Learn from Your Mistakes

The Buddha’s accounts of his quest for awakening are among the earliest autobiographical accounts in the world.

And it’s an odd fact. After all, the Buddha taught not-self. So why is he talking so much about himself? I think it’s because he wanted to teach us some lessons, and one of the big lessons was what he did to become awakened.

It depended on his ability to recognize a mistake and then learn from it. He took several wrong paths, and when he realized that the paths were not going where he wanted them to go—i.e., to the deathless—then, no matter how much he’d invested in them, he was willing to put them aside and try something new. That’s how he became awakened.

And he recommends that we learn from our mistakes as well. The fact that he made mistakes and was willing to admit them sets a good example. The fact that he wasn’t defeated by his mistakes also sets a good example.

You have to keep both sides in mind.

Remember his instructions to Rāhula:

Before you do something, try to make sure you act only on skillful intentions.

While you’re doing it, check to see what results you’re actually getting. Don’t go into denial if you find you’re harming somebody, either yourself or others. If you see any harm, stop.

In the same way, when the action is done, look at the results. If you’ve actually caused harm, then if it was a physical or verbal act, go and talk it over to someone else. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t try to hide your mistakes.

If it was a mental action, have an inner sense of shame, but the kind of shame that holds you to a high standard. It’s the kind of shame that goes together with a sense of pride and confidence: “I should have done better. I can do better. I slipped, but now I’m going to pick myself up.”

It’s important to see that recognizing a mistake and correcting for it is an honorable act. The mistake itself is something that’s worthy of saying, “Yes, I should be ashamed of that.” But the shame you feel should be a healthy shame. It’s the opposite of shamelessness, not the opposite of pride.

Finding the right balance there is a skill. Say you’ve made a mistake: You told a lie, you killed an animal, you broke the precepts one way or another, or you made a mistake outside of the realm of the precepts, but it was obviously a mistake.

On the one hand, you want to remember clearly what you did so that you don’t do it again. This means that there has to be a little bit of a sting in the comments you make to yourself, but not so sharp a sting that you defeat your willingness to correct and your self-esteem—as when you just tell yourself, “I’m a horrible person.” That blocks the path to correcting the mistake.

You want to make sure you don’t fall into the trap of having an ego that cannot admit mistakes.

Sociologists have found five main ways that we try to deny that we’ve made mistakes. They all have to do with a sense of ego, that your ego is so sensitive that it simply cannot admit a mistake. You have to overcome these ego resistances.

They include denying responsibility. In other words, you say, “I didn’t do it,” or, “I wasn’t aware of what I was doing,” even though you were.

This is where people who believe in determinism fall. They say, “Well, I couldn’t have done anything else because everything was determined.” You have to recognize that people who believe in determinism like this have a strong emotional connection to wanting to be free from blame. It’s a psychological disease, an ego disease: the unwillingness to accept responsibility.

As the Buddha said, if everything were predetermined, there would be no path, there would be no idea of what should and shouldn’t be done. Some people like that idea, actually. But for the Buddha, the idea of what should and should not be done is required by the path of right factors. It requires the idea that, yes, you have choices, you can make a difference.

The Buddha’s teachings are all about what you should and shouldn’t do. His most basic categorical teaching was that skillful qualities should be developed; unskillful ones should be abandoned.

That’s the first hurdle we tend to put up: denying responsibility.

Second is denying that any harm was done. You see this often when people say, “I just told a little white lie. It didn’t harm anybody.” Well, remember, when you tell white lies, you’re the one who’s harmed. You’re harming yourself. You’re getting careless in your actions, and when you’re careless in your actions, you start getting careless in your meditation. Little defilements slip right through. Bigger defilements slip right through in their wake. So even though other people may not be harmed by your breaking the precept, you’re harmed. Keep that in mind.

The same holds true for the third way in which we tend to deny responsibility: deny the value of the victim. You see this in international politics, when they say, “The people in this country, the people in this group, are subhuman. They don’t deserve to be well-treated.”

Everybody deserves to be well-treated. This is why we have the practice of goodwill for all, compassion for all, remembering that we ourselves have been lower forms of life in the past. What kind of treatment would we have wanted then? Kind treatment, fair treatment. And again, we’re the ones who are harmed by our misbehavior. We have to keep that point in mind.

The fourth way is to attack the accuser. This is when we try to get rid of our inner critic, saying, “The inner critic is unfair. The inner critic is too harsh.” The inner critic may be too harsh, but you can’t just get rid of your inner critic. How are you going to learn anything if there’s no inner critic?

As the Buddha said, someone who points out your faults is pointing out a treasure, an area where you can correct your own mistakes, an area where you know you can learn.

So you should appreciate the fact that, yes, you are able to criticize your behavior. That’s a sign that you’re a better person than the you who actually did the action.

Finally, the fifth excuse people give is that they’re acting for a higher purpose. Fortunately, in Buddhism there are no higher purposes. I once heard someone say, “We have to defend the religion. Anyone who attacks the religion, we should kill them.” Well, no. As the Buddha said, there’s only one thing whose killing he condones, and that’s your anger. The Buddha doesn’t allow for any principles that would override the precepts.

So keep these points in mind when the tender ego in you doesn’t want to admit a mistake. Then, when you can retrain that ego to say, “I’m the sort of person who takes pride in the fact that I’m willing to admit my mistakes and to learn from them,” then the inner critic doesn’t have to be quite so harsh.

The reason we’re harsh with ourselves is because we put up so many resistances. Then, when we’re overly harsh, that turns around and causes a problem on the other side, in the sense that we lose confidence that we can correct our own mistakes.

Here again, the Buddha says that if we couldn’t correct our mistakes, he wouldn’t have taught. So it’s something human beings can do, and you’re a human being. It may take effort, but it’s effort well spent. What else are you going to spend your efforts on? This is your character you’re developing here.

Have some confidence. Say, “Yes, I can do this.” And it’s an honorable thing. Remember that verse from the Dhammapada: “One who was heedless and now is heedful, brightens the world like the moon when released from a cloud.” It’s the verse that Ajaan Jiab likes to repeat when we have the forgiveness ceremony. There’s something honorable in recognizing a mistake and correcting for it. It’s something people can do, and they should be honored for doing it.

So, on the one hand, remind yourself that it is serious when you make mistakes, especially mistakes regarding the precepts, because that carelessness then infects your meditation and the training of the mind as a whole.

Make sure that you take note of the fact that, yes, you did make a mistake, but don’t do it in such a way that it defeats your willingness to try to change or defeats your morale. No matter how many mistakes you make, you can still learn new skills.

Think of all the people you hear about, like Devadatta or king Ajatasattu, who are doomed for hell because they’ve made some very serious mistakes. But then it’s forecast that eventually they’ll become private Buddhas. Ven. Moggallana, the commentary tells us, used to be a Māra, but then he ultimately became the Buddha’s left-hand disciple.

So remember this: Buddhism was founded by somebody who admitted his mistakes. He knows what it’s like to be imperfect, but he also learned how to learn from mistakes. He’s showing us that we can do that, too.

We’ve all made lots and lots of mistakes in our past. All the great arahants have made mistakes in their past. They were able to learn from their mistakes, though. We can join them as well when we learn how to learn from our mistakes, too.