Trump, the No-Self, and the "Empathy Scale"
Shortly before the election, David Brooks published a fascinating piece titled Donald Trump's Sad, Lonely Life. Among other things, he writes:
Everything we have seen from this presidency confirms Brooks' impressions, of course: we are dealing with someone who lives the breathtakingly unexamined life of a schoolyard bully. Brooks, one of Trump's fiercest critics in the conservative right, is appalled by Trump's lack of empathy. But these paragraphs succeed in evoking some compassion for his situation and for his impoverished heart.
The piece was timely from my perspective. I was doing intensive meditation work with the principles of metta (lovingkindness), which calls for extending good wishes (happiness, health, safety, and ease) to all living beings. The standard practice calls for extending these good wishes first to oneself, then to a benefactor, a friend, a stranger, a difficult person, and gradually all living beings. Trump seemed (and still does!) like the epitome of a difficult person, and I found Brooks's piece illuminating and inspiring.
The mistake was, of course, posting Brooks' piece on social media. My friends, understandably traumatized by the campaign, responded ferociously. One person, who never misses the opportunity to lecture and educate, scolded me for not "taking a cue, or rather a lot of cues, from the people he is oppressing." In a future post I'll tackle the problematic assumption by some well-meaning progressive folks that empathy is dead, as well as its worse sibling, the assumption that empathy is actually counterproductive and to be replaced by silence or groveling. But chided as I was to be scolded online by someone who should know about the extent to which I've "taken cues" from oppressed folks (so said my wounded self! Hello, ego!), I could not find a good way to reconcile the Buddhist principles of the no-self with our ideas that some people simply do not deserve empathy.
Perhaps my enthusiasm about Brooks' perspective came from a vision quest I took a few weeks before I read the piece. It started with a lush forest at dawn, in which a deep voice called me to set aside the ridicule and political satire and really engage with Trump on a deep personal level. I then saw myself walking through the forest until I got to a clearing. Near me were pieces of a grand statue, now broken and lying on the ground. As I walked along the colossal ruins, I saw it was a statue of Trump, his stony head lying sideways, as tall as me. I walked back toward the feet and found the base of the statue still standing, bearing Shelley's poem Ozymandias:
My frustration with the reception of the Brooks piece led me to Donald Rothberg's excellent series of dharma talks on Buddhism and social justice. How are we to make sense of the edict to extend compassion to everyone, including those who personify lack of compassion, with the grave offense that people take at the effort to extend compassion to those who are deemed unworthy of it? Do we extend compassion only to people we like or think are right? Rothberg responded with a simple but profound message: empathy, when sincerely and truly felt, can be hard. And so, when we ask ourselves or others to extend it, it's often helpful to resort to an "empathy scale" and rate, on a one-to-ten scale, how hard it is to extend empathy. If it's a three or a four, said Rothberg, we should make the effort and work on our empathy/compassion muscles. If it's a nine or a ten, it will be a hell of a workout, and perhaps more than our psychological muscles can take, and so it might be helpful to let it go for a while and resume the effort when one feels more up to the task.
After the election, several books trying to offer understanding and empathy to Trump voters emerged on the scene, such as Hillbilly Elegy and The White Working Class. People who read them were very sincere about the difficulty of feeling compassion for those whose vote is the source of others' misery, and often their own misery. I confess that my own efforts to have a conversation with family members who voted for him, largely for religious reasons that I cannot comprehend or condone, were made very difficult by rage I felt boiling in me. But I still think it is important to make the effort at compassion--not so much for them but for ourselves. Living with rage has been more difficult than living with a positive effort to bring about tikkun olam and, as Brenner says, "increase the realism and sacredness of the world." But it is an effort we must undertake in order to remain sane and nourish our souls for the many struggles to come.
We must stop Trump and his regime. But not from a place of hate or ridicule, but from a place of love for all living things.
Imagine you are Trump. You are trying to bluff your way through a debate. You’re running for an office you’re completely unqualified for. You are chasing some glimmer of validation that recedes ever further from view.
Your only rest comes when you are insulting somebody, when you are threatening to throw your opponent in jail, when you are looming over her menacingly like a mafioso thug on the precipice of a hit, when you are bellowing that she has “tremendous hate in her heart” when it is clear to everyone you are only projecting what is in your own.
Trump’s emotional makeup means he can hit only a few notes: fury and aggression. In some ways, his debate performances look like primate dominance displays — filled with chest beating and looming growls. But at least primates have bands to connect with, whereas Trump is so alone, if a tree fell in his emotional forest, it would not make a sound.
Everything we have seen from this presidency confirms Brooks' impressions, of course: we are dealing with someone who lives the breathtakingly unexamined life of a schoolyard bully. Brooks, one of Trump's fiercest critics in the conservative right, is appalled by Trump's lack of empathy. But these paragraphs succeed in evoking some compassion for his situation and for his impoverished heart.
The piece was timely from my perspective. I was doing intensive meditation work with the principles of metta (lovingkindness), which calls for extending good wishes (happiness, health, safety, and ease) to all living beings. The standard practice calls for extending these good wishes first to oneself, then to a benefactor, a friend, a stranger, a difficult person, and gradually all living beings. Trump seemed (and still does!) like the epitome of a difficult person, and I found Brooks's piece illuminating and inspiring.
The mistake was, of course, posting Brooks' piece on social media. My friends, understandably traumatized by the campaign, responded ferociously. One person, who never misses the opportunity to lecture and educate, scolded me for not "taking a cue, or rather a lot of cues, from the people he is oppressing." In a future post I'll tackle the problematic assumption by some well-meaning progressive folks that empathy is dead, as well as its worse sibling, the assumption that empathy is actually counterproductive and to be replaced by silence or groveling. But chided as I was to be scolded online by someone who should know about the extent to which I've "taken cues" from oppressed folks (so said my wounded self! Hello, ego!), I could not find a good way to reconcile the Buddhist principles of the no-self with our ideas that some people simply do not deserve empathy.
Perhaps my enthusiasm about Brooks' perspective came from a vision quest I took a few weeks before I read the piece. It started with a lush forest at dawn, in which a deep voice called me to set aside the ridicule and political satire and really engage with Trump on a deep personal level. I then saw myself walking through the forest until I got to a clearing. Near me were pieces of a grand statue, now broken and lying on the ground. As I walked along the colossal ruins, I saw it was a statue of Trump, his stony head lying sideways, as tall as me. I walked back toward the feet and found the base of the statue still standing, bearing Shelley's poem Ozymandias:
I met a traveller from an antique land,I then looked into a hand mirror and, to my shock and dismay, saw Trump's face looking back at me. It was a true revelation that what I so disliked about him and his administration (and still do, passionately) are faults I dislike in myself as well. What is in him--the desire to be liked, to keep attention focused on him, to avoid criticism, to get out of swamps of scandal--is in me, also, and likely in all of us. It was a profound lesson in the no-self.
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
My frustration with the reception of the Brooks piece led me to Donald Rothberg's excellent series of dharma talks on Buddhism and social justice. How are we to make sense of the edict to extend compassion to everyone, including those who personify lack of compassion, with the grave offense that people take at the effort to extend compassion to those who are deemed unworthy of it? Do we extend compassion only to people we like or think are right? Rothberg responded with a simple but profound message: empathy, when sincerely and truly felt, can be hard. And so, when we ask ourselves or others to extend it, it's often helpful to resort to an "empathy scale" and rate, on a one-to-ten scale, how hard it is to extend empathy. If it's a three or a four, said Rothberg, we should make the effort and work on our empathy/compassion muscles. If it's a nine or a ten, it will be a hell of a workout, and perhaps more than our psychological muscles can take, and so it might be helpful to let it go for a while and resume the effort when one feels more up to the task.
After the election, several books trying to offer understanding and empathy to Trump voters emerged on the scene, such as Hillbilly Elegy and The White Working Class. People who read them were very sincere about the difficulty of feeling compassion for those whose vote is the source of others' misery, and often their own misery. I confess that my own efforts to have a conversation with family members who voted for him, largely for religious reasons that I cannot comprehend or condone, were made very difficult by rage I felt boiling in me. But I still think it is important to make the effort at compassion--not so much for them but for ourselves. Living with rage has been more difficult than living with a positive effort to bring about tikkun olam and, as Brenner says, "increase the realism and sacredness of the world." But it is an effort we must undertake in order to remain sane and nourish our souls for the many struggles to come.
We must stop Trump and his regime. But not from a place of hate or ridicule, but from a place of love for all living things.
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