From: Spirit Rock
Transforming the Judgmental Mind
by Donald Rothberg
In 1979, when the Dalai Lama came to visit the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, he gave a talk and then responded to questions from retreatants that they had written on file cards. However, one question in particular seemed to stump him. In the question, the retreatant spoke of not feeling that he deserved love and asked about how to work with that. The Dalai Lama went back and forth with the translators several times, before he finally and somewhat brusquely asserted: “You are wrong! You do deserve love!” He later said that he was unfamiliar with the level of self-judgment and self-hatred evident in the question.
Other Asian teachers (and some Western teachers) have also been surprised by the strong negative self-judgments of many Western practitioners. Yet it is clear now to many Asian teachers, as well as most Western dharma teachers, that working with strong negative judgments of self (and of others as well) represents a major practice area for Westerners...
...Martin Luther King, Jr., in a 1967 sermon on judging others explored the famous saying of Jesus (Matthew, 7: 1-2): "Do not judge, and you will not be judged; because the judgments you give are the judgments you will get." King acknowledged that it's very important to [point out] racists and those who harm others, but that judgments (here, of others) bring many dangers — they are often based on very limited knowledge and understanding, and they may lead to self-righteousness and rigidity, self-deception... hatred and polarization. He pointed to the importance of combining the insight of judgments (at their best) with love as a way to avoid these dangers.
..Exercise: I invite you to bring to awareness a reactive judgment...
How We Transform Judgments
... In other words, judgments are not ultimately the enemy, despite what we often hear. Rather, reactive judgments function as a kind of defense mechanism, typically covering over unacknowledged and often unconscious pain (in the case of negative judgments). When we touch the pain, there is a certain degree of healing and the very basis for the reactivity (motivated in large part by the need, often unconscious, to defend oneself from pain) diminishes. Then we can increasingly use the intelligence and energy of the judgment to help ourselves and others. In that sense, judgments bear potential gifts.
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