It’s Up to You

A brahman once came to see the Buddha and asked him, “Is the whole world going to attain awakening?” The Buddha didn’t answer. “Half the world?” The Buddha didn’t answer. “A third?” No answer.

Ven. Ānanda was upset, afraid that the brahman might be offended. He’d asked an important question, and the Buddha wouldn’t answer him. So he took the brahman aside and told him, “The Buddha is like a gatekeeper, a wise gatekeeper, who walks around the fortress he’s protecting. Aside from the gate, he doesn’t see any holes big enough even for a cat to slip through in the walls. So he doesn’t know how many people are going to come in and out of the fortress, but he does know that those who go in and out of the fortress have to go through the gate.”

In the same way, the Buddha knew the principle of the Dhamma that all those who would gain awakening would have to develop skillful qualities, practice the four establishings of mindfulness, and develop the seven factors for awakening.

We tend to think that the Buddha knew everything about the past and the future—and it’s true that his memory of the past was extensive, very extensive. But the one thing he said he knew for sure about the future was that he was not going to come back and be reborn.

Although he knew other tendencies for the future, he couldn’t say this was going to happen that year or that was going to happen this year. After all, people have freedom of choice. Even though we have our past karma that will influence things here in the present moment, the way we shape the present moment can be independent. That’s where we exercise our freedom.

What this means, of course, is that it’s not inevitable that we’re all going to gain awakening. We like to think that it’s a natural process, that all you have to do is get out of the way and the natural process will take us there. But that’s not how the Buddha taught it. It’s something you have to decide to do. You have to take responsibility. You have to develop the five faculties or the five strengths inside, the factors for awakening. This is something you have to do yourself.

So you have to be a self-starter. What this means, of course, though is that you do have the opportunity to be independently good. The world may be a miserable place right now. People are giving us good examples of how not to behave, and we’re free not to be influenced by their examples

So with responsibility comes freedom; with freedom comes responsibility. Fortunately, we’re not totally without help from outside. After all, we have the Buddha as our admirable friend. And as he said, admirable friendship is the most important external aid in awakening.

It means not only having admirable friends—people who have conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment—but also hoping to emulate them.

We saw this today in the kaṭhina: gifts from everywhere, from the Queen Mother on down—people giving things, people giving their time, giving their energy, giving their skills. It’s inspiring and it gives us energy to develop those same qualities within ourselves.

People have conviction that the good they do is not, as they say in Thailand, “fixing a little bit of pepper sauce and then diluting it in a whole river.” The good we do will live on and it will come back to us.

We see how people are happy to be generous because of their conviction. So again, we have good examples to follow in the right direction, good examples to encourage us.

But they have to be augmented by what the Buddha said was the most important internal factor for awakening—and that’s appropriate attention: asking the right questions. Questions such as: Where does suffering comes from? It comes from within. Where does the cure come from? Well, it comes from within as well.

So as we go through life, we have to keep looking inward, first for the source of strength that allows us to want to put an end to suffering. Then we look in to see what the problem is. Where are we clinging?

The Buddha’s four noble truths are pretty counter-intuitive. The things we like are causing us to suffer. Holding on to the things we like is suffering in and of itself. This goes against the grain. But when you put it to the test, you find that what the Buddha said is really true.

So the important factors are a combination of admirable friendship and appropriate attention. These are things you have to choose to engage in. You can have admirable friends and not really enter into the proper kind of friendship with them, but you can choose to enter into that kind of friendship. You can hear the questions of the four noble truths and say, “Well, that’s really interesting,” and discuss whether you agree with them or not. But you can choose to say, “This is how I’m going to look at my life. This is where I’m going to focus my attention—inside”: taking the lessons we’ve learned from others, taking the examples we’ve learned from others, and using them to clean up the mess inside.

So it is our choice. There’s something dignified about the fact that it is a choice. Sometimes you hear that awakening comes simply by getting out of the way, or not assuming that you’re doing it at all; let your enlightened nature do it. But that’s treating yourself like a child.

The Buddha has us treat ourselves like adults. Think about him after his awakening, surveying the world and seeing that beings were on fire with passion, aversion, delusion. He was discouraged for a while about the idea of teaching, but then he realized there would be people who would respond. There would be people who would benefit. It’s up to us to choose—are we those people or not?

You have to realize that given his perspective on things, for him an act of kindness was to hold you to high standards—higher standards than you’ve been holding yourself to up to now. But the fact that he was willing to teach meant that he felt that you could meet those standards.

The fact that he taught us: We have to treat it as an attitude of respect on his part.

So take his teachings in the way they were given, the way they were intended: as an act of kindness. All the difficulties are there. It’s not that the Buddha put the difficulties in our way. It’s our own defilements that are making it difficult. But we don’t have to identify with them. Again, that’s our choice.

So choose wisely. Take advantage of all the help you’ve been given, the good examples that have been set. And even though the Buddha couldn’t predict what you would do with his teachings, you can make up your mind you’re going to make the best use of them possible.