Meeting people is difficult because nearly everyone is lost in thought, which is an effective barrier to encounters.

We pay a heavy price for being civilized, literate humans. Estrangement from others is an important part of that price.

There are two modes of awareness or consciousness: direct and indirect.

Indirect awareness is thought-laden. Direct awareness occurs without thought. Genuinely meeting people requires direct awareness.

To be burdened by thought is to think. To think is to conceptualize. To conceptualize is to separate by categorizing (sorting, classifying, cataloging).

Consider a simple case in which a thought-laden man meets a woman. Of course, he immediately takes her to be other. As other, he immediately evaluates her in terms of his likes (desires, appetites) and dislikes:

Is she beautiful? Is she sexy? Is she intelligent? Is she witty? Does she have high self-esteem? Is she wealthy? Would she look good as a kind of appendage if he were seen with her socially?

In other words, what could she do for him? Might she be a sexual, social, or political asset?

How should she be understood (conceptualized, labeled)?

Some of his classifications take place within seconds. Some require more time. All are habitual or, at least, customary or usual.

The labels would be different if he were to meet a man, but the same kind of process occurs. Of course, the same kind of process occurs when a thought-laden woman meets another person.

Since such conceptualizing is separating, meeting people is more difficult to the extent that we conceptualize.  The less we conceptualize, the easier meeting people becomes.

Of course, sometimes it’s necessary to conceptualize others. Anyone who went through life ignoring potentially dangerous others might not live long.

It’s important to realize, as all self-conscious people understand, that others are constantly evaluating us. Even if I freed myself from the often insidious habit of conceptualizing others, they would still conceptualize me.

What’s the alternative?

It’s not immediately clear, is it?

The alternative is to free oneself from incessant conceptualizing. This, I take it, is how sages live.

It’s not that sages are unable to think or that they don’t think. Sages think when it is useful to think and not otherwise. In other words, they are free from useless, often repetitive and habitual, thoughts.

What should you do if you are interested at improving your skill at meeting people?

Regularly practice letting go of thinking.

It’s best to start with natural objects that are so common that you automatically dismiss them as soon as you notice and label them. Is there, for example, a tree near where you live that you see almost daily? Have you ever really looked at it? Have you ever really looked at it for even a few seconds without conceptualizing or labeling? What would it be like to perceive it for the first time?

What about a nearby patch of grass? Try lying down on your stomach and simply looking at it for a few minutes.

Flowers are excellent subjects – as are many animals.

Plants, most nonhuman animals, and even minerals are all relatively easy to meet because they are not thinking about you. So only one entity, rather than two entities, has to drop thought for genuine meeting to occur.

Notice that, in the sense that these other forms are also parts of Nature, they are ultimately not separate from you because you, too, are part of Nature. There is one whole totality.

Meeting people is difficult because, even if you are not conceptualizing them, it’s almost always true that they are conceptualizing you. Meeting people genuinely only occurs when both people succeed in letting go of thought. It takes two.

It can be very sad if you are willing to drop incessant conceptualizing but the person you’d like to meet isn’t.

The good news is that genuinely meeting others is possible. The bad news is that it’s uncommon and initially difficult.

Please never blame yourself if a potential partner never genuinely meets you. Since you are not in control of how that other person uses the mind, it’s not your responsibility.

Your responsibility is to be as open to others as possible, to be as infrequently lost in thought as possible.

Fulfilling that responsibility is, although difficult, very simple. Nothing could be more natural.

Changing habits is never easy. Changing this one, though, is very satisfying. Even just doing the first time can be a revelation.

Logically, the best way to start is with identification rather than trying to stop noticing similarities and differences. In other words, start by pretending that the other is really not other at all.

If you begin with the assumption that that other is ultimately one with you, you’ll soon discover for yourself that meeting people suddenly becomes much easier.

As always, if you know someone who might benefit from reading this, please forward it.

 
Related posts:  Define Identity, Learning from Nature, Improve Intimacy, Listening Well, and Uncovering Your True Self To Improve Your Relationships. 

Additional resources:  J.J. Rouseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality; Eckhart Tolle’s “Realizing the Power of Now” (6 CD set).

What, exactly, is right action?

There are general descriptions that are correct but unhelpfully vague.  For example, it is action that decreases suffering whereas wrong action increases suffering.  Rather than characterizing what we are seeking, this merely describes its outcome or results.

There are types of actions used as examples, but they, too, may be unhelpful because it’s not clear what they have in common or how they relate to other possible actions.  The Buddha himself, for example, says that it is: “Abstinence from the destruction of life, abstinence from taking what is not given, abstinence from sexual misconduct” [Samyutta Nikaya 45:8, Bodhi, tr.].  Apparently, too, non-actions (not doings) can be right actions.

In the Buddhist tradition, the path or way for attaining final Nibbana (Nirvana) has eight aspects.  These are: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.  Since this is the path taken by those who would be noble (by realizing their buddha nature, by becoming buddhas), it’s called “the Noble Eightfold Path.”

So the right action in a given set of circumstances is the action that would be committed by a buddha in those circumstances.

It’s important to notice that being a buddha precedes doing right; in other words, being is primary and doing is secondary.  (In western thought, this pattern of ethical reasoning was followed by, among others, Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche.)  Right conduct is an outcome of being the right kind of person.

Since the possible sets of circumstances that may arise are innumerable, it would be hopeless to try to list what the right acts would be for all those different sets of circumstances.

The only other way to answer the question is to specify what all right conduct has in common that all wrong conduct lack.

This is what Thich Nhat Hanh does:  “The basis of Right Action is to do everything in mindfulness.” [from The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching]  To be right, an act must come from mindfulness.

It’s also what Eckhart Tolle does when he says, in effect, that it comes from the cessation of thought without loss of consciousness (awareness, alertness), which is a definition of “Presence” [in “The Art of Presence”].  To be right, an act must come from Presence [Being].

It’s important to notice that it doesn’t work the other way around.  Tolle gives the example of a Christian who has never realized Presence spending his life fruitlessly trying to love his neighbor as himself.  Though the Christian’s intentions are consistently good, he’s wasting his life.

All actions are doings.  All doings occur in Becoming.  What’s critical is the source of the actions. If the source of doing is Being, the action is right; but, if the source of doing is Becoming, the action is wrong.

If so, from an ethical point of view, realization of Being logically precedes right action.

What’s the practical takeaway?

Focus on realizing Being and ethically right behavior will follow. To realize Being is to stop thinking without any loss of consciousness.  Though it is not easy to do, it is simple.

It is when you recognize your neighbor as yourself that you will be able to stop trying to love your neighbor as yourself.  There will be no more need to try because of the underlying identity. Your doings that relate to your neighbor will automatically be loving.

It is always the difficult but simple identification of what appears to be other as really being self that is the foundation of loving action.

As always, if you know someone who might benefit from this, please pass it along.

Except for sages, the rest of us experience reincarnation frequently. Surprised?

This is important, because it explains why we suffer and sages don’t.

I argue in a related post [see below] that “if we make incorrect or unwise identity judgments about ourselves, we can really get into trouble.” This is exactly the problem here.

As strange as it may initially seem, there is no better relationship cure or booster than to stop making bad identity judgments.

The adjective ‘incarnate’ means ‘embodied in (especially human) flesh.’ Like thoughts and emotions, all physical objects such as human bodies are “forms” (objects, denizens of the domain of Becoming).

To identify two (apparently distinct) forms is to take them to be (in reality) one. Many times daily we take ourselves to be our bodies. That is the truth about reincarnation.

Answer quickly: “Where are you right now?” You are in your house or on the train or in the library, right? Notice the natural identification with a particular physical form.

Such physical identification is similar to mental identification. Except for sages, the rest of us habitually take ourselves to be our thoughts or minds, in other words, our stories or autobiographies; we are the protagonists of our own works of fiction.

We continuously drag these mental and physical identifications around with us.

This explains the heaviness of our lives, why experiences seem so serious and important. What would you expect to happen if you continuously take yourself to be a particular skin bag or set of noisy thoughts?

This explains why we suffer. Without realizing it, we habitually make ourselves suffer.

We don’t have to. Suffering is optional. To end it, simply identify yourself with Being rather than Becoming, with formlessness rather than with forms.

It’s not easy to break identification habits, but it’s possible. Ask any sage.

While you are asking, enquire, too, about the incredible lightness of Being. Once we stop continuously dragging mental and physical identifications around with us, we begin to soar, to live freely. Living becomes playing.

Even if you have never before put these ideas together, you nevertheless have an inkling they are true, don’t you? That’s because you have spontaneously, if only occasionally, experienced for yourself the incredible lightness of Being.

The more you break the reincarnation habit, the more you will experience that lightness or freedom.

Why not do whatever it takes to break that habit?

Partly because all your encounters will begin to flourish, it’s a much better way to live.

Additional Related Posts:  Define Identity, Primitive Identity Judgments, and Identity Judgments.

Additional Resources: Panayot Butchvarov’s Being Qua Being and Eckhart Tolle’s “The Art of Presence” (6 CD set).

As always, if you know someone who might benefit from reading this, please pass it along.

Do you think of yourself as being special?  If you do, please stop!

Why?

Permit me (1) to give the general argument, (2) to remind you of two illustrations from literature, and (3) close with a tantalizing idea connecting literature and the general argument.

(1) Thoughts of specialness are misleading evaluative judgments that foster morally wrong actions.

Here’s an important initial caveat: on neither philosophical nor empirical grounds can we know the consequences of our actions, and, furthermore, “we cannot know what consequences our actions will probably have” for the reasons that Butchvarov gives in Chapter Eight of Skepticism in Ethics. If so, since deciding not to act in any relevant situation is itself an act with consequences, we nevertheless must soldier on in ignorance.

Why does it seem to be, as A Course in Miracles puts it, that “Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions”?

Please imagine yourself to be in any morally important situation that involves another human being.

If you don’t think of yourself as being special, you think of that other person as being just like you. There’s no morally relevant difference. If you agree with me that all genuine love is Self love [not self love], you take that other person to be one in Being with you.

If so, how could you hate or harm that person? How could you attack that person? To realize that “You are not special” (from A Course in Miracles) is to realize that that other being is as special as you. If so, how could treating that person worse than you treat yourself possibly be justified?

If you harmed yourself, wouldn’t you forgive yourself? If that other self harmed you, shouldn’t you also forgive? “Forgiveness is the end of specialness” (from A Course in Miracles). To harm another is to harm yourself.

If you do think of yourself as being special, you don’t think of that other person as being just like you. If he or she isn’t like you, why would you trust that other person?

Once you understand that person to be unlike you, you will actually perceive that person to be unlike you. Why? We perceive what we believe is there and we believe it is there because we desire it to be there. So, we become blind.

Who makes us blind? We do! Perception will be faithful to what we want, but who decides what we want? We do!

So favoring myself and harming that other person may seem justified.

We desire being special. We convince ourselves that that is true, which leads to perceiving ourselves as being special.

In other words, being special is self-created. (It is not Self-created.) It’s a function of ego, whose initial work is separation, which always then turns into attacking and defending, i.e., the ego’s main business. No separation, no ego.

(2) The first illustration from literature comes from Parts I and II of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

You’ll recall that Gulliver’s first voyage was to Lilliput. The Lilliputians are about 1/12th the size of Gulliver. Due to his greater physical size, Gulliver thought of himself as being special. It’s obvious he thought of himself as so special that the Emperor had to search Gulliver’s pockets and make him promise not to leave with any Lilliputians, which, Gulliver admits, he would really like to have done (“I would gladly have taken a Dozen of the Natives . . .”). So smaller people are morally worth less.

Really? Swift mocked our tendency to shade events in our own favor.

A fierce storm at sea forced Gulliver on his second voyage to Brobdingnag. The Brobdingnagians are huge! Will the smaller Gulliver accept that he is morally worth less?

Hardly: “Undoubtedly Philosophers are in the Right when they tell us, that nothing is great or little otherwise than by Comparison.”

After various adventures, he reflects “how vain An Attempt it is for a Man to endeavor doing himself Honor” among those who are so much larger. They seem too obtuse to see his value!

Eventually, after telling the king the history of England, which he deliberately shaded in his own favor, the king concludes that Gulliver’s kind are “the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.” Gulliver thereupon argued that “great Allowances should be given” to the king for his harsh judgments because of the king’s ignorance.

So Gulliver managed to think of himself as being better than either the little Lilliputians or the large Brobdingnagians. It made no difference who he met.

No matter who you meet, do you find yourself with a tendency to think of yourself as being special?

The second illustration from literature comes from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Before Raskolnikov murdered the sisters, he’d written an article “On Crime.” Porfiry (the detective) read the young man’s article.

Porfiry told Raskolnikov that he was interested in how Roskolnikov had argued in the article that all humans were divisible into the ordinary and the extraordinary, who are those who think of themselves as being special. The extraordinary are those who are able to step over moral obstacles if doing so will be salutary for humankind. These are people like Lycurgus, Solon, Muhammad, and Napoleon.

Porfiry challenged this distinction: “how does one manage to distinguish these extraordinary ones from the ordinary?” [Pevear & Volokhonsky, tr.] What is the mark of being special?

He continued, “then there’s this other worry: tell me, please, are there many of these people who have the right to put a knife into others – I mean, of these ‘extraordinary’ ones?” What percentage of the population thinks of themselves as being special?

Also, “Now then, sir, it really cannot be – heh, heh, heh! – that when you were writing your little article you did not regard yourself – say, just the tiniest bit – as one of the ‘extraordinary’ people . . .?” In making the distinction, isn’t it tempting to think of oneself as being special? After all, “who in our Russia nowadays doesn’t consider himself a Napoleon?”

Porfiry’s correct: the distinction doesn’t stand up to examination. There must be some feature (quality, characteristic) that separates the two classes. No such feature is identified and I agree with Dostoevsky that no such feature can be identified.

If so, there is no difference in moral worth among humans. There’s no such thing as being special.

If you disagree, I hope that you’ll leave a comment below explaining why.

(3) Permit me to draw your attention to the pattern of argument in this post.

Suppose it’s correct that it’s dangerous to think of yourself as being special, that immoral acts grounded on the idea of being special come from spiritual blindness.

I am Being. You, too, are Being. So are all others. That is the fundamental spiritual reality.

Morally wrong treatment of others comes from blindness to that reality. Thinking of yourself as being special is a symptom of spiritual blindness.

If so, why is it easy to find examples of that in literature?

Eckhard Tolle asks: What’s the difference between fiction and literature? His interesting answer is, to put it in my terminology, literature comes from Being whereas fiction comes from Becoming.

It’s difficult, of course, to pin down the difference. Might not Tolle be correct? Think of popular fiction such as mysteries and romance novels. Don’t they come from mind?

Though, of course, great writers like Swift and Dostoevsky use their minds to write literature, their best work has a depth that all fiction lacks. That dimension of depth is the difference.

Thought lacks such depth. No-thought has it.

If so, that would explain why it’s no surprise to find spiritual insights in literature.

Interesting, no?

(1) Whence sexual desire?  (2) What should be done about it?

(1) It comes from identification with form, with body. If you did not identify with your body, you would not experience sexual desire. It starts with a feeling of lack or incompleteness.

It is the physical urge to become one with another body. It seems to be universal among humans.

This topic is approachable from different perspectives.

Biologically, our hormones lead us to survive, reproduce, and raise our young.

Morally, insofar as it is selective and exclusive, sexual desire is antithetical to genuine love.

Emotionally, it is an attempt to overcome the negative emotions associated with loneliness and fear (of lasting separation).

Spiritually, since sexual desire is for bodily unity (wholeness, communion), it comes from a profound desire for oneness. Yet, because it is a desire for bodily unity, even when relieved there can only be a temporary, if sometimes deep, satisfaction. Because it is temporal, such satisfaction must be fleeting.

Like all desire, sexual desire is of the domain of Becoming and not of the domain of Being. Like all desire, it is a desire for future fulfillment; satisfaction is not now but, we hope, in the soon-to-be future.

Here is a spiritual trap. Real happiness (bliss, joy) is only available in the present moment. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “happiness does not lie in ideas about what we will realize in the future” (from Breathe! You Are Alive).

So connecting sexual desire to the Becoming/Being distinction immediately invites adopting an interesting, uncommon perspective.

What about relationships (encounters, affairs) built on sexual desire?

Sexual relationships are inherently dysfunctional. Obviously, they are temporal.

Insofar as they are grounded on the idea that the object of sexual desire will remain the same, they are delusional.

Insofar as they are akin to addiction, they are filled with clinging and intense neediness. Everyone except romantically deluded teenagers understands the brevity, instability, and insanity involved in “falling in love.”

They typically involve constant reinvention coupled with frequent injections of delusion and deception. They are based on using others to gain sexual fulfillment.

W. H. Auden: “Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.”

Sexual relationships are salvation’s substitutes.

To think “I want you” is to confess to a clinging state of mind. To cling is to suffer.

Who is the I who wants?

Who is the other who is wanted?

The idea that a person is a separate substance is unintelligible. There is no possibility of an intelligible relation between two unintelligibles.

This is my way of expressing the important reason why those who are open to Being have always taken the paradigm of love to be friendship. They have never taken it to have anything to do with sexual desire, sexual union, or sexual relationships.

The fundamental spiritual error with respect to sexuality is the underlying identification with body. It’s not that that identification is false; it’s that it is radically incomplete.

(There’s a sense in which this is good news. Even those who are thought by many others to have sexually desirable bodies have them for only a few short years. Coming to grips with a loss of beauty can be very difficult for such people. Since that is not a problem for many of us, it might even be thought to be an advantage never to have been thought to have a sexually desirable body!)

Instead of making the small claim that “I am this body,” why not make the big claim that “I am Being” right from the start?

From a spiritual point of view, the claim “I am these thoughts” is equally disastrous.

A sexual desire is either a thought or a craving concerning bodily fulfillment. Because it’s useful to set up the critical issue, it’s a wonderful example of the egoic mind at work:

“Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind? For both you cannot have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For one you see as means; the other end” (from A Course in Miracles; the other otherwise unattributed direct quotations that follow in this post are from this book).

What is freedom of the body? What could it be? A popular entertainer with an endless supply of groupies?

“[F]reedom of the body has no meaning.”

So, you may desire either freedom of the mind or freedom of the body. However, there is no freedom of the body, which leaves freedom of the mind as the goal.  Freedom of the mind is no-thought, freedom from compulsive thinking.

What could kill sexual desire? Months or years of a smorgasbord of sexual activities with multiple partners? How tiresome and empty!

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: “I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.”

Even if it were possible, selecting that path would be going exactly the wrong way. “[T]he body is a limit on love.” Why?

The body is an entity in Becoming, whereas Being is the domain of genuine love. The ego, which is all about separation, interprets the body as itself.  Love, which is all about union, comes from Being, which is empty of body.

(2) When you find yourself inflicted with intense sexual desire, what should you do?

I don’t know. Nobody knows. As I have argued previously in multiple places, there is no knowledge of right and wrong.

A decision either to do or not to do is required. There’s no escape.

Decisions always come from your understanding of yourself. “Every decision you make stems from what you think you are,” and, so “represents the value that you put upon yourself.”

Avoid underestimating yourself.

My best suggestion is to treat all cravings as opportunities for strengthening freedom. The best first reaction, if freedom is your goal, should be simply to stop! Inject some space between you and the craving. Instead of behaving as desire’s slave, seize control by deliberately putting distance between you and the sexual desire.

Once you have made that critical move, whether you decide to give in or not is secondary.

“In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to consider very simply is ‘What do I want to come of this? What is it for?’ . . . The clarification of the goal belongs at the beginning, for it is this which will determine the outcome.”

Exactly! Once you are clear about what you would like the situation to be for, you will perceive the situation as a means to that end.

Is your end real release (liberation, freedom)? Do you want to open more fully to Being?

If so, sexual desire can be an opportunity, a genuine blessing in disguise.

As always, please feel free to comment on this post below. It might help me and others to know what you think. Also, if you think it useful, please use the social media buttons to pass it along.

Why is it difficult to apprehend the root of all evil?

The reason it’s difficult is because, although the critical distinction can be apprehended, it is impossible to use conceptual understanding to apprehend it. Rather, it must be directly experienced.

Because of this fact, there are a number of ways to talk about the critical distinction. None of those ways, however, is adequate from the standpoint of conceptual understanding. They are all signposts, pointings, mere gestures.

All conceptual understanding is dualistic. To understand conceptually is to classify (sort, discriminate) using some concept or other. A concept is a principle of classification. For example, if you have the concept of redness, you can classify any object into red or not-red.

One of many ways to state the critical distinction is to state that it is the distinction between unity and non-unity (duality or plurality). What, though, is the conceptual understanding of unity?

All it could be is to negate non-unity: unity is non-duality or non-plurality. True.

Is it helpful?

No. Conceptual understanding breaks on the rock of unity.

Here’s what needs to be apprehended nonconceptually:the root of all evil is being stuck in non-unity.

Although glimpses of unity occur spontaneously, because most of us have no idea what to do with them, they remain as experiences among other experiences. They may be interesting, but they don’t seem important, much less life-changing.

In that sense, most (perhaps 99%) of us humans are stuck in non-unity. The root of all evil comes from humans who are so stuck in non-unity.

So what is the root of all evil? It is anything characteristic of Becoming.

For example, the root of all evil is conflict. The root of all evil is ego. The root of all evil is time. And so on.

Without time, there is no suffering. Time is egoic, whereas timeless Being is nonegoic. The ego is all about suffering and separation or division, whereas the nonegoic is all about healing and unity.

Selfishness or egocentricity are egoic, whereas selflessness and “Self-fullness” are nonegoic.

Time and timelessness conflict until time is realized to regain timelessness.

The ego’s religion is the denial of Being.

Think of unity as Being, which is characterized by eternal peace and joy. Think of non-unity as Becoming, which, at best, is characterized by temporally brief periods of peace and joy.

Being is nonegoic, whereas Becoming is egoic.

Your ego may be thought of as your sense of separation. Since separation causes suffering, to be egoic is to suffer. Therefore, since the ego is the root of all suffering, we may conclude that the root of all evil is the ego.

There is no suffering in Being. All suffering is in Becoming.

Another way to state this is to state that suffering requires time. Since Being is eternal (timeless), there is no suffering in Being. All suffering occurs in time, in Becoming.

Another way to state this is to state that suffering requires separation. Since Being is unity, there is no suffering in Being. All suffering occurs in Becoming.

Here’s the good news: If, as the Buddha argued, ultimately there is no ego or separate self, then the ego is a delusion. If it is a delusion, we shall only continue to suffer as long as we mistakenly take it to be real. As soon as we stop clinging to it, it disappears. With its disappearance, suffering disappears.

(It’s important to understand, as I have stated many times in this blog, that there is a difference between physical pain and psychological suffering. The end of suffering, then, is not the same as the end of pain. Pain, though, ceases to be a big problem once there is no suffering.)

It’s helpful to think this way: being only a persistent delusion, the ego’s existence is incessantly threatened. To make itself stronger, it seeks division and conflict. It’s perpetually looking for something to attack, for something to fight against.

Except momentarily, the ego is never satisfied, never at peace. Notice how, once it gets something it desires, it immediately wants something else.

To be attached to ego is to be afflicted by the someday syndrome: someday I’ll get what I want and be happy. To get to that fulfilling future, I want X, which is whatever is desired next.

Life becomes one desire after another. This is the way of the world. Grasping for more pleasure, profit, or whatever else we want to gain.

The Buddha said, “. . . avoid the road to profit and pleasure . . . Don’t follow the way of the world” (in The Dhammapada, Easwaran, tr.).

Of course, since the future always remains nothing but a thought or an imagining, it never arrives. So, if you follow the way of the world, discontent persists until death.

This whole approach to life is fallacious. Since it is a delusion, the ego actually has no power whatsoever! All it really does is to cause us to identify with our thoughts. Naturally, our self concepts are always at the heart of our thought systems!

If your ego keeps you busy enough fighting battles, you won’t notice this. Even if you do notice it, it’s impossible to think your way out of it.

The only way out is to let go of your whole thought system. That’s awakening from the dream of thoughts.

Your attachment to your thoughts will weaken as soon as you realize, as A Course in Miracles puts it, “Not one thought you hold is wholly true.”

How could it be? To think is to conceptualize and to conceptualize is to divide. A thought may be relatively or partially true, but it can never be wholly true because unity always is beyond it.

Being is limitless.

Its peace and joy come from its being unlimited.

So the root of all evil comes from your belief that you are limited. That is why you spend life always trying to hang on to what you have and to get more. Since nearly everyone else is also doing that, it’s why conflict seems perpetual.

Our human purpose is to escape from Becoming into Being, to escape from conflict to peace, to escape from incessant dissatisfaction to abiding joy. It’s to escape from thinking that you are some little egoic self always trying to gain more to realizing that your true Self is unlimited. It’s to escape from insanity to sanity.

It’s to realize your True Self as Being.

This cannot be conceptualized. As many sages have said one way or another, “Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained” (from A Course in Miracles).

It’s not necessary to seek and find something that you are not. Ultimately, there is no inner/outer distinction.

In other words, you are already what you are looking for. The only task is realzing it. There’s no need to seek Being because you already are Being.

Should we volunteer? Should those of us who are not fully enlightened sages directly and deliberately attempt to be charitable to others?

I don’t know. Perhaps, perhaps not.

Actions may be evaluated in terms of either their whats, their hows, or both.

The rightness or wrongness of what is done is inseparable from its consequences. Since it’s impossible to know all an act’s consequences, it is impossible to know whether an act is right or wrong.

It is our human condition never to know whether what we are doing is right or not.

So, in terms of what you would do, should you volunteer? It’s impossible to know.

In fact, if you are like me, you have often thought you knew what you were doing when you didn’t. Experience can make that painfully obvious.

Let’s instead focus on the how. Getting the how right is the key to acting morally. Sages have repeatedly told us that.

Nisargadatta: “It is not what you live, but how you live that matters.”

John Daido Loori argues that there is a distinction between being a do-gooder and doing good. Doing good is manifesting true compassion, whereas being a do-gooder is merely using someone else for some egocentric purpose. Someone with “the subtlest hint of self-centeredness” is only a do-gooder.

Ideally, burning away egocentricity should be a necessary condition for volunteering. Otherwise, it would be nothing except being a do-gooder.

The secret to being a good volunteer is the same as the secret to being a good anything:  get the ego out of the way and let Being flow through all relevant acts.

As a professor for over three decades, I had many students who volunteered who came to realize by examining their motives that they were only do-gooders. As a result, some quit volunteering until they became less egocentric.

Ramana Maharshi: “Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”

The first rule should be the healer’s credo: primum non nocere. First do no harm.

Using others to inflate your ego while thinking that you are selflessly serving them is a recipe for doing harm.

Doubt about your motives can undermine motivation. Such doubt can be beneficial. It’s a good idea to examine your motives before installing some pattern of behavior.

Will Durant: “One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.”

A problem is that few people are willing to do any serious self-examination.

William James: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

An even more serious problem is that, after serious self-examination, few people are willing to do the hard work of ego reduction.

Some degree of detachment should be a prerequisite for volunteering. Few seem to understand that all attachments are bad.

John Daido Loori: “It’s very easy to understand not attaching to things that are evil . . . But the same problem exists when we attach to good.”

Sengcan: “If you’re attached to anything, / you surely will go far astray.”

Detaching from ego is what permits identification with what used to appear to be other. Said another way, the more ego, the less genuine compassion.

Ghandi: “Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification . . . But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion.”

In other words, as he also said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

So, should you not then volunteer until you have achieved self-purification?

That’s what I used to think, but my position has softened. Now I would suggest that it would be wise for you to volunteer only after you are on the path of self-purification. In other words, it is not necessary to wait until you have completed that path but it’s a good idea to have made a good start down that path.

Maybe that’s only a rationalization: you decide. I base that suggestion on my own experience.

Over the last year or so I have been a volunteer at two different prisons. The work simply involves leading a self-selected group of inmates in sitting (meditating) and sitting with them regularly.

I make it clear to them that I am not a spiritual guru. I don’t teach theory; I teach practice. Mostly, I teach by showing.

Though I am on the path of self-purification, I have much farther to travel. Nevertheless, the inmates genuinely seem to appreciate my rather feeble efforts to help them help themselves.

It wasn’t that I avoided being a volunteer for so many years because I was too selfish and only interested in advancing my own cause.

It was because I realized that I was selfish that I avoided it!

Experience has shown me, however, that deliberately helping others help themselves may be alright even if you are selfish as long as you are regularly, preferably daily, working to decrease your attachment to ego.

So, if you are sitting daily or otherwise seriously working on yourself and a suitable opportunity to help others help themselves arises, why not test it?

You are likely to come away agreeing with Mike Rayburn: “It is impossible to give more than you receive.”

Since the world is in incessant flux, we make a lot of responses to changing circumstances. What’s the best way to do that?

I recently distinguished ordinary reactions from instinctive behaviors and unavoidable judgments. [Click here for that post.] I argued that the problem with ordinary reactions is that all the do is perpetuate the forms that keep us bound by Becoming. [Click here for the Being / Becoming distinction.]

When we train ourselves to stop reacting, what should our responses be like?

They should be like the responses of sages. What are they like?

They are unconditioned (unlimited), whereas all ordinary reactions are conditioned (limited). It’s the difference between freedom and slavery.

Freedom comes from Being; slavery comes from Becoming.

Important responses are the subject matter of ethics. Practical guidance for living is the raison d’etre of ethics. How may we emulate the righteousness of sages?

It’s important to distinguish the “content” of an act from “how” it is done.

An act’s “content” is its full description, which includes all its consequences. An act’s “how” is its intrinsic character, which is the act considered timelessly, in abstraction.

The critical difference with respect to the responses of sages and the reactions or responses of ordinary humans is not to be found in the content but in the how.

The reason for this is simple, important, and yet insufficiently emphasized, namely, that it is futile to attempt to judge all the consequences of an act. As Panayot Butchvarov once put it (in reviewing an article of mine), “it would be the height of epistemic hubris” to think that we could even know what all the consequences of an act are.

Since the moral rightness or wrongness of the contents of acts includes a consideration of their consequences, it immediately follows that it is impossible to know the rightness or wrongness of the content of acts.

This is part of our human condition. Nobody, not even a sage, is immune.

So, there is no way to know the rightness or wrongness of different responses to any situation.

It is only the ignorant or immature who attach themselves to the idea that certain types of act are always right and certain types of act are always wrong.

It is nevertheless true that some humans, especially sages, seem to act consistently better than other humans. How can this be?

I suggest that it is because such people consistently get the how right. What does this mean?

It can be described in different ways.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe it is that getting the how right means acting without ego. Why?

Egocentric acts are selfish acts.

Are moral acts selfish or selfless? It seems obvious that they are selfless.

Even if acting selflessly is a theoretical possibility, is it a practical one?

Yes, and the lives of sages (saints, successful philosophers) demonstrate it. There are the moral heroes. They can be found in all the major wisdom traditions.

The plausibility of this position increases immensely once you realize that there is no ego in the present moment. As I have stated before [click here for an example], no time, no ego.

The only moment to do something is the present moment. It is impossible to act either in the past or in the future.

So it is hardly surprising that the morally critical feature (namely, selflessness) can only be found in the present moment.

This leads to another description, namely, that getting the how right means acting from Being rather than from Becoming.

An ego is a form. It may be thought of as a person or self.

Whether they exist or not, all forms are to be found only in Becoming. There are no forms in Being; Being is formless.

So acting from Becoming means acting from the standpoint of some form or other, and acting from Being means acting from the standpoint of formlessness.

One way to approach the Buddha’s distinctive doctrine of no-self is to think of it as his denying that there is a separate ego (self, person). Yes, there is an ego, but that’s just a cluster (aggregate, field) of qualities. His point is that there is nothing behind those qualities holding them together.

This is what sages have realized (and not just thought). As that realization permeates more and more experiences, attachment to ego automatically diminishes.

As attachment to ego automatically diminishes, getting the how right occurs more frequently.

As getting the how right occurs more frequently, responses become freer and more appropriate. In other words, they become less conditioned or more infused with the unconditioned, with Being.

Sages renounce reacting and thinking; instead, they respond, if at all, with spontaneous appropriateness.

So the Buddha’s important analysis of ego connects with his ethics, with his descriptions of how to reduce dissatisfaction and live better.

Imagine what kind of a world this would be if everyone’s acts became less and less egocentric and selfish!

At least if you live long enough, it’s impossible not to experience the death of a friend.

We don’t select our relatives, but we do select our friends. If we didn’t value someone, we’d have never worked to create the friendship. So the subject here is loss of something valuable.

The first time I experienced the death of a friend was when I was 15. Jim was a hockey teammate who was a year older than me. My mother was grateful when he turned 16 and received his driver’s license because that meant that she no longer had to drive me to hockey practices and games. Not long after his family moved south from Toledo to Columbus, Jim was skating, probably playing hockey, on some ice outdoors. It broke. He fell through and drowned.

The last time I experienced the death of a friend was last week. John was 84 and died of natural causes, probably congestive heart failure. We’d been friends for about 51 years.

Plenty of friendships ended in between.

For example, Humpty was my best friend in high school. He died some years ago. He was like the axle of a wheel and all the rest of our group were like its spokes.

Rolo was the nominal leader of that group, charting the direction we rolled whenever he was around. I learned yesterday that he is in an intensive care unit breathing with the help of a ventilator. Even if he does not have pneumonia and wakes up from his coma, he doesn’t have long to live.

Humpty and Rolo are not my only friends and classmates who have died.

Amy committed suicide almost fourteen years ago to the day.  She was my best friend at that time. For me, that was a really hard death.

An even harder time for me was seventeen years ago when my wife Laura left after fourteen years. Since it involves rejection as well as loss, a divorce can be even more difficult than “just” loss of a friend. The death of a friendship can produce even more suffering than the death of a friend.

If you have not yet had similar experiences, just wait.

My father died at 84 and my mother at 89. They both complained in their later years about losing so many of their friends to death.

Does it seem morbid to write a post on the topic of the death of a friend?

If so, please ask yourself: what is the opposite of death?

Do you think that life is the opposite of death? Actually, birth is the opposite of death.

Life has no opposite. Life is not a concept, a genuine principle of classification [click here for more on the critical terminology].

Is it possible that a friend’s death can itself have value?

It can certainly hurt a lot. It can seem to hurt in every cell in the body! Although it comes in waves, the suffering can last for weeks, months, years, and even longer. (Perversely, we even manage to attach ourselves to suffering.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have learned to let it hurt. Instead of focusing on being busy and trying, unsuccessfully, to keep myself distracted, I’ve discovered that it’s best to sit quietly and open up to suffering completely.

Let it hurt. If it’s crying time, that’s alright. Sometimes, life hurts a lot. That’s just the way it is.

Unless we learn the lesson, life will keep giving us opportunities to learn the lesson. Andrew Matthews: “When we fail to learn a lesson, we get to take it again . . . and again!”

What’s the lesson?

Appreciate every form without attaching to any form.

Forms exist only in the domain of Becoming. All forms are impermanent. Nothing abides. Some, like a star, seem to last for quite a while; others, like a flash of lightning, are fleeting.

Your body, like mine, is a form, too.

The death of a friend is the end of a form. That’s all.

Attaching to forms isn’t just risky, it’s foolish. By itself, it cannot possibly yield lasting value.

Since the only permanence is found in Being, the only permanent value is Being.

That insight can provide the best perspective from which to handle the death of a friend. Why?

Since there is only Being and Becoming, there are only two perspectives possible on the death of a friend: it can be experienced from Becoming or from Being.

All genuine love is not self love but Self love.

Perhaps this explains Aristotle’s central claim about friendship, namely, that “a friend is another self.”

When the death of a friend is experienced from the perspective of Becoming, it is as if a piece of one’s self has been permanently lost. How could that not be emotionally traumatic?

What happens, though, when the death of a friend is experienced from the perspective of Being?

The only way to know is to be a sage, someone who experiences Becoming from the perspective of Being.

In theory, a fully enlightened sage would not experience any suffering. In practice, nobody — or almost nobody — is fully enlightened, which means that, even for a sage, there will be some emotional suffering. However, its depth and duration will be considerably less than for the rest of us. Why?

Sages are less exclusive and more inclusive in their identifications than the rest of us, which is why they are more loving and compassionate.

The less self focus, the more Self focus.

There is always a potential hidden gain in every loss. The death of a friend can have value if it is used as an opening to Being, as a stimulus to reduce suffering and increase compassion.

The weaker your connection to Being, the greater your suffering. The stronger your connection to Being, the less your suffering.

Note:  It turned out that my friend Rolo died about an hour or so before I began writing this blog post.  I dedicate it to his memory.

Wives who cheat raise some interesting questions.

For example, if you are a married man, how can you avoid having one?

If you are an interested single man or a married man who cheats or is willing to cheat, how can you take advantage of the wives of others who cheat?

If you are one of those wives who cheat or are tempted to cheat, what should you do?

This is not a topic that occupies much of my attention. Following up on something I happened to read in an email two days ago led me to Mark Cunningham’s free e-book “Renegade Hypnotist Reveals Amazing True Secrets About Scoring With Married Women!” (If you want to read it, just do a Google search for “scoring with married women.”)

I had read David Shade’s book The Secrets of Female Sexuality. Mark Cunningham is David Shade’s mentor. Each of them sells various products online and they together produced an extended DVD training on erotic hypnosis. Because the e-book was short and I knew who Mark Cunningham was, I read it.

There are many people who are interested in uncomitted sex. I have personally rejected uncommitted sex as not worth it since I was a teenager, but I’m always open to taking another look at a view. Cunningham claims that wives who cheat or who are willing to cheat are the last refuge of uncommitted sex in America.

Cunningham refers to statistics that show that at least one in three married women cheat. This reminds me of what Neil Strauss wrote in The Game: “If a woman has been married three years or more, you come to learn that she is usually easier to sleep with than a single woman.”

Of course, if you are a man looking to seduce wives who cheat, Cunningham wants you to adopt the correct attitude: “there is no such thing as a married woman, there are only women who got married!”

Wives who cheat are open to cheating because, while they got married thinking it would make their lives better, they now realize after having been married that their fantasies are not getting met. Movies, television shows, and romance novels keep their fantasies fresh; such entertainment is extremely popular.

Since wives who cheat have unfulfilled desires, why not help them by enabling them to fulfill their fantasies with you? Give them the romantic adventure they crave – while, of course, satisfying your own lust.

Wives who cheat are like girls who crave excitement and adventure. Cunningham’s basic position is that, since they are already open to a certain kind of man, just become the bad boy they want and start interacting with them.

“[F]or most women, marriage is a type of pathological trance!” If you present yourself correctly, you’ll break them out of that trance and thus be doing them a favor. Wives who cheat stray because they are not being fulfilled in their marriages.

Be the kind of man who has the qualities she values and she’s yours as a sex partner.

Cunningham details an approach using handwriting analysis. Apparently, women love it. Break the ice, get a writing sample, and it’s game on.

He explains how handwriting analysis can reveal the traits he values in wives who cheat:

She is a woman who has intelligence (which is the most important characteristic), a good imagination, a desire for more physical activity, confidence, secretiveness, generosity, a sensitivity to criticism, curiosity, blindness to consequences, a desire for attention, a trusting nature, energy, a good sense of humor and wants a challenge.

He recommends screeing for 7 negative characteristics. Even if she’s one of the wives who cheat, she should not be a pathological liar, have low self-esteem, be domineering, have a strong temper, be full of resentment, be irritable, or be subject to jealousy.

Where is it possible to find wives who cheat? He details where to go (such as gyms during the day, card stores, parties, and fashion shows) and sometimes even what to wear (for example, look like a successful businessman when you are at a bar that is servicing a ladies’ lunch).

The key is to be, and not just pretend to be, the kind of romantic alternative wives who cheat are looking for.You should be, for example, dangerous to know, assertive, tough, adventurous, and dominant.

He tells you what to do to meet her by breaking into her state and provides a list of what never to do.

After you have given her a wonderful time and enjoyed great sex, he details a clean process for ending it, supposedly without damaging either her or you.

Since breaking a major promise undermines integrity thus damaging character, presumably what he means is that the benefits available from and to wives who cheat can outweigh any damage done.

Naturally, he also thinks that hypnosis works even better than handwriting analysis and invites you to buy some of his hypnosis products.

Does this system work? For the right person, almost any such system will work and work well.

If you are a man, should you use it? I don’t know; there is no knowledge of right and wrong [click here or go to the moral well-being category and scroll down to the post "Knowing What To Do" or go to Chapter 4 of my REAL Overeating Help to understand this very important point].

(I’ve never done it. I wouldn’t do it for the sufficient reason that I don’t believe that the rewards from uncommitted sex are worth its costs.)

If you are a woman who is one of those wives who cheat or is thinking of becoming one, should you do it? Again, I don’t know.

If you are considering it, the most important point I would make is this: please realize in advance that it won’t cure what ails you. It’s true that, even without commitment, great sex can be a wonderful distraction. With commitment, great sex may be the second-most important human experience.

Even with commitment, though, it won’t cure what ails you.

In fact, nothing in the domain of Becoming is able to do that [for the Becoming / Being distinction, click here].

The only genuine solution for life’s problems is to become a sage grounded in Being. It is always better to experience Becoming from the perspective of Being than to be locked only in Becoming. Why?

As long as you are locked only in Becoming, you will always be dissatisfied. There are no genuine solutions in the domain of Becoming.

You may not know that. Alternatively, you may lie to yourself about that, and you may even believe your own lie. No matter: there is no living well in Becoming apart from Being.

So, if you are under the delusion that becoming one of the wives who cheat or taking advantage of wives who cheat will end your dissatisfaction, it won’t. It’s just another mutual using similar to any business transaction.

Nobody but you can fix you. That’s the bad news. You are on your own; nobody else can live your life.

The good news? Fixing yourself is possible and, even, simple.

What do I recommend? First focus on fixing yourself and then your relations with others will soon have a much better foundation. (That’s the policy I myself use.)

Nobody can know that this will work, and I certainly don’t know that. On the other hand, without direct experience nobody can know that anything will work.

What really matters is unrelated to infidelity.