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Dharmette: Sensitivity Grows (3 of 5) Results of Action

Probably you could hear it when I turned on the original sound to play the bell, but it's pouring with rain on my roof right now, and it's making me very, very happy. It's the first time in a long time that it's rained here. I live in Santa Barbara in Southern California, Central California.

Yesterday, I talked about a well-known sutta that's been a touchstone for me over quite a few years: the Dvedhavitakka Sutta^[4] on two kinds of thinking, where the Buddha describes understanding how different kinds of thinking give rise to different kinds of results. Thoughts arising from unwholesome roots—greedy, desirous thoughts, unkind or cruel thoughts—result in harm and they obstruct the path to freedom. And thoughts arising from wholesome roots—letting go, kindness, compassion—result in benefit and they don't obstruct the path. I imagine that makes sense to all of us. It's really logical.

And the Buddha gives this very well-known, pithy teaching in regard to this: whatever an individual frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of their mind. I like that word "inclination," because an incline in English is a physical slope as well as a predilection. I can kind of think of our thoughts rolling down a slope towards a destination.

This teaching points to a kind of growing momentum as we go on that's harder to stop. I think we know that if we indulge thoughts that are arising from ill will, from cruelty and greed, they tend to gather more ill will or greed as they roll down the slope. As time goes on, they tend to snowball.

So it's really good to judge whether we want to start down any particular slope, to follow any particular train of thought or impulse to act, especially if we already have an idea of what might be at the bottom of the slope. What the Buddha has pointed to: benefit or harm, obstruction or a clear path to freedom, wisdom, or maybe some boulders.

The Buddha described in that sutta what he discovered about these ways of thinking, and maybe we just trust the Buddha's advice implicitly. But still, I believe we need to discover for ourselves what he discovered for himself in order to make use of it. We need to actually see and feel the benefit or harm in our own minds and hearts, in our own lives, in order to really, truly understand the connection between the quality of our thoughts and what they give rise to.

We have to feel the pain, I think, of unwholesome thoughts and the actions they give rise to. We have to feel the benefit of wholesome thoughts and the actions that they give rise to. It's in our practice, both on the cushion and in our lives, where we feel those, where the teaching becomes really alive for us. The Buddha offers some advice about how we can practice to that end.

So I'm going to talk about another sutta today. In the Pali Canon, there are several suttas where the Buddha teaches his son Rahula, and this one I'm going to talk about is the first one. It's the Advice to Rahula at Ambalatthika^[5], and scholars think that Rahula was about seven or eight years old when he received this teaching, so he's just a little boy. It's Majjhima Nikaya number 61, and in this one, the Buddha is teaching Rahula a way of reflecting on his behavior. Probably you've heard about this before.

Apparently, Rahula had told a lie recently, because the Buddha begins by really admonishing him about lying and how much damage it can do, how harmful it is to deliberately tell a lie. And then after that, he goes on to give this more general advice about how to assess our actions.

He begins by asking, "What is the purpose of a mirror?" And Rahula answers, "It's for checking your reflection, sir." Such a good metaphor, I think, for what the Buddha is going to teach. Checking into our mental and physical actions is a way of looking at ourselves in a mirror, seeing clearly. Our intentions reflect our actions, they reflect what's coloring our mind. Our actions reflect our intentions. Did I say intentions reflect our actions? It's possible.

Then the Buddha tells Rahula that anytime that he's thinking of doing some action with the body, he should ask himself if this planned activity will lead to harm for himself, harm for others, or harm for both. If he assesses that it will lead to harm, he should avoid doing it, knowing it's unskillful with suffering as its result. It's very similar, and has a lot of parallels, to his advice about thinking that I talked about yesterday. And if Rahula considers that the action will be beneficial, he should go ahead and do it.

And then the Buddha continues: "While you're doing some action with the body, you should ask yourself the same questions about harm, and if you determine that the action is harmful, you should desist. But if it appears to be beneficial, go ahead, keep doing it." And then after he's acted, he should reflect in the same way: "Did it lead to harm for myself, others, or both?" If it did, then first he should let someone he trusts and respects know about it. He should confess it in a way, and in the future he should try not to do it again. And if it was skillful, with happiness as its result, then the Buddha says the boy should live in rapture and joy (pīti and sukha)^[6] because of that result, and he should continue to train day and night in skillful qualities.

And then, of course, the Buddha goes through the same set of questions and advice for actions of speech and actions of mind: body, speech, and mind. He suggests the same result of doing skillful action of speech and mind as he did for the body, that you should live in rapture and joy because of this training day and night in skillful qualities.

The sutta I talked about yesterday points to thinking; it points to an activity of mind. This one expands the field of our attention into all our other actions. We're advised to reflect before, during, and after an action. He's advising us to be mindful all the way through, staying connected to the sense of harm or benefit and then learning from it.

The Buddha points to the beautiful results of having done something skillful: to live in rapture and joy. He suggests there's a direct, experienced, visceral result of wholesome actions of mind, speech, or body. Rapture and joy are indicators, of course, that samadhi^[7] is developing, these jhanic factors.

I imagine we've all experienced sweet mental states, maybe just a sense of satisfaction or contentment after doing something or saying something that was beneficial. Maybe in the meditation, just the recollection of something you did that was wholesome gave you a sense of warmth, contentment, something wholesome, something lovely.

In this sutta, the Buddha doesn't point to the internal pain that Rahula might feel as a result of having done something unskillful. But based on my experience with unwholesome acts, I really believe that the result of those is what the Buddha spoke of in the sutta I talked about yesterday: harm to ourselves, difficulties, blocking of wisdom, obstructing the path to freedom. The result is dukkha, and we feel that directly. We feel that viscerally as well.

So I ask you to recall a time when you've acted in a way that you maybe later regretted—unkind, impatient, maybe even cruel. Any constriction, any guilt, or even any shame that we feel in those kinds of situations can act as a warning again, pointing the mind away from that particular intention, from that particular behavior, and in the future inclining us in the opposite direction.

We talk about hiri and ottappa^[8] in the dharma, what we call the guardians of the world. My preferred translations of these Pali words is "conscience" and "fear of wrongdoing." They're a natural part of our mental makeup arising from a deep place within us, our own internal advisors, our own teachers.

Perhaps you might even remember times as a child when you told a lie or behaved unkindly to a parent or schoolmate that still has a sting. I mention that because among all my childhood memories, most of which are very happy—I had a lovely childhood—there are a few that are painful to recall even today.

One of them, especially when I was about Rahula's age in the sutta, seven or eight years old, I was thoughtlessly unkind to a playmate, and it still stings quite a lot. I can still visualize the situation, the incident, the scene. We were playing jump rope in this little girl's backyard, and I was twirling the rope in this really aggressive way so that she had to jump very fast, and she tripped. I can still see her red hair flying and the rope going up and down. And I am very sorry. You know, 70 years later, you can see I'm feeling it even now. It's teaching me. It's teaching me that feeling.

And there were times when I sneaked an extra cookie, or I told my parents, "I hate you," when I was being punished for something. Don't know if you've ever done that. [Laughter] Cringy little things. And the memory of each is still a pointer: desist, don't go there, don't do that.

The Buddha concludes his advice to Rahula by saying that everyone who ever has or will purify their physical, verbal, and mental actions has done it or will do it through this practice of repeatedly reflecting on our actions. What is a purified mind? Maybe it's one that is gradually inclined so thoroughly in the direction of the wholesome that there's no danger of it slipping back in that other direction. Like the cowherd in the Dvedhavitakka Sutta, the mind can rest unperturbed, sitting under a tree and enjoying the vision of the cows wandering about.

The Buddha advised Rahula to confess to a teacher or other respected elder if he reflected that an action he'd taken was harmful. My sense is that at this point in my practice and my life, I can be that teacher or elder for myself. The pain I feel when I have knowingly been impatient, irritated, when I've acted from greed or aversion—that pain is my teacher. The pain itself inclines my mind away from impatience or irritation back into the current of what is skillful, what is onward-leading, what is beneficial for self or others. I imagine that the same is true for you as well.

So that's what I have for today. Tomorrow we'll move into slightly more subtle areas of what is skillful and what is not skillful, wholesome and not wholesome. I look forward to connecting with you then. Until then, bring your wholesomeness into the world. Thank you.