The Magic 8-fold Path: Right Intention, continued

Idiot compassion + radical candor

This is a series exploring Buddhism’s foundational and well-loved frameworks. If you’ve been curious about Buddhism or yourself in relation to the world, or if you need any kind of buoy at this time, this is for you.

We start with the Eightfold Path. Catch up on Right View: Part 1 + Part 2 and Right Intention: Part 1 (with audio for paid subscribers!).

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Don’t do delusion’s bidding.
Don’t let delusion own you.
Delusion is the slipperiest damn fish in the universe.

Hello friends,

We’re back on the Eightfold Path. I don’t mean to belabor the point but it’s easy to forget the ground on which you stand when life gets hectic. It’s just nice to still be here. It’s grounding. One minute you’re feeding the dog or scrolling Instragram (leaving this typo IYKYK), or laying awake trying to sleep, and now *bam* you’re on the eightfold path.

For instance, I’m finishing this at 3am (just waking up, not staying up until then god no!) because I’ve been pecking at this segment for way too long and it’s simply time to move on. As always in life, when it’s time it’s time.

We’re on the path together when you read or listen to these words, when you reflect on these ideas, pecking at or savoring them. You’re on the path when you sit down at the end of long day and take a deep breath.

You’re on the path whether you’re doing the most or doing the least. You are basically good no matter what, remember — a deep beautiful relief.

What has happened since last we intentionally walked this path together?

So much — shew, where do we begin?

And also so very little — a year from now you likely won’t remember the details of these moments that, right now, take up the whole room.

Take a moment to breathe deeply and gather in the wisps of your energy as you proceed. Take a look through this cactus.

I’m committed to luxuriating on the path so we are dwelling on steps as long as we need to. We might even double back. Life is more like a game of blind chutes and ladders than a vision quest upward and onward, we know this.

In our explorations so far on right intention, and right view too, we are really talking about balance.

How can you practice so that you can avoid falling or diving headlong into one extreme or story or another? How can you not be either oblivious to what is true or presumptuous of it?

We began with right view— the grounding for the entire eightfold path. Right view is about unlatching from rigidity. Existing in a space where it is what it is, not what you wish it were.

From right view comes right intention. When you exist in this spacious, allowing world view, your intention — the energy you show up with — is appropriate.

From right intention part 1—

“being in right intention is basically showing up, awake, self-aware, with energy of openness and cheer because you are not stuck in the mire of this is so this or that is so that. There is a positive experience to it, or inherent cheerfulness (though not necessarily 'happy’) because things simply are as they are.”

As we go deeper into right intention, I want to push on this idea of cheerfulness and openness. Of allowing even though shitty things happen all the time and there are a lot of delusional people out there doing harmful things.

How do you stay open if you’ve seen some shit?

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
- Dr. Maya Angelou

I’m sure you’ve heard this quote before and maybe even used it half a doz times yourself, usually said in a cautionary tone and in retrospect about a bad boss or small-minded boyfriend, etc.

Obviously, Dr. Maya is dharma. Dr. Maya is a truth speaker. But as with truth, living it is the hard part. But if it were that easy to just show and see each other and ourselves “as we are” we wouldn’t be living in this chaos apocalypse right now.

What does “as we are” even mean? Who are we???

Delusion functions to convince us that we are seeing someone accurately, synchronized with who they show themselves to be. But, unchecked and unpracticed, can we really trust our perceptions — of ourselves or others? Do you trust your ability to see someone for who they are, and not who you wish they were or want them to be?

Dr. Angelou’s wisdom might be reframed to ask us,

“who am I perceiving this person to be?”

“Why am I believe this about them, and what does it really say about me?”

“Am I allowing them the space to show up / reverberate fully on their own terms?”

Trungpa Rinpoche coined an amazing term you must know about called idiot compassion. Idiot compassion refers to misguided care. Idiot compassion is when we act in service based on ego or the idea of helping. I think of idiot compassion as care given in a way that is mostly not about the person or thing being cared for, but about you — the caregiver — or some principle or concept.

Idiot compassion is reckless projection in a Trojan horse of care. It’s not care in the sense of grounded, honest, authentic exchange. Idiot compassion is not so dissimilar to ruinous empathy, if you’re familiar with CEO and Radical Candor author Kim Scott’s matrix of caring personally and challenging directly.

Remember rigid stories strangle the natural fluidity of identity. You can do this by being too laudatory and lionizing, or by being a judgmental asshole.

Another version of idiot compassion is care that’s given mindlessly and freely in such a way that you end up giving everything away. You are spent. You are burned out. This is also not a grounded, honest, authentic exchange because you left it all on someone else’s field.

In “Give and Take,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant explores the selfish-selfless binary. Do ‘nice guys always finish last?’ Is it a ‘kill or be killed’ world?

He says people fall into roughly three groups: givers, takers, and matchers. Matchers are quid pro quo people. You know those people who receive a favor as an IOU they know need to fulfill, asap? Takers are… you know takers. People always looking out for number one, oriented toward self. Taking space, taking opportunity. Givers are those who put others above themselves, orienting toward the group or the greater good to the detriment of self-interest.

In business, Grant finds, neither being a taker nor a matcher is successful. But neither is simply being a giver. Because while being a giver does facilitate trusting and nourishing networks, it also burns you out and you’ve got nothing left for yourself.

Instead, he illuminates a nuance that I find to be quite Buddhist.