Self-Respect: A Healthy and Balanced Self
อาจารย์ สุจิตโต
For me, the issue of respect is a major one – it touches into what can be a chronic lack, a lack that we experience as having no worth.
This sense whirls one along a track, in a semi-conscious way, of seeking accomplishment, security or the approval of others. And as with all confused needs, no matter how much one gets, it isn’t enough. This is because we’re looking for an inner foundation of self-value without which we are prone to anxiety and depression. But racing along the treadmill of external accomplishments doesn’t allay that need. And one’s fellow racers are too busy to applaud.
This ‘self-value’ stuff may sound odd in a Buddhist world-view which doesn’t see or seek any permanent and lasting self. What self is there to be valued anyway? However the contradiction is more verbal than experiential. The realisation of non-self is based upon having a very solid foundation in mind-base, citta. And this mind-base is experienced (for those not completely enlightened) as ‘my basic self’ beneath the role-play and the thoughts and moods of mental behaviour.
You can’t realise that this doesn’t have to be held onto as me and mine until you’ve accessed it, nourished it, strengthened it and cultivated it. In other words you train your behaviour to access your (apparent) self, and you explore this apparent self to realise something that stands up for itself and doesn’t need holding onto.
For most people, denying that they have a self just gives rise to a ‘self’ ( a program of mental behaviour) based on denial. And if we don’t seek a healthy and balanced self, we don’t arrive at not-self, but rather at an unhealthy and imbalanced self.
Self-respect is a sign of psychological health. It’s a primary factor in the Path: the sense that I have worth, that I have potential for improvement, and that I can move towards the good and the true. Without that sense, you don’t have the confidence/faith to get going.
In Buddhist cultivation, this self-respect is largely derived through reference to our ethical sense. We can refrain from harming, from stealing, from lying and so on. The factor that supports that is not fear of punishment or moralising righteousness, but ‘conscience’ (hiri). That is: because one values oneself, one doesn’t act in ways that aren’t worthy. One doesn’t stain the ethical clarity that we are all heirs to as human beings.
This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is from the blog, “Respect: Offering Value.”
