Lojong Practice Journal: Correct all wrongs with one intention
The 59 slogans through a social justice lens
The slogan ‘Correct all wrongs with one intention’ follows on directly after ‘All activities should be done with one intention’. The ‘one intention’ is to be of benefit: to not cause harm, to alleviate suffering, to serve. I find these two slogans particularly interesting to look at through the lens of social justice—especially the second one.
Anyone who has run in activist circles will likely have heard the importance of prioritizing the impact of something over your individual intention. This is often explicitly covered in guidelines and community agreements at the start of workshops, classes, and organizational meetings. The message is that, regardless of our good intentions behind an action or statement, if the impact was harmful, it is our responsibility to learn from that and make amends.
To provide an example, I once made a comment in an online space to a friend about there being “only being one race, the human race.” My intention was to point out the absurdity of racism, and was absolutely coming from a good place. But it was also coming from a naïve place. My friend pointed out that while the sentiment was coming from a place of goodness, the statement I made ignored the reality of living in a racialised world. Saying there is only one race, the human race, does nothing to address the systemic reality of racism. Similarly to how saying ‘all lives matter’ or ‘I don’t see colour’ disregards how the lives of Black and brown human beings are devalued, and that whether we are conscious of it or not, we do absolutely see race and act according to societal conditioning.
The first slogan instructs us to do everything with the intention to be of benefit, and that’s what I was doing when I made my comment. I intended to point out something that I thought, as a white Canadian, was a profound and deep realization. I had not yet addressed my own colour-blindness and how out of touch I was with the reality and lived experience of my Korean friend and other non-white friends in my social circle.
So my intention was to be of benefit, but the impact was not beneficial at all. This is where the second slogan comes in. ‘All wrongs’ are part of ‘all activities’. It’s called a practice because it’s a process. We can hold the intention to be of benefit and we will also get it wrong — not every activity done with good intentions will have a positive impact. We are imperfect. We always have been and always will be. And we are capable of being better.
When my friend told me that my comment, regardless of my intention, was unhelpful and dismissive of the lived reality of BIPoC, it stung. But I didn’t double-down on how good my intention was and how I hadn’t meant to say something ignorant. I didn’t insist on convincing my friend of my goodness. Instead, I got curious. I wondered at what I was missing.
All of this happened in my very early 20s, just as I was beginning to meditate but before I’d had the shift in my practice from ‘I am suffering’ to ‘There is suffering’. I hadn’t even encountered the Lojong slogans yet, but on reflection, my approach to the sting was to correct the wrong (my ignorant statement) with my same intention to be of benefit. This was what started me on the road of learning the aspects of history I hadn’t been taught, listening to non-white people and believing them, and questioning everything I’d been told about us supposedly living in a ‘post-racial’ society.
Realizing that we have messed up does not make us bad people. Realising we have messed up gives us the opportunity to see how we are good because we acknowledge that we do not want to cause harm. It’s not that our intention doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to the person to whom we have caused harm, nor should it. It matters to our capacity to include ourselves in our practice of compassion. Remembering and committing to our motivation to alleviate suffering is for us personally, not for other people. It keeps us from falling foul of the impossibility of perfectionism and prioritizing personal comfort over collective liberation.
As long as we continuously carry the intention to be of benefit—in our actions and in how we respond and hold ourselves when our actions are unskillful, ignorant or outright harmful—we can stay in the process of learning. When we double-down on trying to convince someone else that our intention was good, it’s worth questioning why we are seeking outside validation. If our intention is genuinely coming from a good place, then whether someone else is convinced of that shouldn’t matter. What matters is that we are so committed to being of benefit that we use our intention to ensure we learn from our mistakes. This is about being accountable to ourselves as much as we are accountable to others.
Next time someone informs you that regardless of your intention, harm has been caused, remember the slogan ‘Correct all wrongs with one intention.’ Get better at admitting you were wrong. Get better at allowing yourself to see the blindspot being illuminated for you. Get better at apologising in a way that invites you not to repeat the same mistake. Get better at educating yourself and integrating what you learn so you are less likely to make the same mistake again. Get better at applying your intention to be of benefit to your own awakening, over and over and over again.
Originally published on Medium.
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It would be so easy to interpret "all wrongs" as the slings and arrows that others, life, the universe throw at us and that we then convert into valuable lessons on our way to enlightenment. But as you point out, those wrongs might as well be or own actions, not necessarily the ones fueled by anger but also those fueled by good intentions. Each and every of our actions can turn sour and then we need to sit down and look at the whole situation and appraise whether anything is salvageable and what we can learn from the experience.
I think especially when it comes to subjects where we are emotionally involved because we care deeply, we can end up saying the wrong thing. Maybe the best option is just to listen and accept that there exist different views and that we don't know everything. But we're so eager to let everyone know our opinion on the matter at hand that we can't remain silent.
Anyway, being aware of the risks when we react to something is the first step to avoid harm. And as you wrote: this is a practice, and in order to practice we need situations that stretch our capabilities.