In the previous articles in this series, we described in depth 3 out of 4 attitudes that Patanjali described in his Yoga Sutras:
- Friendship to the happy.
- Compassion to those who suffer.
- Joy in the face of the virtuous.
- Non-judgmental and detached in front of the non-virtuous.
Judgement is a Fortress of the Ego
The last of these attitudes, which is perhaps the most complex and difficult to carry out, we will describe in the following article.
Most people say the most difficult attitude to cultivate is to be non-judgemental in front of people who are nasty. Our incapacity to stay detached, calm, and non-judgemental in front of evil.
When we judge and we become revengeful, we enter very superficial, sometimes very dark areas of the ego. When we judge, fiery energy contracts our consciousness. We define ourselves; we answer this question: “Who am I?” – “I am so separate from this idiot that I hate, that I should hurt them.”
Even if we haven’t physically hurt them, or even verbally, even if we didn’t act. The fact that we have it as an attitude and that we believe that we should hurt them, makes us defined as something separated from the world, and very lonely.
You will not clean the world from unjust people, many people tried in concentration camps, to clear this world from any injustice. It normally makes things worse.
Selflessness and Peace Take Time
We will meet nasty people, we will meet unjust people, they will treat us unjustly, they will attack us. All these things will happen. No doubt about it. As long as we live in this world it is going to happen.
If every time we meet injustice we become selfish, we will never discover who we are. Because we need time; we need to be very peaceful for a long time, to be selfless for a long time, before our soul and spirit can be revealed. If we do lots of meditation, we do charity work, we touch the soul, but then we meet one nasty injustice and we become evil, then all our journey inside is lost.
If there are ten levels of being and the tenth is very external and selfish. We want to discover level zero. We meditate and we become quiet, we live a harmonious life, eat well, read well, and are very pure. We go from level ten to level two, we are very soulful and connected. Then we get angry and hateful and boom, we will go back to level ten, very far in the periphery of our being.
The Measure You Measure With will be Measured
In order to complete our journey inside; anger, revenge, and judgment, need to be conquered. In the Bible it is said: “The Lord is the judge. Revenge is with the lord, not with human beings.”
Let the one who created this world take care that everybody gets their payment. We are not entrusted with this, this is not our job. Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount said:
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” Matthew 7:1
What he says is if you don’t judge, you will not be judged. If you measure always with kindness, with kindness it will always be measured unto you. Everything you want to be forgiven for will happen if you forgive others. It is a very profound teaching.
What You Think About You Become
When we judge and hate we continuously get attached to the person we address, and we stay intertwined with them. No matter how much you love your lover, when you are revengeful to someone, you will think about them more than your kids, your mother, or your beloved. And what you think about is what you become. If you eat onion, you burp onion. if you think hate, you burp hate.
When we are in this mode of judgment, we become obsessive. Our mind becomes so uncontrolled. We can be furious for hours and hours. We lose our peace. Having trained for some years with meditation, we can do an experiment. If we are in a fight with our lover we can say to ourselves “For the next ten minutes I will not allow myself to judge my lover in any way.” We get our mind under control and then the pain goes away. This experiment helps us to realize something fundamental.
The vast majority of pain we create by ourselves, by judging the person that we love. When we stop judging, the agitation stops, the pain stops, and we can see not just that “I am right and they are wrong”, but we can see the whole perspective.
Our Innermost Castle is Forever Good
Essentially, if every time we meet evil, we become evil, evil is our boss. There is no way around it. If every time we meet evil, we become evil, we are children of evil, controlled by evil because it can just make us evil whenever it wants.
If we can remain good in front of evil, our innermost castle is forever free, is forever good. When we are detached and non-judgemental. When we are firm in goodness, evil can attack our body, can attack our property, our self-image, can cause defamation, but it will not taint our soul.
This is why this sutra of Patanjali is so profound. If we keep our soul free from evil, and free from judgment, and we do some spiritual practice, we will discover who we are. This is the ultimate goal; Samadhi, the revelation of the Self. Everything else is pale in front of that. All the other joys of life come and go, but This has real meaning. And it begins with these four attitudes.
When we truly cultivate these attitudes, then interaction with the social world will make us more spiritual. When your lover or best friend is happy; be their friend. When they are virtuous; be happy for them. When they are in pain; have compassion. When they are being nasty; detach, calm down, and don’t judge.
In this way, every interaction will draw us closer to the supreme goal. To the supreme gift. This is the yoga of living in the world. In this way, all our interactions with others will show to the program inside us that we are spirit. We will become utterly convinced that we are spirit, and all doubts will be gone. And then it will be revealed as a direct experience.
Compassion is Power
If we look at other people’s suffering with sensitivity and despair, it makes us worse. This is why people become indifferent. You feel bad, you feel desperate, what can you do with a whole world of suffering? So we wear a mask of indifference because we don’t know what to do.
Compassion is a particular form of empathy for other people’s suffering. From the spiritual perspective, it means much more than from a psychological point of view. When we truly access emphatically the suffering of others, we also access an inexhaustible force which is here to heal all suffering.
From the spiritual perspective, when we allow true compassion in, then we don’t just feel passively other people’s pain, but we are also infused with the power which comes with the broadening of the identification of who we are. “I am not just this body, I am also another who is suffering.”
And then we are in contact with this great spirit, with a great force that cares and is sensitive. If we are just sensitive it will lead to despair. Faust, the character from the writings of Goethe, is very passive.
When Buddha is feeling compassion he says there is also a solution which he embodies. Compassion has a yin, empathetic side, and a yang, power side. When we come to cultivate this attitude of compassion, we actively seek both. The inner quest needs to be more and more refined until we find it.
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This article was edited and transcribed by Zita from the following video: