See Beings Not Bodies

What happens when you look at someone?
The Practice:
See beings, not bodies.
Why?

When we encounter someone, usually the mind automatically slots the person into a category: man, woman, your friend Tom, the kid next door, etc. Watch this happen in your own mind as you meet or talk with a co-worker, salesclerk or family member.

In effect, the mind summarizes and simplifies tons of details into a single thing -- a human thing to be sure, but one with an umbrella label that makes it easy to know how to act. For example: "Oh, that's my boss (or mother-in-law, or boyfriend, or traffic cop, or waiter)... And now I know what to do. Good."

This labeling process is fast, efficient, and gets to the essentials. As our ancestors evolved, rapid sorting of friend or foe was very useful. For example, if you're a mouse, as soon as you smell something in the "cat" category, that's all you need to know: Freeze or run like crazy!

On the other hand, categorizing has lots of problems. It fixes attention on surface features of the person's body, such as age, gender, attractiveness or role. It leads to objectifying others (e.g., "pretty woman," "authority figure") rather than respecting their humanity. It tricks us into thinking that a person comprised of changing complexities is a static unified entity. It's easier to feel threatened by someone you've labeled as this or that. And categorizing is the start of the slippery slope toward "us" and "them," prejudice and discrimination.

Flip it around, too: what's it like for you when you can tell that another person has slotted you into some category? In effect, they've thingified you, turned you into a kind of "it" to be managed or used or dismissed, and lost sight of you as a "thou." What's this feel like? Personally, I don't like it much. Of course, it's a two-way street: if we don't like it when it's done to us, that's a good reason not to do it to others.

How?

This practice can get abstract or intellectual, so try to bring it down to earth and close to your experience.

When you encounter or talk with someone, instead of reacting to what their body looks like or is doing or what category it falls into:

• Be aware of the many things they are, such as: son, brother, father, uncle, schoolteacher, agnostic, retired, American, fisherman, politically conservative, cancer survivor, friendly, smart, donor to the YMCA, reader of detective novels, etc. etc.
• Recognize some of the many thoughts, feelings and reactions swirling around in the mind of the other person. Knowing the complexity of your own mind, try to imagine some of the many bubbling-up contents in their stream of consciousness.
• Being aware of your own changes -- alert one moment and sleepy another, nervous now and calm later -- see changes happening in the other person.
• Feeling how things land on you, tune into the sense of things landing on the other person. There is an experiencing of things over there -- pleasure and pain, ease and stress, joy and sorrow -- just like there is in you. This inherent subjectivity to experience, this quality of be-ing, underlies and transcends any particular attribute, identity or role a person might have.
• Knowing that there is more to you than any label could ever encompass, and that there is a mystery at the heart of you -- perhaps a sacred one at that -- offer the other person the gift of knowing this about them as well.

At first, try this practice with someone who is neutral to you, that you don't know well, like another driver in traffic or a person in line with you at the deli. Then try it both with people who are close to you -- such as a friend, family member or mate -- and with people who are challenging for you, such as a critical relative, intimidating boss or rebellious teenager.

The more significant the relationship, the more it helps to see beings, not bodies.

For more by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., click here.

For more on mindfulness, click here.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and author of the bestselling Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (in 20 languages) - and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he's taught at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports Health, and U.S. News and World Report and he has several audio programs. His blog - Just One Thing - has over 30,000 subscribers and suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. If you wish, you can subscribe to Just One Thing here.

 

 

 

Comments

[Madame Tiffany]

01:58 PM on 01/27/2012

I liked your last bullet concluding: knowing that you are more than a label. Although well acquainted with mental health issues, when I became a mental health worker, I found that the actual people..were amazing individuals and very enchanting at times.
It is often getting past the armor they have protecting them, or the coat of flames that they seem to throw that one needs to get past. Others may be in a deep freeze, whereby you must use the ice pick of caring to warm the cool and penetrate to who they are. I have found some of the most amazing, interesting, talented and gifted people in this community are hidden to the world. How very sad! The labels are not only unfair but often misleading, for they are you and me. We are no different! And so while your article is true on a universal level...it also speaks to sub levels of our culture. I find that your article rings true and brings a wake up call with practical meaning,thank you.

[loveisallthereis]

05:04 PM on 01/26/2012

or you can see them comprised of the same consciousness as you and everyone else.

but first you must see yourself as the pure awarness you really are.

[jf12]

12:24 PM on 01/27/2012

It's an impure, filtered awareness.

[Pratitya]

08:41 PM on 01/25/2012

Well said except that this is not a practice. It is an imperative.

[anfractuous]

07:49 PM on 01/25/2012

What is equally limiting, is preemptively applying the same dismissive criteria to yourself and then congratulating yourself on, at least, not being a hypocrite, without realizing how you've uncritically internalized a whole, quite trivial, judgmental system. The only defense for such an approach is that the other person is almost certainly doing the same to you and thermselves, and there is no guarantee your understanding will be in any way rewarded - usually, quite the contrary.

Many people have pigeonholed themselves into the most unflattering characterization possible, as defined by society's norms, but will paradoxically lash out at anyone who dares to accept their self-assigned slot. I speak from experience.

[Madame Tiffany]

02:15 PM on 01/27/2012

Ah I so agree with your assessment! Many do pigeonhole themselves. However, often that is because that is what they have been taught through so many forms of media. The media portrays a characterization of what is "normal" and the world bus it. And more often than not the rest of the population plays from the script that they know the best. More than likely from childhood tapes that they replay in their heads. Learning new more healthy self truths comes with knowledge and understanding that negative pigeonholing does not have to be their characterization. It is the speaking out and sharing....as you have done....that can reach to the heart of one caught in the jargon of worthlessness. So keep on plugging for those self- assigners. And for the ones who think more of themselves than they ought....watch out...the fall is steep!

[GrumpyOldGeek]

02:40 PM on 01/25/2012

Empathy works for everyone.

Practice, one by one, gets you there.

It's a good place.