Watch What You’re Doing Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Watch What You’re Doing
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

"Some people think that Buddhism is a religion of experiences. We want to have a religious experience when we come here, we want to have an experience of release or an experience of peace. Actually, though, the Dhamma is meant to take us beyond our incessant habit of producing and consuming experiences. And to do that, we have to understand the nature of action that underlies the producing and consuming, to see exactly what it is to be a human being who acts. What does it mean to act? How does the mind act? What is an intention? Why does the mind have intentions? Are these processes really pleasant or are they burdensome? What would it be like if we didn’t have to do them? We need to look into these things, we need to understand these processes before we can get to where we really want to go. 

If you don’t understand human action, you won’t be able to explore the full limits of human action. You won’t be able to understand how far human action can take you. So we’re here to study, we’re here to learn from our actions.

This teaching on action is something particular to the Buddha’s teachings — this sense of what an action is and how far an action can go. It’s easy to say that all the great religions focus on having experiences beyond what words can describe. Sounds nice. Very friendly. Very ecumenical. But when you compare what the various religions say about action — what it means to act, what the potentials of human action are — you see that they differ greatly. 

Some teachings say that we don’t really act at all, that there’s an outside force acting through us, that everything’s pre-determined. Others say that we do act, but our actions have no real consequences. Or that there are lots of limitations on what we can do to produce true happiness, so we need some outside power to help us. You can’t lump these various teachings on action together and pretend that the differences don’t count. The fact is: They don’t jibe. They’re diametrically opposed. They get in one another’s way.

This was why the early Buddhists kept insisting that the teaching on action was what set Buddhism apart, that it was the most important issue where people have to make a choice and take a stand. And this was why the Buddha’s last words were that we need to be heedful. He didn’t end his teaching career with some nice platitudes on emptiness or nibbana. He said to be heedful — to see our actions as important and to keep that importance in mind at all times."

Watch What You’re Doing

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations1/Section0006.html