Hot Potato

In his book, Awakening Through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness, John Makransky remarks, “[E]very time we mistook others for the very source of our happiness, and misreacted to them with possessiveness or anger through that delusion, we have contributed to a world in which greed, hatred, and violence are daily news” (p.76) This is a very impactful statement indeed, in that it implicates all people in the suffering that we experience even in the news. It takes quite a while to unpack this sentence, among many of the others’ in Makransky’s book, and that’s part of the reason why this is my second reading of the book. But I think it’s worthwhile to explore some of the implications.

Why would mistaking others for “the very source of our happiness” be such a source of suffering? Some might argue that looking toward others for one’s happiness might make people harmonize more and conflict much less. The problem with this theory is that it doesn’t account for the frustration and unhappiness that arises when one unconsciously (or consciously) desires to be happy from another person. What happens is, as Makransky suggests, a kind of chain reaction. With thwarted expectations or desires comes a sense of “possessiveness or anger”, as well as a battle to “win” the attention of the other person, or at least to show that one has some control over them. As the person soon realizes that they don’t have such control over a person’s feelings or thoughts, depression or despair can set in, as well as the need to conceal from oneself the desire, which can lead to more anger or undirected anxiety. A person might not feel that they need to depend on others, but underneath that belief is an atmosphere of uneasiness. Even though the person has consciously overcome their craving for happiness in others, deep down, they still harbor the notion of self and other which stays in the backdrop until something triggers it over again. What results is a kind of tension which I often experience in myself as well as in others.

The way we work with these energies of desire and anger, from what I understand it, is not necessarily to strive to overcome the emotions themselves. If, for example, I hold up the model of someone else and remark to myself, “I need to be more like this person”, I will end up suppressing or denying any emotion or thought that does not fit that pattern of the other, while burying emotions that don’t fit the ideal. This leads to a kind of smouldering or fragile sort of mentality, because I am no longer congruent with my feelings about things. I think a more constructive approach is to allow the experience to arise without trying to “package” it into a self. If the sensation of anger arises, I automatically jump to the thought, “I am angry at you”, thus reinforcing a split of self and other. But what if the emotion was simply allowed to be without necessarily packaging it as a self/other? What if, quite simply, there is only anger, or only desire? What happens then is that there isn’t any feeding the fuel of that anger or desire, because it doesn’t belong to anyone at all.

I remember there used to be a game we played in school called “hot potato”, and the object of the game was to pass an imaginary (you guessed it) hot potato from one person to the next. After a certain time or perhaps a signal is given, the person in possession of the hot potato needs to find someone to give it to, while everyone else dodges or runs away. The idea of this game almost symbolizes the kind of self/other just described. If I am not clinging to the idea that I and I alone have this hot potato (and need to do something about it), I am no longer under any particular pressure to act on it. Who has it? Isn’t it just an emotion that arises, and not necessarily something substantial that belongs to me?

However, I qualify this remark by suggesting that there is still responsibility for one’s emotions. The difference is that there isn’t this attitude of blaming or trying to “assign” blame for something that has already arisen. To blame myself for an emotion I am feeling now is somewhat counter-productive. If it’s happened, it’s happened, and now I need to establish who the person is who instigates the action.

Makransky, John (2007). Awakening Through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness. Boston: Shambhala