Out Beyond Ideas
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.
— Rumi
‘Calm’ is also on the long list of concepts recognized as critically important and, nonetheless, is left generally poorly defined (if at all).
(Again, if you need convincing, pause your reading and reflect for a minute on your take on calm. I’m guessing it’s pretty positive. Next, ask yourself, “What is calm?” Or try to define it. Pretty vague, right?)
Welcome back. As a reward for your effort, here’s a definition of calm:
Calm is a state of observing without reacting.
Obviously, calm is a desired state of mind; it feels good to be calm. But more importantly than what it feels like, calm is functionally advantageous for two main reasons: First, a calm mind is best suited for making good choices. Second, a calm mind is best suited for learning. Both good choice-making and learning are essential in the pursuit of happiness, lending calm a significance that reaches far beyond the pleasant way it feels. (Mindful choice-making is discussed in detail in dedicated chapters in the Theory and Practice sections; the relevance of learning is discussed in the ‘Meaning’ chapter.)
As per its definition, calm is composed of two elements: observing and not reacting. Let’s examine them.
‘Observing’ is an automatic part of being awake and engaged. It implies an alert connectedness to one’s circumstances and, as such, it is what distinguishes calm from apathy.
Apathy may be misperceived as calm, but the two mental states are radically different. The primary difference is that the apathetic mind is not engaged with its surroundings — it is actually detached from them. In contrast, the calm mind is connected to some aspects of the reality in which it operates through curiosity (and ideally caring, without a grasping attachment, as discussed in the Attachment and Commitment chapter). More broadly, observing as used here is distinct not only from apathy but from any detached or passive state, including shock or dissociation, in which awareness may be present but curiosity and connectedness are absent.
The distinction between calm and apathy is critical: A calm state of mind readily supports the pursuit of happiness because it is compatible with inner peace, passion, and compassion. Apathy, on the other hand, is incompatible with the effective pursuit of happiness because it is passionless (and passion, as discussed above, is a prerequisite for it).
The second element of calm is ‘non-reactivity’: At any given moment, one can be either calm or reactive, but not both, as these states are mutually exclusive. The mindful alternative to ‘reaction’ is ‘action’ (i.e., not inaction). In other words, from a mindfulness perspective, being non-reactive is not being passive or doing nothing; it is being active. A ‘reaction’ is a behavioral response that follows, and is driven by, a judgment. An ‘action’, in comparison, is a volitional behavioral response determined by, and thus expressive of, one’s value system.
Given that reactions require judgments, mindfulness practices designed to cultivate calm are rooted in refraining from judgment. A nonjudgmental mind is, therefore, a nonreactive mind, which is the same as a calm mind (as long as it is awake and connected rather than disengaged or apathetic).
Practically, the aspiration to develop a nonjudgmental mind is problematic — it may be impossible to train the mind to stop judging, given that the tendency to judge is deeply ingrained in our brains, as it is a survival-protecting instinct (LeDoux, 1996). Therefore, it makes more sense to invest in training the mind to let go of, or transcend, the automatically generated judgments than to refrain from judging altogether. Even that is an uphill climb.
A ‘judgment’ step is integral to the brain’s information processing: As data about the world flows toward the brain cortex, where consciousness resides, it is evaluated and labeled as either positive — i.e., good, and therefore attractive, or negative — bad, and therefore repulsive.
The automatic judgments and the quick, reflexive attraction and repulsion reactions that follow are remarkably effective in pursuing survival. This design offers the advantage of speed, which, in life-or-death situations, often makes all the difference. In the pursuit of happiness, however, speed is, at best, irrelevant; since the speed of choice-making tends to come at the expense of quality — particularly in complex or emotionally charged situations — it often is a hindrance (Kahneman, 2011).
Reliance on automatic judgment interferes with making good choices by circumventing rational analysis.
Reactive choices are essentially generated instinctively, which is why they are produced much quicker than the analysis-dependent (i.e., thoughtful, mindful) choices that a calm (i.e., non-reactive) mind aspires to generate. To a calm mind, the right timing is an asset; speed is not.
A calm mind attends to much more data than a reactive mind (as discussed in the ‘First Order of Business’ chapter). Collecting and analyzing this data is time-consuming and inevitably slows down the choice-making process considerably. On the plus side, it enables generating sophisticated, nuanced choices that are more likely than instinctive, automatic choices to exert the desired influence in general and on the pursuit of happiness specifically.
In addition, reliance on automatic judgment interferes with learning by distorting the true nature of that which is being observed: The brain’s judging and labeling of observed data happen so quickly that it is easy to ignore that it happened at all. Overlooking the fact that a ‘quality label’ (positive to negative, good to bad) is manufactured by the mind invites the conclusion that the experienced ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ is inherent to the information being perceived, while, as a matter of fact, the ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ is a subjective add-on superimposed on it. Failure to recognize that the subjective judgment is not part of the objective data distorts the true nature of the perceived reality.
For example, it is common to instinctively label unexpectedly cold water coming out of the shower as ‘bad’ (more so if it means that the water heater stopped working). In reality, of course, the cold water is not ‘bad’, just as the pleasantly warm water is not ‘good’. At every temperature (between 0-100 °C) it’s just water, H₂O — without an inherent ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’. The quality (good to bad) attributed to water is merely an expression of one’s subjective preference. It is a product of the mind (i.e., a judgment) attributed to the water, or to any experience; it is never inherent to it. However, we often don’t slow the mental process down long enough to recognize what is actually involved, so we file the surprising cold water as if the water inherently has a negative quality.
The fact that any judgment is a manufactured additive, superimposed on the phenomenon being judged, is remarkably easy to ignore. The brain readily treats the judgments it produces as if they were discoveries, integral parts of the phenomenon experienced. As such, unidentified judgment distorts the true nature of the objective reality and, consequently, it gets in the way of learning and understanding what it actually is.
Mindfulness practitioners aspire to develop the ability to perceive reality as it is, without judgment: the cold water is neither good nor bad; it is just cold water. The warm water, similarly, is neither good nor bad; it is just warm water. One’s preferred temperature does not make water universally good or bad.
However, the ability to relate to reality without judging it contradicts our nature — our brain judges automatically, reflexively, especially when it comes to experiences that involve discomfort and pain. To overcome this and free the mind from judgments (both positive and negative), the system needs to be “hacked” or “tricked.”
One useful way to think about the brain’s information processing — based on clinical observation rather than settled neuroscience — is as an assembly line that requires all incoming data bits to be labeled, or “tagged.” Unlabeled data bits are held back, prevented from flowing forward. Normally, the “tag” carries a judgment, marking the data bit’s place on a positive to negative spectrum. In this model, the system behaves as if it is “appeased” by any “tag,” even a blank one — as long as the data is tagged, it will be allowed to proceed.
In other words, it is possible to replace the automatic, judgmental labeling of information with a different kind of label — a non-judgmental label. As mentioned above, the absence of judgment negates the possibility of a reaction. Ultimately, then, automatic reactivity can be neutralized by substituting a qualitative label with a non-judgmental label, which amounts to promoting a calm mind.
Odds are that at this point, you are wondering what constitutes a non-judgmental label. And well you should be.
A universal, non-judgmental label must meet two criteria: First, it must be detached from the ‘goodness to badness’ continuum, and second, it must be applicable to everything (everything!); it has to be relevant to every bit of data that represents reality. These two criteria are satisfied by the label ‘interesting’.
Interesting is a nonjudgmental term — it is neither positive nor negative. Most relevantly, it exists outside the attraction-to-repulsion spectrum entirely. Subjectively positive experiences (e.g., showering in pleasantly warm water, being awarded the Nobel Prize) as well as subjectively negative experiences (e.g., icy cold water coming out of the shower, being wrongly convicted of a major crime) are potentially equally interesting. The response associated with ‘interesting’ is curiosity (which doesn’t trigger an attraction to something judged as good nor a repulsion from something judged as bad), which is why it interrupts the reflexive reactive cycle. Moreover, the term interesting offers an accurate description of everything: Everything in reality is interesting.
All that is is interesting. If not directly, then through the interconnectedness of everything (that is, things that are not interesting lead to something interesting if they are connected to it). For example, if you don’t find anything interesting in the phenomenon of water (icy or warm), perhaps you are interested in, say, dinosaurs or the British Royal Family. Well, water plays a role in their stories, so, by extension, it would be at least somewhat interesting as well.
The overarching argument in support of the claim that everything is interesting is that consciousness itself is (very, very) interesting, so anything that registers in consciousness is interesting, if not in its own right, then as an expression of the consciousness phenomenon.
The bottom line is that labeling any experience in consciousness as interesting is never a mistake. By its non-judgmental nature, the interesting quality negates reactivity, and in its essence, it negates apathy and supports wakeful connectedness that, no less importantly, supports learning. (As discussed in the ‘Meaning’ chapter, learning is one of the sources of meaning in life.)
[Sidebar: Franz Kafka captures the same insight from a different angle:
You don’t need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Don’t even listen, simply wait.
Don’t even wait. Be quiet, still, and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
— Franz Kafka ]
(This chapter is complementary to the ‘Cultivating Calm’ chapter available in the companion Practice volume.)
REFERENCES
Hanh, T. N. (1998). The heart of the Buddha’s teaching: Transforming suffering into peace, joy, and liberation. Broadway Books.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. Simon & Schuster.