Recently I read the book "three steps to awakening", of Larry Rosenberg.
Larry says that relationships are very useful to the dhamma practice because it is the most powerful way for our egoistic tendencies to arise in order to deal with them.
Is it true, I think we all are agree.

In my case this is specially obvious because I enjoy great inner peace in solitude (and spend a lot of time), but in relationships this collapse time and time again, although I have been trying many different mindful approaches for many years.

The reason of this post is this reflection, that has been always in my mind: in situations with terrible physical pain, heat, cold, illnesses...big adversities is obvious very difficult to be mindful...probably also in spiritual masters and enlightened people.
So, how about this contemporary society? Isn´t it completely disfunctional? I saw in TV a zoo in Japan with 1000 monkeys and all were neurotic and completely crazy. Aren´t we humans to live in small groups of people, all acquaintance and in nature?
A person with inner peace is supposed to be at ease in this society... is it logical? is it possible? doesn´t the crazy energy of the contemporary population (specially now with all this high technology) invade us?

My opinion is that a Noble One may be happy and fullfilled (sorry for my english) in a quiet and more "normal" environment and why should he be like that in such a disfunctional society?
Thank you

The experience of Kornfield in his book A Path with Heart, about his returning to this society after many years of serious practice and retreats marked me.... he admited that all the old psychological problems were still there!
That is the reason I put this post: maybe the spiritual quest is about get deep inner peace and lead a simple and attentive life without having to face all the challenges of this obviously dysfunctional society.
We have this New Age tendency to face the things we hate and be able to face any situation with mindfulness and balance...

I hope you understand what I mean

This is a very important topic because it is about the problems of many yogis to deal with this kind of modern life

I think that because I've never went on an extended retreat for years of my life I often have better equanimity than people who do this. 

Personally I've never resonated with Jack Kornfield's books find that he beats around the bush. I tend to like practice instructions so I can go practice.

My favourite attitude is to understand what psychology already knows. Looking at people who have good romantic relationships when they don't have any spiritual background, is a big clue.

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5660267
The Positive Psychology of Love

The modern world is about chasing goals and while you are alive Buddhism doesn't prevent you from basic needs having to be met, but there's a whole section of goals that are up to you. Find goals that are worthy of your time and pursue them with motivating imagery:


http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5720286
Imagery Books

Emptiness just makes it easier to learn conventional forms of happiness and to have the energy to pursue them because you are okay with obstacles and failure that naturally happens along the way.

The great thing about psychology (especialy learning about personality disorders) you can detect which people you should avoid and which people have a chance at healthy relationships and attitudes. If a person tries a lot at romantic relationships but has to reject many people due to their extreme beliefs then at least they tried and have the solace that the grass isn't greener on the other side. Being alone without trying seems a waste.

EDIT: Another point I would like to make is that as meditators (I have this problem) we forget that we can often be like therapists and therapists are often dealing with psychological resistance. Our lack of empathy and contempt for normal people gets in our way of teaching things to people.

The biggest resistance you'll get is when you don't give enough validation to people:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pieces-mind/201204/understanding-validation-way-communicate-acceptance

Jose, I understand what you say.

I do not entirely agree. I believe (and it is just a belief because I do not know, as I am not enlightened) that it is possible to be quite content and calm even amidst the busyness and crazyness that is much of modern day life.

I remember listening to Eckhart Tolle once talking about how he was even able to enjoy walking through downtown New York, amidst all the traffic and scurrying people and feel totally at ease with the life circumstances as they were in that moment.

Daniel, if he reads this would be well suited to answer given that he works in a hectic Accident & Emergency (called ER in the US) department of a hospital...

Eckhart Tolle also repeatedly talks about the benefits of being in relationship if even just one party has a certain level of awareness (obviously better if both do) because each other triggers what he terms the "pain body". He writes/speaks extensively on these topics and about how one can become intensely aware of the pain body as it arises. If both partners are practicing in this way, they can even develop a signal, such as a hand gesture to indicate to the other that their pain body has arisen. Then, if the other is able to "catch it" in the moment they can be with it and not act on it. If not, they will bite the other ones head off anyway  :-)

The pain body can be likened to a dormant entity. How often it is active varies from person to person. For some, it arises ocassionally. For some people it can be present almost all of the time (think of someone who is constantly angry or perhaps a crazy person walking down the street and shouting obscenities at anyone who happens to walk by).

Often, when in solitude, it is difficult to notice its presence or simply because it is not triggered by the words or actions of another person.

I guess in Buddhist terms the pain body can be likened to the taints/kilesa...

This echoes my opinion on the topic of the intersection of fundamental insight and psycho-emotional development.  I have a very strong opinion because insight practice is working for me in gaining psycho-emotional healing.  I have been to many therapists and benefited greatly from them (same with shrinks and psych meds).  However, 'emptiness' seems to give me enough space to go in any direction that I want.  Since my desired direction is mental health, it almost happens automatically.  This might be tangential to the point in the original post, so I'll stop here.

Interesting topic.

Forgive me for quoting a pop-star, but I think this is an interesting thought:
“Peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no trouble, noise, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart”
-Lady Gaga

This is kind of a nice definition of equanimity actually. It reminds me of Shinzen Young's definition of suffering - Pain x Resistance = Suffering, whereas Pain x Equaminity = "Purification"... substitute pain with discomfort or any other unpleasant feeling and you get the same result.

I think there's a type of peace thats a direct result of being in certain environments - most people feel relaxed on a sunny day at the beach or in a forest, or by a heater on a winters night with good friends. A pleasant external atmosphere creates pleasant feelings within, and its very easy to access a sense of peace in nice circumstances. Whereas harsh, horrible environments tend to have the opposite effect - but its definitely possible to be at peace (at least to a certain degree) in the midst of a horrible or traumatic situation.

This has actually led me to discover a really "bad" side-effect of meditation, as my skill at equanimity/being-at-peace in difficult situations has increased, my aversion to difficult situations has decreased. I have very very little fear of bad things happenings, and when bad things do happen I find it quite easy to remain in tune with a kind of witness-consciousness, detached and at peace in the midst of turmoil. While this is great for dramatically decreasing suffering, it has been disasterous in a way because my tolerance for bullsh!t has also increased... meaning I stay in bad situations longer than I probably should in some vain attempt to fix them up.

As I see it, this has interesting ramifications on a societal level.  I heard a talk by philosopher Slavoj Zizek where he was quoting D.T. Suzuki talking about zen and war, and killing a person mindfully. Zizek seemed to be accusing Buddhism of having the potential to facilitate psychopathy - where a person has such deep equanimity that they can transcend their aversions to killing, thus cutting someone's head off could be perceived as fundamentally the same as cutting up a piece of paper (i.e. its all just empty sensations subject to the 3 characteristics). I can see where this is coming from, but I think its a really extreme case and would take an inclination towards psychopathy in the first place for it to come true.
I have a friend who used to be really into Buddhism, but abandoned it because he felt it was "too politically apathetic".

Back to your orignal post Jose, I do agree completely that this society is highly dysfuntional, and full of unnecessary cruelty and insanity... and I think that maybe simply being the smiling calm content person is not always the wisest role to play. To alleviate the sufferings, to fix the injustices: dyanmic and wrathful emotions may be useful, especially if they come from a place of compassion.

Hello Jose. You seem to be taking these American lay teachers far too seriously. I have heard Jack's stories many times. In my opinion, he did not acheive any significant spiritual awakening when he was a monk. He returned home to the USA and for a while indulged heavily in unwholesome forms of casual sexuality. This showed no real spiritual development as a monk.

Jack is certainly a gifted and inspiring speaker & teacher to a mainstream market. I trust Jack has helped many people. But that is all. I would not regard Jack as an adept yogi or enlightened master.

Solitude is a beautiful & crucial thing. Society is crazy & dysfunctional as you state. We can be at peace in society by seeing clearly & fully accepting it is crazy & dysfunctional. 'Suchness'. We can abide in society (for example, work in a job) but need to be very gentle and not get overly involved. This is not easy at times.

The Buddha said Noble Ones delight in solitude. However, they must also develop metta & patience with the world.

Nicky, thankyou for your interesting comments with regards to Jack, I'm only partially familiar with his work. I think how you depict him is probably a lot more true of many well-known western (and eastern for that matter) teachers than is often presented. But then I think of things like the Joshu Sasaki Roshi scandal - the senior zen monk in the world, probably incredibly highly attained - yet morally imperfect. I feel the whole idea of the perfect enlightened being is nothing more than a regurgitation of the childhood fantasy of a superman-like hero, at the end of the day they are still human - and if they weren't how much compassion would the really be capable of??

Nicky:
I've seen a lot of suffering created by people acting with gentleness and refusing to get involved in a toxic world, where they could have stepped in and done something to help. While I have the deepest, deepest, deepest respect for the Forest Monks who retreat from the world, I can't help feeling that there is an in-built aspect of selfishness (perhaps even "Spiritual Greed") by dogmatically adhering to that path - which I have to admit is in and of itself morally dubious. Most people I know seem to view the monastic path in that light - selfish indulgence under the banner of religious righteousness (I only partially agree).

In my view there is a place for gentleness and retreat, and there is a place for dynamic action and involvement.

I have to agree with this one.  I think saying one 'should' or 'shouldn't' try to do various things can be counterproductive.  It's more like what is a likely better path for your current goals and situation?  Peace can be a bit like dog training.  When training dogs, you first train them in a calm peaceful environment so they can concentrate better.  Then once they have good skill in that environment, you starting increasing the difficulty, taking them out on the street, confronting their phobias, etc.  You keep increasing difficulty until 5 squirrels, a motorcycle parade, and lightening strikes all at once will not rattle them, those are the well trained dogs.  So the question is, how well do you want your dog/mind trained and at what stage are you now? 

IMO, it's not a moral question.  Others suffer but if you suffered, how would that help their suffering?  It's not logical to think you have to suffer or that there is any benefit to you suffering, just because others suffer.  There's no benefit to it.  If you get sucked into other people's drama, it's because you have not dealt fully with that issue in yourself and it remains a weakness and/or insecurity in you.  All the people around you do you the favor of showing you all your weaknesses so much better than if you were all alone trying to find them all by yourself, not finding them, and then thinking you were all done with the dog training already.  But if you can only perform in only one kind of highly specialized controlled environment, then IMO, you don't truly own the peace you feel when you are there, because if you owned that peace, then you could take it with you whereever you went.  ;-P

As for everyone else, they are on their own paths.  Once they suffer enough and try all kinds of noneffective ways to alleviate suffering, and they try them over and over in every way they can, eventually they will start trying more effective ways to not suffer.  I suspect that is why suffering exists, maybe it has to be there to keep telling you that you are still doing it wrong.  ;-P

As for someone else's concern that equanimity can lead to psychopathy, I have wondered about that too.  Maybe if you get stuck in that part of the path, that could happen?   But in the end equanimity gets more and more boring.  I don't think anyone will stay there forever.  Eventually you will want to move on.  But I am not sure how much enlightenment requires tons of kindness and love either.  Certainly those things are good but I have heard plenty of stories of various yogis being really quite the jerks to people around them.  Where those people all the way along the path or maybe had a bit more to go? 
-Eva   

What mindfulness does to create compassion is to reduce stress. When normal brains are less stressed it's easier to develop compassion. When irritated it's almost impossible to be compassionate. 

A psychopath probably has a damaged amygdala and can't experience compassion no matter what. This means that meditation has biological limits.

More accurately, we should probably be talking about sociopaths, kinda similar but not the kind to carry out extreme illegal activities.  Athough definitions do vary, I don't think it's common for sociopaths to have ZERO empathy.  Ones I have known have small amounts of empathy or caring in certain situations.  For instance, one that I know does care about dogs to some extent and likes them, just doesn't care much about humans.  Seems like empathy is just very underdeveloped and its influence weak on the overall personality when compared to more average individuals.  

As far as 'biological limitations' on meditation, I do suspect there are often limits to how fast change can reasonably occur per individual in a certain amount of meditation time.  Plus the biggest weakness of meditation is that an individual has to be at a point where he/she is willing to do it in the first place, which is a HUGE drawback.  It cannot help those who have not already reached a certain point of willingness.  The average sociopath may well not be interested in trying it in the first place.  

As for 'biological limits,' I think they are overrated.  People can and sometimes do pull back from the brink of death from cancer and exhibit complete remission.  People can and do things that shoud be totally impossible.  THose things may not happen every time but that they happen sometimes means they are entirely possible given the right circumstances.  Personally, I think the circumstances have a lot to do with ability and willingness to change.  The more a person clings to previous ways, the more a person will be stuck in previous situations. And most of us are big clingers!  ;-P 
-Eva