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How does accepting things as they are help make them better?
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
I've always been of the school that when a defilement of some negative mentality shows itself to apply an antidote to counteract it. Such as, when feeling angry meditate on love or patience. I try as best I can to be honest and fearless when looking at my mind so as not to fool myself or miss something. But I'm starting to think that this, while it has been effective, may not be a very compassionate approach.
So if I accept things as they are what is left to motivate change? Simply being okay with being angry or being a thief or something doesn't seem to be the teaching. So what am I missing?
So if I accept things as they are what is left to motivate change? Simply being okay with being angry or being a thief or something doesn't seem to be the teaching. So what am I missing?
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The Serenity Prayer is pretty good:
God grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things that I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
I think acceptance is just the beginning of finding a solution to a tough situation, and not the total solution.
I like the line, "Just because you are indispensable to the universe does not mean the universe needs your help." The only thing anyone might claim to change with any usefulness is their own mind. The rest is largely imaginative window-dressing.
So in Buddhism we investigate what is closest to home ... this mind. Just investigate ... not praise or blame. We watch and watch and watch some more. Watch inside (so to speak); watch outside (so to speak). Watch everything and ... see what happens. The prize (since we all may long to get one) is a greater ability to see things as they are, coming and going and coming again and going again. Things change ... no big deal and yet quite a big deal when the mind is not at ease.
Imagining what it might be like to 'accept everything as it is' is not the same as accepting things as they are. Imagination may draw us forward -- or help us to imagine we might turn out to be as passive as a turnip -- but it is actualization of a clear mind that eases the strain. Do what you like, go where you like, think what you like. Just keep an eye on things and correct what mistakes you can.
Just noodling here.
Accepting things as they are makes YOU better.
Acceptance doesn't do anything.
But it is what allows for conditions to change, which allows for circumstances to change.
I remember hearing a talk by trungpa on the development of the paramitas. One doesn't go about developing them because then that is forced. When a situation presents itself you work with that circumstance. If you're impatient thats what you work with.
Impatience arises. Investigate. There really is no need to fix it. It is a play of energy. See it for what it is and let to disipate on itas own.
We solidify what is a process by the three poisons. Just thoughts for you
@genkaku I do meditate quite a bit and watch what goes on, I guess it's the praise and blame part that I have trouble with. Change happens, but does it happen for the better without an effort to make it so?
@federica I like that, thanks.
When you say "Such as, when feeling angry meditate on love or patience" what are you focusing your love and patience on? Are you calling up thoughts that make you feel serene, thus blocking the anger or are you investigating the anger itself and transforming it with love and patience?
Our negative emotions get fueled by their denial or suppression. They just want to be there; they want to vent. When we get upset about them and find an antidote or whatever; they are like little human beings who don’t get taken seriously.
At least that’s my - probably grosly oversimplified- understanding.
When we completely accept our anger for instance, we are still angry, but at the same time we are compassionate and calm and patient and understanding.
We don’t fight the anger, so we don’t fuel it, and it will disappear after some time.
What remains is our open accepting state of mind.
That’s the change.
(Imho)
I am curious, on this website we all have our notions about how we walk down our path, treat the dharma in various ways, but how much of what we say actually with regards to the teachings do we fully committ to?
In order to have expectations of the way things should be, we need to judge good or bad and we suffer. When we are effected by things that have happened in the past and again judge them as good or bad, we suffer.
Acceptance is not the place where people give up and let things be, it is more often the place where they can respond to the real world rather than our world of illusions. When facing death, and a person is able to accept the inevitable, they pull their lives together and prepare for what will come. Before that time, they suffer in anger or denial. They waste their energy fighting the inevitable. When they see things as they truly are, they muster their forces and get on with what needs to be done.
Well said :thumbsup:
Some people say you should accept everything, but that's not true. Buddhism isn't about accepting in that sense of the word. When people say you should accept things, they probably mean you should recognize them for what they are. After recognizing something, you can find a skillful means to remove it.
However, sometimes you do need to be accepting. For example when you are angry, you apply loving kindness. Accepting and loving kindness are the same thing; they embrace.
So apply acceptance when it helps, and don't do it when it doesn't.
With acceptance,
Sabre
In my mind that’s what meditation is about. It’s not some kind of internal fight. On the meditation-mat everything is welcome and free to go. We need to trust the process of meditation without interfering in it very much, or even at all.
I know there are other ways of doing meditation, but in this context it’s all acceptance.
Whereas I believe you always must accept. If you apply acceptance when it helps as you stated, you trap yourself into a world of judgement.
If I accept myself as I am (have compassion for myself), what motivates improvement? I realize intellectually that there is something wrong with this question, but what motivates people who like themselves to practice?
Nobody ever became a Buddhist because s/he was so damned happy. Some people suffer and seem to have all the luck.
When you read a Buddhist scripture, you make judgments about it. When you chose some particular Buddhist sect, you made a judgment. Life is full of judgments. It's what you do with those judgments that is important.
When your buddies tell you that you should go out for a night on town, do you not make judgments taking into consideration the Precepts...before making your decision?
Perhaps we're just looking at things in different ways.
Accepting yourself as you are means that you are resolved - improvement requires a state of degeneration that may be improved - its a progression along extremes - it requires opposing extremes - perhaps you have further to progress in accepting yourself - maybe that's the improvement you hint at...
Practice has far more potential that the first steps of resolution - it isn't solely a way to self improvement - it can be a way of life.
By being undivided there is no dichotomy between a self that is trying to not be a thief and a self that indulges.
Thus clear seeing can happen when one is undivided. You know what it is to be a thief rather than a delusion.
Go full force.
I understand that by working from the "inside" out, the world can slowly become a better, more compassionate place. But what about more systematic changes? Is it not good practice to desire great political/social change?
The way I've sort of reconciled the idea of "accepting things for what they are" and change is that one should know one's own capacity and ability to make change, and stretching beyond that is not accepting one's own limits. But staying within the limits while working for social change still is within the framework for "accepting things for what they are."
If one believes that compassion and love is the way to end injustice, then acceptance is a necessity in order to get to that compassionate place.
The world has plenty of prisons and to some degree, they do keep people on the straight and narrow. There are many people who have been victimized who are more than happy to see people rot in prison. To my way of thinking however, those people who hold the person who hurt them in their heart with resentment, hurts themselves as well.
When I think about the transformative power of compassion and love, I think of an example of a woman who was able to forgive a drunk driver who had killed her son. This woman was bitter and resentful and hated the person in jail. The person in jail was also bitter and guilt ridden. When this woman who was the victim of the crime mustered the courage to confront the drunk driver, she felt compassion and she was able to forgive. This extraordinary act of love and compassion, transformed both of their lives more than one could imagine. Much more effective than prison.
That is real power.
Then act.
Then correct your errors with an attentive eye on your very real responsibilities.
Buddhists are not just a gaggle of smarmy, arm-chair theorists. What distinguishes them -- if anything -- is the willingness to pay attention and take responsibility.
Cheers.
What is anger, the actual sensation of anger, and the thoughts it generate.
We already know that being mad angry is not going to help solve a situation.
So what is that anger that prevent you from keeping your cool?
what is that boredom that prevent you from enjoying yourself?
What is that guilt/envy/sadness that prevent you from enjoying a beautiful evening with your family, distracting you...
When we begin to look inside closely enough, we begin to realize that these things are distracting us constantly, preventing us to live life peacefully.
I'm talking about things like fighting for rights for workers, making a more egalitarian society, that type of thing. I can't see how feeling compassion for faceless multi-national corporations that harm the environment, cut jobs and safety standards with the stroke of a pen would help anything. Then again, I'm not sure what actual social/political action would help.
True acceptance at a time like that is actually a place where a person musters their resources and begins to do productive things that need to be done like make peace with someone they have feuded with. For the most part, loving and practical things that have been left undone.
Acceptance in respect to your example of fighting for rights of workers, does not mean capitulation either. It speaks more to the spirit the fight entails. One should always resist tyranny but not with hatred in their heart. The hatred can consume a person and cause them to struggle with what is happening now. When consumed like that, people may make irrational choices. To respond with acceptance, one responds in a measured, rationale way, always keeping in mind that these multi-national corporations are not really faceless. They have fat little faces with people attached.
An example I would use would be a Buddhist approach to animal cruelty vs the PETA approach. In many ways, radical PETA adherents have created another negative entity which is often as resisted and disapproved of as the industry that they resist. I don't pretend to have the magic elixir that will end animal cruelty, and I don't mean to criticize PETA's intentions which are honorable and well placed, but at times, some of the responses that occur can be cruel to people. Hatred vs hatred, or vs greed or vs indifference are not consistent with Buddhist teachings.
It can also help us to fully experience the present by minimising denial and aversion.
And in some sense mahamudha or dzogchen focus on introducing the state of enlightenment with right view.
This state isn't contrived or produced, but is the natural state.
So from the point of Rigpa (knowledge of the natural state) one can better understand how everything is a play of rigpa energy.
such knowledge really ends the process of creating projects or seeing immediate experience as something other than it is. it cuts ignorance directly.
try to change things that you cant accept.
my baby died, i cant accept it, i want to change it.
its a recipe for insanity.