The Magic Begging Bowl, Part 2 - Self-Inquiry

In Part 1, we saw how even the most exalted stars in the celebrity firmament look on in dismay as their greatest successes – Wimbledon titles, World Cups, sell-out concerts - vanish into the magic begging bowl of their heads that can never be satisfied. No matter how many triumphs are poured into the bowl, discontented thoughts continue to blaze through the mind:

‘I could have experienced the ultimate satisfaction, glory and happiness of being considered the greatest tennis player who ever lived, but I blew my chance.’

And:

‘I’ve achieved fame and fortune playing rugby/golf/snooker and thereby missed the fulfilment of contributing something meaningful to society.’

As we have also seen, when these thoughts arise, they can become agonising fixtures for years and decades.

If we find this depressing – what possible chance do mere mortals like us have of finding contentment when even the rich and famous fail? – consider this comment from the American mystic Adyashanti:

‘When we get what we want, we experience this blissful moment - we got what we wanted. We don’t want anything else. The joy we experience, the release that we experience, the happiness, is not because we got what we wanted, but because we’re no longer wanting. We, for a moment, experience the great happiness of not wanting anything.’ (Adyashanti, 19 May 2003, ‘The Gift of Wanting’)

Why would ‘not wanting anything’ be experienced as ‘great happiness’? Why would it not be a state of grey boredom? Because the present moment is inherently blissful, because that ‘great happiness’ is always available here, now; but we, alas, are not.

Where are we, then? We are lost at the bottom of our begging bowls dreaming of the next moment, the next goal that will bring us ‘that final, complete thing that I don’t have now’ (McEnroe). Or we are lost in the past, dreaming of ‘the days when everything felt infinite’ (McKagan). In reality, that final, complete thing when everything feels infinite is here, now, freely available to all! It is not ‘there’, ‘then’.

From this perspective, winning a million-pound jackpot floats a million shiny lures drawing our minds away from ‘the great happiness’ of the present moment into misery-inducing thoughts of future happiness supposedly secured by all that money. From this perspective, wealth, fame and glory are fool’s gold tempting us into the mind and away from the blissful present.

It’s hard to believe the present moment is really this friendly - it’s always seemed a bit brutal. Is there any way we can check to see if there’s truth in any of this? By experimenting with directing our attention into our feelings and sensory experiences, we can temporarily escape the influence of immiserating thoughts and experience ‘the great happiness of not wanting anything’. Not because we have got something, but because we have won a respite from the begging bowl mind. That is all meditation is.

A complementary remedy is to subject the thoughts to inquiry. If we test the truthfulness of the thoughts luring us into the future, we can dispel them and again experience ‘the great happiness of not wanting anything’.

‘The Work’

It took me around ten years, with a large, ego-sized gap in the middle, to get my head around Byron Katie’s system of self-inquiry that she calls ‘The Work’. Eckhart Tolle has said of this method that it ‘acts like a razor-sharp sword that cuts through illusion’.

Born Kathleen Reid, it seems her mother was amused by Katie’s early passion for poetry, calling her ‘Byron Katie’. The name stuck.

If that sounds bizarre, so does the idea that revolutionary insights can be gained from completing something called a ‘judge-your-neighbour worksheet’ evaluating our complaints against existence, especially pesky humans.

In essence, the process involves identifying a stressful thought and subjecting it to rational challenge. But don’t we do that all the time anyway? Interestingly, no.

A good example of a stressful thought was offered from his own life by psychiatrist and brain scanning specialist Dr. Daniel Amen, a friend and admirer of Katie’s:

‘My wife never listens to me.’

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? A standard marital complaint, but this is exactly the kind of thought that can smoulder at the back of the head for years, generating misery for oneself and others.

The statement is to be written down and then challenged by the first two of the four questions on Katie’s worksheet:

‘1. Is it true? (Yes or no.)

‘2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? (Yes or no.)’

Ingloriously, I initially fell at this first hurdle – why ask the same question twice? In fact, both questions struck me as surplus to requirement. Let’s say my statement read:

‘I’m upset with my friend because he never phones me anymore. I always phone him.’

Is it true? Well, I am upset because he doesn’t ever phone and I do always phone him – so, yes! There’s nothing to discuss. Can I be absolutely sure it’s true? Yes, I can – you can ask the question two, three, ten times, the answer will still be ‘yes’! A sobering insight into just how stubbornly and naïvely trusting I was of my complaining mind.

Having written our stressful statement down, we are to think back and anchor our minds in a particular situation when we felt upset about the problem we have identified. The problem may have arisen a thousand times, but we are to cast our minds back to a particular incident. So, in the case of Daniel Amen, he is to anchor himself in a moment – perhaps at home in the lounge or kitchen - when he strongly felt his wife was ignoring him. He brings the situation to mind: what she was doing and saying, how he felt, and he then challenges the statement:

‘My wife never listens to me.’

Is it true? Amen’s answer:

‘No. I’ve written 19 public television specials; she’s listened to every script.’

This is already remarkable – the stressful statement seemed powerfully true. Certainly, as we will see below, it seemed true enough to cause Amen intense suffering. And yet, here we are, having meditated for a few minutes on this most elementary question, and a powerful contradictory example has already popped into view. And if Amen can find one, he can surely find second and third examples of when his wife did listen to him.

The second question:

‘Can you be absolutely sure that it’s true, with 100% certainty?’

‘No.’

This is already clear enough. Even the single example of the TV specials means it is not ‘absolutely’ true ‘with 100% certainty’.

The third question:

‘How do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought, “My wife never listens to me”?’

Amen is again to meditate on the situation in which his statement is anchored, and he relives the pain of the experience. His description of how he felt:

‘Terrible. Isolated. Alone.’

How did his thoughts and feelings in this situation make him act?

‘Distant, irritable with her.’

And what was the outcome of the thought? Irony of ironies, Amen comments:

‘She’ll not listen to you!’

This is a common theme in ‘The Work’ – our stressful thoughts and emotions tend to provoke or aggravate precisely the problem we’re complaining about, even when the original complaint was baseless. Many a ‘jealous guy’ will nod sagely in response to that observation!

The fourth question on the worksheet:

‘Who or what would you be without the thought?’

Here we need to slip into a meditative state where we try to sense how we would have felt in that precise situation without the stressful thought. Amen’s response:

‘Fine. How would I act? Normal. What’s the outcome? Happier.’

In other words, apart from what he was thinking and believing about his wife, all was well – it was a beautiful day, they were having an enjoyable time together until the damning thought intervened.

The contrast between the third question, how the thought makes us feel, and the fourth question, who we would be without that thought, shines a bright light on the leading role played by the thought in making us miserable. It can also give us a glimpse of ‘the great happiness of not wanting anything’. With the thought: pain. Without the thought: bliss.

The final part of the process is to ‘Turn the thought around.’ In Amen’s case, an obvious turnaround from ‘My wife doesn’t listen to me’ is:

‘My wife does listen to me.’

We meditate on that thought, try to feel if it rings as true or truer than our original complaint. Amen can clearly see that it rings truer, adding:

‘And then I can list all the times she does [listen].’

He can doubtless remember any number of occasions when his wife has listened to him – helping with TV scripts, with personal and familial problems, through thick and thin – and suddenly, miraculously, the bubble of painful conviction that had left him feeling ‘Terrible. Isolated. Alone’ has simply burst. Amen comments:

‘And that way, rather than allow the thought to fester… I’ve gone into the heart of it and I’ve killed it. And now it doesn’t bother me. It’s so effective.’

This is pretty astonishing. We are haunted, tortured by thoughts of this kind for years and decades, and we never twig that they are not actually true! But how is this possible? And why are we suddenly able to see the truth when we ask these simple questions?

If It Hurts, It Must Be Real

A stressful thoughtful pops into our head. The very fact of its appearance lends credibility - it exists, seems substantial. The impression is reinforced by the painful emotions that arise in response - the fact that we feel upset and hurt suggests that the thought is rooted in reality. After all, if it wasn’t accurate, why would we feel hurt? It must be that we are upset because we really are unjustly put upon by our husband, wife, friend, life. The pain acts as a kind of shield protecting the thought – our focus, now, is not on evaluating whether the thought is true but on how best to defend ourselves, hit back, or avoid further suffering.

It is not that stressful thoughts seem to be influencing me, they seem to actually be me. My body is me - if you criticise my body, you attack me. But my thoughts are me, too. If you criticise what I believe about my country, religion, race, colour, gender, politics and even sports, I may erupt as if I had been physically attacked.

The thought, ‘I’m upset with my friend because he never phones me anymore’, is my thought; it’s part of me, of my capacity for rational thought. If you tell me my thought is rubbish, I may feel that my integrity, rationality and even sanity are being rubbished.

But this is the crucial point – because I identify with my thought and my emotional response to it, because I view it as part of me, my instinct is to defend it from challenge, including from my own challenge. So, our default position is that our angry, sad, resentful thoughts are justified and not to be challenged by us or anyone else. This is why, as Amen says:

‘If you don’t question a thought, you believe it. And then you act as if it’s true, even if it’s a lie.’

Even the simple question ‘Is it true?’ radically changes our perspective on the thought. From being an unquestioned part of me ‘here’, it becomes a separate object of observation ‘over there’. We have stripped it of its protected status and are highlighting its separateness. To emphasise the point, question 2 asks if it is ‘absolutely certain’ that it is true.

When we say ‘No’ to these questions – because, after all, Amen’s wife does listen to his TV specials – something astonishing happens. Our angrily simplistic bubble of resentment depending on a black and white view of the world - I am right, they are wrong - is burst by the contradictory evidence. The impact on our thinking and feeling can be instantaneous and dramatic. From my own life:

‘I’m fed up, she’s always giving me orders.’

The thought slips instantly, like a virus, into my chest – my heart drops. I may just be hungry or tired, or unwittingly upset by something unrelated, but in the moment, my irritation makes it seem true.

‘She’s always giving me orders. Is it true?’

A few moments of thought and reflection.

‘No, actually, she is often not pushy at all. In fact, I’ve often marvelled at the way she is wonderfully unpushy, the way she’s so relaxed about not getting her own way. But that’s the exact opposite of what I’ve just claimed about her in my statement!’

It is mind-boggling but I instantly realise that the truth has somehow been reversed by my irate mind, and I notice that I had in fact previously been upset by something completely unrelated. The bubble of irritation instantly bursts like a soap bubble with an almost audible ‘Pop!’ And what is left behind? Exactly as Adyashanti says, exactly as if I had got something I strongly desired, I am temporarily freed from my wanting mind, and I experience love and bliss. It is quite something to find that I am feeling love for the person who, literally moments earlier, was annoying me.

Or:

‘I’m upset with my friend because he never phones me anymore. I always phone him.’

‘Is it true?’

Again, it seems incontrovertibly, painfully true – I feel bereft. But when I question the statement, I am amazed to realise that the most recent contact with my friend was initiated by him, not me! I, in fact, have made less effort to stay in touch than he has. The turnaround is much truer:

‘I make no effort to stay in touch anymore.’

Again, along with surprise, a subtle moment of warmth and delight as the wanting mind temporarily abates.

I should add that it is not, of course, that the stressful statement is always found to be untrue. But even when it is found to be accurate, we learn a lot that was hidden by subjecting it to inquiry. For example, Daniel Amen is a big talker – his voice is all over social media. An interesting turnaround for him might be:

‘I don’t listen to my wife.’

I can’t do a worksheet for John McEnroe, but we know about one of his stressful thoughts from the autobiographical comment cited in Part 1:

‘A French title, followed by my third Wimbledon, would have given me that final, complete thing that I don’t have now - a legitimate claim as possibly the greatest player of all time.’

We saw how McEnroe had written, in 2008, that the belief that he had blown an incredible opportunity to be declared The Greatest in 1984, ‘still keeps me up nights… I’ll often have one or two days when I literally feel sick to my stomach’.

He may well have moved on from this belief by now. If not, we can imagine how he might subject his thought to inquiry:

‘I blew my opportunity to be deemed the greatest tennis player who ever lived. Is it true?’

In fact, no: Roy Emerson, Rod Laver and Bill Tilden had all won many more Grand Slams before him, and Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have all won three times as many Grand Slams since. McEnroe may still suffer from the thought that he cannot be considered The Greatest, but the particular agony of believing that he threw away the chance cannot survive self-inquiry. Another stressful thought might follow:

‘I cannot ever feel peace and happiness because I’m not the greatest tennis player who ever lived. Is that true?’

A turnaround jumps out:

‘I was unable to feel peace and happiness as long I was trying to be the greatest tennis player who ever lived.’

And:

‘I can feel peace and happiness even though I’m not the greatest tennis player who ever lived.’

Conclusion

There is much more to ‘The Work’ than I have described here, but I would like to point to a crucial conclusion that becomes very clear on experimenting with the process. When we, the people around us, or the world, or existence generally, seem to be at fault in some way, our mind’s judgement cannot be taken at face value; it must be subjected to self-inquiry. As a result, many of the mental torments relating to what we lack or hate - to what we think we must have to be happy - simply evaporate. In their place, an experience of ‘the great happiness of not wanting anything’.

Self-inquiry is also a marvellous antidote to the storms of righteous anger and hatred that perpetuate ‘the nightmare of history’. To understand the extent to which our enraged ego is inventing and projecting freely in blaming some dehumanised ‘enemy’ for our woes, does not at all diminish our motivation to work for positive change. On the contrary, it clears away emotional torment and prejudice, allowing love and compassion to shine through.

‘They are all inhuman monsters who are full of hate.’

Is that true?

Now turn the thought around…

David Edwards is co-editor of medialens.org. For further discussion on these themes, see, ‘A Short Book About Ego… and the Remedy of Meditation’ (Mantra Books, 2025), available here. He is also the author of the forthcoming science fiction novel, ‘The Man With No Face’, to be published by Roundfire Books in 2026.

You can print Byron Katie’s free ‘judge-your-neighbour worksheets’ and sign up for her free, weekly ‘At Home with Byron Katie Podcast’ on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, here. Also read, ‘Loving What Is’ and ‘A Thousand Names for Joy (both with Stephen Mitchell).