The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

The Courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Ok, so recall that last time we were discussing what the Buddha realized when he became enlightened, namely the four noble truths:

1) Life is suffering

2) The cause of suffering is craving (sometimes translated as "attachment")

3) It is possible to end suffering by mastering your craving.

4) the way to make this happen is to follow the 8-fold path.

We also talked a bit last time about suffering, so now it's time to talk about how it is that we cause our own suffering. This is key, because the fact that we ourselves are responsible for our suffering is what makes it possible to escape suffering. Seeing how this works is a bit of a perspective shift for most westerners. so I want to ease into this with what might seem to be a digression on how we seek happiness.

Aristotle says that the ultimate goal of all humans is happiness and this is something the Buddha would certainly agree with. Buddha would also agree with the idea that the happiness we should seek (not that we always do, but that we should) is the kind of reflective happiness one might call contentment rather than the emotional one of delight. Why? Because a reflective happiness is based on the operation of reason and is thus stable over time. It will last, while the emotional states are by nature ephemeral. To seek emotional happiness, therefore, is to chase after something you can never hold in your grasp. The consequence is that you spend far more of your time chasing happiness (and suffering in the process) than you do actually being happy. If you want to be truly happy, you need a more stable target.

Let's think a bit more about just what it is we seek. We want to attain a stable state of reflective happiness or contentment. But what is contentment? In the simplest sense, it's a state where your desires are met. If your desires are all met, then you do not seek anything beyond what you have and you are content. If you want to meet and marry the woman of your dreams and you actually do this, then you are content with your life, at least in this respect. When I asked the class earlier whether, given the choice, you would take a billion dollars or true happiness, almost all of you chose happiness. When asked why, most people say, "Well, if I were really happy, then I wouldn't care about all the things I could buy with a billion dollars." So it seems we all intuitively agree on what contentment looks like and why it's desirable, but what often escapes our notice is that there are two very different ways to pursue it.

In the West, we take our desires as a given, something that can not really be changed. Indeed, we sometimes view them as very positive things, because they provide strong incentive for us to go out in the world and work hard for what we want. Thus westerners tend to place enormous emphasis on attaining what we want. If I want a Mazeratti and I work very, very hard, maybe I will one day earn that Mazeratti and be content. But this approach has two basic problems.

First, it's often the case that I will never attain what I seek, thus spending large portions of my life suffering in the futile attempt to get what I can not have. Then, when I realize my folly, I will suffer all the more thinking about all the wasted years, my failure to meet my own standards, etc. It does not require much knowledge of the world to see that this is actually quite common and accounts for enormous amounts of suffering. You should also be able to see that the problem could be attributed to lack of effort and/or ability, but it could also be attributed to having the wrong desires in the first place.

The more insidious problem is that the Western approach makes it hard to be content even if I am good at getting what I desire. From a Buddhist perspective, chasing your desires is a never ending cycle. For example, I struggle for 40 years to get a Mazeratti. When I finally do, I am delighted. However, after a year or two I am used to having a Mazeratti and it no longer brings me the satisfaction it once did. Now I have my eyes set on a yacht or a trophy wife or a mansion and I am quickly involved in another struggle to attain the new object of my desires. None of this ever really makes me happy in any meaningful, sustained sense. People sometimes express puzzlement at how rich people can be unhappy with all that they have. Well, if you have everything, then you appreciate nothing. Ask yourself if this dynamic works in your own lives when you get something you have wanted for a long time and you will see it's true.

In many ways, this is more of a problem for high achievers. This is because my desires are limited only by my means to achieve them, and thus the more capacity I have to achieve things, the more things I want and the more confident I am that I can get them. This leads me to aim higher and higher and higher with my goals.

Once I get immersed in this dynamic, I am constantly working hard to satisfy some desire or other and I never feel I can stop and enjoy what I have accomplished. It's telling that most billionaires still work hard to make even more money, not because they need any more money, but because they now desire to move up on the Forbes magazine's ranking of the richest people on Earth. People realize this in some sense, which is why they talk about the problems with a never ending "rat race" but few do anything about it, largely because they can not see an alternative.

Well, what if we don't take our desires as a given, but as something over which we have some control. More accurately, it's not so much that we control whether we have a desire, but we control whether it influences our behavior and perspective. I might not be able to prevent a desire from popping into my head, but I can certainly control whether I act on it. Moreover, it is up to me how that effects my outlook on life and my happiness. I can choose to be annoyed that I can not satisfy my desire or I can choose to be satisfied that, in denying my desires, I am acting in my own long term interests. This is a very Eastern idea. I had a Chinese friend in graduate school who was always talking about the way Chinese parents raise their children. It's a fundamental part of their approach that the kids are taught self discipline. For example, it's the standard view in China that it's good to be a little hungry an hour after a meal. In America, the first pangs of hunger send us to the frig,but in China people learn that mild hunger like this is a sign they are eating correctly and thus they do not give in to the temptation to act on it. The idea of rational self control and discipline is thus a fundamental part of Buddhism. You practice such self control every time you meditate despite being busy or tired or whatever...

So to get back to the problem of happiness. If satisfaction is the meeting of my desires with what I possess and I can control my desires, then I can attain satisfaction by lowering my desires to ones that I can achieve and maintain. Once my basic desires are achieved, I can focus my efforts on preventing my desires from leading me away from what is truly important, rather then on pursuing the latest desire that popped into my head. For example, it's common for couples who have been married for many years to "get bored" with their relationship. This often leads one or both of them to do things which are probably not in the interests of their long term happiness, like engaging in affairs. True, you might have a strong desire to be with that hot new office boy, but it doesn't seem likely that this will really bring you contentment in the long run. Wouldn't it be better to focus your efforts on your existing marriage? And, when it comes to your marriage, you might try to find ways to "spice things up" but you could also work to appreciate what you already have. Maybe part of the reason you are dissatisfied is not the objective state of affairs, but your attitude towards them. If you would just stop and make yourself reflect on how very lucky you are, you will not want to change things so much. This is one of the reasons why Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday...

Now, Buddhism is not saying you should simply suck it up and live with whatever you happen to be given. If you are standing in the cold rain right next to a shelter, you should step out of the rain. However, it does say that we put altogether too little thought into exactly how we should be acting and then in controlling the desires that motivate our action. What is required, first and foremost, is the rational ability to distinguish between what I can change to make my life and the lives of those around me better and what is out of my control. Then I have to learn to control my own mind to accept the things I can not change and not allow their lack to affect my happiness. Finally, I have to develop the courage to work to change the things that I can control. These are the same sentiments you see in the serenity prayer above - wisdom, acceptance, and courage.