ego is the repository and protector of these learned experiences.  It drives our lives and controls our actions based on these learned experiences which at their core are based on insecurity.  As such it is the font of our neuroses that cause us so much fear, anxiety, anger, and general suffering.  It is the reason why few of us ever feel at peace or find true happiness.

Since you can’t change the culture, we have two options.  The one is to change ourselves in a way so that we have a better fit with the culture and thus do better in our interactions with it.  Succeed on its terms.  That is the basic tact of self-help books.  And it doesn’t work because our culture feeds upon and manipulates everyone in it.  And thus we can never find real happiness or peace going that route.

The other option is to change the way we interact with the culture ... to interact with it on our terms.  To realize with great clarity what it is and how it operates, how our learned experiences have impacted us and caused us endless suffering, and how we can step back from this manufactured ego and find our true selves ... strong, secure, happy, and at peace. Freeing ourselves from the cravings that our learned experience promotes ... that is the source of peace and contentment, happiness and yes, even joy.

And that, my friends, is the Buddhist path.  Ending our suffering not through the process of psychoanalysis or self-help improvement, but by understanding how our feelings and perceptions, while feeling very real, actually have no inherent reality and are just a product of our learned experience ... and learning that by freeing ourselves from this known, from our ego, we can discover again our true selves and see ourselves and the world around us as we and it really are, without the distorting filter of our learned experiences, our thinking mind.