It's widely accepted, these days, that there's plenty of wisdom to be found in Buddhism, even if you're a hardcore atheist with a Richard Dawkins ankle tattoo who'd never be caught taking life advice from any other religion. (Can you imagine the damage to mindfulness meditation's reputation if word got out that it's been part of Christian, Muslim and Jewish traditions for centuries?) Yet one of the most insightful bits of Buddhist psychology has yet to reach a widespread modern audience: the notion of the "near enemy". According to this way of thinking, for every desirable habit or state of mind, there's a "far enemy", which is its obvious antithesis. Thus hatred, it won't surprise you to learn, is the far enemy of love. Near enemies, on the other hand, are much sneakier and harder to spot, because they so closely resemble the thing they're the enemy of. Needy, possessive co-dependency can look and feel a lot like love, when really it corrodes it.
This is best thought of as a metaphor, of course: Buddhist mythology is full of malicious demons disguising themselves as decent sorts, and clearly emotions can't really be devious or sneaky. But it's a metaphor that works surprisingly well in numerous contexts. It's great to cultivate an attitude of easy-going acceptance, for instance – but not if it curdles into resignation or indifference, which looks similar but is in fact entirely opposed. (Ancient Greek Stoicism is one thing; stiff upper-lipped, repressed British stoicism another.) A further example: psychology studies remind us that being overly materialistic is a recipe for misery. Yet all too often the proposed solutions involve spending lots of money on memorable experiences, or becoming obsessively minimalist and purging your possessions – both of which, though they appear anti-materialist, are just different versions of a fixation on money and stuff.
The idea might even apply on a societal level, suggests the Buddhist teacher Ethan Nichtern: what if recycling and other relatively superficial aspects of an "ethical lifestyle" are best understood as the near enemies of a true commitment to environmental action, making climate change harder rather than easier to address? You might expect the plastics industry to be against recycling, but as Nichtern writes, it's "incredibly supportive of recycling legislation over a more long-term… reduction of disposable culture".
It's ironic that you're as likely to enounter near enemies in "spiritual" circles – including Buddhist ones – as anywhere else. Meditation can be a path to calm and clarity. But hang around meditators for a while and you're sure to run into a few who seem to be using it to smother issues they should probably see a therapist about; on closer inspection, what they exude isn't calm so much as an eerie sort of blankness. The American psychologist John Welwood called this "spiritual bypassing": the tendency "to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues". Not even the most apparently enlightened, it seems, are immune to confusing a fake for the real thing. All anyone can do is to be constantly aware of the risk.
I've stretched the idea of "near enemies" a long way beyond its origins here, I recognise. Though I trust this wouldn't have irritated the Buddha too much. I'm pretty sure not much did.
oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
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