Most people in the throes of our achievement society are trying to be a hero. They are striving for greatness. They seek to prove their worth by accruing status, power, or even social impact. They seek to set themselves apart from and above others through extraordinary acts. In doing so, they so often exhaust themselves and label themselves as failures.
Those in the throes of the more traditional disciplinary society strive for moral goodness. They seek to prove their worth by shunning earthly temptations and remaining pure, by overcoming their original sin. They set themselves below a higher authority in perfect obedience. In doing so, they so often debase themselves and label themselves as sinners.
Antiheroes seek neither greatness nor moral goodness as their core aim. They seek the basic goodness within themselves, the world, every being, and every moment.
In his 1984 book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chögyam Trungpa teaches that human beings are, at their root, innately awake and dignified — what he calls basic goodness. For Trungpa, this isn’t something we achieve through greatness or earn through moral goodness. It’s already there in all of us, always, the way the sun is always there shining behind the clouds.
But basic goodness, in his teaching, isn’t only in us. It is in the ordinary textures of the world and the universe too — the dew on a blade of grass, the sound of a river, the warmth of the sun beaming down on us, actually everything that is in this moment.
Goodness isn’t reserved for the extraordinary. It’s woven into things, everything, exactly as they are. It is the natural, most fundamental state of all things.
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book The Antihero’s Journey: From Burnout to Real Contribution in Polycrisis Times. To read other excerpts, go here.
