Open-mindedness

By Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche 

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche IX

Peculiar to the mahayana tradition is the realization that we are, in the strict sense of the word, able to work with others. Concern for others no longer turns into some kind of preoccupation or occupational therapy for us, a neurotic tendency that helps us to forget ourselves through wanting to help others. We are able to do genuine, constructive work, as far as helping others is concerned. The mahayana is known as the ‘great vehicle’ because we are not only progressing on the path individually, we are also able to directly or indirectly influence people in our environment. An involvement with other people becomes more important to us than just working with ourselves for the sake of our own wellbeing, which was the concern of the hinayana practitioner.

A prerequisite for any form of mental pliancy  is a sense of open-mindedness. Here, the word ‘liberal’ is stripped of any political implications. It is connected with the Oxford Dictionary definition, which is the ability to incorporate and appreciate other people’s viewpoints; being broad-minded as opposed to having a narrow-minded and dogmatic approach to life and others. Being open- minded is the opposite of any kind of fanaticism or dogmatism. However, at the same time it cannot be defined as the opposite of that, because a supposedly broad-minded person who becomes extremely irritated by dogmatists or fanatics would defeat the whole purpose. The broad-minded person must be open to viewpoints that are a completely anathema to the views he or she upholds. This extremely accommodating, open-minded and liberal attitude is the prerequisite for any kind of mahayana practice.

Being open-minded does not mean we are open to different things but unable to choose one from another. We are still capable of making moral judgments about what is good and what is bad or what is beneficial and not beneficial. We could take an interest in social issues, but open-mindedness is not particularly a view as far as social structure is concerned. Open-mindedness is the necessary condition for any kind of opinion to be formulated without falling into the extreme of dogmatism or fanaticism. There is a general basis or background for opinions to be formulated properly.

There are two things a mahayana practitioner has to deal with in terms of not generating conceptual paraphernalia: intolerance and prejudice. Intolerance leads us to defend a particular cause or viewpoint to the extent that we feel we are defending ourselves. This type of intolerance is regarded as anathema to open-mindedness. In other words, an intolerant person cannot practice the mahayana tradition. It is as simple as that. The other thing a mahayana practitioner has to deal with is prejudice. Prejudice is also anathema to open-mindedness. If a person is prejudicial in attitude, it will leads to all kinds of misunderstandings and to more conceptual paraphernalia. Normally, we know being prejudiced is not good, but it becomes automatic and manifests in all kinds of situations. Prejudice might arise in court, where a person is prosecuted because of their skin color or because the victim is a woman or a member of a minority group. It leads to all kinds of misjudgments where people are unable to make a proper assessment of the whole thing.

We cannot help others if our mind is infiltrated with all kinds of prejudices and vested interests. Some sense of calm and serenity, which are characteristic of open-mindedness, are a necessary condition in the approach to helping others. Calmness, which is attained through the meditation we engage in on the level of the hinayana, here refers to a lack of emotional disturbances and emotional instabilities. The emotional aspects that hinder our relationship to others are dealt with through meditation. There is a sense of calmness and serenity, but this is not anathema to emotions as such. In the mahayana, we are not encouraged to uproot all emotion, just the emotions that are particularly disturbing to their own growth. Lack of emotions means lack of interest, and if we do not take an interest in what we are engaged in, the notion of helping others becomes completely meaningless.

Normally, when we talk about someone being calm and collected, we mean the person is detached. We understand the words ‘calm,’ ‘collected’ and ‘detached’ to be synonymous. A very involved person is regarded as a warm person. Probably hot, too. Nonetheless, in the mahayana definition, involvement and detachment go together. We are detached to the extent our attitude is not influenced by any bias or vested interest, but at the same time we take an interest in the situation in which we are involved a sense of involvement and a sense of detachment go hand-in-hand, rather than there being a situation where we go from one extreme to the other.

It is said that if we begin to uphold any kind of belief system without some open attitude towards it, thinking that particular belief or value system is the best, this will lead to a state of inertia rather than development. Therefore, a critical approach and open-mindedness go together. We normally have a particular belief system that we have uncritically accepted and then begin to work for that cause. After a while, we might realize this belief system is wrong, after discovering all kinds of defects and deficiencies in it, but we cannot acknowledge the fact we have made a mistake because that revelation exhibits too much of our own ignorance. So we continue to cling to the belief system and try to suppress any doubts and critical attitudes that might arise. All these things become anathema to the mahayana approach.

In the mahayana, this sense of open-mindedness is connected with prajna or ‘knowledge.’ As we will discover, prajna is related to dispelling or overcoming conceptual paraphernalia. Conceptual paraphernalia is related to prejudice, vested interest, dogmas, fanaticism and all the rest. A mahayana practitioner must have open- mindedness. Any moral or value judgment a person might form, due to Buddhism or any other system, is formulated within this background of open-mindedness. Otherwise, it leads to a state of intellectual inertia where we are unable to move forward because we hang onto something so hard we cannot appreciate other people’s viewpoints. We cannot even look at our own belief system properly and discover different aspects of it, we just accept some things blindly and then proceed to act without thinking twice about it. That leads to all kinds of disastrous consequences.

You may ask, ‘What has this to do with dealing with emotions?’ From a mahayana point of view, we develop open-mindedness by dealing with our own emotions while dealing with other people at the same time. We have to have an open attitude to our own emotions without judging them so that we can accept, accommodate and work with them. We will go into how to do that in the coming chapters.