I have been striving lately for purity in my thoughts and actions. For the most part, I have the core of it all pretty well hammered down. But one of the things I have been finding the hardest to let go is talking about other people while they are not there. Which in its negative form could be considered gossip. It seems like there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. And the wrong way involves picking out other people’s faults and believing that you can see through to the roots of their problems. Even if you can, it becomes “unseemly” to do so after a certain point. Mainly because it hooks you into a relentless cycle of judgement and prevents you from being able to allow people to simply exist as they are.
This is, from my experience, one of the more difficult of the disciplines within the umbrella of self-mastery. Mainly because other people are constantly bringing up other people. We are constantly gossiping, sharing news and stories about friends and associates. And there also seems to be a natural inbuilt bonding tendency among groups of humans to badmouth individuals for the sake of entertainment who are not on the inside of that group. It’s not so much that I think there is anything inherently or morally “wrong” with these behaviors - it is just that I do not want to take part in them any more. And I am seeking a way to do so graciously which does not add any social awkwardness.
I’m not really sure what the best way to deal with all of this is. But it may simply be holding your tongue. That is a skill I have been learning a lot of lately. Know when to hold em and know when to fold em. Know when to block and when to punch. We boxed again yesterday afternoon and landed some pretty good hits on one another, though we’re still not punching with all that much speed, strength or skill. More often than not, when one of us opens up we both end up hitting each other simultaneously in mirror images of one another.
Maybe that’s the thing about talking about people who aren’t there: it wounds you as much as it wounds the other person. It is a game without a winner. The main reason I am trying to avoid it, I guess has simply to do with actualizing intention: I would rather have a conversation with someone than about someone. We owe each other the truth of our beings, because this is really all we have. It doesn’t pay to slice it up and serve it as a hot dish to some people and a cold dish to others.
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9 Comments
I believe this is true in general of harmful acts. What we are, in the finest sense of that word, is unitive with the being of others.
We see the world in a mirror. We see self and others in the manifold image of that part of ourselves of which the image is the reflection. The harm we see ourselves inflicting in others is the harm we inflict on ourselves, seen in a mirror.
Me too.
You won’t have much luck with the awkwardness but you will get a new version of you, which seems to be what you’re aiming at. And, it will open you up to new types of friendship. Then you’ll find that you’re gossiping with these new friends about topics you never thought could be gossiped about. (Ask me how I know!)
When I watch this ebb and flow in my own life one of the things I notice can be summed up as ‘leadership’. Sometimes simple work related things and other times I notice the strings I’m attached to and how easily they get pulled, how I get led.
One of my coworkers, who I admire for pulling himself out of this habit, wound up speaking in a very vague manner about everything. If you just met him he seems closed off and bored. “Well, you know, that’s just how things are, I try not to let it get to me, etc.” You wouldn’t think he had an opinion about anything. He’s not as interesting as he used to be, that’s for sure.
It works though. He’s very happy and well adjusted now and has renewed his spirituality.
Back when I worked in an office environment I often pondered on this very thing - the seemingly necessary trade-off between holding my own ground, being the person I wanted to be, living up to my own standards vs. being ‘entertaining’ or standing out, socially. This Emerson quote comes to mind:
I noticed, for example, a direct correlation between how ‘entertaining’ a person was in social situations with how extreme their opinions tended to be, which tended to directly correlate to how judgmental they could be without considering the opposing point of view. The most opinionated also tended to be the most gossipy - in other words, the most opinionated about other people.
Meanwhile, I have a hard time getting really worked up about anything, certainly not worked up enough to make a big show of it. I have the same trouble *not* looking at something from both sides as others seem to have *not* taking a side. I used to wish I had stronger convictions just so I could enter into social debates with any amount of enthusiasm. But as Mr. WIlson would say, “convictions cause convicts.”
The mind that is rigid and closed-off enough to be able to hold onto any extreme conviction/opinion for any length of time without seeing beyond it - and which feels compelled to impose that narrow mindset and criteria on everyone else - is really its own worst enemy. Nobody trusts a gossip.
And as for the social trade-off, it’s actually totally unnecessary. You don’t have to hold strong opinions at all to enjoy playing devil’s advocate with those who do.
“You don’t have to hold strong opinions at all to enjoy playing devil’s advocate with those who do.”
Yeah, this is fun.
> relentless cycle of judgement
Yup. Not a good place to be.
In the professional academic world there’s a clear rule: criticize the work, not the person. So ‘Freud’s paper of 2007 is deeply flawed’ is fine but ‘Freud clearly hasn’t any idea what he’s doing’ is taboo. This is all very interesting in the light of ‘judge a tree by its fruits’ and all that.
This phrase has been kicking around my mind for a while. Two points: can you judge a fruit without eating it? And: what about tacking this onto Krishna’s advice of relinquishing the fruits of action? That is, suspending judgement altogether… easier said than done. Judgement, to me, seems like a scaffolding: it needs to be removed in sections.
KJV has ‘… by their fruits ye shall /know/ them’ which hangs better with ‘do not judge’. Except that I think the original saying is pre-Christian (Google tells me it’s in Plato - judge a tree by its fruit not its foliage).
‘By’ is such a wooly word in English - I wonder if the original texts are clearer? In Latin, for example, ‘per’ often translates into ‘by’ but is more correctly construed ‘through the agency of’. Through the agency of its fruits: judge the fruit not the tree? (which presumably implies eating the fruit). Or are the fruits to do the judging? (again, hangs better with ‘do not judge’). Or is the tastiness of fruit a fair measure to mete out to others?
This stuff is all over the place: the grape as the Blood of Communion, the grain as the Body; the withered fig tree (apparently, fig is one of the hardest trees to kill so makes excellent Bonsai for novices); and of course the tree in Eden through which judgement came. Never mind the fig leaves.
I think there’s something in the Tao Te Ching that corresponds here as well. I’ll have to look for it.