"When Our Buttons Are Pushed"
Each of us has "buttons" -- areas where we are sensitive. When our buttons are pushed, we fly off the handle, blaming the other person for upsetting us. But our being upset is a dependently arising process. We contribute the buttons, and the other person does the pushing. If we didn't have the buttons, others couldn't push them.
Our buttons are our responsibility. As long as we have them, someone will push them, especially since they are big, red, and flashing. Our buttons are so sensitive, that even if a person walks by, the breeze from his passage will trigger our button's detector and our alarm will ring, "That person is offending (harming, criticizing, deceiving, manipulating, cheating, etc.) me!" Although many times people have no intention of harming us, our buttons get pushed just because they are so sensitive.
We need to do internal research, asking ourselves what our buttons are and why we are so sensitive in those particular areas. Our sensitivity generally has to do with attachment. If we are able to identify and then reduce our attachments, our buttons shrink. Then even if someone wants to push them, doing so is harder. Realized spiritual beings have no buttons left to push, so no matter how others treat them, they do not become upset.
We may think that if someone deliberately insults us, it's correct to be angry. However, such thinking is illogical. We would be giving our power to the other person, in which case his intention -- which we cannot control -- would be governing our happiness and suffering. Whether or not another person wishes us ill does not matter. We still have a choice whether to be offended. The less we are attached, for example, to praise and reputation, the less miffed we will become, because our mind will not interpret situations as personal assaults.
Thubten Chodron
"Working With Anger"
2001
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
On Having Buttons
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9 comments:
That sounds true and wise but I struggle with the desirability of detachment.
Still and all, attachment certainly supports the power of the buttons my X2B and I keep pushing on one another.
(I still want to qualify that as "probable-X2B" because if she were on board with the responsible non-monogamy thing there'd be little need for the X part. But this has nothing to do with your statement here.)
From a Buddhist pov, I prefer the term "non-attachment" to "detachment." It's not talking about physical separation, or removing yourself emotionally from a situation, but rather (in my experience) allowing things to be as they are without all the other stuff (training, belief systems, conditioning, childhood experiences) being loaded on top of them.
For me, it goes back to the "expect nothing, get nothing, and you'll never be disappointed," view of life which I'm sure I've mentioned before.
Found this great website that talks about it in terms of relationships:
http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/on-practice/love-sex-and-non-attachment
From that entry:
"A truly healthy individual is one who is complete by herself, and doesn’t need to depend on anything or anyone else to feel whole and content. I don’t mean we should go it alone and isolate ourselves from others. I mean simply not to depend on someone or something external to me as a necessary condition for my happiness.
But the fact is I’m not enlightened. Sure, it’s great to know what the ideal is, but very few people are actually there. I’m sure not. We all have times when we come up against feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, or insecurity. It’s a very normal human response to try to compensate for these unpleasant feelings by using a partner’s love to cover them over. But the truth is, real contentment can only come from within ourselves. A partner can’t provide that for us, and to expect it will only lead to disappointment."
My silly wife tells me I should be more detached when I get annoyed. But I tell her I don't want to be detached. I want to live in the moment, and if it's an annoying moment I want to enjoy my annoyance. I find me funny when I'm annoyed. She says I'm being indulgent.
I'm not going to be all detached and let my emotions drift off to some nether world, It's like having sex. I want to have my orgasm. I don't want it off raining unicorns in Shambala.
Of course there are times when a bit of detachment is good. But letting things get to you is good too. If I didn't get annoyed, I'd never get anything done. I'd just be all wallowing in my bliss.
Depends on the situation. Keeping cool at work is good. I'm also trying to detatch more from the ex and from Dad. Want to have fewer buttons in both cases. But I have no desire to detach from my kids or other people in my life who bring mostly joy.
I find the quote contradictory. If you are perfectly content alone, then you DON'T need anyone ... I'll never be like this, wouldn't even try, and wouldn't want to be with anyone like that. It's good to feel needed and to need someone. Yeah, it's risky, I'm vulnerable to loss and the self-contained are not, OK.
The concept of "non-attachment" in Buddhism is different than most Westerners understand the word, and after 7 years I'm still too much of a beginner to even attempt to explain it. This guy does a pretty good job putting it into layman's terms:
http://rioguzman.com/2009/03/01/buddhism-non-attachment-brad-warner/
In my experience, non-attachment isn't situational (i.e. "keeping cool at work."), it's how I aspire to live. And it's not about damping down emotions at ALL -- nothing in Buddhism says not to have your emotions! (This is a very common misconception about Buddhism.) You can have an emotion come up, notice it, and not have to do anything about it, or cling to it, or believe that it defines who you are. Because, like everything else, emotions pass.
To me, the quote isn't contradictory at all, it sums up exactly how I want to live my life, and how, when I'm successful at it, I'm better able to manage all of my relationships. Nothing external can bring us true contentment. For example, there is a woman I work with who used to make me CRAZY. When my phone would ring and it was her, my whole body would tense up, and I would find myself behaving in ways that shamed me -- I was short and unpleasant, often, to her. One day, I had one of those "showertime enlightenment" moments (I have a lot of those) when I realized that she wasn't doing anything personally to me. She had only recently been promoted, was new at her job, and wanted to do well at it. Like everyone, she didn't want to make a mistake, and this made her super-persistent and I let this annoy me. So I decided from that moment on that I was going to ALWAYS greet her with a smile or at least a smile in my voice, and instead of listening to the voices in my head that wanted to argue with her on every point, to just listen, then answer. I don't know if she noticed any difference, but I sure did, and once I dropped my attachment to the idea that she was just a huge pain in the ass, we started working together really, really well.
The non-attachment thing: what I've been unable to convey about my relationship with John, is that it's very complete in and of itself, and when we are together I am as joyful and loving as I can be, holding nothing back from him while expecting nothing from him. If I was attached to ideas about how our relationship "should" be, I could make myself miserable. We all make ourselves miserable with "shoulds" (I should be rich, I should be thin, I should be married, I should write more, I should have published a novel by now, I should have a better job, fill in the blanks here). My relationship with John is exactly what it is, nothing more, nothing less. When we are together, we are in love, and I love him. When we are apart, which is most of the time, I love him just as much, but I certainly don't feel that anything is missing from my life by him not being there. In fact, when we are apart, I'm generally not thinking of him at all.
The ratfuck mess I got myself into this past spring was actually a really good lesson to me in how easily I lapsed back in to conditioned, habitual thought patterns and behaviors. At the root of it was the idea that someone (older, wiser, more mature? Ha, right.) knew better how our relationship "should" be (well, at least to make it okay in his mind), and I went along with that to keep the peace in the moment, and honestly, because sometimes it felt good, rather than listen to my heart -- and I called ALL of that jangly, nervy stuff "being in love" rather than recognizing it as my heart standing on the stoop shotgunning rock salt over my head and shouting at me, "pay attention! pay attention!" (Oh, look, I mentioned guns again, do you guys feel all scared and threatened?)
Anyhow, now I've done a fairly crappy job trying to explain non-attachment as I understand it in a Buddhist way.
Wow, that comment could have been its own post.
I found that all really interesting. Must give it more thinkiness.
I liked your post. (And your really big comment.)
If you have an idea about the world that you are attached to, then it is automatically a button, and anyone who knows about it can push it. If you un-attach yourself from that idea, there is no button. You can still have the idea, so you won't become a bliss-drunk unicorn hugger or whatever, but you are just not attached to it.
I don't think you can or should detach from the world. That would be impossible, like a fish trying to detach itself from the sea.
Exactly how I see it, Roy! But as my most favorite teacher Cheri Huber says, "Don't believe anything I say! Find out for yourself!"
I'm re-reading one of my Lama Surya Das books, "Awakening the Buddhist Heart," and this morning on the subway I turned the page, and there he was, talking about buttons!
Pema Chodron talks about shenpa, or getting "hooked." I think she means the same thing.
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