True humility comes from exchanging self with others, which is a blend of compassion and wisdom. As the great mind-training practitioner Geshe Langri Tangpa describes it:
Whenever I associate with others
May I view myself as the lowest of all.
This is not a nebulous attitude but rooted in the clear understanding that cherishing a self that doesn’t exist is never going to work and that all the happiness there is in the world comes from cherishing others.
Carrying on from this article, where I started looking at the three reasons given in The New Eight Steps to Happiness for choosing humility: Humbled by their humble nature.
2. We accumulate a vast amount of merit
Wishing for others to succeed and enjoy higher status creates a lot of merit, or good karma, which we can use to be happy, make spiritual progress, help others, and attain enlightenment. The more we can big others up, the better, so it’s worth finding every opportunity to praise and elevate people.
I was interested to see this “mainstream” article talking about how, to get happier, we need to make ourselves smaller rather than give into our self-aggrandizing fantasies: To get happier, make yourself smaller. The author quotes someone taking an astronomy class:
When I go into class on Thursday mornings, I usually am stressed out about my life,” she told me. “But 90 minutes later, I feel relief because I am just a speck on a speck.
It’s all about proportion and perspective. For example, virtually all of the time people are thinking about themselves, not you; and how many of you remember or even ever knew your great grandparents’ names? Who will remember ours, and for how long?
We can relax into a humble reality of not being the object of attention and criticism, and we can appreciate a magnificent universe without spoiling it with our self-absorption and petty concerns.
No man is an island: it’s an optical illusion of consciousness to think that we are. We are not isolated, separated-out individuals, which becomes obvious when we meditate on our interdependence. The Lojong or mind-training meditation on the kindness of others shows us that we are not the center of anything, just parts of a whole, like cells in the body of life. (See this article: Love the great Protector.)
The world is constantly inviting you to try to make yourself appear bigger in others’ eyes and in your own; this fact underpins the entire social-media business model. The trick to finding happiness is to get smaller.
One cell is not as big or important as all the other cells in the body, surely!? It may be distinct, but it exists only in relationship to all the other cells, or indeed in service to all the other cells, who also exist in relationship to it. It is actually such a relief to just be a humble cell and not have to focus on bigging ourselves up in our own or others’ minds.
And in case you’re wondering, humility doesn’t mean we lose our ambitions or drive in life, just that these are now based on a valid and far more inspiring sense of who we are. Which, interestingly enough, turns out to be someone with limitless potential for enlightenment and the ability to help each and every living being every day.
Self-consciousness and the need for affirmation
Thinking about yourself all the time makes you miserable over the long term. Researchers have shown that such self-focus can provoke emotional problems, making social situations or task performance feel frightening and unpleasant.
Status, fame, etc don’t make us happy, do they?! At least, not for long. The highest ranking baboons apparently also have the highest levels of glucocorticoid levels, indicating constantly elevated levels of stress. Rather than seeking societal accolades, we can seek humility instead.
We may think it’d be fun to be famous and rich, but I would wager that most rich and famous people would like not always to have to be the center of attention. On the way to this café on Kensington Church Walk, I walked past a famous now elderly actor. He was not only bundled against the rain, but his whole body language indicated that he didn’t want to be seen or acknowledged. So I didn’t follow him down the street to catch another glance (or did I?! you’ll never know).
It is not just the rich and famous, of course, who are self-consciously miserable. Even if we are quite a modest person, acute self-consciousness can sometimes make us hard to be around, especially if we mask it by being ready to find fault in the people around us, believing they are not paying us enough attention, for example, or excluding us from their plans. Others, finding us unduly sensitive or needy, can start to tread on eggshells around us, which exacerbates our insecurity, setting up a vicious cycle.
Rich or poor, famous or little known, powerful or overlooked, if we are thinking about ourselves all the time we are positioning ourselves in a precarious place of need, where we need others’ affirmations or love to simply feel okay. Instead, humility gives us the self-confidence that comes from identifying with our Buddha nature and from developing peaceful minds, especially unconditional love. If we can learn to be happy with ourselves, content to be just one cell in the body of life, in loving service to others, we really won’t mind what others think of us. Not that long ago, Venerable Geshe-la said to some managers:
We are only trying to help others so there is no need to worry.
Work in progress, of course, but worth every minute we spend on it.
No virtue signalling required
Virtually all of the many experiments on charitable behavior show that giving raises well-being—especially when it is anonymous, with no spotlight on your virtuous acts.
Although it is fine to be admired or praised (and we can accept it and even offer it to the Buddhas at our heart), counter-intuitively, perhaps, we can feel better when we have no expectation of reward or even acknowledgment. The article gives the example of anonymous kidney donors, which naturally makes me think of a Buddhist friend of mine who is currently in Malaysia preparing to hand over his kidney to a Kadampa nun he only met last year. She is in her fifties and he is in his seventies, so he has figured that she needs it more. He is making no fuss about this; he’s just doing it. And I stand in awe of that. He asked me to write a letter vouching for his sincerity and lack of ulterior motives so that the authorities can accept something quite hard to believe, which is that he is not doing this out of coercion or for any financial or personal gain.
When Bhikkhu Pannakara was interviewed, it became clear that he wasn’t doing this peace walk for the fame or reputation. He said he was surprised at all the attention but that the people were coming because “they are suffering”. He just wanted to help; it was not about him. Chatting with a close friend the other day, who teaches Buddhism to thousands of people every year, they said: “Once we’ve finished a teaching, we immediately move on, don’t we, even if it was to loads of people. We don’t dwell on it.”
3. We need to practice humility because there is no self or I that we normally see
This third reason is the clincher, in my opinion: the self or me we normally see doesn’t exist so what is the point of bigging it up. As Venerable Geshe-la says:
We should view our self – the object of our self-cherishing – as the lowest of all, as something we need to neglect or forget. In this way our self-cherishing will become weaker and our love for others will increase.
Inspired by Geshe-la’s life and example, I have long wanted to put this on a tee-shirt:
We’re nobody till we realize we’re nobody.
Not a doormat
As mentioned above, true humility is based on an exchange of self and others – where we genuinely believe others to be more important than us. It cannot be fake or contrived for it is a million miles away from pretending to be something it is not.
Geshe-la says:
We need to practice humility even when we associate with those who according to social conventions are equal or inferior to us.
Someone who stayed with Venerable Geshe-la for years in Spain told me that he was incredibly respectful and kind with whomever he met. This included some migrants he met one day while walking along the beach, whom he greeted and talked to as if they were his dear friends. Geshe-la also showed deep respect for animals and encouraged us to try not to eat them if possible.
Humility has nothing to do with being servile or letting people walk all over us. There is no doormat mentality about it. For one thing, there is no self there to be a doormat. But it also doesn’t diminish our common sense when it comes to establishing boundaries or whatever is needed to be able to keep offering our service. You don’t get the sense that any of the peace monks are doormats. On the contrary, although they were not bothered about it for their own sakes, they commanded respect and awe wherever they walked, and people of all stripes went out of their way to help them. Venerable Geshe-la was so humble that you could almost see right through him, but he was also more present, powerful, and pervasive in person than anyone I’ve ever met. He never met or saw an insignificant person. And that is why he is significant for us.
No edges to my loving now
Once we’ve exchanged self with others fully, like a Buddha, we can be helping everyone everywhere – there is no duality of me over here and everyone else over there. Someone once wrote to me in a card:
Our happiness is your reward.
It was a generous comment and I mention it because of how curious I am as to how true that statement really is. What other reward would we need if we realized that the self we normally see doesn’t exist?
The article I was quoting from earlier describes it:
the delusion of our own importance and the constant need to maintain a mirage that we are at the center of everything … So relax into the reality of your cosmic smallness.
Ironically, the smaller we become, the bigger we become, identified with all the cells in the body of life in a total exchange of self and others. Also, because we come to recognize that nobody is outside of our mind, including ourself, the duality of self and other dissolves and we are everywhere and everyone. In that same article, it says:
A common theme in most major religions involves the loss of self through communion with the divine. In Sufism, this is called fanā’, or “the annihilation of the ego.” The 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi wrote about fanā’ in exquisite metaphors; in this poem, he compared his self to a “clear bead”:
There are no edges to my loving now.
The clear bead at the center
changes everything.
Last but not least, this practice of humility arising from exchanging self with others is perfect preparation for deep concentration on emptiness and going deep into the practices of Tantra, including diving into the heart chakra.
Reality is on our side
Reality is on our side. Which means that whenever we are aligned with reality, we are serving our own best interests and fulfilling our own deepest wishes for lasting happiness and freedom, not to mention the ability and power to bring joy and benefit to everyone else. Humility is grounded in the reality we can reach through these three reasons, including the truth that the self we normally see does not exist and the truth that others, countless and kind, genuinely are more important than just one person who happens to be me.
Ok, thank you for reading! Your comments are warmly appreciated.
13 Comments
Meditation dissolving our ignorance by enhancing reality and focusing on subtle objects like a seed letter Bam the size of a mustard seed. Not subtle enough go deeper millions of tiny 8 prong vajras deeper trillions of Buddhas so very small! The result? A mind as expansive as space! ❤️🙏
There was a time in my life when I felt that everyone was judging me. I think a lot of us feel this way. When we walk down the street, we feel that we are being judged by everyone who sees us. We become self-conscious. I remember thinking this about my first girlfriend. I had to constantly be on my guard to make a good impression. I assumed that I was her constant concern. But here is the truth; most people are only concerned about themselves. They could care less about you. They are self-conscious also, and self-cherishing. Knowing this can create a sense of freedom.
I agree, this is common.
And your last few sentences, so true!
This reminds me of the Emily Dickinson poem:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d banish us – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Haha, love that! And it is really quite profound.
“When we stop obsessing about ourselves, something wonderful happens .” And that’s the truth!
Yes.
At our winter retreat, Gen Samten talked about “the joy of insignificance” 🙏💙
And he is such a good example of this.
There’s nothing to add ….your articles written with this razor-type mind and adding expériences for sangha helps me so much not just to understand but to acknowledge and to practice the teachings….so clear. Thank you so much for taking the time to help us.
wow that’s a very kind and motivating thing to say, thank you! 🥰
Another beautiful article on humility. I am reminded on a plant that is growing in my garden currently, the Forget-Me-Not. I let it grow like a weed, wherever it wants, it has tiny, almost insignificant flowers, but when they they all blossom together my garden is filled with their beauty. We don’t have to be the large rhodedendrons, or flamboyant lilies to make the world a better place. Small and humble and connected to many others is what will make the impact.
The Forget me Nots remind me of my Dad, he died two years ago when they were in full blossom. His death, the ageing of my mother, the heartbreaks and problems of my daughters and sisters are all the definite cause of my humility. I cannot stop their suffering, their deaths, in my current state, I’m powerless.
Only as a Buddha can I really help, I have a lot of work to do.
Thank you ❤️
This: “Small and humble and connected to many others is what will make the impact.”
And thank you for the reminder that one way to humility is knowing that we are powerless until we become enlightened. (And the only way to become enlightened is through exchanging self with others).