Is Progress Possible? Mindfulness vs Tribalism

Another title for this blog post and video discussion might be: "driving progress wisely." Or "a mindful approach to progress." 

In the video, Robert Wright, author of Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (2018) speaks with Emma Varvaloucas, Executive Director of The Progress Network* about tribalism and politics in today's exceptionally divisive and social media driven world.

A factor that they discuss, and Wright has covered in the past, is the way that we often fall into counter-productive extremism, even when we think we're on "the right side" of history on matters. An example Wright gives is of recent protests when some police were filmed driving their cars into protesters. This is not at all typical behavior, but many on the left commented as if it was. 

On the other side of the political divide, he noted, other people saw the isolated cases of rioting and looting and responded as if this was the typical behavior of Black Lives Matter protesters and allies. It wasn't.

So on both sides (and this is not to suggest that the two sides are equal) we can see cases of taking the extremes as if they were the norm. 

This might have the power to enrage and rally allies, but it also twists truth. 

Many on either extreme don't see this. And if they do, they might argue that twisting the truth is necessary and beneficial.

And yet this itself comes around to harm the cause, as people on the other side can often discuss and see the "lies" being put out. So we can end up scoring an "own goal" in which our over-inflated rhetoric or excessive reaction to wrongs actually causes more harm.

The Solution

A little mindfulness and compassion. Even as we work within our tribe or group, and fight for a world that helps people we identify and empathize with, we need to try to think about the lives and reasons of those on the "other side." 

For us as Progressives, that means thinking about and appealing to the ardent further-left activists we know as well as good-hearted centrists and conservatives. In the Buddhist world it means empathizing with those at the cutting edge of new ways of understanding and practicing the Dharma as well as those who place highest value on the oldest teachings and institutions.

And that takes real work. Often we can find our greatest frustration is with those who are closest to us on the political spectrum but who are just either a) twisting things a bit too far, or b) failing to connect with us and see a problem we're pointing at. 

Back when I studied the Pali language, I remember noting that the Buddha used a few words that essentially mean "stupid" and "idiot" to describe people around him surprisingly often. It wasn't just the Brahmins or members of other religious groups that he was talking about. It was often his own near and dear monks and nuns (well, mostly just monks that I can remember). 

The point is, the Buddha offered criticism to anyone who acted or spoke against the truth, be they a close disciple or a distant teacher. And he offered kind words to those who spoke and acted in manners aligned with truth, be they members of his community or not. 

One way I have seen this helpfully manifested in discussions has been in the use of the phrase "both/and." It typically is valuable when a poster or commenter writes that "X is bad, an alternative of X is good." For instance, "our government is bad, anarchy is good." We might say, "what about both a system that preserves helpful things about our government like environmental protections or worker's rights and greater avenues of freedom and self-expression as well as local governance?"

Again, this is by no means easy. And convincing people of things on the internet, people you likely don't know and might never meet is often a lost cause. Nonetheless we are here. Let us make the best of our time in this space.

* Emma also interviewed me way back in my previous life as a famous Buddhist blogger and hers as an editor for Tricycle Magazine. 

Anger

Illustration credited to Alex Hill

Friends and Readers,

This is not an exposition on the phenomena of anger, but it is my anger that I will be pouring out. As the religious have for eons written confessions, dreams, and their angers as well, it is my turn.

We Buddhists attempt to channel our anger (hopefully not just get rid of it, ultimately impossible) in the proper ways, through meditation, through action, through illumination and through community activities. These can all be either positive reactions or negatives to the anger that is boiling within us, but I am getting off topic. Let me tell you what is making my own blood boil.

I am angry that many have lost the need for depth in life. In fact, I am furious. Just today I was serving a gentleman  (I’m a waiter, which is the fate that befalls us philosophers) who looked at me after I told him I study philosophy and said,

“Why don’t you study something useful like economics?” I am still infuriated by this notion and I am now shifting by belief that I have no reason to prove to anybody why philosophy is still important, they have to show me why it's not.

I am angry that we believe we can ultimately be pleased by a surface existence. Popular culture has no evil intrinsically, but my satisfaction cannot be sustained by watching the latest TV show, no matter how good, by the most recent fashion fad (which will change in a few hours anyways).

My anathema is the continuation of staring into screens, onto pages, into each other and only seeking information. Catalogs only suffice to those who want more of the surface. The ocean is much more than just how far it stretches, but its depths make it the most mysterious of all. We are like this. You will only find some life on the surface of the ocean but to be a functional habitat for the trillions of life-forms that live there, depth is required.

Walt Whitman said there is a multiplicity within us, there are lives within us, depths to be explored, criticized, praised, changed, and kept. It infuriates me to state that our lives can be lived happily enough if we just stay on the surface. Yes, the depths are dangerous, dark, sometimes bringing from themselves nightmares and poisonous serpents but without those depths, there would be no surface for us to frolic on.

There is ferment within me. The inferno within wishes to engulf the sick belief that money automatically means anything at all besides being money. This is hardly anything new, in fact, I am beating a field of dead horses by writing any of this, but the inferno is only growing and cannot be contained. Money automatically means happiness? No. Money automatically means evil? No (despite how lovely this view looks).

Our egos have exploded and grow to disproportionate sizes—a sex tape conjures the belief that one is a celebrity who requires attention, fame, money, power. The surface, it seems, has satisfied us and has turned us into monsters. We are zeppelins that are inflated with the thin hydrogen of our most basic desires. We fly around, slowly, demanding awe from the onlookers who will only shortly burn up in the crash along with us and just another moron (pardon my French) will attempt to rebuild it, alter it just slightly, and set it up into the sky.

I am tired of dogmatism—certainty stains the eyes and the souls. I am not arguing with matter-of-facts, I am not proposing, asking, or trying to even all together persuade why all of these lead to horrendous ends, we have seen it time and time again. I am demanding that it STOPPPPPPPPP.

Has our beasthood (which is not to criticize the animal world, which is not ‘beastly’ as we like to believe, in order to inflate our own egos some more) taken over? Soon we shall be shedding our skins and underneath will not be another layer of skin, but bones and muscle. We have become this dull. We have become boring, incapable of opening our minds to foreign concepts (and the more tragic part, to “foreign people.”) We treat those who are different with disgust because they are not us.

This has gone so far that we even spread democracy with the gun. Really?????????????

What is all of this for? For life? For happiness? This provides no happiness for me, it drives me to the belief that there’s something wrong with me. How sick. Am I to believe that my belief that we have dimensions of us (and the world) that are unexplored and won’t be, that things change; there are variations and perspectives, that philosophy is dead, that the humanities are dead—no—that humanity is dead.

These are not my wishes. Humanity shouldn’t continue to decay in its iniquity, it should reach and fish within its own dangerous depths to find the pearls that only lurk at the bottom of the seas. I don’t have the answers my friends, I have my frustrations, my convictions, my love and my hope and for now, I have my life and that will suffice. But know, because I have my life, hope, convictions etc. I will not just sit idly and be satisfied with only things that I’m “supposed” to be satisfied with. I am furious that people are becoming automatons because I know for a fact they are not, but reorienting themselves to be. Let’s stand together, move together, love together and all go fishing together, within ourselves, so that we may come to the bottom and bring the pearls to the surface, which will illuminate the waves that crash along the shores of our lives.

A Trinity of Concepts: Emptiness, Desire and Enlightenment

Greetings readers!

It is quite obvious that I am about to tackle some major concepts within this blog post. I will not apologize for heavy philosophical writing but I will, for the sake of all beings, attempt to make this as simple as possible. Simplicity within Buddhism is a sacred element in my opinion because it is key to the understanding of universality, interactivity and the progression of Compassion.

So how on Earth can I possibly tackle such major themes, which have everything to do with each other all in one post?

Can I go down a check-list of some sort and check mark everything that I need to say about each and just move on to the next one?

I hate the word blasphemy but I think it would be appropriate for such a project. Not only do these have everything to do with each other, I am going to make a case in stating that they are all the same thing.

That is incredibly “unorthodox” of me to state but those of you who are already thinking to yourself, “What? Why? You’re crazy!!!” I beg you to hear me out. You will see that I am not “stretching” things that far and even if I were, so be it, it must happen.

I will begin with Emptiness!

Within my postmodern mindset it is difficult for me to accept a notion of something being contentless. The only form of contentless that I can even imagine is something having so much content that some of it needs to be thrown out. There are a few ways to go about explaining this. The classic question “why is there something instead of nothing” can be turned into “why is there something instead of everything?”

To quickly ponder over those two questions and to simultaneously move to my next point would be to answer in saying that Nothing is not nearly as much chaos as Everything. Everything must be diluted, Nothing is open, potential where as it is Everything that must be deconstructed and made peace with. Something is a flux between the two, Everything and Nothing even though it seems that this Something is Everything at the same time. That’s as far as I will go with that but my major point here is saying that there are things that could use a little bit of diluting, trimming and throwing out of.

Such statements are beginning to sound a little bit Nihilistic....that’s because they are. They are not Nihilistic in the sense that everything is meaningless but rather the contrary, everything has so much meaning that we do in fact need to peal some of it away, throw it away and then take what is good, useful and pragmatic and continue on with that. Nihilistic pragmatism? Yes. I would state that Buddhism has a lot of that very concept embedded in the heart of it.

Okay so finally, Emptiness. What is emptiness?

We live and continue our days, day-by-day, moment by moment. There is nothing new about this statement to Buddhism. What about these moments? Now. What about right Now? As I am writing this post and as you Now are reading this post. It is difficult to say that the future exists at all because it is now here yet but it is also impossible to say that there is anything static within this world as well. We’re stuck saying things are Becoming. Things are constantly becoming and so Now is a constant process of change. This too is nothing new to Buddhism but here is where it gets interesting. Emptiness is not the idea that there is, in fact, nothing that keeps “me” “you” “us” “we” and so forth but rather it is moments. It is not things that are empty but time.

Moments in time from one moment to the next. The flux between when one thing is about to end and when the next moment is about to begin. There is absolutely no way to ever measure such a thing and so we can say a few things here. We can either say that because there is no quantification of such a thing and such a claim to Emptiness would force Emptiness to be attributed to Now, since Now is all we have, and then everything is Emptiness.

But wait!

How can everything be Empty so fundamentally when we have already discussed that things have content to them, they have meaning, potency and potential? Can, with such a view everything be Empty at the same time? Because stating Now is Empty only with time, but always Empty would force the way we view content itself to change.

So no. That’s out!

We’re not forced to say that Emptiness does and should have content, we are blessed to be able to say that. This is where Emptiness meets Desire.

Part II: Desire as Emptiness. Emptiness as Desire.

Desire is believed to be the thing that keeps us within Samsara (at least in Theravada.) Samsara to me is more so a continuation of the breaking of community and the lack of realization of interdependency, interactivity and compassion. That definition would make Samsara a negative aspect of reality.

Traditional logic, and the Four Noble Truths state that with the breaking of Desire, Enlightenment can be attained. This understanding continues to do good when Desire and Enlightenment are properly situationally explained but as a general ontological point, I think it leads us way off the road.

Desire as a more conceptual thought cannot be ridden of and all Buddhists know this. The Dalai Lama always tells people it is not Desire that we’re trying to get rid of, it is “bad” Desire. Desire to do evil things like harming people and animals and such.

Okay so back on course. The statement I made was that Desire and Emptiness are the same thing, neither of which is contentless. That last point is incredibly important and please do not forget that! It. Is. Not. Contentless!!!

As moments continue to arise and fall, constantly changing, it is Desire that continues interactivity and community. It is that process, the Desire for those two things which keep the Cosmos and Everything somewhat stable in place. Because we don’t have any idea as to what sort of Desire that is, the basis of it, the reason behind it, the point in which the Desire is Ultimately Fulfilled (or brought to a close) we must call it Empty.

There is one more reason we must call it Empty. As things come from the past and are thrown into the present and continue on, infinitely into the “future” there is a interactivity between what we call Being and Non-being. Being is Existence, transcendent of itself and constantly changing and Non-being are those moments of Emptiness where there is a flux between what has taken place and what is about to take place. Non-being and the word Creativity can be interchangeable here and they both have the quality of being “Empty.” They’re empty because they’re potentials, neither determined nor isolated from anything else, rather influenced by everything instead. It is that slightest moment when we have an Empty choice to do something Good or Evil that is Empty. The manifestation of the action is the leaving of Non-being and into Being and also then becomes either Enlightenment or a continuation of Samsara.

Desire as Enlightenment.

This is where the unorthodoxy really kicks in guys, so please, hold on!

I have now stated that Emptiness is not contentless but is moments in which Good and Evil are in flux and that choice is made. There is no isolation and no determinism but rather influence. Being and Non-being are dynamical in that Empty/Creative/Desire(ful) moments lead to choices to be made which can be Good or Evil.

Samsara has been defined as a breaking of community and interactivity, an ignorance that everything is interdependent and connected.

Enlightenment must be some form of the opposite of that (with exception, of course. It’s not always the case that if it’s not “A” then it has to be “not A.)

Please excuse the logic lesson there!

So Desire can be Enlightenment only if Desire is essentially viewed as favorable. I am talking about the same Empty Desire that I talked about just a few minutes ago. The way that it can be viewed as favorable and be viewed as Enlightenment is if the understanding of Desire is positive in the first place. Empty moments must somehow more likely lead to Good than Evil for them to be Enlightenment.

Right?

Well....almost. Yes because I am openly an idealist regarding humans and just the world and do believe that most people will make a Good choice as opposed to an Evil one but more so because there is nothing left to call Enlightenment. That sounds like a strange thing to say but I mean it, there is nothing left other than these moments to call Enlightenment.

The “Criteria” for Desire to be Enlightenment generally gets fulfilled.

1)  It is mysterious

2)  It is objectively present but subjectively participated with

3)  It is empty on its own thus requiring context.

4)  It is its realization that can change some people.

5)  For Mahayana, the realization of this for others is more likely to happen than a realization in one’s own mind.

These similarities do not make it necessary that Enlightenment and Desire are the same thing so I will now move on quickly to Enlightenment.

Enlightenment as Apophatic Participation with Everything

Before I begin here I will have to give some terms. This will seem as the largest “break” from what I have written so far in this post yet it will all tie in together again, I promise.

To describe some terms here, apophatic means negation. It is generally used in theological terms but I believe it to be useful when discussing Enlightenment as well. What I mean exactly by negation is saying that we can only say what something is not instead of what something is. I link this sort of term closely with mysticism but not always.

What Enlightenment is not….

Enlightenment is not a state one enters and leaves that is isolated from some and available for others.  Thus Enlightenment cannot be isolated, it must be constant, integrated with everything around it. Attempting to isolate it will go against one of the most important of all Buddhist principles of interconnectivity.

Enlightenment cannot “truthfully realized” via a belief of raw experience.

I mention this statement almost in every post because I honestly believe it is a misconception many Buddhists have, especially in the tradition that I am a part of, Zen.

Through no attempt may a person find a “hidden” or “final” truth about oneself that is completely common, simple and universal to all things. Regardless of whether this “hidden” “Buddhanature” is a positive quality to humanity or not, a raw experience not only is not a way to discover such a religious and subjective term, raw experience itself is not possible. As stated above, the closest we can come to Emptiness is Desire, which is not contentless so no amount of meditation will take a person to a place where “Buddhanature” is discovered.

(On a quick note I am not attempting to make humanity seem as if though it is not in a state of Buddhahood, my explanation for Buddhahood is much different than that and it will be explained more thoroughly in my next post!)

The list can go on and on but I find those to be the most important. With such statements it is possible to justify such intensive history of Buddhist mysticism and monasticism.

Buddhism began as a predominantly monastic faith available to few but as concepts that had to do more and more with everybody arose, the tide shifted into a religion of laity and not of the monks. Buddhism lends itself easily to introspective isolation with such stress on the individual but it is a mistake to assume the individual is, in fact, one single “I.” Realization of anything within Buddhism goes through the motions of discovering the principles that Buddhism presents and one of those is interconnectedness and community. The “I” is only as “we” continue and still personhood is a tricky subject. I will not say much more about this because this will begin the “Self” discussion which is not the purpose of this post.

To Sum Up!

We have now stated that Emptiness is Desire is Enlightenment.

Enlightenment is a mysterious thing, empty in that it is not contentless but rather so mysterious that it is empty. Desire is the progression of each moment in continuation towards community and interdependency, the healthy kind.  Enlightenment is such because it is generally characterized as a realization of the Buddhanature within all things but this suggestion is that the Desire that propels everything and its realization is the Enlightenment that we seek. We respond and participate in such ways that it becomes so subjective, yet recurrent that “Empty” is a word that can be used.

There will be more posts on all of these topics as I go into more depth but that is a nutshell introduction to how I view Buddhist philosophy.

What, if anything, is Buddhism?

This title comes from a fascinating somewhat recent paper by UCLA's Jonathan Silk, one of the great Buddhologists of our time. That paper is titled, "What, If Anything, Is Mahāyāna Buddhism? Problems of Definitions and Classifications" (Numen, Vol. 49, No. 4 (2002), pp. 355-405).

It brings to light the issue of defining our subject area and the amazing difficulties therein. One of my great pleasures over the last three years has been serving on the committee for an American Academy of Religion group looking at "Buddhism in the West." Each year we receive a slew of presentation proposals and choose some to be presented at the annual AAR meeting. Here a consistent theme has come up in the discussion of Buddhism in the West: the so-called "Two Buddhisms" model.

This model divides Buddhists in the West into two groups: immigrant Buddhists and convert Buddhists. The immigrant Buddhists generally try to maintain the type of Buddhism they practiced before, preserving ritual, language, and other elements from their home country. Converts pick and choose aspects they find most helpful, often searching for the "true Buddhism" to be found when "cultural accretions" are stripped away. What you end up with is two quite remarkably different kinds of Buddhism. The immigrant laypeople rarely, if ever, meditate, they donate regularly to temples and monastics, believe in ghosts and take part in (to Western eyes) strange rituals. Western converts meditate a lot, spend more on books about Buddhism than at their local meditation center, and avoid anything looking "superstitious."

On the one hand, this model looks good and may make good intuitive sense. But for those who have studied Buddhism in the West, and for many simply experiencing it, these categories fall apart pretty fast. We find plenty of converts chanting dutifully in languages they don't understand, immigrants meditating assiduously, and so on. Those who cling fast to the model say that this is simply the "Westernization" of immigrants and the "cultural appropriation" of some converts, thus showing the model's continued usefulness, albeit growingly muddled.

Detractors of the model focus on its flaws, sometimes to the point of no longer seeing its usefulness. When I taught Intro to Buddhism to college students, I used this model - basically. For two days I described the "Two Buddhisms" as relatively separate and determinable categories, and then on the third day I showed the problem with the model. It was a very useful tool for introducing Buddhism in the West to new students.

If a better way of classifying Buddhism in the West comes along, a way that first year students can easily comprehend, I'm sure I will adopt it. But what Silk's article brilliantly shows (here in regard to Mahayana Buddhism vs Mainstream or Theravada or Hinayana Buddhism) is that sometimes the old yet flawed schema is the best we've got. Silk's article draws us through a great historical survey and a dazzling assortment of conceptual tools that can be used to determine just what is Mahayana Buddhism. In the end though the answer seems to be that, even with all this work, we still don't have an answer.

The same questions and analysis can arise when we ask, "what, if anything, is Buddhism?" and (for me especially), "what counts as Buddhist Ethics?"

In the end we find that attempts to draw a firm line around our concepts (i.e. to define them) are always doomed to failure. Either our method is flawed, or new evidence (counterexamples to our 'rules') will arise to force revision. We tell our first-year students that, "Buddhism radically downplays the role of gods (devas)." But then we introduce them to Tibetan Buddhism, where the gods - as benevolent deities, malevolent protectors, and archetypal bodhisattvas - play an overwhelming role. Or we tell them that meditation plays a central role in the Buddhist path and then later introduce them to Jodo Shinshu, where meditation as we know it is virtually absent.

It all serves to validate the Buddhist notions of selflessness/emptiness (that no person or thing has intrinsic existence or characteristics) and impermanence (our definitions, whatever they may be, are not going to last forever). It also highlights the failing nature of language itself to grasp reality. If we are wise we see that our labels are just useful designations and do not refer to any inherently existing thing. A good textual demonstration of this is in the Questions of King Milinda (Menander).

In the end we can see the whole exercise in trying to find a 'definition' as either foolish eel-wriggling (a term the Buddha used for the spiritual used-car salesmen of his day) or a skillful way of digging into the rich history and many 'structures' of Buddhism. An answer or answers may be found to our questions, but remember to hold the answers lightly, not clinging to them so that if they no longer serve us one day, we can let them go.

That, I must say, is Buddhism. -- Your comments, either eel-wriggling or otherwise, are most welcome. (cross posted at American Buddhist Perspective, but please comment here)

Is there a place for verbal abuse in Buddhism?

Zen author Brad Warner is as well-known for his colourful insults as he is for his teaching of Zen. His writing is funny, entertaining and often insightful, but his interpretation of what constitutes true Buddhism is narrow and exclusive, rejecting the vast majority of what goes by the name of Buddhism in the West and in Asia. Those who teach some version of Buddhism that he regards as 'phoney' are subjected to all sorts of insults and mockery. His latest volley of attacks on Genpo Roshi for example mock his Big Heart Circle retreats as Big Fart™ Circle. In the past he has publicly referred to other Buddhist teachers as 'butt-buddies' and a student who left a retreat early as an 'asswipe'.

The lineage I practice with (Deshimaru Soto Zen) is closely related to Brad's and I've never seen this sort of behaviour or attitude anywhere else. People can be quite direct sometimes and they tend not to put on pretenses, but I've not seen anyone act or encourage others to act in this way. The attitude I'm familiar with is non-dogmatic and inclusive with emphasis on open-minded, open-hearted, non-judgemental observation and responsible behaviour.

Zen monks don't observe the full Vinaya precepts, they keep to a much smaller set of ten precepts. The sixth precept is generally translated as 'Do not criticise others'. Brad Warner will have made a solemn vow to keep this precept. Interpretation of precepts vary from teacher to teacher, but the explanation I was given would certainly have excluded Brad's behaviour. According to Brad it only means that you shouldn't criticise others behind their backs or criticise them for not following the precepts. In response to criticism, Brad said:

...the precepts are only to be used as a guide to gauge our own behavior — not the behavior of others. I said this before but I cannot stress it enough. When the precepts are used to judge the behavior of others we're back into the same sick game every religion plays where we are the morally righteous and the unbelievers should change their ways. Buddhists must never be like that.

....It's also absolutely un-Buddhist to point at another person and say that person is breaking the precepts. You cannot know what the precepts are to someone else. Trying to insist that others live up to your interpretation of the precepts is a recipe for misery anyway.

This rings true, but surely it's also absolutely un-Buddhist to mock and slander other people too? The precept is to encourage us to be non-judgemental not used as a shield to protect us from people who are accusing us as being judgemental. This sort of thing becomes a vicious circle. The best thing is to avoid slandering people in the first place.

I think that constructive, open-minded criticism can be healthy in that it exposes our views to the experiences, and analysis of others. However, criticism that is attached, and narrow-minded can be like an intoxicant that increases egotism, intellectual vanity and hostility, all of which are forms of clinging and delusion. Also, not criticising others is a good 'house rule' for maintaining social harmony in the place of practice, which itself helps with the practice.

The justifications that Brad Warner gives for acting in the way that he does is that he is exposing false teachings and that this is how he really feels and that to act differently is 'phoney' and that being phoney is the same as being a hypocritical charlatan or that being phoney leads to repression and passive-aggressive behaviour. This isn't Buddhism as taught either by Buddha or Dogen. This sort of argument can be used to justify pretty much anything. There's no support for the idea that not acting out all our anti-social impulses ie. acting as a socialised human being leads to greater harm later on. He is placing 'authenticity' ie. his attachment to 'punk' credibility above any harm he does other people. Unsurpisingly his blog comments section is full of conflict - with people challenging Brad's controversial teaching and others attacking those who criticise him.

Some of his defenders argue that Dogen himself criticised others quite heavily, comparing practictioners of Nembutsu (chanting the name of Amida Buddha for salvation ie Pure Land Buddhists) to 'croaking frogs'. Well, firstly Brad isn't Dogen - he doesn't have the understanding of Dogen to be able to arbitrate what does and doesn't constitute 'True Buddhism'. Secondly, while Genpo Roshi does advocate a controversial new method he isn't suggesting we chant for enlightenment. Third Dogen's criticisms, even in the context of the religious conflict and competition of Japanese Buddhism are significantly milder and more reasonable than Brad's.

The Zen way is neither amoral nihilism nor is it repression. It means at least trying to live according to the precepts and taking the Bodhisattva vows sincerely. Things like selfishness, vanity and arrogance are not rationalised as 'authentic' they are faced as part of our practice. How do these delusions arise? And why do we cling to them? By releasing the tight grip of the personal mind we can naturally understand other people better and treat them with kindness.