A friend of mine announced to me today that he was giving up judging people. The life coach he has been working with explained to him that judgment creates separation, and since life's greatest joy is to be found in connecting with others, he is hurting himself every time he judges anyone or anything. "I'm done with judging," he said. "It's making me unhappy. I want to connect with people, not push them away."
This announcement came at a good time for me, as I've been thinking very much about judgment lately. I know that my own judgments have cost me a great deal over the years, and I've been exhorting my students and friends to consider how often they judge. I've noticed that the act of judging seems to follow observation as automatically as throat clearing follows a cough; as an act it is reflexive and ubiquitous, but can be trained away with a little practice.
The Buddha said that in making a judgment we express a preference and in expressing a preference we create suffering in both judge and judged. Lao Tze, the great Taoist sage, said pretty much the same thing. Of course Lao Tze also said that the Tao -- the ubiquitous, universal path and force -- that can be expressed in words is not the same thing as the Way itself, then went on to write a whole scroll (book) on the subject. Even though words were less than ideal, even a great master had to use them to function in his role as teacher and guide.
Therein, of course, lies the rub. Words and symbols are not the same thing as the ideas or objects they represent, yet we need them to communicate. In the same way, while excessive judgment can indeed cause separation and suffering, some judging is required if we are to live in a world with objects and others. Judging, like writing or speaking, is a useful tool. Eschewing it completely limits us and makes everyday life unworkable. Cleaving to an absolute, rigid idea may be OK, but without judgment we cannot make decisions and without decisions we cannot act. That's fine if we are at the end of our days and ready to ascend a mountain to breathe our last, but living and working in a material world requires some judging.
Both the Buddha and Lao Tze talk about taking a middle road and living a harmonious, balanced life, and that is precisely what is required when it comes to judging. In truth, some of us let the pendulum of judgment swing too far in the direction of inconsiderately judging everything and everybody. Working on our habit by trying to stop judging completely can be a useful exercise; it helps bring the pendulum back to center in the same way a strict regimen can help us regain control of our diet. Think of judging like eating. When we eat pathologically, we eat without discrimination. We simply see something and shove it into our mouth out of habit or a need for emotional gratification. To stop this habit, we make a few judgments and express some preferences too. We prefer nutritious food to junk. We prefer being healthy to being sick. We prefer to live a longer life. We prefer living to dying.
We make judgments in our relationships, too. We simply must. If our spouse, child or partner suddenly stops bathing and working in favor of lying in bed in a drunken stupor all day, it may not be enough to withhold judgment. Can we be understanding and kind? Can we look to our own problems to understand why one or more of those issues rankles us so keenly? Can we wish to connect with them and feel their pain? We can and perhaps we should, but at the same time we must also urge a bath and a job and perhaps even orchestrate an intervention. If nothing works, if that person continues to spiral downward, we may feel compassion and pain too, but having done everything we possibly can we may also prefer to move on to a healthier relationship.
On the other hand, we may be the kind of person who takes refuge in rigidity and sameness, the kind of person who, lacking a self-confident, self-respecting core, seeks to raise himself up by putting others down. In that case we are using judgment as a weapon rather than a tool, and in doing so we are indeed slicing and chopping our way to alienation and unhappiness rather than embracing connection and satisfaction. If our pendulum has swung this far in the direction of thoughtless judging, we must indeed work to change our behavior, looking inside for the source of the urge to judge rather than preoccupying ourselves with the imagined shortcomings of others.
In judging as in other areas of life, if what you seek is harmony, it all comes down to balance.