In this episode Kristin Neff, Associate Professor in Human Development and Culture at the University of Texas talks to us today about self-compassion, how she feels it differs from self-esteem, its contingent nature, and why it’s such a useful thing to cultivate in life. She goes on to talk about remorse, responsibility, shame and guilt and what her understanding is of the Middle Way.
MWS Podcast 23: Kristin Neff as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_23_Kristin_Neff
This is a re-blog (with a few minor improvements) of a post on my old Middle Way Philosophy blog in September 2012.
Let’s start with a compilation of evil laughs. You’ll probably only need to watch the first minute or so to get the point. What I’d like you to note is certain features of what we imagine to be evil. Note the falseness, the association with a separate universe constructed in one’s own mind, the alienation from others, and the group mentality. All of these are part of our experience of ‘evil’ – but they are not an indication of a supernatural force. Rather they are the features of metaphysics: of fixed beliefs and goals in a super-dominant left brain.
Some people see evil as a supernatural force, whilst others deny its existence or seek to ignore it. I want to avoid either of these approaches and to account for evil, with all its power, in human experience. Just as God can be supremely meaningful without being an object of belief so can evil. The meaning and seriousness of evil seems to be undermined and trivialised in modern culture (illustrated most strongly by the slang use of the terms ‘wicked’ and ‘evil’ to mean conventionally good), but at the same time it is easy to see why this has happened. It demands an absurd level of fraught anxiety to regard ordinary human desire as the work of Satan, when our experience of desire is that it is largely both unavoidable and – up to a point – beneficial. If we have let go of that anxiety and accepted our desires as human, then that is a starting point, but we then need to start taking seriously the need for moral awareness and moral effort. We can only do that with an awareness of what we are avoiding – of ‘evil’ in a broad sense, neither supernatural nor naturalised into nothing.
So what is evil, if it is not Satan outside us, or human desires within us? My thesis is that evil is not a person or a set of feelings or desires, but a type of belief: that is, metaphysics. The integration model explains how we do not have ‘good’ desires and ‘evil’ desires, but rather desires that can be more or less effective as they get more or less integrated. Desires that I may experience as ‘evil’ (say, the desire to be insulting in an argument) are just unintegrated: they are in conflict with my other desires. However, if I then ask what prevents the integration of ‘evil’ (i.e. currently rejected) desires with ‘good’ (i.e. currently accepted) desires, the answer is fixed beliefs. Those beliefs may, on the surface, be about ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but they rigidify and simplify what I understand as good so I can idealise and hold onto it regardless of challenges, and rigidify and simplify what I understand as evil so that I can reject it, regardless of what it may have to tell me. My thesis is that such rigidification tends to occur around metaphysical beliefs – i.e. ones that cannot be incrementally addressed in experience but merely asserted or denied.
So, what is evil, in the broader and more helpful sense, includes metaphysical beliefs about good as well as metaphysical beliefs about evil – along with other metaphysical beliefs such as those about self, fate, freewill, God or nature. It may run against the mental habits of a lifetime to start thinking about the belief in an ultimate good as evil: but we only have to consider the amount of alienation and conflict created by sincerely held ideas of ultimate good to begin to appreciate why this is so. This doesn’t imply that those who hold such beliefs are ‘evil’ or even that they are mainly motivated by evil: only that the impact of such metaphysical beliefs on them is evil, within the context of wider moral development gained by experience. Great saints and religious leaders with strong metaphysical beliefs may often have had a largely good impact – but my thesis is that they were handicapped, not aided, by those beliefs. Their moral objectivity came not from those beliefs, but from the degree of integration created by the other conditions working in their lives, often including the meaningfulness of the symbols (such as God) that they also had metaphysical beliefs about. Similarly, great figures widely regarded as evil (such as Hitler) had a variety of conditions working on them. They were not evil as people, but their rigid metaphysical beliefs dominated their lives to such an extent that their actions strike others as evil. In the case of Hitler it is not only Nazi ideology, but also his beliefs about himself and about the destiny of himself and the Germans, that could be identified as the metaphysical source of this evil.
But what does this have to do with Satan or with evil as traditionally conceived? The picture here, in Jungian terminology, is a picture of the Shadow: the rejected energies in ourselves that we project outwards onto Dark Lords, villains, evil spirits, unfaithful spouses, bad bosses, evil capitalists etc. The features we normally give to ‘evil’ are associated with narrow left-brain dominance rather than with integration: empire-building, scheming, ruthlessness, and false emotion (as in the evil laughs above). Psychologically, then, it appears that what evil means to us is unintegrated desire.
We allow evil itself to dominate, however, if we project that unintegrated desire outwards and treat people or things as themselves evil. An appreciation of complexity, or of humanity, is an antidote to this. We also allow evil to dominate if we even treat our desires themselves as evil – for they are part of us. Evil instead works primarily at the level of belief. It is the belief in the ultimate truth and completeness of his schemes, and the ultimate justification of his ruthlessness through the idealisation of current egoistic desires, that makes the Dark Lord evil.
Devil picture by Rex Diablo (Wikimedia Commons). Picture can be freely reproduced under Creative Commons licence if attributed
In this episode, Marina Cantacuzino, the founder of the Forgiveness Project talks about the project, how it came about, it’s rationale and how she would like to see it develop. She also talks about forgiveness and its complex nature.
MWS Podcast 18: Marina Cantacuzino as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_18_Marina_Cantacuzino
Previous podcasts:
Episode 17: Rich Flanagan on the compatibility of atheism and MWP.
Episode 16: The ‘Thought for the Day’ presenter Vishvapani Blomfield.
Episode 15: Lesley Jeffries and Jim O’Driscoll, the founders of Language in Conflict
Episode 14: The writer and journalist Mark Vernon on agnosticism.
Episode 13: Robert M. Ellis on his life and why he formed the Middle Way Society.
Episode 12: Paul Gilbert on Compassion Focused Therapy
Episode 11: Monica Garvey on Family Mediation
Episode 10: Emilie Åberg on horticultural therapy, agnosticism, the Quakers and awe.
Episode 9: T’ai Chi instructor John Bolwell gives an overview of this popular martial art.
Episode 8: Peter Goble on his career as a nurse and his work as a Buddhist Chaplain.
Episode 7: The author Stephen Batchelor on his work with photography and collage.
Episode 6: Iain McGilchrist, author of the Master and his Emissary.
Episode 5: Julian Adkins on introducing MWP to his meditation group in Edinburgh
Episode 4: Daren Dewitt on Nonviolent communiction.
Episode 3: Vidyamala Burch on her new book “Mindfulness for Health”.
Earlier podcasts
See this link for a new review by Robert M Ellis of ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion’ by Jonathan Haidt.
I woke from sleep in the early morning hours recently, and my first conscious thought consisted of the word “provisionality”. It was as prominent as if a banner with the word had been hoisted across the foot of my bed. And I knew at once why it was there, and what it meant.
A few hours earlier I’d been struggling unsuccessfully to draft an article on meditation for this blog. This unannounced and unexpected banner-headline in the quiet of my bedroom, in the dark, turned a searchlight on my struggle, and resolved it.
While I was sitting in front of my monitor, I couldn’t put into words the conflict I was experiencing about Robert’s intelligent disquisition on the hindrances to meditation, which seemed to reflect the kind of stuff I’ve read before in Buddhist tracts and articles about how arduous and difficult meditation is, but worthwhile for the ultimate reward of solitary ecstasy . They all have that hallmark of the experience of robed sitting by people, almost exclusively men, who – by sitting in meditation for many years and by assiduous effort, overcoming formidable obstacles and hindrances – have reached the pinnacle of spiritual attainment, personal enlightenment.
How could I question that? Yet I still do, insistently.
Let me return to my sudden waking up, and set aside the conflict for a moment, though I think they’re linked somehow. Maybe that’s my inner philosopher in me speaking, with new-found confidence, and in a softer, more open and provisional style.
What follows is a rather crude and simplistic comparison of two approaches to meditation, devised by me, and based on my own experience of, observation of, and talking with women, especially nurses, but also Buddhist women, and of women in Africa, where lifestyle is still quite other than here in the developed Northern hemisphere (still curiously referred to as ‘the West’).
‘Male ‘model of meditation and principles of practice
Emphasises physical stillness in a prescribed erect sitting posture, eyes closed to shut out worldly distractions.
More or less totally (and deliberately) divorced from all forms of common worldly activity or engagement with other people e.g. social or family relationships, childcare, sexuality, work (including housework and gardening or growing crops), play, leisure, celebration, contingent events etc.
Performed in complete silence, often regards sound as a distraction or as contamination.
Solitary practice encouraged, group meditation takes care to exclude the possibility of any physical contact by meditators.
Oriented to personal achievement of bliss, ascending hierarchy of attainment (simile: climbing a lofty mountain, leaving the world and its cares far below).
Highly structured, elaborately detailed, concept-laden and often ‘scripted’ technique to be followed, rigour recommended.
Narrow focus of attention, discipline and effort prized.
Body regarded as vehicle for mind, used instrumentally, often seen as source of undesirable distraction from mind (Body-Mind dualism).
Teaching (on technique and to provide ideological buttressing) originated, articulated, controlled and directed (almost exclusively) by men.
Women’s voices and unique experience marginalised.
‘Female’ model of meditation and principles of practice
Allows and promotes activity and movement, spontaneous and purposive, open to the world and embraces it, eyes open.
Integrates short, naturally occuring periods of stillness, silence and relaxed, comfortable repose (no imposed postural requirements) with activities of daily living, and seamlessly in relationship with other people (specially attentive to children, the elderly, or animals), on an emergent basis as life unfolds.
Encourages and welcomes togetherness, especially the company of other women.
Characterised by shared conversation, or singing/crooning, and comfortable shared silence, especially when carrying out shared activities (household tasks, cultivating gardens, fetching water or firewood, weaving or sewing, pounding or sieving grains, community cooking,
reciprocal grooming like hair plaiting, manicure etc).
Oriented to cooperative, cohesive and collective purposes.
Uncontrivedly self-effacing and ‘unselfish’.
Body-mind understood in ‘wholistic’ terms, expressed as an intuitive apprehending of feelings, and understanding sensations as metaphors of influence and meaning, a naturalistic and concept-free ‘integration of desires’.
Wide focus of attention, open to the whole visual (and aural and osmic) field, while (like a bird) able to pick up particular detail. (‘without stirring from the unity of self-refreshing pristine awareness, the details of experience are clearly differentiated without being contrived’ [Longchenpa])*
Uncontrived: elaborate conceptual expressions of technique and ideological underpinnings for meditation experienced as redundant, at variance with women’s experience, and ironically referred to as “typically male” or in other earthy, bawdy terms…..!)
Teachings shared informally, in light jests or personal anecdotes, by story-telling, in songs or poems, in pictures, or by clothing, body adornments, experiment and innovation in make-up and hair-styling,
through the positioning and re-arrangement of household articles, artefacts, flowers or elemental things (feng shui).
Women will share generously and with no expectation of reward or desire for acclaim or special ‘recognition’.
Men only have to notice that they are there, and that their contribution to meditation practice, although divergent, is of equal value to mens’.
* Quoted from Longchenpa, You Are the Eyes of the World, translated by Lipman K, Peterson M (2000), Snow Lion Publications, New York