Imagine two cases. In the first, you’re with a friend in a canoe on a lovely river, having a nice picnic on a Sunday morning. You’ve got your grandmother’s special silverware. You made some good food. You’re wearing nice clothes, all dressed up, maybe it’s kind of a date, who knows. And then suddenly there’s a loud thump on the side of the canoe, and you’re tipped over into the river. You come up sputtering. Your hair is ruined, your clothes are ragged, your grandmother’s silverware is at the bottom of the river. And what do you see? Two teenagers with snorkels and goggles, laughing at you, because they snuck up on your canoe and tipped it over on purpose.
Take two. Everything’s the same. You’re in your canoe with your friend, your nice clothes, your grandmother’s silver, what a wonderful day. And then the shocking crash against the side of your canoe tips you over, dumps you in the cold river. You come up sputtering. What do you see this time? A large submerged log, drifted downstream, that smacked into your canoe and dumped you in.
You’re still cold. You’re still wet. Grandmother’s silver is still at the bottom of the river. But it feels different. It feels different from being targeted capriciously and unfairly by people who did it on purpose, compared to, well, that’s a drag, natural hazard. You don’t take it so personally. Maybe you make some choices in the future, look out for the logs next time, choose a different river, or a different sport altogether. But it’s not so personal. It feels really different.
The takeaway is that most other people are like logs. We’re in the middle of their bad day. That doesn’t excuse them from moral culpability, but we can start to recognize them as being at the effect of, carried along by, thousands of impersonal processes upstream, sweeping them along. It’s really quite powerful to regard other people this way, as usually not malevolent, not evil, just carried along by their own tendencies. We’ve still got to deal with the logs in life. We still have to make choices about which rivers we put ourselves in, the ones that might be full of them. But it’s not so personal. There’s a kind of buffer around it.
This is where the Buddha’s teaching of the two arrows comes in. The first arrow is inescapable, inherent discomfort in life, physical or emotional. You’re dumped in the river and you’re cold. That part isn’t optional. Then there’s the second arrow, the one we throw at ourselves with our own cascading reactions, the taking it personally. That’s where most of our actual suffering comes from. And that’s where we can help ourselves.
There’s a teaching from the Zen master Yun Men that I keep coming back to. He was asked, what is it that trees wither, and leaves fall? He replied, body exposed in the golden wind.
There are undoubtedly associations to that phrase in Zen that I’m probably ignorant of. I’m going to take it at face value, and invite you to do the same. How does it feel? It’s almost like a poem. Golden wind. There’s that aspect of life that includes loss, trees withering, other people doing various things to us and around us. To enjoy the golden wind, we have to be exposed to all the forms of that wind. If we’re going to participate in life, dare greatly, love people, try things that might not work, we’re going to expose ourselves to it. The eight worldly winds, as it’s said in Tibet: gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and ill repute, praise and blame. Body exposed in the golden wind. There’s no getting the good parts of being alive without standing in that same wind.
If you’d like to go deeper into the nature of mind that makes this kind of freedom possible, not just less personal reactions, but a genuinely different relationship to who you take yourself to be, I’d love to have you join me in Neurodharma. It’s where I get into the deeper practices for working with identity, awakening, and the wiring of the brain itself. You can find it here: https://rickhanson.com/online-courses/neurodharma-online-course/. Use the code SUBSTACK10 for 10% off when you register.
The content in this article has been adapted from my spoken word.
I identify with another human; I do not identify with a log. Identification projects a whole bunch of baggage that originates in my relationship to myself. I am not saying that I won't treat other people like logs; I am only describing what I do when I do not.
Here's two more scenarios.
One, a friend with whom I have been trading practical jokes is responsible. Yes, she crossed a line, but she's my good friend and I DID prank her last week.
Two, a coworker with whom I do not work well is responsible. We have a history of animosity. This seems like another instance in our worsening conflict and I now expect even more that it will continue to worsen back in the office.
Enduring relationships contextualize interpersonal events in ways that matter to how I understand social life.
Still, I don't contest the point about all humans, including ones who anger me, being subject to causes and conditions and perhaps being far less free to choose how to act than I normally believe.