From Narcism to Altruism
Self development
We all know the experience that we are stuck, are not moving forward and it seems that our development is stagnating. The term “development” is popular nowadays — just think of the growing attention for upbringing, lifelong learning and ongoing training in organizations.
Thanks to this popularity it has become a container concept with many meanings, so that a clear, unambiguous meaning and application are often hard to find.
In this case it is not about the natural development from babies to adults, but about the development of adults themselves. For a long time this kind of development was seen as a form of occupational therapy for old hippies, New-Agers or people with psychological problems. By now it is a widely accepted phenomenon, which is reflected in a great interest in psychotherapy, coaching, mindfulness, meditation and Buddhism.
It seems that the idea that the quality of being and the quality of life are inextricably linked is increasingly accepted. It is precisely this quality of being that is closely related to our self, because the self also includes the interpretation and appreciation of our experiences. The most intriguing aspect of this self is nevertheless undoubtedly the capacity for development, which we know as self-development.
Narcissism: blessing or curse?
A dominant aspect of our human experience is the compelling experience of our own unique existence, which is traditionally called personal identity or self. Another popular name, but usually with a rather more negative connotation, is ego. We already see a hint here that the self, although necessarily present, is not a blessing per se. It is a quite stubborn phenomenon with which we struggle often during our lives to control. This self, or ego, is also seen as the source of our jealousy and envy, frustration and anger, hope and fear, vanity and arrogance. For many a curse that they would like to be freed from.
In order to do that we need to develop this limited self further beyond its habitual borders. A known obstacle to our self-development or personal growth, and at the same time a reference to its importance, is found in the myth of Narcissus. In this classic story, the beautiful young man finally falls in love with his own reflection in the pond and gets caught in it, then languishes and eventually dies. The story points to our need for exchange with our environment to maintain a healthy sense of self. Without this we too are bound to die, literally and figuratively, think of oxygen, food and drink, but also touch, recognition, warmth and love.
However, it is also a warning for the power of our own projections on the screen of reality: these prove so convincing that we assume them to be factual and true! After all, Narcissus believes that his reflection is an “other” and not just a projection of himself! This way we easily lose ourselves in our own images of reality. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, describes this phenomenon pointedly as:
Samsara is the mind directed outward, lost in its own projections,
Nirvana is the mind focused inwards, recognizing its own nature.
Samsara is the Buddhist term for our experience in the [repetitive] world of suffering through our attachment to pleasant experiences and thoughts, and our aversion to unpleasant ones. In other words, we want pleasant experiences to last as long as possible, and we want to eliminate unpleasant ones as quickly as possible. We all know from our own experience how successful this approach is.
Nirvana is the experienced world in which we have freed ourselves from these reactive tendencies by turning our minds inward. [1] By practicing this with meditative techniques we slowly establish a view of a wider Self.
Both the myth and the description of Tulku Urgyen confront us with the tendency we all know, namely a rather stubborn focus on ourselves, on ‘I,’ whereby the intensity and quality of the exchange or contact with our environment remains instrumental and limited.
I and myself
With some observation and self-reflection, we can relatively easily ascertain that we too spend most of our time on ourselves, and put our own interests at the forefront. Logical of course, because in our experience we are the center of our existence, experience our circumstances, make choices, act and produce results in our live. In everyday use, we all call this ever present, very prominent self, “I.” We have our name for others, we all call ourselves the same.
Although our language is full of words with ‘self’ — in the Van Dale (the major Dutch dictionary) I count at least 150 lemmas with self, from self-acceptance to selfworship (!)- we usually do not consider who or what that self that we all call ‘I’ actually is . We have no distance from it, we are identified with it, we are “I.” And if we start looking for ourselves, we soon experience that it is not that easy to find.
If we look at the lessons from the spiritual traditions, then self-reflection seems crucial for our inner development. Who am I? is therefore a classic question in these traditions. Most traditions have the goal of reaching beyond ourselves or liberating ourselves. In the West it is not an uncommon development goal either, just remember Abraham Maslow who topped his ‘pyramid of needs’ hierarchy with self transformation. (Interestingly, if you google this then usually the self transformation has disappeared and the top is self actualisation, the level beneath self transformation. I haven’t found an explanation yet for this phenomenon)
This self is here seen as a functional self — after all, we manage our daily lives with it — but rather a limited form of a potentially much larger and wider Self. This wider Self encompasses and transcends our individual and limited self. Many famous texts and stories have been written about what this larger and broader Self is and that embodies probably humanity’s most important Story and Desire. But that reality cannot be captured in our conceptual language, it is non-conceptual — it ignores that.
The best texts about it are poems that, like all poetry, refer to an experience or phenomenon that cannot be directly grasped by rationality and language. But you can experience it immediately! In Tibetan Buddhism, the larger Self or larger whole to be realized is called the nature of mind or Buddha nature. Longchenpa [2] writes about our obstacles in this realization in “A diamond Song About Useless Worries”:
Occupied day and night by everyday worries, where can I find the time to attain the essence of non-doing? If I don’t immediately get rid of those imagined obligations, what good is this pointless worry?
In other words, we will not achieve anything here if we do not set priorities. Fortunately, practical applications have been developed that we can use with relatively little effort in our daily lives for the realization of our Buddha nature.
From narcissism to altruism
The opposite of narcissism (focus on ourselves) is altruism (focus on others). Others means here everyone else and not just the ones you love or like! In many spiritual traditions and world religions we find the idea that the change from a narcissistic spiritual attitude to an altruistic one is a necessary step for the transcendence of our limited self. A direct relationship is made between the experience of happiness in our lives and the degree to which we are altruistic. In a famous Buddhist verse in his Bodhicharyavatara, Shantideva says [3]:
All the happiness that the world contains
Is created by wishing for happiness for others.
All the suffering that the world contains
Has arisen by wishing for happiness for ourselves
At first glance, this statement seems somewhat absolute and extreme, but on closer examination — imagine that everyone would put the welfare and importance of the other before their own! almost unimaginable, right? — we can see that we may be dealing with an universal truth here.
Investigation
The historical Buddha Sakyamuni is supposed to have said Do not even believe what I say. The meaning is seen as a statement that we better research everything in our own experience than take it for granted or true because someone else or an authority says so.
The above statement by Shantideva lends itself perfectly to this type of experiential research and that is why I would like to invite you to the following:
Arrange for yourself an hour, day or other period in which you direct your attention to your behavior — thinking is also behavior here! — observe and determine whether it is self-directed or other-oriented. Time and again ask yourself what exactly the difference is and how it expresses itself in your behavior and thoughts. Also be aware of the subtle variants where it appears that you are doing something for someone but you still hope to benefit from it in the (longer) term. Insight into the extent to which you tend towards narcissism or altruism comes if you look carefully at the result of the behavior in question — to both yourself and the other. This self-confrontation is of course often not so pleasant, but it is necessary.
It is practical to take a moment to sit in the morning, or meditate if you do, and instruct your mind to view your actions that day (especially remember your thoughts and fantasies) in this way.
Every time you remember this during the day you confirm the assignment.
In the evening at the end of your day you take a moment to make an inventory of what you have noticed and to reflect on it. It is helpful to make a brief note of that. An additional exercise might be to be aware when you (or the other) actually use the word “I” and what effect it has.
Essential in working with our minds is that we learn to observe, to be aware, without judging. It is not about avoiding or suppressing the inevitable judgments and thoughts that arise — old habit, isn’t it — but about observing precisely those judgments and thoughts without identifying or interfering with it, without doing whatsoever. So leave it alone, remain calm and open and then we automatically experience what is called the “nature of our mind,” which manifests itself when we are no longer distracted by the inclinations of our little mind.
Learning or discovering
The development of our individual self into a broader Self is not an exclusive Eastern or Buddhist affair. We find similar ideas in Western psychology. For example, in Gestalt psychology [5] it is stated that the self is not an individual phenomenon but a function of the environment in which we find ourselves (quote from Fritz Perls). This comes from the observation that nobody can exist on their own but that we are always part of an environment, of a larger whole. Just as in Buddhism, one speaks here of a greater whole or Self of which the individual self is an integral part. Viewed in this way, there is no self in itself, as an independent self, but all selves (ie, all of us) are an integral part of the whole.
An important difference with the traditional western view of development is that in the spiritual traditions it has for a long time been seen as the development of something that is already there. As something that should not be learned but just discovered as already there. This means that the path of self-development in those traditions has a different form and meaning than in ours.
We see this difference in the names for the basic technique in the spiritual traditions, namely meditation. These names have the meaning of recognizing and getting used to the nature of our mind, rather than learning something that is not yet there. In this sense we use it ourselves as a path from narcissism to altruism. Narcissism is the attitude of an “I”; who loses itself in itself and therefore suffers. Altruism or compassion is the attitude of an “I” who at all times knows itself to be part of the greater whole and sees the other as himself — and it is this broader view in which we recognize and acknowledge the inseparable connection to everything that motivates us to to overcome our narcissistic self-love.
Only when we practice this in our daily lives do we get a definitive answer about Shantideva’s proposition in our own experience.
Have a good heart.
[1] By “turning the mind inward” is not meant that we literally turn away from the world. It refers to the attitude in which we pay structural attention to the essence and functioning of our mind. The mind is seen as the real source of our reality, in which circumstances and events are triggers for our experiences, but not the true cause. The most important techniques used for “looking inside” are meditation and contemplation.
[2] Longchenpa or Longchen Rabjampa (1308–1363) is seen as one of the greatest teachers that has been produced by the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is best known for his realization and writings about Dzogpa Chenpo (Dzogchen: The Great Perfection), the highest teaching on non-conceptual reality.
[3] Shantideva (685–763) is the author of the famous Bodhicharyavatara. In it he describes the path of the Bodhisattva, the Buddhist ideal of compassion that can be realized by all. Essential to this path is that our motivation for the realization of enlightenment is the interest of others, not just self-interest.
[4] Speech to the Kalamas, Angutarra Nikaya I 188–93, in: Thus said the Buddha, p. 120–125.
[5] Gestalt psychology originated around 1900 in Berlin, from research into visual laws — how we actually see. Her most famous adage is: the whole is more than the sum of its parts (Aristotle) which means that a whole has a meaning that goes beyond just “adding up” the parts. “Gestalt” (German) therefore means “a meaningful whole.” The premise of gestalt psychology is that our perception is primarily driven by finding meaningful wholes. Today we know this vision mainly through its application in Gestalt therapy with its emphasis on awareness of patterns in interaction with the environment — with the greater whole.
