Have you ever stopped to think how many times do you find yourself judging someone every day? How many criticisms do we hear and how many do we make from when we wake up to when we go to bed? Surely there will be many or in any case, a number that is always too high to be able to live with the mental serenity we need.One of the secrets that Buddhist philosophy teaches us to rediscover spiritual peace is never to criticize. However, this is probably one of the most difficult principles to apply as we are naturally inclined to criticize. We see something we don't like or don't meet our expectations and values, and we immediately criticize it.
There are people who are real specialists in this field, they are people who live practically only to criticize what others are doing. But have you ever wondered what lies behind a criticism?
Many of the people who are dedicated to criticizing others simply try to distract their mind from the existential distress they are experiencing. They criticize others for not being forced to criticize themselves and not having to take steps to solve their problems. So, they just look at the speck in the eye of others while ignoring the beam in their eyes.
This way they will stay in their comfort zone, ignoring their own faults at the cost of minimizing the mistakes of others. It is what is known as "bad common joy", even if personally I prefer a variant of this idea: "bad common joy for fools".
Criticizing and judging: two sides of the same coin
Our nature leads us to make comparisons and decide what is best or worst for us. Through these comparisons we judge things, phenomena or people following some rules. It is a natural and useful process because it allows us to distance ourselves from the facts by taking a more objective position and, eventually, making better decisions.
However, criticism is often just a form of censorship, a way of denouncing a person's actions and behaviors for the simple pleasure of doing so, without obtaining any benefit or lesson that would help us improve our lives or at least avoid these same mistakes. In these cases, criticism is completely counterproductive because it prevents us from looking inside ourselves, it makes us concentrate so much on others that it prevents us from solving our problems.
Therefore, observing the lives of others and how they solve their problems can be a very useful exercise or, conversely, it can be an unhealthy habit that leads to immobility and to fill us with resentment towards the whole world.
It is you who must decide, but you must always keep in mind that we are not judges and we have no right to blame anyone.
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