Gate 39 Not to quarrel

Not to quarrel is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it stops angry accusations.
争い闘わないことは法明門である。それによって怒り争うことが断たれるからである。

The kanji here don’t actually say “accusations;” the sense is closer to conflict, dispute and dissention.  This week it’s not so helpful to take this gate statement apart word by word.

What we’re being told here is to avoid angry arguments, because they just feed our greed, hatred and ignorance.  We’ve got two things to consider here.  One is what the teachings say about anger, one of the three poisons. Another is what the teachings say about how that anger moves into quarreling, which is not right speech.  

We’ve considered anger in three previous gates.
14 Benevolence: In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Buddha says cultivating loving-kindness reverses anger and greed, although it takes some time.
15 Compassion: The opposite of compassion is anger.  Someone makes a mistake because of his own suffering and we can take it personally, become angry and lash out, or we can recognize the suffering and try to help stop that chain or cycle of pain perpetuating pain.  It’s possible over time to see our anger clearly and redirect that energy into something more wholesome.
19 Reflection on suffering:  We can make course corrections as our insight deepens and we recognize that we get hijacked when the universe doesn’t do what we want or expect.  We can hold our goals loosely, and find new and helpful ways around obstacles without getting caught up in anger when our ideas don’t match reality.

We’ve already nibbled at the edges of this thing.  We all have personal experiences of anger, so this is not exotic new territory.  Of course, our tradition has plenty to say about anger because it’s one of the three poisons, the most basic causes of suffering in the human condition.  

Anger usually happens when the ego is challenged.  I want things to be a certain way, and that’s not how they are; therefore my self-concept is threatened.  I think I “deserve” certain things or don’t “deserve” certain things.  Life isn’t fair—I worked hard and he didn’t and he got the prize.  I was standing here patiently waiting and someone cut in front of me in line.  She promised that she would do something for me and she forgot or changed her mind.

We go forward expecting certain things to happen and when we don’t get what we expect, it’s a bad surprise.  Sometimes we even get angry at ourselves because we don’t match up with our own ideal image of who we should be.  Sometimes we have a sort of pre-emptive anger.  I’m feeling insecure so I’m going to get angry at you first before you see that I’m inadequate.  I’m going to make my feelings your fault.

In a backwards way, that angry energy can feel good.  If I’m angry, I must be right, worthy and justified.  If I’m angry, I’m scary, powerful and in control.  Yet our anger has nothing to do with what’s “out there;” it’s our own response to what we encounter.  People and things can’t “make” us angry.

Anger may come up very quickly, and it feels like it’s not something we’re creating, and therefore not something we can control.  You stub your toe or cut your finger, and it hurts right now.  You get passed over for a promotion or you break a new tool the first time you use it, and it hurts right now.  That’s why we need practice—to become so intimate with ourselves that we see exactly what’s happening when feelings of anger come up.

We can certainly use anger to build up our self image.  I have a right to be angry because of what she said or did.  Yet that’s just an idea.  There’s no cosmic scorecard.

In my days as a government employee, one of the program managers ran into trouble with some equipment during an important presentation.  I frequently served as a resource for presenters around the agency, but I was not responsible for this particular problem.  Nonetheless, I got the brunt of this manager’s anger, and one of my coworkers became angry on my behalf: That was inappropriate and he owes you an apology.

I’m OK, I said.  That wasn’t really aimed at me.  He was unskillful, but he was just expressing frustration.  I could see that if I held onto a personal grievance based on my ego, I would just be perpetuating suffering and no good could come of it.  How does that help in this moment?

It’s important to understand that the Buddha is not asking us to ignore or suppress our anger.  Because we’re baby bodhisattvas and we’re still working on dealing with our delusions, we’re going to have anger.  Once it arises, we have to deal with it, and that means we have to fully enter into it.  Acting it out and squashing it down are both ways to avoid fully entering into it and fully experiencing it.  If I act it out, I turn my focus on you and I get to ignore what’s really happening with me.  If I squish it down, I pretend anger is not present and again I get to ignore what’s really happening with me.

Instead, I can acknowledge that OK, the reality is that I’m angry.  I don’t like what’s happening or how I’m feeling.  What’s being challenged and where am I uncomfortable?  Do I need to do something about my anger or can I see that it’s going to resolve itself?  If I need to do something, what skillful thing can I do?

There’s a difference between anger and aggression, a feeling arising and the action we take based on that feeling.  We need to open up a space between impulse and action.  Zazen gives us the opportunity to watch anger arise without being able to go pick a fight.  We’re not going to get up off the cushion and pick up the phone, but we do have to be careful not to just sit there silently for 50 minutes ruminating on what’s making us angry and fanning the flames so when the bell rings we boil over.  Looking carefully at anger doesn’t mean clinging to anger.  Let’s do what we can to create enough space within ourselves to see anger before it becomes agression—before we start the quarrel this gate is warning us about,

Dogen Zenji had some useful things to say about this in the Shobogenzo Zuimonki.
Once, Zen Master Shinjo Kokubun told his students, “In former times, I practiced together with Seppo.  Once Seppo was discussing the dharma loudly with another student in the monk’s dormitory. Eventually, they began to argue using harsh words, and in the end, wound up quarreling with each other. After the argument was over, Seppo said to me, ‘You and I are close friends practicing together with one mind. Our friendship is not shallow. Why didn’t you help me when I was arguing with that man?’ At the time, I could do nothing but feel small, folding my hands and bowing my head.

“Later, Seppo became an eminent master, and I too, am now an abbot. What I thought at the time was that Seppo’s discussion of the dharma was ultimately meaningless. Needless to say, quarreling was wrong. Since I thought it was useless to fight, I kept silent.”

This is the story that Shinjo told; now Dogen makes a comment:

Students of the Way, you also should consider this thoroughly. As long as you aspire to make diligent effort in learning the Way, you must be careful with your time. When do you have time to argue with others? Ultimately, it brings about no benefit to you or to others. This is so even in the case of arguing about the dharma, much more about worldly affairs. 

Even though the power of a wise man is stronger than that of an ox, he does not fight with the ox. Even if you think that you understand the dharma more deeply than others, do not argue, criticize, or try to defeat them.  

If there is a sincere student who asks you about the dharma, you should not begrudge telling him about it.  You should explain it to him.  However, even in such a case, before responding wait until you have been asked three times. Neither speak too much nor talk about meaningless matters. After reading these words of Shinjo, I thought that I myself had this fault, and that he was admonishing me. I have subsequently never argued about the dharma with others.

This is how Dogen learned to practice with his own impulse to be quarrelsome.  Interestingly, his conclusion is that it’s a waste of your time!  You’ve got better things to do, like actual practice.  Maybe you’ve heard the saying, Never try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig.  It seems that Dogen is saying something similar.  Don’t quarrel with folks.  It wastes everyone’s time and just makes people cranky.

Quarreling is what happens when we forget about interconnectedness and non-separation.  There’s something in my world that I don’t like and I want to get rid of it.  Therefore I wave my arms and make loud roaring noises and somehow that’s going to fix the problem.  Quarreling comes from being self-involved.  When we’re self-involved, it’s very difficult to see the world from another person’s point of view.  We have to be able to loosen our grip on our own ideas just enough to make space for new ideas to enter in.

That doesn’t mean we become wishy-washy and don’t stand for anything.  It doesn’t mean we can’t have opinions and values.  It means we don’t get so trapped in our own worldview that we can’t see beyond it to the context of the rest of the universe.  Dogen must have run into this dynamic in his own life, because he said in another part of the Zuimonki:

Even if you are speaking rationally and another person says something unreasonable, it is wrong to defeat him by arguing logically. On the other hand, it is not good to give up hastily saying that you are wrong, even though you think that your opinion is reasonable.  Neither defeat him, nor withdraw saying you are wrong. It is best to just leave the matter alone and stop arguing. If you act as if you have not heard and forget about the matter, he will forget too and will not get angry. This is a very important thing to bear in mind.

According to Dogen, we’ve got three ways to deal with a looming argument.  We can let our anger boil over into agression, we can roll over and submit and not offer information even when we know we’re right, or we can open the hand and not engage with the quarrel.  We can let the dust settle and let everyone calm down until we’re better able to see beyond our self-involvement to the rest of the circumstance.

As soon as we talk about quarrels that result from forgetting about interconnectedness, in this family we might think of Uchiyama Roshi’s retelling of the story of the squabbling squashes.  In the field behind the temple, an argument broke out among the squashes; they all took sides and started a loud quarrel.  The clergy came out, broke it up and taught them to do zazen instead, which they did until they were able to calm down.  The clergy told them to put their hands on their heads, and they discovered that each one of them was connected to all the others by the vine they were growing on.  They said, why were we taking sides and quarreling when we’re all living one life together on this vine?

This is a nice story, but I think it’s more helpful for working with a tendency to be quarrelsome than for stopping a quarrel in progress.  We have to come at this thing from two directions.  In the short term, we have to do our best to watch what’s happening right now before aggression boils over into a quarrel.  In the long term, we have to dislodge our habit of being quarrelsome.  In the short term, Dogen says, walk away from the fight.  Don’t pick up whatever someone else has thrown down and engage with it in battle.  In the longer term, Uchiyama’s story says, remember that all beings are interconnected and that ultimately it’s pointless to argue with yourself.  The right hand doesn’t need to quarrel with the left hand.  This bit of the universe doesn’t need to argue with that bit of the same universe.

Interestingly, the English word quarrel usually means a heated disagreement about something trivial between people who usually get along and are on good terms.  That fits pretty well with the squash story.  Some minor thing happens, the ego takes a hit, and suddenly we forget that we’ve been friends with this person or married to this person for years.  It’s actually the fact that this is a friend or family member or someone we like or respect that can make things so difficult.  We know this person or situation pretty well, we know what to expect, things have always been good before, and what he did or said was an extra-bad surprise.  Being hurt by this person is worse than being hurt by a stranger because this is an important relationship.  Kapow!  Lots of energy explodes.  
We forget that we’re connected by our shared history and shared interests and maybe by blood, and all we can see is ourselves and how angry we are.  Then we say unskillful things and quarreling arises. 

In the Vinaya, which is the part of the Pali canon that has the rules and procedures for the sangha, causing a schism was a grievous enough offense to get you kicked out.  Interestingly, the Buddha said that even in the event of a real schism, each side is still to treat the other with care and respect, even while there may be some investigation into what’s really happening.  Buddha even taught about how to choose sides.  He said we should always be on the side of the dharma. Which side is acting on behalf of the dharma?  That’s not always clear in any disagreement.  Which side is working for wholesomeness?  Both might have good and wholesome intent.

Whether we’re one of the quarreling parties or just a bystander, we need to pay attention.  In the case of someone actively sowing dissention with his or her speech with the intent to cause harm, our job is to be on the side of ameliorating suffering for the largest possible number of beings, not leaving out ourselves and the person creating the division.  In fact, there’s a story in the Pali Canon about monks in the sangha who were quarreling about the dharma and it just went on and on.  Buddha tried to mediate and find some peaceful way to end the quarrel, but the monks just kept fighting.  Finally he took his robe and bowl and left!  He went off into the forest by himself and lived nicely with the animals.  Eventually the laity heard that the Buddha had left so they stopped giving alms to the monks.  Ananda had to come to Buddha and persuade him to come back, and ultimately the quarreling monks apologized to him.

What a great example of walking away from a fight!  Not only did the Buddha not get caught up in the disagreement himself or feed that quarrel somehow, but the fact of his leaving was what got the monks to stop and look around and realize that they weren’t getting any material support anymore.  He did something smart to break the monks’ self-involvement.  He didn’t say anything or make a big show of leaving—he just left.

However, he was also making a comment on the condition of those quarreling monks.  The verse at the end of the sutra says:
One should associate with the wise, not the foolish.
It would be better to live alone if we cannot find good friends.
There is no companionship with the foolish.

For foolish here, we can read ignorant.  Ignorance is one of the three poisons: being ignorant of the nature of suffering.  These monks were displaying their ignorance by quarreling.  They were showing the whole world that they were inflexible, ego-driven and clinging to their own ideas.  In essence, Buddha said, it’s not worth my time to hang out with you.  You’re not in any position to engage with me or each other in a meaningful, mature, wholesome way.  I’ll come back when you’ve done some growing up!

Differences of opinion are normal and healthy.  We’re never all going to agree about everything; our karmic circumstances are all different.  The question is: what do we do with those differences of opinion?  Do we attack the other person and create a win-lose situation?  Or do we maintain our equanimity so we can think clearly and see clearly and leave some possibility for agreeing to disagree?  Do we maintain a spirit of inquiry and give the other person a chance to explain his or her viewpoint?  Or do we just grab as much territory as possible for ourselves?

We need to not fall prey to the idea that others will agree with us once they understand what we’re saying.  They may understand perfectly well what we’re saying and still not agree—and we have to be OK with that.  We can disagree without resorting to being dismissive, arrogant or condescending.  We can disagree without quarreling if we don’t make it personal and if we don’t injure the other person.  Injury here means things like ridiculing, demeaning and disregarding.

Handling disagreements without quarrelling is a gate of dharma illumination because it shows our true nature in an unclouded way and it also helps us to settle down so we can see the true functioning of the dharma in our world.  The truth is that we’re interconnected and bickering serves no real purpose.  It feeds a self that’s actually empty and doesn’t need that feeding.  If you win the quarrel, you don’t really win anything.  You just feed the three poisons and sow the seeds of future quarrels.  So, yes, we offer our insights and points of view.  Yes, we skillfully correct someone when that’s appropriate.  Yes, we stand our ground when necessary.  But we do no harm.