More Wisdom for Dummies

Buddhist wisdom is often presented as very paradoxical, subtle, hard to understand. Yet the basic principles are actually quite simple. You learn how to make distinctions. You begin to see that some of the things you do are good and some of the things are not so good; you have the desire to stop doing the things that are not good.

That’s a very basic principle.

In fact, there’s one passage where the Buddha said that even though you may be a fool, the extent to which you see your foolishness, to that extent you’re wise.

So there is wisdom for dummies. You don’t have to be all that bright in terms of reading knowledge, but you do have to have the quality of truthfulness and a desire to be harmless. Parts of the world say that the desire to be harmless is foolish, childish, immature, unrealistic. But the Buddha pointed out that goodwill—the desire for your happiness, the desire for everybody else’s happiness—is a part of wisdom.

So, what does it mean to see your own foolishness? You see that you did something and the results didn’t come out well. You see that you had the choice not to do what you did. You didn’t have to do that. If it were something you had to do, then no foolishness would be involved. But you did have the choice and you made a bad choice. It’s a very basic principle.

These principles are contained right in the realization of your foolishness. One, you do have the choice to act in different ways. Two, your actions do yield consequences. This is the basic principle of karma.

Then comes goodwill. Once you realize that you can have the choice not to be foolish, not to cause harm, then the next step is to want to find out what you can do to become wiser.

One of the principles the Buddha lays down is that you see which duties fall to you and which ones don’t. If you’re wise, you take up the duties that do fall to you while you put aside the ones that don’t. This principle goes all the way through the Buddha’s teachings.

What duties does the Buddha talk about?

First is the duty to abandon unskillful qualities and to develop skillful ones. That comes right out of the principle that you do have choices, some choices are better than others, and again, you have the desire, based on goodwill, to not do harm.

Then a more refined version of that duty comes in relation to the four noble truths. Each of those truths has a duty. The duty with regard to suffering and stress is to comprehend it. For the cause of suffering, the duty is to abandon it. The cessation of suffering is something you should realize. And the path to that cessation is something you should want to develop.

Notice: You want that because of your goodwill, so you try to maintain that attitude as you look at your actions. When the Buddha was teaching his son—we’re told the son was seven years old at the time—first he taught him the principle of truthfulness. In other words, if you’re going to become wiser in your actions, you have to be true in observing what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and the results you’re getting. If you can’t be true to yourself in these ways, then no matter how much you may know about the Dhamma, you haven’t really learned the first step.

Before you act, you ask yourself, “What are the consequences of this act I want to do going to be?” Some of the things, of course, you can foresee, and some of them you can’t. If you’re not sure, you can try things out. But if you know that if you do x somebody’s going to get harmed, then you just don’t do it. If, however, you don’t see any harm, either to yourself or for others, you can go ahead and do it.

While you’re doing it, you look at the results that’re coming up in the immediate present. If you’re actually causing harm, you stop. If you’re not causing any harm, you can continue.

Then when you’re done, you look back at the long-term consequences of what you did. If you realize that you caused harm in spite of your efforts not to, then you go talk it over with someone who’s more advanced in the path to see what advice you can get. Then you determine not to repeat that mistake.

But if you don’t see any harm, then you can take joy in what you’ve done, that you’re advancing in the training, and you continue trying to train even to become even better.

Now, those instructions teach a lot of basic principles of the Dhamma, one of which is that some of the actions you do have results immediately in the present, and for some of the actions you have to wait for the results to come. In other words, some actions are like spitting into the wind: It comes right back at you. Putting your finger in a fire: You don’t have to wait until the next lifetime for it to burn.

Other actions are like planting a seed. If you plant the seed today, you can’t expect the full-grown plant right away. It’ll take time. Those two principles are the basis of the principle of causality that the Buddha taught: that what we do now can have consequences right away and on into the future. That further means that what we experience in the present moment is a combination of results from past actions, our current actions, and the results of current actions.

You can pursue the implication of that fact and they can get quite complex, but as long as you hold to the basic principle that you’re going to try to do your best, then you can use this principle for its intended purpose: to realize that, through changing your actions in the present moment, you can stop causing suffering. Again, you see the thread all the way through: You do your best because of goodwill. That’s how you turn from a fool into a wise person.

So, you can derive all the Buddhist teachings from this basic principle: You recognize that you’ve caused some harm, and you don’t want to cause harm again. You recognize that you did something foolish, and you don’t want to continue acting like a fool. There’s nothing complex about that, nothing abstruse. But it does take a lot of truthfulness to abide by it. And a lot of goodwill. Still, those things are free.

We had a discussion yesterday about holy fools. To whatever extent a holy fool recognizes that he’s a fool, there’s some hope for him. The Buddha simply offers some advice, based on truthfulness and goodwill: If you want to stop being a fool, you look into your own actions. Learn from your mistakes. Hold on to the things that people like about holy fools, which are, one, that they have goodwill, and two, that they’re truthful. To that extent, they have the seeds for wisdom.

Where the training differs here is that you have to turn around and look at your actions very carefully. Be very observant—because even in the best-intentioned mind, there are some falsehoods going on, areas where you’re lying to yourself.

So your goodwill is what’s going to see you through. That, and the realization, “I’ve been lying to myself. That’s foolish. I’ve got to stop.”

This is wisdom for dummies. When you admit the fact that you’re not all that smart, that you have some big blank spots in your wisdom, then there’s hope for you. The people who are already good are the ones who will never learn anything.

That was Ajaan Lee’s comment one time about a monk who came to visit him. The monk was pretty proud of the fact that he was a student of Ajaan Sao. He made a public declaration that he was going to come and have a Dhamma discussion with Ajaan Lee. Yet when they met, Ajaan Lee talked about all kinds of things aside from the Dhamma. When the monk left, someone asked Ajaan Lee, “Why didn’t you talk about the Dhamma?” He replied, “When a person thinks he’s already good, what more can I teach him?”

So, there’s wisdom in seeing your own foolishness and wanting to do something about it. Which is why some of the best expressions of Buddha’s wisdom are when he explains wisdom for dummies. It’s there that everything becomes clear.