This exchange is probably the most famous in Zen lore. Bodhidharma met the emperor of the Liang Dynasty, Wu, a devout Buddhist renowned for his piety and charity, who was much given to endowing monasteries and orphanages. Wu said: "I have endowed temples and authorized ordinations--what is my merit?" Bodhidharma's answer was radical: "No merit at all." Wu had been doing good for the sake of accumulating merit. Bodhidharma cut through Wu's ideas about merit in the core of his teaching; that your practice isn't apart from you: when your mind is pure, you live in a pure universe; when you're caught up in ideas of gaining and losing, you live in a world of delusion.
I love this little story. It is a reminder for me to get in touch with my intentions and motivations. I often notice that people tend to do things in the hope of getting something in return. Well if I do this for her then that means she will do this for me. This kind of motivation often leaves us disappointed and judgmental if she does not reciprocate. If we have someone in our lives that constantly reciprocate our good deeds back to us we begin liking the person more and more because they give us our good deeds back. I believe this becomes friendship with a faulty foundation.
Without getting in touch with our own intentions behind our good deeds, we live in an unauthentic arena of life. When we practice giving freely and doing good without any expectations of anything in return it can be very freeing. I first started applying this concept a few years back. I began realizing I would get upset if I let someone in front of me in traffic and they did not wave as to signal, “thank you”. I began asking myself, “Is the only reason you are letting them in is so they will acknowledge your kindness?” Seems simple yet this helped me in gaining greater awareness behind my intentions in other areas of my life.
Start recognizing your motivations behind your generous and kind deeds. If you start note that they are not so pure, begin to laugh—yes laugh. You will see the silliness of these intentions. It is silly because you are simply taking yourself too seriously. You will see when you seek praise and recognition, it strengthens your ego. There is nothing wrong for being praised or recognized, but there is something wrong with having the motivation to do it because you want recognition. Beginning to live from this place of awareness is Being Empowered.
1 comment:
wow - funny, Johnny, I feel like you've read my mind with this one. In the last couple of years I've realized the need to check my self-interest when I extend myself for others. For years my motivations were connected to overcoming my sense of not being good enough. If I did for others, I thought, I'd feel more adequate. It took seeing this relationship, this expectation of a quid pro quo, in others for me to see it in myself. I realized that any time there are strings attached to generosity (even if it's just the string of needing to be acknowledged), it is not generosity. Under those conditions, my doing for "others" is more doing for myself.
Remember that story about the princess who stubs her toe and demands that her whole kindom be carpeted in leather? Instead she's give a pair of shoes, which requires her to sharpen her focus on the root of her discomfort. I think of that story when I think about how yoga has helped me learn to unpack my motivations (which are often layered and sometimes muddy) in order to reveal the root of my intention. In the process, I've realized that I can't hold myself up on any pedestal of do-goodery in order to feel blameless, and that true integrity requires becoming comfortable with some discomfort; seeing clearly requires seeing that we are human - soft feet and all - yet sturdy enough to be imperfect.
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