Advice Not Given

by Mark Epstein

The story of Angulimala is one I often think about when issues of work and family collide. Just as Gloria’s expectations for her career kept her in a state of isolation and agitation, so do many people’s notions of the centrality of their work keep them cut off from the people they need the most. When Gloria stopped her resentment at her patrons, she became a better ambassador for her art. In getting over herself, she moved from a familiar feeling of entitlement to an unfamiliar one of compassion. Unlike Angulimala, she did not need to renounce her chosen profession and put on monk’s robes, but she nevertheless made an important shift in the way she was living her life.

  Another patient of mine, a woman named Kate, made a similar shift. She, too, found that the confluence of Buddhism and therapy helped her get over herself. I think about Kate in the context of Right Livelihood because her issues also centered on a feeling of privilege associated with her work. Her difficulties did not arise at her job, however; they came when she got home.

  Kate works forty-five hours a week in a clerical position at a midtown architectural firm. Her boyfriend, with whom she lives in a one-bedroom Fort Greene apartment, is retired. He does many of the household chores while she is at work: the laundry, the shopping, and almost all of the cooking. He usually has a big dinner waiting—more than she really needs, she says—when she comes home. But Kate’s boyfriend’s standards of cleanliness do not match her own. The other day she came home exhausted from work and found the apartment in disarray. The glass coffee table was littered with newspapers and empty coffee cups, the bed was unmade, clothes were strewn across the bedroom floor, and when she went to the bathroom she found the top of the toothpaste lying on the counter with the half-empty tube lying nearby. That was the final straw! She got angry and said something mean to him, something about the toothpaste and how much did he really care? How many times did she have to ask him to do the simplest thing? It would take about twenty seconds to make it right. Was that too much to expect?

  Kate had lived with her boyfriend for more than ten years. They had been through a lot together and, despite the tensions in their relationship, had continued to find solace and sustenance with each other. I knew, when Kate began to tell me her story, where it was going to lead. Kate’s boyfriend had a temper, too. He did not take her irritation lightly. He blew up at her and she ended the evening in the bathroom trying to calm down by smoking a cigarette, something they had both agreed she would not do in the house. They managed to stop the fight from escalating further, but did not speak for the rest of the evening. They had been civil the next morning until Kate left for her appointment with me. The tension she was carrying was still obvious, though, and Kate was full of indignation as she told me what had happened.

  I had been through far more serious confrontations than this with Kate in the process of her relationship and I am sure she was expecting sympathy from me. But sympathy was not what I offered. I thought that Kate’s attachment to being the breadwinner was making her unnecessarily critical of her boyfriend. He was trying to do his share, after all, at least in some important respects. He cooked, he shopped, and he was obviously looking forward to her coming home. Yet Kate felt that her boyfriend was not giving her enough support—she had to work hard at her job, put money away for retirement, and she deserved to come home to an apartment that was not a mess.

  “Why not just do it yourself?” I asked. “If it’s only going to take twenty seconds, why not straighten up when you first come home and then pour yourself a glass of wine or something? I know it’s not fair, but it would be a lot less painful than this.”

  Kate did not immediately agree with me—I’m not even sure that after close to an hour of talking about it that she agreed with me—but she did hear me out. Her boyfriend had his strengths and his weaknesses. He was not exactly shirking domestic chores even if he was unlikely to straighten up before she got home. She could pursue her notion of what was fair or what was right or what she was due and try to get him to see her point of view, or she could stop. She could even do the unacceptable thing of taking on the tasks herself.

  “I’m not your maid,” she had yelled at him before taking refuge in the bathroom, and I knew that she would hear my advice as at odds with her promise to herself not to become just that. Because she was a woman, was she expected to do the picking up?

  “You’re not my mother,” he had screamed back at her. This was doing nothing for their relationship, I thought to myself.

  In giving Kate my advice, I thought about my own home. My wife might not agree with me, since she does not experience me as someone for whom a clean house is much of a priority, but I actually like it when the house is clean when I come home from work. On days when I arrive and no one else is there, I will usually put things in order before doing anything else. I’ll distribute the mail, clean off the dining room table, put away my old newspapers, fold up the blankets on the couch, put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, cleanse the refrigerator of its spoiling food, and run a sponge over the countertops. If my wife is home, I am much more liable to do nothing, figuring, much as Kate seemed to, that it is not my responsibility if someone is already there. Why is it easier for me to do these simple household tasks without resentment when I am alone? I asked myself. What meaning, if any, do I put on it if my wife does, or doesn’t, clean up? I thought about it and then told Kate what I was thinking. It helped her to hear about my domestic life. It helped move the conversation from the principle of the thing toward a more open discussion about what it all meant.

  As nice as it would have been to come home to a clean apartment, Kate was giving meaning to the mess that was not necessarily there. We could summarize it as follows: If her boyfriend really cared about her, he would take the time to pick up before she got home. While I could see her point (and while it might even be valid), I did not agree. Kate was making her suffering more than it needed to be. It was bad enough to come home to a messy house; it was much worse to come home to a messy house inhabited by a boyfriend who did not care about her.

  “Just pick up when you get home and then forget about it,” I suggested.

  Was I just reinforcing some kind of negative stereotype of a Buddhist as a masochist or a stoic or an enabler? Was I suggesting service or surrender out of my own fear of conflict or as a brake on Kate’s healthy aggression? Did she not have a right to get her own needs met? I struggled, internally, with these kinds of questions even as I told Kate what I thought. But I felt strongly enough about it to tell her.

  In my head was the Buddha’s retort to the famous bandit, “I have stopped, Angulimala; you stop too.” Kate’s mind was making a very reasonable request. Her outrage was understandable and the demand on her boyfriend was not extreme. Couldn’t he just pick things up before she got home from work? Was that really so much to ask? But her mind was giving the situation a specific meaning and this was keeping her in its thrall. Buddhism teaches us to look carefully at such situations. Are we like Angulimala, garlanding ourselves with the severed fingers of our victims, stringing a necklace out of our resentments? Or can we see past our own points of view? Pride, it is often said, is the last fetter to enlightenment. If one can believe the ancient Buddhist psychologists, many other difficult emotions—anger, jealousy, and envy among them—are easier to work with than pride. Even among very accomplished spiritual people, it has long been acknowledged, the tendency to compare self and other remains. If Buddhism can teach us anything useful, it is to loosen the attachments we have to our own indignation.

  “How do you use meditation in your relationship?” I asked an old friend in Boston, a longtime Zen student named Richard Barsky, many years ago, before his untimely early death from myeloma, when he was one of the only married people I knew.

  “By letting go even when you know you are right,” he responded.

  When my wife reads this over—someday—she will roll her eyes. Yet I have always remembered this little conversation. Letting go, ev
en when you know you are right, is not a bad thing to keep in mind. Most of us do not recognize when our egos are driving our behavior. We feel justified in our opinions and in our expectations. Right Livelihood, while encouraging us to reflect upon how we make our money and how we structure our lives, can also help us question our inherent sense of privilege. Letting go even when you know you are right is a challenge as great as the one the Buddha gave Angulimala. It helps bring the lessons of Right Livelihood home.

  —

  There is another famous scene in the life of the Buddha that makes a similar point. In the hours preceding his final enlightenment, when he is doing battle with his ego, the Buddha’s tormentors shoot volleys of arrows at him. Some people interpret this barrage as representing the internal enemies of anger, intolerance, and pride while others see it as symbolic of the rage of external foes. Whichever interpretation one prefers, the outcome is the same. The arrows turn into bouquets of flowers as they rain down upon him. They do not hurt the Buddha, whose mirrorlike wisdom has outmaneuvered his ego. The power of his understanding turns the arrows into harmless objects of beauty. He stops them much as he later stops Angulimala.

  A friend of mine, the artist, writer, and curator Phong Bui, who grew up in Vietnam and came to this country when he was a young man, told me how when he was a boy his Buddhist grandmother used to take him to the seven-storied Thiên Mụ Pagoda in Huế, the tallest religious structure in Vietnam, where there is a giant painted mural of this episode of the Buddha’s life.

  “Why do the arrows not touch him?” his grandmother would ask. “Why do they turn to bouquets of flowers?”

  The usual answer has to do with the Buddha’s conquering of anger. Because he has stopped his own angry reactions, the arrows cannot hurt him. Bui’s grandmother had suffered tremendously at the hands of her in-laws. She had not come from their social class and they had been very derisive of her for much of her life. She might have interpreted the painting solely on that level, for she had endured much cruelty and felt much justifiable rage. But she gave her grandson a different explanation.

  “Why do the arrows not touch him?” she repeated. “Because he is not there.”

  Bui’s grandmother understood, in a profound way, what the Buddha meant when he told Angulimala he had stopped. The Buddha, in getting over himself, did not vanish. In fact, his presence became even more powerful, his “being” a vehicle of transformation for those around him. In this way, he became a true expression of advice not given. The arrows shot at him turned to flowers not because of anything he said or did but because of the power of his presence. He had stopped his ego, and those around him could feel it. Even someone as intent on murder as Angulimala was touched and able to change his ways.

  Therapists, at their best, can inspire something similar in their patients. The grudges and resentments that people carry with them often make sense when looked at from a narrow perspective, just as working primarily for money and not thinking about one’s impact on others does. But a therapist can offer a wider view. Livelihood means more than just earning a living. It means recognizing that despite the fluctuations of gain and loss, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, and fame and disgrace—or, indeed, because of them—we are all the poorest of the poor. As Gloria realized, marooned as she was on Bainbridge Island, “The poorest of the poor. I have to have a care for it!”

  Six

  RIGHT EFFORT

  The classic depiction of Right Effort used music to illustrate how the ego’s ambition can sabotage its goal. An energetic disciple named Sona came to the Buddha for help and advice. Meditation was frustrating him. Despite exerting himself to an extreme, Sona was unable to find the freedom that the Buddha extolled. Sona was a musician by training, a lute player, and the Buddha used this fact to give him specific instruction.

  “Tell me, Sona,” said the Buddha, “in earlier days were you not skilled in playing string music on a lute?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “And tell me, Sona, when the strings of your lute were too taut, was then your lute tuneful and easily playable?”

  “Certainly not, O Lord.”

  “But when, Sona, the strings of your lute were too loose, was then your lute tuneful and easily playable?”

  “Certainly not, O Lord.”

  “But when, Sona, the strings of your lute were neither too taut nor too loose, but adjusted to an even pitch, did your lute then have a wonderful sound and was it easily playable?”

  “Certainly, O Lord.”

  “Similarly, Sona, if energy is applied too strongly, it will lead to restlessness, and if energy is too lax it will lead to lassitude. Therefore, Sona, keep your energy in balance and balance the Spiritual Faculties and in this way focus your attention.”

  The Buddha was giving a lesson in meditation to the former musician, helping him relax his effort so that he could find ease in his practice. He was showing Sona that attention was his instrument now, that it could be tuned just as his lute had been, and that it was possible, and desirable, to keep it adjusted to an even pitch. As a musician, Sona was aware that this tuning was not a one-time thing. An instrument requires care. Keeping it in tune is an ongoing process, one that requires a steady deployment of energy to keep it right. Sona was encouraged by the Buddha’s advice. He did not have to be at the mercy of his ambition. As he learned to observe his own mind, he found he could modulate his effort and adjust himself as circumstances required.

  —

  This is not always as easy as it sounds. Until one becomes familiar with one’s instrument, it is impossible to settle into a good rhythm with it. Musicians are not the only ones to appreciate this. Athletes who have experienced being “in the zone” have an intuitive understanding of it as well. When they lock into their game, there is a sense of effort proceeding effortlessly. While they cannot make this effortlessness happen magically, some players develop a sense of how they tend to get in their own way. This awareness allows them to consciously adjust themselves. I have found that being a therapist is very similar. Many days a week, I see from eight to ten patients, an hour at a time, with only one break. Friends often assume that this must be exhausting, but on most days it is not. If I am doing my job well, there is no room for me to dwell on my usual worries and concerns. I listen in such a way that the time flows by and my energy is not depleted. My workday is a vacation from my ordinary self.

  Beckett’s psychoanalyst, W. R. Bion, used to say that a good therapist has to discipline the mind to be free from memory and desire in order to function optimally. I think he had it backward, in a way. When giving attention to a patient, I am automatically free from the weight of my memories and desires. I do not have to deliberately let go of them in advance; they simply disappear when my awareness is given over, in a sustained way, to another. My thinking does not stop, but I stop thinking about myself, unless it is somehow relevant to what my patient is telling me. Even trying to retain details of a session to put into a book feels like an untoward intrusion on the patient and on my state of mind.

  Freud proposed that an analyst dwell in a state of evenly suspended attention and he emphasized that this was no ordinary state of mind. “The rule for the doctor may be expressed: ‘He should withhold all conscious influences from his capacity to attend, and give himself over completely to his “unconscious memory,”’” Freud wrote. “Or, to put it purely in terms of technique: ‘He should simply listen, and not bother about whether he is keeping anything in mind.’” Although this posture of analytic attention is essential to a successful psychotherapy, with the exception of a precious few therapists like Winnicott and Bion, analysts down through the ages have found it enormously difficult to restrain their egos. There is a rich literature of therapists twisting Freud’s words to allow them to bring back their usual mode of focal attention trying to zero in on the problem in order to offer an erudite interpretation. Buddhism showed me that evenly susp
ended attention is not an impossible ideal but a very real possibility. My instrument could be tuned as well as Sona the musician’s.

  My favorite part of the Buddha’s discussion with the lute player is his recollection of the “wonderful sound” the instrument had when it was in tune. The Buddha was referencing the joyful aspect of things that comes out of Right Effort, something Sona might well have forgotten in his overly ambitious pursuit of liberation. The Buddha obviously wanted Sona to take pleasure in what the proper deployment of his attention could bring. Something similar can happen in therapy. There is a wonderful sound when a therapist is able to listen without judgments or preconceptions, when he stops looking for what he already knows, restrains his own need to prove how smart he is, and settles into a state of relaxed alertness. Patients are held in a special way by this mode of attention and they often come to unanticipated realizations as a result. “It must not be forgotten,” wrote Freud in 1912, urging his followers to restrain their need to be clever, “that the things one hears are for the most part things whose meaning is only recognized later.”

  —

  I saw this very clearly in my work with Debby, a woman several years my junior, who had been anorexic when she was in her late teens. When Debby left home and went to college, she took one look at the food they were serving in the dining hall and said to herself, “Well, I’m not eating this.” And she didn’t. It was actually the odor, not just the look of the food, that made her so repulsed. The smell in the college dining hall was similar to one she had hated in her fifth-grade cafeteria. Her family had moved in the middle of that school year and Debby had not found the transition easy. She never ate the meals served in her new school but at least she could bring her own lunch in those days. In college things were different. Anorexia took her over steadily and relentlessly and eventually she dwindled to something like eighty pounds.