"I'm right. You're wrong." with Noah Levine

June 21, 2021 There’s this tiny little book from my teacher Ajahn Amaro titled, “I'm right. You're wrong.” It's about loving kindness and how much suffering we get ourselves into with, “I'm right. You're wrong.” How much conflict and extra - unnecessary - suffering we get into by clinging so tightly to being “right”.

It will destroy relationships and affect communities.

There are four types of clinging. The first type is the clinging, ‘clinging and craving’. This also means ‘aversion’. So when I say ‘clinging’ know that I'm talking not only about attachment but I'm also talking about craving as a form of clinging, “I want. I need to have. I'm craving.” This is clinging.

Clinging also means, “I can't stand it. I can't bear it. I wanted to get rid of it.” This is also clinging. Aversion seems different than cleaning, but it's all in this same basket.

In Buddhism, the way we suffer, is by trying to control what's happening, whether it's trying to keep it or get rid of it, both are encompassed in ‘clinging’.

Most of our suffering is generated by, “I'm clinging or I'm craving for something to feel more pleasant than it does” or “I'm aversive to what's happening. I'm not accepting it. I'm hating it.”

Ajahn Amaro say that an aspect of loving kindness is not holding to our fixed views of, “I'm right” even if you believe it.

Not having to be so attached to it. Not having to suffer about it.

Of course we all have an opinion. We all have a view. But it’s the clinging to our views as the ultimate reality, as a, “for sure I'm right”.

I always wonder this: How much evidence do we need that we have so often been mistaken when we thought we were right?

I mean, when you reflect on your life how many times were you so ******* convinced that you were right, but in retrospect, you realized, “Oh…well that was…I was wrong.

And then we continue thinking, “I'm pretty sure I’m right even though I have all of this evidence to show me that I could be wrong.”

I am obeying this mind that doesn't support my own best interests.