Awareness of defilements
As I practice the path, read the sutras, and practice meditation each day I become more aware of my own defilements. I am doing what I can to be mindful of them and to let go of them.
The process of doing this has made me more and more aware of the defilements in others. As I (gradually) see through my own ego, I can also see through the ego of others. As I can see my own kleshas (mental afflictions), I can also see the kleshas of others.
In many ways this causes me to understand why practicing the path leads to some amount of withdrawal from usual society and usual social norms. Seeing the affliction in others, and the way social norms allow or encourage those afflictions... I don't know what the word is. I feel the toxicity of this affliction more intensely.
I work in a school. I care deeply about the students and I do what I can to support their positive emotional development. I am painfully aware of it when I see other teachers and administrators who are not doing this. I am aware of it and I see it all the time. It is a very delicate affair to cultivate a positive emotional environment for children and teenagers. It takes so precious little to upset it. I see so often teachers and administrators who cultivate massive egos and massive emotional problems, and then vent this onto the students. The more perceptive/sensitive I become to kleshas, the more evil this kind of behavior seems.
It takes a certain amount of spiritual depth to actually have good intentions. IF you say to yourself, "I'm helping others!" but actually you are a whirlwind of confusion, ego-clinging, anger, and pride, you are not really helping others.
I practice metta meditation every day. I send metta to all of those I work with who I see lost in confusion. I practice compassion. But still, I feel more compassion for the students than I do for the adults who treat them cruelly. When I see an administrator on an obvious power trip bullying students, I feel more compassion for the students than I do this administrator. I understand that the administrator is just confused, and in need of compassion. But they've put themselves in a position to make it their business to spread the poison of their afflictions over hundreds or thousands of young minds. They could have chosen to work somewhere else - but they are here. Charging the wolf to tend the sheep.
When I see that some administrators and teachers cultivate afflictive emotions and huge egos and then vent this aggressively onto students, and the rest of the teachers and administrators accept this as normal, I feel that I want nothing to do with the institution. The whole system is madness. It is like being in 1984. There is a widespread acceptance of egotistical cruelty to children, and being in a place where this is accepted and taking place is a major spiritual challenge.
Imagine if you were a doctor committed to saving lives, and each day you saw your fellow doctors giving patients poison to make them sicker, and because of social norms, you cannot say "You should give them medicine, instead of poison." And the doctor who poisons the most patients gets made head of the hospital. This is how it feels.
Yesterday, the principal of our school told all the students that he is "disappointed in them." Again. He has done some variation of this every time has addressed them. I understand that he thinks he is promoting discipline. I understand he thinks that this is how you create order. But actually, he just has a big ego and likes the puffed-up feeling of power he gets from being just a little bit cruel to many, many children at once.
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