Learn to Depend on Yourself
January 30, 2024

We live in a world where we’d like to think that everything is going to turn out all right, but one of the messages of the Buddha’s awakening is that the world has its ups and downs, and the human world doesn’t seem to be going any place in particular. We can’t guarantee that the people in charge really have our best interests at heart. So, we have to have our own best interests at heart. We have to depend on ourselves.

We look outside, and there’s not much we can depend on. The problem is that we look inside our minds and we have the feeling sometimes that there’s not much we can depend on there, either. The important thing is that you really can create a real solid refuge inside. The refuge outside—the refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha—is a refuge of an example, a refuge of information being passed on: If you want to find true happiness in your heart as the Buddha and the members of the noble Sangha found true happiness in their hearts, this is what you have to do.

There are the duties of the four noble truths and the duties of right effort. If something bad has come into the mind, you try to get rid of it. Then you try to prevent bad things from coming up again. As for good things, if they’re not there yet, you try to give rise to them. If they are there, you try to develop them further.

An important aspect of right effort is wanting to do it. So, on the one hand you think about the bad things that can happen if you don’t develop skills in the mind, and then also think of the good things that you can do when you do develop good skills. And you rejoice in the fact that you have this agency, that you do have this power in you. It’s something that we should constantly reflect on: that we’re not just the victims of fate, we’re not just cogs in a big cosmic machine. We’re living in a system of cause and effect that’s a lot more malleable, where we can make a way, in our minds at least, to find true happiness.

So, when we judge our actions, we’re not judging them for a final verdict. We’re judging them as a work-in-progress: that we’re trying to head in the right direction, and the question is, “Is this action leading us there, or is it leading us away?” If it’s leading us away, what can we do to turn us around? If it’s leading us in the right direction, what can we do to make that determination firm? This is the work of right effort.

Learn how to want to do the practice even on days when you feel tired, when you feel ill-at-ease, when you feel discouraged. What can you do to step out of those moods and put yourself on the right track? It is possible. Every thought world we create is has its blank spots where we can slip out.

They’re like a hologram. A hologram might give us an image of something else further away, but it always has its empty spots that make you realize that this is not the real thing. In the same way, the worlds that your mind creates have their empty spots, so try to find them. The main way of finding them is to remind yourself that this is a creation. “Is it a good creation? If it’s not, I don’t need to continue participating here. I can let it fall away so that I can find something new and better.”

It’s part of the power we have, so learn how to rejoice in the power you have. It may come with a lot of responsibility, but it’s far better than being powerless. If you’re powerless, you’re at the mercy of forces that you don’t really know at all. You hope they may be good, but you look around and if there is a divine creator, as a comedian once said, maybe he’s not bad, but he is an underachiever. Yet we’re not here to depend on divine beings. We’re going to have to depend on ourselves—and therein lies our hope.