Some Thoughts on Compassion
A friend of mine shared that while she was sick in bed on this particular morning her husband waited for her to wake up to make him breakfast. She complained about his lack of compassion toward her. His actions in this case were clearly inconsiderate, and even hurtful. But not all failures to be compassionate are so easily seen. Most occur in very subtle ways, and they occur every moment.
The roots of the word compassion are the Latin com, which means with, and pati, which means to suffer. So compassion meant to suffer with. But today we view that definition more as empathy. The modern understanding of compassion goes beyond empathy. It includes action motivated by an internal desire to alleviate the suffering of another.
However, before we can be compassionate we must deeply understand the suffering of others. When we suffer with them, when we exercise our empathy for them, we come closer to understanding their suffering. Without such an understanding there can be no right action.
Similarly, before we can empathize, we must first be aware of the suffering of others; we must accept the fact it exists. That comes from attention. If we are inattentive or oblivious to our environment, if we ignore what is happening, then we remain unaware of the suffering. Without attention there can be no awareness, and without awareness there can be no empathy.
So in empathizing with another we “suffer with” them. But in doing so, if we are inattentive, we may act to relieve the personal suffering generated by our empathy rather than alleviating that of the other. This substitution is very subtle and happens all the time. Such action isn’t compassionate. It is not motivated by a desire to alleviate the suffering of another. Instead it is motivated by the desire to relieve our own suffering caused by the suffering of another.
Compassionate action flows naturally from clear understanding. Sometimes this action takes a positive form i.e. it requires we actually do something. Other times it takes on a negative form i.e. we stop doing something. Our whole lives we are conditioned to think that all action must take the positive form. “Don’t just stand there. Do something!” These days I am trying to just stand still and stop all my actions that have been adding to the suffering of others.
Unsurprisingly, this has created suffering of its own.
Fragmented Beings
We call a human being an individual. But is he really? Consider what the word “individual” means. It is derived from the Latin “in-,” which means not, and “dividere” which means divide. So the word “individual” means not divided or undivided. But even a cursory look reveals that the human being is totally fragmented!
We have created a society where each of us plays different roles in the course of our daily life, each distinct from the other. We go further and purposely try hard to keep them separate, switching from one role to another as we move from environment to environment. These roles are nothing more than images we have constructed in our mind, built by the thoughts that fill it. If we observe our thoughts, pay attention to them, we become aware of the great variety of them appearing and disappearing in our mind: fragments from memory with no discernible relationship between them.
Even as I define myself as an individual, I am really not undivided. I am not whole. I am an unintegrated collection of thought fragments, memories. And because these fragments of thought have no relationship to one another, they are often contradictory and in conflict with each other. So the prevailing state of my mind is chaotic! When I, an individual, am not whole, how can my world be? After all, the chaos in my mind I act out in the world.
The problem of fragmentation and disorder affects both the common man and our so-called leaders. Thus, we all behave in contradictory ways, engage in conflict and hypocrisy. It is critical that each of us work to transform ourselves from fragmented beings, disordered and divisive, into whole beings, ordered and unified. This has real world implications on how we relate to one another in conflict and cooperation. It determines whether our change efforts succeed, whether we will live in harmony or discord.
External systems of rules and regulations can coerce behavior, but they cannot integrate the fragmentation inside the human mind. That work must be done by the individual. It can only be done by the individual. Even the gurus, priests, imams, psychologists, are fragmented beings. How can they guide you to becoming an integrated whole? No one can. Thus, as the Buddha said, “be a light unto yourself.” If the human being transforms himself, he transforms everything, i.e. if he changes, his world changes. If he does not, nothing changes.
Personal Willpower, Communal Impact
We seem to make decisions in more impulsive ways than before. Many of us don’t seem to practice any reasonable amount of self-control. I feel this may be because most of us today just don’t have strong willpower.
Last year I read a book called “Willpower”[1] by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. In it the authors liken willpower to muscle. And just like a muscle willpower can wear out from fatigue. When willpower is worn out, we behave more impulsively. How quickly we drain our willpower depends on how strong it is.
In using our willpower to make decisions we’re using our conscious mind or “System 2” as Daniel Kahneman refers to it in “Thinking, Fast and Slow”[2]. Conscious decision making or thinking is hard! It requires effort and uses a lot of energy in the process.
The body, however, has a limited store of energy. When we are low on energy, this conscious decision making process shuts down and decision making is shunted to the brain’s default decision making process or “System 1.” It doesn’t require much energy; it’s automatic and occurs outside of our conscious awareness. Many of the decisions we make in the default mode are driven by habit.
Conscious decision making generally produces reliable outcomes. We make better decisions with it. Not so with automatic decision making, which has been shown to be error-prone, often in systematic ways. So it’s important that we exercise our willpower; build it up, and make it stronger.
No one can make you exercise your body or mind. That’s a choice you make for yourself. But the results of your choice affects your behavior which in turn affects society. We live in communities and we have an obligation to them: to be the best version of ourselves.
Links
[1] Baumeister, Roy F., John Tierney (2012). Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
[2] Kahneman, Daniel (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.
The Context for Concepts
In my last post I might have left the impression that conceptualizing the real place is bad or that we should avoid it. This is not a correct impression.
We cannot avoid conceptualizing the real place. It’s automatic; part of our biological structure and the structure of our language. Concepts are how we make sense of the real place. They provide insights into the real place. We need those insights to respond appropriately to the real place. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that concepts are the mind’s representations of the real place and not the real place itself! We can call them images, idols, models, data, or symbols.
D. T. Suzuki[1] shared, “To point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon…” Alfred Korzybski[2] wrote in Science and Sanity, “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” George E. P. Box[3], in Statistics for Experimenters, put it pithily that “all models are wrong; some models are useful.” These reminders, to be consciously aware of the difference between the real place and our mind’s abstractions of it, is the thread that runs through science and religion.
Problems only arise when we hold onto a concept long after it has stopped representing the real place and a gap has developed between what is and what we conceptualize it to be. To know what is, we must first “go and see” the real place. Without that direct experience with the real place, we cannot hope to act in ways appropriate to it. This is my understanding of what Zen and lean teach.
Links
[1] D.T. Suzuki
[2] Alfred Korzybski
[3] George E.P. Box
The Real Place
My study of Buddhist thought, and especially Zen, have so far taught me that I am often unaware of the real place. Decades of schooling and acculturation to society have taught me to ignore the real place in favor of concepts manufactured by the human mind; to create and be hypnotized by images and models. Right, wrong, god, devil, me, you, husband, wife, mother, father, boss, servant, friend, enemy, success, failure, good, bad, us, and them are all concepts. These are all creations of the mind. It gives them meaning. They’re not real.
Concepts are static–unchanging and easy to grab a hold of and cling to, while the real place is dynamic–ever changing; sometimes in predictable ways, most times in unpredictable ways. The real place offers nothing to grab on to; nothing to cling to. It is inevitable then that the two will eventually diverge from one another. I believe that that gap between what I see and what I think I see is the source of much, if not all, my suffering–frustration, anxiety, feelings of helplessness, exhaustion, and such. To experience the real place, I must let go of concepts, or rather I should not cling to them. Only then will my actions be appropriate or right for the real place.
Zen has been useful in ferrying me back to the real place every time my mind drifts to concepts.
My most direct experience of this gap, or at least one that I am most aware of, has been in the workplace. Data, charts, procedures, policies, concepts abound. Again, most, if not all, are disconnected from the real processes and systems. How work actually happens. However, like me, organizations remain mostly unaware of the disconnect. They thus suffer in a mire of internal conflict and frustration, too.
Lean can be useful to get organizations back to the real place.
Ripples
Drop a pebble into a pond. Its effects ripple out. But the ripples don’t radiate infinitely across the surface. Nor do they last forever. At sufficient distance from their center they are hardly distinguishable from the surrounding water. A point beyond the reach of the ripples wouldn’t know that a pebble was ever dropped into the pond.
Drop two pebbles into a pond. Each generates ripples that radiate out. If the pebbles were dropped far from each other, their ripples die out before reaching one another. Each unaware the other happened just as before. But if the pebbles were dropped close to each other, their ripples interfere with one another. Some reach through to the centers themselves. Thus making their presence known. “Here I am! I exist!”
We are sources of ripples in this expanse of existence. I cause ripples at every point and instant I am. So do you. But until our ripples interact with one another we cannot know of each other. In ancestral times we were separated far enough from one another for our ripples to ever interact. We were independent. Alone. That space has shrunk to almost nothing in our time. Our ripples constantly collide with one another. Sometimes constructively, sometimes destructively. We are painfully aware of each other without announcement.
We absorb some of the energy from the ripples that bombard us. Not enough to damp them completely. They reflect off of us. We react to counteract their impact on us. And so no ripple ever settles out. Each seems to get an invisible kick and be periodically rejuvenated. By what and from when seems shrouded in mystery. The water’s surface is forever unsettled. This is the chaos that is life. No peace. No quiet.
As we grow in number, as the space between us continues to shrink, the closer we get to one another, the more we are bombarded with original ripples and ripples from interacting ripples. They come at us from all directions. They come at us faster. There is no way to predict and prepare for the next collision with the here and now. There isn’t time to process what it means. There is no thing to thank or to blame. We only experience it. Rich. Momentary. Unique.
Perceptions Dictate Actions
Abraham Maslow proposed a theory on human motivation outlining an hierarchy of needs we all move through. Whether the hierarchical structure strictly applies may be questionable, but his categories of needs can be accepted as defined with an appeal to personal experience.
At various points in our lives we have felt a need for food, water and shelter, safety and security, stability, friendship, love, respect, and growth. Maslow grouped these needs into five categories: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. While he organized these categories in an hierarchy, I find it more meaningful to think of them as factors that combine and interact to give rise to various mental states.
Personal experience has led me to believe mental states affect perception. A given situation will be perceived differently under different mental states. And, how you perceive affects how you react. If your mental state is dominated by a sense of insecurity, you will perceive your situation as threatening and react accordingly. Futhermore, no other category of need will feel worthwhile until the one dominating your mental state has been attended to.
It has also been my experience that people with dissimilar mental states have difficulty relating to one another in a productive fashion. Because mental states affect perception, dissimilar states result in different perspectives of the same issue. Differing perspectives are not conducive to forming the common understanding necessary to cooperatively face a situation. People talk past one another. Messages are misunderstood. Communication doesn’t take place.
Given that it’s unlikely two people will share similar mental states at any given time, how does one move across this emotional minefield? Meditation and self-reflection have helped me to characterize my mental state. This awareness has opened up a choice for me unavailable before: how do I want react to things? At the very least I have an option to not make things worse. I can also attempt to ascertain the other person’s mental state and work towards common understanding.
Failure
Most of us have been taught to live our lives singularly focused on outcomes. We are a result oriented society. We worship winners and revile losers. With that as the context, is it any wonder that the majority of us are risk averse? Why do something if there is a chance we might not achieve our desired end? Who would want to be labeled a failure or a loser?
I remember an incident back in middle school. I had got a ‘D’ in one of my classes. It generated such anxiety that I doctored my report card. With a couple of well placed dots penciled in on the dot matrix printout I changed the grade from the ‘D’ to a ‘B’. I knew it was wrong, but the fear of failure was dominating. Even though my parents had never set any expectations for grades – they had always wanted me to just do my best – I had nevertheless internalized the stigma of failure from other social contexts.
The message we all, student or professional, get every waking moment is clear even if it is just implied: hit the target. It does not matter how. Anything less is not only worthless but it will bring negative consequences. What we fail to grasp is the fact that just as you cannot inspect quality into a product, you cannot test knowledge into a student. Trying to do it just fosters our present culture wherein we are all afraid to take chances and risk failure.
We must shift our focus upstream to the learning process. We must be taught how to learn beyond just what to learn. All of us have to understand how knowledge is built and then use that process to grow our own knowledge. That process, the learning cycle, is elegantly expressed by Dr. Shewhart and Dr. Deming: PDSA or Plan-Do-Study-Act. Its deceptive simplicity hides the profound impact it has had in growing human knowledge.
Make a guess at the solution to the problem you’re facing and plan a way to test your guess. Following the plan, actually do the test; carry it out. Study the result by comparing it against your guess. Do they match each other? How you act, depends on the answer. If the result matches your guess, you have confirmation of your guess. If not, you will need to modify your guess with the new found data and run through the cycle once more. Either way, you have increased your knowledge. There is no failure!
How many cycles it takes to understand the nature of the problem we face depends on how good our initial guess is. We must afford everyone the opportunity to run through as many cycles as they need without judging them as a success or a failure based on the outcome of any given iteration of the cycle. Doing so is a way to kill intrinsic curiosity and stop the learning process cold. If we want people to take risks, then we have to foster an environment of experimentation and cooperation.
Life is a journey, not a destination. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whirlpools…
We are rather like whirlpools in the river of life. In flowing forward, a river or stream may hit rocks, branches, or irregularities in the ground, causing whirlpools to spring up spontaneously here and there. Water entering one whirlpool quickly passes through and rejoins the river, eventually joining another whirlpool and moving on. Though for short periods it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event, the water in the whirlpools is just the river itself. The stability of a whirlpool is only temporary. The energy of the river of life forms living things – a human being, a cat or dog, trees and plants – then what held the whirlpool in place is itself altered, and the whirlpool is swept away, reentering the larger flow. The energy that was a particular whirlpool fades out and the water passes on, perhaps to be caught again and turned for a moment into another whirlpool.
Nothing Special : Living Zen – Charlotte Joko Beck with Steve Smith
Book Review: “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”
As I read “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” I found myself nodding my head in approval… a lot. Daniel Pink makes a compelling argument against the adequacy of commonly accepted ideas on what motivates us: ‘carrots and sticks’, and the effectiveness of management that continues to use those ideas today even after they have been debunked. He presents the findings of scientific studies conducted by thought leaders in the field of psychology, sociology, economics like Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, Carol Dweck, Dan Ariely, and Teresa Amabile as he builds his own model to describe what drives us.
Pink’s model of motivation is elegant. Made up of three parts, it is simple yet captures key factors that drive motivation:
- People have a desire for autonomy with respect to task, time, team and technique,
- People want to gain mastery over what they do, and
- People crave to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
It holds an intuitive appeal for me. I suspect that might be a function of the type of work I do and my experience doing it. For as long as I have been working I have been dissatisfied with the management style used by each of my employers. Among other things, I found them lacking in the way they chose to motivate. The studies Pink discusses in the book helped me understand why some of my job functions went from ‘play’ to ‘work’. They also explain why, from time to time, they reverted back from ‘work’ to ‘play’. His model crystallized what I am looking for as a knowledge worker: An opportunity to choose what I do, when I do it, with whom I do it and how I do it. An opportunity to do it well and get better at it. And, an opportunity to do it in the cause of something greater than myself.
“Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” is a well written book. Pink doesn’t make the reader work at it. He weaves stories that hook a reader and pull him along without being wiser to it. It takes lots of skill and effort to pull that off. Pink builds his case for his model of motivation logically, never losing the reader in the process. He doesn’t just cite studies, he explains their findings. Then he takes the additional step to explain the implication of those findings as he works to incorporate them into his model. So, the net result is an extremely reader friendly book that informs and educates. I place this book in the same space as Jonah Leher‘s “How We Decide“, Dan Ariely‘s “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions“, Ori Brafman‘s “Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior“.
Footnotes:
Iterations 