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Venerable Ajahn Brahmavamso -
On
Making a Mistake
Ajahn
Brahmavamso is the Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery in Wetern Australia.
These Dhamma reflections are extracted from a talk he gave at the
Dhammaloka Centre in Perth in 1990.
In this life that we have we often forget that it's no great thing to
make a mistake. In Buddhism it's all right to make a mistake. It is all
right to be imperfect. Isn't that wonderful? This means that we have the
freedom to be a human being, rather than thinking of ourselves as
someone wonderful and great who never makes mistakes. It is horrible,
isn't it, if we think we are not allowed to make mistakes, because we do
make mistakes, then we have to hide and try to cover them up. So the
home then is not a place of peace and quiet and comfort. Of course most
people who are sceptical say: "Well if you allow people to make
mistakes, how will they ever learn? They will just keep on making even
more mistakes". But that is not the way it actually works. To illustrate
this point, when I was a teenager my father said to me that he would
never throw me out or bar the door of his house to me, no matter what I
did; I would always be allowed in there, even if I had made the worst
mistakes. When I heard that, I understood it as an expression of love,
of acceptance. It inspired me and I respected him so much that I did not
want to hurt him, I did not want to give him trouble, and so I tried
even harder to be worthy of his house.
Now if we could try that with the people we live with, we'd see that it
gives them the freedom and the space to relax and be peaceful, and it
takes away all the tension. In that ease, there comes respect and care
for the other person. So I challenge you to try the experiment of
allowing people to make mistakes - to say to your mate, your parents or
your children: "The door of my house will always be open to you; the
door of my heart will always be open to you no matter what you do." Say
it to yourself too: "The door of my house is always open to me." Allow
yourself to make mistakes too. Can you think of all the mistakes you
have made in the last week? Can you let them be, can you still be a
friend to yourself? It is only when we allow ourselves to make mistakes
that we can finally be at ease.
That is what we mean by compassion, by metta, by love. It has to be
unconditional. If you only love someone because they do what you like,
or because they always live up to your expectations, then of course that
love is not worth very much. That's like a business deal love: "I will
love you if you give me something back in return."
When I first became a monk I thought monks had to be perfect. I thought
they should never make mistakes; that when they sit in meditation they
must always sit straight. But those of you who have been at the morning
sit at 4:30 am, especially after working hard the day before, you will
know that you can be quite tired; you can slump, you can even nod. But
that is all right. It is all right to make mistakes. Can you feel how
easy it feels, how all that tension and stress disappears when you allow
yourself to make mistakes?
The trouble is that we tend to amplify the mistakes and forget the
successes, which creates so much of a burden of guilt and heaviness. So
instead we can turn to our successes, the good things we have done in
our life; we could call it our Buddha nature within us. If you turn to
that, it grows; whereas if you turn to the mistakes, they grow. If you
dwell on any thought in the mind, any train of thought, it grows and
grows, doesn't it? So we turn our hearts around and dwell upon the
positive in ourselves, the purity, the goodness, the source of that
unconditional love - that which wants to help, to sacrifice even our own
comfort for the sake of another being. This is a way we can regard our
inner being, our heart. Forgiving its faults, we dwell upon its
nobility, its purity, its kindness. We can do the same with other
people, we can dwell upon their goodness and watch it grow.
This is what we call kamma - actions; the way we think about life, the
way we speak about life, what we do with life. And really it is up to us
what we do, it is not up to some supernatural being up there who says
whether you will be happy or not. Your happiness is completely in your
hands, in your power. This is what we mean by kamma. It's like baking a
cake: kamma defines what ingredients you have, what you have got to work
with. So a person with unfortunate kamma, maybe as a result of their
past actions, has not got many ingredients. Maybe they have just got
some old stale flour, one or two raisins, if that, and some rancid
butter, and - what else goes in cakes? - some sugar... and that is all
they have got to work with. And another person might have very good
kamma, all the ingredients you could ever wish for: whole wheat flour,
brown sugar and all types of dried fruit and nuts. But as for the cake
that is produced in the end... Even with very meagre ingredients some
people can bake a beautiful cake. They mix it all up, put it into the
oven - delicious! How do they do it? And then other people might have
everything, but the cake they make tastes awful.
So kamma defines the ingredients, what we have got to work with; but
that does not define what we make with it. So if a person is wise, it
does not matter what they have got to work with. You can still make a
beautiful cake - as long as you know how.
Of course the first thing to know is that the last way to make a good
cake is to complain all the time about the ingredients you have.
Sometimes in the monastery, if there is an ingredient missing the people
who are cooking look in the pantry and just use whatever is there. They
have to be quite versatile and you get some very strange cakes, but they
are all delicious, because people have learned the art of using what
they have and making something of it.
So where is kamma heading? What are we actually making of it? Is it to
be wealthy or to be powerful? No. This meditation, this Buddhism, the
direction we are going in, is towards enlightenment. We are using the
ingredients we have to become enlightened. But what does enlightenment
actually mean? Enlightenment means there is no anger left in your heart.
There is no personal desire or delusion left in your heart.
At one time there was a Russian teacher called Gurdjief who had a
community in France. In his community there was one fellow who was just
absolutely obnoxious. He was always annoying people and giving them a
really hard time. So the community would meet together and they would
ask Gurdjief to send him away, to get rid of the fellow, because he was
always creating arguments and making people unhappy. But Gurdjief never
would. However later on, after he died, they found out that he had
actually been paying the fellow to stay there! Everyone else would have
to pay for board and lodging. But Gurdjief was actually paying the
fellow to be there - to teach the people a lesson. If you can only be
happy when you live with the people you like, your happiness is not
worth anything, because you are not being stirred up. It is like a glass
of muddy water, when it is not stirred up it looks clear, doesn't it?
But as soon as it is agitated, the mud comes from the bottom and is
stirred up. It is good to stir up your glass just to see what is in
there really. So Gurdjief used to pay this fellow to stir up everybody
to see what was there.
A very good indicator of where one is in the spiritual life is to see
how well you get on with other people - especially the difficult ones.
Can you be peaceful when someone else is giving you a hard time? Can you
let go of anger and irritation towards a person, a place, or towards
yourself? Eventually we have to, otherwise we are never going to get to
enlightenment, we are never going to get peaceful.
Imagine what it is like to say: "No more will I get irritated, no more
will I fight or reject a person or their habits. If I cannot do anything
about it, I will learn to peacefully coexist with that which I do not
like. I will learn to peacefully accept the pain, instead of always
turning my head away from the pain and seeking the pleasure." Imagine
that!
Sometimes people think that if you do not get angry then you just tend
to be a vegetable, you just allow others to walk all over you, you will
just be someone who sits here and does nothing. But ask yourself: "What
do you feel like after you have been angry? Do you feel full of beans,
very energetic?" We get worn out when we are angry; it just eats up so
much of our heart energy. Even when we are irritated or negative towards
a person or a place, that eats up energy. So if we do not want to feel
so tired and depressed, we can try, as an experiment, not getting
irritated. See how much more wide awake and zestful we feel. Then we can
send that energy out into caring for others, and to caring for ourselves
as well. It is in our power to do that. If you really want to get on the
fast track to enlightenment, try giving up irritation and anger.
So how do you give it up? Well, first of all, by wanting to give it up.
But a lot of us do not want to give up our anger and irritation - for
some obscure reason we like it. There is a wonderful little story about
two monks who lived together in a monastery for many years; they were
great friends. Then they died within a few months of one another. One of
them got reborn in the heaven realms, the other monk got reborn as a
worm in a dung pile. The one up in the heaven realms was having a
wonderful time, enjoying all the heavenly pleasures. Then he started
thinking about his friend, "I wonder where my old mate has gone?" So he
scanned all of the heaven realms, but could not find a trace of his
friend. Then he scanned the realm of human beings, but he could not see
any trace of his friend there, so he looked in the realm of animals and
then of insects. Finally he found him, reborn as a worm in a dung
pile... Wow! He thought: "I am going to help my friend. I am going to go
down there to that dung pile and take him up to the heavenly realm so he
too can enjoy the heavenly pleasures and bliss of living in these
wonderful realms."
So he went down to the dung pile and called his mate. And the little
worm wriggled out and said: "Who are you?", "I am your friend. We used
to be monks together in a past life, and I have come up to take you to
the heaven realms where life is wonderful and blissful." But the worm
said: "Go away, get lost!" "But I am your friend, and I live in the
heaven realms," and he described the heaven realms to him. But the worm
said: "No thank you, I am quite happy here in my dung pile. Please go
away." Then the heavenly being thought: "Well if I could only just grab
hold of him and take him up to the heaven realms, he could see for
himself." So he grabbed hold of the worm and started tugging at him; and
the harder he tugged, the harder that worm clung to his pile of dung.
Do you get the moral of the story? How many of us are attached to our
pile of dung? When someone tries to pull us out we just wriggle back in
again because that is what we are used to, we like it in there.
Sometimes we are actually attached to our old habits, our anger and our
desires. Sometimes we want to be angry.
So next time you get angry, stop and watch. Just take a moment of
mindfulness just to see what it feels like. Decide, remind yourself:
"Next time I am angry I am going to feel it, instead of trying to be
clever, to get my own way or to hurt the other person." Just notice how
it feels. As soon as you notice how anger feels with your heart - not
with your head - then you will want to give it up; because it hurts, it
is painful, it is suffering.
If only people could be more awake, more aware - know what it feels
like, instead of thinking about it, there would be no problem any more.
They would let the anger go very quickly because it is hot, it is
burning. But we tend to see this world with our heads rather than with
our hearts. We think about it, but very rarely do we feel it, experience
it. Meditation starts to get you in contact with your heart again: and
out of thinking and complaining, where all anger and desire starts from.
When you come from the heart, you can feel for yourself, you can be at
peace with yourself, you can be caring to yourself. When I come from the
heart, I can appreciate other peoples' hearts as well. That is how we
can love our enemies, when we appreciate their hearts, seeing something
there to love, to respect.
People get angry because they are hurting, they are not at ease. But if
we are happy, we can never get angry at someone else; it is only when we
are depressed, tired, frustrated, having a hard time; when we have got
some sickness in our hearts, that is when we can get angry at other
people. So when someone is angry at me I feel compassion and kindness
towards that person, because I realise that they are hurting.
The first time I went to see someone who was supposed to be enlightened,
I thought, "Crikey! I had better make sure I meditate before I get
within ten miles of him, because he is bound to be able to read my mind,
and that would be so embarrassing!" But an enlightened person is not
going to be cruel and hurt you. An enlightened person is going to accept
you and put you at ease. That's a wonderful feeling, isn't it: just to
accept yourself. You can just relax, no anger and irritation. There is
that great understanding, great enlightenment, that you are all right.
What a lot of pain that would take away from human beings' lives; what
great freedom it would give the people to participate in the world, to
serve in this world, to love in this world, when at last they realise
that they are all right. They do not have to spend so much time getting
themselves right, changing themselves, always afraid of making mistakes.
When you are at ease with yourself you will be at ease with other
people, no matter who they are.
Forest Sangha Newsletter: January 1997, Number 39
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