Positive Regard for Undeserving People

There are people in the world who, at first glance (or second, or third), don’t seem to me to deserve positive regard. At all. Maybe there are people like that for you, too.

But in an ancient tale, five people are traveling through the forest: the leader, their beloved, a friend, a stranger, and a wicked person. The group is attacked, and one person must be sacrificed in return for safety for the rest. Whom should it be? The wicked person, if we’re being just? The leader themself, if they’re altruistic? But the answer is, no one.

Because if we sacrifice anyone, then instead of spending our energy cultivating a warm and connected heart, we have to keep in mind who’s in and who’s out. We’re in a constant process of “yes/no, yes/no,” “you but not you…,” as opposed to being in a constant process of listening, understanding, and caring.

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 497. I’ve been thinking about this question - maybe it’s like a koan – a Zen riddle that a teacher offers a student and the student can work with for a long time, or their whole life even – and I hope I’m not offending anyone since it’s certainly not an actual koan – but this question or riddle of how to have positive regard even for people who seem completely undeserving of positive regard.

And when I say, “positive regard,” I’m thinking of that as a form of metta, so, staying with the theme of metta. There are people whom I find it difficult to say the metta phrases for (may you be safe, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you live with ease). Maybe they’ve done something terrible to me or to someone else, or maybe they’re not a good steward of the planet, or maybe they’re using money or power or both to cause harm – I feel like in this moment we have our pick but maybe that’s always been the case, throughout time.  

And the first thing to remember is that metta isn’t magic: I’m not saying the phrases so that that person will be happy, or safe, or free. I’m saying them to condition my own heart (or mind, but they’re the same). And the conditioning is a kind of non-exclusion conditioning: I’m working on not excluding anyone from my heart, even the person taking the worst action in the world. I’m working on softening my heart without regard to who’s in the room, or who’s on the planet. 

Maybe this sounds like a terrible idea. I feel like it’s legitimate to question why anyone would want to soften their heart to someone who’s causing great harm to others. 

But the thing I can tell you from a little bit of practice so far in this direction, is that my heart feels too brittle when I’m excluding people. It feels too brittle or too breakable or too fragile. When there are people who are “inside” my heart and people who are “outside,” it feels surprisingly harder, than if there’s no distinction.

This has been a strange thing to discover. The first moment I realized it – truly knew it in my bones rather than read about it or heard a teacher say it was true, which had already happened for a long time – was at the metta retreat I just sat. We spent several days practicing for ourselves and our easy or beloved person, and then a friend, then a stranger. Finally we got to the difficult person on maybe day seven of the nine days. The instruction was to work with someone slightly difficult, not incredibly so, and no politicians, so I thought I’d pick someone fairly close to home, and picked my ex, my daughter’s father. 

This ex is only sort of difficult because my daughter is an adult so we have little contact…but there are plenty of difficulties to remember. So he seemed like a good choice. But as I was saying metta for him, wishing him safety and happiness and good health and ease, a weird thing happened. I suddenly knew without any doubt at all, that saying the phrases for him, and wishing him wellbeing, was no different from saying them for anyone else. No different from saying them for a stranger or friend, or even for my most beloved person. And not “no different” in the sense that the phrases were the same or that I experienced similar obstacles and similar ease with the process. “No different” in the sense that there was no difference in my heart between him and my most beloved person. None at all. 

I can’t really explain any better how this felt, but I will say that I was so surprised, that my first impulse was to ask one of the teachers if this was a trick. I actually had a moment of adverse reaction of, “Wait a minute! This man belongs over here, and now he’s over here.” But then I realized that yes, of course it is a trick. It’s a trick of the heart or maybe more accurately, it’s a conditioning of the heart. And it’s not a conditioning of the heart to have well-wishes for each category of people, which is what I always thought metta was about. It’s conditioning the heart to make no distinctions, among humans, among other beings, among humans and other beings. No distinctions, meaning seeing that all the supposed differences are insubstantial and empty of any meaning, any fire, any content at all. 

There is an ancient koan about this that I put a brief explanation of in today’s MailChimp note, if you saw it. You are traveling through the forest with a beloved, a friend, a stranger, and a wicked person, and your group is set upon by bandits. The bandits demand the sacrifice of one person to let the rest of the group to go free. Whom do you sacrifice? You could say, the wicked person, of course. Why not sacrifice the most wicked person of the group, the person who’s caused harm to others? Why not sacrifice that person in our lives? Or you could say, myself, I should be altruistic and sacrifice myself, because maybe that’s what our culture suggests. 

But the answer is, no one can be sacrificed. If we sacrifice anyone, we’re making distinctions that don’t really exist and that are only going to encrust our hearts and make them brittle and more breakable. That was the trick at the metta retreat.

Fast-forward to the Mindfulness in Law Society Conference the week later, and I was listening to James Fox speak. James founded and runs Prison Yoga, which is now in many US states and in other nations as well. Highly recommend checking out their work.

During James’ talk, someone asked him, how do you sit, and practice, with someone who has committed a heinous crime? And this is the same question the story asks, and the same invitation of metta practice: to wonder whether we’re allowing some people into our hearts and excluding others, and why? 

James Fox was who gave me the words for today’s Wake Up Call title. His answer was, “positive personal regard.” He generates positive personal regard for every single human in every prison he visits. Or another way of saying that is, he generates metta for everyone, and he sacrifices no one. 

So who is it that you feel doesn’t deserve your positive regard? Maybe it’s the other side: the DA if you’re a PD, ICE if you’re in immigration, someone in power, your least favorite family member – it could be anyone. Is it too big of a leap to soften your heart and turn towards them with positive personal regard? Realize they’re only causing the harm they’re causing because they misunderstand the very thing you don’t misunderstand: that we’re not separate, that we’re not fundamentally different, that we’re all right here, so res ipsa we all belong here, that no one can be sacrificed because when we sacrifice someone - anyone – it breaks everyone’s heart? Is it too big of a leap, or is it a smaller step than we realize?

Let’s sit, and let’s play around with metta again.