Each type has a spiritual task to accomplish. The spiritual task of the greedy type is to transform the desire for sense objects into a desire to know the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Greedy types need to balance their optimism with an awareness of suffering. Practices that can help the greedy type include: contemplation of old age, sickness, death, and impermanence, meditation on the 32 parts of the body; generosity; renunciation; noticing the ending of experiences; putting oneself in uncomfortable, unpleasant situations (in order to become disenchanted with sense pleasures); slowing down; and taking the Three Refuges.
The spiritual task of the aversive type is to transform the critical mind through wisdom and insight. Aversive types need to learn to relax, question their beliefs about being “right,” and notice joy in addition to suffering. Practices for the aversive type are: lovingkindness, compassion, mindfulness of mind, humor, faith, patience, open awareness, and putting oneself in pleasant surroundings in order to soften the heart and connect with life.
The spiritual task of the deluded type is to transform spaciousness into a state of rooted equanimity. Deluded types need to learn how to reel in their minds. Practices useful for a deluded type include: noting (labeling); mindfulness of the hindrance of doubt; body awareness; somatic experiencing; qigong or yoga; precision; mindfulness of the earth element, and putting oneself in safe and pleasant surroundings to prevent dissociation.
This week, mindfully take at least one small step on your spiritual task each day. We are all created different from each other and no single personality type truly defines. We also change from moment to moment. The personality type is not meant to completely define you. It simply serves as a guide on your path of awakening, or a helpful tool to increase your mindfulness. Have fun with it and bring yourself a little bit closer to your edge.
"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." - Rainer Maria Rilke
As we move through life, attempting to move in peace, planned precision, or along whatever pleasant, care-free path, we often encounter things which disrupt our flow. I cannot think of an unbroken month in my life when some incident has not occurred: my car being broken into, my work load doubled, my computer crashed, my thumb sliced open, my trip canceled, etc. How frustrating this can be. We've all been there, which is why we connect so well with Robert Burn's apology To a Mouse for destroying its nest while ploughing:
... But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promised joy. ...
You probably recognize the oft quoted "best laid schemes o' mice an' men" part. The conclusion drawn here is that try as we might, there's no way to prepare with "foresight" for a complete path of "promised joy." There's always a potential accident or obstacle around the corner. Though, the "grief an' pain" is just the story that we tell ourselves, and Stories Define Reality. Rather than allow ourselves to rely on a happiness defined only be the path that we had planned, we can learn to walk that path that is presented to us.
Learning to be mindful and avoid obstacles is a wise and worthy pursuit. However, it is likely impossible to prepare enough to avoid every obstacle. Even in a secure garage, someone can still break into your car if you have one, and sometimes having one is the best option. "Being able to remain centered and awake even when we feel uncomfortable is much more impressive than doing so in an environment where everything is to our liking. No matter how good we are at controlling our circumstances, there will always be factors and people that we cannot control." (Daily Om's The Upside of Irritation) Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche believes that "We might even begin to welcome obstacles as an opportunity to engage in virtuous activity: patience, generosity, discipline, meditation, exertion, and their binding factor, prajna—wisdom rooted in seeing things as they are. With practice and a change in attitude, whatever comes our way—good or bad—has less power to obstruct our journey." (The Path Through Obstacles in Shambhala Sun)
In Growing Together, Thich Nhat Hahn shares a beautiful metaphor for dealing with suffering from obstacles: "You can use the goodness in yourself to transform your suffering and the tendency to be angry, cruel, and afraid. But you don’t want to throw your suffering away because you can use it. Your suffering is compost that gives you the understanding to nourish your happiness and the happiness of your loved one."
The Stoics had an exercise called Turning the Obstacle Upside Down. What they meant to do was make it impossible to not practice the art of philosophy. Because if you can properly turn a problem upside down, every “bad” becomes a new source of good.
Suppose for a second that you are trying to help someone and they respond by being surly or unwilling to cooperate. Instead of making your life more difficult, the exercise says, they’re actually directing you towards new virtues; for example, patience or understanding. Or, the death of someone close to you; a chance to show fortitude. Marcus Aurelius described it like this: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
...
Stoicism, as Marcus reminds himself, is not some grand Instructor but a balm, a soothing ointment to an injury wherever we might have one. Epictetus was right when he said that “life is hard, brutal, punishing, narrow, and confining, a deadly business.
We should take whatever help we can get, and it just happens that that help can come from ourselves.
When you see the obstacles in this light, you can realize that it is not a path cluttered with obstacles. The path and the obstacles are not separate, they are the path, the whole path. "Like cars in amusement parks, our direction is often determined through collisions." (Yahia Lababidi) As children, many of us enjoyed running obstacle courses, jumping hurdles, running through tires, crawling under ropes, walking across balance beams. This was not tedious to us, it was a fun part that we chose. Let's learn from our own childhoods and find the joy of running the obstacle course. It can be so much more fun and satisfying than walking the easy route alongside the course. Relish in the whole path. In this way, we can learn to be Comfortable with What Is . Comments, Please - Please share your thoughts. What are your experiences in recognizing life's obstacles as life's path?
There's a viral fad going around Facebook asking people to post 25 things about themselves, then invite 25 more people to do the same. There are several different versions of it, some inject the word "random" or "silly". My list is clearly not random; I doubt anyone's is. Though there may be ways to do something partially random, I structured mine instead. [Ok this fad has died off by now, but I wrote this article back then without posting.]
Seeking balance and organization, I broke it down into 5 buckets.
1-5 The Odd or Sensational
6-10 The Basics
11-15 The Personality
16-20 The Stories
21-25 The Activities
This has been a fun exercise. I learn a lot about my ego, by comparing my list to the typical formula.
1-5 The Odd or Sensational
Here's the part where I show how cool and unique I am, then introduce a minor flaw in a clever way.
1. I have touched my own skull. Following a high school weight lifting accident resulting from a plate sliding off the bar while close-grip curling then cracking me between the eyes. My sister rushed to the rescue with a frozen chimichanga. I had a gash large enough that the plastic surgeon allowed me to touch my own skull before sewing me up with 2 tiers of stitches.
2. I love the smell of burnt plexiglass - sweet and smoky.
3. I once bowled 6 perfect rolls in a row. The rest of the game was crap. Count how many gutters (8)! <link to image, see the top row>
4. I once completely wiped out my opponent in Go. link to image On a whole, though, I am extremely novice.
5. My superpower is profuse sweating. I still have not learned to harness this for the good of humanity. But I have harnessed it for the good of my own detoxification in Bikram yoga.
6-10 The Basic
This is the part where I talk about my loved ones and some other interesting traits in order to come off as endearing.
6. I have a slight allergy to coconut. I still eat Thai curries, but prefer them when the ratio of chili to coconut is something like 3:1. Yum.
7. I live with a classy cat. He always wears his tuxedo and lounges around cooler-than-thou on the furniture.
9. Family - I was going to call this section "The Mundane" instead of The Basic, until I realized that writing about my family fits into this one, and there's nothing mundane about my family. They are spectacularly interesting people, each of them. I love my parents and younger sister Laura. We are a very close bunch.
10. I am carnivicarious. (blog post) Most of my childhood, I grew up as a meatatarian, a total carnivore. I ate pretty much only meat and bread, and I was completely opposed to vegetables. On May 1, 2008, I stopped eating meat after being inspired at a dinner party. My brain still wants meat sometimes, so I’ve coined the term “carnivicarious” to cover that. It’s the pleasure that I get through someone else’s enjoyment of meat. But the joy that I get from not eating meat is really wonderful.
11-15 The Personality
This section describes how uniquely skilled and special I am. (just like everyone else)
11. ENTJ-->ENFP - On the Myers-Briggs test, I max out Extroversion, always have. And definitely score higher on Intuiting than Sensing. Most of my life I have been ENTJ, but over the past couple years I have transitioned to ENFP.
12. Strengths - Input, Ideation, Woo, Maximizer, Strategic - according to Strengths Finder.
13. Groundhog Day is my favorite movie (blog post) . The movie is an analogy of a path to awakening, where Phil goes through many possible attempts at happiness before he finally gets it. In many ways, this is what Buddhism tells us. We will keep reincarnating and living our lives over and over again, failing to find the true purpose in many ways, until we find the true path to happiness and awakening. Phil Connors was given a very tangible opportunity to do just that.
14. My serenity
Lies in snow, cherry blossoms,
Birdsong, and haiku.
15. "I know a fine fellow named Ed,
Who lived his life trapped in his head,
Until he awoke,
Turned his ego to smoke,
And learned he has nothing to dread." - a friend left this in a comment on my blog
16-20 The Stories
16. I got thrown to the floor (twice) in a demonstration by Chen Taijiquan Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang. I asked for it.
17. The first party that I ever DJ'ed was the day that I learned. The DJ bailed at the last minute, so I downloaded some software, and DJ'ed off of my laptop and extensive collection of MP3s. The party kicked ass! I blew out the pre-amp, when a "fan" broke into the booth and cranked the volume all the way up.
18. I went to a Japanese pop concert. My friend and I were the only foreigners there in Saitama, outside Tokyo in Sept 2008. We saw one of my favorite artists, Amuro Namie, singer of "Can You Celebrate " and many, many other hits. The crowd was feverish. I've never seen just am intense encore chant: "Na-Mi-E! Woooooooo! Na-Mi-E! Woooooooo!" This is an enormous change after the affected apathy of Seattle music crowds.
19. producers ...
I saw The Producers on Broadway for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick's last show. It was an amazing show just on their talents and the energy alone, but something made it very special. During the courtroom scene, an accidental fart sound effect was played, and the cast couldn't hold it together, though they tried nobly. Finally, Nathan Lane broke character to collect himself. He even cracked a Martha Stewart joke, being that it was the day after her conviction.
20. Sixth grade. Peed myself. Won state math contest. Weird combination of pride and embarrassment.
21-25 The Activities
I live getting into all kinds of things, here are the 5 that sprung to mind soonest.
21. I am on day 13 (Feb. 3) of a new practice: 100 days of writing (blog post). "I bring to my practice not just repeating something over and over but the act of self-reflection: I practice and I observe. I practice again. I tweak and adjust and tear apart and build up again. I create an opportunity to know myself better. Gradually this habit seeps into the rest of my activities. The result of Practice is that over time, I have a more engaged relationship with my whole life." - Kim Ivy
22. Artist - My favorite media are black sharpies on graph paper. I create a lot of mandalas.
23. I love to dance. Swing, argentine tango, merengue, salsa. If you throw on some deep house or breakbeats, you will see another side.
When we're new to a path, we often find it pretty difficult to relate with family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. This is certainly true when we embark on a spiritual path.
Fortunately, we also form strong bonds of friendships as we meet people along our paths. Erica Knight has been an important friend for me discussing mindfulness, happiness, and how to have a meaningful life. These conversations often illuminate me because she challenges everything on her path, which is similar to mine, yet still uniquely hers. This constantly pushes me to rethink and re-contemplate. Much of the content on this blog comes from my discussions with Erica.
We both experiment with the mindfulness practices espoused in Buddhism, in Taoism, by Tolle, etc. and report back on how they work for us. We both comment about the awkwardness of the path, especially when they contradict societal maxims. Having lived in this society, attachment, judgment, desire, and suffering-in-the-face-of-hardship seem to be so naturally human. On the other hand, spirituality teaches us to favor non-attachment, non-judgment, renunciation, and avoidance of suffering. Is this dehumanizing or transcendent? Pondering this is a valuable mindfulness practice, especially as practicing the spiritual teachings puts us at odds with others.
Goodness knows I have gone through some pretty embarrassing moments when I first began living by new ideals, and still sometimes now and again. I have come to interpret these times as challenges to grow my practice stronger through perseverance and contemplation. I have to learn how to fit new realizations with my nature, rather than just adopt them from a book or example. There are a few lessons learned along the way that make it easier.
First of all, it helps to have a definition of spirituality -- or whatever word you choose -- that fits your style, something that you can say comfortably. I define spirituality as "meaningful living," and I view it as orthogonal to religiosity. It is connecting at a deep level with my own spirit or soul or Being or me-ness or I am; this transfers to connecting with the spirits of others. When you communicate about it, you will be more comfortable with the words that fit you, though I encourage you not to place too much into the words themselves. It is sort of like clothing. If you're from Texas you may be comfortable in a cowboy hat and boots, if you're from Luzon you may be comfortable in a barong, and if you're from Oahu you may be comfortable in a grass skirt. Try wearing these things out of your element, and you will both feel and look funny to others. Spirituality is the same way. So you see, the clothing is a metaphor, and actually the choice of words is an even subtler metaphor. It's not the choice of words, it is the comfort with them.
Another important thing to note is that spiritual or mindful living (whatever you want to call it) is a skill just like any other. When you're first starting out, you don't really know how to incorporate it into your life yet. You copy from books or other examples and it seems unnatural to others because it is unnatural to you. It is like learning to play the piano; nobody wants to hear your playing at first (except for your teachers, maybe) because you're still on the very basics, you still make mistakes, and you have not developed your own style, yet. Can you really expect that your Chopsticks-level spiritual practice is going to be super-inspiring? Bear with it until you know how to live this way. Its actually quite rewarding to work through this phase.
There are a number of other issues that you might bump up against. Here are a few of the common ones.
People you have known for a while may feel your change as a form of judgment. Even though you may have honestly made a complete change to non-judgment (hard, hard, hard), a spiritual practice often comes across as self-righteous and obnoxious. By changing your view of the world and refusing to interact in the same way as previously, this can be upsetting to people we love who see our changes as challenging their ways of life. This concept is explored in the New York Times opinion piece Being and Mindfulness.
If you're like many people, you may often err on the side of proselytizing. After learning something new and very useful, it is natural to want to share this with friends, family, and others who might think that you sound like an obnoxious lecturer. The lessons of Consoling Wisely need to be taken into account here, especially: "When you communicate your views, do so casually and in a nondogmatic manner. Allow the people you speak with to ask questions. Offer only as much information as they are ready to hear." From the Daily Om's Expanding Their Vision.
You may find difficulty relating to people with whom you previously spent a lot of time ranting and complaining. When you engage in the practices of positivity and non-judgment, complaint-based relationships are no longer as interesting to you. So it seems that you would no longer be able to relate to these friends. But perhaps, this is a challenge to learn to be compassionate along with them, acknowledge their suffering, and connect with them based on who they are rather than an mutual grudges. This is much easier said than done, I know. I often catch myself in the complaining side of things and can commiserate with others.
All in all, where it may feel that spiritual practices are isolating and solitary, even dehumanizing, they are really the contrary. By following a practice of compassion and loving-kindness, you begin to notice the interconnectedness of everything, even the amount of people that it takes to bring A Pistachio to your table. Matthieu Ricard addresses this eloquently in Happiness:
But how, you might ask, can I avoid being shattered when my child is sick and I know he's going to die? How can I not be torn up at the sight of thousands of civilian war victims being deported or mutilated? Am I supposed to stop feeling? What could ever make me accept something like that? Who wouldn't be affected by it, including the most serene of wise men? The difference between the sage and the ordinary person is that the former can feel unconditional love for those who suffer and do everything in his power to attenuate their pain without allowing his lucid vision of existence to be shaken. The essential thing is to be available to others without giving in to despair when the natural episodes of life and death follow their course.
This post is dedicated to my close friend and mindfulness companion Erica Knight. A lot of the concepts in this blog come from realizations made during conversations with her where she challanges my practices, holding me accountable to live the most meaningful life that I can live. She helps maintain humanity and grounding into spiritual practices, keeping me away from purely intellectual and theoretical understandings.
Take the what Buddhist personality type are you quiz from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review magazine. It is a fun way of looking at yourself that also provides a valuable perspective for mindfulness. The types/temperaments system is from the 1600+ years old Visuddhimagga, a work based on teachings from the Pali Canon. The article, Which Buddhist Personality Type Are You? summarizes:
The Visuddhimagga offers descriptions of six personality temperaments: three unwholesome types and three wholesome types. The text suggests that the unwholesome and wholesome types “parallel” each other. The modern-day application of the personality-type system focuses primarily on the three unwholesome types and pairs them with their positive attributes. The three types of Buddhist personalities, paired with their positive tendencies, are Greed/Faith, Aversive/Discerning Wisdom, and Deluded/Speculative. The Greed/Faith personality type is characterized by craving and optimism, the Aversive/Discerning type by criticism and clarity, and the Deluded/Speculative type by doubt and equanimity. Each type has its neurotic tendencies and its awakened tendencies, and the spiritual task is to learn how to strengthen the awakened aspects.
Rather than be a judgmental notion to defeat, each temperament pair is neutral, with equal parts obstacle and virtue. By thinking of each type as a likely temperament to exhibit, it helps us understand both our most likely challenge to overcome and the corresponding virtue. The upshot is that when we better understand our obstacles in this world, we have a clearer understanding of the path that we are on so that we can navigate it wisely. "Each type has a spiritual task to accomplish."
This seems right on for me, and the article goes on to provide some mindfulness tips:
The spiritual task of the greedy type is to transform the desire for sense objects into a desire to know the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Greedy types need to balance their optimism with an awareness of suffering. Practices that can help the greedy type include: contemplation of old age, sickness, death, and impermanence, meditation on the 32 parts of the body; generosity; renunciation; noticing the ending of experiences; putting oneself in uncomfortable, unpleasant situations (in order to become disenchanted with sense pleasures); slowing down; and taking the Three Refuges.
It is encouraging to see that I'm exploring the right path, though of course this is a difficult path for me which requires a lot of concentration to keep from straying. I believe that the current step for me is to explore Sangha (good deeds in and for the community) a lot more. Soon it may be time to take the vow of the Three Refuges. To me, the fact that I have been benefitting from these activities validates the benefits of this article. I encourage you to take the quiz and explore your spiritual task in fellowship with me and other readers.
There has been a terrific side benefit in my sharing. Taking this quiz has brought me a lot closer to an important person in my life. An ex-girlfriend and I are now able to understand each others' challenges quite a lot better. She has Deluded/Speculative primary and Aversive/Discerning Wisdom secondary, making it difficult for her to understand by Greed/Faith, and vice versa for me. We often had misunderstandings due to both having quite different challenges in our lives. This article and quiz gives us perspective to understand each others' challenges. Our renewed and strengthened friendship is a blessing.
I highly recommend this quiz to understand yourself better, to help others understand you better, and to provide guidance on how to handle suffering in your life.
I dedicate this to my sister Laura, who like me, loves such personality tests. I suspect she also has the same primary and secondary temperaments as me. It would be beneficial for me to have her help on these.
Request for comments What results did you get on the quiz?
Ed Essey explores the nature of happiness, the human condition, compassion, and communities. He cultivates his life through the practices of taijiquan, qi gong, reiki, yoga, tango, salsa, writing, reading, art, music, and communing with others as often as possible. He blogs to share his insights and impressions of the world with others and engage in discussion about them.
"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." - 
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