Why am I doing this?

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso
It is said that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there. Well, what I can remember about the sixties is that nobody trusted the establishment. It was easy to blame society for everything, and I took pride in living spontaneously – making decisions that followed my heart rather than my head. For a while I was lucky, then life hit me like a ton of bricks and I lost faith in my heart. Buddhism helped me to put things together again by pointing out that, as long as we remain ignorant of our true nature, we cannot trust either our heads or our hearts to lead us to happiness and away from suffering.

Putting it simply, selfish behavior leads to unhappiness and actions motivated by genuine concern for the welfare of others lead to happiness. So, to avoid the pitfalls of life, all we have to do is abandon our selfishness. This is not so easy; the complete abandonment of selfishness is only attained when we generate the wisdom realizing the empty nature of the self. Until we gain such wisdom, we should block selfishness by being mindful of our behavior. Before doing any action we should stop and ask ourselves, "Why am I doing this...?"

Ven. Thubten Gyatso (Dr. Adrian Feldmann), is an Australian monk who is the resident teacher at the FPMT center in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia.

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala
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