The quote below is from a book that is actually good. That
is why I won't name the author here. I'd like to believe he's a wise man, so
there's no need to embarass him.
The thing is, I don't want to criticise the book, I just
want to draw your attention to what can happen when one detaches oneself from
reality and flies away on the wings of logic. Besides, the ideas expressed in
the quote below can be found in but slightly different formulation in countless
other Buddhist-inclined writings.
* * *
It's about how one's being conditioned by one's past
experience limits one's thinking: one reacts in a way that one is used to
react, failing to see opportunities.
[---] the mind [---] has a strong tendency to create
habitual reactions, as a default mechanism for coping with the complex demands
of life. [---] The Self is a vast network of inter-related habitual reactions
that define what we think, act and feel, and greatly influence the possible
outcomes of body, speech and mind. [---] Like a recurring nightmare,
conditioned habitual reacitvity forces us to re-experience reactions of
anxiety, fear, worry, grief, sadness, disappointment, frustration and anger
over and over again. [---]
In the next paragraphs, the author is revelling
in that idea, getting more and more cathegorical (to not say bombastic) in his
expressions:
One of the fundamental problems of habitual reactivity is
that it introduces a degree of inflexibility in the mind. [---] habit gives us
a sense of order and control, but it comes as a price, because each time we
blindly identify with a habit, we lose a little more of our freedom. [---] Like
a train passenger, we are taken to our destination without any say on the route
taken, because the route is fixed by the train tracks. In the same way, the
mind reacts according to the tracks laid down by past conditioning. [---]
Habitual reactivity is a powerful force that limits the possible outcomes of
the present. [---] Like daydreaming or sleepwalking, we perform activities as if
on autopilot. Instead of seeing reality as it is, we see only the shadows of
our past projected onto the present [---]. [---] the limitations imposed by conditioned
reactivity [corrupt] and [distort] the mind, making it inflexible and rigid.
He carries on like that, but I think this is enough to give
you the idea.
Of course, if you have read any Buddhist books, you are very
familiar with the above. They all say the same thing: it's harmful for us to
allow the bad experiences from our past to prevent us from doing, seeing,
believing things now.
It sounds very convincing when presented as pure theory. In
fact, as long as you avoid any reference to anything that occurs in real
people's everyday lives, you can easily bring truthful and useful observations
to the absurd extreme – as if any reliance on past experience was "blindly
identifying with a habit". That's what Buddhist authors do, filling
hundreds of pages with brilliant logical conclusions from truths and
half-truths, ending up with the insistence that you must begin to think that
you don't exist, and all your suffering is just your imagination. (Translating
their elaborations into plain English, they seem to be suggesting that if you
are hit by a car and lie there with broken bones, it is entirely your decision
to suffer from pain or not.)
* * *
That Buddhist principle is obviously, utterly, manifestly,
spectacularly, ludicrously wrong, which can easily be proven with the following
simple example.
Imagine that you have to walk from your home to your
workplace. Let's assume you can choose between A-street and B-street, and the
first route is somewhat shorter. So, all other things being equal, one would
prefer A-street.
Now, suppose that on your first walk to work, you discover
that in A-street there is a house where lives a very aggressive dog. In fact,
it attacks you and bites you.
The next 8 times you walk to work, the same thing happens –
as soon as that dog sees you passing by its house, it runs to you and bites
you.
Now, you are about to go to work on your 10th workday. As
each past workday, you must choose between A-street and B-street, the first
path being somewhat quicker. What will you do?
(Let's not confuse things by making up options that may or
may not be available, such as trying to find the dog's owner and talking to
him, buying a car, getting an armed escort and such. Let's just keep to this
one choice that is clearly there: to take A-street or B-street.)
Choice 1:
Remembering that in A-street lives a dog who has bitten you
9 times already, you use your intelligence and realise there is a very little
chance that anything will be different this time. Comparing in your mind the
risk of getting bitten by a dog versus a little more time spent, you decide to
take B-street to work today.
Choice 2:
You realise that conditioning through your past experience
limits your freedom. You also realise that it's wrong to be prejudiced. Just
because the dog has attacked you in the previous 9 workdays, doesn't mean it'll
happen today. Maybe the dog isn't even there? Are you going to be the slave to
your fear for the rest of your life? Are you going to carry the memory of your
past pains forever? You don't KNOW the dog is going to bite you today. But you
do know that via A-street youre path to work is shorter than via B-street. So you
choose A-street.
It should be obvious to every even halfway sane and
intelligent human being, that choice 2 is not freedom. It's extreme stupidity.
(And if you expose not only yourself to that danger, but your child as well,
it's actually criminal.)
Now, not all of us walk to work, but each one of us
makes a great number of choices each day. If we wouldn't let our past experience
and mental predictions guide us, we would be making great many mistakes. It is
very true that we also make mistakes when we excessively cling to our past
experience and become blind to changed circumstances, but we must strive to
reach a reasonable balance between acting on expectations created from past
experience and being open to the new. The Buddhists' insistence that we have to
completely disregard our life experience and approach every situation as a
blank sheet is sheer madness.
P.S.
Don't try to tell me the Buddhist authors don't really mean
it like that. It is what they say. If they mean one thing and write another,
then they need to learn to write what they really mean, not do I have to
struggle to give their obviously nonsensical statements a sane interpretation.
In simpler words:
If you mean "use a campfire to warm yourself",
don't say "create a fire that burns everything".
If you mean "some immigrants have committed sex
crimes", don't say "the immigrants have raped our entire nation".
If you mean "some things you believe to be true are
actually not true", don't say "everything you believe in is an
illusion you need to get rid of".
And so on.
