Hating Insincerity
I know a man who deeply hates insincerity. When he meets insincerity, especially when it disguises itself as sincerity, it makes him angry. What really sends him into a rage is arrogant upstarts who give themselves the airs of knowing.
Why? Whose insincerity is it that really disturbs him?
I tell this guy, who, worse luck, I am forced to meet on a daily basis: Go beyond likes and dislikes. Insincerity is insincerity. See it as it is. Get to know it. Don't react to it emotionally. Don't be afraid of it. Make a friend of it.
He hears the words, but he doesn't seem able to listen. He is a very difficult student -- to put it more bluntly, a total prick. Sometimes (I hate to say this in public of someone who sits in Zazen every day, but it is true) I even doubt whether he is truly sincere or not.
Why? Whose insincerity is it that really disturbs him?
I tell this guy, who, worse luck, I am forced to meet on a daily basis: Go beyond likes and dislikes. Insincerity is insincerity. See it as it is. Get to know it. Don't react to it emotionally. Don't be afraid of it. Make a friend of it.
He hears the words, but he doesn't seem able to listen. He is a very difficult student -- to put it more bluntly, a total prick. Sometimes (I hate to say this in public of someone who sits in Zazen every day, but it is true) I even doubt whether he is truly sincere or not.
posted by Mike Cross at 11:41 AM
11 Comments:
Hi Ray,
This friend of mine knows he's insecure. In that sense, insecurity is not such a problem for him. But he tends to assume that he is sincere whereas lesser beings are not. How to get him to drop off this assumption? Not easy, even for a teacher with clear eyes.
Hi Mike,
I, too, have a friend whom I castigate on a daily basis for being judgmental, angry, indecisive and a host of other things. In fact, you would think we were twins. ;)
Thank you, Ray.
Maybe even in the matter of sincerity, the middle way is best.
For example, I sent somebody a cheque for £35 last year for two Nepalese singing bells, trusting that the guy would send me the bells. That was a good example of pure sincerity. It never occured to me that the guy might just pocket the money and laugh.
Hi Michael,
All the best to both of you (from both of me).
Hi Mike, How could you have ever have believed that you were sincere? You are a self admitted hypocrite and faker. Your so-called personality changes with the wind. You take on the traits of those you admire and pretend you have none of the traits of those you despise. You love people who pay you compliments. Hate people that are critical of you. You take on airs. You see things that are not there. You fail to see things that are right in front of your nose. And your jealousy, it gets embarrassing..
In a nutshell, you are just like the rest of us.. Have you noticed how we make these subtle and not so subtle changes to our persons depending with whom we are interacting, with what we are reading.. which side of the bed we got up on, and on ad infinitum.. I know you like to think of yourself as a rock. But you are more like a pile of tiny pebbles. When you called yourself a prick I almost fell off my chair. It was so beautiful and so true. And your sincerity was palpable. Think about the changes it caused you when Brad had the bad taste to point out the obvious. He is a prick also.. And you are both great guys.
Thank you, Oxeye.
I am my father's son. Brad is his father's son. Michael Luetchford is his father's son. We are all mirrors for each other's faults and virtues. But just when you've got everything sorted out philosophically, a guy like James Cohen comes along, and asks you to re-define boundaries that you didn't even know existed.
Is a Dharma-heir of Gudo Nishijima really capable of THAT degree of self-delusion? Can the criterion for the transmission of the Buddha-Dharma really be THAT wide?
I don't know Mike.. I don't know the man. I did read what you wrote about him, and his e-mails that you put up. He just doesn't seem like a very scary monster to me.
Thank you, Oxeye.
Imagine that you were brought up in Nazi Germany, having blue eyes and blond hair, proud of your Aryan genetic heritage. Then one day a Jew comes to visit you, wearing a rabbi's skullcap, telling you he is your long lost brother, that you were adopted by a gentile family, but originally your are totally kosher. In that situation, the guy claiming to be your brother might represent a somewhat scary proposition. Not because he himself is inherently scary. But because of what he is telling you about yourself, and about your father.
This metaphor might help you understand why James Cohen scares the shit out of me. More than that, it might help you understand why I scare the shit out of Brad Warner.
Thank you, Ray.
You are very welcome to ramble away. Maybe the spark of your honest self-reflections will light a good fire.
I'm not sure what a hermetic system is -- though I probably heard of it 25 years ago when I studied Cybernetics. Could you explain?
Thank you Mike, Mikedoe.
Attachment is another thing my friend dislikes. He is a keen advocate of practising detachment, and he aspires to live the free, unencumbered life of a monk.
And yet he counts his pennies, thinks about buying a bigger car, looks forward to his next infusion of caffeine. Worst of all is his attitude towards teachings that he regards as true. Although those teachings just tell him to relinquish all views, to drop off all conceptions, he holds onto those very views and conceptions as if his life depended on it.
The guy really is a hopeless case.
Since we are talking sincerity, Ray, the most relevant comment I could make might be that in a sense all conceptions are false, not sincere.
But to conceive of the earth as a closed system strikes me as a particularly wrong conception.
Alexander used to say, "A child of 3 can understand this work, but give me a man whose been educated and God help me."
As also the product of an elitist education, I sympathize with you, Ray. Like me, you probably have more insincerity than most to drop off.
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