Misanthropy and love

In some kind of mild samadhi state, very tranquil. Not particularly alert, actually - I’m feeling quite tired, despite the promises that my not eating dinner would bring me the energy of Superman. Ah well. Today seems to be about love.

I have been troubled, saddened by the apparent fact that I love inanimate objects, and animals and trees, whereas I have trouble loving people. The sad fact is that I felt earlier today more love for the bannister on the stairwell than I did for the person sitting next to it. It doesn’t help to deny it. Also, I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. As a small child I preferred to play alone. As a teenager, I was unpopular, and although I wanted to be popular, I never knew what to do to be liked - primarily because I didn’t actually like being with people. I wanted to impress them, gain their affection, etc., and was frustrated when I didn’t. But I don’t think, looking back, that there was ever a genuine interest in them as people. I wanted to hang out Friday nights because it was cool, not because I really wanted to. Ok, memories.

What came to me mulling over this thing is: People are never the problem. Thought-patterns are the problem.

I’ve sometimes looked at other people like animals are plants, not in a demeaning way but in the sense of causes and conditions. This is an organism. For some time this has felt inevitably condescending. Here I am, wise sage, looking at the organisms doing their thing. Even “doing their best” - really, people are always doing their best, they, we are just so deluded that it gets very convoluted.

But of course I the observer am also an organism the same way the people are. Organism, energy system, consciousness system, whatever the details are. I guess I could map it onto Wilber’s quadrants if I really wanted to, which I don’t. The point is that these systems which comprise us are all impersonal, all anatta, in me as much as them.

No one is born an asshole. They may be born with certain tendencies toward being one way or another, but those tendencies can all be channeled in wholesome or unwholesome ways. (I do think classical Buddhism underestimates genetics, and needs to engage with genetics more. Some traits really are inborn, I think. Not that this makes up a “self,” but even using the Big Dipper analogy, one of the stars will always be blue, or red, or whatever.) What makes people into assholes are the thought-feeling-belief-idea patterns they hold. Even while a neo-Nazi Republican hunter oilman is bloviating lies and deceit, his liver is doing its job, his spleen is miraculous. And his mind is doing its job too, it’s just marinated in complete dreck.

Unlike the more enlightened Buddhists, I remain very skeptical (“a lot of skepticism remains...”) that some of these people can really be changed, or opened up. I also, as I’ve written recently, don’t think they are necessarily suffering in any conscious way, which begs the question of what suffering really is. I think we’d all like to believe that conservatives are always suffering. And who knows, maybe the vast majority of them are. But some, at least, if not most, have learned sophisticated strategies for dealing with that - so sophisticated they are completely invisible and unknown. In other words, they’re happy just as they are, thank you.

So, it’s very hard to be loving toward a nation which has just re-elected such a horrible, stupid, selfish, and destructive man to the position of most powerful person on Earth. But, remember, only 51% of the nation did that. 49% voted for someone smart, kind, wise, heroic, and competent. Notice how the 2% changes my whole view of “humanity.” And America is the exception. The vast majority of Europeans and Africans know this guy’s a nut. I don’t know about Asians. So, what’s broken is the system, and the system is comprised not of assholes but of thoughts.

Greed, hatred, and delusion. That really is the Republican party platform, isn’t it. Greed: as much money for the most powerful. Hatred: of anything different, ‘other,’ or threatening. Delusion: Jesusland.

Wow.

So, we can see that large swaths of people are prey to greed, hatred, and delusion. These are the same thought patterns that afflict me too. Greed: for fame, fortune, and admiration (“he’s so enlightened!”). Hatred: of Republicans. Delusion: well, I’m still working out how much of my religious stuff, my belief in ‘making something of oneself,’ and also my contemplative practice, is delusion.

Back to metta. Let’s see if I can cultivate a way of gazing at people as causes and conditions – very full empty boats – rather than as people in the sort of rich sense of the word. And see what happens. If I love bannisters, I should do ok.

Of course, on personal levels, with friends, the situation is different. First, the premises are different, because I do feel loving toward most of my friends. It’s been interesting to observe the couple of friends whom I have challenges with. But most of the people I am friends with, I love as people. It’s strangers that I have problems with.

What’s interesting is, what do I know about strangers? Only my own projections and judgments. Really, all I do know is precisely the biological causes & conditions. I have no idea why people are here, what their lives are really about, etc. Even when people seem to do nice or not-nice things, who really knows why. So, getting back to the causes and conditions is really a way of seeing clearly, because the rest I really don’t know.

There are people whom I’ve gotten to know, and really dislike the more I know them. I won’t go into details, not wanting to send my mind off on the stories. But it does happen. Still, most people are just confused. Not evil - confused. Evil is something to do with the ‘soul.’ Confused is something to do with the thoughts and feelings being juggled around in there. Now, as someone who does use the word ‘evil,’ I use it as Forrest Gump would - evil is as evil does. But that’s a digression.

Another reason I don’t like people is I don’t like being around them because of the ways I restrict myself. It could be as mundane as not picking my nose or something, or not really saying what I feel/being open and honest. Sometimes, you can’t be completely honest with people: “I’d really like to have sex with you right now.” That is not going to lead to good things.

So, I don’t really know what to do about the repression thing, except, I guess amazingly enough this is the same thing I was working with yesterday - discipline. The situation is not to be so aversive to discipline-energy. Part of that process, for me, will involve being in the story - remembering why I’m applying discipline, appreciating that. And also knowing that this energy is necessary to make anything good happen, so it is a friend of the good. And finally some more standard vipassana practices: how does it feel in the body, see it as just a mental/physical event/energy. Notice the negative stories that spring up around it: iron fist, anti-dead-poets, closet, strait-laced, waste of life. And gently set them down, because that’s not what’s going on here. ‘Gently’ is the final point, because for me at least, discipline needs a lot of softening in its application. No gevurah without hesed, and, in action, not too much netzach without hod. Netzach is watching the breath, being with the mindstate, slogging. Hod is when it’s time for some mental ice cream. Both are necessary. (Note the negative story in the word ‘slogging.’)

So I guess the process is to be with discipline-energy more, and come to appreciate it. Again, the story part will remain important, because I am very suspicious of “come to like the energy of discipline” without a clear-eyed sense of what it’s being used for. Otherwise it’s just nazi boot camp. But with that set, then it is appropriate to look at the energy as an energy.

And then, after that, when I apply a little discipline energy to not farting in public, or watching what I say to people, it won’t provoke so much resistance.

That’s that piece. I think those are the only two pieces I see right now: projections/not seeing people just as causes & conditions, and the self-limitation they require on me. Obviously there is also just the simple desire and aversion: that guy’s walking where I want to walk, that girl is pushy, whatever. Those are more basic and easier to see.

I care about all this because love is a big part of the picture. I am sad when I think that I am not a loving person. So, I am directing some energy toward being a loving person.

Some states arise naturally. Others can be cultivated. I seem to have a negative story around the latter - oh, we’re just making ourselves be loving people. But, um, that’s not really so negative, is it? To have that ability, and to use it?

It only is negative when it gets tied up in the God concept. We’re making ourselves be religious people, i.e., we’re cultivating a sense of the sacred and then reporting back “Look! The world is sacred!” In other words, it’s involved with some kind of truth-claim. Possible solution: drain the God-concept of the word God, and replace it with the Hebrew YHVH, Presence. We’re just being present in a mindful way, and also cultivating a sense of the sacred - which means love, awe respect - for the present, instead of, I don’t know, derision, desire, greed, hatred, and delusion. Then there is the later step of making the Presence our Elohim, our “god,” meaning, that which we respect and love and honor as such.

The Elohim part is optional, subjective. The YHVH part is not. That’s there. Here.

Finally, have the Buddhists made YHVH their Elohim? Of course. They want to fully be with the present, be free from what takes us away from the present, namely, suffering in its various forms.

Ah. Title for work: “YHVH Means Presence: Synthesizing an integral Buddhist Judaism”