Dukkha and Expectations

This is the third of six weeks looking at Dukkha from various angles.

So for these six weeks we are looking at Dukkha, or some ways in which we make life hard for ourselves. Dukkha is that ‘second arrow’ – the first arrow is something that happens and the second arrow is what we add on top through our thinking. In these six weeks we are looking at some ways in which we make second arrows. We are particularly looking at some ways in which our brains build up the picture of reality – how they create meaning. Last week we looked at interpretation, how we make sense of what we observe, and how we might choose between different interpretive takes, and the interpretation may become more sophisticated with more attention.

This week we’ll look at expectations, which is sort of the opposite – it is what we expect or want to happen. A lot of the pain of life – the dukka – is in the mismatch between expectations and reality.

One place where it is often possible to observe expectations is when anticipating something a bit stressful. An example might be a family gathering; or a difficult meeting at work. For instance the anticipation may be filled with worries or even paranoia about all the things that might go wrong, and they are almost never borne out in practice. Those worries or whatever can be interesting clues to what is in our internal wiring, and to how much the internal wiring does not match reality.

We have inbuilt expectations of all sorts of things. Some simple ones that can cause trouble are: expecting things to happen quicker than they do; and expecting other people to do what we want them to do. A more subtle one is expecting other people to be more like us than they are. Another subtle one is whatever internal wiring we have around how we expect other people to react to us.

Linked with expectations is how rigidly we hold the expectation – how do we handle it when the world does not conform? Two possibilities are: rejecting what that does not fit in with our internal model of how the world behaves; or, holding the expectation provisionally and changing our model when it does not match reality. The mindful approach encourages the second of these – we are trying as much as possible to see things as they are without rejecting anything or judging anything.

A helpful way to look at this question of how we hold the expectation is to make a distinction between judgement and discrimination.

As an artificial example (and I don’t do this BTW!) - suppose I observe someone coming in late, and then again a couple of times. Lazy! I may think to myself – this is a judgement – and in my mind the representation of the person is linked with the notion lazy. Of course the truth about that person is likely to be much more nuanced – they may have a good reason for coming in late, and even if not they probably work hard sometimes and less hard other times, as everyone does. And if I take the trouble to talk to the person and find out what is going on, I will get something more concrete than the single word 'lazy'. This more nuanced way of looking at the facts is discrimination.

Judgment is bound in with an emotional attitude (in this case disapproval) – and tends to solidify that attitude. If there is a judgement it will tend to be there in the background of all interactions with that person, however well hidden.

Perhaps some of you will have had times when you have been really angry with someone and have noticed yourself looking around for reasons and justifications for the anger. That is another example of judgment – it’s like the emotional attitude comes first and the rationalising is trying to shore it up.

On the other hand, discrimination is very clear on what is happening but takes a more neutral stance – it is not approving or disapproving, and it is not invested in things going a particular way. With discrimination, we may still be thinking how a situation may turn out, and may have our top guess, but if things turn out differently we won’t be annoyed.

In general the mindfulness approach encourages discrimination and discourages judgement. It tries to see everything as it is, without preference. We can avoid a lot of dukka that way, a lot of second arrows.

Reflection

For the reflection, we need a recent event that you had not been looking forward to, perhaps that you were worried about.

Closing the eyes, feeling the bum on the seat, the feet on the floor. Feeling that contact and solidity. Perhaps taking a couple of deep breaths and then letting the breath settle into an even rhythm. Tuning into the sensations of breathing. They are always there as an anchor if the thoughts get too scattered or go out of control.

Considering the recent event. First looking at your anticipation of it: what were your expectations about it? What was the emotional colour of those expectations? How intense were they? […]

To what extent were those expectations borne out during the event itself? What was the emotional colour of the event as it happened? How intense was it while it happened? […]

Is it possible to see any judgments in the expectations? Is it possible to see expectations held more lightly, with some discrimination? […]

Now letting the reflection dissolve, and coming into meditation.