Give Me More Advice, Please

Michael Schumacher, a famous German race driver,  resigned from Formula One Championship about 3 years ago and last year he decided to come back and race again. Now lots of people say that the seven times world champion "made a mistake" and that you cannot keep up with the young drivers at 41. Schumacher himself said as he was beginning to race this season that he'd been bored and wanted to come back to race and have fun. Racing for him in the past was about winning - most of the time he would either win the championship or come close second - but now he says it is fun. It is incredible how others judge someone else's life. It's nobody else's business if you decide to race or not, and if a team is willing to hire you, then you are free to race and the motivation is only your problem.

In Buddhism a lot of people would like their teachers to tell them exactly how to solve all kinds of problems or how to deal with this or that but true Buddhist teachers don't dictate other peoples' lives. We have some kind of moral directions, we are aware that living in a society includes being responsible and acting morally, but there are no other directions from Buddhist teachers. It's because one's life is basically a very intimate, very personal thing. Whether you are quiet or loud, competitive or detached, whether you enjoy cooking or watching silly soap operas is nobody's business, it's your life. If you are gay or straight, whether you decide to marry or stay single, whether you build a boat and sail around the world, being rich or poor, it's nobody business. Even the person deciding to sail around the world has no idea if it was a mistake or not. Even if you die in a thunderstorm at the sea, you still don't know whether it was a mistake to go.

A few years ago I told Mike, my teacher, that I had made mistakes when dealing with some students and their behavior and Mike said: "How do you know?" We think we can judge others and ourselves but usually we cannot even judge our own actions and decisions. Life is very complicated and unless you do something clearly stupid  like lending 1000 dollars to an unknown person in the street intoxicated by heavy drugs, a guy or girl that you will never see again, or something brilliant about which everyone believes was brilliant, like saving a drowning child's life,  we are usually clueless as for deciding what was a mistake and what was a good decision. Most of our actions have lots of tiny and some clear consequences but it is impossible to have a complete analysis of the action and assess the consequences. That's why we rely on the balance state of body and mind in Buddhism and believe that as long as the body and mind is in the balanced state, our actions are balanced and have OK consequences. When the state of our body and mind is disturbed, we are prone to take disturbing and disturbed actions and the consequences may be very bad.   But people often judge actions that were not based on disturbing state of body and mind and say "It was a mistake." Yes, it was a mistake from their narrow point of view.

Living in a society is tricky. There are millions of opinions and rules and values, but after all only you  have to take actions and you are responsible for what you do.  Everyone's life is different and complicated. We can only give advice if someone is lost and looking for some directions and we feel confident about giving directions. Otherwise we can only respect the other people's sincere decisions and actions.  Yes, sincerity. Maybe the only advice we can give ourselves and others is this: Try to be sincere and act sincerely. But where does sincerity come from? And we are there again - the balanced state of body and mind. What does a person in the balanced state of body and mind say if this person is clueless? Such a person says: "I don't know."