Vexation and the Self

In Tea Words Volume 2, Master Sheng Yen asks, "how can we truly tell when we have overcome vexation and reached wisdom?" He then continues thus: "Vexation and wisdom are both mental activities, but the crucial difference is that vexation is centered on the self; it is this centering on the self that causes suffering. However, with wisdom one sees things as they are, unconcerned with the self, untainted by personal subjectivity" (p.9).

According to Master Sheng Yen, vexation is always marked by self-attachment. It's not the phenomena themselves that are "vexations", as one might suggest, but rather the self that attaches or clings to these vexations as pertaining or referring to a self. If I see a swarm of flies, for example, am I going to see them with reference to how I feel around them, or am I going to instead see them for what they really are (namely, flies)?  A wise perspective is to gradually rid oneself of the perceptions that surround a particular object and to see it for what it really is, without the reactions of the self.

This practice is admittedly not easy to do. Has anyone ever seen something they really love, such as a chocolate cake, and seen it as a cake rather than giving into their mental associations of craving and desire? I am sure that many people do try to do this, but deep down inside, have they attained the mind of wisdom? As long as there is even a subtle attachment, then there is no true wisdom there...and nor, for that matter, is there compassion, since the associations one has are entirely centered on one's own feelings about the cake. As soon as I get into that habit of craving something, I then come to falsely conclude that others crave the same thing as well. I assume that everyone in the world must like chocolate, just like me! This is hardly very wise either.

Quite often, what appears to be wisdom is really a kind of self-centered form of knowledge gathering or seeking. Watching the movie Three Identical Strangers the other day, I came to realize that (as I suspected from my early years of reading), many so-called "scientific" experiments in the 50s and 60s were using the debate of nature vs. nurture to bolster all sorts of "absolute" claims about the way people raised in totally different families might be determined by their genes. By separating the triplets at birth, the researchers intended to create controlled experiments which focused on the way family parenting styles influence the children's future behavior. In none of these experiments was there any recognition of the damage it would do to the children to be experimented in this way, as well as the families. In this way, what looks like valuable knowledge lacks wisdom and compassion. There is an "ulterior motive" behind the research that relates to particular interests, such as governments who might want to cut back on education that is designed to give children equal access to resources. After all, if we are determined by our genes, why bother investing in education that helps all students equally?

Sheng Yen (2013) Tea Words. Elmhurst. NY: Dharma Drum Publications