Right Understanding, Right Self

One of the things I enjoy about Buddhism is the variety. The oldest type is Theravada Buddhism. Theravada means something like "wisdom of the elders". The Theravadins stick to a minimal canon of sutras and are considered by many Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhists to teach the Hinayana--"the small vehicle"--style of Buddhism. This style can be respected for its thrift, simplicity, and universal applicability. It is similar to the passage in Christianity that says the Way is steep and narrow. It's old school--figuratively and literally. The Mahayanists consider themselves proponents of the "Great Vehicle", opening their canon up to an almost unending set of sutras and commentaries on sutras. The Vajrayanists consider their way most complete and exalted (although some Vajrayanists will say that the three ways are equally good). Vajrayana means something like "the diamond way", and a vajra is Indra's thunderbolt. Vajrayana is also known as tantric and can be seen as the most esoteric--full of ritual, magic, and the abundance of the world. Very different feel to it than Theravadin straightforward simplicity.

Anyway, one of the Buddhist teachings that I appreciate is the outline of the "Eightfold Path" to awakening. The eight things one is expected to work on are: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. When we look to relate with others a step beyond hierarchical status or power positions, this usually involves some set of principles, rules, guidelines, or whatever you want to call them. Moving up the ladder from Purpose level interactions to Understanding level interactions, we run into the "good and right" self-identity. Jeffrey Alexander speaks about this sort of relating on a social level in THE CIVIL SPHERE. On pages 228-234, Alexander talks about legitimacy of power, not just power. Between equals who work towards shared understandings and a social contract, power is subjected to the dictates of legitimacy. Fellow citizens and neighbors want to be known as "good and right" people. Being good is socially valuable, and in debates about what is good, one wants to come across as right as well as good.

At this stage, we take one step away from a magically-imbued ideal self--and an animalistic amped self--and a step towards an actual inspired self. The distance between who we are and our ideals now becomes a problem to be addressed--often by attempting to perfectly apply principles. The principles we choose to validate make up our personal sense of "right understanding". At this point, because people test the idea of a civil self among equal civilians, legitimacy becomes important and power is no longer considered to be an acceptable end in itself. And, in a circular but not meaningless way, we put our social weight behind the system of principles we choose while being measured as fallible and lacking by those legitimizing principles. We are "right and good" in our own eyes to the extent we live as examples of our principles, and our principles look right and good to the extent that our actions seem so.

At this point, though, we still are not fully integrated, inspired selves. We have moments of inspiration, but inspiration does not necessarily come on a regular basis just from being authentic. We still put effort into being good, but we are trying to become more graceful about it. There is often the feeling that I could be better if my society were better as well. But having a right framework, a right understanding, may help me work on being a "good" person. We may still look for competition and status, but we may be less likely to believe that physical power is legitimacy, so competition also takes the form as valued debate. The abstraction utilized here helps me recognize that a shitty Christian is a worse neighbor than a good and righteous Muslim even if I believe that Muslim is going to hell for his infidelity and he believes the same of me for my opposing religious beliefs. We may tolerate a good citizen even if he has "false" mythical beliefs (compared to my "right" mythical beliefs).

When two adults--let's stick with the Gates/Crowley couple for now--interact as good and right citizens, they speak to each other as equals rather than competing for status in ways that illegitimately attempt to utilize the power in their positions. This highlights an important shift. We begin to recognize--at least, hopefully, in a pluralistic country--that sometimes I want to be treated as a "person", but the frustrated cashier may treat me as a role (just one more customer). And, as long as the cashier follows the generally agreed-upon laws, I may not like being treated as only a customer, but I can understand it. You can even do the same as a professor and a cop. If you're willing. Now, during stressful moments, we are likely to act less maturely than we do in our best moments. When that happens, we compete for status and the one-up position. The go-to human method is to remember myself as good and righteous and everyone who I see as competing to put me down or put themselves up I see (often correctly) as illegitimately trying to abuse whatever power they can get their grubby hands on. That is only half of right view, though, which means that I'm taking a wrong view. Because I am also trying to get my grubby little hands on whatever advantage I can garner in the situation, influencing the other person to not treat me as good or right. I'm actually asking to be treated as bad and wrong (illegitimate even by my own principles)--which Gates and Crowley did with one another.

Both introjected the righteousness of their ideals but it seems that neither was mindful enough in the stressful situation to actually apply their ideals. A common failing, for sure. Right mindfulness, then, is a huge part of the "mature" self. Neither of this couple seemed to be making mature decisions in this situation even if both might argue about how they were "right". It just goes to show that over-valuing a "right self"-identification keeps us from being good and mature along with being able to claim rightness. As equal citizens, it is sufficient that they can agree to disagree after a beer with the President, but many of their fellow citizens have figured that out without an executive beer order.