13 May, 2024

Why am I attached to certain people, and how to become more fulfilled without relying on others?

QUESTION

Dear Ven. Robina:

Last month I received the opportunity to experience directly the deep suffering of change of one of my biggest attachments, which of course is a man.

As you say in your teachings, the suffering is literally unbearable.

But thanks to your patient and profound teachings I could identify it immediately as this suffering of change and investigate and analyze it directly as it occurred.

Also, I realized that I’m mainly attached to the feeling of joy, peace, and harmony that this person triggers inside me.

On the next deeper level I could not explain why he triggers these wonderful feelings. Do you know what the root causes for feelings are? Why does one person trigger such marvelous feelings? And another person who may be even more “beautiful” or “special” does not trigger these feelings.

I realize too that underneath the attachment is the lack of self-worth, and that I yearn for his approval. 

So how do we learn to become more fulfilled without relying on others? How do we learn to rejoice in our own good qualities? It seems such a necessary practice and it seems that we never do it.

And how to learn from these experiences?

Love and many thanks for your guidance,

G

ANSWER

Dear G,

Well, your analysis of this attachment is most interesting. You are correct.

The intensity of our craving for someone or something equals our own lack of wholeness; attachment is the symptom of a less than whole person. Join the universe!

All these delusions are fabrications, exaggerations – that’s the nature of the neuroses – and they’re extremely painful. They’re the voices of ego.

The immediate cause of why someone appears delicious to us is, indeed, due to the presence of attachment in our own mind, but why some people trigger pleasure in us and others don’t — that’s due to past karma. Clearly, you have some intense history with this person that has manifested as closeness and goodness and much pleasure, which now seems to have ended.

And we all know that things don’t last, some quicker than others. And losing the object of attachment is naturally very very painful.

It’s only really when we’ve realized emptiness, realized our own true nature, that attachment goes. And when attachment is gone, so has anger, jealousy, pride, and the rest.

Yes, you’re so right: a major practice that we overlook completely is rejoicing in our goodness, our virtues, our intelligence, etc. etc. But we need to actively think those thoughts; they don’t arise naturally — certainly, the delusions seem to arise all the time in our mind.

Suffering in its nature is the fruit of past negative actions, but if we’re wise we can learn from it hugely, which you seem to be doing. Which is marvelous.

In terms of our growth as human beings, it’s such a great opportunity to grow quickly, if we have the courage to face it, embrace it.

When we get in touch with our true nature, yes, we discover that it is naturally blissful, joyful, positive. This is encouraging!

Love to you, G, and much rejoicing in your practice!

Robina

16 May, 2024

Low self-esteem is the flip side of pride

Arrogance is a really interesting state of mind. We never like to admit to being arrogant. Anger: we're even prepared to admit to that. But arrogant? We don't like to think we're arrogant; it doesn't make sense to us. 

But in our culture, we love to admit to low self-esteem. And what's utterly fascinating about this is that low self-esteem is like the flip side of arrogance, pride. If you didn't have arrogance, you could not possibly have low self-esteem. This is quite shocking, so let's look at this.

The key function of all the delusions, all the unhappy states of mind – actually there are two: one is they're very disturbing, but the main one is they're delusional, meaning they're misconceptions deep in our bones that exaggerate certain aspects of the object. With arrogance, the object is obviously self: arrogance over-inflates, exaggerates our own importance.

And what is low self-esteem? It’s the opposite: it exaggerates our own lack of importance. If you constantly feel you are nothing, if you constantly feel you are hopeless – “I'm nobody, I'm nothing, I can't do it, I'm so negative” – that's the flip side of pride. 

The fact is, if you didn't have arrogance, if you didn't have pride, you couldn't possibly have low self-esteem. It's like deflated pride, you know? We know that as soon as someone insults us, we’re so injured; there's so much pain, and then it turns into low self-esteem.

Now, we can see arrogance in other people very easily: “Oh my God, he's so arrogant. That woman is incredible; she’s so arrogant. Look at them.” We see it in other people, but it's really hard to see it in ourselves; we would never like to think we're arrogant. 

A big problem is we mix the delusions and the virtuous states of mind. We confuse self-confidence with arrogance, and we confuse humility with low self-esteem – but self-confidence and humility are both virtues. So a humble person would be self-confident and an arrogant one would fall into low self-esteem.

Humility is a spacious state of mind: it’s relaxed, content. It’s a virtue; it's more reasonable, it's more in sync with dependent arising, and it's comfortable. When you’re humble, you’re realistic about who you are and you’re content with it, you are self-confident. Arrogance is a nonvirtue, a delusion. It’s over-inflated, it's ego-based, it's uncomfortable, and it's distorted. 

Look at a person who's arrogant: they're very fragile. I always think of the example of two people in the same room: let's say they're both good at the same thing, and one has got arrogance and one has got humility. The humble person is delighted to meet someone else who's even better than they are. But the arrogant person is really distressed, really nervous, can't bear the thought of meeting a person who might be better than them because what happens is they take it as a personal insult, and they get upset, and then they feel, “Oh, I'm nobody.” They flip it over, and they become, “I am nobody. I am nothing.”

We've all got arrogance, and, in the West especially I think it’s one of our main delusions. That's why we all have so much low self-esteem. When an arrogant person sees people better than they are, they’re thinking, “How dare all these people out there be better than me? How dare everybody be more happy and more wise and more this and more rich and everything else?” 

We can'tbear to see this quality in ourselves. But it’s why we get hurt and injured and offended so easily. Look how fragile we are!

And this arrogance comes hand in hand with anger. If you've got anger, you can't not have arrogance, and if you've got arrogance, you can't not have anger. They're like two cousins, like brothers, like sisters. I remember Atisha, this eleventh-century yogi, saying – I forget which way he put it, but both would work – “The best patience is humility.” But “The best humility is patience” is perfect too, isn’t it?

This is not to criticize us. Seeing these delusions is really quite difficult because we’re so close to them, they’re so instinctive, and even hearing about them sounds like criticism, but if we can see our faults, we can see our suffering, and then we can find the solution.

We should be delighted to see our delusions and then know that they're impermanent, they’re not set in stone, they don't define me, and I can change. That's the humility that has to come, you know? So we need this humility – and patience – I tell you. It’s being kind to ourselves.