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So What Do You Do With Shame?
AllbuddhaBound
Veteran
I would like to know what Buddhist people do with their shame. Is there a recognized approach suggested that everyone follows?
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Comments
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Baa Moo neigh
and
shame neatly mirrors it.
I try to treat it meditatively like any phenomena by simply accepting it's own arising, life and passing to unfold on it's own, free from my conditioned impulses to control it.
It's a work in progress, like all practice is.
Gassho
LG
Is it bcos of something you did?
Just stop doing the darn thing.
The examples that always pop into my head have to do with what someone's done, not what they look like....
I'm not saying anything more about that one way or the other, just making an 'interesting' observation.
Forgiveness is a big deal, apparently. And it's great to forgive others their trespasses but we also have to forgive ourselves. If we feel shame in something we have done then it seems a bit of growth is already implied.
Make amends and if it's something done to somebody we can no longer reach then move on and add positivity to anothers day.
Guilt can be a useful emotion because it is dynamic -- it motivates us to make amends with those whom we have hurt or violated (including ourselves). Shame, on the other hand, can be quite stagnant. Instead of motivating us, shame can tend to simply fester and ferment and turn into what the Buddha called the asavas or "fermentations." (Another translation of asava might be "obsession.")
The main approach the Buddha takes to any unskillful mind-state is to recall its causes and conditions. In the case of shame, much of the blame lies in our social conditioning: the whole network of language that we internalize through our acculturation. Built into the social landscape through which we move (and thus manifest in our thoughts) are implicit associations and pre-formulated judgments: we internalize assumptions about who is worthy and who isn't, what is valuable and what isn't, what people ought to do and what they oughtn't, etc.
The trick is to see the arbitrariness of it all: most of these assumptions are just the intersection of a social agenda and an object. All words are agendas. For example, the idea that we should value one person over another based on their physical attractiveness is simply a manifestation of our animal instinct to procreate: the object of our affection becomes elevated, and everyone else who falls short becomes an inconvenience... or a mistake. It was a mistake to have been born so unattractive. You shouldn't have been born that way. How dare you look the way you look? (Do you see how insane this mode of thinking is? And yet that's how many people approach the world. Nothing is a mistake. It just is.)
When we forget the ultimate reality -- the bigger picture beyond our evaluations of things as limited by our incarnations as human apes -- we see that such evaluations are unnecessary most of the time and, in fact, oftentimes quite harmful. Buying too strongly into concepts of attractiveness, for example -- holding too strongly to it as the lens through which we evaluate those we come in contact with -- sets us up for immense insecurity, suffering, and the potential for cruelty.
Query the causes and conditions that underly your shame, and you will find it has much less power over you.
It is inferiority complex.
Shame is good according to Buddha.
It stops you from doing unskillful actions.
You have poor self-esteem.
You dont feel that you are good enough when
You compare yourself with others.
I used to have inferiority complex.
It is due to looking at the world unrealistically.
Get the facts. Get real.
It all depends on who you compare with.
There will always be some one poorer and fatter than you .
Get some counselling, you need help.
Why do you feel shame?
Is it bcos of something you did?
Just stop doing the darn thing.
The latest figures show that 70% of Korean women had cosmetic surgery.
If we put that into some kind of perspective, the truth is that 100% of us have no idea of what we are talking about and should feel guilty about what we say or post or blog about and an undisclosed percentage feel shame for what we post after the event, but really should be counselled on their attachment to this emotion as they are really beautiful inside. Really, there is beauty inside - even in you!
It took me many years to overcome it. Eventually I was able to accept my self . nobody is perfect. We are all different . Learn to accept your self .
My observation above was not about which word was used, but when any of those words are used/applied to the situation of "what a person looks like" as opposed to what a person has done (an action).
People aren't born naturally feeling shame about themselves (for personal appearance and other things they can't help) -- they are taught to feel shame for those things; and that really sucks....
I also think a person can feel shame if they have done something they feel makes them a shameful person. The guilt to me, would have come and gone, shame would be what lingers if we hold onto our guilt.
Also, it may be the poetry student in me (a common saying in poetry circles is "there's no such thing as a synonym"), but I'm not sure "remorse" and "shame"/"guilt" are synonyms. "Remorse" and "regret", perhaps, but not "remorse" and "shame." Splitting hairs, it may well be, but there's something to be said for linguistic economy and precision, especially on the internet where we lose a lot of the back-channel feedback and intonation from spoken discourse.
TREES
I think that I shall never see,
A poet who didn't kill a tree.
The bard inscribes his many verses,
While loggers ship trees in twelve axle herses.
The power of the pen flows from your lines,
While power saws dismember knotty pines.
You write your sonnets full of mush,
While pulp mills pound oaks to formless smush.
The maples of my youth are gone,
Just so you can ramble on and on.
Your consciences you need to vent,
On reams of paper and parchment.
Of course, that doesn't tell the tale,
There are all those quills pulled from peacock's tails.
And then there's me whose brain is tired,
As in your writings my mind gets mired.
And so I protest this English class,
Destroyers of nature -- you I'll bash.
Now maybe you think that I'm a ham,
But I think you're cruel, Yes, you am.
:wow: