Best Of
Accentuate the Positive or Eliminate the Negative?
This dichotomy has been on my mind lately. It all exists on a spectrum were we seek a balance, but some naturally fall more to one side than the other. Is one better than the other, or are they two sides of the same coin? The question for the spiritual seeker, or life liver in general, do we live our lives trying to build the positive qualities and situations to better our lives and the world or do we clear away the negative aspects of life so the good can flourish? Is one way more beneficial such that we are justified in advocating generalized advice to adopt one over the other?
I come at this issue from the lens of being an introvert. Growing up introversion was viewed in a negative light, extroverts would say things like, "you just need to come out of your shell". At some point in the not so distant past introversion/extroversion was seen more as a spectrum and the positive aspects of introverts received attention and praise, while still honoring the value of extroverts.
Introversion/extroversion is only one of the psychologically defined and studied personality spectrums, the other being conscientiousness/careless (I prefer care free), agreeable/disagreeable (challenging), neuroticism/emotional stability and degree of openness to experience. To me the question at hand concerns neuroticism/emotional stability.
I test pretty heavily towards the emotional stability end of the spectrum, so it is a little hard for me to truly understand the perspective of someone towards the neuroticism end. Even so, I do believe there is value in a more neurotic world view. Problems that would bother others, don't tend to bother me and can go unaddressed until they get out of hand. And I do believe that the best medicine is customized for the individual so trying to force a neurotic peg into an emotionally stable hole isn't very productive. That said I do believe in the value of a positive focus. For one, life in the moment is likely more pleasant, and second an optimistic outlook favors seeing and taking advantage of opportunities when they do happen to arise.
Optimistic thinking has been in the ascendant for a while, but now there seems to be a shift towards the value of honoring our negative feelings. On the one hand, most everything moves in cycles and as they mature healthy strategies can become extreme and mutate into something less beneficial, toxic positivity for example. I see a distinction between the rise of the recognition of introversion and this movement towards valuing negative feeling today, in that introverts didn't condemn extroversion the way it feels like the trend today devalues a positive, constructive and forward looking attitude. I see criticism of therapies like CBT or time tested philosophies like Stoicism that have relieved a lot of suffering over the years. I find reframing my view does me a lot of good, I just recently turned 50 and was lamenting it a bit. My uncle light heartedly said its better than the alternative of not getting older, and that helped. Some of the advice I've been hearing lately would tell me that instead I should feel the bad feelings I have about ageing, I think so I can process them? But I only have those feelings because of the way I contextualize and view the reality of ageing, I don't get it... Going back to the personality spectrum, I can imagine that for others this new advice might prove helpful and recontextualization not so much.
Maybe this also somewhat goes back to the old argument about the state of nature. By eliminating the negative do we return to a naturally wholesome state, or do we need to construct beneficial structures to temper our naturally antagonistic qualities? I think baby studies show we have both positive and negative hardwired into us and thus need to both accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative to varying degrees depending on the circumstance.
That's all the long way of saying, I think its all a balance and different strokes for different folks. We're all of differing temperaments and we're all better together when we can honor these differences. I'm of a pretty positive disposition and I like hearing other perspectives. It does bother me though when those perspectives get presented as The Truth rather than one way of many valuable ways to be in the world.
What has and hasn't worked for you?
person
Re: Mindfulness Hack
@how said:
Few things point out the fallacy of a correct posture like achieving such a thing, because the difficulties of a meditation practice will simply continue on unabated despite such a narrow achievement.
Do you think that a mind, when threatened with a potential curtailment of its empire during meditation, won't bring up the ideal of a perfect posture to neutralize such a threat?
How much of these aches and pains are about having chosen a meditation posture that is more ideal-based than it is actually comfortable?
Is each moment of your life, also equally filled with these aches & pains when you are simply being physically still?
Interesting! It's my feeling that posture is overrated. I think it's important for novice meditators, but one of those rafts that can be discarded. I've taken 3 levels of Shambhala training and the staff is always going around the room "correcting" posture. I found it extremely distracting to be suddenly told to place my hands on my thighs, palm down, just behind the knees. My hands were just fine in my lap and I had been meditating comfortably. Thank god I never did a Dathun.
After a couple of years, I found sitting on the floor wasn't going to work. My legs were going numb and it hurt. Rather than fight it, I started sitting on a stool or chair. 15" above the floor is about right. Much better. I still didn't conform to "correct posture" for a chair, which was fine by me. Not so fine with some meditation instructors, but whatever. Usually they'll try to correct me a couple of times, but when I continue in normal practice, they leave me alone.
There is the ideal and then there's the real world, so to speak.
Re: Mindfulness Hack
Few things point out the fallacy of a correct posture like achieving such a thing, because the difficulties of a meditation practice will simply continue on unabated despite such a narrow achievement.
Do you think that a mind, when threatened with a potential curtailment of its empire during meditation, won't bring up the ideal of a perfect posture to neutralize such a threat?
How much of these aches and pains are about having chosen a meditation posture that is more ideal-based than it is actually comfortable?
Is each moment of your life, also equally filled with these aches & pains when you are simply being physically still?
how
Re: Getting better "blog"
Each moment is a new arising, a life and its finish. Each moment of consciousness is another re-do in relationship to the last. Is the person who brags still existing in the same universe that spawned that bragging?
To an ego, this is chaos,
to the braggart, it is fears defense,
to the accepting, another opportunity in awakening.
how
Re: Mindfulness Hack
This is a great subject.
In paying attention to the micro moments of ones gaze becoming inattentive, you might notice that the eye's focus actually begins first to cross just enough to start creating a blank visual screen that the mind can then freely dominate. This a common observation amongst zazen forms that are practiced with the eyes open and is just indicative of the way we have habituated the process of sense gate data subservience in the promotion of our mind's own storylines.
Meditators who are blind or meditators who practice with their eyes closed can find the same precursors to a falling away from being fully present in the obfuscations of any of the other sense gates as well.
In Zen its good to note that such observations are considered to be more akin to concentration exercises than they are to the meditation itself. They can be foundational to the development of a meditation practice but shouldn't be mistaken for the meditation practice itself.
In a different tradition that has similarities to Zen they have a delightful admonishment to their meditators about it in saying one should be wary of becoming as limited as a cat watching a mouse hole.
how
Mindfulness Hack
With Shamatha meditation, the instruction is to rest your gaze on a spot - on the floor, about 3' out from where you sit.
Something I learned over the years was that this instruction is important. It's important because it teaches the student about a tool they can use in their practice. Kind of a hack.
When meditating, rest your gaze on your object (that spot on the floor). When you sense your eyes wandering away from the object, you are no longer meditating. Return to the object and resume meditation. Don't go all vise-grip on the object to prevent wandering. Just rest.
Re: How to die?
It is harder to imagine a bigger statement of contempt for your fellows than choosing a funerial legacy that removes that much breathable air from a terrarium that the rest of the living depend upon to continue surviving.
how
Re: Sick of Zen
but on a side note, i just found this whole post interesting because i experienced the opposite from @Talisman
after practicing Nichiren buddhism for years, i felt like i wanted to run away from structure and dogma and the fact that i could "just sit" was like... "ahhh... relief." i like sort of figuring things out myself and not being forced to swallow things that i don't understand.
Re: How to die?
A funeral costs about 10,000 euros over here as well.
But it seems like a self-aggrandising statement. I’m tempted to record no wishes on the matter, as I will be gone by then and what’s left is just the physical shell.
Jeroen
Re: Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
Right speech: do not talk to a resentful person about politics, especially if the party getting roasted is the one they have voted all their life. Dumb, SUPER DUMB Kotishka!
Kotishka