As His Holiness says, and I quote it all the time, “Compassion is not enough – you’ve got to have wisdom.” And Lama Zopa Rinpoche says it very bluntly: “Meaning well is not enough – you’ve got to have wisdom.”
When it comes to music and nutrition and carpentry and the rest, we really understand this: if you know nothing about nutrition, I don’t care how much compassion you have, you wouldn’t open your mouth if you don’t have the wisdom to know how to help me.
But when it comes to emotional things, we all think we’re capable of advising whether we have knowledge or not. We have no sense that we need to actually be qualified first in order to advise somebody.
This “wisdom,” this knowledge we’re talking about is not necessarily going off and studying psychology. We’re talking here about studying your own mind, your own thoughts and feelings and emotions using the Buddhist approach of studying the mind and then applying it in meditation: that’s how we get wisdom.
If you’re trying to help somebody who’s depressed, but you haven’t worked on your own mind – you don’t even understand what depression is – then you are not qualified to help her.
If you’ve got an angry child, and you don’t understand anger because you haven’t dealt with your own anger, then you are not qualified to help her. In fact, when she gets angry with you, all it does is trigger your anger, and then makes it even more complicated, but we don’t see that.
It’s wonderful to want to help people, but kindly be qualified before you open your mouth, you know? It doesn’t mean you can’t do your best, but be conscious about what you do know and what you don’t know. Again, it’s like nutrition: if you know nothing about nutrition – I mean like zero – and you see a person who’s evidently obese and needs some help, you just can’t make it up. The more you know, the more qualified you’ll be to help the person, and, because you know it yourself, you’ll have empathy.
So often what happens is you don’t know you’ve got anger – you don’t realize you’re angry – or you know you are, but then another angry person comes along, and you’re not realizing that your anger completely pollutes the way you see this person: you’re not qualified to help them because you’re just sending the anger back.
And why “wisdom”? Because as you work on your mind and lessen the neuroses, the delusions, one, you suffer less and, two, you literally become clearer, wiser, because one of the functions of the delusions is to blind us from seeing other people clearly.
Working on your own mind, knowing your own mind, is absolutely vital. When we look at the lamrim, this is how all the instructions are structured, but we don’t get it. The very first level of the lamrim – and we talk about this all the time – we know that the lamas refer to it as the practice of renunciation. That just sounds so boring and so kind of religious – you’d never think of the practice of renunciation as being what qualifies you to then do the compassion wing. We don’t hear it this way, we can’t hear it this way, but this is exactly what it is.
If you’re trying to practice the path of renunciation, what does it mean? What are you renouncing? Well, guess what: you’re renouncing your suffering, and you’re renouncing the causes of your suffering: this is noble truth number one, and noble truth number two: there is suffering, Honey, and there are causes.
And Buddha’s talking to you. Whenever we sit and hear the teachings, we think, “Oh, I wish my boyfriend was here, I wish my mother was here” – all we think is that they need it. Well, I’m sorry, he’s talking to me, he’s telling me that yes, I suffer.
The very first level of suffering is when all the bad things happen – and that’s where we have to understand karma, and it includes learning to control our body and speech, the servants of our mind: we must harness them first.
The second level is about the mind, and this is where you need, as Lama Yeshe always says, to be your own therapist: you need to learn to understand your own mind because what goes on in your mind is the main cause of our suffering (and, fortunately, our happiness too!). As Lama Zopa says, the world out there appears back to us in the aspect of whatever is in our mind.
Your daughter might be angry – you’re absolutely correct, she is really angry – but when you don’t factor in your anger, then you’re in serious trouble: her anger will appear a lot worse than it really is because it’s your own anger interpreting her anger. It’s like double trouble.
“How can I help my crazy daughter?” you ask. Always my answer is the same: you’ve got to first help yourself. I’m not joking. How do you help a person play piano? It’s not rocket science: go learn the piano first.
That’s why the wisdom wing’s got to come first, that’s why working on your own mind’s got to come first. You’re just not qualified to help others until you have some understanding of your own mind. It’s so clear, and it’s not mystical – it’s practical.