When people come together, differences in views about life will sure to be revealed. There will be those who are open to various views about life and living, and there will be those who are rigid in how they feel and think about issues.
For those who are open to various points of view, they can hear what someone says and process what is being shared. They may differ on certain points and agree with other aspects of what they hear. There is an emotional openness about what is being shared.
There are others, however, who treat their point of view as absolute. Their point of view has been arrived at based on their life experience. Whenever someone has an emotional charge about something, there is a basis for that emotional attachment to a particular opinion or position.
Coping with pain
Oftentimes, in order to cope with the pain of some life experience, individuals form an intellectual way of making sense of their pain. What hurts is bad. Things that are threatening cause pain and are, therefore, to be avoided or opposed. For these people, the solution to overcome such pain is to create an absolute, dogmatic point of view that attempts to get rid of their source of pain, their discomfort and their sense of vulnerability.
Eckhart Tolle has written,
Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don’t want to be where you are. Here, Now.
Dogmas—religious, political, scientific—arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of “I know.”
Tolle also shares,
Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas. It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.
What is this basic delusion? Identification with thought.
Dogma and current social issues
When one person attempts to force their view of something onto others, they’re saying that there is only one way to see things and no other. These folks are intolerant of others who have a different point of view. When groups of similarly opinionated people get together and attempt to force their position onto others, they create dictatorships or a racist, misogynistic, anti-LGBT society.
Dogmatic thinking is a false way of attempting to maintain control over others and life itself. When someone is told that they must see their pregnancy that was a result of being raped through to birth, because abortion is wrong, we’re stepping over a line of shared respect for one another’s view of what’s right. In fact, such an attitude is a hostile act of disregard towards another human being.
A democracy is an environment where each person’s view of some aspect of life is viewed as being equally valid as someone else’s view of an issue. Our form of government is predicated on people achieving consensus about what we value, support and affirm.
Compassion and love aren’t a luxury
The Dalai Lama has written,
Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or nonbeliever, man or woman, black, white or brown, we are all the same. … We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek. On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture and language makes no difference.
He goes on to say,
Compassion and love are not a luxury; they are essential to our existence. Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community. If we are to survive, human beings must develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. We must learn to work not just for our own self, family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind.
May we all live with awareness and compassion.
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