Doubt, Arrogance, and Humility

Abstract

The author compares the simple, yet radical acceptance evoked in Dr. Safran's paper to the Tibetan Buddhist notion of being unfrozen from one's clinging to “self.” A dream and personal associations show how arrogance, symbolized by the horse, and self-doubt/ignorance, symbolized by the ass, interfere with acceptance and living fully. The Buddha's notion of the “Middle Way” as a “liberation from both the exhaustible and the inexhaustible” (Morinaga, 1925) is a path out of the dualism of endless seesawing between arrogance and self-doubt. Humility allows surrender and acceptance of living moment-by-moment. Humility is explored etymologically, and from the points of view of a Tibetan teacher, a Castilian nun, and the work of Ghent (1990) on surrender. These perspectives relate humility to truths of human nature, to an openness to seeing, to an ability radically to admit one's personal limitations.