Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives CO1194
“‘Do good and get good, do bad, get bad.’ But some people do bad things and get good. Please advise on this?”
~ Response by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
This business of ‘do good, get good, do bad, get bad’ is still rather immature. It’s kind of on a level for people who aren’t so intelligent, so one ought to be careful. This level of understanding isn’t quite yet Buddhism. It’s not up to the mark of Buddhism. For it to be Buddhism, it should say to be above and beyond good and evil. This level of understanding is very ordinary. It’s for people who haven’t developed very far spiritually; it’s a kind of beginner’s level.
It’s a level of understanding that was taught before Buddhism, so it’s not actually Buddhism. One ought to understand it in this way. Now the confusion in this question is due to the fact that the person isn’t clear about what is meant by good and what is meant by bad. They’ve mixed up and confused the mental aspects of good and evil with the physical aspects of good and evil. And they’re attaching to certain narrow meanings of the words.
For example, somebody does something good mentally, but gets something bad materially. This is what the person is confusing – mental goodness but receiving bad material results. Or someone who materially, say how they deal with the world, is quite bad, but accidentally or coincidentally they get some happy mental results. This is what people think is to do bad and get good. Notice there’s a lot of confusion here about what is good and what is bad.
So one has to straighten out this, to see, to understand, the words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ carefully, and not to just attach to common everyday or narrow understandings of these words. If we understand these teachings merely with attachment, with narrow old opinions, then it will only lead to confusion.
When looking for the causes of what’s happening now, the good or bad results we’re experiencing now, don’t be hoping too much to find causes in previous lives. Instead look at in terms of idappaccayatā, the flow of causes and conditions in this life. That will have a much better chance of us staying clear and not getting confused as the questioner seems to have done.
From the retreat “Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination,” as translated from the Thai by Santikaro
Dhamma Questions & Responses sessions were offered by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu in 1990-1991 to foreign meditators attending Suan Mokkh International Dharma Hermitage courses.
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