Humility and The Tao Te Ching

A humble person has a realistic view of herself and her abilities, and has developed healthy self-esteem through taking knocks and getting back up again. She is not a doormat and not lacking in confidence or in competence, often erroneously ascribed to humble people. Even knowing her abilities, she is unwilling to push herself forward, to brag, or to take credit not due her, as those less grounded might do. Her quiet confidence and sensitivity permit her to see to the wellbeing of others, often by creating emotional safety for them, even in the midst of conflict. Whatever is happening around her, she is essentially unfazed, being grounded by a realistic sense of self. Unfortunately, her kind are rare today, and becoming rarer.

Society today can hardly be characterized as emphasizing humility, the mere idea of which is distasteful to many. If anything, it is the opposite, with narcissistic tendencies and behavior on the rise. Lacking humility, we exaggerate our own importance, separating ourselves from others. We take ourselves far too seriously, leading to an excessive focus on ourselves. Civility and respect are casualties.

What might account for this paucity of humility? Part seems due to people being told from childhood that they are totally special, part to the decades-old enthusiasm for encouraging people to act out their feelings no matter the impact on others, and part to the fact that American (and Western) society is in disarray generally, with traditional support mechanisms in decline or absent. These factors conspire insidiously to undermine faith in the personal and societal benefits of humility, founded on a true sense of self-worth and respect for others.

As uncertainty increases, people are pushed on an endless search for emotional safety. But lacking as it does appropriate limits, reasonable expectations of personal behavior and responsibility, and proper interpersonal boundaries, people are emotionally adrift, insecure and fearful. Desperate for something that will give them a touchstone, a solid foundation in today’s continuous fluidity, many “look for love in all the wrong places.” They may find a temporary, if unsuccessful, refuge in things like social media/internet escapism, narcissistic self-centeredness, or in being absolutely certain of something, almost anything, from a political ideology to their own specialness, false gods all.

How can the ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching instruct us?

He who stands on tiptoe

doesn’t stand firm.

He who rushes ahead

doesn’t go far.

He who tries to shine

dims his own light.

He who defines himself

can’t know who he really is.

He who has power over others

can’t empower himself.

He who clings to his work

will create nothing that endures.

If you want to accord with the Tao,

just do your job, then let go.

From Tao Te Ching, #24

Stephen Mitchell

The first long stanza emphasizes the futility of clutching and grasping at things we imagine will get us what we want, not realizing that our efforts are likely to produce the opposite. The last two lines express a related theme common in Buddhism generally, as well as in Zen and Taoism---letting go, avoiding or dismantling attachments to ideas, outcomes, oneself. Attachments are the fusing of anything with a large emotional force, keeping us from making helpful judgments or taking beneficial actions, particularly towards others. Attachments can express great personal neediness, increasing today as stresses multiply and stability mechanisms fall into disrepair or disappear entirely. The more uncertain everyday life becomes, the more people unconsciously resort to clutching and grasping, hoping for support in the midst of personal turmoil. As these efforts are bound to fail, many redouble their efforts, creating a vicious downward cycle.

Loss of humility, and its correlate loss of concern for others, are simultaneously an outcome of societal uncertainty and the lack of healthy support mechanisms, and a cause of further disorientation. There is no stopping this trend unless those of us professing a moral grounding for our lives and for our interactions with others, even those we do not like or strenuously disagree with, model humility every day. That naturally requires a highly evolved and fearless knowledge of ourselves producing a solid emotional grounding, an issue I dealt with a bit in the last post on “knowing yourself.”

Knowing Yourself

Can we know ourselves? seems like a foolish question. Would not most of us say yes, of course? Certainly we “know” what our conscious mind experiences. I am sitting in this chair typing this note. My back is bothering me. I am thinking about life. I am having a great dinner. I am watching a poor TV show. I am an impatient person. I am a sensitive person. I disagree with…. And so forth. I am aware of these sensations and thoughts. But is that knowing? Do those types of things express who I really am?

Those experiences are knowing about myself, how I think about myself, what I am feeling. They are only partially about knowing myself. How can I say this? Because what we consciously feel or think is hugely incomplete. It does not include what is in the unconscious, which is not directly accessible by us. Researchers tell us that perhaps 80% of what we think, feel, or do arises from the unconscious. Thus, who we really are, particularly as seen by others, is highly conditioned by the unconscious. I told myself for years that I was a sensitive person. I was not, at least not much. I was not consciously lying. I did not say to myself, “Oh, you really aren’t sensitive, but you are going to pretend that you are.” I really believed that I had that trait. I was being dishonest and hadn’t a clue. The poet David Whyte says that we cannot be honest with others if we are not honest with ourselves. And we cannot be honest with ourselves so long as the unconscious remains opaque to us.

An example, one entailing mixed motives. Let’s say my wife is overweight (she definitely isn’t!), and I admonish her to eat better and get exercise. “That’s for her own good,” I say to myself, and let’s say that my concern is really honest. My unconscious, however, has another agenda. I am embarrassed and angered by my wife’s weight, and hide that from myself. If even a glimmer of the thought arises, I say to myself that it isn’t true and re-assert that my only concern is her health.

But my wife experiences problems with me. The two different motives produce two different, mainly non-verbal (and contradictory) behaviors from me. One, the sincere desire to encourage her to a healthier life-style, is visible by my caring attention and attitude. Two, my embarrassment and anger are also visible by my obvious frustration at not seeing immediate progress and for her adding excessive weight in the first place. She senses the difference immediately. It may not be clear to her what the dynamics are, but she knows there is more to my “concern” than I am admitting.

As with all of us, faced with one positive non-verbal message and one negative, the latter will receive all our attention since it is perceived as both accurate and a threat. Acting on her accurate perception of my disapproval, she accuses me of not caring. I, a paragon of virtue in my own mind, am outraged. Not seeing my negative unconscious motive, I feel diminished in the face of an assault on what I perceive to be nothing but honest caring.

You know where this “conversation” is going. Yup, downhill all the way. Lest you think I am speaking only about myself, and not about you, kindly stand disabused. I am no different from anyone else. All of us live a partial illusory existence. We accept at face value what our conscious mind says about who and what we are, and what we do. These views are nearly always laudatory and filled with certainty. Ignorant of the role of unconscious, we attempt to impose this illusory state of affairs onto others, leading only to personal unhappiness and interpersonal conflict of the worst sort.

Can we know ourselves? Sure, if we’ve got the guts. We must first accept that the unconscious is a huge force in our lives, one that can produce unfortunate behaviors. Second, and this is where having real spine comes in, we must access that unconscious and look at aspects of ourselves which are unpleasant. Resistance is high at this point because we likely spent a life-time constructing our illusions, and we sure as hell don’t want to let loose of those fictions now.

Third, once we have uncovered what we really do not want to see, we must exercise the discipline and persistence to change untoward outcomes.

But if accessing the unconscious is critical, and we cannot access it directly, how are we supposed to get at it? The mirror of others---staring us right in the face with every interaction, if we possess the openness and perceptiveness to take advantage of what they can tell us verbally and non-verbally.

But am I begging the question? How then do we get that openness and perceptiveness?

The Buddha winks.