Ideals

One of the strangest tendencies in Dhamma circles is the habit that some teachers have of saying that ideals are to be avoided across the board. It’s strange because, when you look at the life of the Buddha, he was very idealistic. He wanted the ultimate happiness. He wanted to overcome death. That’s as high as an ideal can go. And he was willing to sacrifice everything else for that ideal.

So it’s strange when Buddhist teachers say that ideals are bad. They’re usually speaking in the context of the idea that the practice is all about simply accepting things as they are. If you have an ideal, you have an idea that things should be different from what they are, and that’s a doomed prospect because things simply are the way they’re going to be. The more you want things to be a different way, the more you’re going to suffer, so give up your ideals. That’s what they say.

But that’s not the picture of the practice that the Buddha gives. He presents it as a path of making sacrifices for the sake of something of great value—as in that very basic principle in the Dhammapada: “If you see a greater happiness that can be attained by giving up a lesser happiness, the wise person will forsake the lesser happiness for the sake of the greater.”

There are things we have to give up, and if we want to succeed at the path, we have to believe that they’re worth giving up. That’s what ideals are for. If you don’t have ideals, then the prospect of putting forth extra effort gets defeated pretty quickly. “It’s simply not worth it.” “Why bother? It’s not going to succeed”: That’s what the mind tells itself—and it weakens itself that way. It shoots itself in the foot.

Now, it is true that there are mistaken ideals, misinformed ideals. This is an area where you have to practice what the Buddha calls “guarding the truth.” When you approach the practice with ideals, you have to ask yourself, “What are your ideals based on?” What you’ve heard, what you’ve read, what you’ve thought out on your own? None of those are totally reliable. You have to test these things. You have to put a question mark against the sources.

But the general ideal that we have to make sacrifices, and it’s going to be worth it: That’s an ideal you have to hold to. The question is, specifically, which things have to be sacrificed and in what order? That’s where the idealists have to be realists. But being an idealist doesn’t mean you can’t be a realist.

Look at the Buddha again. He tested his ideals against the reality of cause and effect in many different ways. He first thought that the different teachers at the time might be able to teach him how to find the deathless, so he tried their teachings. As he said, he was very sincere in his efforts. He practiced with conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment as best he could. But after having given his all, he realized that the paths these teachers were teaching were deficient. So he tried the path of austerities. He put his life on the line and almost died. After six years he finally realized that this was not going to be the path, either. But he didn’t give up. He’s realized that he had based his ideals on some false presuppositions. He had to go back and question those presuppositions, think in a new way, think outside the box.

That’s what the Middle Way was—thinking outside the box. He’d fallen in with a group of people who saw the world as having only two alternatives: sensory indulgence and self-torture. Self-torture was more noble, they thought. But he discovered that, No, both sensory indulgence and self-torture were ignoble. There was an alternative way that was truly noble, and it wasn’t simply halfway between the two. It was off the spectrum.

But the idea that there could be a path leading to the deathless: That kept him going. Otherwise, he would have given up a long time ago, gone back to the palace, and forgotten about finding awakening. And the world would have been deprived of this ideal.

So, in general, you need a sense of ideals—that there are things that can be attained through your efforts, and it’s going to be worth whatever sacrifices are required. The question is finding out what sacrifices are needed and what strengths you need to develop in the meantime. Then you focus your attention there.

You’re motivated by considerations like the simile that the Buddha gives of the spears. As he said, if you could make a deal: They would spear you three hundred times a day—one hundred times in the morning, one hundred times at noon, one hundred times in the evening—every day for a hundred years, but you’d be guaranteed gaining the stream, gaining the Dhamma-eye at the end of the hundred years. He said it would be a good deal to take on. It’d be worth it. And you wouldn’t think that the stream was gained with pain

What he’s indicating, of course, is just how amazing and astounding the deathless is. And it’s a very grounding experience. When it comes, you know for yourself that it’s really, really good, not because you’ve been told that you have to have this type of awareness or that type of cessation experience so that you can check off the box: “Yes, that was an awakening experience.”

No, it’s something that’s inherently worthwhile, inherently good, no matter what your cultural background, no matter what you’ve learned about it beforehand. Think of those archers—the ones who were sent to kill the Buddha, and then kill the archer who killed the Buddha, and then kill those archers. When the Buddha taught them, they gained the Dhamma-eye and they recognized it immediately—“This is something of immense value”—without having been told ahead of time what it was going to be. So it’s an amazing experience. It’s worth whatever sacrifices are called for.

And you are capable of doing it. That’s the other part of having an ideal. If you have an ideal that tells you that you’re incapable of doing it, throw that ideal out.

Or the ideal that says, “I’ll learn how to be happy simply with things as they are.” Throw that ideal out.

Neither of those is really an ideal. Each is a way of limiting yourself. You want to find what human beings can do. You’re a human being. You may have your weaknesses, but everybody who’s followed the path has had weaknesses.

Look into the Theragatha and Therigatha: people with no education, old people, young people, desperate people, happy people, a wide range of people, many of them worse off than you are now. But they were able to pull themselves together, figure out what strengths they had, build on their strengths, locate their weaknesses, learn how to deal with those weaknesses so that they were no longer weak in those areas, with a strong conviction that whatever sacrifices are necessary are worth it.

You can make those sacrifices only if you have strong ideals that you hold to strongly. Then you work on the strengths that are needed to follow through with those ideals.

Strength and conviction that the Buddha knew what he was talking about, and you will benefit from following what he has to say. Persistence: Falling down? Pick yourself up. Falling down again? Pick yourself up again. Mindfulness: Remember the times when you’ve done things right and don’t disparage them, so that the mind can settle down in concentration. You can gain the strength of discernment, where you see what really is worth holding on to, what really is worth letting go. You’ll be able to talk yourself into doing what you may not like to do but you know will give good results. You can talk yourself out of doing things that you like to do but you know will give bad results over the long term.

When you develop these strengths, then the ideals can become a reality. You’re focusing not so much on “things as they are” as on things as they have come to be so that you can manipulate them and can figure out what things can be. You can make them into a path to the deathless. That’s when the practice gets really good.

Otherwise, you just keep on giving in to that old cynical voice that says, “It’s not worth it. You can’t realistically do it.” Where has that voice led you? What has it brought you? Why do you believe it?

Try believing the Buddha instead.