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Why do we do what we do?by Ven. Thubten Gyatso |
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What I can remember about the sixties is that nobody trusted the establishment. It was easy to blame society for everything, and I took pride in living spontaneously - making decisions that followed my heart rather than my head. For a while I was lucky, then life hit me like a ton of bricks and I lost faith in my heart. Buddhism helped me to put things together again by pointing out that we cannot trust either our heads or our hearts to lead us to happiness and away from suffering. To avoid the pitfalls of life, the question we need to ask ourselves in every action we do is, "Why am I doing this?" Certainly the external world, people, and events influence our behaviour but, ultimately, we all live a life of our own making because whatever we do, and how well we do it, is the result of our own will. Will begins as an idea to do something, and then sees the action through to completion, or incompletion, depending upon its strength. Our ideas to do things are either stupid or intelligent. Stupid ideas are where our view of the object towards which we act is mistaken or influenced by disturbing emotions such as attachment, anger, or pride. Drinking excessive quantities of alcohol with the mistaken belief that it is a manly and honourable thing to do is an example of behaviour arising from a stupid idea. Drinking excessive quantities of alcohol through desire for the state of intoxication, believing it to be a state of superior happiness, is equally stupid. I hope I have not ruined your party tonight, but we have to face reality, right? There are plenty of other examples of stupid ideas in our lives. Intelligent ideas see the reality of the objects of our actions. In Buddhist terms, this means knowing that the things of this world, the causes of both happiness and unhappiness, never remain constant, they never bring complete satisfaction, and their ultimate nature is that they are empty of existing in their own right. Secondly, whenever we have a positive attitude such as unconditional love, patience, or compassion, that state of mind will always be associated with intelligent ideas. We can trust our hearts when these attitudes are present. If we are aware that our relationships are transient experiences, how can we ruin the happiness we get from each other by indulging in petty criticism, irritability, and anger? We know a delicate flower will soon be thrown out with the garbage, but while it is manifesting all its beauty we treat it with great tenderness and care. Why do we not treat our friends and companions in life the same way? If we think they have let us down and deserve to be abandoned, the fault is ours, not theirs. We expect too much; we want perfection in an imperfect world. What lies behind our will to do things? The basic urge in life common to us all is the desire for happiness and to avoid suffering. We pursue this desire with behaviour patterns acquired during this life and also patterns of behaviour inherited from past lives. All manner of psychological conflicts may arise with the clash of urges coming from these two separate sources. Intellectually, we may be trying to live according to the moral standards of society, but due to immoral behaviour in past lives we have the instinctive urge to break those standards. Or we may be born into a family of thieves and, due to honesty in past lives, we have an instinctive urge to break family tradition and live without stealing. On the other hand, our wish to maintain the moral standards of society may be reinforced by instinctive urges from past lives, in which case our life will go from happiness to happiness. Or, an instinctive urge to steal may be reinforced by a circle of friends who are thieves. When we have no means of discriminating between stupid and intelligent urges coming from both sources, we will have no freedom. We will be unable to avoid following the urges of self-cherishing, anger, and attachment because they are stronger - having been deeply embedded into our minds during countless previous lives under the influence of ignorance. Adopting the moral code
of not harming others is the first step towards freedom. It gives
us a choice when we ask, "Why am I doing this?" If the urge
to do something is more selfish than beneficial for others, we should
drop it. If it is more beneficial for others than selfish, we should
do it. When this intention to help others is supported by perfect
concentration and wisdom seeing the reality of the things of this
world, we will have total freedom in our lives. Instinctive urges
will never again obscure the purity of our intentions. We will have
free will. Gyatso
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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)
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