In Harmlessness Is Strength

The harmless selves in your toolbox are the ones you want to encourage, to put to use.

Now, it may seem ironic that part of having a strong sense of self is that you try to make the self as harmless as possible. We tend to think of people with a strong sense of self as often being careless in their treatment of others, but that’s not genuine strength. The more you harm others, the more you’re creating a debt. The more debts you have, the weaker you are.

So we’re trying to live a life that’s as debtless as possible, which means that we have to look inside to develop the qualities we need for happiness, so that we need to rely less and less on other people. We develop our own mindfulness; we develop our own concentration, our own discernment, so that as we go through life—not only as we’re sitting here meditating, but also as we deal with other people—we can be as light as possible.

…Many of us come to meditation for rest and respite. But we stay because we see that once the mind has rested, it can be a lot more skillful in dealing with situations around us.

It’s just important that you keep in mind the fact that as long as you’re acting, there’s going to be some burden on other people. For example, with the precepts: The precept against killing comes down to two points—you don’t kill, and you don’t order other people to kill.

Sometimes you hear it as a precept of total harmlessness. But that’s impossible. Even when you live a vegan lifestyle, it’s a burden on some people [beings]: the people who have to work in the fields, the bugs that get sprayed. Even with organic produce, it’s not that they don’t use pesticides. They’ve just invented organic pesticides. They kill all the same.

So we try to live a relatively harmless life as best we can. And in the areas where we do have control over things, we try to be totally harmless. That keeps turning us back on ourselves: Where do we find the strength to maintain that harmlessness? After all, harmlessness requires a lot of care. And the things we used to depend on other people for: We’ve got to find resources to provide those things from within ourselves.

This way, we can go beyond what’s just bright action and turn those bright actions into what the Buddha calls actions that are neither dark nor bright. Those are the ones that take us out of the cycle entirely. Only then can you be totally harmless.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the book, Meditations 9, (pdf) pp. 160, 161.