Knowing your own faults

Seeing your own faults takes both wisdom and courage. Most people find it hard to see their own faults, though they spot other people's very fast. They may see a fault before the other person has even committed it, faster than light. Their own faults are extremely hard to see.

Perhaps the instinct to protect ourselves, love ourselves and praise ourselves keeps us from looking for our own faults. Even a murderous robber with plenty of evidence against him finds a way to think himself innocent. In one film a prisoner confides to his cellmate that he is innocent. The cellmate sympathizes, with a touch of sarcasm, and says everyone in here is innocent. Ask each prisoner and none will say they are guilty.

A moral person behaves the other way around and tries to track down their own faults. Whatever the instinct says in their defense, they keep trying to hold themselves to account. Even when the fault is someone else's, they look for the share that is theirs. Two friends quarrel and fight until their noses bleed, somewhere we know nothing about, and when we hear it we blame ourselves for not noticing the hidden disagreement earlier and helping to settle it. We see litter in the street and blame ourselves for not having urged people to keep the place clean.

Knowing your own fault also takes courage. Everyone wants to look good in other people's eyes, and no one wants to be seen at fault. So owning a fault, seeing it in yourself, is courage and strength. Cowards prefer to blame others and push the shame onto them.

Under the law of cause and effect, someone who has seen their own fault is no longer condemned by the gods. Under the law of the land, a prompt admission counts as a mitigating circumstance. And in a lifetime of self-cultivation, you must know a fault before you can mend it. So whoever sees their own faults has a way to correct them, and a chance to perfect their morals further.

Someone who sees their own faults also finds it easier to be humble. Knowing you are at fault, who is there left to look down on? A proud person, though, will be led by the law of cause and effect into mistakes that shame them into being less proud. They will keep making mistakes until the pride is gone. But the price is that each mistake brings painful results. By that logic, pride leads to suffering.

A humble person no longer has to make mistakes, so they do not suffer those results. And someone who knows their own faults is humble. So, by the same logic, someone who knows their own faults will not suffer.

There is one more great benefit: experience in teaching morals to others. The world is hungry for morality. People do not have enough of it. Wrongdoing and suffering have never shrunk in this world. Kindness is still the exception, found only in places. Most people still treat each other badly or cruelly. So the need for moral teaching is enormous.

Many countries and religions worry over how to teach people morals and struggle with it, with no very hopeful results. We lack people with enough inner strength to teach morality. Teaching science takes two things: solid knowledge and a gift for explaining. Teaching morality takes three: knowledge, the ability to explain, and an exemplary moral life. That third requirement limits the number of people who can teach morality.

But the answer lies with people who can see their own faults.