{"id":462,"date":"2009-03-01T21:00:05","date_gmt":"2009-03-01T21:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/03\/keep-your-enemies-close-and-your-near-enemies-closer.html"},"modified":"2009-03-01T21:00:05","modified_gmt":"2009-03-01T21:00:05","slug":"keep-your-enemies-close-and-your-near-enemies-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/keep-your-enemies-close-and-your-near-enemies-closer.html","title":{"rendered":"Keep Your Enemies Close, and Your Near Enemies Closer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite ideas from Buddhist psychology has always been the \u201cnear-enemy.\u201d The idea of the \u201cnear-enemy\u201d is that for every beneficial habit or more enlightened quality that we might develop in our mind, there is a devious, and highly intelligent version of confusion which tries to masquerade very closely as the positive trait.<!--more--><br \/>\nFor example, the near-enemy of metta or lovingkindness is not spite or malice, because those qualities are too clearly different from love. They are instead considered \u201cfar enemies,\u201d easier to spot (not necessarily easier to transform, though). Instead, the near enemy to metta is conditional love, commodified care, affection which only enters into contractual obligations that begin with any form of the phrase \u201cI love you if \u2026\u201d The \u201cif,\u201d usually means \u201cif you conform exactly to my narrow view of comfort and security.\u201d<br \/>\nThe reason that the near enemy is such a potent teaching to contemplate is it gets right at the heart of our confusion. If we believe that inherently human beings are awake, compassionate, creative and smart, then how is it that delusions can survive in us at all? How does ignorance survive in the face of Buddha-nature? I hope this question has kept you up at night at least a little bit. It\u2019s kept me up a lot.<br \/>\nThe only answer I can come up with is this: confusion is NOT DUMB. Confusion is very smart. Ridiculously smart and sneaky. It knows how to co-opt the language of Wisdom, knows how to steal compassions logos and use them to its own advantage. That\u2019s the only way delusion has a shot of avoiding Buddha-nature\u2019s powerful gaze. To get smart and crafty.<br \/>\nWhat I\u2019ve been toying around with is how the near-enemy works in the external world, outside the realm of personal psychology.<br \/>\nHere\u2019s a good one: in the world of environmentalism, I\u2019m starting to believe recycling is the near-enemy of true environmental action. I was first fully introduced to this argument in the seminal work <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcdonough.com\/cradle_to_cradle.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Cradle to Cradle<\/em><\/a> and now in the Back to the Sack project it has become clear that the plastics industry is incredibly supportive of recycling legislation over a more long term vision of the reduction of disposable culture.<br \/>\nIn politics, Sarah Palin was the near-enemy of Hillary Clinton. That turned out not to be such a convincing one. Thank you Tina Fey for exposing that delusion.<br \/>\nAnd now, last week, the Republicans (yes I am equating them with the samsaric forces of delusion, more and more every single day that passes &#8211;\u00a0 wanna argue?) have seemingly found President Obama\u2019s near-enemy, Louisiana Governor <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bobby_Jindal\" target=\"_blank\">Bobby Jindal<\/a>. The skeptical side of me thinks maybe they got into a back room before last Tuesday\u2019s Presidential Address and said, \u201cwow, boys, they really got this popular handsome young dark-skinned fella up there. We can\u2019t beat him, but maybe we can find someone of equal pigmentation.\u201d If the ultra-conservative Jindal is Obama\u2019s near-enemy, his national debut is being hailed as a Massive Fail, but I\u2019ll let you judge via youtube below in case you missed the speeches.<br \/>\nWhat other good examples of near-enemies can you think of, either psychologically or culturally? Funny near-enemies preferred. Tragically funny are best.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YcfC2fO1p5E\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YcfC2fO1p5E<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0vCVicXyltk\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0vCVicXyltk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite ideas from Buddhist psychology has always been the \u201cnear-enemy.\u201d The idea of the \u201cnear-enemy\u201d is that for every beneficial habit or more enlightened quality that we might develop in our mind, there is a devious, and highly intelligent version of confusion which tries to masquerade very closely as the positive trait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - 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One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/keep-your-enemies-close-and-your-near-enemies-closer.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Keep Your Enemies Close, and Your Near Enemies Closer - One City","og_description":"One of my favorite ideas from Buddhist psychology has always been the \u201cnear-enemy.\u201d The idea of the \u201cnear-enemy\u201d is that for every beneficial habit or more enlightened quality that we might develop in our mind, there is a devious, and highly intelligent version of confusion which tries to masquerade very closely as the positive trait.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/keep-your-enemies-close-and-your-near-enemies-closer.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-03-01T21:00:05+00:00","author":"Ethan Nichtern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/keep-your-enemies-close-and-your-near-enemies-closer.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/keep-your-enemies-close-and-your-near-enemies-closer.html","name":"Keep Your Enemies Close, and Your Near Enemies Closer - 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His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. Ethan lectures regularly at universities and venues around the country on Buddhism, meditation, contemporary culture, and activism.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/enichtern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}