Like a Thoroughbred Horse

The Buddha’s Culture of Openness

by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

When the Buddha started out on his quest for awakening, he called it a search for the deathless. He also called it a search for what is skillful: the actions that would most effectively lead to his deathless goal. From the very beginning, he placed his faith in the principle that it was through his actions that he could find what he wanted. The only question was, which actions would skillfully lead him there.

When you read about his quest, it’s hard not to be struck by how many mistakes he made before finding the right path. But it’s also hard not to be impressed by how consistently wise he was in dealing with them: recognizing that they were mistakes, admitting that he was responsible for making them, and resolving to change his ways so as not to make them again. That’s how he was able to teach himself, through exploring his own actions, the way to the deathless happiness that he sought.

Having seen the benefits from admitting mistakes, he realized—when he began to teach others—that all who wanted to find awakening would have to share the same attitude: observant, truthful, and responsible, not afraid to admit their mistakes to themselves or to others. People who didn’t have this attitude wouldn’t be able to learn from their own actions. And if they couldn’t learn from their own actions, what could they learn? How could they find the right way simply by listening to his words?

After all, the message of the four noble truths is that you’re creating suffering through your unskillful actions, and you do that because you don’t realize that they’re unskillful. Sometimes you don’t even realize what you’re doing. You operate in ignorance. Only when you can clearly observe what you’re doing and recognize when your actions are causing suffering will you be willing and able to stop acting in those ways. That’s how the Buddha found the deathless, and that’s how you’ll have to find it, too.

It’s for this reason that when the Buddha set out the qualifications he looked for in his students, he said:

“Let an observant person come—one who is not fraudulent, not deceitful, one of a straightforward nature. I instruct him. I teach him the Dhamma. Practicing as instructed, he in no long time knows for himself, sees for himself: ‘So this is how there is the right liberation from bondage, i.e., the bondage of ignorance.’” — MN 80

He wanted his students to be observant enough to recognize their mistakes, and straightforward enough not to hide them from themselves or from others.

This is an important feature in the culture of the noble ones. It’s also an area where that culture departs widely from the cultures of the world.

We can see this in the way children observe their parents, siblings, and peers as they become acculturated: The unspoken rule in human society, from a child’s point of view, is that if you admit a mistake, you get shamed or punished. So, even when they’ve done wrong, children learn to master the tricks of denial, such as denial of agency (“I didn’t do it”), justification (“He hit me first”), denial of intention (“I didn’t mean to”), and denial of responsibility (“It was already broken when I stepped on it”).

Some families and peer groups operate in a way that encourages these tricks more than others, but the tricks are a common feature of a child’s survival skills all across the world. As a result of learning how to hide the truth about their intentions and actions from others, children become adept at hiding the truth from themselves.

And this doesn’t happen only in the society of the family or groups of children. It’s reinforced in our courts of law, which—with their adversarial approach to justice—reward those who can best argue the case that whatever they’ve done, it either wasn’t their fault or wasn’t really wrong. This creates a divide between the actual rightness or wrongness of actions on the one hand, and the verdicts of the judicial system on the other. There are procedures for minimizing this divide, but the fact that it exists calls both sides into question: The conventions of the law can obviously reflect social biases, but when actual rightness and wrongness can be artfully called into question, it makes many people wonder if rightness and wrongness really exist.

Now, this set of values gets picked up by some of us more than others, and some people are less successful than others in outgrowing it. But to whatever extent we have picked up and retained it, either consciously or unconsciously, we have to deliberately unlearn it when we come to the Dhamma.

The Buddha taught that the principles of right and wrong, skillful and unskillful actions, were objective, built into the way things function, regardless of social conventions. The path to awakening has two versions—the right path and the wrong path (MN 117)—and only the right path can lead to true freedom. If you’re adept at hiding your unskillful thoughts and actions from yourself—or at refusing to admit that they’re unskillful—there’s no way you can make genuine progress on the right path.

This becomes especially clear as you try to meditate. As one forest ajaan observed, the first thing you discover about the mind as you begin to really watch it is the extent to which it likes to lie to itself. Your success or failure as a meditator will depend on whether you side with this insight or with your habitual lies.

The Buddha saw that the best way to encourage the right response to this insight was to create a culture in which his students could see that it was to their advantage to admit their mistakes to others.

He did this in two main ways: through the Dhamma—his instructions—and through the Vinaya, his system of monastic rules and their accompanying values.

From the Dhamma

The primary example from the Dhamma is the set of teachings the Buddha gave to his son, Rāhula, when the latter was still a child. These were instructions in how to develop the qualities of the ideal student: observant and straightforward.

The Buddha first taught Rāhula the importance of truthfulness. He illustrated his remarks with a series of striking images. Rāhula, on seeing his father approaching, had set out a jar of water with a ladle for washing his feet. After the Buddha arrived, he washed his feet and left a little bit of water in the ladle.

Showing the water to Rāhula, he asks him, “Do you see the little bit of water in the ladle?”

“Yes, sir,” Rāhula replies.

“That,” the Buddha tells him, “is how little of the quality of a contemplative there is in anyone who tells a deliberate lie with no sense of shame.”

He then throws the water away, shows the empty ladle to Rāhula, and finally turns it upside down, saying that whatever quality of a contemplative there is in a person who tells a deliberate lie with no sense of shame is thrown away, empty, and turned upside down in just the same way.

The Buddha concludes this part of the instruction by telling Rāhula to train himself: “I will not tell a deliberate lie even in jest.”

Then he teaches his son how to reflect on his actions in the same way that he would reflect on his face in a mirror. What the Buddha offers here is a set of lessons in how to observe, admit, and learn from mistakes just as he himself had done on his way to awakening.

When Rāhula intended to do something—in thought, word, or deed—he was to ask himself, “This action I want to do—would it lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both? Would it be an unskillful action, with painful consequences, painful results?” If he could foresee any pain or affliction coming from it, he was to recognize the intention as a mistake, and not follow through with it. If he foresaw no pain or affliction coming from it, he could go ahead and act on it.

While acting on it, he was to reflect, “This action I’m doing—is it leading to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both? Is it an unskillful action, with painful consequences, painful results?” If he saw that it was leading to pain or affliction, he was to recognize it as a mistake and to stop doing it. If he saw no pain or affliction coming from it, he could continue with it.

When the action was done, he was to reflect on it again: “This action I have done—did it lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both? Was it an unskillful action, with painful consequences, painful results?” If he saw that it did lead to pain or affliction, then if it was a bodily or verbal action, he should confess it to a teacher or knowledgeable friend and then exercise restraint in the future. If it was a mental action, he should exercise restraint in the future after having developed a healthy sense of shame around it—that it was unworthy of him.

If, however, he saw no pain or affliction coming from the action, he should feel refreshed and joyful, and continue training in skillful qualities (MN 61).

These instructions teach many values all at once, such as compassion and integrity, along with a clear sense of cause and effect. But the governing word in this passage is training: Rāhula is to see himself as in training to master skillful qualities. It’s in this context that he is to develop his powers of observation and the virtue of being straightforward.

It’s important to note that Rāhula is being told to judge his actions both by the intentions behind them and by their results. This, too, is connected to the fact that he’s in training. In a system of ethics aiming at a final judgment of an action, the question often arises as to whether the intention or the consequences should be regarded as the crucial factor in determining guilt or innocence. In that context, it often has to be one or the other.

But a person training in how to master skillful actions isn’t aiming at final judgments. He’s aiming at mastering a skill, which means that he should judge his actions as a carpenter, say, would judge his skill in the course of making a piece of furniture. It’s a work in progress. In Rāhula’s case, progress is measured both by the skill of the intentions he acts on and on his ability to anticipate accurately the consequences of acting on an intention that appears skillful.

In this context, the act of admitting a mistake plays a positive role: It helps you move forward in mastering your skill. By truthfully and accurately reporting your mistakes to others who are more experienced in the skill, you can benefit from their wisdom and experience. Only when you recognize a mistake will you recognize that you need help. Only when your teachers know of your mistakes can they help you.

From the Vinaya

The same principle applies in the area of the Vinaya: A monk is expected to report his offenses to other monks so that they can help him progress on the path. Within the Saṅgha, the Buddha cultivated this positive attitude toward confession both in the procedures he set up for dealing with offenses and, more importantly, in the values he encouraged the monks to develop around those procedures.

A central feature of the Vinaya is that a monk can be penalized for breaking a rule only if he admits to having done an action that breaks it.

Some have objected to this principle, on the grounds that it would allow a monk to get away with a serious offense and never have to undergo a penalty as long as he simply denies having committed the action that went against the relevant rule. But we have to remember that, from the point of view of kamma and the Vinaya, he’s not really getting away with anything.

The point of view of kamma is that the longer he denies any wrongdoing, the more severe the kammic consequences. The Vinaya treats offenses as having an objective reality, independent of whether the monk who commits them admits to them, and independent of whether other people know about it. If offenses go unconfessed, they fester.

AN 6:12 notes that a sense of fellowship is fostered among the monks when they all adhere to the same precepts. This means that when a monk commits an offense, he’s in effect estranging himself from the community. The purpose of the penalty for the offense is not to punish him but to rehabilitate him, and to help him avoid further bad kamma. If he doesn’t willingly admit the mistake, he doesn’t deserve rehabilitation.

This is true even in cases where the monk has committed any of the most serious offenses, for which the penalty is that he’s automatically no longer a monk and must be expelled from the Saṅgha. Kammicly speaking, expulsion in this case is better than staying on as a sham monk, for the Buddha warned in graphic terms the kammic consequences of pretending to be a monk when you no longer are: worse than embracing a fire or being wrapped in a sheet of hot iron (AN 7:69). It would be better to return to the status of a layman and, if you want to continue practicing, take advantage of the opportunities available to laypeople for practicing in a straightforward way.

Now, not all monks will regard the penalties imposed by the Vinaya in a positive light, and some of them will try their best to avoid being penalized for their mistakes. This is why the relevant Vinaya procedures are designed to warn an offender that he’s better off confessing an offense as soon as possible.

For instance, under the class of offenses where the offender has to undergo a six-day penance, if he hides the offense for x number of days, he has to undergo an added period of probation for x number of days.

In a case where a monk hides an offense, but his fellow monks suspect him of having committed it, they may formally accuse him of the offense, and the Saṅgha has to meet to judge the case. Even here, they can impose a penalty on him only if he admits to the offending action, but the examples given in the Vinaya for how to cross-examine the accused are pretty aggressive. If the monk finally admits to the action in question, he has to undergo not only the penalty for the original action, but also an added open-ended probation for the arrogance of having put his fellow monks to all that added trouble.

The lesson in both of these cases: If you’ve committed an offense, you’re better off confessing it from the very beginning.

But these procedures work most effectively if the monks bring the right attitude to them, which is why the Canon contains passages devoted to promoting that attitude.

For example, in the case of a monk who wants to bring an accusation against a fellow monk, he’s advised to examine himself first to make sure he’s motivated by goodwill and not by vindictiveness. He has to remind himself to speak only what’s factual, and to maintain the attitude of goodwill throughout the settling of the case. The monk being accused is reminded to hold to the truth and to do his best not to get provoked (Cv IX.5.1–7).

But in more general terms, the Buddha encourages the right attitude toward confession through similes and admonitions. His admonitions can be quite severe, to show that he means business, but his similes can be lighthearted, to make the right attitude more attractive.

An example of a severe admonition is the stock description of a monk who has committed an offense that automatically expels him from the Saṅgha, but who refuses to admit to his fellow monks what he has done: He’s “unprincipled, of evil character, unclean and suspect in his dealings, hidden in his actions, not a contemplative though claiming to be one, not leading the holy life though claiming to do so, inwardly rotten, oozing with desire, filthy by nature” (SN 35:200; AN 7:69; Ud 5:5)—not the sort of person who deserves to live off the gifts of the faithful, and certainly not the sort of person you’d want to be.

Prominent among the similes are those that remind the monks that they are in training, and that, in that context, the act of admitting one’s mistakes is a step forward in mastering the skills of the path. The Buddha adds a touch of humor to this point by comparing the monks to horses in training.

On the one hand, there’s the attitude of an auspicious thoroughbred horse, worthy of a king: “Whatever tricks or deceits or wiles or subterfuges he has, he shows them as they actually are to his trainer, so that his trainer can try to straighten them out.” There’s a certain charm to the idea of a horse who would think like that, and the implicit message is that a monk who thinks in the same way would display the same sort of charm (AN 8:13).

On the other hand, monks who misbehave when being formally accused of an offense are compared to unruly horses who rebel when hitched to a chariot and told to go. A monk who denies what he has done is like an unruly horse who backs up and pushes the chariot back with its hindquarters. If he attacks his accusers, he’s like a horse who kicks the chariot pole and stomps on it. If he tries to pull the discussion off-topic, he’s like a horse who pulls the chariot off the road and makes it flip over. If he waves his arms in the air while defending himself, he’s like a horse who rears up and paws the air. If he leaves the meeting while his issue is still unsettled, he’s like a horse who bites through the bit and runs away (AN 8:14). Having learned these similes, you find it hard not to regard this kind of behavior as ridiculous. And it’s hard not to want to avoid that kind of behavior yourself.

A Culture of Training

The Buddha was wise enough to realize that simply teaching the main principles of the Dhamma wouldn’t be enough to help his students find the deathless. He had to train them to change not only their ideas but also their values and habits. That’s why he taught both the Dhamma and the Vinaya so as to create a culture in which the values of the Dhamma could be inculcated in a way that countered the values of the world.

His teachings on the value of admitting your mistakes—to others and to yourself—are a case in point. In addition to knowing the basic principles of the four noble truths, it’s good to know the above instructions, rules, similes, and monastic procedures by which the Buddha fleshed out those principles and brought them to life in the training he offered. His attention to detail shows that some seemingly minor attitudes can either help or hinder in making the third noble truth—the end of suffering—a realizable goal.

So as his teachings come to the modern world, it’s important that we not be too quick to throw out the parts that seem trivial or out of line with our habits or cultural values. In some cases, such as our de facto attitudes toward our own mistakes, our cultural values may be part of the problem. Those are the habits we have to unlearn.