Expert: Bodhicitta - 3/21/2005

Question
Greetings Bodhicitta,

I don't know if you remember me from before. My name is John and I live in Japan but am from Ireland. I have another question related to confidence, but first let me give you the background you asked for.

My father was a troubled man when I was an infant. When I was three, for example, I was learning to ride a bike. He got very impatient with me and my natural pace of learning, and in the end lost his temper, throwing the bike at my mother in a rage. I felt fear, and shame, and repressed the memory.

My father came from a troubled childhood - his parents never expressed love and often locked him outside in the shed on some very cold, Irish nights.

Eventually my mother left him, and we moved in with my grandparents. My grandfather became my new father-figure, and for a while it was great! He'd take me in to Dublin to see the St. Patrick's Day Parade for example. But, often, he would end up in a pub, getting drunk, and because I was a child I'd get very bored there. I wished he would take me home. Slowly, he sank deeper and deeper into alcoholism, and became very bitter. I didn't know it at the time but he was probably in a lot of physical pain from a cancer he never told anybody about until near the very end. I in my immaturty simply thought he was weak minded, mean, or just a bad man - I was around 12 years old.

Because he was hiding his pain and suffering, one day, for example, his temper flared up and like my father he said to me "YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT!" Again, I felt that fear and shame. I ended up hating my grandfather for "letting me down", especially because at the time I was being bullied in school, and having difficulty making friends. Those words haunted me throughout my early life, and I too became very bitter towards my grandfather. The poison that infected him infected me. When he was dying I didn't visit him, or even go to his funeral. My hate for him completely blocked him out.

I feel very sorry about that now, and have come to terms with my love for. I remember him in the good times, and realise what a good man he was. I forgive him for being unable to share his suffering with others, and I rememeber all the good thing wabout his character.

With my father, we now talk regularly (he lives in America), but he can't rememeber the time with the bike. He's forgotten a lot. I forgive him too.

I forgive both of these men when I realise that they were suffering deeply at the time, and what they said had little or nothing to do with me, and everything to do with them. However, I recall the Buddhist saying, when you get shot with an arrow, you don't go around asking "who shot this?" or "why did they shoot me?", you simply pull the arrow out!

Even though I forgive them, the affect of their words carries on. I'm still left with an unstable confidence. Perhaps the shame and fear still live within me.

It is pulling the arrow out that I find difficult. I still find it difficult to make friends, and I think I have a lot of social fear inside me. I am perhaps too obsessed with how people see me, and my confidence can be very dependant on other peoples' support. Then, at other times I am arrogant and judgemental, and I think I am better than everybody else. I start looking down on people and condemning them. I push them away with my judgements. Perhaps I do this to cover my fear. I swing from being confident, to being too confident or arrogant, to being very low on confidence. In other words, my confidence is very unstable.

So, my question is how do I find a good foundation on which to build my confidence?

I think my spiritual faith depends on this foundation, and until I resolve it, I am always going to doubt The Way! How do I pull out that arrow of self-doubt?

Thank you for your time Bodhicitta. Again, I think it's great that you are doing this work online! You are helping so many people. I send you blessings, and pray that you achieve whatever it is that you wish to achieve.

Love and Light,

John.  

Answer
Hi John
thanks for your question. yes i remember you well.

confidence is an interesting question. it crops up a  lot in buddhism. to meditate you need shraddha or confidence. so what sort of confidence is that?

Westerners seem facinated by confidence , lack of confidence and getting more confidence. There is a lot
of ways of working with confidence in the modern world.
you could use will to say to yourself "I AM CONFIDENT!" many times, sort of positive thinking, the sort of thing you would get in a self help book, or a management course. You could go and get a therapist or a counsellor.

But non of this seems to work very well. the  more people tell you you should have more self confidence the more inadaquate you feel. the more assertiveness training you do, the more arrogant you become.

This is all WILL power and ego from a buddhist point of view.

So from the Buddhist view point in meditation and ordinary life there is a very different approach.

what is required is to link with the natural confidence which you already have. work with the heart not the will.
link to your buddha mind.

the buddha mind already has all the qualities you need. it is naturally open ,clear, confidence, calm, insightful etc. the problem is we think we have to go out and find something better. this is the story of samsara. if we just
rested in our being, our hearts everything would be fine. Ego all the time is trying to manipulate, control tell us that there is something better out there in this illusory display which we call the world. we could be richer, we could be more assertive etc. but there is no problem.

Good luck
Bodhicitta