Judgment and Non-Judgment
It is critical to our progress along the path that we make lucid judgments about skillful and unskillful thoughts and behaviors. At the same time though we are often enjoined to pursue a kind of non-judgmental awareness.
How are these recommendations reconciled? Or are they completely at odds? We will look at this question in this video.
Seems to me that being non-judgmental implies avoiding the fixations or attachments that go along with certain kinds of judgment, judgments of others that criticize in order to justify myself or protect my self image and which are often linked to resentments, fears, confrontations, responses to judgments of others: “he said I was x, but I don’t believe it. He’s only a stupid y anyway … .” These judgments are reactive, and thus the idea of a non-reactive attitude sounds good to me. Thanks for the idea of non-reactivity. The reactive judgments of others are not anything like skillful choices — rather they can fester and make things worse.
Absolutely Michael. Negative judgments of others can be pernicious even when true.