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How does wisdom into something seemingly abstruse, like the doctrine of no-self, help us become simply nicer people? When you watch your mind carefully, you begin to notice that all of your thoughts, feelings, and actions arise and pass, and are not really ‘you.’ They are conditioned by other phenomena – you get hit with a brick, you feel pain – and the responses themselves are learned habits, which we have been practicing for many years. Even the faculty of decision – do I get really angry, or not – is conditioned by practice, temperament, possibly even genetics. There’s really no one here making these decisions – it’s just the various causes and conditions coming together, as they must. So, when someone acts or speaks unkindly, we can see the same process operating within them – if we are mindful enough to notice, and calm enough not to react in a habitual way. Who is really saying the unkind words? The conditions are present – they are who is speaking. And it’s hard to get angry at conditions. What’s more, if you believe in God, it’s not only hard – it’s idolatrous. Because the sum total of all the conditions in the world is What Is – and that is God: the One, the Is, the omnipresent and omnipotent.
The important final piece is not to judge yourself when “you” fail to respond in a skillful way. Suppose someone says something unkind, and you are hurt, and so you react not as an enlightened yogi but just as yourself, hurt. There’s a tendency now to blame oneself. But that is the same error as blaming someone else. The conditions were present for you to feel hurt, and so you felt hurt. It wasn’t your decision; it isn’t a flaw in your character. It was just the conditions. So forgive yourself, set an aspiration to cultivate different conditions, and keep practicing.
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