A Healthy Sense of Self

Last night we talked about the reasons why it’s important to develop a skillful sense of self on the path. Tonight we’ll talk about the Buddha’s instructions in how to do it, and the lessons we learn from doing it well.

The self strategy that the Buddha recommends using along the path derives from the question at the basis of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” This question contains two ideas of self. The first is the idea of the self as agent, the producer of happiness; the second is the idea of the self as the consumer of happiness. When the question says, “What, when I do it”, the “I” here in “I do it” is the self as producer. The “my” in “my long-term welfare and happiness” is the self as consumer of happiness.

The idea of the self as agent also introduces the element of control, which the Buddha says is essential to any idea of self [§18]. This was the point he made at the very beginning of his first discussion of not-self: If you have no real control over something, how can you say that it’s you or yours? It’s only through the relative element of control you have over some of the aggregates that you can identify with them to begin with.

Now the Buddha has us use both the idea of self as producer and the idea of self as consumer as part of our motivation for practice. For example, concerning the self as producer, there’s a passage where Ven. Ānanda tells a nun that even though we practice to put an end to conceit, it’s only through a certain kind of conceit that we can actually practice [§24]. The conceit he’s referring to is the conceit implicit in the idea, “If others can do this, so can I.” This relates to our confidence—as producers of action—that we are competent to learn how to do things correctly and skillfully. This healthy sense of “I” gives us confidence that we can handle the path. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to attempt the path at all.

The Buddha also teaches us to use the idea of self as consumer as motivation for the path. There’s a passage in the Canon where he’s apparently talking about a monk who’s getting discouraged on the path and is thinking about going back to his lay life [§25]. Essentially, he recommends that a monk in that situation ask himself, “Do you really love yourself? Are you going to content yourself simply with the food, clothing, shelter, and medicine of lay life even though this means staying in the cycle of birth, aging, illness, and death? Or would you really like to put an end to suffering?” The implication here is that if you really love yourself, you should try to put an end to suffering. You should care for the self that’s going to be consuming the results of your actions.

So what should the self as producer do to show genuine goodwill for the self as consumer?

The traditional answers for the Buddha’s question—“What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?”—fall into two classes. The first class gives specific do’s and don’ts. The second class gives advice on how to determine for yourself what’s the most skillful thing to do in a given situation.

In the first class, there are the practices called “acts of merit”: generosity, virtue, and the development of goodwill. Each of these practices fosters a healthy sense of self.

When the Buddha teaches generosity, he emphasizes the fact that you’re free to give. In fact when a king once asked him, “Who should I give things to?” the king expected that the Buddha would say, “Give to me and my disciples.” Instead the Buddha said, “Give wherever you feel inspired.” In other words, he encouraged the king to practice generosity as a way of exercising his freedom to choose.

The act of generosity is one of the first ways we realize that we do have freedom of choice. When you were a child, the first time you realized you had that freedom was when you gave away something you didn’t need to give. It wasn’t on a holiday or somebody’s birthday, where you had to give something. It was when, of your own accord, you wanted to make a gift of something that was yours. A strong sense of well-being and self-worth came from that choice. When you’re forced to give, there’s no special sense of self-worth. But if you give when there’s no compulsion, it gives rise to a sense of self-esteem: You’re not just a slave to your appetites. You have the noble heart that’s willing to share pleasure with others.

Similarly with the practice of virtue, such as observing the five precepts or avoiding the ten courses of unskillful action [§5]: When you realize that there are ways that you could get away with harming someone, but you choose not to, it gives rise to a very strong sense of self-worth. When you’re tempted to do something that’s unskillful but you learn how to say No to that temptation, you realize again that you’re not a slave to your defilements.

This is how the practice of virtue develops skill in learning to deal with addictive behavior. For example, suppose that you feel tempted to do something and you try to say No, part of the mind will say, “Well, you’re going to say Yes in five minutes, so why not say Yes now?” You learn how to say, “No, I’m not going to fall for that trick. What I do in five minutes is not my responsibility right now. My responsibility is what I do right now.” If you keep this up, you learn how to deal with all the tricks that the mind has to fool itself. This gives rise to a sense of competence and self-worth. It also gives you a lesson in the existence of choice, which is an important element on the path.

Meditation on goodwill also gives rise to a sense of great well-being and self-worth. On the one hand, it reminds you that you do deserve to find true happiness. I don’t know about France, but in America many people say that they have trouble feeling goodwill for themselves. They don’t feel worthy of true happiness. If you have that attitude, it saps the strength you need to follow the path. But if you can remind yourself that true happiness isn’t selfish or self-indulgent—it doesn’t harm anyone and it also puts you in a better position to help other people—this gives you a healthy motivation to practice.

On the other hand, the ability to extend thoughts of goodwill to large numbers of people, even those you don’t like, creates a spacious sense of your own nobility—the nobility that comes from not carrying grudges or playing favorites.

All of these ways of practice give training in being more skillful and more mature in how you create your sense of “I” and “mine.” At the same time, they give you practice in learning how to dis-identify with less skillful intentions, such the desire to be stingy, hurtful, or mean. In this way, you’re gaining practice in developing the perceptions of self and not-self in a skillful way.

Now, the Buddha realized that simply giving instructions in generosity, virtue, and meditation would not cover every situation in life. It’s important that you also learn the skills to judge for yourself what is skillful in the areas where clear-cut rules don’t apply, or two good general principles would pull you in opposite directions. So he also gave instructions on how to train yourself to judge situations wisely for yourself.

I’ll give an illustration of this principle. If you ever go to Alaska, you’ll discover that there are bears. Most of the people who encounter bears in Alaska have no previous experience with bears. They don’t understand bears’ habits or the etiquette of bears. Bears do have their etiquette, you know. So, in order to train strangers in how to deal with bears, the Alaskan government used to post big signs around the state, entitled, “Bear Awareness.” It’s joke in English that doesn’t work in French, because the word “bear” in “bear awareness” can also be “bare.” The signs listed ten points to remember when encountering bears. I can’t remember all ten, but the first nine gave specific do’s and don’ts. For example, if you see a bear, do not run away. Even if the bear runs at you, do not run off. Instead, raise your hands so that you look large to the bear—bears have very poor eyesight—and stand your ground. At the same time, speak to the bear in a calm, reassuring voice, to let the bear know that you mean it no harm. If the bear attacks you, lie down and play dead. Usually the bear will lose interest and walk away.

That was as far as the specific instructions took you. Then the sign told you that there’s a situation where it couldn’t tell you what to do—which is if the bear starts to chew on you—because the bear may have two different intentions. One, it simply may be curious to see if you really are dead. The other is if the bear is hungry. So while you’re lying there with the bear nibbling on you, you have to decide which is the bear’s motivation. If the bear is simply nibbling out of curiosity, continue to play dead; the bear will lose interest and walk away. However, if the bear is hungry, fight for all of your life. Poke your finger in its eyes and do whatever else you can think of to scare it away.

Now to decide the bear’s motivation in a situation like that requires a lot of mindfulness and alertness.

In the same way, as you’re facing your day-to-day life, there will be areas where the Buddha’s instructions on generosity, virtue, and goodwill give clear guidance, and areas where they don’t. In areas where they don’t, you have to develop your own mindfulness, alertness, and many other skillful qualities to determine the right thing to do. This principle is so important that it was the first thing the Buddha taught to his son.

Notice the qualities of heart and mind that are developed by this kind of practice.

First, it teaches you to be observant—and in particular to be observant of your own actions, their motivation and their results—because this is one area where we tend to engage in a lot of denial. The area of our motivations, our actions, and their results is the first area where we learn denial when we’re children—as when we might have said, “It was already broken when I lay down on it.” The Buddha here is teaching you not to develop that attitude. If you actually broke it by stepping on it, you should admit that you were the one who broke it.

The Buddha’s instructions here also teach you to have a healthy attitude toward your mistakes, what we would call a healthy sense of shame, one that comes with a high sense of self-esteem. You’re not ashamed of yourself as a person, but you are ashamed of any of your actions that have caused harm because you regard them as beneath you. This healthy shame is actually very helpful on the path because it enables you to see your mistakes as mistakes, and it makes you want to stop making them: the first steps in being able to learn from them.

The Buddha’s instructions also teach other healthy attitudes. For example, compassion: You want to make sure that your actions harm no one. Truthfulness: If you make a mistake, you should be willing to admit it to other people. Integrity: Take responsibility for your actions.

In particular, however, the Buddha’s instructions here teach the most skillful sense of self to help you on the path: a self that’s always willing to learn. If your sense of pride or self-worth is built on the idea that you’re already good, you’ll have trouble learning, and trouble admitting mistakes. But if your pride or self-worth is built on the idea that you’re always willing to learn, then it opens many possibilities for developing more skill. It’s the best kind of pride there is, the most useful basis for skillful I-making and my-making.

This is the kind of pride that can use a sense of shame, integrity, and all the other attitudes the Buddha is teaching here as means to negotiate with your less skillful selves, the less skillful members of the committee, and win them over to the path to true happiness. In the factors of the path, this comes under right effort: the ability to “generate desire” within yourself to do the right thing.

Finally, these instructions teach an important lesson about happiness: that it is possible to find a happiness that also offers happiness to others. In other words, your happiness does not have to depend on the pain of others. If it’s gained through generosity, virtue, and goodwill, it actually fosters their happiness, too. In this way you learn not to draw a sharp line between your happiness and the happiness of those around you. And as a result you focus less on the word “my” in “my happiness,” and take more interest in trying to master cause and effect: what actions actually cause happiness both for yourself and for those around you.

In this way the sense of self fades into the background and your sensitivity to cause and effect comes more to the fore. This is what enables you to get more and more skillful on the path—so that when bears attack you, you’ll be able to tell whether they’re eating you out of curiosity or out of hunger. And that way you can deal skillfully with any situation you encounter on the path.