Don't Be a Jerk by Brad Warner

Author:Brad Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New World Library

The Buddha said:

Don’t be a jerk

Do the right thing

Then the mind is not irked

And the enlightened ones sing

We should consider this ancient teaching in practice. This is the real message that has been transmitted through the ages to this concrete time and place. It’s what the ten thousand Buddhas have been practicing all along.

Among rightness, wrongness, and it-doesn’t-matter-ness, there is wrongness. Wrongness is what happens at the very moment you do something wrong. It’s not an abstraction that sits around waiting to be done. It’s the same with rightness and it-doesn’t-matter-ness.

There are similarities between real wrong actions, no matter where or when they occur. And there is a big difference between right, wrong, and it-doesn’t-matter-type actions. Right and wrong are time, but time is neither right nor wrong. Right and wrong are the dharma, but the dharma is neither right nor wrong.

When you yourself are in balance, you know right from wrong absolutely. The state of enlightenment is immense and includes everything.

We hear of this supreme state from our teachers and from what we read. Right from the start it sounds like “don’t be a jerk.” If it doesn’t sound like “don’t be a jerk” it’s not Buddhist teaching.

“Don’t be a jerk” wasn’t a teaching someone intentionally invented. It existed before anyone put it into words. When we hear it, we hope that we can learn to do the right thing and not be a jerk. This is a pretty big deal. It’s on the scale of the whole of time and the entire universe. The scale of not being a jerk is in the “not being” part. Just don’t do jerklike things.

When jerk-type actions are not done by someone, jerk-type actions do not exist. Even if you live in a place where you could act like a jerk, even if you face circumstances in which you could be a jerk, even if you hang out with nothing but a bunch of jerks, the power of not doing jerk-type things conquers all.

Jerk-type action has no fixed form. It has no existence until someone does it. If we don’t act like jerks, jerk-type acts cannot exist.

You can do jerk-type things, or you can avoid doing jerk-type things. The moment you know that jerk-type action does not exist outside your own conduct, that is realization of the truth.

This is not a once-and-for-all realization. It appears dynamically, moment after moment. When enlightened people understand that not being a jerk requires not doing jerk-type things, they behave like decent people at each moment in the past, present, and future.

At every moment, no matter what we’re doing, we need to understand that not being a jerk is how someone becomes enlightened. This state has always belonged to us. Cause and effect makes us act. By not being a jerk now, you create the cause of not being a jerk in the future. Our action is not predestined, nor does it spontaneously occur.

By not being a jerk at this very moment, you enact non-jerk-ness and make it appear in the world.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.