In a World of Crooked Wheels

There’s a parable in the Canon of a chariot maker. The king comes to him and says, “There’s going to be a battle in six months. I need two new wheels for my chariot. Can you do that?” The chariot maker says, “Yes.”

So he spends six months minus six days on the first wheel. He brings it to the king. The king is upset. “I need two wheels. Can you do the other wheel within six days?” The chariot maker says, “Yes.” Six days later, he brings the second wheel. The king looks at them and doesn’t see any difference between the wheels. So he asks the chariot maker, “What’s the difference?”

The chariot maker says, “Look.” He takes the second wheel and sets it rolling. It goes as far as its momentum will carry it. Then it circles around and falls to the ground. He takes the first wheel and sets it rolling. It goes as far as its momentum will carry it. Then it stands right there on its rim, perfectly balanced.

The king asks, “What’s the difference between the two wheels?” The chariot maker says, “The second wheel still has crookedness in the wood, in the hub, in the spokes, in the rim. But the first wheel has no crookedness at all.”

The Buddha tells this story and then adds that he was the chariot maker in that previous lifetime, good at getting rid of the crookedness of wood. Now he’s a Buddha, good at getting rid of the crookedness of greed, aversion, and delusion in his students.

You can read this parable in a lot of ways, one of which is that the Buddha’s Dhamma-and-Vinaya is like the first wheel. It’s well designed. It’s going to last for a long time. Look at it: Over 2,500 years, it’s still here. A lot of other institutions, other human creations, are like that second wheel. They look good, but they don’t last nearly as long.

We know also that the Buddha said that his Dhamma-and-Vinaya wouldn’t last forever. Eventually it would fall, not because of anything outside, but because people inside would no longer have respect for it. That’s the Dhamma-and-Vinaya: something really well put together. It falls apart, not because of any flaws in it, but because of flaws in people who don’t really follow it.

Look at other institutions in the world, and you’ll see that things can fall apart really quickly. Most things aren’t all that well put together. Even if something is set up well but people don’t have any true devotion to the values of why it was good, it’s going to fall apart. And, of course, there are people from within who just actively want to destroy things.

We live in a world where change can happen very fast. Destruction can happen very fast. If our well-being, if our sense of what’s right and wrong, depends on those institutions, it’s going to fall very quickly. They fall, and we fall along with them.

But if we hold on to the Dhamma and Vinaya, as long as we make ourselves worthy of it, then we have a solid foundation. Other things may fall apart around us, but we don’t fall apart.

And the fact that we’re not falling apart sets a good example for others. Remember, the Buddha said that he was the unexcelled tamer of those fit to be tamed. He wasn’t the tamer of everybody. There were a lot of people who wouldn’t accept his instructions. Some of them were so bad that the Buddha wouldn’t even talk to them. And even with those he did take on to train, if he found that they were not responding to the training, he’d give up on them because he had to devote his time and energy to places where it actually would be profitable.

So it’s up to us to make ourselves worthy of the Dhamma. In making ourselves worthy of the Dhamma, we give ourselves a solid foundation. That means having a clear sense of what’s worth holding on to and what’s not.

There’s that passage where the Buddha says there are five kinds of loss: loss in terms of relatives, loss in terms of your health, loss in terms of your wealth, loss in terms of right view, loss in terms of virtue. He says that with the first three—wealth, health, relatives—loss isn’t all that serious.

It sounds heartless. How can you say that loss of your relatives is not serious? Loss of your wealth and health is not serious? You can be put to a lot of hardships in those kinds of loss. But, as the Buddha said, that kind of loss doesn’t take you to hell. What he didn’t say but he could have said is that that kind of loss is inevitable. It’s going to happen, so you have to prepare yourself for it. He’s not being heartless. He’s trying to save you from suffering.

The preparation for those three kinds of loss lies in holding on to those two other things: virtue and right view. You don’t have to lose those. You lose them only if you throw them away. You throw them away because of people’s example. You see that the rest of the world has no concern for virtue anymore, no concern for right view, and if you let their skepticism become your skepticism, then you’re finished.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can hold on to these things, and because you hold on to them, they protect you. Remember the Buddha’s saying, that the Dhamma protects those who practice the Dhamma.

It may sound like we’re looking out only for ourselves and our own survival, but that’s not the case. When you follow the Dhamma, you set a good example. And it’s through examples that we best teach other people.

Otherwise, we’re like a person who smokes who tries to get other people to stop smoking, or who drinks and tries to get other people to stop drinking. That has no power. If you want your influence to be powerful, you have to follow the Dhamma.

Those two qualities—virtue and views made straight—the Buddha said, are also your foundation for mindfulness. It’s based on those two that you can develop right mindfulness, and right mindfulness, of course, is how you get the mind into right concentration. It’s through right concentration that your views, which have been made straight—in other words, you hold to right views—actually become your own discernment.

When we start out, we borrow the Buddha’s discernment. But through following it and being observant—we commit ourselves to the practice and reflect on what we’re doing—we make it our own.

For example, with mindfulness: If you’re virtuous as you go through the day, then when the time comes to sit down and meditate, you look back on the day, and there’s nothing you have to hide from yourself, nothing you have to deny—no wounds in the mind. You haven’t caused any harm.

When there are wounds, you either have an exposed, raw wound, which hurts, or you cover it up with scar tissue, which is hardened. In other words, you don’t admit the fact that you made a mistake. Then that refusal to admit your mistakes gets in the way.

When the Buddha was giving the basic instructions to Rahula on how to practice the Dhamma, that was one of the most important aspects: If you make a mistake, if you cause harm, you talk it over with someone. You don’t hide it.

But it’s best, once you’ve learned what is a mistake, that you don’t make it again.

As for right view, whatever comes up in the course of getting the mind to settle down, you have a good idea of what should be abandoned and what should be developed.

After all, mindfulness is not simply being aware of whatever comes. That’s probably one of the most widespread and the most harmful ways that the Dhamma has been misinterpreted. We’re not here to be non-judging. We have to judge. And the judgment is not an affliction. It’s by judging our actions that we’re actually making good on our goodwill. If you really want beings to be happy, one way, of course, is not to cause them any harm—and not to set an example of causing harm.

So, if you see that you made a mistake, you have to judge it as a mistake. You admit it and you learn from it. That’s the first step in getting beyond it. So using your powers of judgment in this way is an important part of mindfulness, and it’s an important part of goodwill as well. The idea that being judged is bad for you is not helpful at all in the practice. You simply have to learn to use your powers of judgment wisely. Use them well. Be judicious in how you look at your actions. That way, you rise above your mistakes and you make yourself worthy of the Dhamma.

Remember that Buddha’s statement that he was looking for a student who was honest and observant. “Bring me someone who’s honest and no deceiver,” he said “and I’ll teach that person the Dhamma.” His instructions to Rahula show what it means to be honest and observant. You’re honest about what you’re doing. You’re honest about what your intentions are and the results of your actions. You’re observant to see these things, and you’re honest in that when you see that you made a mistake, you don’t hide it. You freely admit it so that you can learn from it.

So you develop these qualities inside your mind. That’s when you have a reliable refuge in this world where everything is falling apart, where the various wheels that people have made come wobbling down, some in ways that are so fast that it’s startling. Some don’t go very far at all. Some are very crooked to begin with. Others are not so crooked, but eventually they show their crookedness.

As the Buddha said in that simile for the wheel, those who follow his teachings to get rid of the crookedness inside their minds are the ones who will last. Those are the ones who are solid. The ones who are crooked, who refuse to get rid of their crookedness, are like the second wheel. They fall down.

So, with all the wheels falling down around us, it doesn’t mean that we have to fall down, too. As long as our happiness doesn’t depend on things outside, our sense of what’s right and wrong doesn’t depend on those things outside, as long as it depends on the Dhamma and the Vinaya, then we can reliably expect to be solid and safe.