"One of the lessons repeated again and again
if I wanted to be happy, I had to learn to recognize and work with the conditioning factors that produce compulsive or trait-bound reactions. The essence of his teaching was that any factor can be understood as compulsive to the degree that it obscures our ability to see things as they are, without judgment. If someone is yelling at us, for example, we rarely take the time to distinguish between the bare recognition 'Oh, this person is raising his voice and saying such and such words' and the emotional response 'this person is a jerk.' Instead, we tend to combine bare perception and our emotional response into a single package: 'This person is screaming at me BECAUSE he's a jerk.'
"But if we could step back to look at the situation more objectively, we might see that people who yell at us are upset over something that may have nothing to do with us. Maybe they just got criticized by someone higher up and are afraid of getting fired. Maybe they just found out that someone close to them is very sick. Or maybe they had an argument with a friend or a partner and didn't sleep well afterward. Sadly, the influence of conditioning is so strong that we rarely remember that we CAN step back. And because our understanding is limited, we mistake the little part we do see for the whole truth.
"How can we respond appropriately when our vision is so limited, when we don't have all the facts? If we apply the standard of American courts to tell 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' about our everyday experience, we must recognize that the 'whole truth' is that everyone just wants to be happy. The truly sad thing is that most people seek happiness in ways that actually sabotage their attempts. If we could see the whole truth of any situation, our only response would be one of compassion."
From: "The Joy of Living,"
"But if we could step back to look at the situation more objectively, we might see that people who yell at us are upset over something that may have nothing to do with us. Maybe they just got criticized by someone higher up and are afraid of getting fired. Maybe they just found out that someone close to them is very sick. Or maybe they had an argument with a friend or a partner and didn't sleep well afterward. Sadly, the influence of conditioning is so strong that we rarely remember that we CAN step back. And because our understanding is limited, we mistake the little part we do see for the whole truth.
"How can we respond appropriately when our vision is so limited, when we don't have all the facts? If we apply the standard of American courts to tell 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' about our everyday experience, we must recognize that the 'whole truth' is that everyone just wants to be happy. The truly sad thing is that most people seek happiness in ways that actually sabotage their attempts. If we could see the whole truth of any situation, our only response would be one of compassion."
From: "The Joy of Living,"
