The ‘Impressive’ Monk (Sequel to “The Snobbish Monk”)

In The Snobbish Monk, an article I wrote in 2013, I talked about seeing deeply the root of all my efforts to feel good about myself: a defective sense of self, the idea that I wasn’t good enough. I was trying to feel good about myself because I didn’t feel good about myself.

 

Seeing that was crucial to being free from that stressful pattern, but not enough for me to actually be free from it. I also needed to consciously change the behaviour that was part of the pattern. In other words, I had to choose to stop trying to feel good about myself.

 

Easier said than done. The urge to repeat the pattern came up again and again, but this time I was clear about what’s better for me.

 

A major behaviour I needed to stop was looking for people to help. I recall times when the mind was actively looking for people to ‘save’. Why? So that I could be ‘the hero’ and feel good about myself. I needed to catch that urge, and remind myself not to do it.

 

Volunteering to be the hero had gotten me into trouble quite a few times actually. Some of my ‘clients’ stopped being interested to end their suffering as they found something else: getting my attention, which made them feel good. I had to say no to them, and even stop answering their emails and calls if they kept trying. Not nice? Hard hearted? Maybe. To me, one thing’s for sure: It’s the right thing to do—for my own well-being and theirs too. They needed to recognize the pain of attention seeking. To indulge that desire of theirs would be clouding their minds from recognizing that.

 

It’s not that I completely stopped helping others with their problems. I still did, but only when they came to me for help. I just had to choose not to approach others to offer help.

 

Choosing this path was sometimes a bit uncomfortable. Withdrawal symptoms, you see? Those people were my drug, my feel-good drug. Nonetheless, it wasn’t too difficult for me to persist, as there was enough clarity of what’s right. I just needed to see the urge as impermanent, and let it pass on its own.

 

Another thing I had to stop was trying to impress others. It was hard. Though I had seen the need to stop, I still found myself doing it from time to time. It can be as subtle as speaking with a more refined accent, or standing straighter. It’s not what I did that really mattered, but the why I did them, which was so that others would look up to me, so that I feel good about myself.

 

What followed that peacock act was a (previously) subconscious scanning for signs that people were impressed. If it came in a form of praise, then all the better; yet, as I said in my last article, something within me rejected praise.

 

It’s conflicting, I know. There were two modes: the basic, vulnerable one, believing I wasn’t good enough; and the overcompensating mode, trying to appear perfect and superior to impress others. While overcompensating mode wanted praise, the vulnerable believed that I didn’t deserve it.

 

Basically, I had to stop doing all those things that were meant to make me—well, actually, the ego—feel good. Looking for people to help and trying to impress others were the two major ways I was overcompensating the belief that I wasn’t good enough. I stopped all that.

 

What good did that do? Lots of it.

 

Apart from no longer suffering from the stressful actions and results of those actions mentioned above, I’ve noticed some happy changes.

 

One, I’m still happy to help others, but I’m also happy not helping others. Isn’t that great?

 

Two, it used to be that after a Dhamma talk, I felt empty. I never understood why then, but now I do. It was due to craving for more high, more feel-good, that was felt during the talk. “Not getting what is desired—that too is suffering.” That empty feeling hasn’t happened for many years. No more hangover after a Dhamma talk.

 

Three, without trying to impress others and worrying about making a good impression, I feel more at ease, at peace.

 

Four, with the above, I find myself more creative, more intuitive, more intelligent. I’m all those, and at the same time none of those. I’m free to be anything, and nothing. As a result, what I do becomes better and people are even more impressed!

 

Besides needing to stop overcompensating the ‘defective me’, I also needed to stop avoiding situations that might supposedly expose the ‘defective me’. They weren’t actually things to be ashamed of, but I was ashamed of them.

 

One of them had to do with the Chinese language. Although I was educated in Chinese schools, my Chinese was significantly weak compared to my school friends. The first time I failed an exam was in Standard 5, and it was the Chinese subject. It traumatized me. None of my classmates failed it. I was alone. I dreaded showing my exam paper to my father whom I knew would be upset with me. That experience left a mark on me that I could not remove.

 

That mark stayed even after I became a monk. I tried to avoid giving Dhamma talks in Mandarin. And when I sort of couldn’t avoid it, I was afraid to appear like a fool, using the wrong expressions, while pretending that I was completely fine. As you can imagine, it was stressful. Interestingly though, I was fine giving talks in Hokkien, even though my Hokkien was far worse! So, what do you think was happening there?

 

I also dreaded having to reply to emails in Chinese. I often gave the excuse that typing in Chinese was difficult, which was true, but not the real reason I preferred to reply in English. I also gave excuses declining invitations to speak in conferences that were held in Chinese.

 

Happily, I’m no longer like that.

 

What happened? Much effort.

 

I was determined to improve. I wasn’t sure how to start, but started anyhow. I started reading, looking up meanings whenever necessary. I even had a notebook to improve my vocabulary. I watched videos with subtitles, so that I could pause them and read the subtitles. I just did whatever I could.

 

The effect seemed like nothing at first, but I persisted. And as I did that, something shifted in me. I became more confident. Even though I still wasn’t satisfied with my level of proficiency, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that I was making the effort to improve.

 

More significantly, the effect of my efforts went beyond what I attempted: I realized deeply that I could always do better when I wanted to.

 

Bit by bit I stopped avoiding those things I mentioned earlier. I began to accept giving Dhamma talks in Mandarin. If I didn’t know how to say something in Mandarin, I just had to ask, just like when I began giving Hokkien talks. Sometimes I felt a little embarrassed, but I did it anyway. It wasn’t hard; only uncomfortable because I anticipated being looked down on. But it seemed that never happened. People were more than happy to help.

 

The whole thing was easier than I expected. The only hard part was thinking it was hard.

 

Another thing that made me feel ashamed of myself for a long, long time was something I didn’t even have a name for. I had a set of quirks that no one I knew seemed to have.

 

Quirk one: I was abnormally forgetful. I had no trouble remembering interesting things even for a long time, but I often forgot simple things, like what I wanted to do. I would go somewhere to do something, but when I got there, I forgot what it was. I also often forgot to do homework as a schoolboy, or office work when I was working. I also had trouble remembering people’s names. Whenever I was found out, I felt very ashamed of myself. Why can’t I remember just like others?

 

Quirk two: I tended to get absorbed doing something, till I forgot the time, and then had to rush like crazy for school or meetings. Or I’d think that I still had enough time to do something, but eventually things happened and I ended up not having enough time. I just couldn’t seem to learn how to manage my time.

 

There were other quirks like that. I tried hard to change, but I couldn’t. And all these added to the sense that there was something wrong with me.

 

Then one day, a retreat student of mine—whom I didn’t know yet was a clinical psychologist—told me I had AD(H)D. I had heard of it before, and didn’t quite believe him. But I later looked it up, and that blew my mind. Wow, I thought, this is talking about me! I was so happy to learn that all those quirks weren’t my fault!

 

Even better was learning that there are strategies to compensate for the condition. Some of them I had already figured out on my own, and I picked up new ones. It was great! I’m not a victim of circumstances. Yes!

 

I cannot be like others because I’m not like others. Realizing that freed me from the idea that I should be able to do things (such as remembering) like others do. With that, I felt free to do things in ways that work for me.

 

Among other things, I began to feel more comfortable asking people for their names, even if I had asked them before. Long ago, I avoided asking people for their names even for the first time. Why? Then I would have an excuse of not knowing their names. That’s lame, I know. When you’re ashamed of something and don’t want to admit it, you come up with lame ideas.

 

What a relief!

 

Neither overcompensating nor avoiding the idea of a ‘defective me’ meant that I had to meet it more often and feel it more deeply than before. While that might sound terrible, it’s not at all. It was overcompensating and avoiding that was more stressful. Without doing any of that, I was able to meet the ‘defective me’ as it is: a fabrication, a construct. That’s all it was and can ever be.

 

As I watched it whenever I could, it gradually weakened. I know that, because I felt less and less of it, even when meeting situations that would have triggered it like in the past. These days, it doesn’t even come up anymore.

 

All that took time and effort, every bit of which was well worth it. The ‘defective me’ was formed out of circumstances in the past that I was in. I can’t undo the past, but I can undo what it has created. And in doing so, I’ve gained much understanding that I would have otherwise not. So, in a strange way, I’m grateful.