Craving, hatred, and delusion: the fetters of the ego

Craving, hatred, delusion form one of the neat sets of virtues and vices from the Buddhist liturgical canon. They are called “fetters of the ego.” In my own psyche they rank: 1) delusion; 2) craving; 3) hatred.

Hatred is number three. I have had three enemies in my life. For a moment I could only remember two of them. That is a good sign.

Once your antennae are trained, you detect your hatred early, and that is the moment to depart, before you waste energy, emotion and brain power. There is room for pretty much everybody on this earth, and the person I hate might fit in tidily somewhere else. Hitler, Genghis Khan, people who would kill 500,000 Rwandans, and Saddam Hussein are outside of this scope. They are the stuff of grand philosophy, Devil and Evil talk.

One of them was an extremely successful litigation partner in one of the biggest law firms in the U.S. Her disdainful, manipulating and suspicious nature were perfectly suited to her work, and when she died an early death she left millions of dollars behind, specifically cutting out her mentally ill brother, giving it mostly to the Republican Party. She probably died of hatred, though they called it something else.

Craving is my median weakness. Craving is all mixed up with impatience. If you could only wait until dinner to eat, you wouldn’t get fat. Craving the sound of a boyfriend’s voice has gotten me on the telephone long before I should have been, during times when a period of separation would be a better idea. Craving has landed me in bed with someone long before the relationship was ready for it.

The opposite of craving, waiting for perfection, is also counterproductive. You have to date quite a lot before you find out which flaws are dealbreakers, and which you can get used to.

Viewing it as a continuum, we look for the sweet spot in a relationship where you each have a few tolerable flaws to put up with for (you hope) the rest of your life but you get that feeling of sweet security, reliability, response, and I guess we call it “love” that you have craved.

My cravings have turned frogs into princes one too many times. They are frogs.

Now we come to the force which has made me fall off the edge of the earth. Delusion.

Once I was leaving a job and at my going-away party one of my fellow teachers read a poem which was very funny and appreciative, but included the lines:

Ann is smart and at her sternest

When talking about the importance of Ernest.

Ernest was my boyfriend, later my husband. I was unaware how gradually, but completely, I had made Ernest my world. I had deluded myself into thinking he was giving me a wider world, not, as it turned out, less of everything.

Other peoples’ advice and observations are a good way to check delusions and maybe I should have listened more closely to that observation. I didn’t have my internal delusion detector working properly, and possibly still don’t.

It is rare that a pointed observation is made so wittily, in rhyme. Think of the clumsy, well meaning warnings you have received which came out as insults. Think of the overstatements of risk so grossly overdrawn that you discounted the warning.

Our delusions are so deeply rooted in our expectations and our predictions. A male friend fell in love with a married woman a few years ago during a torrid, brief affair which she abruptly broke off. The mere mention of her name still strikes deeply into his heart. He is convinced that she loves him more than she loves her husband, and that she will come to him one day. Delusion. Or is that true love?

How slippery delusion is, because it somehow involves predicting the future, and nobody can do that.