Within the boundaries of respect and (occasionally) propriety, I’m generally a very open person with the way I think and feel. This is not because I am necessarily the most secure person in the world, but it largely springs from the fact that I have way too much to deal with in life to keep it all in. This aspect of my personality, which has been cultivated over many years, is one that leads to difficulties on occasion. Knowledge is power, and when people know about you, about your life and the way you have lived, and the mistakes you have made, your personal business quickly becomes common and general knowledge, the consequences of which must be dealt with.

I say this at the outset because I am someone who believes that genuine and respectful relationships of any kind must be based on truth, and truth requires a certain openness as to our needs and wants and expectations. I’m not a good liar, and I hate dissembling and pretense. I feel deeply and horribly uncomfortable in any environment that seeks to pretend that everything is alright and never have the trust or genuineness to talk about real issues with the hope of resolving them. I do not believe in solving these issues with violence by railroading others into compliance with my own (or anyone else’s) opinion and perspective, but I do believe we have to construct institutions that allow for honest and open discourse without the threat of sanctions for professing mere opinions about others.

We have to decide for ourselves, especially if we are in leadership positions, whether we value sincerity and honesty or whether we value pretense and illusion. Buddhists have a belief that reality is illusion, but this is a mistaken belief because it fails to distinguish between the fiction of our public relations and the existence of a genuine reality underneath it. If our reality and our existence is deceptive, it is because we are dissemblers and liars, not because there is no deeper truth underlying our existence. What we chose to do about the truth speaks to our own character.

It is therefore an act of courage to believe and speak the truth in a world that is ruled over by deception. Even though to some extent we are all blinded and deceived by our fears and lusts, our ignorance and our presumed knowledge, we also deceive others. We must accept responsibility for living lives of integrity, which can be a difficult task. It requires us to wrestle with our fears, to show others who we really are, within appropriate boundaries, and to allow others to feel comfortable enough to be themselves.

Before we can wrestle with who we ought to be, we have to understand who we are. It is easy to be full of all kinds of loathsome and wicked ways but put on a show of godliness in one’s surface behavior. All of us, no matter how honest we are, develop enough practice in this area in our lives to appear more righteous than we really are. I cannot condemn this behavior in others without lamenting its presence in myself. We do this for a variety of reasons, but one of the more common ones is that we know that if we admit our struggles and shortcomings we are likely to be judged very harshly for them, and so not wishing to be judged we pretend to be better than we really are. And everyone else does the same as well, even to the point where we often deceive ourselves into thinking ourselves better than we really are.

Encouraging openness in others is not an easy task. It requires a great deal of respect so that they see that one will not condemn them for what they have seen, and done, and what has been done to them. Some of us carry large burdens and histories of being attacked and ridiculed for deeply personal matters. These wounds do not heal easily, and it is hard for us to build up the trust that we need in order to establish good relationships with others when there is the fear of condemnation for admitting one’s true feelings. Honest communication depends on the avoidance of silence and violence, which can only take place in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.

There are many examples I could use to describe my own struggles with this issue, but I will give a personal one rather than a political one, and hopefully it will not cause any offense. As the teacher in charge of administrative affairs here at Legacy Institute, it is part of my job to enforce the rules on others. One of these rules is that no dating is allowed by either teachers or students. It should not be any surprise that this particular rule is the cause of a great deal of deception and dissembling among the students (and it presents a fair bit of difficulty for teachers as well, as might be imagined). If it is a punishable offense to be interested in someone or to be in a relationship with someone, then clearly by that standard I am worthy of punishment myself, and also I am unwilling to punish others for that which I myself am guilty of.

After all, it is not uncommon to see people showing a great deal of interest in others here. There are a couple of students who are in a relationship here, albeit a private one, and as both of them are decent and honorable I see no trouble in the existence of a relationship, and would not wish them to feel it necessary to hide in the presence of others, myself included. Likewise, I have known at least a couple of other students who have falsely called their boyfriends “cousins” to avoid getting in trouble. And, as I have mentioned, I am not suited to the monkhood in my own conduct, as any reader of this blog would be able to readily understand.

As for my own opinion, it is my belief that it is not the existence of feelings or interest or a relationship that is a problem, since when you put young men and young women together you will get those things whether you like it or not, but rather how they are handled. As a teacher, I can set an example of how to respect and treat the young woman I care for in a proper and professional manner while being open and honest about my romantic interest at the same time. And I would hope that this behavior would be a worthy way of teaching and modeling how to treat others.

It should go without saying, though, that in order for this behavior to be copied and accepted that it would require a sense of openness where people are able to see and understand that the mere existence of feelings or even a relationship will not lead to punishment and sanctions, but that it is the behavior and proper respect and decorum that is the deciding factor. That requires a bit more nuance than a blanket prohibition that not even I can keep, though, and a delicacy to the feelings and an open understanding of the reality of one’s situation. If one wants the truth, one has to be able to handle the truth, and if one wants to encourage honesty, one has to prevent such honesty from becoming an offense worthy of punishment. We could all stand to improve in these matters.