And what would he think of Emma Watson?
Around November last year, Vogue released an interview with Emma Watson (which was a joy to watch). In it, she shared many insightful things on different topics (1:17 — impostor syndrome; 2:14 — social media, ‘duvet days’, white feminism, reform of history education in the UK; 6:35 — activism and meaning; 7:50 — activism as an artist; 9:03 — gratitude for turning out alright; 9:30 — pressures of turning thirty; 10:40 — guilt of not enjoying aspects of her life more; 12:44 — identity, vertigo of fame, and grounding; 14:28 — anxiety of being in public spaces; 15:20 — trans issues; 16:58 — empathy, fear and belonging; 20:57 — plurality and choice in feminism; 23:45 — her reach and influence; 26:00 — playing a symbol, being a human; 28:25 — embarrassing moments).
However, one particular phrase in one particular snippet (28:04–28:16) spiked some attention across the USA, UK and Australia.
I… never believed the whole ‘I’m happy single’ spiel. I was like, ‘This is a spiel, this is totally a spiel.’. […] It took me a long time, but I’m very happy — I call it being ‘self-partnered’.
No, of course not; I think there are actually two orthogonal concerns here.
I tried to illustrate my point in the diagram above. Note, that I’ve deliberately chosen ‘dating status’ rather than ‘relationship status’ because I’m focusing on what a person wants rather than has. ‘Single’ is too coarse a concept — one can be single and anywhere on the above grid. Being self-partnered is more about moving to the right, regardless of how far up or down the ‘dating status’ axis one is.
Of course, the metaphor isn’t perfect: one can love oneself to the point of narcissism and egotism. My point is to explain what ‘self-partnering’ means to those who cannot fathom the concept rather than to those who take it too far.
One of my first exposures to the dangers of not being ‘self-parterned’ was comedian Daniel Sloss’ Netflix special, Jigsaw. Described by him as a ‘love letter to single people’, it has been massively influential on my life, both positively (resulting in this article) and perhaps negatively too (discouraging me from vegan activism).
I highly encourage you go watch it because I don’t wish to diminish the impact of hearing his words for the first time. Around halfway through, Sloss starts to discuss how his Dad (and society at large, through movies and TV shows) left him, unintentionally, at the impressionable age of seven, with the following idea.
If you are not with someone, you are broken. If you are not with someone, you are incomplete. If you are not with someone, you are not whole.
He summarises the situation most people are in as follows:
A bunch of people who never took time to learn how to be alone, therefore never learned how to love themselves, so you employed someone else to do it. […] So whenever I’m in a relationship, […] I’ll compromise, I’ll change who I am and then for some reason, I hate myself. Why do I hate myself? ’Cause I’m not me.
Hating oneself is not limited to whether or not you’re in a romantic relationship; it is a manifestation of the fundamental ‘Buddha Nature Blocker’ of faintheartedness or timidity (the deeply ingrained tendency to deem ourselves incompetent and insufficient). When discussing this topic in his book Joyful Wisdom, Mingyur Rinpoche relates a touching anecdote of a lady who came to one of his lectures.
Then, in a small voice, almost a whisper, she said, “I hate myself.” […] She became tense again and started to cry. “I can’t do anything right. […] What’s wrong with me?”
So let’s say that we’re on board and we’d like to learn to love ourselves more. The question then becomes, how? Loving oneself actively goes against many of the stories and experiences we grow up with. However, there are a few people we would do well to listen to — I’ve grouped what they say into three generalisable principles.
If you’d like to soundtrack this article, I recommend Kung Fu Fighting (the Cee Lo Green and Jack Black version from the movie Kung Fu Panda).
In that aforementioned section of Joyful Wisdom, Rinpoche’s point is to illustrate that such thoughts are merely judgements, not necessarily reflective of reality. When years ago I was doing CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), one of the exercises was to note down any judgements I had about myself, note the triggers and my responses to them, and then challenge the judgements, by coming up with alternative, kinder ones and examining the evidence on both sides. Like Sloss had the clarity to be able to step back and see his Dad’s and society’s judgement of single people for what it was, so too I was slowly learning to step back and observe my self-critical judgements are not necessarily reflective of reality.
Under this perspective, such judgements about ourselves are illusory walls of ignorance, boxing ourselves off from our own acceptance, preventing us from recognising the fact that we already love ourselves. I’m currently doing the Tergar Joy of Living course, and in ‘Level 2: Opening the Heart’, Rinpoche defined ‘love’ as ‘a wish for someone to have happiness and its causes’. In that light, even self-criticism and harsh judgements are (misguided) expressions of the desire to change yourself in a way you think would make you happier. With an understanding of that view, it becomes possible to open up to yourself.
કોટિ રવિચંદ્રની કાંતિ ઝાંખી કરે
એવા તારા ઉર વિષે,નાથ ભાસે
- Muktanand Swami
A crore sun’s and moons’ brilliance peeking through,
Like that, in your breast, Refuge shines
[નાથ (naath) is usually translated as ‘Lord’, but there’s a nuance (Bhagavad-gomandal) of a protector. In fact, the word ‘juggernaut’ is actually derived from ‘jaggan-naath’ meaning ‘protector of the world’.]
One of the more unfortunate lessons in Western culture is the idea that you need to rely on an external saviour to come and fix your problems. In religious settings, this manifests itself in the idea of the Messiah, in pop-culture fiction as the Knight in Shining Armour, or the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The assumption is that you are fundamentally flawed and incomplete (sound familiar?) and you need someone else to save you from your version of damnation.
A much more positive idea is that we are all fundamentally whole and complete and it is in fact our ignorance that makes us look outside and rely on externals rather than look within. And so to dispel the darkness of ignorance, one needs to develop the light of one’s wisdom. Whichever path you chose to do so (the subtle notion of the Tathāgatagarbha, the Upanishadic metaphor of the mind as a dirty mirror, or the Stoics or Science of Well-Being on the relevance of externals to one’s happiness), the end result is the same: you basically have all you need to be satisfied within yourself.
Literally, ‘buddha’ means the awakened one, in Samskrtam (aka Sanskrit). And the awakened one had a few important things to say about the self-reliance. When explaining that a mother or a poor field labourer had achieved enlightenment through their own efforts and consoling the rest of the sangha about his impending parinibbana (27–35), he repeatedly said the same is: one is (indeed) one’s own refuge.
Jay Shetty articulates this point rather beautifully when he says:
No one is coming to save you;
you have to save yourself.
No one is coming to change your life;
you have to change yourself.
You have to be your own hero
and save your own heart.
Related, my favourite verse in Kung Fu Fighting is:
You are a natural
Why is it so hard to see
Maybe it’s just because
You keep on looking at me
The journey’s a lonely one
So much more than we know
But sometimes you’ve got to go
Go on and be your own hero
In another emotional video, Jay Shetty asks some girls to write down their self-flagellating thoughts and then prompts them to say them to their sisters. Not only did they flat-out refuse, the thought of doing so horrified them.
But then I wondered, what about the converse? What if he had asked them to write down positive things about their sisters and loved ones, and then say it to themselves?
I can’t take credit for any of the principles of this post: I took them from a Beyoncé song :P I also wouldn’t dare speak for or conjecture on behalf of Buddha. All I invite you to do, is wonder: who would you think of when listening to Halo?