To Be an Adult
June 07, 2024

A few mornings ago, I was down here sweeping around the sala, looking out across the valley, and it was a very pretty scene: very peaceful, very green, much greener than it usually is this time of the year.

But then there was the sound of artillery shells off in the distance, again and again and again. I was reminded that the human world can be a very beautiful place but that sometimes its beauty can disguise a lot of danger, a lot of defilement—which means that we have to be heedful.

I was reminded of a book I read once, The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. In what is probably the climactic scene in the novel, one of the characters has decided to go on a cross-country skiing hike in the Alps and he gets swallowed up in a storm. He just barely makes it to one of those little cabins they have in the Swiss Alps for people who might be stranded like that. There was food, firewood, matches, blankets.

He was able to get out of the storm, take some food, light a fire, and lie down. He quickly fell asleep and had a very vivid dream: He was in a bucolic scene, somewhat like ancient Greece, walking through fields. The peasants in the fields seemed very happy with their work, and they kept motioning to a temple on the hillside at the end of the valley where their fields were located. He finally made it to the temple and went inside. There he found some old women sacrificing babies and bathed in blood.

Again, a bucolic scene, very pleasant, very peaceful, but hiding who knows what—some pretty dark things.

So as we’re sitting here meditating in a quiet spot, we have to keep reminding ourselves that the world is a dangerous place. We have to use our opportunity to meditate, to practice the Dhamma in all ways—in terms of generosity, virtue, concentration, discernment—as protection, both from ourselves and from the dangers outside.

As the Buddha says, the real dangers outside are not so much what people can do to us, they’re what other people can get us to do. They can get us to break the precepts, they can get us to give in to passion, aversion, and delusion, telling us that greed is good, anger is good—all kinds of horrible things they can say are good. If we believe them and act on those beliefs, that becomes our karma—and that’s the danger.

So we have to look into our own minds. Where are we susceptible to these kinds of messages? We’ve got to learn how to see through them. No matter who tells them, no matter how many people tell us, no matter how many times they tell us, we have to hold firm.

After all, who else can protect us? As the Buddha said, “The self is its own mainstay. Who else could your mainstay be?”

We’ve depended on people who love us to shelter us, to bring us into this world, but their love and protection can extend only so far. From that point on, we have to learn how to depend on ourselves and basically become adults.

Of all the religions in the world, the Buddha’s teaching is the one religion designed for adults. Others teach dependence on this or that power, this or that outside being who’s going to help you, encouraging a childlike devotion.

In contrast, think of when the Buddha was teaching his son. Again and again and again, it was how to be an adult. His lessons when Rāhula was seven: Take responsibility for your actions. Stop and think—when you do something, what are going to be the consequences? If you foresee any negative consequences, i.e., any harm for yourself or others, you don’t do it.

Here the Buddha’s teaching Rāhula to be an adult, to take responsibility for what he’s doing, take responsibility for the results of his actions. And notice, the Buddha has Rāhula judge his actions both by the motivation and by the results.

In the West, our discussions of ethics tend to switch back and forth between the two: Should a person be judged by his or her motivation for acting, or should the person be judged by the results of the action? This line of thinking comes from trying to a determine how much guilt you might assign to an action that’s not quite skillful. You pass final judgment and then stop. You’re finished with the matter.

Whereas the Buddha is teaching you a skill. When you’re learning a skill—how to be skillful in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds—both the motivation and the results are relevant, because you can learn from both. You’re judging a work in progress.

So the Buddha is teaching Rāhula to be honest, to have integrity, to have compassion, to show restraint—all the signs of a good healthy ego, all the signs of a good healthy adult.

Another time, when he taught Rāhula meditation, he started out by saying, “Make your mind like earth. Disgusting things get thrown on the earth, but the earth doesn’t react.” He didn’t say it, but he implied that when pleasant things like perfume get poured on the earth, the earth doesn’t react, either.

Quick reactivity to our likes and dislikes is part of being a child. Here, though, the Buddha’s saying to grow up and show some restraint—not only outside but also inside.

This is especially necessary as you meditate, because you’re going to find negative things coming up in the meditation. If you let yourself get blown away by them or brought under their influence, the meditation won’t go very far.

Sometimes it’s said that the Buddha is teaching non-reactivity so that we can also be non-judgmental and not pass judgment on things. Actually, he’s teaching non-reactivity so that you can become a better judge of what should and shouldn’t be done. When you’re faced with a certain situation, what would be the best thing to do? Don’t just go on your impulses; don’t just go on your emotions. Look carefully, and then use your powers of judgment.

Again and again, the Buddha kept teaching Rāhula—even when Rāhula was young—to be an adult. Our problem is that even though we’re adults, we often act like children. So it’s good to remind ourselves: The Buddha is teaching us to be self-reliant, to be mature. This is why we train the mind.

Society likes to keep adults like children. They give you flashy things or dangle flashy things in front of you, saying, “If you want this, do what we tell you.” They don’t care whether you’re really an adult or not. In fact, advertisers, politicians, the people who run the media: They all want to keep you like children.

The sad thing is that I’ve been to Dhamma centers where they feel that keeping you like a child is not enough, they want to keep you like an infant. Everything gets watered down so that you don’t feel too challenged, you don’t feel that you’re being judged, you don’t feel like anybody’s going to say anything negative about you. They’re creating an infant’s world, and then tell you that that’s the Dhamma.

It’s like those little pictures you see in China, and especially Taiwan, where monks are portrayed as little tiny baby monks. The people putting food in the monk’s bowls are little tiny children—as if the Buddhist teachings were for children.

In fact, in the past, starting around the time of the Sung Dynasty, that was the attitude in China: Buddhism was for weak-minded women and children. It taught a fairy-tale world in which good intentions lead to happiness and bad intentions lead to harm, but that’s not the way of the real world—that’s what they said.

They got it all backwards. The real world where people get ahead by doing harmful things: That’s the fantasy world where people think they can get away with doing whatever they want without thought of the consequences. The people who want to live in that world: Those are the children. They’re the ones who cause a lot of damage. Whereas the people who take responsibility for their actions are the real adults, the ones who provide protection.

As the Buddha said, when trouble comes into the world, it’s because of fools. He compared it to a house on fire. Once one house is on fire, it can set fire to the houses around it.

You want to make sure that you don’t pick up fire from other people, and that you don’t start a fire within yourself.

So learn to be responsible. You might say, “I’m already very responsible,” but there’s still a lot within the mind where you tend to indulge in your defilements with the attitude of, “Well, a little indulgence here and there doesn’t matter.”

That attitude of “It doesn’t matter”: That’s a child’s attitude. That’s what we’ve got to learn to outgrow.