[Buddha-l] Re: The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing

[Stuart Lachs]

The notion of the Dalai Lama saying that Tibetans do not have self loathing 
raises an interesting question about whether someone at the top of the 
social hierarchy is in a position to know what someone at the bottom of the 
hierarchy is feeling.



I wonder too, if a strong belief in karma combined with a strong faith in 
the power of the Buddha(s) would keep a person from developing self 
loathing. Though on a slightly different note, a Japanese monk once stayed 
with me in my small cabin in Maine in Feb., 1975. The second night he had 
what seemed like an anxiety attack, a state not uncommon at the time. In the 
middle of the night he opened the top of the wood stove against my 
instructions not to touch the stove, which filled the cabin with smoke. I 
woke up in a choking cough. With a beam of light from my flashlight cutting 
through the smoke, I found him crouching in a corner like a scared animal. 
It is a rather long story, but the next day I told him that a number of 
Americans had this kind of anxiety. He immediately brightened and said some 
thing like, Oh Buddha wanted me to understand Americans so he had me 
experience their kind of anxiety so that I could help them. He had no more 
trouble for the next 10 days or so that he visited.



I also believe that post WWII Japanese did not have the guilt and self 
loathing that many Germans did, partially because of the Japanese belief in 
karma. The suffering they experienced towards the end of the war and after 
was viewed as karmic retribution so, in a sense, the slate was cleaned. 
Likely Koreans, Chinese, Philippines, and Manchurians did not share this 
belief of a clean slate, but that is a different matter.



Westerners, in general, have, what is sometimes referred to, as 
hyper-individualism. We are also bombarded with advertising meant to make 
people feel inadequate, if you do not buy XYZ product. XYZ promises to 
fulfill us, that is, until ABC's ad unsettles us again. Yes, it is a never 
ending cycle. Buy, buy, buy,...In conjunction with this ad blitz, we also 
live in a sea of celebrity worship. This is all in the context of the 
individual measuring himself against all other individuals and the 
celebrities worshipped. It seems to me to be a prescription for self 
loathing or at least self doubt, feelings of inadequacy, and the ever 
present depression. I recently read some thing about the enormous scale of 
anti depression drug sales in the USA.



But back to Tibet, the book "The Timely Rain," written in 1964 by Stuart and 
Roma Gelder, British journalists who were the first westerners into Tibet 
after the Chinese take- over. The introduction was written by Edgar Snow. 
The book, in part, talks about how cruel the upper classes and monasteries 
were to the serfs. It also mentions abusive monastic monetary practices as 
well as the severe punishment given the serfs: in one case   a serf was 
blinded and mutilated for stealing two sheep from a monastery, a serf could 
be turned into a slave to the monastery if they could not meet their debts, 
and so on. Drepung monastery "was the biggest landlord in the world. It 
owned 125 manors and 25,000 peasant serfs, as well as 300 great pastures and 
16,000 herdsmen."  Sounds like some early Buddhist monasteries in India and 
China, where serfs were charged excessively high interest for loans and some 
were turned into temple slaves.



I would imagine that at least some of the serfs on the receiving end of 
cruel and torturous punishments and what seems like painfully high interest 
rates had some doubts and questions about the compassion of the Buddha, his 
monks, and the theocratic establishment. The Gelders said, "You couldn't 
enjoy a religious festival tax free. You paid for singing, dancing, 
chanting, drumming, drinking, and ringing a bell. We gathered there were 
about eighty special religious taxes. A fourth of the income of Drepung 
monastery was from interest on loans at between 20% and 50%." We would call 
this usury, but do the Tibetans? Perhaps Tibetans think 50% interest is low, 
a gift, a blessing?



So, I wonder was the Dalai Lama seeing and being in touch with a limited 
number and subset of Tibetans? The same goes for Shamar rimpoche and other 
high lamas. Are the Dalai Lama, Shamar rimpoche, and other elite lamas the 
people to ask to judge the state of a peasant's mind?  Did they have a 
system of thought that allowed the elite monastics to understand themselves 
as kind, compassionate Buddhist models while maintaining the privilege and 
power of a theocracy? Did they have a concept in their mind scheme for self 
loathing? If there was no concept, how would they see it when it was staring 
them in their eyes? They would call it some thing else so it did not exist!



The above was meant as conjecture, though it may not read that way. Maybe 
self loathing is culture bound after all and Tibetan culture does not have 
it? But maybe, they have no concept of it so do not see it? - or call it 
something else?



Just some meanderings stimulated by the thread.





Stuart





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Katherine Masis" <twin_oceans at yahoo.com>
To: <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2007 1:21 PM
Subject: [Buddha-l] Re: The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing


> (a) Joy Vriens offered quotations from Santideva.
>
> Thanks for the selected quotations, Joy.  It's
> interesting that the Dailai Lama's book, *Healing
> Anger: The Power of Patience from a Buddhist
> Perspective* (Snow Lion, 1997) is based on Shantideva.
> I haven't gotten to it yet, but now I'm really
> curious to see what his interpretation is!
>
> (b) Joanna Kirk wrote:
>
> "Makes one wonder if severe adult neurosis was simply
> absent in many of the Tibetan families, before they
> became submerged in industrialized  culture . . .
> Self-loathing might well accompany the development of
> a conventional self that is based more on me
> (industrialized cultures) than on we
> (non-industrtialized cultures)."
>
> (c) Jack Hat wrote:
>
> "I wonder whether the important variable was the lack
> of self-loathing in people in that part of the world
> or the lack of psychological understanding in their
> Buddhist teachers. Would a western therapist find
> self-loathing in those people?"
>
> Here's an interesting piece from Alan Roland's *In
> Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a
> Cross-Cultural Psychology* (Princeton, 1988):
>
> "One particular aspect of we-self regard and
> structural hierarchical relationships is profoundly
> related to caste.  As Bhaskar Sripada . . . has noted
> from reflections on his own psychoanalysis, the
> particular ego-ideal internalizations of a Brahmin
> enhance his or her own self, we-self regard being
> further supported by unconsciously splitting off and
> projecting any poor aspects of self-esteem onto the
> lower castes.  In turn, the lower castes split off
> certain idealized aspects of their own self and
> project them onto the upper castes, further supporting
> the we-self regard of the upper castes." (p. 247)
>
> For us westerners, self-loathing seems to take place
> in a smaller "space", within each individual.  In
> other cultures, the self-loathing might be projected
> onto a larger, social "space."  Perhaps there are some
> cultures that lack self-loathing completely, because
> they're not part of industrialized culture.  I'm not
> sure about this, though.
>
> Katherine Masis
>
>
>
>