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Come meander with me on the pathless path of the Heart
in these anecdotal,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes personal meanderings of the Heart's opening in the every-day-ness of life...

Friday, March 4, 2022

Competition and Compassion - Sharon Salzburg


Competition today is tantamount to a blood sport -
and not just on the playing field or in the ring.

The psychoanalytic theorist Karen Horney introduced
the concept of hyper-competitiveness as a neurotic
personality trait almost 70 years ago.  She characterized
the hyper competitive coping strategy as "moving against
people" (in contrast to moving toward or away from people).
Her observations are now all too evident in our culture.
Extreme us-versus-them behavior has created a lonely world.
There is always some new adversary to move against, so we
get locked into a vicious circle of measuring our strengthe
by disparaging others.

Competition is natural, a part of the human arsenal for survival,
but when it creates enmity, we need to question its power in our
lives.

This is where sympathetic joy - joy in the happiness of others -
comes in.  If we're in a competitive frame of mind, when
 something good happens to someone else, we think it 
somehow diminishes us.  It doesn't really, of course, but
being consumed with jealousy and envy clouds our judgement.
Even when we're not in the running, extreme competitiveness
makes us feel as if we were.

If we approach life from a place of scarcity, a mind-set
that emphasizes what we lack instead of what we have, then
anyone who has something we want becomes the enemy.

As a Buddhist monk Nyanaponika Thera says:

"It is compassion that removes the heavy bar,
opens the door to freedom,
makes the narrow heart as wide as the world..."

Looking closely at the life of someone we consider to be the
competition, we are bound to see hardships that the person
endured or understand how tenuous status and good fortune
can be. When we can connect with a perceived enemy on the
level of human suffering, winning or losing seems less important.

A few years ago I led a meditation group at an elementary school
in Washington, D.C.  The walls of the school corridors were
plastered with homilies:  Treat people the way you would like
to be treated.  Play fair.  Don't hurt others on the inside or the
outside. The message that stopped my short, however, was
Everyone can play.


Sharon Salzburg
Buddhist Teacher

with thanks to The Beauty We Love
(and photo too)


 

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