The news this week of former President Trump’s 34 guilty convictions has been the occasion for a sigh of relief for many, for deepening anger and frustration for others. While many of us will not regret the outcome and will even rejoice in it, it has not silenced divisive, rancorous voices. And it remains to be seen whether it can lead to a coming together of people agreeing to be united in a common view point, in shared values.
Family gatherings, visits home to parents, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners can often play out this divide and turn into highly stressful occasions in which family members get into loud and contentious arguments. We’ve all wondered in recent years how to turn down the arguing and forge more caring relationships with those we disagree with.
I heard a wise practitioner recently relate how she shifted such a dynamic with her father. She described him as someone who likes to needle others with argument. It had reached the point where she dreaded her visits. Arguing and fighting is a form of intimacy, albeit exhausting and sometimes dangerous, but it takes the place of close contact when the understanding and skills for real intimacy are lacking.
The turning point conversation went something like this: Her father started in on whatever argument was close at hand or perhaps an old stand-by. You can imagine differing political points of view here and feel the tension rising. This woman suddenly said, “I don’t want to talk about that, dad.” His reply, “Why not? It’s important.” Her response opened a whole new path for them, “Not between us,” she said. “Not between us.”
She stuck to her guns, so to speak, and their whole relationship warmed and became more heart-centered. I could even imagine him in the privacy of his own mind wondering about her point of the view and reexamining his own.
That kind of self-reflection and reexamination won’t be the outcome of every exchange we have no matter how skillful but the chances are greatly improved when we’ve engaged and are engaging in our own process of self-reflection and reexamination.
One of the Buddha’s teachings involved the monks of a certain village who came to him because they had been “arguing, quarreling, and fighting, continually wounding each other with barbed words. They couldn’t persuade each other or be persuaded, nor could they convince each other or be convinced.” Not so different from today.
They came to the Buddha expecting him to resolve the argument. After all, they were arguing about the dharma, so surely the Buddha would side with them and all would be well.
The Buddha did no such thing. Instead he asked them, when they were “arguing, quarreling, and fighting…etc.”, were they treating each other - their fellow spiritual companions - with kindness? Were they kind to each other with their actions, with their words, with their thoughts and feelings? Were they living according to the precepts they shared for moral behavior - not harming, not making false speech, not taking what is not freely offered, etc.? Were they sharing whatever material goods they had - in this case, the contents of their alms bowls, their food for the day - with each other? Were they living their lives according to Right or Wise view?
This last was a specific reference to the first path factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. The Buddha - and all the monks knew this - was referring their shared understanding of the Four Noble Truths.
The beauty of the Four Noble Truths - there is suffering, there are causes for suffering, there is an end of suffering, the end of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path - is that it is like a pocket dictionary, short and portable and containing all the basics. When one opens it to find quick guidance, one is drawn in deeper and deeper with each step not only leading onward, but ever inward, away from that which is unwholesome.
Right or Wise view basically says we need to be guided by a whole overview of where we are going and how we might act. If we think, speak, and act in unwholesome ways, there were be suffering and an unwholesome result. If we think, speak, and act in wholesome ways, there will be wholesome results and freedom from suffering.
And one of the basic tenets of Right View is the understanding of the Four Noble Truths. Which contains the Noble Eightfold Path and Right View!
So the Buddha sends us back in a circular fashion as soon as we step on the Eightfold Path of the Four Noble Truths. Remember the Four Noble Truths. Be guided by the Four Noble Truths.
If we imagine everyone in this country as a member of our own village, can we begin to think more kindly toward them, imagine they have reasons for believing as they do, imagine they struggle with uncertainty, fear, hardship, just as we do, imagine that they want to be happy too? And can we begin to have conversations locally that are related to shared concerns, that are sprinkled with kind acts - smiling, opening doors, engaging in conversations about the weather, perhaps even sharing coffee and a muffin?
Many of us are already engaged in such actions. They spring from the natural kindness and good will in our hearts. Perhaps thinking of Right View, that this is the View that needs to set the tone for all our thoughts, words and deeds, needs to color our perceptions, needs to spread across the skies of our minds to shed a particularly warm light on the goings on below, perhaps that view can deepen our sense of when kindness is possible. According to the Dalai Lama, happiness comes and goes, but kindness is always possible.
Because it turns out, the content of the argument - even for the Buddha, even if it was about the dharma - was not as important as the attitude of mind. Arguing stemming from anger is an unwholesome habit pattern. The anger and the arguing are unskillful. Although the Buddha understood that the realm of leaders was not the same as the realm of the spiritual life, he also understood and taught his followers, as was captured in the Dhammapada, that “Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is an eternal law.”