Trust

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

From sibling rivalry to international relationships, our society is pervaded by conflict, with temporary periods of peace characterised by artificial smiles concealing the inner thought, "I don't trust you."

Even when our thought is pure, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion, or the outright paranoia, of others. But a pure thought is hard to come by because the conflict in our lives is a reflection of the conflict within our mind - where the devil abides. This demon does not have horns and a tail, it is infatuation with our self-image born out of ignorance. In our blindness as to what we are, we fabricate a self that appears to exist in its own right, independently of everything else. Believing this false self to be true, we cherish our self-image above all else, and immediately fall into neurotic modes of behaviour to protect it in our own eyes and in the way we want others to see us.

Gross disturbing emotions of attachment, grasping at things that please or enhance our self-image; hatred, pushing away all that displeases or harms our self-image; and pride, a swollen-headedness that makes us aloof from others, are obviously related to self-centredness. There are, however, more subtle disturbances such as pretension and dishonesty.

Pretension is when, through seeking material things or the approval of others, we fabricate some good quality about ourselves and try to convince them it is true. We do this so often that we soon believe our own lie, and move further away from reality. For Buddhist monks, pretension leads to the five wrong livelihoods: contrived behaviour such as false humility, flattery, hinting, threatening others, and giving something small with the hope of a large return. Buddha instructed his monks to beg openly, whereas each of these wrong livelihoods has a hidden message that obliges someone to give. It is not only monks who behave like this.

Dishonesty is when, through seeking material things or the approval of others, we confuse them by concealing our faults. This too can go from conscious concealment to the situation where we believe our lie to be true. The ultimate result of both pretension and dishonesty is that we cheat ourselves, and we turn others away from us because we cannot be trusted.

Life is hard enough, and if there is nobody we can trust, it becomes intolerable. For our own sake, we have to realise that being deceitful places us in a situation where we will not trust anybody else, and so we will cut ourselves off from the comfort and security of good friends. In terms of our responsibility to others, we will be unable to provide them with the comfort and security they need. The best gift we can give to our family, to anybody else, and even to ourselves, is to be trustworthy. So we have to observe our mind closely and abandon our instinctive responses to pretend we are something that we are not and to conceal our mistakes. Living a falsehood eats away at our peace of mind like cancer devouring our body.

Being honest, admitting our mistakes, and apologising brings instant relief and happiness. It releases us from the solitary isolation of pride, and diminishes our tendency towards anger and attachment. I am not talking about major lies, although they may be included. Mostly I am referring to our ignorant compulsion to exaggerate or invent good qualities of our body, mind, and possessions, or to hide their faults. This creates the Annie Get Your Gun mentality of, "I can do anything you can do, better..," and sets off an endless spiral of competition against everyone, even one's own partner.

By incorporating our body and possessions into our self-image, we are laid wide-open to exploitation by the advertising and fashion industries, experts in the arts of exaggeration and concealment, who do not waste a moment in taking advantage of our foibles. When a person's worth is judged by their possessions and physical appearance, society is in a sorry state. Here in Mongolia the movement towards capitalist-style consumerism is rapidly accelerating and traditional Buddhist values, almost destroyed by politicians and still under attack by evangelists who stupidly parrot communist propaganda, are quickly disappearing.

The Buddhists themselves are not helping, with some defying the basic teachings by wearing the robes of monks and yet living as lay-people with wives, drinking alcohol, and reciting scriptures as their means of livelihood. Young people no longer trust their parents, teachers, or politicians, and the degenerate behaviour of these non-monks removes the last opportunity for them to have trust in someone. Thus they are exposed to the great danger of falling into the nihilistic state of apathetic meaninglessness now manifest amongst young people in the West. There is nobody they can trust.

The best hope for Mongolia and the world is that we parents, teachers, politicians, and religious practitioners fulfil our responsibility to society by abandoning our self-cherishing, pretension, and dishonesty, and become trustworthy.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.