THE THREE POISONS is a guide to using Buddhist principles to resolve the conflicts (both internal and inter-personal) in your life. It outlines how conflict is viewed from the perspective of Buddhist psychology, how the Buddha himself resolved the conflicts in his life, and provides the reader with tools and techniques to convert the poisons of anger, greed and delusion as they show up in various conflict situations into loving-kindness, compassion, and tranquillity.
The Three Poisons
A Buddhist Guide To Resolving ConflictBy Ross McLauran MaddenAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Ross McLauran Madden
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-8811-5Contents
Acknowledgments.....................................................................................................vForeword............................................................................................................ix1. Introduction.....................................................................................................12. The Nature Of Conflict...........................................................................................113. Conflict and the Life of The Buddha..............................................................................414. Buddhist "Psychology" and the Genesis of Conflict................................................................905. Mindfulness - Step One Towards Resolution........................................................................1056. Loving Kindness and Compassion...................................................................................1317. The Reconciliation of Conflict - Transforming the Three Poisons into the Four Sublime States.....................1738. Conclusion: Conflict and the Wheel of Becoming...................................................................199Appendix "A"........................................................................................................217Meditation Techniques...............................................................................................217Appendix B..........................................................................................................223Conflict Resolution Cheat Sheets....................................................................................223Glossary............................................................................................................233Bibliography........................................................................................................245Index...............................................................................................................251
Chapter One
Introduction
"Every cell in our body contains all the talent, wisdom, goodness, and happiness of the Buddha, and also of all our spiritual and blood ancestors ... Of course, every cell also contains within it the seeds of hell, of violence: jealousy, anger, and other negative emotions. But we can practice so that hell does not overpower the energies of Mindfulness, understanding, and loving-kindness in us."
We live in a world of conflict. Within us and without, locally and globally, in every person, couple, situation, family, company, business, religion, state, country and continent, conflict arises and passes, leaving in its wake both the resulting synthesis of the clash of opposing forces - which is often good or necessary for all concerned - as well as its victims and detritus.
Conflict is not therefore the exception but, rather, the rule. You may not like it, and might prefer a conflict-free world, but really that's just the way it is. Look around - individuals living in maelstroms of confusion and pain, families in denial and dispute, countries insulting and attacking each other, groups in turmoil - it's really quite remarkable. It appears that conflict is somehow hardwired into the way the human mind works and as a result encoded as well into how we treat each other at all levels of human intercourse.
Our hardwired conflict is not the same as the aggressiveness of animals. I have a lovely male Staffordshire terrier named Aiko, who is kind to me and my children, but who goes psycho when he's around cats or other small furry animals and wants to attack them. Since he's a pit-bull mix, the species-aggression he exhibits is natural to him. The conflict that's hardwired into his genes operates by rote and instinctually, without compunction or remorse about any of his behavior, no matter how incomprehensible or reprehensible it appears to me. I've trained it out of him not by appealing to any sense of right or goodness or possibility, but simply by superimposing over it a fear of displeasing me.
Human conflict is different because unlike Aiko's, our human brains consist not only of reptilian and mammalian components, but have also a greatly enlarged neo-cortex, which allows us to conceptualize, develop morality and wisdom, and actually transform ourselves and the world around us in an intentional and compassionate way.
So whereas Aiko stops chasing a cat when I tell him to, yank on his collar, and say "heel", you and I can stop a conflict and turn it into something else through self-knowledge and the desire to do so. We have free-will, which means we can choose the ethics and morals we wish to abide by. We have the ability to be mindful - the ability to watch our own minds and feelings, and learn what their patterns are and what triggers them. And whereas Aiko "loves" me and is loyal by instinct, you and I are able to love ourselves and others, learn to see and feel the suffering of others, and choose a path of compassionate transformation for ourselves and the conflicts that embroil us and them.
Ultimately, if conflict is imminently present in each of us and all of our situations, we have perhaps mis-designated its role in our collective life. It has an inherently negative image for us, somewhat better than "death" but worse even than "doing the laundry", and is rarely recognized as the catalyst for personal and situational growth that at its best it surely is.
Because of this failure to recognize the transformational aspect of conflict, we have failed by and large to develop the art of dealing with conflict as it arises, concentrating instead on developing the art of war. War is the response to the confrontational part of conflict which fails to recognize the human possibilities for growth and cooperation in each opposing event. Because we have been unclear about the difference between what conflict is and what its true function is, and unclear about the nature of the emotions and psychological processes that are unleashed during conflict situations, we often have failed to derive the benefits of conflict, coming instead out of the process with bitterness and a feeling of alienation.
While that may be unavoidable in certain conflict situations, it is entirely avoidable in a majority of others. We don't have to be the puppets of our passions in conflict, nor do we have to come away from them with a feeling of defeat or anger. What we need is an understanding of and language for the conflict process, and some basic principles and procedures to help navigate through the perilous passages in the journey through that process. Since there is never an absence of conflicts, but rather only unresolved and resolved ones, we need an understanding of how the one molts into the other, and what we can do to aid in that process. Resolved conflicts aren't conflicts anymore, because the energies that caused the difference in wants to become active struggles have been transformed from negative to positive, from poison to elixir. To do "conflict resolution", whether for ourselves or others, we need to be at home with conflict, kneading and playing with it with acceptance and a feeling of possibility, and not just with a closed feeling of dread. Instead of seeing it as an anomaly or as "something wrong", we need to see it as perhaps painful yet necessary, and then work it lovingly with tools that transform it intelligently into a new set of possibilities for growth.
In what follows I try to fashion just such a language for the resolution of conflict out of the teachings of the Buddha, and the practices and theories that have grown out of those teachings. As in so many other areas of our lives, there is a wealth of wisdom for the resolution of conflict in the teachings of the great spirits in human history, people like the Buddha and Jesus, Mohandas Ghandhi, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Luther King. Indeed, their many messages seem to converge, all of them boiling down to Christ's Golden Rule or the Buddha's teachings on Loving Kindness and Compassion. If you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, then you probably won't let greed and hatred control your dealings with them when you find yourselves in conflict. If you've developed Loving Kindness for all sentient creatures and empathize with their inherent suffering, you'll try to reduce suffering for everyone in a contentious situation.
But while these basic credos provide a measuring stick for the success of our efforts to live as compassionate beings, in actual conflict situations we also need techniques that acknowledge and work with the dynamic structure of conflict itself. Most social groups have some form of conflict resolution structure in place to deal with disputes between members of the group. For example, in Islamic society, shura (groups of people chosen by the parties to mediate or decide a controversy) and consultation between the parties are preferred methods to quell conflict. Similarly, as you will see from the story of "the Dirty Basin" later in this book, during the life of the Buddha he and the members of the sangha (his followers who lived together to follow his Way) had to develop methodologies to deal with conflicts as they arose between the monks living in the community.
While these existing methodologies are of interest, it is a primarily historical or sociological one. Historical or sociological study is not the real purpose of this book, however, since the modern world (a world bursting at the seams with strife) is much different than a sangha in Northern India 2500 years ago, and might benefit from a fresh look at how Buddhism applies to the resolution of new-world conflicts not set within the confines of a religious commune. So we'll look instead primarily at the basic concepts of conflict and its alleviation in Buddhism.
In Buddhism, techniques and precepts develop out of two intertwined major pathways, commensurate in strength and depth with each other, each fostering the other through the expression of itself. First, there is a pathway of self-understanding, of Mindfulness. On this pathway one expands awareness of and comfort with one's own consciousness, so that the world becomes clearer and less filled with maya (which is Pali and Sanskrit for illusion) and moha (which is Pali for ignorance or delusion, and which in Sanskrit is avidya).
Second, there is the path of Loving Kindness (metta) for one self and thereby for others, from which grows Compassion (karuna) for who they are and the suffering they must by dint of their human life endure. This path develops often through learning to positively practice Compassion for others, but also develops quite naturally to the extent that self-understanding or Mindfulness has been developed.
These two pathways are relevant to the resolution of conflict in each of the three contexts dealt with in the pages that follow: the individual level (i.e. internal conflict within the individual), interpersonal (such as between husband and wife, lovers, or co-workers, neighbors, and so on), and in situations where you are acting as a mediator to help two or more opposing sides resolve their conflict.
The twin pathways of Mindfulness and Compassion are relevant to each of these three contexts. If it's your own internal conflict, then through Mindfulness and honesty with yourself, and through the development of Loving Kindness and Compassion towards yourself, you can learn to see yourself and those conflicts in new ways that allow them to transform you into a more centered and harmonious person. In inter-personal situations, Buddhist principals and practices can help you to not only be mindful of your emotions, but also to communicate them in such a way that they can be actually heard, and alert to what the other party is actually communicating, so that they can be heard as well. If you've signed on to help resolve someone else's conflict, in addition to being mindful and compassionate yourself, you can use Buddhist psychology and precepts to help the disputants become aware of what is actually going on in the situation, and to let go of their attachments to their own delusions so as to develop Compassion for the other side.
In this paper, we shall first look at conflict itself, and how it is viewed from a Buddhist perspective. In that perspective, conflict arises where there is a) some factual or situational nexus that creates a perceived divergence of interest within an individual or between the opposing sides to a conflict, and b) the arising of any or all of what the Buddhists call "the Three Poisons" of i) anger or hatred, ii) greed or grasping, and iii) ignorance or delusion. As we shall see in the next chapter, if you have (a) without (b), you have a debate, disagreement, or a theoretical difference but there is no conflict because there is no emotional or physiological attachment or aversion to the prospective result of the divergence.
The resolution of conflict in its truest and fullest sense is the conversion of the Three Poisons of anger, greed and ignorance into the Four Sublime States of Loving Kindness, Compassion, Appreciative Joy, and Equanimity. In fact, in deference to the Four Noble Truths expounded by the Buddha upon his enlightenment, and the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path which is laid out in the Fourth Noble Truth, and by which he declared suffering to be resolved, we might fashion the schema for the arising and full resolution of any conflict as follows:
The Four Truths of Conflict
1) Life is Conflict 2) Conflict is caused by Attachment 3) Conflict can be resolved and reconciled through transformation of Attachment 4) The way to resolve and reconcile conflict is the Eightfold Path To Resolve Conflict.
These truths acknowledge that conflict is unavoidable in human life, and that (as we shall discuss in the next chapter) attachment in one form or another is the root cause of all conflict. This attachment can be released and transformed, through using Mindfulness to convert and transform destructive emotions into Loving Kindness and Compassion. This conversion process is the one referred to in the Fourth Truth of Conflict, to wit:
Eightfold Path To Resolve Conflict:
1) a Situation causes Attachment and thereby Conflict 2) which is the arousal of one or more of the Three Poisons 3) which persist through a Refractory Period (a period where they are highly resistant to change) leading to stasis 4) after which the parties can Acknowledge to themselves and each other - through the development of personal or interpersonal Mindfulness -the nature of the Three Poisons present in the situation, making possible 5) a Settlement of the (external) Situation, during which process 6) the parties can develop Loving Kindness and Compassion for themselves and the others, which allows for 7) Appreciative Joy in the benefits that each side has gained through the Situation, which allows each person to achieve 8) Equanimity and peace with themselves, the others, and the outcome of the process.
Certainly, not every conflict resolves in this order and not every conflict resolves completely through all these phases before the actual situation giving cause to it terminates, but then neither is every baseball hit a home-run, nor does every game go a full nine innings before being called. Indeed, it's only from a short-term perspective that one might say that not every conflict resolves, since I'm quite sure that all will have been resolved before the next Big Bang.
With this Eightfold resolution schema in mind, after discussing the nature of conflict itself, we will look at the life of Siddhartha Gautama, and see what role divergence and conflict played in that life. The Buddha is a very unusual person to view in a conflict context, because he was always Mindful (having in fact invented Mindfulness), and seemingly always expressed Loving Kindness and Compassion. And by the way that the characteristics of Mindfulness, Loving Kindness and Compassion manifested in the various conflicts swirling around him, they are instructive to our own attempts to foster those qualities in our own conflicts. They are also instructive in that even the Buddha could not prevent the development of conflicts in his own life or those of the people around him, nor could he always successfully quell them once they started. Which means that any failures to resolve our own conflicts are both understandable and unavoidable. It also points out that an important part of the art of healing inter-personal conflict is often the ability to foster Mindfulness, Loving Kindness and Compassion in others as well as in oneself.
Certainly, one could say that in the history of Buddhism there are many examples of Buddhists (whether singly or in organizations) not expressing Loving Kindness and Compassion towards each other, and of them failing to be mindful of their true motivations or attachments in their own conflicts. Indeed, in any faith or system for the improvement of the human condition there are examples of shortcomings and cruelties. When I told a friend I was writing this book, he opined that Buddhist monks and temples are often sources of social or personal oppression in Southern Asia, somewhat akin to the coercive and restrictive aspects of Christianity in the West.
While that may be true, it is also true that Buddhism offers a very profound and real framework for the resolution of suffering and conflict, along with instructions on how to achieve those goals. Any acknowledged shortcomings in their previous application - whether by ourselves or others - should merely warn and catalyze us to have integrity and diligence in our ongoing use of the proffered framework and instructions.
Because Buddhism is largely a system for the refinement of human consciousness based upon a schematic conception of how our minds and perceptions function and go astray and become conflicted, we shall outline herein some of the salient characteristics of that conceptual schema, both to understand its portrayal of conflict and how it applies to its resolution. We'll then discuss Mindfulness, Loving Kindness and Compassion, because of their pivotal role in the resolution of conflict, and then discuss ways in which they can be utilized in the process of resolving the various types of conflicts we encounter in our lives. Finally, we'll look at how the Buddhist concept of "Wheel of Becoming" - the progression of steps through which ignorance and mistakes arise and continue in our lives - is relevant to the resolution of conflict, and how the introduction of Mindfulness and Compassion into the progression leads to resolution and freedom.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Three Poisonsby Ross McLauran Madden Copyright © 2010 by Ross McLauran Madden. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
