He focused on the state of your fetters and effluents. So, what about that carpenter with his adze? Well, the Buddha actually didn’t say not to reflect or evaluate on your practice as a whole. Which means that there’s constant reflection. Then you resolve not to repeat that mistake.Īs you go through the day-the Buddha gives the example of going on alms, which is the time when monks are most exposed to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations that they wouldn’t experience in the monastery-you have to reflect afterwards: Were there any places, either on the way to the village or in the village or on the way back, where the mind was taken with desire, lust, anger, irritation, or delusion around any sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations? If you detect any of these unskillful qualities, you should work to get rid of them.Įven when you meditate, you have to reflect when the mind’s getting into concentration: “Where are there still disturbances? What am I doing to cause the disturbances? How do I drop those causes?” If you realize that you made a mistake and you did actually harm somebody, you go and talk it over with someone else more advanced on the path. Then you look at the results of your actions, while you’re doing the action and afterwards. If there’s anything unskillful in the intention, you don’t act on it. It starts with the passage with Rahula where the Buddha says, “Look at your actions in the same way you’d look in a mirror.” First you look at your intentions. But that goes against so much in the Canon where the Buddha talks about how it’s important to reflect on what you’re doing, to evaluate how well your actions are giving results, and to make adjustments. Recently I heard someone interpret that as meaning that we shouldn’t try to evaluate our practice, that we should trust in the practice and just keep doing it and doing it and not stop to judge how well it’s going, because judging it will get you all tied up in knots. But he does know that someday it’ll be worn through. But he can’t measure from day to day how far down the handle’s been worn. As the Buddha said, the carpenter uses the adze every day, and he knows that by using it, he wears down the handle. It’s a tool, somewhat like an axe, except that the blade is perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. There’s a passage where the Buddha compares the practice to a carpenter using an adze.