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The Weight of the World and its New Ugly
zombiegirl
beating the drum of the lifelessin a dry wasteland Veteran
In light of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon, I've been thinking about being aware of the world's suffering and whether or not it can become a negative. Isn't there always just some new ugly? It never seems to end...
Every time something like this happens, someone will always bring up awareness of all of the other miseries in the world happening outside of our limited scope. Living in a country like the US where things like this don't happen too terribly often, it's easy to forget about the worse living situations in other countries when they aren't right in front of your face. Is this a good thing or is this a bad thing?
My grandmother used to criticize me for watching violent movies. She would say to me, "Why do you want to put all that awful stuff in your head?" Sometimes, I think she was overreacting a little, but there have been certain movies and things in the media that I really wish I could un-see. There have been times that I wish I hadn't put that awful stuff in my head. Certain things can really stick with you and haunt you and I don't always think it's for the best. Has anyone here ever seen the horror movie (not to be confused with the comedy) The Girl Next Door? If you haven't... just don't.
It's important to be aware... It's important not to be blind to others' suffering... But sometimes, it just feels like such a burden knowing of all these awful things. Is it wrong to feel that way? These days I find myself avoiding the news in general because it's just too depressing. Does it help me to know the awful rape statistics of India? I can't see how that knowledge could enhance my life... it just makes me angry, makes me sad. Is sometimes wishing for ignorance selfish? It probably is... If we consider the war in Iraq, feeling this way could potentially lead to extreme nationalism when you aren't aware of our running death toll. But sometimes I just wonder if keeping up to date with all of the new ugly in the world is really necessary to keep me humble. Is knowing the ugly necessary for compassion? Don't the Buddha's teachings prepare us enough?
Maybe the problem is because I think too small and too limited. Some people probably learn about the injustices of the world and vow to make a change. Some people probably feel more connected to the world at large and don't feel as helpless as I do... Perhaps. But maybe being small and limited is okay too. There is certainly no lack of suffering in the world... my city, my neighborhood, these places are not exempt just because they could be worse.
What do you guys think? Anyone else struggling to keep that seed of optimism alive against the horrors that seem so much louder?
Every time something like this happens, someone will always bring up awareness of all of the other miseries in the world happening outside of our limited scope. Living in a country like the US where things like this don't happen too terribly often, it's easy to forget about the worse living situations in other countries when they aren't right in front of your face. Is this a good thing or is this a bad thing?
My grandmother used to criticize me for watching violent movies. She would say to me, "Why do you want to put all that awful stuff in your head?" Sometimes, I think she was overreacting a little, but there have been certain movies and things in the media that I really wish I could un-see. There have been times that I wish I hadn't put that awful stuff in my head. Certain things can really stick with you and haunt you and I don't always think it's for the best. Has anyone here ever seen the horror movie (not to be confused with the comedy) The Girl Next Door? If you haven't... just don't.
It's important to be aware... It's important not to be blind to others' suffering... But sometimes, it just feels like such a burden knowing of all these awful things. Is it wrong to feel that way? These days I find myself avoiding the news in general because it's just too depressing. Does it help me to know the awful rape statistics of India? I can't see how that knowledge could enhance my life... it just makes me angry, makes me sad. Is sometimes wishing for ignorance selfish? It probably is... If we consider the war in Iraq, feeling this way could potentially lead to extreme nationalism when you aren't aware of our running death toll. But sometimes I just wonder if keeping up to date with all of the new ugly in the world is really necessary to keep me humble. Is knowing the ugly necessary for compassion? Don't the Buddha's teachings prepare us enough?
Maybe the problem is because I think too small and too limited. Some people probably learn about the injustices of the world and vow to make a change. Some people probably feel more connected to the world at large and don't feel as helpless as I do... Perhaps. But maybe being small and limited is okay too. There is certainly no lack of suffering in the world... my city, my neighborhood, these places are not exempt just because they could be worse.
What do you guys think? Anyone else struggling to keep that seed of optimism alive against the horrors that seem so much louder?
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Comments
There are times when it is very, very difficult to stay optimistic and peaceful. There are times when I have to avoid the news for the sake of my own wellbeing. I'm not trying to hide from anything or ignore the big stories. I just don't think exposing myself to the endless 24/7 news cycle, where the commentators rehash the same incomplete fragments of information, can really do anything to help understand what really happened in any given situation.
My incipient Buddhist practice is helping me a great deal with this struggle to stay positive. (And I really am generally a very positive person.) When it all gets to be too much, it helps me to study and focus on the Five Mindfulness Trainings as set forth by Thich Nath Hanh. I know it might sound simplistic, but I feel that following the first five precepts in this manner can at least allow me to have a positive influence on my immediate surroundings. And that is all I can really do. Maybe that influence will radiate outward. Who knows?
I can relate to every word you wrote. I also struggle with my self over this being "selfishly unconcerned" or is it really "compartmentalizing for the sake of sanity"? Being a glass-half-full kinda gal, I'm going to go with the sanity story.
I stopped watching the nightly news, the weekly 'news' magazine shows (60 Minutes, 20/20, etc) and the 24/7 cable news channels years ago. I think it was right about the time of the first Iraq war (1991) when I suddenly realized there we were... there I was! ... watching an entire WAR on TV like it was a video game!
The absurdity and the ... craziness.... of that was undeniable.
Now of course you just can't miss the really BIG stories. The bombings, the terrorism, the wars, and other true atrocities of the world near and far. But I read/watch, then I think about what I can do (or can't do) about it, and then I try to move on as quickly as possible. I try not to dwell on these things. Sometimes I do well, sometimes I fail at it....
Obviously the bombs going off in Boston isn't trivial. But more broadly speaking, the news that is broadcast is negative-- negative sells. Positive doesn't sell so well because it usually isn't controversial. So you end up with a skewered picture of the world where the positives are largely filtered out. With the internet, this skewered view explodes exponentially (I say all this, being myself an ex-news junkie).
The technology for murder has certainly improved, has become far more efficient. But the hatred that fuels the weapons has never changed. And I sometimes doubt that human rights has improved much when you can find a workaround it (Guantanamo, black sites, drone strikes, etc.). The history of the world is littered with mounds of corpses. The "new" ugly is really the same "old" ugly.
But history has always had those few courageous people who have fought back in their own capacity too. Once again, we don't hear much about those people, except a few leaders that have stood out (MLK, for example, hardly did what he did singlehandedly).
Simone Weil wrote about how evil was always more interesting than good. She used Dante's Divine Comedy as a case in point--the section on heaven is pleasantly boring in comparison to the Inferno. Its the same with the news. The more we expose ourselves to it, the more negativity--its a toxin, and it is intoxicating. I know a bomb or two (?) went off in Boston the other day and it occurred during a marathon and there are deaths and injuries. What else do I really need to know about it? I know people and loved ones are suffering. There is no reason to know other details except the best places to donate money to in order to help out.
I'm not saying one should NEVER watch the news, but I think the news content is a lot less important than we usually think. I try to moderate my own dosage. It is too abstract and even when it deals with one individual, the whole thing is so "prepared" that it too is an abstraction. It isn't even "real" in that sense.
Anyway, these are the sorts of things I try to bear in mind when I dare expose myself to the "news." Seneca had the right insight when he wrote 2,000 years ago, "Life is neither a Good nor an Evil; it is simply the place where good and evil exist." The rest is a choice we have to make, not between "good" or "evil" but between courage or cowardice.
One of the hardest teachings of Dharma is that ignorance and 'evil' is just ignorance. Love when distorted and warped, manifests in its opposite. These negative traits in ourselves and society can be used in service by wrathful means (advanced practitioners only thank you).
While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. - Eugene V. Debs
We have to focus on the positive, the good because that provides the means towards greater wisdom and the optimism to change and overcome the overtly negative.
Mind your business. Find and amplify your good.
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion. - Simone de Beauvoir
For FACEBOOK users, one way to retain some sanity when one finds themselves bombarded with nothing but tragedy and heartache all around them;
Review your FB newsfeed and remove all those friends, acquaintances, family members etc who post mostly horror stories, tragedies, animal and child abuse photos and graphic headlines, etc on a daily or near daily basis. All those "Please LIKE this photo...." (and something wonderful will happen) over pictures of maimed babies or dead mothers.... It's horror porn, pure and simple. Clean [those people] off your newsfeed! You'll feel a world of relief. They can still remain your "friends", but you only need to read their stuff if you feel like it (and actually go tho their FB page).
I got so sick and tired of seeing this Tragedy Porn every morning with my first cuppa coffee and first click on FB, that I purged my newsfeed of these heartache- wallowers.
MUCH BETTER!
Our minds take in the whole image, meaning the white background as well as the dot, and then it picks out the dot as different from the whole. To relate this to the negativity of the world the vast majority of our experience is people working and living together peaceably and harmoniously (background), so when there is something negative that is what stands out from the norm and what we notice. As has been pointed out this is what sells in news and so it seems like this sort of behavior is greater than it is.
Violent crime in the US is at the lowest levels in 40 years. The author of the article looked into the stat and only found one major article reporting that fact.
Violence is much, much lower today than it has been throughout history. Stephen Pinker gives a TED talk about it.
Jimmy Carter's foundation has reduced the number of Guinea worm cases from 3.5 million in 1986 to 542 cases last year. http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/mini_site/index.html
There are plenty of really positive stories but they don't get talked about that much.
I don't do that anymore. I following running events so I was checking online for the results of the race periodically and then I saw what happened. I turned on the news, and I watched for a little bit. I looked for the helpers and they were everywhere. I actually felt the news did a better job with this than with most other such things. There were many stories of the helpers and the heroes and the good in humanity. I watched some with my 16 year old and we had a good discussion around it. After a little while, I shut the tv off and went on with our evening. I pay little mind to the details about the actual event, because half the time they are wrong and overall they just don't matter. I found the sign the little boy made to be quite profound. It just seems like so many who desire peace are the victims of violence. Seems it is a lesson we need to grasp.
This morning I did a very long metta and tonglen meditation. From my lovely children to my parents, my grandma, my extended family, my town, the victims of the bombing, the helpers, the families of the victims, the whole country. Even the person/people who committed the act. I've actually had an ability to cultivate a lot of peace in myself, and when I meditate I send it out there. There is a lot of hurt and fear in our world. Hurt and fear cause people to perpetrate such acts, and it causes more hurt and fear for others. It has to stop somewhere. As much as I can possibly manage, it stops with me. It stops with my children. I do whatever I can to cultivate and maintain peace within myself, my family, and my friends. I'm not going to live my life in fear over every backpack that is sitting somewhere, every public gathering, every day my children go to school, movies, field trips and so on. I don't want to live that way, and I don't want them to live that way, so I just refuse to give into that fear that is so well propagated in our culture. The fear stops here.
How do we find and generate these qualities?
Metta and tonglen seem an excellent way . . .
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi
God knows that's how I felt during my undergraduate education.
We learned about all the social phenomena and the ills of society - all sorts of inequality, power struggles, identity politics, etc. It seemed like a never-ending barrage of suffering. I remember talking to a bunch of my classmates after we graduated, and we all noted how depressing it was to go through our undergrad. All these social problems with very limited "solutions." How could we change anything?
This isn't "Buddhist" per se, but I really like Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People." It's real down-to-earth, useful stuff that helps you put things in your life in perspective. None of that "The Secret" junk.
In it, he talks about the circle of influence and circle of concern:
I think lots of us who are sensitive to the suffering of the world (I'm sure many Buddhists are) will feel like our circle of concern is so vast that we can't comprehend how to do anything to help. Our circles of influence are too small. But if we focus on what we can do in our circle of influence, we will feel more empowered and more competent.
Granted, we know that samsara entails suffering and impermanence. But we can still take action to relieve some of the suffering, just not be too attached to the outcome. But a really workable way is to do things within our own power and not get too ahead of ourselves. Just like meditation - we sit for 5, 10, 15 minutes at first, building up concentration/awareness before leaping to anything more advanced (maybe not applicable for Zennies
I agree that for the most part it's the tragic stuff that gets reported -- in once sense that is understandable, since some of these things are big issues. However, I think news channels broadcasting 24/7 as well as internet new sites that need constant updates to bring in traffic magnify the bad and and offer a skewed vision of the world. As for FB, if someone is constantly bombarding me with stuff I find disturbing, I put them under 'aquaintences' which means they are still my FB friend, but their posts don't show up in my newsfeed -- it's a good way of managing my feed without hurting feelings.
To paraphrase Noah Levine, Buddhism is all about an inner revolution. Instead of trying to start one outside, we can really change the way we see and interact with the world by smashing the systems of thought we have inside.
Does anyone who practices Buddhism ever find him- or herself hip deep in a conversation about the wondrousness of it all? Maybe so, but it gets pretty icky, pretty fast, whereas nitty-gritty uphill efforts against 'ego' or 'attachment' or 'ignorance' or a host of other trip-wires make for much better and more credible conversation. Just check out the topics on newbuddhist and you'll see what I mean.
The hard stuff is easy ... in a Buddhist practice or on the nightly news. It's depressing, painful, bloody, confusing, full of anger, gloomy, greedy and creates a matrix in which anyone might say "ouch!"
Somehow, this framework needs to be revised. But climbing into the ick-mobile of lavish praise or imaginative realm-making really doesn't cut it unless you consent to be a dimwit. The easy stuff (laughter, love, decency, etc.) is hard ... precisely because it is so easy ... and yet it doesn't last.
Well, this is one of those bs-all-night topics. The best I can think is that a Buddhist practice can lend a hand. Practice promotes experience and experience trumps hope and belief, two of the central aspects of uncertainty and sorrow.
The best I can think of is Martin Luther King Jr.'s observation, "It's not what's wrong with the world that scares people. What really scares them is that everything is all right." This is the kind of observation that is easy to quote but takes a bit of practice (maybe Buddhist practice) to actualize.
When we read, watch or listen, it ain't nothing-- it's gazzillions of cells and chemicals that create our personalities moving and firing. With the advent of mass media, and especially the Internet, it is now possible to pump oneself with more data in an hour than one's grandparents could in a month. My point is that it's way more stimulation than our brains evolved to handle. I think that is why it is so easy to cloud one's mind while on some news website.
As for worrying that turning off that TV is disengaging from the suffering in the world, I do not think that flooding one's brain with digitized presentation of that suffering helps much. There's plenty of suffering in our "real" lives-- us, families, work places, institutions and communities. It's good to be informed but each one of us needs to find the reasonable degree of informed-ness -- otherwise, dwelling on "issues" out there can easily take away the bulk of our life force that can be used to actually make things better.
Internet etc are very powerful tools that can be used skillfully and unskillfully. As with any powerful tool, we must take great care when wielding them. As I look around me (and within me), I can see quite a bit of room for improvements in that department.
When I see the news, I mostly see the business of "attention grabbing" about the news. When folks over focus on such stories, I try to return it to the story of this moment of exchange between us because that's the thing I can actually do something about.
and @lucy-Begood, you're my hero with that load you've taken on.
Dhp1
So watch your mind states.
Some people are unable to change their circumstances for any number of reasons.
Life over here is the opposite from where you are seeing it from.
It is so beautiful here, and so interesting in many ways, so alluring, that the desire to stay is very strong. I have to look for the dark side. It's well hidden. Without the media or travel one might think the world is a lovely place.
I feel sorry about your situation.@music.
He loved it here. Made the most of his family and friends. Loved the sea and the woods.
It was a beautiful spring day and the hall was full of hundreds of people to enjoy sharing in stories and pictures of this well loved guy.
We have storms over here too. People come from miles away to look at them. Fishermen get killed sometimes or unwary tourists.
But you are right too. There is horrible things happening to people all the time. I hear about it when I'm driving in my truck.
It's all illusory and its all real. So we agree.
The hell you perceive is not "out there" somewhere, but in the fabrications of your own mind--by craving for a world which adheres to some human standard of "perfection."
Of course bad things happen. With that, good things happen. You wouldn't even register all those things as bad if you didn't not know good was out there, too.
This year we've had a really long winter. Lots of snow. Not always easy for those of us who like to be out in the warm sunshine, but ideal. We've been in a drought the past many years which is causing many issues for the animals and crops. As a result of our long and snowy winter, our drought has eased. The risk of wildfire is down, the likelihood for a strong berry and nut crop is good. This should be a better summer and fall for many beings compared to the last 2 years. Then you look 300 miles to the west, and our snowy winter is looking to cause yet another record flood in North Dakota. One man's heaven is another man's hell.
@Music
All hells are self orgasmic and you could walk away from this one by simply unclenching your grip on it. Of course you would say that what I see as hell, you see as just having a more realistic view of life.
Over & over, folks have asked you if you've considered helping others as a way of not supporting whatever holds you in this darkness.
And then I thought that you actually love your perceptions of this world too much to do anything that might threaten them.
Hope that's not true.
And that's as philosophical as I'm gonna get today.
And I think key phrase there is: "Bring gloom down to the minimum". No, we can't eliminate negativity. But what are you doing to hold it down to the minimum? You can make a change in your immediate surroundings. You. You. You.
*I prefer to refer to it as the world of shared experience
Just speculation based upon my own life.
But there are three more Noble Truths.
My only comfort, paradoxically, was reading E.M. Cioran. I kept repeating in my mind what Cioran said, "There's no point killing yourself because its already too late." If life is meaningless, so I thought, then suicide is just as meaningless--that was how I kept myself from killing myself. I resigned myself to the knowledge that I was going to die anyway, which was a sort of "suicide in slow motion." I thought of existence as an aberration. I still have a lot of the notes I kept to myself during that dark time.
Eventually I just became exhausted from it. I was devout in my despair--it was like a religious faith to me--but thankfully, it was not sustainable. I was trapped in my own ego in a war with "the objective world"--but it was a war of my own making, really just a war with myself. (it was years later that it occurred to me that I was actually depressed--I thought "depression" was something that happened to "other people")
Blaming everything on the "objective world" is a cop out, a sort of inverted narcissism. The reality was I didn't hate "the world"--I hated myself. Or rather, I was hate. The only way out was to let it all go--and even then it was from sheer exhaustion. All those judgements and expectations, all those OUGHTS which I compared the "objective world" to was the source of my suffering. Compassion for others was a way to get out of that vicious circle.
I get it. And I'll never go back to that hell again.
I think that riverflow has accepted the fact that sentient existence is characterised by Dukkha..and that there is a way through.
Whereas you are constantly disappointed by looking for happiness where it cannot be found.
In retrospect, I understand it this way: The fragmentation of an ontological whole into subjects vs. objects is an error. Every attempt to bridge this gap within that framework will inevitably fail. The problem is not in the subject or the object, but the ontological assumptions underlying "subjectivity" or "objectivity" as absolute realities. Taken to a consistent extreme, it is only natural that it leads to despair and nihilism. The Buddhadharma is, in this sense, a process of healing ("salvation," salvus) this violent rupture, the real-ization of a seamless whole (or emptiness) which precedes this delusion of separate and essentialised subjects and objects.
I know that sounds like a clumsy, jargon-filled mouthful, but it is hardly a clinical matter to me.
The pesimist fears that's true.
It can become a negative if you give it "inappropriate attention" as the Buddha called it. Brooding on this ugly can easily be negative. But, simply being aware of it, not necessarily so IMO. There is a big difference between "brooding" and "awareness". Don't think so. Consider the story of Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara. Love this story.
You will never reach the bottom of your misery. You might think that wallowing in the dark might provide protection against the loss, against the hurt, but that simply isn't our nature. Instead, you've just created a world of all loss... all hurt. And no matter what you think, you will never become immune to the misery. Misery may become comforting, in a way, but it's like an alcoholic comforts in booze... your views are simultaneously the cure and cause of your own affliction.
No one can make you see this. You will have to wake up on your own. Maybe one day, like @riverflow, and like me, you will just become too exhausted to bear your self-inflicted burdens anymore. Life has enough of it's own darkness to add to the heap with depression and listless desolation. But on the other side of the dark is good. Yes, I think we all agree that the bad can seem so much louder, but there is an equal. The equal is in the love and compassion between sentient beings on this earth. How can you scoff at something so wondrous? My guess is that there is more of this around you than you know, you're just too jaded to see it. Why do you think we all respond to your posts in such a manner? Are we just trying to win a point? Maybe for some, but for most (myself included), we're all just rooting for you Music. You slosh your pain around this board and it's impossible not to see... it's impossible not to care. We care about you here Music. This is the light in the darkness.
"Joy at last to know there is no happiness in the world!" -Ajahn Chah
You cannot "overcome the darkness", this will only lead to more misery. Searching for happiness will only create more lack because you suddenly created this thing "happiness" that exists outside of yourself, and then you wonder, well, why don't I have it? But the answer is that to see happiness as some sort of goal, to assign a value to it, means that it will always stand outside our reach. This is what we are trying to explain to you. On the opposite side of nihilism is the false happiness, like they say, "rose colored glasses". This is what you think of us... that we have just set our minds to happy mode and now, we can just live in this illusion... but reality isn't like that. Reality itself is devoid of assumptions of good or bad. Even watching wildlife and witnessing a predator attack it's prey... is it sad? A lot of people would say yes... but in reality, the predator deserves to live just as much as the prey. We are assigning that value of sadness to the event. In reality... all of these tragedies we witness... it just is. What you choose to do with that information is your own choice. There is an appropriate place for mourning, but to live inside that world is not helpful nor wise.
Try to think of life as more of a blank slate. Try to notice the labels you put on events and things. This is the best advice I can give you. The mind-state in which you abide will taint the entire world. Are you familiar with the ten spiritual realms? In some forms of Buddhism they are not taken as literal realms of other beings, but rather, mind-states in which we can abide in this world. The realms are: Hell, Hunger, Animality, Arrogance/Anger, Humanity/Passionate Idealism, Heaven/Rapture, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattvahood, Buddhahood. Being angry, for example, has a very direct influence on your environment... you become rash, irritated, you might lash out, you might perceive threats that aren't there... This effect is very clearly mind-made. The Hell realm is just the same. That is where you are residing. I know that you must feel that this is something that was done unto you, but what I and many others on here are trying to explain is that while that may be true, you are what's keeping you there.
As to the larger question, it's good to be aware of one's tolerance level. Each of us can only do what we have the strength to do, and that strength/resilience level is different for everyone. So we shouldn't feel badly if we feel like we can't handle as much as the next person. Comparing isn't helpful. Self-care comes first. If we allow ourselves to be drained, we won't be of any use to anyone.