Being Reliable

Here we are, sitting with our eyes closed, looking for a reliable happiness inside. It may seem selfish. After all, there is so much deliberate unhappiness being dished out there in the world. War. Genocide. Injustice. Why aren’t we out there fighting it?

We have to remember, though, that that term “reliable happiness” has two meanings. One, it’s reliable for us. And two, it’s reliable with regard to other people. In other words, it’s not going to cause us to do anything that would harm them. The happiness itself is stable. It’s unconditioned, which means it doesn’t have to depend on conditions being a certain way. Once that happiness is found, you don’t have to make demands on the world that it has to be like this or like that. You don’t have to do anything that’s harming anybody at all.

Even the path there is a harmless path. It’s not the case that you’ll be stepping all over other people in order to get this happiness. You get it by being generous, by being virtuous, by developing thoughts of goodwill, by developing your powers of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are all things that benefit you and benefit other people.

With things like generosity and virtue, the help really obvious. With goodwill it’s obvious. When you’re mindful to be looking for happiness inside, you’re not taking anything away from anyone else. And you’re becoming a better person. Similarly, the energy you transmit into the world is a better energy. And the things you do, coming from mindfulness and concentration and discernment, are all good things.

So the happiness we’re looking for is happy in the doing — in the causes — and happy in the result. Reliable in the causes, reliable in the result. Once you’ve had your taste of the deathless, you become a reliable person. The term in Pali is niyata. You’re certain. It means you’re certain for nibbāna. But also your behavior is reliable. You’re not going to consciously break any of the five precepts at all. If you haven’t reached that point yet, you’re not reliable. This is why this is a gift to others as well.

As the Buddha points out, the mind is capable of all kinds of things. Look at the animal kingdom: all those different kinds of animals. They all represent different kinds of unskillful behavior, unskillful intentions. There are so many of them. We’re capable of anything if we haven’t trained our minds properly. And the mind is so quick to change that the Buddha said there’s no adequate analogy for how quick it is. Even the flash of an eye is too slow. There can come a point when you’ve been working to help other people, but then it breaks down.

When I was first practicing meditation with the Ajaan Fuang years back, I’d wake up at three in the morning, up on the hillside there, and I’d hear the bombers going overhead from U Tapao on their way to bomb Cambodia, bomb Vietnam. What I was doing there, sitting and meditating on the mountain, suddenly seemed so pointless, so irrelevant.

I mentioned this to Ajaan Fuang. He said that if you try to take on all the causes of the world, your goodness is going to break. In other words, you’re not strong enough to take on all the issues of the world. Even if you take on one big issue, there’ll often come a time when you get disillusioned, when your goodness breaks, where you just can’t do it anymore.

I’ve seen many, many people suddenly switch their views 180 degrees and become very selfish. They say, “I’ve been helping other people. Who’s going to help me? I’ve got to scrounge for myself, claw things my way, because nobody else is going to help me.” That attitude can happen so quickly—which means that even well-intentioned people may not be all that reliable. And if you’re not reliable, you’re a danger to the world. Sometimes, people who have been good but suddenly change their attitude are especially dangerous, because they’ve gained the power that came from being good, but now they’re misusing it.

So by practicing the Dhamma, you take that danger out of the world. While you’re still in the course of the practice, the safety you offer is still temporary. You’re heading in the right direction. But when you gain the Dhamma eye, then you can guarantee you’re not going to pose a danger to the world. You’re reliable. You’re certain.

The world needs more people like that. Otherwise, you do good for a while, and then it switches to something not so good. This is why we’ve been going around* samsāra* for who knows how long. Our goodness is unreliable. It runs for a while, and then it changes. It flips around. So as long as you’re a potential danger, you need to practice the Dhamma.

This means that the practice is not selfish. You’re trying to take one potential danger out of the world. Now, when you’ve found a happiness that’s really reliable, then if you have extra strength, the help you give to other people is pure. All too often, when people are being really good, denying themselves for the sake of others, they have to talk themselves into thinking about how good they are. They start feeding on that sense of conceit. Then the help they give is tainted by that conceit. They give for the sake of feeling good, not necessarily for the sake of doing what actually needs to be done. But if your needs for happiness inside are taken care of, and you have the energy to help others, then you look to see what would be of genuine help. You don’t need to feed off the idea that you’re a good person, or a helpful person, or a compassionate person.

There was that Dhamma teacher who years back said he didn’t want to be born in a world where there was no suffering, because he wouldn’t be able to exercise his compassion. On the face of it, that sounds noble. But the more you think about it, the more you realize: You want to feel good about your compassion, so you need to find people who are suffering. Your happiness depends on their suffering. Ideally, you should have a totally independent happiness. Then the gifts you give to others are appropriate for what they need, as best you can figure out. They’re not tainted by this idea that “I want to feel good about myself.”

So we’re looking for a reliable happiness in two ways: reliable in the sense that it’s not going to change into anything else. It’s solid, because it’s not dependent on changing conditions. And two, reliable in the sense that it makes us reliable people. It poses no danger to anyone. We pose no danger to anyone. This is why that old question of whether you should put others’ needs for happiness ahead of yours, or you should put your own needs for happiness ahead of theirs, is a false question. By looking after your needs properly, you’re also helping with the needs of others.

There was a famous monk in Thailand who, toward the end of his life, boiled all the Buddha’s teachings down to, “Don’t be selfish,” which in Thai is Yaa hen kae tua.” Literally it means, “Don’t look after yourself. Don’t look after your own needs.”

Ajaan Suwat took issue with that. He said, “You do have to look after your own needs, but you do it wisely. You do it with discernment. Then the goodness spreads around.” If you really look after your own needs, you need to make yourself reliable. Because if you’re not reliable, where are you going to take yourself? You’ll take yourself down. And you may be taking other people down with you.

We see so many people who are suffering from the consequences of their unskillful actions, yet they have no idea that it’s connected with unskillful actions. All they can see is that they’re suffering, and they don’t learn anything. They pull themselves even further down.

So now you’ve heard the Dhamma. You know what unskillful actions can lead to and what skillful actions can lead to. Do your best to follow the skillful path. When you have a clear sense of what’s right, what’s wrong, where suffering comes from, where the end of suffering comes from, you have to dig up the appropriate resources inside. They’re there. It’s not the case that the more you dig them up, the more depleted they are. It’s like developing a good habit, strengthening a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

Of course, with exercise, you also have to feed the muscle well. Feed the strength of your mind with Dhamma. Feed it with right view. Feed it with the refreshment and pleasure of concentration. Then your mind will become more reliable. It finally gets to the point where, when you can depend on yourself, other people can depend on you, too. This is why the Sangha is one of our refuges. You become a member of the noble Sangha. Other people can depend on you both as an example and for the fact that you’re never going to intentionally harm them. You’re showing them the way to true happiness.

When the time comes to go, you go leaving a good example behind. Think of the Buddha. He realized the best gift he could give to all of us was to go and not come back. Take a danger out of the world, and leave a reliable example behind.