Delight in Conviction

The Buddha tells about how he saw the world before he went out into the forest. It was like a river that was drying up, and there were fish in the river, fighting one another over that last little bit of water before it all dried up. Of course, they were all going to die—the winners and the losers. Everywhere he looked where he might want to find happiness in the world, somebody had already made a claim to it. So if he was going to find his happiness out there, he was going to have to fight people off.

Then he realized that the problem was inside his own heart, and that he could solve the problem inside his own heart as well.

That’s the message of his awakening. And not just his awakening, not just his solution of his own problem. The way he taught about his awakening was meant to help us realize that we can solve our problems, too—again, by looking inside.

This is why we meditate, bringing the mind into the present moment where we can see it in action and figure out where we’re causing ourselves suffering—and where we can find the strength inside so that we don’t have to suffer.

One of those strengths is conviction in the Buddha’s awakening—not just that it was a good event for him, but also that it has meaning for us. What he learned about the principles of karma, in particular, has a lot of implications for us in our search for happiness. As he saw, people would fare through the world up and down, based on their actions. Their actions were shaped by their intentions. Their intentions were shaped by their views. The way these things worked out was pretty complex, but the basic principle was simple: You act on skillful intentions, the result is happiness. You act on unskillful intentions, the result is suffering, pain. Of course, you look at your life, and it’s not the case that you do nothing but good actions, nothing but bad actions. There’s a mixture. But what’s important is that, as you go through life and you realize you’ve made mistakes, you admit the mistakes and you try to develop right view. Then your actions really do make a difference. Believing in that gives you the energy to try to do your best.

There are people out there, just as there were people in the Buddha’s time, who say that you’re powerless. Either actions are not real at all, or even though they are real, they have no impact on shaping your life. Or they have an impact, but it’s totally deterministic. In other words, what you did in the past determines what you do now. With views like that, there’s not much hope to change your ways. But as the Buddha saw, what we experience in the present moment is shaped partly by our past actions, but more importantly by our present actions, our present intentions. And our present intentions can be freely chosen. They don’t have to be determined by the past. Which means we can learn.

As he said, he would teach people to abandon unskillful actions and to develop skillful ones. If they couldn’t have done that, he wouldn’t have taught it. But the fact is that they can. And if doing that didn’t lead to happiness, he wouldn’t have taught it, either. But the fact is that it does. So what he’s telling you is that you have power. You can train your mind. And he showed through his example that training the mind can take you really far.

This is what he’s asking us to have conviction in—and it’s a good thing to be convinced of. Would you want to be convinced that your actions had no meaning? Would you want to be convinced that there is no pattern in acting on good intentions or bad intentions? It’s good to hold to that principle. You may not know it yet. After all, it took the Buddha a long time to gain his awakening, and he had to learn lots and lots of lessons in the course of that time. So we’re tapping into his knowledge. We’re tapping into his wisdom, borrowing it for the time being until we can confirm it in ourselves.

So take joy in that fact. This is called delighting in the Dhamma. We look at the world outside, and if we’re looking for happiness out there, we will find some. The Buddha doesn’t deny that. But it’s not reliable. It comes and it goes. People give us happiness and then they decide to take it away. Sometimes they take it away in situations where there’s not much we can do about it. And if our happiness depends on what we can get from other people, we’re in a really bad shape. There are people who love us, but the time will come when we’ll be parted from them. Or there are people who love us and then decide they don’t love us anymore. This happens, too. Or there are people we have to depend on, but we learn that they’re not as dependable as we thought they were.

So if you’re looking for a reliable happiness, you’ve got to look inside. Of course, you look at yourself and you ask yourself, “Am I very dependable?” Well, maybe not yet. But you can work on it. Again, if we couldn’t develop skillful qualities, the Buddha wouldn’t have taught us that. But the thing is, we can. And he shows by his example that you can find something really reliable inside when you do.

This is what conviction means in the context of the Buddhist teachings—not that you believe that he’s going to come and save you, but that what he saw in his awakening is a good guide to how you’re going to live your life. And you delight in that Dhamma.

We live in a world where there has been a Buddha, someone who understood the problems of suffering, who not only solved the problem for himself, but also laid out the teaching so that others could solve the problem for themselves. That’s a good world to live in.

So think about that when you sit down to meditate. You’re focusing on your mind in the present moment because your mind in the present moment has a lot of potential power, and you want to learn how to use it well. There are a lot of potentials you have here for understanding yourself, understanding your breath, understanding the way you talk to yourself, understanding the perceptions you hold in mind—even the feelings you focus on.

These are not just random things. They’re things that you play a role in shaping. With some good guidance, you can learn how to shape them well. The Buddha is offering that guidance. So learn how to take delight in that fact. And realize that you’re also going to learn to develop some strength from it. After all, if you believe in your freedom to choose wisely, you’ll put more effort into doing that.

This is a lot of what it means to develop your strengths inside. We all have this potential to do well, but if you believe that you don’t have it, or that it’s not going to make a difference, then it’s hard to stir up that potential. It’s hard to realize it.

It’s like being lost. If you believe that there’s no way out of the forest you’re lost in, you give up pretty easily. You run into this obstacle, that obstacle, and you lose strength. You lose hope. But if you believe there’s got to be a way out—after all, you found your way in there to begin with, so there must be a way out—then you don’t let the obstacles get you down. And you’ll find you have resources of strength that you wouldn’t have imagined otherwise.

I remember the first time when Ajaan Fuang had us sit and meditate all night. I didn’t believe we could do it. But then he told stories of the forest monks sitting all night long. And you have to think, “Well, they’re human beings. I’m a human being. If they can do it, there must be a way to do it.” When you believe there is a way out, that’s a lot of the strength you need right there, in the belief. And it’s not just an empty belief. There have been lots of people who’ve found the way out before. When you have confidence in that, conviction in that, that makes you strong. And you can delight in that strength. That gives you even more energy.

So learn to think in ways that give you more strength. All too often, our internal conversation can be pretty discouraging. We tend to limit ourselves in ways that we really don’t have to. Part of it’s out of laziness; part of it’s out of just a sense of hopelessness, disappointment. But you have to realize that the Buddha himself went through periods when things looked pretty hopeless and disappointing. But he was able to find the strength that he had in himself not to let those disappointments overcome him.

As he said, the strengths he found in himself were things that other people can find in themselves, too. And you’re one of those people. So find strength in your conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, because it does have a lot of meaning for your life. It’s not just an incident in his life. It’s one of the events that defines the world in which we find ourselves. And it helps us to redefine ourselves in terms of our sense of what we’re capable of.

So make the most of it.