The other night I watched television journalist Christiane Amanpour interview a woman she called “Sarah.” Sarah is a lawyer for the International Criminal Court (ICC), and in 2024 she accused Karim Khan, the Chief Prosecutor for the ICC, of sexual misconduct. In the interim, rumor mongers accused Sarah of being a covert Mossad agent who was taking Khan down because of his arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. The adjudication of the complaint against Khan is now in its final stages, and this interview was Sarah’s first public interview. While I found her to be a compelling witness, it’s not my intent to judge the merits of the charges against Khan.
I mention this interview because of a fascinating moment that occurred during its course that helps illuminates a point I want to make about Buddhist practice. In the interview, Sarah stated in detail her specific allegegations against Khan. Amanpour noted Sarah did not use the word “rape” in her account, and that the testimonial record shows that when investigators asked her whether she had been raped, she just remained silent. Amanpour asked. “Why?”
At first Sarah replied that she was a lawyer trained to give just the facts and not draw conclusions—conclusions were up to the jurists. But after having said that, her face betrayed a moment of emotion she struggled to hold back, and added that if she put a label on what had happened she wouldn’t be able to continue functioning as a lawyer, a wife, and a mother.
That is the moment I want to focus one. Like Sarah, we can choose to take an internal stance that closes off certain lines of inquiry so that we can remain functioning. We can also choose to close them off so that we remain comfortable. This choosing to close off applies not only to how we view our internal experiences, but also whether and how much we choose to empathically imagine what others might be feeling.
I am currently reading Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). In it, Smith argues it is our human capacity to empathically imagine others’ experience that is the ultimate foundation for all of ethics. When we hear someone is murdered, we can imagine what that murdered person must have felt in the final moments of their life, or we can imagine being in the shoes of a family member. Our feelings of repulsion, fear, loss, or disgust as we engage in these acts of empathic imagination form the basis for society’s prohibitions against murder—not whether it violates the Ten Commandments or the categorical imperative. Whether or not we agree with Smith’s conclusions, most of us can agree that our ability to empathically imagine how others feel plays an important role in our everyday morality. It is the basis for the Golden Rule.
What I want to emphasize is that engaging our empathic imagination is something we can choose to do or not to do. We can choose whether or not we want to go there.
When we walk down the street and pass a homeless beggar, we can decide in that moment to engage in imaginative empathy—what is it like to live that person’s life right now?—or we can choose not to go there. We can choose to focus our eyes straight ahead and keep on walking. In another moment, the other person is all but forgotten.
We can imagine what it might be like to be an average Israeli confronted by an interlocutor asking if they can empathize with Palestinian suffering. The Israeli can choose to go there—or choose to focus on the suffering of one’s fellow Israelis, the need for solidarity with one’s people, and the need for security. It easy enough to decide in the moment, “I’m not going there.” It’s equally easy for pro-Palestinian activists to choose not to empathically imagine what it’s like to be a post-October 7th Israeli.
Our Sangha just read a chapter in Charlotte Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen in which she describes the internal battles we all go through to some extent or another between parts of ourselves that want to be selfish or indulge in anger, and parts of ourselves that want us to be better people; to be generous and kind. Sometimes we can listen into an internal dialogue between the “bad” parts of ourselves and the “self-improvement” part of ourselves. The Gestalt therapist, Fritz Perls, called this kind of inner battle the battle between “top dog” and “underdog.” Top dog tells underdog he/she needs to be a better person in some way (be kinder, be thinner, work harder) and underdog says, “you’re right!” But underdog doesn’t really change and almost always wins. Perls addressed these inner conflicts by having his patients sit alternatingly in two chairs. In the first chair he would have the person identify with his or her selfish or angry part and voice aloud what that part felt a need to say. When that part was done speaking, Perl’s would invite the person to switch to the other chair and speak as the self-improvement part. This dialogue would go back and forth until either a previously unimagined resolution to the conflict emerged, or when it became clear to the person how stuck they were. Part of the wisdom that emerges from such an exercise is the awareness that there is no such thing as getting rid of or excising a part. Each part of us has something valid and important to say.
In Everyday Zen, Joko Beck was recommending that when we become aware of these kinds of internal conflicts we can choose to sit in a third kind of seat and become a neutral observer who does not take sides. She writes as if this inner observer is our “original self” or some kind of reified consciousness. It’s not. It’s just our capacity to choose in any moment to sit in one internal seat or another—to be in the “pro” seat, or the “con” seat, or the “observer” seat. One thing Zen practice does is strengthen our awareness of how powerful taking the observer seat can be. We learn to take that perspective more and more often whenever he become aware of inner conflict. Being the observer allows us to listen to both sides of an inner conflict and discover whether in this moment a third way is possible, or to become more aware of our stuck-ness.
Sometimes, just the ability to stay “with” our stuck-ness is just what’s needed. A resolution of the conflict may not be possible in this moment, but changing future conditions may provide fertile ground for an emergent solution.
In addition, sometimes being the inner observer helps us to see the human condition as it actually is: the inevitability of conflicting inner perspectives; the fact that we may never improve and will certainly never be perfect; and that as humans we are always walking a tightrope between our baser natures and our higher aspirations.
And perhaps “walking a tightrope” is too negative a phrase. Zen practice can help us to become more at ease with accepting the multiple voices inside our heads and give up hope for final victories. We learn to dance to our inner dialogues and laugh along with them. It’s not just a bad thing. It’s a human thing. And if Zen is about anything, its about becoming more fully human.