“It is not men’s acts which disturb us—but our reaction to them. Take this away, and anger goes.” (ODAT, 15 November)
Before I feel anything in response to an event, there are actually two events: the thing that has happened and my judgement of it. The judgement feels natural only because it is produced by my mind, which I have trained to respond in certain ways. If I don’t like the response, I have to retrain my mind.
But isn’t it normal to feel anger? What’s normal? Statistically the most common reaction? That’s surely a sign neither of wisdom nor clarity. Naturally occurring? Well, so is violence. Animals are violent. That does not mean I should be. I discover the notion of a normal reaction is meaningless.
What matters is seeing things as they are.
It does not take long once one starts to view one’s thoughts from the outside to realise they are not conditioned from without but from within and are not the inevitable consequence of the event. After all, if they were, everyone would react the same way to the same events, but they don’t.
It turns out that outward reality—as I perceive it—is not actual reality at all.
Someone said something mean? Oh, so their vocal apparatus produced a sequence of sounds, and the sound waves hit my ears, and I decoded those into language, denoting what that person says they think. Why am I suddenly interested in what this person thinks? I wasn’t before they said the ‘mean thing’, but now I’m interested? How did I pick them? Why not pick someone else? There are eight billion to choose from. And why am I interested in others’ thoughts anyway?
Yet the only reality is that soundwaves have been produced.
The tissue paper castle collapses swiftly in the rain.
And to think one can spend one’s whole life upset—like Miss Haversham—because of thoughts alone.
All quite unnecessary.