There seems to be quite a bit of concern by some people as to whether a person's sincere offerings can be offset by making the offerings to the wrong person or organization. And also a concern that one's good intentions may be backing a bad cause. And we all know that proverb about the path to hell being paved with.....

In the earliest discourses one can find the idea that the amount of merit to be gained by making an offering depends upon three factors: what is offered, the sincerity of the one making the offering, and the virtue of the one recieving the offering. The idea is that one should sincerely give something of real value to someone whose virtuous activities will be supported and encouraged by the offering. Whereas making a sincere but valueable offering to someone who merely doesn't want to work a menial job and so would rather beg would end up just encouraging mendicancy for its own sake. So the Buddha's teachings on generosity didn't necessarily support the idea of a welfare state.

Anway, the Buddha's socio-economic views are not what I am concerned with here. I am more concerned with the issue of judging our own (or others) intentions. Let me begin by saying that I think unless we have the ability to see into people's hearts and psychically watch the unfolding of past, present, and future karma (as the Buddha and many of the arhats were supposed to be able to do) we should not presume to judge the sincerity of others. So that leaves us with ourselves.

Now it would seem that it should be easy to judge our own intentions. But in fact it is not because our judgements are clouded by rationalizations, greay areas, and sometimes by self-hatred, guilt, lack of self-esteem and other complexes which cause us to judge ourselves by a standard we would never reasonably apply to our friends or neighbors. So if our own standards or judgements can't be trusted then what can we trust? Is there a standard to go by which will enable us to root our self-deception and/or self-flagellation?

I think one thing that can help is to try to get a less self-involved and more universal perspective. To step away from ourselves and try to see things more objetctively. That is where meditation and chanting can come in. These methods can help us relax the self-conscious judgemental mind, and provide some mental and emptional space in which to get a different view. We need to step away from the rushing cascade of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and impulses. Step out of that stream of consciousness (or rapids) and dry ourselves out for a bit on the bank of the peaceful abiding which we can cultivate through chanting or silent sitting (or both for a wonderfully powerful synergy of spiritual technology).

Anyway, I think we all have a basic idea of right and wrong, and I would hope that we are discerning enough to tell when we are being motivated by greed, anger, and/or ignorance and when we are being motivated by loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity. Of course our motivations can and often are mixed, but what is primary? Look at that and then don't judge it for good or ill, but ask yourself why one would be motivated that way. What were the factors, causes, and conditions which gave rise to such motivations. This is to learn to be mindful of our feelings and mental states and can come through in the self-reflective space which chanting or meditation can provide.

Another interesting thing about Buddhism is that it doesn't use the terms good and evil as much as it talks about what is skillful or unskillful behavior. Maybe we have made some unksillful choices which contributed to a bad cause or maybe we contributed to a good cause with very unskillful motives (like pride or self-righteousness or the desire to show off or whatever). In either case, we need to ask ourselves where that unskilfulness came from. Was it because we didn't have enough information at the time? Was it because our doubts did not yet outweigh our need to believe in something? Was it because our cynisicm outweighed our faith? There are many different configurations and possibilities. And the only way to learn how to unravel it all and discern what is skillful from what is unskillful is to simply step back and look. Look at the situations, look at ourselves, look within. The danger here is that we can get too self-involved and cripple ourselves with second-guessing. Sometimes you just have to act on your best instincts and what your best educated guess is concerning a situation. If it doens't work out or one's motives weren't the best - then just learn and move on. That is how you awaken.

This, in fact, is something we can learn from both Nichiren and Shakyamuni Buddha. Before the Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi Tree he spend quite a bit of time learning how to attain states of altered consciousness which he later decided were not the answer he was looking for. But he didn't fret that he wasted his time with the yoga teachers. In fact, he incorporated what he learned there that was positive into his meditation instructions which he would give as the Buddha. The Buddha almost starved himself to death, and while he did declare that kind of ascetisism to be unskillful it did help him counterbalance his earlier experiences of luxurious self-indulgence and thus he declared the Middle Way. No mistake was wasted by the Buddha in his quest for buddhahood.

The same for Nichiren. People forget that he was a Nembutsu practitioner in his youth. He also studied and practiced Shingon and when he travelled to Kamakura he visited Zen monasteries and I think he visited Mt. Koya (the center of Shingon Buddhism) as well. So Nichiren took more than a few detours if you will. But in each case he learned and remembered, because he had seen for himself what worked and what didn't . In some ways, Nichiren himself may have felt that his earlier practice of Nembutsu was slanderous. Some gosho even lead me to believe that he was quite triumphalistic about it and had even looked down on those who embraced more difficult practices and the study of the Lotus Sutra. At the very least, he seems to have felt that he had committed such slander in past lives. If memory serves, he writes about this in Kaimoku Sho. But from my perspective, I think Nichiren is much more credible because he did have a personal experience and deep knowledge (both theoretical and practical) of the very teachings he would critique later. He was able to critique them based on inside knowledge and not merely on an outsiders biased perspective. So again, his mistakes were not wasted.

And that is the perspective we need to keep in mind when judging our intentions. We do the best we can based on what we know and the amount of spiritual maturity available to us. We make our mistakes and grow from them. The real danger is when we get lazy and make excuses for ourselves and knowingly compromise the truth or our convictions. And if we should catch ourselves doing that? What then? The answer is not to condemn ourselves and wallow in guilt, but to admit that we were being unskillful and then try to correct it. Then we will have awakened, then we will have learned. Then we can use our personal knowledge of that mistake to help clear the path for others.

As a closing remark, I think we do need to cultivate discernment, the ability to judge things correctly. But we have to be careful to avoid being judgemental of ourselves or others. Oftentimes, there really is no one to blame. There is just samsara with all its confusion. And if it were not we would not need Buddhism in the first place. I used to say that karma means everything really is your fault. I was being deliberately perverse, but a part of me took that seriously - that everything bad is somehow my own fault. But now I see things differently. Now I see that karma is all pervasive and is without such sharp boundaries as self and other. I see that there is no room for such harsh judgements or blame. There is karma which is skillful and that which is unskillful, there is group karma and personal karma, and it all interrelated. Now I would say, karma means that everything is workable and no effort is wasted, and we are all in this together.

Hmm that was more of a ramble than I would have liked, but I hope there was something helpful in all that.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei