self esteem

[Guest]

Hello everyone

I'm curious about people's views on self-esteem. On one hand, having good self-esteem leads to a positive and happy life. People with high self-esteem are confident, friendly, out-going and not afraid of taking risks. On the other end of the scale you have people with very low self-esteem and I think this is a key issue for many people with a history of depression (including myself)

so is self-esteem just another way of saying "ego" or are the two concepts unrelated? A Buddhist quote comes to mind, there are many variations but it goes something like this:

"you can search the universe looking for someone more worthy of your love and admiration than yourself but you'll never find them"

I've started doing metta practice and I find it difficult to start the practice with myself. Also, it's recently started to dawn on me that I don't like myself very much. A therapist I saw a couple of years ago said I needed to love and respect myself more. My question - and one he was never able to answer - was how? If it was that easy I would have done it, but how do you go about increasing your self esteem? Are there are specific practices/exercises (Buddhist or otherwise) that people know of which could help?

gassho
Rob

[Jen]

Re: self esteem

I've never liked the phrase self esteem personally, it sounds , well, egotistical and rather pompous to me. I always called it self confidence. I used to not be very confident, back in my early twenties. I wouldn't do things I wanted to do because of it, and would shrink back. Honestly, the only thing that helped was faking it until i came to believe it, thus making my self confidence reality. I purposefully put myself in situations that would require me to be confident, and emulated the behaviors of others with seeming confidence to carry me through. I sang karaoke, though completely mortified (the only notes I can hit are the wrong ones, I can't even chant in tune ops: ), and just pretended to be the most awesome karaoke singer ever. The strange thing was, no one made fun of me, I was cheered on, people got up and sang with me, and by the end of the night I had a taste of confidence, esteem , whatever you call it. It took several years for that lesson to stick, and of me continuing to 'put myself out there' in different ways. I probably annoyed a few people, too, as I would pretty much talk about how awesome I was whenever I felt otherwise. I wouldn't call it self delusion, as the delusion eventually became the reality, and I am not sure it was the power of positive thinking. it was more or less I was too stubborn to stay miserable so I forced myself out of it no matter how miserable that made me in the short term. Not sure if it would work for anyone else, but I have no esteem/confidence issues now.

I wish you luck, and I hope others have better advice than mine,
Jenny

[Jundo]

Re: self esteem

Hello everyone

I'm curious about people's views on self-esteem. On one hand, having good self-esteem leads to a positive and happy life. People with high self-esteem are confident, friendly, out-going and not afraid of taking risks. On the other end of the scale you have people with very low self-esteem and I think this is a key issue for many people with a history of depression (including myself)

so is self-esteem just another way of saying "ego" or are the two concepts unrelated? A Buddhist quote comes to mind, there are many variations but it goes something like this:

"you can search the universe looking for someone more worthy of your love and admiration than yourself but you'll never find them"

I've started doing metta practice and I find it difficult to start the practice with myself. Also, it's recently started to dawn on me that I don't like myself very much. A therapist I saw a couple of years ago said I needed to love and respect myself more. My question - and one he was never able to answer - was how? If it was that easy I would have done it, but how do you go about increasing your self esteem? Are there are specific practices/exercises (Buddhist or otherwise) that people know of which could help?

gassho
Rob

Hi Rob,

My teacher, Nishijima Roshi, describes Buddhism as a philosophy of "optimism". When I first heard that, it struck me as strange, because I had thought our way was to drop all "likes" and "dislikes" about life, which I thought meant that we must be "neutral" and rather ambivalent to everything.

But now I see Nishijima Roshi's point, and it applies to your question too.

You see, in our Zen Practice we are often doing several seemingly contradictory things all at once, hand-in-hand, without the least conflict or contradiction.

So, on the one hand, it is vital that we learn to fully and completely drop the "self", drop the ego and all our 'self-centered' thoughts and ideas. We fully and completely drop all "likes" and "dislikes", and all other judgements. We accept life "at it is". This is Shikantaza.

But the funny thing that happens when you accept the world as "just what it is", is not numbness or neutrality or cold "whatever" ambivalence ... Instead, it can be more an experience of "going with the flow", harmony with "what is", oneness, allowing and embracing. Life is "just what it is", and that's just fine! YIPPEE!

We even then (and this sounds strange) accept the "self" as "just what it is" too. So, strange as it sounds, by dropping our sense of "self" and "self-centered ideas" and judgements of things, we even drop our self-centered ideas on what is "wrong" with our self ... and we accept our "self" as just what it is too! :shock: [PLEASE READ THE FOREGOING SENTENCE AT LEAST TWICE!] :wink: :wink:

We realize that our thoughts are, to one degree or another, a fictional story we write for ourselves ... and it is up to us how we write the story. So, if you want to judge negative, neutral or positive ... the universe will let you do that. Up to you.

Thus, one might say that our ENTIRE Zen Buddhist Practice, all of it, is about dealing with the issue of "self-esteem". The most important goalless goal you must attaininglessly attain is to see right through that fictional "boogeyman under the bed" that is your "self" and "self-centered" judgements ...

... about everything, including your self!! :shock: :shock: :shock:

So, drop all thought and judgments in Shikantaza, drop all judgments about everything ... including about what a loser you think you are!

Gassho, Jundo

PS- The other thing about "self-esteem" is, once you have it, you must not become its prisoner, allow it to run to excess. Everything in balance, everything in moderation. But that is only an issue once you get the self-esteem!

[will]

Re: self esteem

It's really just an illusion, and it's not only mind.

Stick with this phrase:

To sit Zazen is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the Myriad things(all directions.)

W

[prg5001]

Re: self esteem

As the Scottish comedian Ivor Cutler once said:

"If you don't love yourself I will suspect your motives"

or something like that anyway.

[Shui_Di]

Re: self esteem

Why don't we change self-esteem become SELF-esteem?

What I mean here with "SELF" is, not to describe your self as something separated from others, but see it as one reality of the universe. We're all the part of universe. We can't say that eyes is better than ears, or foot is better than hands. Every part of our body has its own function.

And the miracle is, when we drop the self, not to discriminate it as separate... the true SELF will manifests by it self.

Gassho, Shuidi

[Dojin]

Re: self esteem

i must agree with what jen wrote, she put it perfectly i for one used to do the same as she did and it worked for me.

as for what jundo wrote. i must admit it kinda resonates with me after reading it just now, so i think he is right. we do drop everything even the dropping itself, or the notion of dropping the dropping itself....

Jundo thank you for that beautiful description, from the bottomless endless reaches of my being thank you.

Gassho, Daniel ( who just dropped it all and went to sleep )

[Jundo]

Re: self esteem

... We even then (and this sounds strange) accept the "self" as "just what it is" too. So, drop all thought and judgments in Shikantaza, drop all judgments about everything ... including about what a loser you think you are!

Gassho, Jundo

Someone wrote to ask whether all this "self acceptance" and embracing ourselves "just as we are" means that, for example, a wife beater or alcoholic or thief should just accept themselves like that, not seek to change or live any other way.

No. Please recall that, in our Zen Way, we live on several channels at once ... seemingly contradictory, yet not contradictory at all.

I want to reach for Jundo's handy-dandy "acceptance without acceptance" formula here, and apply it to our personal natures:

So, in our "Just Sitting" Shikantaza, we completely accept the universe, and all in it, just as it is. We drop all thoughts of likes and dislikes, dreams and regrets and need for change, hopes and fears. Yet simultaneously, hand in hand without the slightest deviation (on another mental "track", if you want to say that), we live our lives as human beings, and living life requires choices, goals, likes and dislikes, dreams and hopes.

Thus, living our life is much like living in a house with a leaky roof, spiders and broken windows. In Master Dogen's way, we simply sit to drop all resistance to the house we have been living in all along, to realize that there is nowhere to 'go' in life, to cease all efforts to add to or take away from the structure, to let go of the ego's insisting on how things "should be" in order for the house to be "good" ... Then we find, in dropping that resistance, that the house we have always been in is "perfectly what it is", and we can be joyful right where we are. HOWEVER, we can be content with that house even as, hand in hand, there is still much serious repair work to do (an acceptance-without-acceptance of the leaky windows, spiders and creaky doors). There is nothing to prevent our fixing those, even as we accept their existence! We can accept and not accept simultaneously, repair what needs to be repaired.

We have goals for repair even as, on the other "track", we drop all goals and thoughts of repair.

So, even as we can accept that we are a wife beating alcoholic, we should immediately set to not be so! One simply cannot taste the fruits of Buddhist practice if one is so filled with anger, violence, pain and need that one is a violent, abusive alcoholic!

And what guides us onto the smooth path for life?

Yes, the Precepts.

Gassho, Jundo

[Craig]

Re: self esteem

wow-some really amazing stuff there. tonight during zazen i just sat. totally goaless. no words, judgements, figuring out etc. when i found myself doing so, i just sat. nowhere to go and nothing to come back too. AMAZING!
thanks for the teaching Jundo.
Craig

[Jundo]

Re: self esteem

wow-some really amazing stuff there. tonight during zazen i just sat. totally goaless. no words, judgements, figuring out etc. when i found myself doing so, i just sat. nowhere to go and nothing to come back too. AMAZING!
thanks for the teaching Jundo.
Craig

Just do that for the rest of your life, and you should be ok. There is a lot more left to discover when you first stop looking.

[AlanLa]

Re: self esteem

I recall reading in some Buddhist text somewhere something along the line of your ego (self-esteem) needs to be just strong enough to be able to let itself go. Too strong and we want to hold on to it, and too weak and we want to be rid of it, so it's what I like to call the Goldilocks rule: The middle path for self-esteem means that it has to be juuussst right. But the problem is no one wants what could then be labeled mediocre self-esteem .

A person is perfect as they are, and when they work to better themselves that work is also perfect as it is. The "new" person is just as perfect as the "old" person. As the (perfect) process flows we flow (perfectly) with it, or such is the non-goal of self-improvement. In other words, just because you are perfect now does not mean that you can't be better later. Right? Now is now, and zen is zen.

[Jundo]

Re: self esteem

I recall reading in some Buddhist text somewhere something along the line of your ego (self-esteem) needs to be just strong enough to be able to let itself go. Too strong and we want to hold on to it, and too weak and we want to be rid of it, so it's what I like to call the Goldilocks rule: The middle path for self-esteem means that it has to be juuussst right. But the problem is no one wants what could then be labeled mediocre self-esteem .

A person is perfect as they are, and when they work to better themselves that work is also perfect as it is. The "new" person is just as perfect as the "old" person. As the (perfect) process flows we flow (perfectly) with it, or such is the non-goal of self-improvement. In other words, just because you are perfect now does not mean that you can't be better later. Right? Now is now, and zen is zen.

So very well said, Alan.

My talks on the Sit-a-Long today and Monday will be about 'self-esteem' (or no-self 'no-self' esteem), and pick up much of what we've been discussing here.

http://treeleafzen.blogspot.com/2008/11 ... -1of2.html

We are all perfectly just as we are. And that does not mean we can't be better later.

Gassho, J

[AlanLa]

Re: self esteem

Let me add that perfection and self-esteem, etc. are not outcomes. We tend to think of them as static, but they are in no way fixed. Rather, they are processes that are continually unfolding. Seen this way, I think it is much easier to understand how you can be both perfect now and differently perfect later (which is just a later version of now).

[Borsuk]

Re: self esteem

Hi,

in reference to the 'should you accept yourself completely as you are even if you are a wife-beating alcoholic?' question: I think that one of the causes of being a wife-beating alcholic is that there is a lack of acceptance in your life. A wife-beating alchoholic must have a huge amount of resistence to 'what is'. And also, it seems to me that in a state of total acceptance and surrender the mind-set of wife-beating and abusing alcohol (or being abused by alcohol) would be impossible. The two are mutally exclusive. You cannot surrender completely to 'what is' AND want to beat your wife at the same time. If you were a wife-beating alcoholic but then came to a moment of total acceptance, you would thus in that moment cease to be a wife-beating alcoholic...

Gassho,
David

[Jundo]

Re: self esteem

Hi,

in reference to the 'should you accept yourself completely as you are even if you are a wife-beating alcoholic?' question: I think that one of the causes of being a wife-beating alcholic is that there is a lack of acceptance in your life. A wife-beating alchoholic must have a huge amount of resistence to 'what is'. And also, it seems to me that in a state of total acceptance and surrender the mind-set of wife-beating and abusing alcohol (or being abused by alcohol) would be impossible. The two are mutally exclusive. You cannot surrender completely to 'what is' AND want to beat your wife at the same time. If you were a wife-beating alcoholic but then came to a moment of total acceptance, you would thus in that moment cease to be a wife-beating alcoholic...

Gassho,
David

Yes. You have stated this so well.

I truly believe that Buddhism can be a force for revolutionary change in this world as this is mastered ... eliminating much violence and suffering from our planet. I look forward to a day when science finds a way to make this revelation available to the masses. The violent individual is suffering inside, just in this way.

I might say that alcoholism and such (other addictions) likely have a physiological component too beyond a person's control. There have been a couple of great Zen teachers who have had to try AA (Maezumi Roshi is an example and often spoke about it, and Daido Loori could not quit smoking for years ... and now has terrible lung problems). We will be discussing this shortly, in our Precepts study, next week.

Gassho, J