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Working with Conflict: Feeling the Elephant - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 26, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Working with Conflict: Feeling the Elephant

Good evening, welcome.

Tonight, I’d like to start with a story that we find in the literature of early Buddhism. Part of what I think is remarkable about this story is that it is not only captured in the Buddhist literature of ancient India but also in other religious traditions at that time, such as the Jains and in early Hinduism. It was a story that was floating around, and different religious traditions sucked it up, incorporated it, and made it their own.

I would like to use it as a springboard to talk about some specific topics.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

There is a king who asks someone to round up people who have been blind since birth—individuals who have never had the sight faculty. The individual does this, gathering a group of about ten people. The king then instructs the person, "Show them an elephant, but only one particular part."

So, he shows one person the elephant's head, another the ear, the tusk, the trunk, the body, the foot, the hindquarters, the tail, and the tuft at the end of the tail. He brings their hands to the elephant and allows them to touch this particular portion, telling them, "This is an elephant."

After doing this, the king says to these individuals directly, "Tell me, what is an elephant like?"

The person who touched the head says, "It is like a pot." The person who touched the ear says, "No, no, no, it is like a fan." Another says, "It is a ploughshare," or "It is a post," or "It is a mortar," or "It is a pestle." The person touching the side of the elephant says, "It is a wall of a storeroom." The person touching the tuft at the end of the tail says, "No, no, no, it must be like a broom."

When they heard others describing what it was like, they started to argue. "An elephant is like this, it is not like that. You are wrong. I know what an elephant is like; I felt it."

They got into arguments and eventually fisticuffs, fighting physically and saying, "I know what is true, and clearly you don't." The king was delighted; he loved this. It was like entertainment for him to see these people fighting, holding onto a particular view, and getting into disputes with others.

The Map and the Territory

There is a lot in this story. One thing I want to highlight is that these individuals are having a direct experience. They are touching a portion of the elephant; they are having a tactile experience. This cannot be denied or disputed—they felt what they felt.

However, they then made a leap to a mental construct. They made up an object. They didn't actually feel a pot, but they said, "It is like a pot." They made a transition from what is being experienced to an idea.

Humans do this all the time. We like to make sense of our experiences. But there is a way in which we don't notice that thoughts are the map of the territory, not the territory itself¹. Thoughts are the map; the territory is the actual experience. Sometimes the distinction doesn't matter, but here we are talking about people getting into physical fights, blaming each other, and saying "I'm right, you're wrong," based on a thought they have after a sensory experience.

This is a big part of Buddhist practice and meditation practice: to learn the distinction between a thought about something and the actual experience of something. Concepts, ideas, views, beliefs, opinions—these are all mental events. They are important and helpful; we need them. But it is helpful to distinguish between these mental events and what is actually being seen, heard, or felt.

Thoughts are flat, two-dimensional, and fragmenting. They define things as "this, not that." In contrast, an experience is just an experience. A scent that we smell is just something we smell. As soon as we bring in concepts and views, we start making divisions. This is natural—it is how we navigate the world, distinguishing a chair from a frying pan—but sensory experience is vibrant and fluid. There isn't a clear delineation where one sense experience stops and the next begins. Thoughts draw straight lines, make clear distinctions, and assign judgments of "good" and "bad."

We can do this to the point where we get completely disconnected from the experience. In the same way that a menu is not the meal, we can get into fights about what is on the menu and forget there is even a meal. We can get into fights about the map and get disconnected from the territory, which is our life's experience.

Clinging to Views

In the story, the blind people could have said, "I experience it as big and kind of round; I think it is a pot." Or, "I experience it as flat and kind of big; I think it is a fan." That is very different from saying, "It is a pot, and something is wrong with you if you think it is a fan."

If we talk more about experience, if we tune into our experience, it creates some openness and spaciousness.

The characters in the story come to fisticuffs because they are clinging. They are holding onto this idea they have based on their experience, and they are really invested in their beliefs. What makes a person think that this is important enough to fight physically, to harm others and risk harming themselves?

There are underlying beliefs beneath the concept they are holding onto. Beliefs like:

• "I know what is right."
• "How dare they question me?"
• "Don't they know who I am?"
• "It is disrespectful to question me, so I have to stand up for myself."
• "The king is here; I better look good for the king."

Common to all of these is that they are self-referential. It is all about me—the way I look, the way I think. The sense of who we think we are needs to be propped up, bolstered, or defended.

If we look at the things that get us agitated, we will discover that this sense of self is often tied up in it. Perhaps underneath is a fear: "I don't want people to know that I'm not quite sure, so I'm going to pretend I'm really sure." Or maybe there is shame about not being able to see. We don't know their life experiences, but often, the need to look good or defend oneself is behind the holding of views.

The Awakened Person

In the Buddhist teachings, clinging leads to dukkha². Holding onto our beliefs leads to suffering. Suffering is a single word for a giant range of meanings, from slight irritation to the most horrifying pain. In this setting, the suffering is being in conflict and feeling the need to defend ourselves.

Thoughts and beliefs serve important functions, but they can lead us astray from a life of peace and freedom if we are overly attached to them or mistake them for reality. Mental events come and go. They are insubstantial.

I am not saying we shouldn't have any beliefs or views. It is when we hold onto them so tightly that we think it is okay to harm others based on them, or to abandon our own well-being, that problems arise.

The Buddha described an awakened person—someone who has complete freedom and ease—as a person who doesn't get involved with disputes. Guaranteed, as soon as you start clinging to views, there will be somebody who has a different one, and you will be in conflict.

The Buddha describes the awakened person thus:

"They are not an enemy to any doctrine seen, heard, or thought out. Not forming opinions, not shut down, and not desirous. They are the wise ones who have laid their burden down."

What is this burden? The burden is the sense of self that has to be protected and defended at all costs. This is not a belief you have to adopt; it comes from experience. Usually, through meditative experience, you start to see that there is actually nothing here except a collection of experiences—a moment of seeing, feeling, hearing, thinking. That is just what is happening. When we try to grab onto them and create a separate, enduring self, we create a burden.

This holding on causes suffering, often showing up as dogmatism, conceit ("I know it, and I don't know what you guys are doing"), self-righteousness, or indignation. This leads to division. We can have values and views that promote freedom without causing division or harm.

Conflict in Modern Times

The story ends with the king being delighted by the conflict. It occurs to me that in contemporary times, the same thing is happening. Different people have different life experiences and different news sources; they think one thing is true, while others think something else is true.

There are others who have a vested interest in seeing conflict happen. The media industry is for-profit; they depend on us feeling outrage. Politicians and advertisers depend on manipulating our feelings so we behave differently. There is a vested interest in us getting agitated and holding onto our views, rather than treating each other with care.

This is not to say that everything is okay—oppression and terrible things are happening. But we don't have to hold onto views in our own lives in a way that puts us in disputes with others.

Navigating Conflict with Kindness

With Thanksgiving approaching, families get together, and sometimes there can be disputes. I appreciate what Ezra Klein³ said recently. He was asked about his family being angry about a position he held. He said:

"I love my family, and it is not my job in my personal life to police and change the views of people I love and care about. I'm just going to love them."

He admitted there were people in his family with radically different views. He also shared a rule he tries to follow. Before trying to persuade anyone of anything, ask them three questions about their view:

1. How did you get to your position?
2. What does it mean to you?
3. What is behind it?

If we are ever going to be persuasive—which doesn't happen often—it is because the other person feels safe with us. They feel seen and heard by us. Then, they might be willing to listen.

So, if you encounter people with different views, open your heart to them. Listen. Ask them these three questions.

This is part of a bigger picture of how to work with conflict. Gil Fronsdal⁴ has used the phrase: "Be still and look upon everything kindly."

"Be still": Can we quiet the mind? When we are in conflict, thoughts race. Thoughts are abstractions; they divide and create conflict. Just recognize that. Rather than getting lost in thoughts, shift toward sensory experience. Feel the softness of your clothing, taste the flavors of the meal, feel your feet on the ground, listen to the sounds.

This shift toward sensory experience brings us into reality and disrupts the momentum of thinking. It loosens our identification with the thoughts ("I'm being disrespected") and brings us to the truth of the moment—maybe the chair is uncomfortable, or you are hungry.

"Look upon everything kindly": What would it be like to give the other person a victory? To say, "Huh, you may be right, I hadn't thought of that." Or, "I can see that part makes sense." Even if you don't agree, just the idea of giving them a victory shifts the ecology of the relationship.

Ken Wilber⁵ once wrote that there is nobody on this planet who is such a genius that they can be 100% wrong. To be 100% wrong, you would have to create a whole new physics. Nobody is 100% wrong.

I will end with this verse from the Dhammapada:

"Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hate alone does it end. This is an eternal truth."⁶

The Pali word is literally "non-hate." Some translate it as "love," but that can feel idealistic. Non-hatred is being willing to listen, to engage with respect, and even to question ourselves.

Q&A

Question: In World War II, my grandfather was in the Army. In cases like Hitler, I'm sure no one is completely wrong about everything, but sometimes isn't it appropriate to fight with violence against something like that? To stop the Nazis from dominating the world?

Answer: To go to the extremes—I hope I am never in a situation like World War II. That was awful. I want to bring it into our lives, something you and I can work with. I don't want to say that fighting the Nazis didn't make sense. I agree, it is terrible to think about not fighting them. Or even now in Ukraine fighting against Russia—sometimes it seems even that kind of violence is justified. Honestly, I don't keep up to date on all the news, and I don't feel I am in a place to say what is right and wrong in those massive geopolitical situations. I am like one of those blind people who felt just a little bit of the elephant. I don't feel I can make a comment on it.

Question: This is about something I struggle with. Even when we as individuals can notice when we are only touching one part of the elephant and have humility, sometimes I realize others are not giving themselves that same level of humility. I find frustration there. Why are they missing the fact that they are clinging? I'd like to better articulate the source of suffering in that. Is it me wanting control?

Answer: I have a person in my family who has very different views than I do. I started to think: "What if I was born and raised in the same community as that person? If I was the same age, the same gender, lived in the same place, and had the same profession? I probably would think the same thing they do."

People come to their beliefs because so many causes and conditions support it. It helps me to say, "Oh, okay, this is what makes sense to them based on their life experience." That allows me to feel their humanity. The suffering gets reduced because I don't feel I have to convince them otherwise, even though they might be yelling.

Question: It sounds like stronger doses of loving-kindness get us to that place where we can empathize or piece together where they are coming from.

Answer: Yes, humanize them. Recognize them as a product of their life in the same way that we are. We came to our conclusions based on our life experience and news sources.

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I am wishing you all a wonderful holiday time. Thank you.