Alone with Others

I have just finished reading 'Alone with Others' by Stephen Batchelor.

To be honest I was really surprised. I came back from retreat having had what I thought was an insight.

Insights are always accompanied by uncertainty. Are they profound and useful? Will they stick or slip from my grasp?

So I was amazed to read something that Stephen wrote over three decades ago that spoke so clearly, rationally and with such a well developed exploration of exactly the insight that I had reached independently.

There's that word - independent. As if...

Irrespective, it was like a gift from the ether. It appeared with impeccable timing, to save me from slipping wholly back into a fog of general existence.

So what was the insight? It was about relationships. The path to relieving much of the suffering I experience in relationships is to shift from a stance of "What is this doing for me" to "What can I do for this". I understood this intellectually before I went on retreat. I understood it fundamentally when I left.

It is about motivation. David Loy talks about motivation being the primary driver of karma (in his talk 'What about Karma'). He quotes Spinoza that "Happiness isn't the reward for virtue - it is virtue itself" or "We are not punished for our sins, but by them".

The point I understood from David's talk - right motivation is crucial. Stephen talks in the same terms about authentic relationships.

My challenge is to understand and reorient my habitually selfish motivations in relationships. This will have to be done while trying to survive in a world where I am looking to do good things for others while others are looking for what good things can be done by me.

That said; If I, me and other are all empty and really part of the same, then that previous paragraph can be reduced to ... do good things while looking for what good things can be done.