- Chapter Four -

 

Being Judgmental and Abandoning Life

 

Together we must learn all, we must learn to climb above ourselves to ourselves, and cloudlessly to smile - Cloudlessly to smile down, shining eyed and very remote, when beneath us violence and purpose and guilt steam like rain.

- Friedrich Nietzsche  

 

I am known to be quite a judgmental person, so the question is sometimes put to me that if I believe everything is caused, including all human behaviour, then why am I so condemning of others? Why am I critical of those who avoid being truthful and choose to pursue less lofty paths in life instead?

I usually answer this by pointing out that the process of making judgments is a natural function of the mind. In its purest form, judgment is simply the act of apprehending the truth of a situation. It is what the mind does naturally when unencumbered by egotism, bias, prejudice, dogmatism, insecurity, fear, anger, and all of the other distorting forces which come into play whenever one has strong emotional attachments. Making a judgment about a certain kind of behaviour, whether it be displayed in other people or in oneself, is no different to making a judgment about the validity of 1+1=2. It is simply the act of accepting reality as it is.

This kind of judgmentalism should not be confused with moral judgmentalism, as displayed by fundamentalist Christians and haughty matrons. Moral judgmentalism is essentially an expression of contempt by self-righteous individuals and rarely has anything to do with the pure act of discerning truth. Whenever I make a judgment about a certain kind of behaviour, I am always aware that the person involved is fully caused to behave in the way that he does and therefore fundamentally innocent and blameless. At bottom, we are all just puppets on the string of Nature. She is the sole determiner of everything that happens and ultimately we have no say in the matter. All we can do is go along for the ride - if Nature allows us to.

Judging human behaviour, in its purest form, is no different to judging anything else in the Universe. One can examine a bacteria-infested tree, for example, and correctly declare that it is diseased. Such a judgment is relatively egoless and contains no moral import at all. There is no suggestion that one is blaming the tree in any way. One is simply acknowledging a fact. The tree, due to its causes, is unhealthy. It does not make the tree inferior in an ultimate sense. It may be inferior to other trees in terms of health, but nevertheless it is still a perfect manifestation of Reality, as is the bacteria which infested the tree. It still continues to possess the same level of ultimate significance as any other object in existence.

One constantly hears from religious and spiritual people that we should be non-judgmental, particularly towards other people. However, this is very na ve and foolish. Not only is it impossible for us to refrain from making judgments while remaining conscious, but the very attempt to be non-judgmental constitutes an act of violence towards one s own mind. It is an attempt to circumvent the mind s natural inclination for making assessments, which is a form of madness.

In my experience, it is usually insecure, feminine-minded people who chant the mantra of non-judgmentalism the loudest. It is very prevalent in the New Age movement and in modern Buddhism and Hinduism, all of them very feminine religions. In wanting people to be non-judgmental they are merely expressing their desire not to be judged themselves. Their self-esteem is so wrapped up in what other people think of them that they are overcome by the desire to put a halt to everyone s thought processes, just so that they may never be judged in a negative light. It is a form of petty selfishness on their parts.

We do not need to pander to this kind of insecurity and cowardice. Such pandering is unhealthy from a spiritual perspective. It diminishes human consciousness and creates a barrier between us and truth. If we allow the mind s natural ability to apprehend truth to be constantly undermined by the desire not to hurt people with our judgments, then it will gradually fall into a state of atrophy and we will be spiritually dead.

Rather than trying to cease being judgmental, our goal should be to ensure that our motivation for making judgments is pure, and that our judgments are always true. And that can only come about by improving the quality of our thought and eliminating all traces of egotism from our actions. The pure man who exercises his faculties for judgment to the fullest is a rare treasure indeed. He openly articulates the truths that nobody wants to hear. Although evil people hate him, he acts as our conscience in this overly-fake world of ours. Rather than killing him off, we should all become like him.

 

Punishing criminals

The issue of punishment is sometimes presented as an argument against causality. If causality is real and responsible for all human behaviour, then what happens to our notions of individual responsibility? How could modern society continue to function if we regarded all people to be fundamentally blameless, regardless of what they did? On what basis could we punish those who break the law?

This is a fairly easy one to resolve. From the perspective of our evolution as a species, the main purpose behind punishing criminals has always been one of maintaining social order and shaping the future of society. Punishment offers a deterrent to those who contemplate breaking the law. That is its purpose. It has nothing to do with the concepts of "free will" and "individual responsibility". You do not need to believe in free will in order to punish someone. It is all about social harmony and protecting the established order.

Of course, people are often punished for more petty reasons. Revenge tends to be a common motivating factor, as is the desire on the part of the punishers to revel in their self-righteousness. If this sort of emotionalism continues to be deemed acceptable by society (and unfortunately, it still is), then yes, we probably do need to maintain the illusion of free will. The pleasures of exacting revenge and lording it over others would only be undermined if we accepted the truth that people are not ultimately responsible for their actions. In a wiser, more civilized society, however - a civilization in which the emotions of revenge and self-righteousness no longer exist - punishment of anti-social behaviour would probably be run along entirely different lines, with the furthering of human spirituality being the highest priority. Punishment would only be deemed necessary to the extent that it fostered the conditions for wisdom.

The question of whether or not it is "wrong" to punish criminals, given that causality is ultimately responsible for his actions, is meaningless. After all, the punisher himself is also a part of the larger realm of causality and equally not responsible for his actions. How can he do "wrong" in metering out punishment? This point was nicely illustrated by the great sage of Ancient Greece, Diogenes:

"It's my fate to steal," pleaded the man who had been caught red-handed by Diogenes. "Then it is also your fate to be beaten," said Diogenes, hitting him across the head with his staff.

Trying to ascertain right and wrong in these kinds of matters is futile. Right and wrong are subjective judgments. They chop and change depending on a person s fundamental values. A far more intelligent approach would be to simply accept the obvious truth that the issue of punishment is determined by practical concerns only. Since a measure of order and social harmony is needed for the maintenance of civilized life, deterrents are needed for those who wish to behave in a mindless destructive fashion. If these deterrents were to be removed, the rule of the jungle would quickly take over and the very worst elements of the human race would soon be ruling society. This isn t good for anyone.

Although the affirmation of causality does eliminate the reality of free will in an ultimate sense, it should be noted that it does not negate the concept of personal responsibility. On the contrary, it reaffirms it. The realization that everything is created by cause and effect invariably leads to the realization that every action we perform in the here and now has consequences without end, affecting thousands, if not millions, of people in the future. That is a tremendous responsibility to shoulder. Who among you is strong enough for it?

 

The Concept of Karma

Although I am not a Buddhist, I often use the concept of karma to illustrate a point. It is useful because it links the reality of causality with human psychology.

In a general sense, karma simply means cause and effect. A person s karma is the product of all the innumerable causes which have contributed to his development as an individual. His genetic material, parents, teachers, life experiences, nationality, culture, the evolution of the human species, the creation of life on earth, the formation of the solar system - all have played their part in the shaping of his life. One can think of all these things as his "past lives", while the endless consequences of every movement he makes during his lifetime, consequences which will continue to ripple out into the world long after he is dead, can be considered his "future lives". When the Buddha spoke of having countless past lives, this is undoubtedly what he meant.

Most Buddhists use the word "karma" in a more specialized sense, however, strictly confining it to the mental realm. In particular, they use it to refer to the way our choices in each moment determine our future mental states. Wise choices generate "good karma" which benefit us in the long run, while foolish choices generate "bad karma" which invariably leads to suffering and hell. Two young people starting out in life can follow very different paths depending on what choices they make. One of them makes the choice to become a wise human being and spends his youth methodically laying down the foundations for this to happen. He gradually detaches himself from the world of delusion and, by the time he is middle-aged, he begins to enjoy the pleasures of Heaven. The other youth chooses to lead a dissolute life, immersing himself in wine and women, leading to multiple marriages, liver disease and a sense of overwhelming despair that his life is effectively over. That is, he descends into hell.

Of course, the word "choice" here is simply a figure of speech. That the first young man chose to value wisdom was not really his choice at all. It was the inevitable result of his causes which stretch back endlessly into the past. He was fortunate to be the recipient of a lot of good karma: a favourable set of genes, which was the product of innumerable choices by his ancestors; a good upbringing, the product of his parent s choices; a well-balanced education, the product of his teacher s choices; his experience with wise mentors, either personally or through books, which was the product of his own past choices; and so on.

He was also, it should be noted, the beneficiary of a lot of good luck as well - for example, having the kind of early life experiences that build character instead of crushing it; hearing a chance word from another which triggers a life-changing insight in his mind; meeting a wise mentor at just the right time of his life; having none of his genes mutate in a life-threatening or debilitating way, and so on. Thus, we can see that a person s destiny is as much determined by luck as it is by his karma.

This is where the more specialized conception of karma, as favoured by Buddhists, breaks down. Buddhists are living in a dream world if they think that the whole of human behaviour is solely the result of choices and personal karma. In reality, Nature is an infinitely complex and messy affair, which makes it impossible to truly isolate a realm of existence from everything else. A person s mental and spiritual development is affected by countless factors, only some of which stem from the choices he has made as an individual. Like most other religious people, Buddhists are trying to escape reality by immersing themselves in a simplified conceptual realm, one that has their own egos firmly planted in centre-stage.

The concept of karma is probably most effective when used as a tool to analyse the nature of emotional attachment. Emotional attachment is easily the biggest factor to influence human decision-making and behaviour. A person who develops an attachment to another person, or to an object, a belief, a set of values, a purpose, or whatever it may be, automatically creates an array of mental habits which influences the rest of his life. For example, a man who falls in love with a woman, and marries her, quickly forms the habit of looking towards her for emotional comfort and companionship. His happiness becomes intertwined with her presence and support, his self-esteem with her moods and opinions. If she were to suddenly die, or run off with another man, he would be devastated. Not only would he suffer the severe withdrawal symptoms that stem from not having her around for his daily fix, but his agony would be compounded by his sense of betrayal and sudden lack of self-worth. This is a classic example of karma in action. Prior to this, he was lying back in a pleasant domestic heaven; now, suddenly, he has been "reborn" into the hell-realms.

This process of being reborn into various mental realms is essentially what the Buddha s concept of reincarnation refers to. The doctrine of reincarnation is often misinterpreted to be a life-after-death theory, but it really has nothing to do with that. It is instead a far more practical, down-to-earth conception that refers to the mundane realities of human life. We are all constantly being reborn into one mental realm or another. One minute we might be in a state of boredom, for example, and thus having a mild experience of the hell realms. But then suddenly, we find something interesting to do, which promptly ejects us from the hell realms and causes us to become reborn in the heavens. Most people s lives are cyclic in this manner, constantly oscillating between the hells and the heavens. Sometimes, as with the case of the husband above, they spend a lengthy period in extreme hell; at other times, they ascend into pure heaven, such as when a person falls in love. Usually, though, most people experience a bland existence of mild heavens and hells.

In Buddhism, this cyclic process is called "samsara", the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. This is quite an apt description when you think about it. When a person is reborn into a different realm, it is as though he becomes an entirely different person. For example, when a woman first falls in love, she is full of laughter, her eyes sparkle, her skin glows, and she looks almost godly. But then her husband suddenly leaves her and everything changes. Her eyes suddenly become lifeless, her skin becomes pasty, she loses energy and her whole being begins to sag. Not only mentally, but physically she has been reborn. The laughing goddess of yesteryear has well and truly died.

What ultimately causes a person to be flung around in this cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is his emotional attachment to things - which, in turn, is created by his ignorance of the nature of Reality. Because the deluded person is spellbound by the illusion of self-existence (he believes that his self ultimately exists), his mind naturally focuses its attention upon the protection and prosperity of this self. It falls into the daily habit of trying to manipulate everything in a manner that best enhances the self s prospects. Most people do this so naturally and unconsciously in every moment of their lives that they are not even aware they are doing it. They even believe they are being selfless most of the time! But in truth, a person really only becomes selfless when he becomes so conscious that he comprehends the nature of Reality and no longer believes in his own existence, which is a very rare attainment.

The moment you form an emotional attachment and fall into the habit of seeking your happiness in it, you are automatically sowing the seeds for your own future rebirth in the hell realms, and probably for other people as well. That is to say, you are producing bad karma.

Because things ultimately have no existence, to become emotionally attached to something in this world is to become psychologically dependent on a mirage. But alas, mirages cannot support such a heavy dependency. Sooner or later, they vanish, and you are left flailing about in agony with nothing to hold on to. And what is worse, your mirage-fixation sets a bad example for other people. You are teaching via your lifestyle that being attached to mirages is a good and noble thing, thereby encouraging others to do likewise. In this way, a part of you, the most evil part of you, is being reincarnated into them.

You might as well go around beating up old grannies and raping little children and be done with it. The effect is just the same. It does not matter how gentle and nice you might think you are as a person, if your lifestyle encourages people to become fixated on mirages, then you are directly contributing to the misery and suffering they will eventually experience. I always have to laugh at those who say, "We should be free to do whatever we like, as long as we don t hurt anyone". It does not seem to stop these people from entering into emotional relationships and falling in love! They seem oblivious to the fact that love is easily the biggest source of human misery in the entire spectrum of human behaviour.

In the end, all human suffering is generated in this way. Like moths to a flame, people are forever chasing mirages and getting burnt by the process. It is a serious form of psychosis which is nevertheless deemed to be perfectly rational and normal behaviour by most of the human race. Not only is it deemed normal, but it is constantly praised to the heavens in all corners of the globe. Love poems eulogize it, pop songs celebrate it, Hollywood movies spin glowing yarns about it, wars break out over it. It is the essence of what most people call "life". I call it the epitome of brainlessness.

Enlightenment is the process of putting an end to this psychosis. The enlightened person is one who no longer seeks his happiness in mirages. He lives in the emptiness of Reality, utterly at peace with the world and beyond all attachment. His mind is high on Heaven itself and no longer possesses the capacity to suffer. He had the wisdom to spend his youth chasing the one thing that is not a mirage - namely, Truth. Whereas ordinary people continue to go around and around pursuing mirages in a cycle of madness, the enlightened person rises above all this and attains the indescribable joy of nirvana.

It may be argued that not all human suffering is caused by ignorance and emotional attachment and the chasing of mirages. Some of it can be caused by physical factors only. Clinical depression, for example, is primarily caused by faulty chemistry in the brain. It does not matter how wise or enlightened you are, the argument states, if you have that kind of faulty chemistry in the brain, then you will suffer depression.

This is not really true, however. Although an illness such as depression does have some underlying physical causes, there is a large psychological component as well. If the brain of a fully enlightened sage were to malfunction in the manner associated with depression, then yes, he would probably experience a loss of energy and some mental flatness. The critical parts of his brain would not be receiving the proper chemical balance and therefore would not be functioning as well as it could. But that would probably be the extent of it. He would not experience the sheer emotional collapse and the sinking into a dark hole that most depressed people experience. This is because he has long ago abandoned the need for emotional sustenance and for external events to unfold in a desirable way. He can no more emotionally collapse than an empty balloon can burst. The whole affair would be little different to breaking a leg or contracting cancer - inconvenient and physically painful, yes, but without the emotional trauma that deluded people normally bring into it.

When a person comprehends the illusory nature of things and no longer seeks happiness in anything, and no longer attaches himself to any object, it is then that he rises above samsara and attains nirvana. He no longer enters the heavens (his lack of attachment precludes him from experiencing happiness) nor the hells (he is no longer capable of experiencing the loss of an attachment). Thus he no longer engages in the wheel of birth, death, and rebirth. He becomes immortal, no longer believing in the charade of his own existence. Just as a robber cannot steal anything from a person who has no possessions, death cannot take anything away from the person who has emptied himself of all attachment to life. He has literally conquered death, and not only death, but the Universe itself. How my heart goes out to those who have achieved such a tremendous feat! You, my friends, are the true heroes of this world.

 

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Copyright David Quinn 2003