Today is Medin Full Moon Poya Day :

Humility helps awaken ourselves

By Lionel Wijesiri

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it’s my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.
~ Helen Keller

In a culture that so often rewards the proud - a world quick to admire and applaud the prideful, a world eager to bestow the label “great” on these same individuals - humility occasionally attracts some surprising attention.

Take, for example, the best-selling book Good to Great. Since 2001, this leadership manual from Jim Collins has become one of the most popular and influential in the business world. The book is driven by this question: Can a good company become a great company, and if so, how? To find the answer, Collins and a team of researchers spent five years studying eleven corporations that had made the leap from being merely good companies to being great ones.

Collins identifies two specific character qualities shared by the CEOs of these good-to-great companies. The first was no surprise: These men and women possessed incredible professional will - they were driven, willing to endure anything to make their company a success.

But the second trait these leaders had in common wasn’t something the researchers expected to find: These driven leaders were self-effacing and modest. They consistently pointed to the contribution of others and didn’t like drawing attention to themselves. “The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes,” Collins writes. “They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.”

When Collins interviewed people who worked for these leaders, he says they “continually used words such as quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings; and so forth” to describe them.

Pride or conceit

A few months ago, a seminar speaker made this opening statement: “If you have to tell the world you are great, definitely you are not.” He said, “Low self-worth can lead to boastful behaviour, where we are trying to mask our insecurities with arrogant mannerisms. The impact, however, is usually the opposite - the behaviour drives people away and further damages the boaster’s feelings of low self-worth.”

One might call this type of attitude as ‘pride.’ Truly, it is more than pride and the term ‘conceit’ is a more appropriate way of identifying this malady. The modern perspective of pride comes from a sense of self-respect, resulting from actual knowledge or real success. The meaning of conceit exists as a perception of our own value that exceeds our earned right to feel that high value.

As a result, one exalts oneself and depreciates others. One loses prudence, conscience, mindfulness and hence let the defilements a freehand to shamelessly and carelessly displaying ones property and person. Step on his toes at this point and you’re going to get the worst of it.

Fetters

Conceit in Buddhism is the eight of the ten fetters (samyojana) which bind one to the cycle of rebirth (samsara).Conceit consists of an ego-centric pre-occupation with one’s status vis-à-vis others, and is said to be threefold depending on whether the concern is that one is better, equal or worse than others.

For example, one may be conceited of Birth - that is, to be proud that one is born of such a noble family, race or possessions - that is, to be proud of being rich, having mansions, cars, jewellery, responsible posts in society, etc.; or born talents and other unearned qualities - that is, to be proud of being tall and good-looking.

Conceit is also the fifth of the seven negative mental tendencies known as anusayas, as well as being one of the defilements (klesa).Conceit, among other factors, is a dormant predisposing condition for corresponding forms of manifest conduct (paryutthana) which are symptomatic of mental and emotional turbulence.

Conceit can arise from the most trivial cause. One completes a piece of work, and having made a good job of it, one is naturally pleased.

There’s no harm in that. The trouble arises when we begin to make comparisons - “A. couldn’t have done it half as well.” That may be quite true, but it is dangerous to think that because one’s skill is superior in a single instance that one is therefore a better person. That is, “Superiority Conceit,” and it has its counterpart in the “Inferiority Conceit” of the unsuccessful person, and the “Equality Conceit” of the man who says “I’m as good as you.” With the underlying implication “And a good deal better!”

Price

What’s the price of acting conceited?

Relationships: Because they are self-centred and self-absorbed, those individuals find the needs, wants, and desires of others quite irrelevant. Confident people will avoid them. Learning and knowledge: If they already know it all, how can anyone possibly teach them anything? That won’t happen. They are not teachable.

Wisdom: No matter how sharp and experienced they are, someone else will have more wisdom. People with closed minds do not discover new insights.

Potential: Many conceited and arrogant individuals are gifted and talented. They have simply let it go to their heads. Their challenge is that opportunities for them to grow and expand will be missed; others will avoid working with them.

Peace of mind: Those on the extreme end of the conceit and arrogance scale generally seem unhappy, agitated, and argumentative - certainly not at peace. Their overall health and fulfilment in life is significantly reduced.

Humility is not passivity. Rather, it is an utter lack of importance. Individuals who embody the concept of humility appreciate that each human being occupies a unique place within the sphere of character development. Though they can take pride in their own accomplishments, they also understand that the people they interact with each day are as valuable and have as much to offer the world as they themselves do.

Ways

If you’re looking for ways in which to be more humble in your life, consider these tips:

As a human being you need to be aware of your faults and misgivings. You need to know that you are not unsurpassed. It’s okay to not be perfect and accept your weaknesses. A better self-awareness will help you be more humble in life.

Learn to say, “I don’t know.” It’s hard, for whatever reason, to answer someone “I don’t know.” Probably because all of the world’s information is at our fingertips, not knowing something seems like an excuse or not a legitimate answer. Life’s full of questions we simply don’t have answers to. Say, “I don’t know,” listen, then learn.

Serve someone. We instinctively resist serving because we believe there is a direct relationship between being served and being important. Bring someone a cup of coffee, run an errand for a friend, give away some money.

Like other spiritual traditions, Buddhism sees humility as a great virtue. Within that context, it appears to be a natural by-product of supreme spiritual attainments that transcends the ego, just as are the four noble states of mind - love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.