Aṅguttara Nikāya 3. Book of the Threes 101. The Dirt-washer
QUESTIONS:
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Is it reasonable to read “not wanting to be despised” as meaning wanting to be thought of as competent?
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And also wanting to think of oneself as competent?
POSSIBLE PARALLELS with WESTERN RESEARCH
Threat to our competency as a driver of unproductive and counter-productive speech.
Harvard social psychologist Chris Argyris spent much of his career studying the factors that made for productive and counter-productive communication. A key observation was that nearly everyone studied espoused one set of values and ideas on how to communicate effectively _ (parallels to Right Speech) but when feeling threatened we tend to resort to another set of values and ideas._ A sense of competency of was one of the factors he identified as a cause for for feeling threatened. Threats to competency include events that cause me to question my own competence to handle a situation or the concern that others would question my competency." For example, “I am the presiding member of this sanga meeting, leader, dharm teacher, etc therefor I should know how to react in a certain way to this challenging situation”.
Argyris goes further to show that there are general, common patterns or forms of espoused theories and theories-in-use. In his books he shares how he worked with individuals and organizations so that their actions more closely matched their espoused theories, beliefs and values. Argyris likens the process to working with sports coach or learning a skill from a craftsman.
Using a role playing exercise with well over 30,000 organizational executives and leaders in profit and non-profit organizations, government officials, and university administrators in industrial countries world wide, Argyris and others found that less than 2% of individuals can communicate consistently with their espoused values.
Other Parallels with Buddhism:
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There is a sense of high respect for the value of a good teacher who can show the way.
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The process of learning is challenging and tends to involve a changes to our sense of self.
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The learning process calls for close observation of what we actually say and what we are thinking. The use of a audio recorder is recommended so that practitioners can review and hear for themselves what they actually said vs. what they remembered they said. It can be a rigorous learning process calling for diligence!
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As I see it one advantage of written blogs is that we can later go back and read the actual words that we wrote rather than relying on our memories which are notoriously self serving.
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A sense of gratitude and interdependence tends to get
developed in the practice.
References:
http://www.aral.com.au/resources/argyris.html#a_arg_models
http://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/