The waking day seems full of emotional reactivity. We react to others’ opinions on a multitude of issues—political, religious, ecological, aesthetic, occupational. This reactivity can keep us happily (or unhappily) occupied for much of the day. Then we react to others’ opinions and judgements of ourselves as people. These opinions may not literally be articulated on an hourly basis, but we have an uncanny ability to remember others’ judgements of ourselves. The body and mind can plunge into a reactive loop to a memory or a perception of judgement. The funny thing is, even a positive reaction (agreeing to someone’s opinion, for example) seems to strengthen the centre of reactivity, strengthen the predisposition to reactivity of all kinds. And, when a person who earlier articulated a ‘happy’ opinion now articulates a painful one, the knot is intensified.
We react to relationships. I perceive that I am ignored by another and this sets off painful thoughts and emotions. Or, even if I react positively to a relationship (with pleasure), then there is fear of loss and also a fear that the ‘pleasure person’ will begin to contradict themselves and thus hurt us. When K talks about total listening or attention, I wonder whether this is a positive act—something I have to stiffen my muscles, strain my eyes and ears and nostrils, and focus my psychological energy to attain—or rather, is it merely a lack of reactivity, a natural openness or pre-existing awareness that just notices and allows the world and mind to happen without reactive loops draining energy?
The same analogy occurs to me with regard to care. Care does have positive behavioural attributes—helping behaviours, a generous outlook. There are such things as kind habits, I think. But I also wonder: is care, very simply, a lack of reactivity? If I don’t react, then the other—person, animal, tree— is simply and automatically present in their wholeness, their authenticity, in my consciousness. When they are present and I don’t react, I have a different response to them than when I react to them through memory, images, pleasure and pain. Since this response lacks the mechanical quality of reactions, one may call it care.
The thought ‘I must care for others, for nature, I must be responsible, sensitive, etc., etc.,.’ is a very tortured and complex thought. Paradoxically, it produces a self, a centre, which is then trying to convince itself that it must care. Guilt, resentment, anger are the by-products of this rather violent thought that insists that it must care. Since I don’t generally know the ‘thoughtless’ or non-reactive care, I then overly insist on thought-reaction-care even more and thus intensify the loop of division and reactivity.
How then to be non-reactive, so that I can be a better caring person? This is a really funny question, because I think this very question is born from the same conditioned reactive centre that asks, how can I have more pleasure, more self-importance? It is a pretend-question, posturing as a question of compassion and care, with no authentic answer.