Values of the Noble Ones

We live in a land of wrong view. We tend to think that if we lived in a Buddhist country, it would be easier to practice. More people would respect us for practicing. It would create a better environment for practicing. And there are some places, say in Thailand or the other Asian countries where Buddhism is prevalent, where the atmosphere really is conducive. But you also have to remember that there are a lot of non-Buddhist attitudes in those countries as well.

In government bureaucracies, anyone who says, “We’ve got to make sure that we’re not corrupt,” is told, “Go live in a monastery.” In other words, “Don’t bother us,” as people go their way, and people who want to practice the Dhamma get pushed out. Even in some monasteries the attitude toward the Dhamma is pretty cynical.

So it’s not the case that you’ll find the ideal environment everywhere over there. You have to be really selective. This means that while you’re practicing, you have to be able to carry the practice with you, carry the attitudes with you, whether you’re in a Buddhist country or a non-Buddhist country. You have to have your own counter-cultural attitudes.

That’s because the cultures of the world, as Ajaan Mun used to say, are the cultures of people with defilements. They encourage greed, they encourage anger, they encourage delusion. That’s true not only here but everywhere. Whereas people who are trying to get rid of their greed, aversion, and delusion, are going against the stream.

So you’ve got to have some inner strength. This is why we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. The word for refuge in Pali, saraṇa, also means something you keep in mind. This is the mindfulness practice that will carry you through.

I was reading today about high school students taking mindfulness courses. The way mindfulness courses are taught here is basically that you’re aware of whatever comes up and you accept it—don’t do anything about it. They discovered—and they were surprised, but they shouldn’t have been—that this kind of mindfulness makes people more aware of their problems but also leaves them without any tools to deal with them. Of course, that’s not the mindfulness the Buddha taught.

His mindfulness is designed to provide you with the tools you need to recognize: When something skillful has come into the mind, you try to encourage it. And how you encourage it: You remember that. When unskillful things come into the mind, how do you abandon them? You try to remember that.

You keep this in mind as an important activity. When you go out in the world and you get a job, that’s not part of the job description: “Abandon unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones.” The job description basically says, “Do this and get this done.” As for your attitude, as long as you don’t talk too much about your attitude when it’s negative, you’re okay. That means you’re left to fend for yourself, as far as your attitudes are concerned. They want something else out of you.

So you’ve got to have some counter-values and you have to carry them with you wherever you go. That’s one of the reasons why we practice mindfulness of the Buddha: to think about what he would do in a situation where you’re on your own. In many cases, the Buddha wouldn’t have gone into that situation to begin with. But suppose he did: What would his attitude be? What would he recommend you do if he were there at your shoulder to recommend a skillful course of action?

He basically would say, “Step back from the situation and view it from a different perspective.” When you’re dealing with other people and they try to pull you into their worlds, their attitudes, you’ve got to pull yourself out—make sure you stand apart. At the same time, though, you want to do it in such a way that you don’t ruffle too many feathers.

So think of yourself as an undercover agent, trying to bring Buddhist values into your office, into your workplace. Those values include working on your mind, trying to figure out: What would be a good perfection to develop here in this imperfect environment?

The Canon lists ten perfections altogether. The Buddha himself never came up with this list, but the list does include things that he advocates elsewhere, in scattered places. There’s generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity. Those are all good things to develop. You’ve got to figure out which ones are appropriate now.

If the list of ten is too long, just think, “How about goodwill?” Goodwill is not just a pink-cotton-candy attitude you spread out with cloud machines. It’s basically thinking, “What would be the skillful thing to do here?” Because it’s through your skillful actions that you’re going to be happy.

If there’s any way you can induce other people to be skillful in their actions, that’s going to make them happy. They may not realize it yet, in which case you have to do a sales job, and that requires a fair amount of skill. But it’s good to have these skills because you’re protecting your practice.

Sometimes you can use humor. Sometimes you can just simply step back and not get involved.

And keep your eye out for times when you can insert something that’s in line with the Buddha’s values, the Buddha’s sense of duties, like we chanted just now. How do you “comprehend suffering”? What does that mean? Suffering is basically clinging. Clinging is kind of an addiction. We do something over and over again, and it’s causing suffering, but we feel compelled to keep on doing it: We’re feeding on things that we know are going to be bad for us, but we feel compelled.

Part of that is because we lack the imagination to think of something else we could do. In other words, we can’t imagine ourselves not doing that and we can’t imagine other things that we could do. This is part of what the Dhamma is for: to help improve your imagination as to what your possibilities are.

In fact, you could say that’s what the Dhamma is all about: opening your mind to possibilities you didn’t consider before. After all, the four noble truths, they talk about suffering. We know there’s suffering, but then the Buddha says it’s not because of people or things outside. It’s because of our own cravings. Now, that’s unexpected.

Then the Buddha says that you can actually have dispassion for your cravings and find happiness. That, too, is unexpected. Then the path he gives, from right view through right concentration, probably wouldn’t have occurred to you if you hadn’t heard it from him.

So, look at your clingings as a form of addiction, and look at the problem of addiction as a failure of the imagination.

One way to improve your imagination is to step back from situations and ask yourself, “What am I assuming here about this situation that’s actually keeping me trapped?” “What am I assuming about myself that’s keeping me trapped?”

Those are good questions to ask in general, and specifically when you find yourself in an environment that’s pulling you down. Try to think outside the box a bit.

The Buddha gives you tools for analyzing suffering into what he calls a state of “becoming.” That’s a world of experience and your identity in that world of experience, and these two things are centered on a desire.

You can ask yourself, “What is it that I desire that keeps pulling me into this world?” Sometimes it’s the fact that you desire the approval of the people around you or you want their respect. Or you feel you deserve their respect. Well, learn how to let that go.

Think about the ajaans in Thailand: Nowadays, the forest tradition is receiving a lot of respect, but it wasn’t always that way. People looked down on the forest monks as being dirty, unreliable, not fulfilling their duty in society. The monks, in particular, were criticized by the senior monks in Bangkok for this. The Bangkok monks had been commandeered into helping set up an education system in Thailand, and they wanted all the other monks to share the work.

Ajaan Mun had to keep leaving, leaving, leaving areas where this attitude was being imposed. He and his followers were criticized a lot for that. But we’re lucky they did leave. The allure, of course, was being accepted by society. They had to say No to that allure. That’s what freed them.

So when you look and see what it is that pulls you into a particular world of values that are opposed to the practice, you have to remind yourself: You don’t need that.

When I went to stay with Ajaan Fuang, one of the most refreshing parts of meeting him was that he was obviously Thai in a lot of his attitudes, but he also had a tendency to stand outside Thai society, looking at it from the outside. He wasn’t popular in the neighborhood, yet he learned not to let that bother him, because he had more important work to do.

That’s the attitude you should have: You have more important work to do as well—work inside. That involves different priorities, different values from the world around you. So learn how to keep your more important values in mind.

This is a crucial part of mindfulness that gets forgotten: the values—the attitude that the state of your mind is the most important thing; the state of your virtue is something that you really want to protect.

So in a world where people are engaging in wrong actions and wrong speech, there are times when you’re put at a disadvantage. But those disadvantages are only temporary. The fact that you’re holding to the precepts means you have something of solid worth that gives you a good future over the long term.

So carry the values with you. Keep reminding yourself of what’s important in life, so that you don’t get sucked into other people’s ideas of what’s important. You have your own inner culture. And you’ve learned it—we’ve learned it—from the noble ones.

When the ways of the world change, situations in the world fall away, yet you’re still holding to those values, they’re not going to let you down.