Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Being informed / having opinions
Invincible_summer
Heavy Metal DhammaWe(s)t coast, Canada Veteran
"Don't seek enlightenment - just seek to drop your opinions." -- purportedly a Zen proverb.
Many people value being "informed." It's supposed to be a good thing to know what's going on in the world and be able to hold our own in a discussion. People who have their "head under a rock" are looked down upon. It's a privilege to be able to make up our own minds, we're told.
To what extent is this emphasis on forming opinions problematic, from a Buddhist perspective?
Aren't opinions merely an extension of our egos? Part of a conditioned/constructed "self" trying to impose itself on the world? So what good is it - as someone who practices Buddhism - to become an archive for various evaluations of the world that I experience?
To be clear, I'm not saying that reading up on the news or reading an op-ed piece is a bad thing, but I think that the urge to "take a side" on issues can be.
How ironic.
Anyways, what do you people think?
Many people value being "informed." It's supposed to be a good thing to know what's going on in the world and be able to hold our own in a discussion. People who have their "head under a rock" are looked down upon. It's a privilege to be able to make up our own minds, we're told.
To what extent is this emphasis on forming opinions problematic, from a Buddhist perspective?
Aren't opinions merely an extension of our egos? Part of a conditioned/constructed "self" trying to impose itself on the world? So what good is it - as someone who practices Buddhism - to become an archive for various evaluations of the world that I experience?
To be clear, I'm not saying that reading up on the news or reading an op-ed piece is a bad thing, but I think that the urge to "take a side" on issues can be.
How ironic.
Anyways, what do you people think?
6
Comments
Zen Master Seung Sahn
Thank you very much for coming today. But what is it that brought your body here? Is it your mind? What is mind? Where is it? What is its shape? Mind is no mind. A mountain does not proclaim, "I am a mountain!" A river does not say, "I am a river!" All names and all forms are made by thinking. Thus, mind is no mind. All things have name and form. Names and forms come from emptiness. Thus, form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
When you are thinking, your mind, my mind, and all people's minds are different. If you cut through all thinking, your mind, my mind, and all people's minds are the same. The mind that cuts through all thinking is the true empty mind. The true empty mind is before thinking. Your substance is before thinking. Your substance is universal substance. Before thinking, there is no speech and no language. There is no God, no Buddha, no mountain, no river, nothing at all. Thus, no form, no emptiness.
But, before thinking is truly just like this. No form, no emptiness is itself a clinging to emptiness. Put it down! Then you will have no inside and no outside; you will attain the Absolute. Everything that you see, hear, taste, and smell is the truth. God is God, Buddha is Buddha, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. The truth is like this. Form is form, emptiness is emptiness.
If you cut through all thinking, your mind will become clear. Just that is your true self. Thinking is desire, desire is suffering. When the mind remains clear, there is no life and no death. You will find true freedom that has no hindrance.
Your body has life and death, but your true self transcends both life and death. What, then, is one's true self? Does it exist or not? If you say that it exists, where is it? If you say that it does not, what is hearing this speech? Both these answers are not complete. Why? (striking the table) KATZ! Put it down, put it all down! The Great Way is in front of the door.
All things change in each moment but if we say "this is how it is" and stick to that then we are not seeing things as they really are as the circumstances of what we have formed an opinion on will have immediately changed and can never be the same again.
We are not seeing things as they really are....
So, for clear mind to be present, let go of thinking mind. I believe that is what this saying means.
~ Ajahn Chah
So is that my opinion? Don't like it? I have others but you can form your own . . . or not . . .
This comes back to a question about right speech. True speech is self evident, it does not find or express through the component of distracting opinions. It is why the wise are so often silent and we are left with our opinionated chatter . . . contrary, static or fluctuating ideas, opinions and other mind holdings . . .
:wave:
This absurd contradiction helps me; partly because it is impossible to live a normal life without expressing opinions.
It is my job to form, express and defend opinions. And when you look closely, every day is full of opinions and choices. What do I have for breakfast? Wait, I’ll check my opinions, on what a good breakfast is for me, first. And this goes on all day.
Maybe what’s important is to be able to see the other side. So we’re not too identified with our opinions. We just use them for practical purposes.
The media these days seems obsessed with opinions. What do you think about this or that? Vote now to give your opinion. Why? What difference does it make? But if I say "I don't know" I feel like a failure for not having an opinion.
The older I get the less sure I am about anything.
If you take the statement "drop your opinions" literally, drop means to "let go of, to stop clinging to.". But it's much more inclusive than just opinions about world affairs, politics, etc. It includes opinions of good vs bad. For example, "pain is bad therefore it must be avoided" or "pleasure is good therefore we must go get pleasure". If you were to drop the opinion that "pain is bad and pleasure is good", then you would be perfectly fine with whichever one you are presented with, AKA you would have equanimity. There would be no clinging and no aversion to anything. If there is no clinging and no aversion to anything, then there is no more suffering.
Just my opinion!
http://audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/2930.html
It mentions reasoning as one of the unreliable (although not useless) ways in which people try to get at the truth. The talk also goes into the idea that if you would state something as the truth based on informed opinion, it would go against right speech (since informed opinion is not a reliable source of truth, you cannot really make such a claim). Instead, it is suggested to say something like "from what I have read, I'm inferring that X". So what I infer from this talk is that you can make use of informed opinion, just don't treat it as the truth.
'Of any two options, choose the third', is one of my favourite sayings. Does this mean we can encompass polarities? Be aware of our and another's position and aware of more . . . ?
IMHO it is all a little too much . . . :hair:
Another thought... Is it even beneficial to try and stay "in the loop" with current affairs when all our media is geared towards putting opinions in our heads? Is it an obligation as a Buddhist to be aware of the suffering and problems in the world, and attempt to ameliorate them? Why is saving sentient beings Right and not just a matter of opinion? Yes, but I was getting more at the idea that there seems to be room for conflict if one wishes to "be informed" yet not hold any opinions. It's just a form of worldly renunciation I never really thought about before.
Good point, @zenff. Seeing both sides is pretty key to losing attachment to a single opinion. However, I think that what comes with that is learning how to deal with that ambiguity on a daily basis. Personally, it sometimes feels a bit stressful to not have an easy way out by just saying A is better than B full stop. Sorry @jeffrey, I'm not following. Could you rephrase that?
when you become aware of yourself, you also become painfully aware of other people's pathological illogical behavoir. and in doing so, you start to let go of the tight grasp you have on your opinions, because you realize how utterly rediculous it is to assert yourself in that way, because little is ever gained.
i still have opinions, but now i know that they trip me up more than they ever helped me. becoming aware is the first step to curing your friends, family and co-workers of their pesky affliction of having to pretend like they give a shit about what you are asserting. because most people dont really care what other people think. they just sit quietly, waiting for you to finish your dia-tribe so that they can go back to consuming themselves with thoughts of themselves.
:eek2:
[so delicious . . . ]
. . . after I reincarnated as a wer-lobster, I found out that 30% of Americas were of the opinion that we had NOT landed on the moon.
Que?
As an exercise I tried to find convincing arguments that something ludicrous was true. I constructed the evidence for the Eiffel Tower Hoax
What was scary was how soon, on some level, looking for evidence started to make the unreal more real . . .
. . . which in my opinion is all we ever do, until ready to throw opinions out . . . :screwy: