Self-love, self-friendly, non-self

Someone recently wrote to me and asked me two questions.

Did Buddha teach you narcissistic love? Do you love yourself against seeing through your illusions?

There was a third question, but it was a bit quirky so I’ll deal with it in the end.

First, I explained that I recently explained that the language of “narcissism” is useless. This is mainly because the word “love” is very open to interpretation.

Not self-love, but self-prosperity

I prefer to think in terms of self-awareness. In other words, you prefer to treat yourself with the same warmth, support, encouragement and forgiveness that you show to your dear friend.

The idea of ”loving yourself” can be difficult. If you talk about the “loving” parts of your personality that are harmful to yourself or others, this could mean that you approve them.

But if you talk about being kind to them, then that’s not the point. You can be kind to someone without approving what they are doing. Being kind to the harmful parts of yourself means working patiently with them and not judge yourself harshly by having them.

Buddha of self-esteem

Buddha mainly spoke implicitly about self-intelligence, but there is one place where he speaks quite explicitly about it. He said he’s talking about people who act skillfully.

They might say, “We don’t care about ourselves,” but they still matter to ourselves. why is that? For their own consent, they act towards themselves as their dear one acts towards their dear one. Therefore, they are important to themselves

He explains that acting towards yourself “as a dear person” means acting ethically, that is, acting in relation to the long-term happiness and happiness of yourself and others.

He contrasts this with people who say that they are important to themselves, but are acting skillfully and are encouraging their own future suffering. In other words, they think they are (kind) to themselves, but they behave like their enemies.

So for Buddha, things were to be truly kind to ourselves by acting skillfully (i.e., treat ourselves as we treat our loved ones). It acknowledges quite clearly the principle that we should be kind to ourselves and treat ourselves as friends.

If we are kind to ourselves, we are kind to others

We should treat ourselves as we treat friends, and everything else as we treat ourselves as we treat ourselves. And we need to think and act like this:

I want to live and I don’t want to die. I want to be happy and recoil from the pain. This is so if someone takes my life, I wouldn’t like it. However, others want to live, and don’t want to die. They want to be happy and recoil from the pain. So if I take someone else’s life, they wouldn’t like it either. Others hate me, too. I hate this, so how can I give it to someone else?

The general principles are clear and beautiful. “I hate others that I hate because I hate this, so how do I give it to someone else?” Applies to all actions. And the Buddha applies this principle to other forms of conduct, such as stealing, sexual misconduct, and lies.

You could call this “narcissism,” but like I said, I don’t think the term is very useful. I think it’s better to say we should be kind to ourselves. In other words, we should treat ourselves the same way we treat someone we care about.

However, whether it is “self-friendly” or “narcissistic love”, there is no form of the word “immunity from misunderstanding.” We need to understand that whatever we call “treating ourselves as beloved” means acting skillfully.

The teachings of Dharma work together

The mutuality of this kindness for the self and others is what Buddha spoke at Sedaka Sutta.

Take care of yourself, you take care of others. And when you look after others, you take care of yourself. And do you take care of others by taking care of yourself? Through development, cultivation and meditation practices. And how do you take care of others and take care of yourself? By acceptance, harmlessness, love, sympathy.

One thing about the teachings of Dharma is that you cannot take just one of them and expect it to “work.” They are designed to work together synergistically. Therefore, “self-friendly” and “other kindness” are mutually supportive. When I am kind, I will help to be kind to others. When I become kind to others, I help myself too.

Being kind is not “good”

But one thing I think needs to be clear is that being kind to others is not the same as being “good” for them.

Being “nice” includes seeking approval from others. The assumption is: “If I act the right way, others will like me and show kindness.” It is dishonest, flawed and ultimately selfish.

What happens when we are not self-friendly is that we try to manipulate others to be kind to us to fill our inner void. That void arises because we have not learned to be kind to ourselves. We don’t think warmly about ourselves, encourage ourselves and talk to ourselves, or forgive ourselves when we’re not perfect. We long for the kindness of others as we are not kindly involved with ourselves. Therefore, operation.

Real self-friendly is that we respect ourselves, treat ourselves the same way we dear ones, and be kind and empathetic to ourselves. This naturally extends to others when they empathically know that they are the same as us. Their feelings are just as realistic as our feelings are for us.

Self-system and non-self

My correspondent asked the third question:

Buddha said that he would send Metta/goodwill in all directions, but is it directed towards himself? It seems to be still because you are yourself.

I replied that I thought this was an overly abstract way to see what overlooks our real experience.

My real experience is that I perceive myself. Or at least I recognize the various sensations, thoughts, feelings, and impulses that I collectively label as “me.”

This “self” includes both perception and perceived.

That perception always has an emotional tone. Someone can hate themselves – that is, they perceive themselves with disapproval. Someone can be kind to themselves. This means that they perceive themselves with kindness, patience, support, and encouragement (like our dear friends).

Yes, I can have good intentions for myself. I can be kind to myself. At the final stage of LovingKindness practice, when I “send” kindness in all directions, I simply permeate my consciousness by an attitude of empathy and kindness. I will permeate my consciousness into the world. In other words, they are “sending” kindness anywhere. But I am also “send” kindness to myself, as I am instilling myself with kindness. (In fact, there is no “send” anything. It’s just an incomplete phon.)

To say “You are yourself” means treating yourself as a unified phenomenon. In other words, as if you were your self. The true self (the perfect united one) could not be associated with itself. Rather, each of us is a fusion of various activities, processes, etc., including parts that can be kindly related to and parts that need to be kindly related.

That’s because we don’t have a united self that can be kind to ourselves.