Respect for Heedfulness
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
March/April 2001
“One who sees danger and respects being heedful”: something we chant every week. And where does that respect lead
Where does that heedfulness lead
They lead to the presence of Nibbana.
It”s because they lead there that they”re so important. And that”s why Buddhism focuses on suffering and stress: to give rise to the kind respect for heedfulness that will take us beyond suffering.
Some people accuse Buddhism of being very pessimistic and negative, focusing only on suffering and stress as if it were denying that there is any pleasure in life. But the Buddha never denies pleasure. He talks about it very openly. The problem with pleasure, though, is that it leads to being complacent. When things go well, we start getting lazy. And we just stay right there. Life doesn”t get any better than that, we think, as long as we”re complacent. It”s when we realize that there must something better than this ordinary everyday pleasure, something not mixed up with ordinary everyday pain, and that this something better is going to have to depend on us: that”s when we start getting heedful. We realize that unless we do something about the state of our minds we”re not going to get any better than this. And so for the purpose of learning how to get to Nibbana, the Buddha has us focus on pain, suffering, stress - however you want to translate dukkha. If we can understand how the mind puts suffering together, we begin to untangle all the mind”s attachments, all the ways it makes and creates unnecessary problems for itself.
At the same time we start opening ourselves up to something better. So we focus on suffering because it”s a learning opportunity. In fact, the Buddha actually has us treat suffering with respect. He calls it a Noble Truth. It”s not just any everyday, ordinary old truth. He says to look at it as a Noble Truth, something worthy of respect, something worthy of comprehension. Really look into it. Don”t dismiss it. Don”t try to run away from it. Open yourself up to learning from it.
There”s room for respect for happiness as well. If you search around in the Noble Truths you find happiness—pleasure and rapture—tucked away under the fourth Noble Truth, in Right Concentration. That”s the kind of happiness you can learn from, the happiness that comes together with mindfulness and real clarity. Because on the one hand it puts the mind in a state where it can see suffering and not be threatened by it; and at the same time that kind of happiness itself ultimately becomes an object you want to explore. You use it as a tool and then, when you”ve taken it as far as it can take you, you turn around and start exploring it as well. You begin to see that there”s even some stress and suffering in there. So these are the things we should respect: suffering and the right kind of happiness. That”s why the Buddha calls them Noble Truths. If we don”t have respect for these things, where does our complacency lead us
As the Buddha says, complacency is the path to death. And the complacent are as if already dead. In other words, they”re not alive to the opportunities lying before them. If we really do follow the path, if we”re diligent at it, keep with it, stick with it, it opens us up to Nibbana. And when people reach Nibbana they look back on the pleasures of their daily lives before and see that they were an awful lot of burden, an awful lot of stress compared to what they”ve found.
Our problem is that we haven”t reached the point where they are, so pleasures look pleasurable to us, they look pretty good. We don”t want to give them up quite yet. We get a nice spot in our meditation and say, “This isn”t so bad. We can stay right here for a fair while.” But it”s all so precarious. Stress is…
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