(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)
The Tibetan New Year — the year of the Water Dragon — was on Wednesday, February 22, 2012.
Students from around the world gather for the festivities which include toasts to our dharma teachers.
One practitioner from Toronto, Canada tells us that while brushing her teeth that morning, she thought about what she would say in her toast to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (CTR) later that day.
Given the result — a heartfelt toast — brushing one’s teeth obviously brings good results!
Saying that CTR changed her life, she touches on several vital points, one of which is how important it is to work with negativity.
After the toast, I run home to brush my own teeth. This is what arises.
The first thing that arises is CTR’s phrase “negative negativity.” He says that negativity itself is not the problem. It’s the conceptual overlay (justifications for the “rightness” of the projection).
…negativity is not bad per se, but something living and precise, connected with reality…… but the trips we lay on these experiences are overloaded and rather heavy handed, this gives us negative negativity. This is when we watch ourselves being negative and then with the basic twist of logic we feel that the negativity is justified in being there….we just try patting its back, guarding it, and justifiying it. Then it is double negativity. <source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Garuda, “Working with Negativity,” Spring 1972>
And the phrase “negative negativity” makes me think of the word “projections’ and the suffering that the negative ones in particular cause:
I have been fool enough to think that I possess my own projections. (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: Sadhana of Mahamudra,1968, Bhutan)
We go even further! We try to seduce others into agreeing with our justifications\overlay\excuses.
So now we have a full-blown conceptual structure, viz.
(i) a projection;
(ii) a justification for that projection; and
(iii) attempts to seduce others to support our justifications.
…negativity, hostility, destructiveness breed all sorts of tension, friction, gossip, discontentment etc.” <source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Garuda, “Working with Negativity,” Spring 1972>
(I am using the definition of “projection” by Eric Holm, the Dorje Loppon. If you wish to read this definition, please click here and scroll down to the word “projection.”)
Two-fold problem:
As I see it, the problem is two-fold:
(1) We don’t acknowledge that we are projecting; we think we’re just stating a fact;
(2) We then overlay that projection with justifications, e.g. “I’m justified in feeling negative towards that person because that person……..”.
Underlying these justifications are attempts to go into CYA mode, or resist our resistance, or just ignore the situation that our projections have created. There is no genuine communication here either with ourselves or others.
And [we try to figure out how] we can we get through every conversation without having to reveal anything about ourselves… <source: SMR, Boulder, CO, March 07, 2011>
Let’s try what Pema Chodron calls compassionate inquiry by filling in the blanks for one of your own projections.
“I’m justified in feeling negative towards that person because
(a) that person …….
(b) that person …….
(c) that person …….
Example:
(a) is too intense;
(d) has unrealistic expectations;
(c) doesn’t act properly.
Continuing with our compassionate inquiry, re-do this exercise by focusing on yourself, not the other person. This takes courage because it cuts through the our belief in the “rightness” of our own projections by shifting the responsibility from the other person to ourselves.
“I’m justified in feeling negative towards that person because ……..”.
Example:
(a) that person reminds me of how I used to be and I didn’t like myself then and it makes me uncomfortable;
(b) I have unrealistic expectations of myself . I know this because I just keep saying “yes” to practically anything that people ask me to do;
(c) Sometimes I don’t act properly. I know this because I don’t really do things to help others, but to build up my self.
In short, I believe that the underlying truth about why we feel negative runs something like this: “I-don’t-like-the-challenge-to-my-highly-polished-carefully-crafted-image-that-I-have-of-myself-and-spent-years-creating.”
The first action (not acknowledging that we are projecting) is the result of ignorance.
The second (overlaying our projection) is the result of cowardice.
…(this) basic twist of ego….is very cautious and cowardly, as well as frivolous and emotional. <source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Garuda, “Working with Negativity,” Spring 1972>
Likewise, the first action (not acknowledging that we are projecting) produces karma.
The issue of karma necessitates being honest with ourselves and looking truthfully at the way we are in the world: how we think, how we communicate, how we behave, how we treat other people, the environment, and other creatures. We discover whether we have a naturally arising benign tendency, a mixture of positive and negative, or a naturally arising malicious tendency. It is these naturally arising tendencies that predominate in the death bardos, not our learned, socialized responses, pretences, or self-images. <source: Nairn, Rob: Living Dreaming Dying with a foreward by His Holiness the Seventeeth Karmapa; publisher Shambhala 2004)
The second action (overlaying our projection with justifications) maintains that karma if we act on that projection and thereby cause suffering.
How can we work with this?
(1) As CTR once suggested: talk to ego. Let it know that you know what it’s up to, e.g. that it’s trying to solidify itself by using other people to look down on;
…you are encouraged to say to your ego, “You have created tremendous trouble for me, and I don’t like you. You have caused me so much trouble by making me wander in the lower realms of samsara. I have no desire to hang around with you. I’m going to destroy you. This ‘you’ — who are you anyway., Go away! I don’t like you. <source: Trungpa, Chogyam and Carolyn Gimian: The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: The path is the goal…; in the chapter entitled “The Utilization of Practice,” section entitled “Reproach” page 185; published by Shambhala Publications>
(2) Rather than hardening our arrogance (which, ironically, is based on self-hatred) around how “justified” we are in our projections, warriors have the attitude of gratitude.
The dharma teachers tell us that everyone is our teacher in a general sense and that, at some time or another, everyone has been our mother. At any rate, we don’t have to walk around decade after decade sucking on our projections and their justifications as if they are a baby’s pacifier; and
(3) reminding ourselves that our projections say something about us, not the other person! When we believe in the “rightness” of our projections, we are not actually relating to the other person as they actually are. We are relating to them as if they were a photographic image. But the joke is on us! It’s really ourselves we are looking at.
When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. Wayne Dyer
(4) reminding ourselves that at the time of death, any unresolved negativity will arise:
Most of us are to some degree untruthful with ourselves [which creates negativity]…As we die…the reality of what was always there comes upon us. When this happens, the mind can be overwhelmed, making it impossible for the dying person to recognize. <source: Nairn, Rob: Living, Dreaming, Dying: Practical Wisdom from the Tibetan Book of the Dead; published by Shambhala 2004>
(5) Grasp\hold the right end of the stick:
CTR used to use a phrase that was something like “grasping\holding one end of the stick or the other.”
First end of the stick: When it comes to our own projections, one end of the stick is cowardice.
…(refusing) to cut through intelligence when it changes to intellectual speculation or is based on a belief of some kind, reinforced endlessly by other beliefs and dogmas…<source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Garuda, “Working with Negativity,” Spring 1972>
Why do we refuse? Fear. Fear about what?
By squashing it [projection], you are completely taking away the occupation [of creating the projection, and then justifying it]. You begin to feel that you have nothing to hold on to any more. <source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Garuda, “Working with Negativity,” Spring 1972>
Second end of the stick: The other end is bravery.
…the conceptualized negativity [the overlay, the projection], the negative negativity must be cut through. It deserves to be murdered on the spot with the sharp blow of basic intelligence or light….”uncompassionately,” as deserved. <source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Garuda, “Working with Negativity,” Spring 1972>
and
“The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. <source: Chodron, Pema: The Places that Scare You, Chapter 13>
The first end of the stick (cowardice) involves a lack of genuine devotion to these teachings on basic goodness and decency. We know what we should do, namely, be willing to give up our excuses and rest in groundlessness. But we do not do it. We prefer to cling to our projections like a child clings to a teddy bear because they make us feel solid. Protecting ego still takes precedence over being without self-deception.
How many of us feel ready to interrupt our habitual patterns, our almost instinctual ways of getting comfortable?….We use the teachings to continue to actually avoid what we are doing…must practice compassionate inquiry. <source: Chodron, Pema: The Places That Scare Us>
The second end of the stick (bravery) means being willing to cut through ego’s fixation on its own seductive logic:
By squashing it [projection], you are completely taking away the occupation [of creating the projection, and then justifying it]. You begin to feel that you have nothing to hold on to any more. <source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Garuda, “Working with Negativity,” Spring 1972>
The choice of which end of the stick we grab is ours.
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