Be Nobody (18 page)

Both my grandfather and I were totally convinced that this kind of wrestling was real. It drove my dad bonkers! We would watch eye gouges, “sleeper holds” (pinching some “nerve” in the shoulder that would render the opponent instantly unconscious), death grips, and elbows to windpipes—not to mention the fully illegal bashing with chairs and attacks with smuggled blackjacks, brass knuckles, and razor blades. All this, my dad adamantly maintained, had to be fake.

You know the adage? Grandparents and grandchildren generally get along so well because they share a common enemy. My granddad and I derived a certain perverse pleasure in the apoplectic response we got from my father as we held firmly to our faith that wrestling was a real “sport” and not just athletic “theater.”

If we are to defeat our mental afflictions, we have to be like the professional wrestlers. We need to get ready for the Big Smackdown. We have to be ruthless and brutal with our negative emotions, for they are our true foes. While our human “enemies” have lots of other things to do when they're not harassing us—sleep, eat, carry on relationships, tend to business, pursue hobbies—our mental afflictions have nothing else to do but destroy our happiness.

There's a big misconception about the spiritual life. There is a widespread assumption that the spiritual practitioner should always remain in a sort of otherworldly and catatonic state—tranquilized, muted, and peacefully inert.

But the true spiritual renegade is not some namby-pamby navel-gazer, looking vague and flashing the peace sign at his or her negative emotions. It may come as a surprise to some that many spiritual texts use the language of violence and war in relation to the project of self-control.

The Buddhist classic
Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life
by Shantideva, for example, urges us to be “fierce warriors” when it
comes to overcoming what the text refers to as our “congenital enemies.” Just like soldiers on the battlefield, we should be brave when it comes to our own personal Rage in the Cage. Knowing that the struggle will not be easy, we should steel ourselves and resolve to persevere no matter how difficult it may be:

In the heat of battle, fierce warriors are able to swiftly kill those who, ignorant and unhappy, will die anyway. Although tormented by countless wounds from arrows and spears, they do not turn away until they've accomplished their goal.

When I am intent on slaying my congenital enemies, the causes of all my continuous suffering, why am I now depressed and dejected, even if I must put up with hundreds of difficulties?
⁹

Warriors on the battlefield, boxers in the ring, and, yes, professional wrestlers in their smackdowns get even more psyched when injured. And we too should become even more maniacal when the opposition puts up resistance in our personal struggle with our own worst inclinations.

The
Guide
also urges us to be not only strong-willed but also merciless when it comes to the Big Smackdown. We all have the tendency to make excuses for our thoughtless reactions. Even worse, we defend, justify, and rationalize our afflictions:

So what if I got angry and yelled? She deserved it! I just had to set her straight!

And worst of all, we go so far as to identify with our negative emotions—and thus define ourselves through them:

I am jealous; I am proud.

In order to live happier lives, we must stop pampering, excusing, rationalizing, and identifying with the enemies of our peace of mind. If we leave the door open even a crack, they will surely rush in. If we continue to mollycoddle these nasty demons, they'll beat us every time.

That's why Shantideva exhorts us to
get medieval
on the little buggers!

Let my guts ooze out and my head fall off—whatever! But I will never, no matter what, bow before my enemy, the mental afflictions.
¹⁰

Nothing namby-pamby about that, right?

Let the Rage in the Cage begin!

•  •  •

What are the weapons we'll need to fight the mental afflictions? What kind of wrestling holds can we apply the next time one of them raises its ugly head? And what sort of “illegal” implements can we smuggle into the Rage in the Cage that might give us a fighting chance in our efforts to defeat our worst enemies?

Recognition

Just acknowledging the mental afflictions as harmful, rather than as necessary or even desirable constituents of our being, will go a long way toward helping us beat them.

A smoker friend of mine refers to cigarettes as his “little friends.” They're always there for you, he explains. First thing in the morning with your coffee, all day long as you work, with a drink at the end
of the day, after meals or sex—you can always count on your “little friends” to help you get through life.

Many of us regard our mental afflictions as our “little friends” instead of our worst enemies. Labeling them more accurately will help get us psyched for the Big Smackdown.

Understanding

Mental afflictions always justify themselves. It is, in fact, part of the negative emotion's modus operandi to appear to be a reasonable response to a difficult situation. But this is a serious mistake. The mental afflictions are not rational at all; they are harmful emotional outbursts that reduce us rather than lead us to a better self-perception.

I had a student who once told me that she was having a hard time breaking her habit of getting angry. “I get such clarity when I'm mad,” she reported. “With anger, things really come into focus and I feel such certainty.”

And yes, as we all know, there is the sense of great lucidity that comes with a strong emotion like anger. Everything is indeed quite starkly black and white:
I'm right; they're wrong
.

But when the spell of the affliction is broken, we often realize that the seeming clarity that came with the negative emotion was actually a distorted, skewed view of the actual situation. A powerful feeling, wholly in service to the ego, was masquerading as a hyper-rational, objective evaluation.

The mental afflictions do not actually bring us real lucidity, and they do not arise out of rational, objective calculation. No one in the cold light of day chooses to have a mental affliction attack. No one, when faced with a problematic person or situation, judiciously, cogently, and reasonably considers their options and then elects to have a big meltdown.

This person just said something I didn't like. Hmm. I wonder what would be the best thing to do here, for my own present and future happiness and peace of mind? Oh, I know! I'll increase my blood pressure and heart rate, get all knotted up and tense inside, go red in the face, and say things—maybe really loudly with lots of four-letter words—that I'll probably regret a few hours from now!

So another major weapon we can develop and then bring into the Big Smackdown is wisdom and understanding. Remembering how karma works to create our sense of self, we remind ourselves that if we want to have a better self-conception we'll need to avoid the temptation to give in to the siren song of the afflictions. And so we dispel the affliction's spell of pseudo-rationality.

With wisdom we understand that
it is never in our self-interest to be anything other than cool, calm, and collected
. It's never intelligent to capitulate to a mental affliction. Giving rein to our worst inclinations is neither rational nor advantageous.

Self-improvement derives from self-control, not from self-indulgence.

De-identification

Disassociating from the negative emotions gives us more power over them. We are
not
our jealousy, pride, envy, anger, or depression. A mental affliction may have arisen, but regarding it as an alien power will reposition it as something other than “you.” You will be fighting them, not integrating and identifying with them.

Determination . . . by any means necessary

We've already seen how important unwavering resolution is in our battle with our negative emotions:

Let my guts ooze out and my head fall off—whatever! But I will never, no matter what, bow before my enemy, the mental afflictions.

Any other attitude we take with our afflictions will only sustain and invigorate them. The “by any means necessary” determination is perhaps the most powerful arrow in our quiver as we wage war against our inner enemies.

And like the professional wrestlers I used to watch on television, we can't be too scrupulous about what methods we use to try to win the match. Full nelsons, scissor holds, kicks to the head, but also blackjacks, folding chairs, and razor blades—we have to resort to whatever weaponry will help us emerge victorious from the Big Smackdown.

Once more, we let the
Guide
be our guide. In order to aid our good intentions, resolution, and determination to become a better, more self-controlled person, the text recommends a truly radical method, one that bends the usual rules. We are told how to smuggle the blackjacks and brass knuckles into the ring.

We are charged to use and direct the mental afflictions against themselves. As in some of the martial arts, we take the energy of our opponent—and make no mistake about it: anger, jealousy, pride, and strong desire have great energy—and we turn it to our own advantage.

And so Shantideva draws a distinction between the mental afflictions that function as our enemies and the very same energies when utilized as our allies. The
Guide
recommends, for example, that we abandon patience (the usual antidote to anger) and
get angry at our anger
!

Stationed within my own mind, they are perfectly situated to destroy me. And yet I do not get angry. To hell with this inappropriate patience!

I will be tenacious and intent on revenge! I will wage war against my mental afflictions—except for the kind that are designed to obliterate mental afflictions.
¹¹

Get angry . . . about being a slave to anger!
¹²
Be proud . . . of efforts to overcome pride.
¹³
Be envious  . . . of those without envy!

And be strongly desirous. Desire the defeat of the opponent in the Big Smackdown, the Rage in the Cage. Desire self-improvement. Desire a better self-image, the reward of self-development through self-discipline and karmic management.

And finally, desire with all your heart the end of desire, the Great Itchlessness that is the end of desire, contentment itself.

•  •  •

“I count him braver who overcomes his [negative, selfish] desires than he who conquers his [external] enemies,” said Aristotle, “for the hardest victory is over self.”
¹⁴

It has been recognized since at least the ancient Greeks that it is hard to change self-destructive habits and replace them with beneficial ones. It's difficult for the self to overcome the self. It's totally worth doing—and we should fervently desire it—for it's the only way to really improve our self-esteem. But no one is saying it will be easy.

And so, as we engage in our regimen of self-improvement through karmic management, we have to expect setbacks.

We won't always emerge from the Big Smackdown victorious. There will be plenty of times when the mental affliction du jour will defeat us, even when we put up our best fight. We may offer resistance, but there is a point of no return where we just capitulate:

Oh, the hell with this! I don't care if this affliction is bad for me! I don't care who I hurt—myself or others!

And we give in to the urgent demands of the affliction, and the negative emotion wins that round of the wrestling match.

When we are temporarily vanquished by our own worst inclinations—when we submit to the powerful wrestling holds of anger, desire, jealousy, resentment, and prideful arrogance—it feels like we're a character in a cartoon. The affliction grabs us by the throat, and we become a rag doll as we are bounced against the wall and swung up and down and right and left for a while. We are in the throes of a force that is currently greater than the potency of the weaponry we are using to combat it.

We then must switch into a defensive rather than aggressive strategy. We cover up and try to protect ourselves the best we can in order to minimize the damage.

The first line of defense is to break our opponent's hold as soon as possible. Many of us are accustomed to letting our mental afflictions have their way with us for hours, days, weeks, or even months and years. A spiritual warrior will wait until the overwhelming force of the affliction lessens its death grip a bit. But when it does, he or she will immediately shake it off:

OK, that's enough now. I gave in to my resentment, my arrogance, my anger, or my jealousy, but I will not let it ruin another minute of my life! I may have lost this round, but I will not concede the match!

Freeing ourselves from its hold, we get back on our feet and ready ourselves for the next encounter with the enemy. We go back to the spiritual gym and work out some more. We fortify our weaponry in
preparation for the next bout. We
recognize
that the afflictions are the real and only enemy to our happiness; we
understand
that self-improvement is a matter of fighting old habits and replacing them with new ones; we
de-identify
with these nasty tendencies; and we
determine
to be victorious in the next round of the Big Smackdown.

A second defensive strategy to employ when we lose the Big Smackdown is to not use the setback as just another way to feel bad about ourselves. Regret, yes; but guilt, no—and there's a difference. Feeling guilty about our failures, like the depression that often feeds on such guilt, is really just another form of narcissistic self-absorption. It doesn't help, and in fact it saps the energy we need to feel better about ourselves.