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Thursday — Goodwill

As we noted last night, goodwill as a brahmavihāra is a wish that all beings will be happy. It’s an antidote for ill will, the desire to see beings suffer.

As we also noted, it’s not an innate quality in the human mind. Human goodwill tends to be partial to those you like.

For goodwill to become a brahmavihāra, you have to learn how to extend it to everyone, in all situations. That requires mindfulness and determination. Mindfulness is the ability to keep this attitude in mind. Determination involves four qualities: discernment, truth, generosity, and calm.

Discernment here means looking at the issue of happiness in terms of right view.

First, there’s right view about what might be called the kamma of happiness, the principle that for beings to be happy, their happiness has to be based on their own actions.

This is why, in the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta, the expression of goodwill is not just:

It also goes on to say:

In other words, the mature and wise expression of goodwill sees that other beings will be truly happy only if they have goodwill for others, too.

So a skillful expression of goodwill is: “May all beings understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.”

This is an attitude you can extend to anyone without hypocrisy, even to people who have been cruel and heartless in their behavior.

Now, there may be people you would like to see suffer or be punished a little bit for their past misdeeds before they become happy, but you have to ask yourself: Why? What good would be gained by that? Would that punishment actually make them see more clearly the error of their ways? Often suffering makes people even more insistent that they were right to begin with.

Think of yourself: You know you have some bad kamma in your past. Would you want to be punished for those actions first before you can be happy? Of course not. You’d like to have the chance to come to your senses first, so extend the same forgiveness to others.

As the Buddha said, if we all had to be punished for our past bad actions before gaining awakening, no one would ever gain awakening.

Most of the cruelty in the world comes from people who are suffering and fearful. It would be better to wish that they willingly see the error of their ways and willingly change how they act.

You can then rejoice in that. In the Buddha’s image, such a person brightens the world in the same way that the moon brightens the night when it’s released from a cloud.

In addition to providing insight into the kamma of happiness—what it means to wish that beings be happy—discernment also has to apply to what it means to express goodwill in your words and deeds. It does NOT mean doing what people like, or trying to please them all the time. The Buddha doesn’t teach you to be a doormat. You have to think about the other person’s genuine well-being, which the person him- or herself may not even realize. Remember: Appreciating the state of peace, and hoping that other people will find that peace, too, you try to get them to observe precepts and to lessen the amount of greed, aversion, and delusion in their minds.

These are some of the ways in which discernment helps to determine on goodwill as a brahmavihāra.

As for truth: To be truthful in your goodwill, you have to be able to maintain it at all times. This requires that you learn how to talk to yourself in ways that can maintain goodwill even when others mistreat you. This is why goodwill is often discussed together with patience. You may remember the story of Lady Vedehikā from our retreat on the ten perfections: the woman who hit her slave in the head with a rolling pin. It was because of her lack of forbearance that her good reputation was ruined.

Given this need for strength in your patience and goodwill, the Buddha uses many images and perceptions—mental fabrications—to remind you to stay strong and unwavering in your goodwill no matter what.

Think of his image of bandits cutting you into pieces with a two-handled saw: Even then you should have goodwill for them. That way, if you were to die at that time, at the very least you would die with your mind in a skillful state. The survival of your goodness is much more important that the survival of the body. If you die with thoughts of ill will, those would pull you to a rebirth motivated by thoughts of revenge—and that wouldn’t be a happy rebirth.

Then think of the Buddha’s image of the mother protecting her only son. In those days, a woman’s best guarantee for future safety was to have a son. Without him, her life was in danger. If her husband were to die, she’d have no protection at all. So she would protect her baby son in every way possible. In the same way, you should protect your goodwill as your guarantee for future safety. If you allow yourself to abandon your goodwill, you’re putting yourself in danger.

Think also of the Buddha’s image of goodwill as large as the Earth, greater and vaster than the actions of other beings. It’s a strength, not a gentle attitude for weak people to develop. Think of the story of Ajaan Lee fighting off an elephant with his goodwill, or fighting off hordes of mosquitoes with goodwill, “with no holds barred.”

Think also of the Buddha’s image of goodwill as being like space. People can try to write things in space, but there’s no surface on which their writings could stick. In the same way, don’t let people’s bad words or actions stick in your mind. Don’t carry them around and ruminate on them. Just let them vanish.

When someone close to you does something displeasing, think of the good things that person has done: This makes it easier to feel goodwill for that person. Like a monk looking for pieces of cloth to make a robe, and who finds a piece of cloth that’s partly dirty: He tears off the good, clean part and leaves the dirty part aside. In other words, the monk benefits by knowing what to take and what not to take.

If you can’t think of anything good the person has done, think of him or her as being like a sick person on the side of the road in a desolate place: You have to have compassion for such a person.

The purpose of all these images and perceptions—which, as I noted, are mental fabrications—is to help you maintain your goodwill independently of other people’s actions. Remember: If your goodness depends on other people being good, then it’s not secure, and you yourself can’t trust it.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you go out of your way to help other people when they abuse your help. Remember, one of the best ways to help others is to get them to act wisely. If you can’t do that, maybe it’s time to go your separate ways, wishing the other person well, but staying out of each other’s lives.

Ajaan Fuang, my teacher, once discovered that a snake had moved into his room. Every time he entered the room, he saw it slip into a narrow space behind a storage cabinet. Even though he tried leaving the door to the room open during the daytime, the snake wasn’t willing to leave. So for three days they lived together. He was very careful not to startle the snake or make it feel threatened by his presence. But finally on the evening of the third day, as he was sitting in meditation, he addressed the snake quietly in his mind. He said, “Look, it’s not that I don’t like you, but our minds work in different ways. It’d be very easy for there to be a misunderstanding between us. Now, there are plenty of places out in the woods where you can live without the uneasiness of living with me.” And as he sat there spreading thoughts of goodwill to the snake, the snake left.

If Ajaan Fuang had tried to show lovingkindness to the snake by petting it, the snake would have probably felt fearful and would have bitten him. So the lesson here is that when you meet with human snakes—and we’ve all met many of them in our lives—often the kindest thing to do is to wish the other person well and to go your separate ways. Or, if you have to live together, you have to establish clear boundaries.

That’s how truth helps to determine on goodwill as a brahmavihāra.

As for generosity: Goodwill, to be a brahmavihāra, has to be freely given as a gift. It’s not just for people who “deserve” to be happy. “Deserving” and “not-deserving” don’t come into the issue at all. Think of Buddha’s goodwill: He didn’t teach the end of suffering only to people who didn’t deserve to suffer. If he had, he wouldn’t have found anyone to teach.

So you give goodwill freely to all. As the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta says, you extend it to:

In the Buddhist understanding of action, giving a gift is seen as a trade: You give the gift and get something good in return. What you get depends not only on the gift, but also on your motivation and attitude while giving.

We can apply Buddha’s teachings on the levels of motivation for giving in general to the gift of goodwill. The higher the motivation, the greater the happiness that results.

The lowest motivation is, “I’ll get good kamma coming back to me in future.”

In this connection, AN 11:16 lists karmic rewards of goodwill when it’s thoroughly cultivated:

In terms of protection: There are many stories in the Canon of the Buddha being protected by his goodwill: as when the elephant Nalagiri was let loose to attack him, or when a bandit was hired to assassinate him. In both cases, when they came into the range of his goodwill, they stood still in their tracks. Your goodwill may not be as strong as the Buddha’s, but if you consciously develop it, you’ll find that there are times when it can unexpectedly get you out of danger.

Some if the higher attitudes are these:

“Goodwill is good.”

“I’m happy, it’s not right that I don’t wish the same happiness to others.”

“Goodwill makes the mind serene. Gratification and joy arise.”

“Goodwill is an ornament for the mind”: In other words, it’s a natural expression of a mind that has developed concentration and discernment.

As for your attitude, you give goodwill with respect for other beings’ desire for happiness.

As with giving in general, you have to use your discernment to figure out, in individual cases, what is the best way to express your goodwill to others. In some cases, it’s expressed by loving-kindness. In others, as with Ajaan Fuang and the snake, it’s best expressed by leaving the other person alone and wishing him/her well.

One expression of goodwill that’s always an appropriate gift is the gift of forgiveness. In one of the standard phrases for goodwill—“May all beings be free from animosity”—the Pali word for animosity, vera, is the opposite of forgiveness. It’s the vengeful animosity that wants to get back at someone for perceived wrongs. So when we wish that others be free from vera, we’re saying two things: “May all beings receive forgiveness for their wrong actions,” and “May all beings forgive others who have wronged them.”

When you forgive others, you’re not saying that you’re going to love them—or that you’re even going to forget the wrong that they did. You’re simply saying that you won’t try to get back at them.

When you forgive someone who’s wronged you, it doesn’t erase that person’s kamma in having done wrong. This is why some people think that forgiveness has no place in the karmic universe of the Buddha’s teachings. But that’s not so. Forgiveness may not be able to undo old bad kamma, but by erasing any thoughts of vera, it can prevent new bad kamma from being done.

The Dhammapada, a popular collection of early Buddhist poems, speaks of vera in two contexts. The first is when someone has injured you, and you’d like to inflict some injury back. The second is when you’ve lost a contest—in the Buddha’s time, this referred primarily to military battles, but now it could be extended to any competition where loss entails harm, whether real or only perceived—and you want to get even. As when Brazil loses to Argentina in soccer.

In both contexts—injury and competition—forgiveness is what puts an end to vera. You resolve not to settle the score, even if society grants you the right to do so, because you realize that, from the point of view of kamma, the only real score in contests like this consists of more bad kamma points for both sides. So, in forgiving the other side, you’re basically promising yourself to forego any opportunity to add to the score. You have no idea how many lifetimes this particular karmic mud fight has been going back and forth, but you do know that the only way to end it is to stop the vera, and if the end doesn’t first start with you, it may never arrive.

Forgiveness is a stance you may have to make unilaterally, within yourself, but there is the possibility that the other side will be inspired by your example to stop slinging mud as well. That way, both sides will benefit. Yet even if the other side doesn’t immediately join in the ceasefire, there will come a time when they lose interest, and that particular back-and-forth will die.

As for the case when you’ve lost out in a competition, the Buddha says that you can find peace and end vera only by putting winning and losing aside. To do this, you start by taking a good look at where you try to find happiness. If you look for it in terms of power or material possessions, there will always be winning and losing. If you gain power or status, for instance, others will have to lose. If others win, you lose.

But if you define happiness in terms of the practice of merit—giving, virtue, and meditation—there’s no need to create losers. Everyone wins. When you give, other people naturally gain what you’ve shared with them; you gain a spacious sense of wealth within and the love and respect of others without. When you’re virtuous, abstaining from harming anyone, you gain freedom from remorse over your actions, while others gain safety. When you meditate, you give less rein to your greed, aversion, and delusion, so that you suffer less from their depredations, and other people are less victimized by their prowling around as well.

Then you further reflect:

Other victories can be undone—“settled” scores, in the light of kamma and rebirth, are never really settled—but victory over your own greed, aversion, and delusion is something that lasts. It’s the only victory that creates no vera, so it’s the only victory that’s really safe and secure.

But this isn’t a victory you can hope to attain if you’re still harboring thoughts of vera. So in a world where we’ve all been harmed in one way or another, and where we could always find old scores to avenge if we wanted to, the only way to find a truly safe victory in life is to start with thoughts of forgiveness: that you want to pose no danger to anyone at all, regardless of the wrong they’ve done. This is why forgiveness is not only compatible with the practice of the Buddha’s teachings. It’s a necessary first step.

That’s one important way in which generosity helps in determining on goodwill.

In connection with calm, three passages stand out from the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta:

1. Santindriyo: Have peaceful faculties. You have to look carefully at how you engage with the world through your senses. Do you look at it with the eyes of greed, aversion, and delusion? Listen with the ears of greed, aversion, and delusion? If so, you’re going to find things that aggravate those attitudes, and it’ll be hard to live in peace with others. You have to look at:

a) your motivation for looking, etc.

b) the results of how you look, etc., at other people and things.

In other words, see your engagement with the senses as a cause-and-effect process. Then you change the causes—your motivation and what you’re looking for—so that their effects don’t aggravate the mind.

For example, when you look at a beautiful person: If the way you look at the person aggravates lust or envy, you have to look at the person in another way. What features of that person’s body or personality are NOT attractive? Focus on those.

Similarly, when looking at a desirable material object, ask yourself: What would the drawbacks of owning that object be?

2. Santussako ca subharo ca: Content and living lightly. You have to look carefully at how you impose on the world with your material needs. Be content with just enough to get by and to practice the Dhamma. If you’re greedy for things, it’s bound to get you in conflict with others who want the same things—this is why there are conflicts in families and wars between nations. Think about what I just said about winning and losing: It’s best to look for happiness in a way where everyone wins, and that’s easiest when you can keep your greed, aversion, and delusion under control.

3. Diṭṭhiñ-ca anupagamma… dassanena sampanno: Not taken with views, but consummate in vision. What “not taken with views” means is that you don’t grab on to views that would get you into conflict with others. Some views actually seem to be designed to create conflict and arguments, such as how the world began. If people believe there’s a single god who ordains what has to be done in world, they go around trying to force their views on others.

“Consummate in vision” means that you see clearly what’s skillful and what’s not: This is designed for you to take as a guide for your own behavior. You don’t have to impose it on anyone, and you actually create more peace in world.

In this way, calm comes back to discernment.

It’s in these ways that your determination on being mindful of goodwill all the time actually becomes a guide to your activities throughout life, leading to a genuine and lasting happiness, both for yourself and for others.