ACCEPTANCE: Part 1 - PASSIVE OR ACTIVE?
In our competitive and consumer-orientated society, people often perceive the practice of Acceptance as being a passive response, like turning the other cheek, when the seemingly obvious response – often thought to have better results - would be something more forceful.
In my view, the practice of Acceptance and the true meaning of Acceptance in a Buddhist or Mindfulness Meditation context is often fundamentally misunderstood as being a passive withdrawal into ourself.
However, I see the practice of Acceptance as both a point of view and an action. About a employing a certain perspective as well as taking action in a particular way.
Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist whose works addresses themes in psychoanalysis, politics, and popular culture in a deliberatly provocative style, shares a harsh criticism of Mindfulness and its philosophy of Acceptance.
He is quoted as saying: Buddhism and mindfulness is “the perfect spiritual tradition to be co-opted by our self-absorbed, destructive, and consumeristic society. The perfect ideology to create passive acceptance of the world as it is.”
Zizek believes that the practice of Acceptance, “specifically in the context of a Western consumer culture, allows people to believe they are transforming their mind without actually doing anything to change the conditions of suffering that shape our society.” He equates mindfulness to a withdrawal into a mental cocoon. “The whole world can go to hell, and the meditator can be ok with that.” He believes that this evasive attitude fostered by a mindfulness practice can even exacerbate suffering.
Of course, he has a point. Recently, and well documented, is the discovery that a very large percentage of people practicing yoga and mindfulness are in danger of becoming more egotistical and self-absorbed, instead of less so.
Not all mindfulness meditators, yogi’s or aspiring Buddhists are able to sustain their practice for long enough in order to get to the experiential level of understanding all the myriad subtleties of Buddhism, Yoga or Mindfulness.
Whenever we try to change something before we fully understand it, our changes usually come from a place of assumption or habit, not wisdom. And not staying at the practice for long enough to be able to cultivate the necessary self-awareness, most people end up perpetuating bad habits without realising it. Solutions that come from mental habits just end up reinforcing the problem.
So what is Acceptance then, if it’s not the same as turning the other cheek?
In Mindfulness, meditation plays a large part in our intention to achieve personal tranformation. Change through insight is what meditation practice is all about. But meditation is not only about ourselves. It’s also about understanding - and thereby changing - the world around us in a positive way.
When we become really mindful, we realize how much about ourselves or the situations we find ourself in, we don’t like or don’t accept. For transformation to take place through meditation, we have to learn to work with Acceptance. We have to learn to like ourselves.
I found a very poetic quote taken from a website on talks by Thích Nhất Hạnh (Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist) on Acceptance:
To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don't try to be a magnolia flower. If you crave acceptance and recognition and try to change yourself to fit what other people want you to be, you will suffer all your life. True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.
As important is learning to understand the nature of the situations we find ourselves in. Sitting in meditation – having a solid practice – yes it is about understanding our self, but it is not a practice to confirm or validate a sense of who or what we are. It is about seeing and experiencing what is, the true nature of things - and accepting it ... this moment. And this moment. And this moment.
For me, that practice can be really hard work, and it can be quite tough. There’s nothing much passive about that. :)
