The Philosophy You Can’t Stand Might Be the One You Need Most
How my love-hate relationship with Buddhism made me a better thinker.
Of all the self-help advice out there, nothing has helped my life more than going straight to the source of most modern self-help: ancient philosophy.
For some, philosophy can act as a mild antidepressant.
That said, there are several philosophies that I just can’t stand. For a long time, Buddhism really bothered me. Why? Because honestly, I can be kind of a grinch and the idea of “attaining peace” seemed far-fetched and too good to be true. If Buddha came up in conversation, I was quick to begin a rant about “that fat bastard” and his “cult of meditation”. Real mature, I know.
For a long time, I was so committed to being right about Buddhism being a trash ideology that I didn’t notice that my anger was saying more about me than it was about the ideas I didn’t like.
I’ve come to realize now that I was (mostly) wrong about Buddhism and that I was using anger to project my own frustrations — not very “Zen” of me. What I really learned from this experience wasn’t how to attain Nirvana or how to achieve inner peace (I’m still working on that), but rather that the ideas that we can’t stand might in fact be the ones that we need…
