16. Honest & Observant

The Canon makes clear that, in order to reach the goal that offers the highest embodiment of the four determinations, you have to start with whatever powers of discernment, truthfulness, relinquishment, and calm you already have. You then develop them by using them to overcome any desires that run counter to the path. Just as you strengthen your body by exercising it, you strengthen these skillful inner powers by putting them to use.

The Canon associates each of these determinations with a verb. You’re determined—

• Not neglecting discernment means that you always keep in mind the questions that lie at the basis of discernment: “What is skillful? What is unskillful? What is blameworthy? What is blameless? What should be cultivated? What should not be cultivated?” And finally, the questions that summarize the rest: “What when I do it will lead to my long-term harm and suffering? What when I do it will lead to my long-term well-being and happiness?” (MN 135). You see that long-term happiness is possible, that it will depend on your actions, and that long-term is better than short-term. So you always keep the long-term results of your actions in mind.

This means that genuine discernment, instead of focusing exclusively on the present moment, takes the future into consideration as well, as you keep in mind the long-term consequences of what you’re doing in the present moment. This fact is reflected in the passages where the Buddha recommends focusing on what needs to be done right now: In every case, these passages come in the context of his discussions of mindfulness of death. Given that you could die at any moment, you should do what you can right now to master the skills you’ll need to handle death well (MN 131; AN 5:77; AN 6:19–20).

The need to take the future into consideration is also reflected in the passage with which we opened this book: When Sāriputta explains why the Buddha recommends abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful ones, the reasons encompass the results both in the present moment and well into the future (SN 22:2).

• Guarding the truth means being clear about what you base your opinions about the truth on. Hearsay? Tradition? Reasoning? Logic? Direct experience? Of the possible bases for your opinions, the Buddha says that only direct experience is reliable (MN 95), and that it’s reliable only when you yourself have become a reliable person (MN 110). So truth is a quality not only of intellectual honesty but also of personal integrity.

• Being committed to relinquishment means finding joy in abandoning any attachment that weighs the mind down and, once you’ve abandoned it, letting it go for good.

• Training only for calm means abandoning anything, within or without, that disturbs the mind. Here it’s worth noting that, in the beginning stages, you focus on eliminating disturbances that would pull you off the path. Only as the path develops do you begin to focus on disturbances within the path itself.

It’s also worth noting that, on this level of developing the four determinations, three of them—discernment, truthfulness, and relinquishment—function as means. Calm, even here, is a quality for whose sake you train.

By developing these four qualities in these ways, you can overcome desires that are ignorant, deceptive, grasping, or agitated. You’re also going against many of the common habits that the world at large uses in pursuing its desires:

In an image frequently used in the Canon, when you take on the practice, you stop flowing along with the passions of the world. Instead, you go against the stream, even when it’s hard (AN 4:5).

It’s hard because the desires that flow against the four determinations don’t give in easily. After all, they’ve been in charge of the mind for who knows how many eons. And just because these desires are ignorant doesn’t mean they’re not clever. They can easily have you fooled—and have had you fooled for a long, long time. They can even quote Dhamma to their own purposes when they want to, lulling you into thinking that by fighting them, you strengthen them, so you should avoid challenging them; or that because contentment is a virtue, it’s best just to accept them and be at peace with them.

The Buddha, however, never shied away from the fact that the practice will involve an internal battle. This is why he used so many martial analogies to rouse his monks to be up for the fight. For instance, he compared the practice to a fortress on a frontier: Mindfulness is like the gatekeeper who knows how to recognize enemies—unskillful mental qualities—and keep them from entering the fortress. Persistence is like the soldiers who defend the fortress, while learning the Dhamma is like providing the soldiers with weapons (AN 7:63).

In another analogy, the Buddha says that a monk who disrobes on hearing that there’s a beautiful woman in a nearby village is like a warrior who, on seeing the cloud of dust raised by an approaching army, can’t steel himself to enter the battle. A monk who disrobes when a woman throws herself all over him is like a warrior who falls mortally wounded in hand-to-hand combat. However, a monk who can extricate himself from a situation like that and go into the wilderness where he gains awakening, is like a warrior who, when engaged in hand-to-hand combat, comes out victorious (AN 5:75).

An important parallel between a monk and a warrior is that, because the mind can change direction so quickly, especially when it meets with internal resistance, you need to be trained to stick with the battle and see it all the way through.

The training the Buddha offers is twofold: from without and from within. Because you’re starting from ignorance, you need training from other people who are already more advanced on the path than you are. People of this sort are not only capable of giving you instruction when you need it, but they can also “rouse, urge, and encourage” you when you don’t feel up for the fight. These, in fact, are precisely the verbs the Canon uses to describe how the Buddha and his monks taught their students. Unlike the samaṇa schools that could only instruct others in their teachings on the powerlessness of human action, the Buddha—in teaching the power of human action—could provide a complete course of training that both informed his students of the possibility and desirability of taking on the training, and also fired up their hearts to exercise the power of their own actions as far as possible.

That’s training from without.

You also need training from within, because the actual battle is inside your mind. It’s a battle that only you can fight. This means that you have to be alert to what’s happening in your mind from moment to moment, to see how and where the battle lines have shifted. To deal effectively with your inner battles, you can’t simply internalize general lessons from outside. You need to develop your powers of observation and your own ingenuity to generate solutions to specific internal problems on time.

That’s the training from within.

Both sides of the training rely on the first two of the determinations: discernment and truth, in their more rudimentary forms of being observant and honest.

In receiving training from others, you have to observe what’s going on in your mind and in your behavior in general, and report it honestly to those who are training you. That way, they can trust you and be genuinely helpful in giving advice.

In training yourself, you have to be observant and honest about what you’re doing and the results you’re getting from your actions. In particular, you have to pay attention to what’s working and what’s not working in dealing with unskillful desires, so that you can solve problems quickly and not let them fester—and so that your unskillful desires don’t pull the wool over your eyes.

When you become truthful and discerning in these ways, you have a good foundation for developing the other two determinations, relinquishment and calm.

That’s why the Buddha didn’t teach only peaceful or unburdened people. But it’s also why he noted clearly that not everyone could be trained. Only if someone were honest and observant would he be willing to take that person on as a student fit to be tamed.