I want to write about this due to a recent episode in my life…
When arguments happen between people, it is often due to our inability to let go of our own right-eousness. We think we are right and the opposite party is wrong. Therefore, until the other party accepts our viewpoints, our impulse will be to continue to push up the heat on the verbal exchange and often this has the potential to end relationships, friendships, business partnerships. Enemies, wars, feuds, grudges are created, sometimes for life or even many lives… There are areas of life that we have to tiptoe through due to awkwardness and avoidance linked to the past…
Really, so much trouble created from an insubstantial viewpoint that cannot even be seen, found or maintained for a long time. Sometimes, even if we do not argue out loud with the person, but within our minds, we create an incessant mental dialogue about who is right or wrong that saps our energy and drives all awareness out. Then it will also recondition our future actions which may simply be just postponing the inevitable conflict…
Sometimes, a small part of us knows that we are on the way to a catastrophic argument with the other party that has little benefit, but yet, we can’t seem to let go of our righteousness and our impulse overwhelms all common-sense and we continue the reckless exchange of words with a fiery blindness…
From my own experience, it is seen that many of these so-called viewpoints are just mental build-ups that are completely unrealistic and unreliable. For instance, someone who just had a bad day fending off clients who were demanding, becomes quite defensive and brings that kind of attitude into interpreting whatever happens at home with her family. A family member may say something quite innocently, but she will take it as a personal affront and burst into an irate back-and-forth until anger is beyond control.
It can be seen from this example that due to our past histories, conditioning and automatic reactions, we tend to elaborate on a lot of concepts on top of what is actually happening directly in our experience of the situation. For eg, if we see someone dropping some used tissue on the streets, we might immediately create more mental elaborations about how this person must be some inconsiderate, selfish, uneducated brute who has poor parental guidance. He must have been doing this all along in the past and the world is in such a dirty state because of such people etc etc etc. … The fact is that all that is seen, is merely a person dropping a used tissue period. And he may have simply dropped it accidentally.
Similarly, we are prone to creating a lot of mental elaborations above the nitty-gritty situations of life. If we realise that we are doing this, although it is not possible right away to transcend the creation of the stories at the moment they arise, but it is possible to stop proliferating it, or even to step back and let go of it. (Because these elaborations are unreal, will pass and probably irrational in some way. ) Then it would not be possible for these elaborations to make us deeply opinionated. We become less egoistic and more receptive to the viewpoints of others. It is actually possible to stop insisting and start looking from the viewpoints of others.
Here, I am talking of genuinely letting go of one’s own viewpoint from even within our mind, and looking from other perspectives. To back down from an argument out of meekness or fear and then to engage in it furiously in your mind is still insufficient, because we are still glued to deep belief in our own opinions. How often have we had sleepless nights debating back and forth in our mind, imagining further scenarios and creating unnecessary distress/anger?
This is not to say that one should give up all of one’s opinions and become a ‘Yes-man’. We may know our Ps and Qs, have our own ideas about things, but we no longer subscribe to them inflexibly. For instance, we should still have principles in accordance to Cause-and-effect, Bodhichitta and Ultimate Truth, because if we are unable to live according to these principles, they will naturally provoke some kind of external or internal conflict in us.
But in addition to that, there is also some kind of understanding into the nature of mental elaborations, they are seen as something quite weak and transient, instead of being stone-etched and unchangeable. And we know that oftentimes, there are exceptions to everything and allow for space for fixed opinions to be dissolved. When arguments brew, we can almost see it coming, and there is an understanding in us that allows us to change direction with flexibility and a willingness to concede and accept before anything drastic happens.
Most importantly, when you are able to see through your own mental constructs and elaborations and be no longer binded or blinded by them, you will be able to release them when they have arisen, then a sense of deeper relaxation and bliss will arise in your experience and fill your life with deeper clarity and simplicity.
I think of course, for this to happen, it takes frequent self-reflection, self-questioning, honesty, sincerity, mindfulness and even a consistent practice of meditation (Note: there are many kinds of meditation, i am referring to those meditations that have the attitude and orientation of facing up to reality/life and to see things with deeper clarity, rather than meditations that emphasize escaping or disassociation from ordinary life and tunes you out…)
Hope what I say makes sense, though it is difficult to explain how I feel in words…
