True to Yourself

The Buddha looked for honesty in his students. As he once said, “Let an observant person come, one who is neither fraudulent, nor deceitful, but of a straightforward nature. I will teach that person the Dhamma. Practicing as taught, he in no long time rightly knows, rightly sees: ‘So this is how there is the right release from the bond of ignorance.’”

So if you want to be released from that bond, you have to start out by being observant and of a straightforward nature. The Buddha’s instructions to Rāhula are basically instructions in how to do that: what to be observant of, and how to be honest.

You look at your intentions before you act on them and you ask yourself, “Does that action I want to do—in body, speech, or mind—lead to my own harm or to the harm of others or to the harm of both?” If you see that it’ll lead to harm or affliction, you don’t do it. If you don’t see that it’s going to cause any harm, you can go ahead and do it.

While you’re doing it, you ask yourself, “This action that I’m doing: Does it lead to affliction for myself, for others, or for both?” If you see that some unexpected harm does come up, you stop. If you don’t see any harm, you continue.

When the action is done, you reflect back: “This action that I did: Did it lead to harm or affliction for myself or for others or for both?” If you see that it did lead to harm, then if it was a bodily action or a verbal action, you talk it over with someone who’s more advanced in the path. If it was a mental action, you just develop a sense of shame around it, a healthy shame, realizing that the action was beneath you, and you resolve not to repeat it.

If you don’t see that you did any harm, take joy in the fact that your training is succeeding, and continue training joyfully day and night. In other words, when you do something right, you’re happy that it’s right, but you’re yet not satisfied. There’s more to be done.

The important thing is that you’re honest with yourself about your mistakes and you’re not ashamed to admit them to others, because we’re here to train.

The Buddha uses that image of training again and again and again. We’re like elephants being trained, like horses being trained for our own good.

The problem is that our society tends to teach us to be unobservant and sometimes deceitful. The attitude often is that if you admit to a mistake, it’s held against you. If you admit to having done something wrong, it’s held against you. So you try to deny it. The people who can get away with denying it are the ones who don’t have to suffer. That’s the attitude.

We see this in some families more than others, but we definitely see it in our courts of law. If you can deny something thoroughly enough, you get off scot-free. That, at least, is the attitude of the law. That’s the attitude of human societies all over the place.

But of course, even so, you’re not free from the karma. There’s a reality there that hiding things doesn’t really make go away. And that’s the attitude that the Buddha wants us to develop: Our mistakes are serious enough, our actions are serious enough, that we can cause ourselves a lot of harm if we don’t learn how to admit mistakes and learn from them.

You see this in the Buddha’s analogies; you see it in the way offenses are judged in the Sangha. This is one of those areas where it’s good for everybody to know about the Vinaya, because it teaches the right attitudes.

One of the principles is that a person cannot be punished for an action that he doesn’t admit having done. On the surface, that sounds like it’s allowing him to get away with things, but he’s not getting away with anything. If he actually committed an offense and doesn’t make amends, the offense is still there and it festers.

If it’s a serious enough offense—the kind of offense that would make him no longer a monk, but he continues acting like a monk—he’s creating a lot of bad karma.

If it’s a middling offense, what they call sanghadisesa, and he doesn’t admit it, then the punishment he’s supposed to undergo gets added to, day by day by day. One day is added for each day that he doesn’t admit it. It piles up. And it piles up in the mind.

If you deny it to yourself, if you hide it from yourself, there are large areas of the mind that just don’t get trained.

So the right attitude is, “We’re here to help one another.”

When an offense is being judged, the monks who are judging the potential offender have to adopt an attitude of goodwill toward him. They have to have the attitude, “We’re not here to punish the guy to make him suffer. We’re here to get him out of the offense so that he can continue his training.”

The Buddha gives some analogies. The thoroughbred horse is one who shows his tricks and deceits to the trainer so that the trainer can straighten them out. In the same way, a person practicing the Dhamma shows his or her tricks and deceits to the teacher so that the teacher can straighten them out.

If you don’t show them, if you don’t admit them, nothing gets straightened out. They become an obstacle.

There’s another analogym of the unruly horse. He’s hooked up to the chariot. The charioteer says, “Go!” but the horse backs up and rams his hindquarters against the chariot. That, the Buddha says, is an analogy for someone who denies having done something he actually did.

So see it as an act of wisdom—and not as a mark against you—to admit your mistakes, because then you can do something about them. We’re here to be trained. It’s our faults that are getting in the way of seeing the release from the bondage of ignorance.

Try to develop that attitude so that you can really train. See that it’s best to admit your mistakes. So, to begin with, you’re supposed to learn how to see them. That’s what the instructions to Rāhula are for. Look at your intentions before you act. Look at what you’re doing while you’re acting. Look at the results when the action is done. Take responsibility.

And notice the phrasing in each case: “This action that I want to do” … “This action that I am doing” … “This action that I have done.” You’re upfront about your agency. You take responsibility.

Then you see if it caused any harm. If so, you can talk it over. You can learn.

If you don’t want to see the harm you’ve done and you actually deny it, then you don’t learn anything new.

We’re here to learn. We’re not here to be already good. We’re here to become better. That’s the right attitude, the noble attitude.

The attitude of saying, “I’m already good. I haven’t done anything wrong”: That’s the unruly horse.

So, which are you going to be: a thoroughbred or an unruly horse? Try to take on the attitude that the monks have when dealing with offenses. Freely admit your mistakes so that you can learn. We’re here to be trained. There’s nothing to be ashamed about having made a mistake.

What’s to be really ashamed about is if you deny it, because that gets in the way of learning. The purpose of the training is to make you free. If you don’t admit your mistakes, you’re standing in the way of your own freedom.