James Wood:
“A description and a value judgment are not the same thing. If I see a cup on the table, the statement “The cup is on the table,” is an accurate description of my experience, a basic truth. If I say, “The cup shouldn’t be on the table. It should be in the dishwasher,” I am making a value judgment, because I am implying that my experience should be other than it is now or would be better if something else were happening. This is also true if I say “The cup is ugly,” “You’re an idiot for owning such an ugly cup,” or “I hate myself for being so careless as to leave a cup out on the table again.” A value judgment implies that something is wrong or bad about my experience. In this case, the badness or wrongness – the “shouldn’t be-ness” – can be attributed to the cup, to its owner, or to myself. You can judge anything or anyone for any reason. Descriptions are useful because they convey information about the world. Value judgments are confusing because they conflict with Reality. Notice the difference.”
–James Wood, The Path of Awakening (2007) p. 19
Svaha 
Thanks for quoting this passage; it’s one of my favorites! The wisdom here really spoke to me when I first read the book. There is alot of misunderstanding in Western culture about judgment that seems to stem from christian religious conditioning, and the word “judgment” is a very polluted and loaded term that is difficult to use in its true sense today. I find it really useful to have the difference between descriptive vs. value judgment so clearly outlined here. When I first started doing inquiry with my thoughts, I was shocked at how much my mind fought my conscious, descriptive awareness of what was really happening. This comes up a lot for me with family and authority figures, and it makes it all the more difficult that our cultural norms of judgment, objectification and attachment are so cleverly couched in sentiment and “good manners” and in seemingly noble values like “respect your elders no matter what”. When I listen to my mind I struggle alot with guilt over this – especially over taking radical, right action that upsets people. I think somewhere in the book it says “the world does not want you to be awake” – and unfortunately that’s pretty much what I’ve experienced.
“The Path of Awakening” has helped me SO much to get over this with the practice of radical acceptance. To any of you out there who may be sitting on the fence about reading this book or deeply engaging this Teaching– do it!! I’ve never had a Teaching neutralize my mind and its antics so powerfully and completely. If you are seriously committed to awakening I can’t recommend this approach highly enough.
Hi Angela,
Great to hear from you! I really appreciate the clear definitions in the book that get right to the heart of things. Thank you for sharing your experience of questioning concepts about family and authority figures. Commonly held beliefs can be really unhealthy.
I’m curious to know if he takes this any further.
I haven’t read the book, so this is from ignorance I admit, but I hope he doesn’t merely condemn value judgments as confusing and then leave it at that.
They can be useful for the very reason that they do conflict with reality. There are too many problems and snares in value judgments to give them any authority, of course. But does is his advice just to dismiss them?
I guess I’m just asking, what does he suggest we do to manage them? Is it this radical acceptance Angie mentioned?
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your comments!
This passage is from the first chapter, ‘Honesty’, which introduces the vocabulary that James uses. Practices and suggestions are included throughout the book. I really recommend the whole book :)
How do you feel that value judgments are useful? The suggestions for what to do could help if you’ve established/felt that value judgments are not useful for you…
Here is a suggestion from further in the Honesty chapter:
“Practice being with what is without judgment. Notice that you judge all the time – then, notice if you judge yourself for judging. When you notice it without judgment, you break the cycle of unconsciousness… You cannot let go of a judgment by judging. The only way to truly let go of a judgment is to be with it as it is. Then it lets go without your having to employ your mind.”
This is probably the practice of noticing the mechanism, and radical acceptance Angela mentioned.
Also, I also like this quote, from the chapter ‘Action’.
The god gear on your blog is funny!
His idea of ‘conscious action’ relieves much of my concern.
I have a personal, cordial distaste for the idea of just accepting the world as it is, or accepting how things are, and leaving it at that. I think we have a role to play in ‘reality’. But I suspect my questioning is just a wording issue or ‘path’ issue. It sounds like we’re heading for the same thing or at least searching for the same thing. :-)
I think conscious value judgments are important when faced with a situation in which harm is being done to something or someone, for example. I don’t want to just accept an increase of suffering on someone else because “it is the way of things.”
It reminds me of a saying I was told once. It went something like this:
“If you cannot change what is, then why not be happy? If you can change what is, then why not be happy?”
Thanks about the god gear! :-)
Yea, I’ve had a lot of personal sorting out to do when it comes to the word ‘god’. I grew up with a very different idea of what that word meant, compared to the rest of the world apparently. And so now, it just amazes me, how wrapped-up people can get about it.
I’m trying to loosen things up a bit, so it’s good to hear someone else gets it, or got a chuckle at least.
Yes, ‘conscious action’ is really powerful and peaceful. The topics of social justice and activism have been on my mind lately, so your comments are really timely. I’ll write a new post about all that. What ideas about the word god did you grow up with? It is definitely a loaded word, but I don’t mind using it from time to time.
To try and put it briefly, my parents are quite liberal and progressive christians. Practically nothing was taken literally. Well, ‘God’ was literally a metaphor, and that’s about it.
I think it gave me a more open (naive?) childhood, and for that I’m kind of grateful still. But by the time I hit my teens, I found I couldn’t talk to many other religious kids. I really didn’t understand how they could believe the way they did, or think of God as something they could know so confidently (or, something they could *ahem* nail down so specifically).
Now that I’m older, I find some fun in peeling those authoritative layers and convoluted chains away from from the word.
You have a new post up. I’ll go check that out now.
It’s good that god was left as an unknown, unknowable for you as a kid. It seems like usually christian church leaders and teachers want to rush in with answers for kids, terrified of not-knowing what to say… and the stories seem ‘nice’ and ‘helpful’. That was my experience, anyway. When I started practicing zen, I was shocked to see how all the layers of stories about god, (and everything else!) were interfering with the pursuit of truth… it’s amazing when the stories start to break down. Like Zen Mater Seung Sahn says – “only don’t know!”