Goal Orientation

One of the strangest ideas that’s come up in Buddhist circles, and even in some branches of the forest tradition, is that goal-orientation is a bad thing. We should just be in the present moment, content in the present moment, they say, because wanting things to be different in the present moment or being concerned about the future is a form of desire and craving.

Of course it’s desire, of course it’s craving. But, as the Buddha pointed out, some forms of desire and some forms of craving are actually good. There’s the desire in the bases for success. There’s the desire in right effort. Ven. Ānanda talks about skillful forms of craving. You hear that other people have gained the end of suffering, and you’d like to gain the end of suffering, too.

Everything about the Buddha’s teachings is very goal-oriented.

The Buddha himself was very goal-oriented. Look at his quest for awakening: six years of trying all kinds of different methods, even putting himself through torture. If one method didn’t work, he’d try another. If the other didn’t work, he’d try still another. He almost died. But then he did find the right way.

It was because he was goal-oriented that we have his teachings about awakening. Yet even then, he didn’t stop at that goal once he had achieved awakening and put an end to suffering. He thought of establishing the Dhamma and the Vinaya. In some ways, that was even more difficult. The quest for awakening took six years. Establishing the Dhamma and the Vinaya took forty-five.

He had to deal with all kinds of difficult people. Other sectarians were attacking him. Monks and nuns were attacking him. People even tried to kill him. Here he had found the way to the end of suffering, and people said, “No, I don’t like that. I don’t want to hear it.” But he kept at it.

It’s because of his goal-orientation that we have the Vinaya now. We have all the Dhamma, not just in the words of his teachings, but also in the examples he set. The texts talk about his excellent manners, even down to his manners in eating.

He never wrote anything down. He left it up to his disciples to make a record of his teachings. First, they memorized things. They chose what to memorize, how to memorize it, and passed it on. Some of the things they memorized were his attitudes, his values, stories about how he behaved in ways that showed the right way to behave. He tried to make himself an excellent exemplary person for forty-five years.

You might say, “Well, it was easy for him. He had no defilements.” But still, he had to think strategically.

As when he taught the thousand ascetics: He had to teach them in a way that’d grab their attention. First, he showed off his psychic powers. He won over most of them, except for their leader.

Finally, he read the leader’s mind back to the leader. He had been reading his mind all along, but finally he announced, “This is what you’ve been thinking, and it’s stupid.” This scared the leader.

Because they were fire-worshipping ascetics, he used the image of fire. Fire, for them, was something that was all-pervasive, and something they thought they had under control. He said, “That latent, all-pervasive fire is actually ignited, burning everything in your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. You’ve been feeding off of fire. You’ve been worshipping fire for the sake of things that will set you aflame again.” That really hit them. As a result of that talk, they all became arahants.

So he had to think strategically. And as he said, there were times when he would teach other people and they would take what he taught and gain good results. He would feel satisfaction but not be overwhelmed with satisfaction. He was able to stay untroubled, mindful, alert.

But there would be times when he would teach and people would not listen, or they would listen but disagree and not benefit from the teaching. But that didn’t stop him from teaching. He said he was sensitive to dissatisfaction but didn’t let it overcome his mind.

After all, teaching is a mutual project. We have to think about this as we go through our own practice, in terms of our own inner practice in our minds. We have to be as dedicated as he was in his search for awakening. We have a goal. We have to learn how to live intelligently and maturely with our goal.

And sure, it’ll take time. Anyone who tells you that awakening is already here and now doesn’t know what awakening is. The realization of nibbāna and nibbāna itself are two different things. Nibbana, of course, is unconditioned. It’s outside of time and space. But getting to that point where you actually realize it, that takes work and it’ll take time.

So comfort yourself that it is an excellent goal and it’s worth everything you need to do that’ll get you there. When there are setbacks, stop and think, “What did I do wrong?” Buddha has you reflect on your actions: on your intentions, on the actual action as you commit it, and then on the results.

Learn how to look at your actions in those ways, as experiments. And if an experiment doesn’t work, go ahead and change the experiment so that it does work. Keep at it, because this is something that really is important.

If people say that you can’t attain anything because you’re a lay person or because you’re a woman or because you’re too old, or too whatever, they don’t know.

Look at the Buddha. Who would have thought, when they saw him as a prince enjoying himself with all the sensual pleasures of a prince, that this would be the person who would find the Dhamma and establish it for the world?

Who would have thought, looking at the little kids in the northeast of Thailand, back in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, that these would be the people who would find the Dhamma again and bring it out to the world?

You can’t tell people by their appearance or their situation. There’s a lot more going on, and a lot of it has to depend on determination, on goal-orientation, and on an ability to stick with a goal and not get discouraged. Commit to the practice as best you can. Reflect on the results, and if the results are not good, go back and change a little bit here, change a little bit there.

Give things enough time to show results. Some people are too quick to say, “Well, I tried this for five minutes and it didn’t work.” Well, give it a bit more time. Give it a chance to show its results, then pass judgment. This is purely an internal affair, so it’s you versus you, or you versus all the different versions of you that are in there. But because everybody inside there wants happiness, you’re on the same page. Try to use that fact to deal with the obstreperous parts of your mind.

When you’re dealing with other people, think about the Buddha. His teaching was a mutual effort, and sometimes the other people on the other side were not putting out any effort. He tried his best. Sometimes they would, and sometimes they couldn’t.

There was the case of King Ajātasattu, who had killed his father. There was no way he was going to gain awakening in his lifetime. But the Buddha taught him anyhow. He gave him one of the longest discourses in the Canon, because he knew eventually the King would have some faith in him, and that bit of faith would give him something to hold on to, well into the future. But, as he said, if the King hadn’t killed his father, he would have gained awakening right there during that Dhamma talk.

So there were people he couldn’t help. But, as he said, he didn’t let his mind get upset. Even the Buddha couldn’t control everything. And here we are: people who want to have everything under our control. We want things to be just the way we want them to be, and get upset when they’re not the way we want them to be. Remember, even the Buddha couldn’t control everything in his environment. How can we?

So when your efforts to help other people don’t succeed, first ask yourself, “Did you do something wrong?” If you can’t see anything that you did wrong, then there must be something in either your past karma or the other person’s past karma that got in the way. Accept that fact. The world is the way it is. You do your best to help other people. You work on your goodwill, not just thoughts of goodwill, but words and deeds of goodwill, for the sake of happiness.

And again, think of the Buddha offering the Dhamma to people and they say, “No thanks.” There will be people who don’t want your help, or can’t accept your help, but don’t let that get you discouraged. Don’t let that kill your goodwill. Just learn how to have some equanimity to back it up. As Ajaan Fuang would say, “Goodwill without equanimity is a source of suffering.”

So have your goals, but learn how to have an intelligent relationship to your goals. Learn to have a good orientation toward your goals. After all, life is based on finding meaning in our actions. We have to have purpose in life, and having a purpose means having goals.

Every moment that we put together has a purpose. We want pleasure out of whatever opportunities are presented by our past karma as we shape it into our present-moment experience. Even in every moment there’s an arrow that points someplace. Our problem is that all too often our arrows point in different directions from moment to moment to moment. It’s like a compass as you get near the North Magnetic Pole. The needle doesn’t know where to go. It spins around.

You want to have a clear direction and maintain that direction in all of your choices. Then learn how to live in a mature and strategic way with your goals, so that you don’t give up.

That’s the lesson of the Buddha’s awakening: Don’t give up. True happiness is possible. If you don’t get it now, try again, try again. Keep coming back, coming back, with as much intelligence as you can muster, but as much determination as well.