The Way of Paradox
Have you ever felt stuck? Maybe you’ve found yourself challenged by a complex decision. If so, odds are you were dealing with a paradox. Soren Kierkegaard observed, “The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling.” Although paradoxes are sometimes challenging to see, they are inevitable and have a way of making us feel an internal tug of war.
In the new book Both/And Thinking, authors Wendy Smith (a recent podcast guest) and Marianne Lewis define a paradox this way,
Paradoxes are interdependent, persistent contradictions that lurk within our presenting dilemmas. Diving into a dilemma, exploring the options at a deeper level, we find opposing forces interlocked in a circular ebb and flow. Paradoxes may seem absurd at first as they integrate contradictions, yet a more thorough investigation can unveil a logic to the holistic synergies of competing demands. Other researchers use words like polarity or dialectics in similar ways. In our own studies, we adopt the word paradox to align with a rich research tradition and to reflect their often complex and mysterious ways.
Paradoxes exist nearly everywhere — even in the area of self-improvement. In the classic On Becoming a Person, psychologist Carl Rogers wrote, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
The Paradox of Acceptance
A recent conversation with Dr. Carl Erik Fisher (author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction) uncovered the pivotal role of self-awareness and acceptance. To a question on the need for self-acceptance in habit change, Dr. Fisher explained,
I don’t know another route, honestly, based on clinical work and my recovery and spiritual practice. I don’t know another route to change other than radical acceptance, to use a phrase from Tara Brock, and deep, deep compassion for whatever is showing up in the present moment, including myself, habits, conditioning, and limitations. I think that acceptance is really the bottom line. At least it’s one of the first crucial steps.
The notion of acceptance does not only apply to ourselves; it also applies to the world. The psychologist Albert Ellis (founder of REBT) put it this way: “The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties.” Likewise, in his Essays, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote,
“Learning to live, in the end, is learning to live with imperfection in this way, and even to embrace it.”
The Middle Way
Buddhist teachings point to the middle way. According to the Buddha, the awakened one (or Tathāgata) has realized the middle way, which gives rise to vision, knowledge, peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and wisdom (or Nibbāna).
Addressing a group of monks, the Buddha said,
It is this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This, monks, is that middle way awakened to by the Tathāgata (or enlightened one), which gives rise to vision, which gives rise to knowledge, and leads to peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and wisdom (or Nibbāna).
Similarly, the meditation teacher Jack Kornfield explains that Buddhist psychology is neither a path of denial nor of affirmation. It shows us the paradox of the universe, within and beyond the opposites. It teaches us to be in the world but not of the world.
In his book Wise Heart, Kornfield explains,
The middle way describes the middle ground between attachment and aversion, between being and non-being, form and emptiness, free will, and determinism. The more we delve into the middle way, the more deeply we come to rest between the play of opposites.
Final Thoughts
We don’t have to view decisions as going left or right, up or down, and right or wrong. The way of paradox enables us to see a middle way — to embrace the tension and use both/and thinking. When you encounter a paradox, remember that there is potential and opportunity within the tension. To quote the nineteenth-century Danish physicist Niels Bohr, “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. As always, feel free to comment or ask questions!