Things Aren’t as They Should Be

The common understanding of the Buddha’s teachings on karma is that all the pleasures and pains you experience right now come from your past actions; there’s no way you can avoid them. But there are actually two places in the Canon where the Buddha refutes that idea as being totally antithetical to what he taught.

There’s one case where he hears that there are other people who teach that, so he goes and challenges them: “Is it true that you teach this?”

They say, “Yes.”

“Then in that case, people are murderers, they steal, they have illicit sex, they lie, they take intoxicants, because of what was done in the past”—in other words, they have no choice in what they’re going to do right now. They have no freedom to choose whether or not to do these things. “When you teach that,” the Buddha said, “you leave people unprotected and bewildered.”

Now, “bewildered” is the term he uses for our ordinary reaction to suffering. Suffering comes in ways that we don’t understand. If you think that everything that you’re going to experience in terms of suffering or pleasure right now comes from past actions, there’s nothing you can do about it. As the Buddha said, there wouldn’t even be an idea of things that should or should not be done, because everything was already ordained by past actions. Anyone who taught that everything was already ordained by past actions, the Buddha said, doesn’t deserve to be called a contemplative. That, for him, was strong criticism.

The other time was when someone comes and asks the Buddha, “Is it the case that all pleasures and pains come from what was done in the past?”

The Buddha replies, “Even the world knows that that’s not the case.” Then he gives a list of the different sources of pains—a list based on the medical theory of the time, for why we have pain: Sometimes it has to do with bile, sometimes with phlegm, sometimes with the wind energies in the body—all of which, in the Buddha’s analysis, would be coming from past actions.

But then there are other things, things you’re doing right now, that could also give rise to pain. So here he’s making the point that you can take the analogy of a doctor. If everything you experienced in terms of pleasure and pain depended on past actions, there would be nothing a doctor could do for you; there’d be no medicinal treatment for you. You can’t go back and change what you did, so you’d simply have to bear with the pains or pleasures until they just ran out on their own. And they’re certainly not going to run out on their own, because you keep on doing things.

So it’s a really important part of the Buddha’s teachings that what you’re experiencing right now, particularly in terms of pleasure and pain, is not totally dependent on the past. There are some influences coming in from the past, of course, but what’s really important is what you’re doing right now, and you have the freedom to choose what to do right now.

This is why doctors can treat patients; this is why we can get something out of our meditation. There are things we can change. Sometimes we’re told that awakening comes when you see, basically, that this is the way things are. But that term that’s usually translated as, “knowledge and vision of the way things are”—yathā-bhūta-ñāṇa-dassana—really means knowledge and visions of how things become: in other words, understanding the process of causality.

Meditation is not just simply a matter of watching. You’re doing something, or as the Buddha says, you commit and then you reflect. You’re learning about cause and effect. This is why, when the Buddha gave his shortest description of his awakening, it was the principle of causality—in which some influences take time to bear fruit, and others bear fruit immediately: When x exists, y will exist; when x doesn’t exist, y doesn’t exist. It’s immediate—it’s in the present moment, and that’s where you have your freedom.

Which is why what you’re doing right now, meditating on the breath, can make a difference. Or if you’re meditating on goodwill, meditating on the parts of the body, whatever you’re doing right now can make a difference. To make a good difference, you have to be confident that you really can make a difference. Without that confidence, what are you doing here? So be confident that, yes, your choices do make a difference. Things are not totally determined by the past.

There’s a phrase you hear many times in Buddhist circles, that you have to accept that things are the way they should be. There’s one way in which that’s right, but a lot of ways in which it’s wrong. It’s right in the sense that, given the past and present conditions, you can’t complain because this is the raw material you have to work with. But you don’t just let it sit there and say, “Well, that’s just the way it’s got to be.” That’s what you’re presented with, but you can learn skills to deal with what’s coming up in the present moment and to handle it well.

If you don’t have the skills, then no matter what good things are coming up in the present moment, you can suffer from them. Like the instructions to relax as you meditate: Some people turn them into a real burden, a harsh duty that they have to do—relax. Try to have a better attitude toward it—you’re allowed to relax. You’re allowed to take things easy, not in the sense of being lazy, but in the sense that when you’re trying to work with the breath, you don’t have to be very tight about it. You don’t clamp down on it. You loosen up and try to listen to it.

Listen to the body. What does it need? Have a sense of what the body seems to be trying to get as it breathes in, as it breathes out. It breathes in quest of well-being, so what direction is it leading? That’s an example of how, with even a very relaxed set of instructions, if you don’t take it right, you can suffer from it.

Or the instructions on goodwill: We start out with certain phrases on goodwill as a way of educating ourselves. “May all beings understand the causes of their true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” “May all beings look after themselves with ease.” “May they be happy.” But as you cultivate that attitude, you don’t have to keep on repeating the phrases. As with every form of meditation where there’s a phrase that you repeat, there comes a point where, if you really want the mind to settle down, you have to drop the phrase and just be with the feeling tone.

What you’re doing right now can make a difference if you understand, if you have a set of skills to handle whatever comes up. But you do have to accept the fact that you’ve got a certain set of raw materials you’re working with here, coming from your past actions. So, in that sense, the idea that things are as they should be helps you to develop an attitude of equanimity: This is what you’ve got to work with.

But you don’t stop there, and this is where the idea that things are as they should be is actually very harmful. On the one hand, it seems to imply, “Well, it’s good that they’re this way.” Or else, on the other hand, it’s, “They have to be this way.” Neither is true.

The world didn’t have to be the way it is now, and it’s certainly not good the way it is now. People have made choices, some very bad choices, but they didn’t have to make those bad choices—in the same way that you don’t have to make bad choices right now. You look at the way the world is and you realize, okay, this is an example of what happens when people are not careful, when they lack skill. The wise response to that is to decide that you want to be careful to develop some skill. You do that by acting and then looking at the results you get so that you can get better results the next time around.

That’s what you can learn from the meditation. We’re not here to simply see things as they are; we’re here to see how things have come about and, learning from that, how they can be made to come about—how things can be. You can take something simple like this—the fact that you’re talking to yourself about the breath, focusing on the breath; you have a perception of the breath, an image of how the breath flows in the body; you’re trying to create a feeling of well-being: Okay, that’s the activity. You can watch yourself doing that activity and you’ll learn a lot.

In the beginning, the focus is mainly on the breath. As you get more skilled at that, then that focus turns to: What is the mind doing around the breath? You’re committing yourself to this practice and then you reflect. All around. That way, you start seeing things about the mind that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, when the mind wasn’t so gathered—and these things can make a difference.

They can actually take you all the way to the end of suffering. They can open you up to a dimension that you wouldn’t have expected—the dimension the Buddha calls the deathless.

It’s striking how much he talks about the deathless—especially at the beginning of his teaching career—and what a key role it plays in his teachings.

When he decided to teach, after Sahampati Brahma had come and pleaded with him, the Buddha surveyed the world and saw, “Oh, it’s true. There are those who would benefit.” Then the first thing he said was, “Open are the doors to the deathless. Let those with ears show forth their conviction.”

When he went to teach the five brethren, even before he said anything about the middle way or the four noble truths, he said, “The deathless has been attained, and if you follow what I teach you, you can attain it, too.” When Sariputta heard a very short synopsis of the Buddha’s teachings and gained the Dhamma eye, he went back to see his friend, Moggallana. Moggallana, looking at him, said, “Your faculties are very bright. Have you attained the deathless?”

It’s a simple concept that there could be this dimension, but there was some discussion of this concept at that time, about what it actually meant. There were those who thought that to be deathless, you had to find an unending source of food. In other words, you’d be deathless in time. What the Buddha discovered, though, is that you can experience the deathless only if you step outside of time—and you can do that. It’s a possibility—a dimension where there’s no need for food.

If you commit yourself to this practice and are really reflective and observant, you see that things are the way they are, and in this sense, they’re not necessarily the way they should be, simply that there’s an orderliness to them. The Buddha never said the orderliness was good or bad, but it can be used. You can take advantage of it to reach the deathless. That’s the good thing.

This is why there’s that strange passage at the end of the sutta where the King Ajātasattu comes to see the Buddha, and the Buddha gives him one of the longest and most detailed Dhamma talks in the whole Canon. At the end, all the king can think about is that he wished he hadn’t killed his father.

He leaves, and the Buddha addresses the monks. “The king has cut himself off at the root,” he says. “If he hadn’t killed his father, he would have gained the Dhamma eye right here, in this very seat.” Then the sutta says, “Gratified, the monks delighted in the Blessed One’s words.”

It sounds a little heartless, but what they’re delighting in is the orderliness of the Dhamma. And the reason they’re delighted in it is because it doesn’t favor wealthy people, it doesn’t favor powerful people. It’s the same for everybody. It can be misused and abused, but it can also be used to attain the deathless. That’s what’s good about it.

There are a lot of things about causality, how it works itself out in the world, that are pretty horrifying—in terms of the cruel things that people can do to one another. The fact that things can be done to people means that they’ve probably got that kind of karma in their past. But that doesn’t excuse the people who keep on doing cruel things. So, the way things are is not necessarily as they should be. They’re just the way they are.

What you want to find out is things as they can be, and in particular, what can be done to put an end to suffering. Because things are not totally determined by the past, it is possible to do this. So, have a strong sense of the power you have here in the present moment. If you commit yourself to the practice and are really reflective, you can use that power to gain results that you wouldn’t have expected. They exceed anything you can expect.

Let that thought inspire you.