Learn to doubt yourself

Clinging to opinion out of preference or wounded pride is a great illness of beings. From here, let us review everything we like; most of it may well be mistaken. Only people who understand the teachings deeply begin to like the things that belong to the path. Even then it is not certain: like Meghiya, who resolved to practise in seclusion, which looked like diligence but was in fact mistaken; or like the Buddhist who went off to the temple while the neighbouring family needed help, which looked like great love of the path but was still a fault. So of a hundred things we like and want, more than ninety are mistaken. Therefore, always doubt what you want and what you like, and examine each of your thoughts, as if you were stepping outside yourself to look back at yourself.

In this world, when we handle things wrongly, do evil, betray others... it is all because of clinging to opinion. If we practise until we cling less to our own opinion, we have already come a fairly long way and begun to taste the flavour of peace. And it is thanks to this not clinging to opinion that we will build up and contribute a great deal. A person who still clings to opinion will certainly do wrong, make others suffer, and accumulate no merit for their own life.

Day by day, hour by hour, try to go beyond what you want, do not chase what you like, and do not cling to your own thoughts. However, this is a rather deep way of thinking in terms of wisdom and rather lofty in terms of teaching, so not everyone can understand it. Why is it so difficult? Because we have to fight against ourselves. Ordinarily, when we think this or plan that, we always trust ourselves, and if we no longer cling to our opinion it feels like turning against ourselves. At that point we regard the greatest enemy of our life as ourselves, each of our own wishes. This is a very advanced step, so someone not yet used to practice cannot possibly understand the phrase “do not cling to your own opinion.”

Ordinarily people see only what they like. There is an amusing story: a teacher had just finished writing a piece of Buddhist music, and on a day when some Buddhists happened to visit his temple he invited them to stay for a vegetarian meal, eating while listening to the music. After the song ended he asked:

- What do you think?

- Delicious!

It turned out she had not been listening to the music at all but had noticed only that the food was delicious. The teacher laughed, and yet felt sad inside, because she had not noticed or cared about the art at all. Usually we put a great deal of our attention into what we like. The teacher was thinking about the song; that is the artist's illness, wanting his work to be admired and enjoyed by everyone. The woman was fixed on the food alone. Each of them followed their own preference, and so they did not meet. If at that moment they had gone beyond what they liked, the woman would have realised that while she was enjoying her food a piece of Buddhist music had just been composed, and listening a little more carefully, the Buddhist might have come closer to the composer's feelings. And the teacher, had he set aside a little of the artist's sensibility, would also have sympathised with her, because to enjoy a piece of music takes a certain level of experience.

In this life, each person remains a world of their own. If we shut our world inside a frame of our preferences and viewpoints, we do not meet, do not understand, do not empathise, and in the end do not love one another. If each of us stopped stubbornly clinging to opinion and learned to open our hearts, we would understand and love one another more. And what is more love for? To be kinder to one another. That is what matters. Like the monk Meghiya: had he not clung to his opinion, had he understood the Buddha's wishes and loved the Buddha more, he might have been kinder, that is, stayed to serve the Buddha when no other monk was around.

Or in a family, the parents want to take their child to the temple for a ceremony, but the child wants to go to a friend's birthday party. If the child paused their own wish, they would see that gathering with friends is their own joy, but going to the temple to meet a truly virtuous practitioner is their parents' joy, and they would decide to give up the fun and go with their parents to the temple. So in order to live kindly with one another we must love and empathise with one another. And in order to empathise, please do not put your mind in a frame, do not believe your own opinion, do not chase after thoughts, and do not indulge your desires.

To live so completely, one must be a sage, not an ordinary person. So although people differ in many respects, the scholar and the farmer, the rich and the poor, the high-born and those at home in the rice fields and thatched huts... a person's worth lies not in a tall house or a grand gate, not in high qualifications, but in the wisdom that lets them doubt their own thinking and re-examine their own wishes. From that, their heart opens wide, they empathise and are kind to people, and that is a truly noble person in life. We believe that such a person's merit keeps rising, their spiritual life opens, bringing them ever closer to enlightenment. But a person of little wisdom, whenever they think of something, clings tightly to it, closes off their life, does not understand, does not empathise, loves no one, and ends up kind to no one. Of course such a person has no merit, and their life gradually declines and goes downhill without end.

Only a person who does not cling to opinion can set foot on the path to sainthood. But how to live and how to practise in order to go beyond clinging to opinion is an extremely difficult process. In theory everyone who hears it understands, but then, stepping out into real life, we very easily slip back into the ways of an ordinary, common person.

For example, after listening to a talk, when we turn around our sandals have vanished. We mutter inside: “What sort of person goes to the temple and still steals sandals? How cruel and wicked!” We think this and cling tightly to our thought as always. So there is still a great distance between theory and practice. From now on, if we meet such a situation, let us not run after inference and emotion any more; let us stop and look at our own mind, which is stirred up, full of regret, anger and delusion. Once we see it clearly, we begin to laugh: “Truly, this opinion cannot be trusted. What if the person who took my sandals did so by mistake? And even if it was deliberate, he made real trouble, but not as much trouble as my mind. My mind makes so much trouble: I only lost a pair of sandals and I am already cursing all over the place inside.” We no longer trust our own mind's opinion. If we can put down our opinion, we have passed one problem that the Buddha set. And throughout our life we still have to face, and solve, many problems harder than that.

From here we also re-examine everything in our life. We have loved this person and hated that one; now we re-examine it all. Perhaps for a long time we were wrong: the person we hate does not deserve our hatred, and the person we love may not deserve our love either. Or we trusted this person and doubted that one, but perhaps the one we trusted is not actually trustworthy, and the one we doubted does not actually deserve our suspicion. Or we dreamed of this and rejected that; let us re-examine it, for perhaps all of it was mistaken.

For example, someone dreamed from childhood of becoming a doctor but pursued medicine without success. Even so, this person was adamant about not taking up any other work, when in fact, had he become an electrician or dealt with waste, he could have built a career and helped the world a great deal. But because he clung so much to his own opinion: “If I can't be a doctor, I won't do anything else,” he indeed spent his whole life without achieving anything of note.

Or someone says: “After a life of hard work, now I dream of a small thatched hut with a plot to grow vegetables and flowers, with verses and sutras morning and evening...” It sounds lovely, but be careful. If that person suddenly achieved the dream, that is, bought a piece of land in a distant countryside, built a small hut there, and spent morning and evening reciting verses and sutras, living a simple life of practice, then after three months he might realise he had been mistaken. The mind cannot be gathered, compassion does not grow, and merit does not rise because there is no contact and kindness with people. After knowing the path for a few years, he has closed the door on his life to practise in seclusion, never suspecting that because his merit is not enough his spiritual life cannot open. If he is lucky, he will meet a teacher who instructs him: “You must meet, love and be kind to people, to beings, to have merit. Then thanks to this merit you will open your spiritual life.” Only then would he discover that his dream of a small house and a garden by the river had been mistaken.

If someone says they want to reach the great path

Just by letting go for one lifetime,

Alone, with only a shadow, at ease,

No need to make merit or deliver the world, why bother?

If everyone lived that way, what would help flourish

The Tathagata's pure path throughout the ten directions?

What would build up the homeland,

What would light the road with the sun's brightness?

If someone says they won't be bothered

With worldly matters, weary and wretched,

Just practise and realise the extraordinary,

Naturally everything gets done without doing.

But who has enough great merit

To rise above the common condition,

In this very life to realise the extraordinary,

And at ease deliver beings along every road of the world?

While there is still misery and darkness,

So many people in error and lost,

Waiting for a hand

To reach out, rescue them, and look on them with love.

In the age of the Dharma's decline, wrongdoing is many and merit thin;

We must practise and create more merit at once,

Like a bird with two wings flying up,

Only then can we hope for the fruit of the path to advance far and steadily.

So many of our thoughts, wishes and dreams in life may well be mistaken. The Buddha's attendant lost merit because he clung to his opinion. Through this Meghiya sutta, let us re-examine everything we love or hate, trust or doubt, dream of or shun... Let us look back at ourselves and fight with ourselves, and go beyond ourselves.

Through the Venerable Meghiya's lesson, we understand that the greatest enemy of our life is ourselves. And what is ourselves? Our thoughts, our preferences, our desires. A wise person is one who goes beyond it all to doubt themselves and examine themselves. When the clinging to opinion has become light and vanished, that person has truly stepped onto a new rung of the ladder and become a noble one in the midst of life.