Everyone wants a successful
life: how come some fail?
Everyone born into the world
has the greatest of intentions to live a decent life no-one wants
to make a mess of their lives. Even a criminal doesn't particularly want
to live his life dishonestly, but he thinks that being a criminal is good
enough it's a good shortcut in earning one's living ; thus
why not be a criminal. Having become a criminal. it is only later that
he finds out that being a criminal is no good, but by then it's too late : he can't change his mind or his life and ends up being a criminal
for the rest of his life. Thus you can conclude that although everyone
would like to be good, not everyone manages to live out their wishes.
The point of this observation
is to illustrate that although everyone has the best of intentions, not
all people see their good intentions through to fruition. There are many
factors which cause this to be the case for example: physical handicap
or lacking sufficient knowledge. The reasons are too numerous to mention
here ; however, the most damaging of obstacles to success is the
lack of discretion or judgment in situations that require decisions. What
this means is not being able to tell the difference between right and wrong,
appropriate and inappropriate behaviour in any situation. When someone
is unable to discriminate between good and evil, the end result is misunderstanding ; seeing bad things as good, seeing wrongdoing as just, seeing inappropriate
behaviour as appropriate. With such an understanding, a person can easily
justify doing evil and thus makes a mess of his whole life.
On the contrary, even if
a person is physically lame or paralyzed, if he is possessed of discretion
and can tell the difference between good and evil, he will be able to make
some sort of success out of his life more so than many a person
with bags of strength but no discretion.
There are two major influences
on the formation of discretion in a person. The first major influence is
the example of those people we are closest to ; i.e.. our friends.
If such friends influence us to make decision in the correct way, we can
call them good friends (kalyanamitra). Such good friends run right from
the lowest level to the highest ;and the Lord Buddha is the very
highest of our good friends. After the Lord Buddha, the next in line are
the arahants. After that, the Buddhist monastic Order or Sangha are the
next in line. After the monastic order come our parents ; in the
case that our parents own discretion is moral. After our parents come our
teachers (in the case that our teachers' discretion is correct), and after
that, come those of our friends who are good, our employers who are good,
good people in history and the other good people in the world.
As for faulty discretion,
this comes from 'bad friends' (papamitta). such people can be called 'evil'
or simply 'fools'.
The other influence on our
formation of discretion is ourselves. Even if you have been listening to
advice for good or bad friends, you always give consideration to advice
before getting down to following the advice. If you have proper bases for
your consideration, even given faulty data, you will have the common sense
to see through the discrepancies and come out with the right decision required
by the situation unlike the man with unreliable discretion, who
even when given reliable data, will get the wrong end of the stick and
make a faulty decision in any given situation.
Someone who has the ability
to come to a correct assessment of any particular situation based on consideration
of the information presented, is said to have yoniso manasikara ;
i.e.. he gets the point. He asks the right questions of a given situation
to get the information he needs to judge a situation or at least,
when hearing someone else making a correct assessment of a particular situation,
then he congratulates and appreciates them for their ability and
is able to instill in themselves the same sort of ability.
The Lord Buddha was always
very concerned for we, his disciples. This was the reason why he made the
observation, "if you want to be successful in the future, you need to choose
those with whom you associate because if you don't take care in
choosing your friends, or cannot tell the difference between good and bad
friends, when you come to associate with fools, you will pick up their
bad habits and their faulty discretion and that will ruin our
life for us. If however, we take care to choose good friends, we have a
good chance of success in our future. Thus, the very first blessing which
the Lord Buddha taught was, if you want to achieve success, don't associate
with fools.
The definition of a fool
A fool is someone wicked,
or weak, or feeble. For some fools, such a description might seem to be
an understatement. Of course, a fool might be the proverbial giant punching
sandbags, a frightening prospect for a rhinocerii, let alone a fragile
human being. Thus, how come we use the term feeble for a fool? In order
to answer this question, we have to examine the ways in which a person
can be considered powerful. There are four different sources of power in
the human being:
1. Physical Strength: different
people are endowed with different degrees of physical strength. Anyone
with plenty of muscles and no disabilities is endowed with the first storehouse
of power.
2. Strength of Knowledge:
derived from one's background of education and the experience of passing
years. Having the ability to apply educated reasoning in useful subjects
is the second storehouse of power.
3. Strength of Thought:
Some people go through the same number of classes together. They have an
equal amount of knowledge, but their ability to think through things using
their knowledge may not be equal. Some people know so much, but it is of
no use to them when they come to think things through. Someone may know
how to mend an engine but sits idle all day long. Why don't they offer
their services as a mechanic? Or earn their living in the engine business?
Sitting around all day long, waiting for someone to come along and find
work for them... . This we can blame on their having knowledge but not
using the knowledge as part of their thinking. Thus, if anyone uses both
their strength of knowledge and their strength of thought, they are at
great advantage because they are endowed with the third storehouse of power.
4. Strength of virtue: When
one has both the strength of thought and mindfulness of what one is doing,
when one is using one's knowledge and thought to perform good service to
oneself and others, one is endowed with the fourth storehouse of power:
strength of virtue.
The human being has the potential to be endowed with all four storehouses of power: physical strength, strength of knowledge, strength of thought and strength of virtue.
Even if someone is endowed
with all four of these storehouses of power, if their judgment is faulty,
they will not be able to put their power to full use. If, for example,
a foolish guy is physically strong, and may be qualified as a professor
with a Ph.D., with plenty of knowledge, but without the ability to think
properly, he applies his mastery of chemistry for dishonest purposes (e.g.
distilling heroine). Thus even if you are endowed with some of the four
powers, you can still be classified with the fools and those powers
are not used to their full potential. At the most a fool can use only three
of the storehouses of power. They can use only three of the four. Like
a four-cylinder car in which only three of the spark plugs fire;
it is of no use to anybody. If you have a four-cylinder car, all four need
to work in order to get benefit from any one of the four. Thus, if you
know your 'cylinders' are damaged, you don't need to wait until none of
them are left firing before you go for mending!
In conclusion, when we define
the meaning of a fool as someone weak, or feeble, we can see more clearly
now that it means that they are weak or feeble in doing good deeds.
The reason for becoming
a fool
Why, in spite of physical
strength, knowledge, numerous degrees, the ability to think and read, does
a person go back to thinking bad things, and translating them into bad
actions; instead of ending up doing good deeds, they do evil deeds
from morning to night. Even when asleep, they dream of the bad things they
will do the next morning. The anger from the day is carried over into vengeful
dreams at night.
If you look for the real
origin of the factor which makes a person a fool, you can trace it back
to one single reason that of the mind. The mind of a fool is never
still. His mind dances back and forth, from object to object like a monkey.
This is the sort of mind with no ability to concentrate. You might be in
one place, but your mind is in another place completely, now in your home,
now at the cinema ... The mind drifts off in every imaginable direction,
now it is in London, but in an instant it is wandering round Hollywood
or on the other side of the world in Tokyo. The mind roves all over the
place, because it has no home to return to and lacks concentration. Thinking
this and that, the mind is confused and clouded like someone continually
stirring up the sediment in a bucket of water. The mind is thus never clear,
and is irritated and vengeful weighed down, with sweat on one's
brow as if bearing the burden of a mountain on one's back. Worse than this,
when the mind is irritated like this, it cannot think straightand hence thinks only of bad things. Thus simply lacking concentration
of the mind, is the reason for faulty judgment one thing follows
another.
The Marks of a Fool
If a person's mind that
cannot think straight, or is incoherent or for which judgment is faulty,
just from time to time, that is nothing special. However, if this is the
regular state of the mind, it will reduce the quality of the mind day by
day, until the character of that person starts to take on the marks of
a fool. i.e.:
1. Regularly thinking evil
thoughts;
2. Regularly speaking evil
words;
3. Regularly performing
evil actions;
Thinking evil thoughts can
be divided into three different types of damaging thought. The first (lobha)
is to think day and night of stealing the things that belong to others.
Seeing someone else's wife, his eyes light up thinking of when he can steal
her away.
The second sort (payabat)
of damaging thought is to think vengeful or aggressive thoughts. It takes
only a minor conflict to stir such a person to vengefulness.
The third sort of damaging
thinking is to have false views (miccha ditthi) i.e. they think wrong views
about the world are right. To put it another way, their judgment is faulty.
Everyone makes mistakes.
To make mistakes in a calculation or to do something in the wrong order
or at the wrong time are not half so frightening as wrong view about morality.
This is the most damaging sort of mistaken thought, because it causes our
view of the world to be mistaken too. There are in all eight morally mistaken
views about the world as follows:
1. That generosity is not
virtuous and should not be done. If anyone really believes this, they destroy
their own future right from the time they are born. Right from birth until
maturity, a child relies on the generosity of his parents from
the first milk he suckles from his mother. If he were not to be on the
receiving end of generosity from the time he is born, he would have died
long ago or if our relatives had not given us their time to look
after us as we were growing up, by now we would probably have been run
down by a passing car, or drowned, or been killed by contagious disease.
Only because each relative gave his helping hand, that we could be nurtured
to the present day, with food, clothing and knowledge.
At the very least, others
have had the generosity to forgive us our wrongdoing. And when we are fully
grown, only because of the generosity between husband and wife can both
survive on a single salary.
Thus if anybody really believes
that the world can turn without generosity, they are really denying, they
completely deny all that we consider humane and they should certainly
be avoided.
2. That it is unnecessary
to honour people worthy of honour.
3. That it is unnecessary
to be hospitable to the guests that come to our house. Such a belief is
mistaken because when we accept that good judgment is something we can
pick up from the people we associate with, if it happens that a good man
visits our house, but we don't receive them properly, then we have no chance
of improving upon our bad judgment. Thus we should never refuse virtuous
guests.
4. That good and bad actions
have no effect. Such people don't believe that doing good deeds will bring
good results and that evil deeds will bring bad retribution.
5. That a child has no debt
of gratitude to his parents. Sons or daughters with such a view end up
thinking of their parents as no more than companions to keep them company,
keeping them clothed and fed through their childhood. Such people who think
that their parents ought to be thanking them for having been born, are
not hard to find in this world.
6. That this world and the
next don't really exist. Such people think that when you die that is the
end of the story that there will be no afterlife and no rebirth.
Some may say that they cannot answer such a question but at the
very least you should not refute the existence of the afterlife. You should
give the afterlife the benefit of the doubt, in order that you don't make
a mess of your life.
7. That there is no such
thing as being born instantly in fully grown form (0ppåtika). Beings
born into the world are born in many different ways. Some are born from
the womb, with a close connection with their parents. Some other sorts
of beings are born in a different way, however, a sort of instant birth
without the need to be brought up or develop through the immaturity of
childhood. This is the method of birth of beings in the hell realms when beings are born into the hell realms, they become the denizens of
hell instantly, without having to gradually grow up. They are born fully
grown. Conversely, if you do a lot of good deeds during your life, when
you pass away, your body is buried or cremated but the astral body of your
mind is reborn instantly as a heavenly being, through he power of your
past good deeds.
8. That monastics are able
to purify themselves of all defilement. Such people believe that defilements
are something just to be tolerated because they cannot be washed away.
They think that monastics are just the same as themselves; i.e.
completely defiled. they think that there is no way to develop your own
virtue, and so do not even try to make the effort.
Desktop Version
