I vow to be he smallest person in the room.
Humility and modesty are two on the short list of wholesome
mindstates observed by Asanga, the 1st century monk who watched his
mind in meditation and then codified the workings into a book, the Abhidharma Samuccaya. Put another way,
if you want to be peaceful, simply “make yourself the smallest person in the
room,” as my teacher Master Ji Ru says.
This month, I will be blogging about three vows for the new
year. “I vow to be the smallest person in the room” is the first vow; it is a
vow to make humility and modesty our baseline. For a vow to be effective, we
need to consider its implications intellectually, frequently chant it so it
just comes to mind spontaneously to remind us of our intention to be this way,
and to make a concerted effort to practice it, especially under difficult
circumstances.
Let’s start with some basic definitions, then consider a few
short exerpts about humility and modesty, and then let’s look at how to apply
and practice these in our everyday lives. First, the definitions:
Humility is to
depart from a position of gentle, non-assertiveness. It is a behavior or
attitude or spirit that wholly lacks arrogance and conceit or any sense of
self-centeredness or self-cherishing. It is being unassuming without being
proud or feeling inferior. It applies to all that we do, say and think.
Modesty is to
depart from a disinclination to call attention to ourself. Modesty involves
observing proprieties, especially in speech, dress and comportment. It is avoid
extremes through understatement in everything one has and does materially and
spiritually.
Now some quotes:
Humility
Do
not find fault with others. If they behave wrongly, there is no need to make
yourself suffer.
–Ajahn Chah (20th-Century Thai
monk)
Humility
and Patience
I
think that there is a very close connection between humility and patience.
Humility involves having the capacity to take a more confrontational stance,
having the capacity to retaliate if you wish, yet deliberately deciding not to
do so. That is what I would call genuine humility.
I
think that true patience has a component or element of self-discipline and
restraint--the realization that you could have acted otherwise, you could have
adopted a more aggressive approach, but decided not to do so.
On
the other hand, being forced to adopt a certain passive response out of a
feeling of helplessness or incapacitation--that I wouldn't call genuine
humility. That may be a kind of meekness, but it isn't genuine patience or humility.
–His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Real
Humility Is Genuineness
Humility,
very simply, is the absence of arrogance. Where there is no arrogance, you
relate with your world as an eye-level situation, without one-upmanship.
Because of that, there can be a genuine interchange. Nobody is using their
message to put anybody else down, and nobody has to come down or up to the
other person’s level. Everything is eye-level.
Humility
in the Shambala tradition also involves some kind of playfulness, which is a
sense of hum…. In most religious traditions, you feel humble because of a fear
of punishment, pain, and sin. In the Shambala world you feel full of it. You
feel healthy and good. In fact, you feel proud. Therefore, you feel humility.
That’s one of the Shambala contradictions or, we could say, dichotomies. Real
humility is genuineness.
–Chogyam Trungpa
And finally, practicing with humility and modesty,
practicing being the smallest person in the room, requires thinking about these
wholesome mindstates and then acting from them.
·
Behave without arrogance, conceit and other self-centered
tendencies such as jealousy, envy and an impulse to show off. Behave in ways
that reduce one’s sense of self-importance and that give no-fear by their very
nature. (The giving of no-fear is one of the most important practices of
generosity.)
Remember
and Watch Out for The Three Conceits: I am better than you; I am equal to
you; I am less than you.
Conceit is prone to arise when one
is praised for some particular work or mental quality, usually by others but
sometimes by self. Within limits praise from a knowledgeable person can be
encouraging without becoming a defilement. The trouble is that too much praise,
particularly if it borders on flattery, makes us proud and arrogant. The ego
sticks out its chest and feels two inches taller; it has a delicious feeling of
security and believes itself to be invulnerable!
This is the nasty sort of pride
that the ancient Greeks called hubris;
it was looked upon as an insult to the gods, and when the Olympians found a man
suffering from it they unloosed Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, who brought
him to death or destruction. I am not suggesting we kill everyone who feels
proud, but just that we watch ourselves carefully so we can stay humble and
modest without pride overriding those wholesome mindstates, which is pride’s
tendency.
·
Respect others by having a compassionate
interest in them, without a desire to please or to impress. This allows us to
do what is appropriate without distortion or suffering. It also allows us to
see that right speech, which is grounded in compassion, often leads us to be
silent.
·
Relate to others without the need to make your
understandings and opinions right and heard, protected or defended. Listen
without the need to express and without the need to assert or protect and
defend your understandings or opinions. The point of listening is not to
express what we already know; that’s conceit. Ultimately, humility and modesty
are teaching us not to process everything from a position of I-me-my-mine.
Modesty and humility allow us to walk through life calmly
and peacefully, doing what is needed, reasonable and appropriate with
discomfort or stress.
To make these virtues, these positive mindstates, into our
default setting so they arise naturally without us having to activate them in
the face of pride or conceit, in the face of self-deprecation or
self-aggrandizement, we need to flood our mind with a commitment to humility
and modesty. The easiest way to initiate this is through recitation, or
chanting.
Set a timer for 10 minutes. Sit quietly for a minute or two,
relaxing your body and mindfully watching your breath. Take long slow deep
breaths. Then repeat, over and over, either out loud to yourself: In
each and every moment, I vow to be the smallest person in the room.
Do this once or twice a day, for several weeks, until you
sense that humility and modesty are arising naturally in you at times when you
might otherwise have become angry or arrogant or wanting your way.
Then make this an occasional practice. Perhaps chant it in
the car for a couple of minutes to keep it fresh in your mind, or when you’re
showering or brushing your teeth; anytime you are alone and not doing anything
that requires much attention, just recite “I
vow to be the smallest person in the room” a few times.
