Silence the Inner Critic

Who are any of us, really?

We have a distinct sense of who we are, but if we go looking and try to pin it down, it’s not easy to find. E.g. on Monday we feel anxious, I’ve always been anxious, I’ll always be anxious. On Tuesday we might think, I’m useless. On Wednesday we feel relaxed, happy to be alive. Maybe we even think I’m always a happy person. Any given version of ourselves we experience we believe to be the truth. What’s happening is that we have a sense of ourself, an idea of ourself. Beyond that idea, Buddha says that there is no self. Thee is no solid concrete self. This is extremely profound and liberating. This means that nothing is fixed.

Buddha said that we are beings of boundless potential. Our consciousness is like a vast clear sky. The clouds in the sky are our anxiety, self-criticism, hatred of others, our delusions. Weather in the sky. Which comes and goes. If the mind is like the sky, all our bad thoughts are bad weather. They are not intrinsic qualities of the sky. The mind is also blissful and peaceful in nature.

Buddha’s point is that the clouds of bad thoughts are not you. But because we have something called self-grasping ignorance, we grasp at ourself as within our thoughts. We identify with those thoughts and believe them to be us. This is a fundamental reason why we suffer. We don’t have to do it.

In HTTYL, Geshe-la says that the object we grasp at most strongly is ourself, our I. It appears very real and solid. It doesn’t normally occur to us to even question it. The stronger our grasping, the more fixed and limited we feel, and the harder it is to break out of our suffering. We serve this I day and night. The last time you dreamed, everything and your self in the dream felt very real. Then you woke up, and the dream and the person you were in the dream disappeared. Dreams are created by our mind, and disappear when we wake up. The person in that dream - who was it? Was it the same as the person who was dreaming?

We create versions of ourself all the time. We hold on to them as if they are really me. But as soon as that thought goes, that person goes. Where is that real me? There are as many versions of me as there are people who observe me. That’s why its so futile to care about what other people think of us.

We exist in a state of total freedom. If we understand how we are creating ourself moment by moment, we can create a self that is loving, kind, patient, peaceful. Our sense of self is always based on our body or mind or a combination of both (basis of imputation). We are capable of extraordinary development. E.g. everyone is capable of developing universal love - an incredibly happy, blissful state of mind. We are free to think whatever thoughts we want. All of Buddha’s 84k teachings are about doing exactly this.

Most of the time we are trapped in the ego prison of self-grasping. Buddha’s saying that’s not true - you are capable of complete mental liberation. Our Buddha nature is our limitless potential. Its like a gold nugget in dirt. No matter how disgusting our delusions might be, the real nature of the mind remains undefiled like gold. There’s nothing fixed or stuck about you. Its up to you. You can learn to relate to your boundless potential. Our thoughts are free. We can change them. The seeds of our delusions can be destroyed because they are mistaken awarenesses and based on ignorance, things that don’t exist. But we can never destroy our Buddha nature.

When it comes to self-criticism, we think I’m not good enough, I’m not lovable, we don’t like ourselves. How are we ever going to believe that someone else can love us? Self-criticism stifles our joy, our creativity. Trying to protect ourself and make ourselves feel better we criticise others. The self-critical mind can come from 4 places:

• external conditions e.g. people telling us we’re not good enough while we were growing up, or losing a job and feeling worthless.
• repetitive thinking. The objects might change but the thoughts towards them are habitual. Faulty thinking. Repetition makes the thoughts more real.
• we identify with being a faulty, limited person by thinking I AM. Strong identification.
• it is anger directed inwards. Its not a valid mind. It’s based on a distorted way of thinking about ourself.

In HTSOHP, in the chapter on the faults of anger:

• anger is a deluded mind that sees on an object, focuses on its bad qualities, and wishes to harm it. When we have self-criticism we do that to ourself. More self-hatred is not going to help self-hatred. The first step to changing who we are is being able to drop that faulty sense of self.