Acceptance Isn’t the Issue

We’re heading into kaṭhina weekend, so get some quiet while you can. This will be your foundation as you go through the weekend, when there will be a lot more noise, a lot more activity.

Some people resent that, but that’s foolish. The monastery is a place for all kinds of good activities. When people come here and enjoy being generous, that’s something to be appreciative of—and we can learn from them.

Years back, when social scientists went to Thailand to study Buddhism, they’d read up on the Buddhist texts, and they learned that the Buddha said that life is suffering. Then they went to Thailand and found Thai people really enjoying their religion: enjoying the practice of going to the monastery, being generous, observing the precepts, meditating. They came to the conclusion that the Thais didn’t understand their religion.

The problem, though, was with them: They didn’t understand the religion. After all, when the Buddha talked about suffering, he didn’t say life was suffering. He just pointed out that there is suffering in clinging and that it’s possible to stop that suffering and to find the ultimate happiness.

And the happiness the Buddha taught is not only at the end of the path, it’s all along the way. You can enjoy being generous. You can enjoy the precepts, the sense of well-being and self-esteem that comes when you know you’ve done something good.

You enjoy spreading thoughts of goodwill. It lifts your mind. After all, it’s one of the brahma-vihāras. Notice, the Buddha didn’t call it a manussa-vihāra, a dwelling that’s natural for human beings. It’s a dwelling that’s natural for brahmas, who are a high level of deva. But these attitudes are something we can attain in our minds through our own efforts. And that’s just part of the path.

Our ability to find joy in following the path is an important part of the practice. As the Buddha said, if you can delight in developing and delight in abandoning, it’s going to take you all the way to the end of the path.

So appreciate it when other people are delighting in their generosity. Have some respect for them. If you can’t have respect for other people’s good actions, it’s going to be hard to have respect for your own, and this will be debilitating.

As the Buddha said, thoughts that “I am a good person” or “I am a bad person” are the result of craving. In other words, they entail suffering.

If you’re trying to prove to yourself that you’re a good person, you can find all kinds of reasons for saying, “No, that’s not true.” You can easily tear yourself down. But if you notice that good actions really are good, and you engage in those good actions, then you’ve got some proof that there is, at least, some hope for you.

The Buddha saw that the cure for self-hatred is not just to try to develop a blanket self-acceptance. It’s to do good things and to believe in those good things, rejoice in those good things. That’s where your worth as a person lies.

You hear so much about blanket acceptance these days, that everybody should be accepted without judgment. The Buddha saw there was a problem in his time with people judging one another in terms of caste, which is the Indian version of racism. He pointed out that that was foolish. But he didn’t say people shouldn’t be judged at all.

If you want to develop a genuine sense of self-worth, it has to come from your good actions. Some people don’t have a good history of good actions, but if they really are sincere in trying to find happiness, there’s hope. That’s what the Buddha would focus on.

Think of him coming from his awakening: One of the first things he saw as he surveyed the world was that beings were on fire with the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion. So he didn’t see it as his duty to accept them. He saw it as his duty to make a change so that they could know how to put out those fires.

He was really on a mission after he gained awakening. He had found the way to true happiness and he wanted other people to know and follow that way as well, so he focused on their intentions. Those were the people he could teach, the ones who had the intention to really be serious about finding happiness in a way that’s harmless, a happiness that is harmless and will be long-lasting.

Those are the people, as he said, who could be tamed. He was the unexcelled trainer of those who can be tamed. Not everybody. He had goodwill for everybody, but in terms of the time he had to teach, he focused on those who would be receptive.

There are actually cases where he wouldn’t teach people. He had his standards for when he would or wouldn’t get into a debate with someone, and there are several cases in the Canon where he basically said, “No, there’s nothing here to debate,” because he saw that the person wasn’t sincere in trying to find the truth.

As he said, he was like the horse trainer who—if the horse wouldn’t respond to gentle treatment, wouldn’t respond to harsh treatment, wouldn’t respond to a combination of the two—would kill the horse to maintain his reputation. In the same way, he would kill those he couldn’t teach. The horse trainer listening to this was shocked. But as the Buddha explained, what he meant was that he would simply not teach that person.

So it’s not the case that the Buddha practiced acceptance for everybody. And he didn’t advise us to practice acceptance for everybody, either. You should have goodwill for everyone, but when you look for people you’re going to associate with, he recommended having standards: Look for those who are eager to listen to the Dhamma, who listen to the Dhamma and then think about it—think about it, then practice it. Those are the people he said you should associate with.

Look for people you can emulate, people you can learn from, especially concerning what’s skillful and what’s not skillful: how to have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, how to be generous, how to be virtuous, how to develop your discernment. These are things we can learn from one another. The people who embody these qualities are the people we should search out; we should learn from them and emulate them.

It’s not the case that we accept people or don’t accept people. We’re looking at actions as to whether they’re acceptable or not. Then we look at our own actions, asking the same question. This is why the Buddha taught Rāhula in the very beginning: Look at your actions. That’s your mirror for learning what’s skillful and what’s not. When you find that you’ve done something that caused harm, even though you didn’t intend to cause harm, you’ve learned. You resolve not to repeat that mistake. You have a sense of shame around that action and you’re willing to consult other people about how not to repeat that mistake. When you find that you haven’t been harmful, you should take joy in that fact, but then you continue training.

Think of the Buddha on his way to awakening. As he said, the secret to his awakening was that he didn’t rest content with his skillful qualities—to say nothing of unskillful qualities, even his skillful qualities, as long as they hadn’t reached the end. He kept trying to improve himself.

So it’s a combination of taking joy in the good that you have been able to do, but not resting satisfied. And take joy in the fact that you’re not satisfied. That’s the mature attitude.

The Buddha’s not asking you to accept everybody or to accept yourself. He’s asking you to be a mature adult, in training for the end of suffering—happy when you are able to be skillful, and happy that you have higher standards to get even better.

Some people find higher standards to be oppressive. Like that Peanuts cartoon where Linus complains, “There’s no greater burden than great potential.” That’s a child’s attitude.

The mature attitude is that you do have this potential, and you’re glad that you’re aiming at developing it, becoming better and better. Then you can look back at what you’ve done already and you find that, yes, you have made progress.

So the question is not acceptance. After all, look at Aṅgulimāla. The Buddha didn’t make it his business to accept Aṅgulimāla, but he saw that Aṅgulimāla had the potential to become a good person in spite of his past. So he encouraged him in that direction.

That’s what goodwill really means: May those who are acting in unskillful ways come to their senses. Or as the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta says, “May no one despise anyone anywhere or wish for anyone to suffer.”

Goodwill doesn’t mean, “May you be happy as you are, doing whatever you’re doing.” It means, “May you learn to be skillful.”

That’s seeing yourself not as a static thing, and seeing other people not as static things, but as agents, able to change, able to learn through commitment and reflection to go all the way to the end of suffering. Which, after all, is a cheerful message.

Those social scientists were totally off target, but we don’t have to follow them. When we think of the possibility of happiness—that there really is a total happiness that’s available, and we’re capable of finding it—we should do our best to do whatever is needed to get there.

Learn how to enjoy this process of looking back on your actions, being happy to see the times when you’ve been skillful, and happy that you’re not content there. When you can manage that, then you’ve got the right attitude for the path.