Skillful Intentions, Not Just "Good" Intentions

Lately I've been reading Wings to Awakening, an excellent and 100% free anthology of suttas from the Tipitaka, along with insightful commentary from Ajahn Geoffrey. If you don't have a copy of this, I recommend calling up Dhamma Dana Publications (1+ 978-355-2347) right away and asking them to send you one for free. If you'd like to save a tree, you can also read the book online, though I wouldn't feel too guilty about ordering a printed copy as I'm sure the tree's sacrifice has gone to good use here.

Anyway, I find the following paragraph from Part I.A of the book to be exceedingly insightful and applicable with regard to politics, even though I think the Ajahn is talking specifically about personal practice.

First, it is important to note that the definition of skillful states of mind as free of greed, aversion, and delusion, provides a convenient rule of thumb for distinguishing between intentions that are merely good and those that are actually skillful. Sometimes good intentions are colored by ignorance, as when one tries to help another person without knowing the true source of that person's problem. This would qualify as a good but not a skillful intention. As we have noticed, the processes of causality are sensitive and complex. Thus there is no getting by on well-meaning intentions alone. One must monitor one's actions continually to make sure that they are, in fact, appropriate to the present situation, and are not based on ignorance. Delusion, even well-meaning delusion, is a source for unskillful acts. For this reason, one needs to be constantly observant of one's actions and their effects [§6] so that one's good intentions can truly become skillful, and one's actions can actually do justice to the specific conditions in the here and now produced by the process of this/that conditionality.

The key here is that good is not the same as skillful. The road to hell really can be paved with good intentions, especially with regard to politics. As the Ajahn says, ignorance and delusion are the key things that keep good intentions from being skillful.

In our personal lives, developing skillfulness is much easier than it is when it comes to national politics. We can tend to directly observe what's going on in our lives, but we can't do that at the national level. Instead we rely on other people, also affected by greed, hatred, and delusion, to tell us what's going on in our country.

Imagine that you were totally blind, deaf, etc, and could not observe the results of your actions. Lets say that you are somehow fortunate enough have the ability to communicate with another person who can observe the effects of your actions. Well, your friend is also afflicted by greed, hatred, and delusion and he may not even be trying to abandon these defilements. Imagine what his interpretation of the results of your actions might be like. Rather than be able to observe anything yourself, you'll have to take an action, then have this other defiled individual tell you what happened. After that, your own greed, hatred, and delusion come in further clouding any understanding of what's going on.

This is essentially what's happening in political situations. We rely on things like newspaper reporters to tell us what's going on in the world and what the consequences of our actions are. Often these people, even the good ones, have greedy, hateful, and deluded motives. They hate the other political party; they're greedy for good ratings. They may be deluded into thinking they really know what's going on even with little research. Who really knows what's going on with them? Even they don't know the full extent of it.

I'm going to try to avoid commenting on specific issues in this blog, but I'm going to pick an example here because it seems necessary to highlight what I'm talking about. I'm not picking this one because I think it's necessarily the most important issue but because it's one that I think most people aren't quite so emotionally attached to and don't see as "theirs" to the same degree as other issues.

People support the idea of ethanol production in the US with good intentions. It seems like a good alternative to oil and can be better for the environment, according to some, but it's starting to look like pushing ethanol may have many bad effects as well, such as raising food prices. Rising food prices may affect starvation and malnutrition in countries outside the US. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, it would take the entire corn crop of the US, 40% of the world's corn supply, just to replace 15% of the motor vehicle fuel in the US with ethanol.

I'm not going to come to any hard conclusions here on this issue. After all, there may be other ways to produce ethanol that don't have this problem; I've only scratched the surface of the issue. The important thing to realize is that you can't just pick whatever feels good, start to see that position as "yours," then expect that to be skillful. A really skillful decision on something like this requires extensive research, and a refusal to cling to a certain position just because you see it as "mine." Furthermore, you need to try and be as free as possible from greed, hatred, and delusion while considering such an issue. You don't want to take one side out of hatred of the ones who oppose it, for example.

Since I like to quote suttas and encourage their reading, here is part of the sutta (MN 61) referred to in the commentary quoted above:

§ 6. The Buddha: What do you think, Rahula: What is a mirror for?

Rahula: For reflection, sir.

The Buddha: In the same way, Rahula, bodily acts, verbal acts, & mental acts are to be done with repeated reflection.

Whenever you want to perform a bodily act, you should reflect on it: 'This bodily act I want to perform — would it lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both? Is it an unskillful bodily act, with painful consequences, painful results?' If, on reflection, you know that it would lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both; it would be an unskillful bodily act with painful consequences, painful results, then any bodily act of that sort is absolutely unfit for you to do. But if on reflection you know that it would not cause affliction... it would be a skillful bodily act with happy consequences, happy results, then any bodily act of that sort is fit for you to do.

(Similarly with verbal acts & mental acts.)

So in the same way, try to keep your actions with regard to politics skillful, not just good.