Meaningful Choices

There’s a strange version of determinism that you hear sometimes, the idea being that everything we experience is already determined by past causes and conditions, so we really have no genuine choices. What seem to be choices are illusory. In the end, we have to accept the fact that everything is predetermined, including our choices, and nothing can be changed. We’re just cogs in a big machine.

But then they go on to say that people who believe they’re cogs in a big machine tend to be pretty depressed. So even though we have no genuine choices, we should believe that we actually do have choices and try to make the best choices we can.

This makes no sense. If everything is predetermined, how can you choose to believe or not believe you have choices? If you can choose, that means that not everything is predetermined. If you can’t choose, you have no choice in how you view things.

What’s odd is that sometimes this is presented as a form of Buddhism, that because the Buddha taught causes and conditions, he must have meant that everything is predetermined.

But that was a teaching he criticized in no uncertain terms. Usually, he would not go out of his way to get into arguments with people, but on one issue he would: the issue of whether or not you have genuine choices, whether everything is predetermined.

As he said, if everything were predetermined, then whether you’re going to kill or not kill, steal or not steal, would have already been predetermined. And if you believe that you don’t have any choices, then you’re left unprotected, bewildered. Whatever urges come up, you can’t say No to them.

The whole story of the Buddha’s life is that we do have the power of choice, and it’s important that we trust in that. As he analyzed the present moment, he saw that you have potentials coming in from the past, and then you fabricate them into actual present-moment experiences of aggregates.

So the fact that fabrication is involved in everything, intention is involved in everything, means that we live by meaning. That’s because an intention always is, “I’m doing something for the sake of something else.” What you’re doing means x further down the line.

What we really need is guidance in how to find good meanings for ourselves. This is why the Buddha taught right resolve. You look at the world around us, and you see that most people are like King Koravya.

You know the story. He’s talking to Ven. Raṭṭhapāla about why Raṭṭhapāla became a monk. Raṭṭhapāla is telling him the four Dhamma summaries.

• The world is swept away. It does not endure.

• It offers no shelter. There’s no one in charge.

• The world has nothing of its own. One has to pass on, leaving everything behind.

• The world is a slave to craving.

Now, with regard to the first three summaries, the king has been made to think about the fact that he’s old, he’s got recurring illnesses, he’s going to die and have to leave everything behind. Then when Raṭṭhapāla explains what it means to be a slave to craving, he says, “Suppose someone you trust were to come from the East and say, ‘There’s a kingdom to the East with lots of wealth, lots of women. With your forces, you could take it.’ Would you take it?” And the king says, “Of course.”

Here he is, 80 years old, being made to reflect on aging, illness, and death, and yet he would still go for that kind of thing. It would cause a lot of harm. It would kill a lot of people, taking things that are not given, and yet he wouldn’t care. The same with someone coming from the South, the West, the North, or even from the other side of the ocean: He’d try to take the kingdoms there.

This is what it’s like when people have no brakes on their resolves—because we do create our present moment out of resolves. Koravya was driven by greed. The text doesn’t say anything about ill will, but he is callous. He doesn’t care about the harm that his desires are going to cause.

Nowadays, the world is being run by sensual greed, ill-will, callousness, all of which are the opposites of right resolve. Right resolve is basically resolved on renunciation: looking for happiness in ways that don’t involve sensuality. Non ill-will: looking for happiness in a way that doesn’t harm anybody. You don’t mean to cause anybody any harm. As for people for whom you have no ill-will but would be hurt by your ways of trying to look for happiness, you do care. You’re not callous. You don’t want to cause anybody any harm by your search for happiness.

So we need meaning in our lives—and we need good meaning—because we have to put a lot of energy into constructing each present moment as it comes. We instinctively know that we’re putting effort in. This is why we have to have a sense of meaning. Otherwise, we get depressed: We don’t see any point to putting in any effort, and that just pulls us down.

It’s not the case that if you don’t put effort in, everything just falls apart and that’s the end—that you can wish for oblivion and there will be total oblivion and there would be nothing more you’d have to do. You keep coming back, coming back, coming back in spite of your depression.

So a good meaning is one where you find a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody—a happiness that’s totally satisfactory—and that’s what the Buddha offers. Starting with right resolve, you develop powers of concentration. From there, you try to find a happiness that doesn’t require any conditions at all.

Of course, the concentration itself does require conditions. You need a healthy enough body. You need certain requisites in life. But you’re aiming for something that goes deeper inside than just the concentration, something that’s eminently worthwhile, something that doesn’t have to have a meaning.

There’s a series of questions given in the Canon: What is virtue for? It’s for the sake of concentration. What is concentration for? It’s for the sake of discernment. What is discernment for? For the sake of release. What is release for? For the sake of nibbāna. What is nibbāna for? It’s not for the sake of anything. You’ve arrived. You’ve found something that doesn’t have to be constructed, doesn’t have to be fabricated.

That’s the point where you don’t need meaning because you’ve arrived. Up until that point, you need a good meaning to make your choices and the efforts that follow on your choices worthwhile. You have to learn how to see how you’re fabricating things, which is why we get the mind into concentration.

We fabricate a state of concentration so that we can see: This is what fabrication is like. You fabricate the present moment by the way you breathe, by the way you talk to yourself, by the perceptions and feelings you focus on.

You do this given the raw material coming from your past karma, which means that mastering concentration is going to take a while because the past karma coming into fruition at any particular moment will differ. It’s not always the same.

But you learn how to ride each present moment the way a surfer rides a wave. If there were only one type of wave, you could master it pretty quickly. But waves change. So you learn how to master the skill of leaning left, leaning right, how far and how fast to lean—whatever is required. But you’re conscious of the fact that you are putting things together. When you see it clearly in the way you get the mind into concentration, you begin to realize you’re doing it all the time.

So you want to learn how to do it skillfully all the time, which is why the path includes not only right resolve and right concentration, but also all the other factors. It’s because they all have meaning. They all aim at a happiness that’s totally satisfactory and totally harmless.

Life, on its own, doesn’t necessarily have a meaning. We give it meaning by the things we go for. And the Buddha’s basically saying, “Give yourself something really good to go for, really harmless to go for, really satisfying.”

All too many other things that we pursue in life take a lot of effort and then they disappoint. We find other things that we aim at and they disappoint, too. We’ve been through this so many times that the idea of a totally unconditioned happiness begins to seem unreal.

But the whole point of the Buddha’s teachings is that you can give your life a good meaning and follow through and find total satisfaction when you get there.

From that point on, he has nothing more to teach you, because you don’t need any more teaching. You don’t need any more guidance. We need guidance in our processes of fabrication, but when you find something unfabricated, there’s no need for guidance. You’ve arrived.

And as I said, at that point there is no meaning. There’s no more fabrication that requires the motivation that comes from looking for meaning.

But in the meantime, you have to take as your working hypothesis the hypothesis that the Buddha gives you in right view: that we really do have choices, that choices really do matter. You don’t want to drive yourself crazy with the seriousness of this, which is why the Buddha gives you concentration, a place to rest and gather your strength, gather your resources, get nourishment inside, to keep working at this to do it well.

That’s another strange thing we hear people telling us: that Buddhism is all about relaxing. Don’t take things so seriously. There’s nothing to attain.

You wonder why so many modern Dhamma teachers hate the Dhamma.

The Buddha says there is nibbāna to attain. It takes work, but he provides you with nourishment along the way. To have a clear sense of what the Buddha actually did teach, remember that he taught a path. The path has a goal. That’s what it means to have a path.

If the Dhamma didn’t have a goal, he wouldn’t have come up with the image of the path, but it’s the dominant image of his teachings. The very first teaching was about the path. The very last teaching was about the path: actions you choose that’ll take you to a good place.

Always hold that in your heart, because that’s what gives you the courage you need, the strength you need, to keep on making the right choices—because your choices aren’t predetermined, your choices do matter. You can make a world of difference in the world by being careful about how you choose. It makes a big difference for you, too.