Invitation Day

Close your eyes and settle in on the breath. Know when it’s coming in; know when it’s going out. Stay there, with the breath, all the way in, all the way out.

Today is Maha Pavarana. It marks the end of the rains retreat. The monks have lived together for three months. And the Buddha said that instead of having a Patimokkha on this day, we should have what’s called the invitation, where the monks invite one another to criticize one another with regard to the precepts. If you’ve seen, or heard, or suspected that someone has broken one of the precepts that the monks follow, then this is your opportunity to speak up. You can speak up during the rest of the year, but the person you want to speak to has the right to say, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

At the end of the rains, though, it’s the ideal time for the community to decide on the guilt or innocence of people. So everybody has to give their permission to be criticized. The community has seen the behavior of the different monks, so they know who to trust, who not to trust. So it’s an ideal time to discuss one another’s faults because, as the Buddha said, when you open yourself up to criticism, you’re inviting people to point out treasure.

Many times we have faults that we don’t see. And how are we going to correct them unless somebody points them out for us? So when someone criticizes you, it’s not harmful; it’s not hurtful. Of course, the person who makes the criticism has to do it with an attitude of goodwill. You’re doing this to help the other person get out of that particular fault. But it’s a principle that, basically, we should think about all year around—being willing to learn from one another.

Many times your faults are like your eyes. You use your eyes, but you can’t see them. You can look in the mirror, but all you see is the reflection of your eyes. You can’t really see your own eyes. So what we see when we live together is that we see our reflections in one another. And here’s the opportunity to learn.

The Buddha has several precepts around this for the monks. If someone criticizes you, you’re not supposed to show disrespect. Even if the criticism is wrong, you show respect. That means you’re open to getting true criticism sometime. And then you can learn. The message of the four noble truths is that we’re going about things wrong. We want happiness, but we hold on to things that cause suffering. Even though we think the things we’re holding on to will bring us happiness, the Buddha points out that these are the things that make us suffer.

So we have to realize that we’ve been acting in the wrong way in our thoughts, our words, our deeds. We need to learn how to find new ways of acting—to see the problems that we’re creating for ourselves unnecessarily, to learn how not to keep on creating them. That’s how we grow. That’s how we develop on the path.

So think about this, that the criticism you get from others can be a source of knowledge. If it’s true, you learn something important about yourself. If it’s not true, you’ve learned something important about the other person. It may not be what you wanted to learn about that person, but you’ve learned. So leaving yourself open for criticism is an excellent way of learning about the world. If you close yourself off, then you’re not going to learn anything. Always keep this principle in mind.