Right but Wrong

As the Buddha pointed out when he analyzed the causes for suffering, we bring our perceptions to our experience, and we often adjust our experience to fit in with our perceptions. It turns out that even something as simple as seeing a straight line requires a lot of machinations in the brain because the rods and the cones in your eyes are not lined up straight. So when they send a message to the brain, it’s not quite straight, and the brain adjusts it. What you actually see is a straight line, even though that wasn’t the information that was fed from the eye.

Even with something as simple like a straight line, your perceptions shape it. So when you’re in a situation where you think you’re right and somebody else is wrong, you have to question that. Tell yourself: “Maybe I’m bringing my perceptions of rightness to this situation, and those may not be right. And even if they are right, it doesn’t give me any right to be abusive or to be harsh with the other person who’s wrong.”

The question is, how do you figure out how to make that person see what is right is right, and make them want to see what is right is right? This is one of the problems here in the West. We take our rightness and beat one another over the head. And that’s wrong.

So it is possible to be right and wrong at the same time—right in the sense of what you see, but wrong in how you deal with it. So remember, there’s a lot to be learned even when you’re right. You want to be right all around. So you want to get a very quiet mind, so that you can see its perceptions in action. Only when you see them in action can you realize what their power is and where they might take you astray.

So work on your concentration. Work on the stillness of the mind, because when the mind is still, it can see these things that it wouldn’t see otherwise—these things that we bring to our experience.

When you’re sitting here, and everything seems very quiet, nothing seems to be happening, remind yourself that your perceptions are constantly adjusting things. Try to get sensitive to that. Your intentions, the way you pay attention: All these things are adjusting things. Try to get sensitive to that.

This teaches you some humility, to be more careful in how you deal with other people, how you deal with your own opinions so that they don’t become weapons. Instead, they become tools for getting a good result.

We’re operating on the assumption that everybody wants to be happy. But if your happiness depends on making somebody else miserable, or harms them, then you’ve got to adjust the way you do that—find a way of looking for happiness that doesn’t harm anybody.

This requires a lot of goodwill. Think about the Buddha himself. After his awakening, he could have talked about all kinds of things, all the wonderful things he saw in the course of his awakening and the seven weeks after, and also in the times he went off into the forest to meditate alone. But he didn’t. He talked only about things that were useful. He talked about them in a useful way—knowing when to say things in a pleasing way, when to say things in a displeasing way—so that they’d be effective.

So save your displeasing comments exclusively for times when they actually would be effective. This way we can learn to live with one another and learn how to run our own minds in a much more wise and effective way.