It was beginning to dawn on me just how much I expect from myself and others, and just how unrealistic those expectations are. This leads to so many problems. I don't really get angry anymore, but I realised I do get frustrated heaps. And I realised much of these frustrations stem from the many ideals I hold onto.

When I fail to meet expectations I set out for myself, in my mind it's as if I've fallen below the minimum benchmark needed to be a good human being. As a result, there's a lot of guilt, self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness. And not to mention the anxiety and agitation which disturbs the mind, like with many other defilements. My mind fixates on the thing, obsesses and ruminates over it. With guilt, it's the repeated reliving of the past that is so bothersome. Fixating on the 'I should have' or 'I shouldn't have' aspects.

I think all this conditioning comes from the environment and culture we're exposed to as kids. I for one have always been very afraid of making mistakes and getting scolded. I was always very obedient for that reason, doing things absolutely right. That's probably where it began -- but I can't even remember at what point I developed such an intense guilt problem; it's just spiraled out of control and at some point the suffering became too much so I had to learn to contain it.

Here are a few important things I've learned from this.

The way it is

During one of my crazy guilt episodes, I listened to this talk by Ajahn Jayasaro. He said something which has stuck with me ever since:

"If we look at ourselves in the past and say, "How could I have done such a stupid thing?" You just have aversion towards yourself. But that is the height of foolishness, isn't it? Because what you're really saying is, "How could I have been that person on that particular day? I should have been somebody else. I should have been a different person. I should have been a better person. I should have been more kind, I should have been more aware." But what could be more foolish than that – to think that you should be somebody else? You are who you are because of all the causes and conditions that have led up to the present moment and you were who you were on that particular occasion because of all the causes and conditions that came into play on that particular day. So recognising things at play, very complex streams of causes and conditions, then we use wisdom to enter into that flow of causes and conditions, and to deal with it in those areas, on those levels at which we are presently capable of doing so."

It's so liberating thinking this way!

This relates to the idea of the way things are -- tathātā or 'suchness'. Things are the way they are because they are meant to be. That's it.

One of my Dhamma uncles here in Melbourne gives this beautiful example. As a father, he would always go to his kids' music recitals. Kids, being beginners at their musical instruments, don't play the most pleasant music. But one day this uncle had the realisation that it is all perfect. Everything about the music was perfect; not in the sense that it was the most perfect-sounding, pleasing tune to the ears -- he was not deluding himself further -- but that it was perfect in that it all sounded how it was meant to sound. The causes and conditions leading up to the instruments being played that way, to produce those sounds, were all there in place. So in that sense, the music was perfect.

I find this is the way to peace, to really accept things as they are. It's not like having anger arise and trying to be okay with it by suppressing it, but knowing, as Ajahn Sumedho always says, "Right now, it's like this." That knowing is very powerful, because there is no judging, no resistance to the reality of the now, no expectation for the moment to be what it is not. It's powerful because we are in tune with reality, with the Dhamma. We are not fighting with it.

There is so much to learn just from this one simple teaching that I don't even know how to begin talking about it (and I'm not saying I'm perfect at understanding things this way but) -- it's huge! The realisation that things are meant to be the way that they are. Who would have thought!

Mettā for all conditions

But then there is the question: how do we progress if we just let things be? How can we improve if we just accept the way things are?

What I've learned is that there's probably nothing more damaging than to approach something with the intention to change it, to try to make it something it's not. We all understand this - imagine you're 30 years old and your parents tell you your job is not good enough, you need to get married, you need to have kids, etc etc etc. Those things are the last things on your mind; it's just not the time!

A very wise Ajahn once said, "Dtong mee jungwa -- we have to be sensitive to the rhythm and timing of things to do them correctly. We clearly can't force many of these issues, but we have to be ready to move when the timing becomes right."

With acceptance of the way it is, we create a lot of space, to breathe, to look, to learn, to understand, to grow. Flowers have never bloomed from the sun yelling at them to hurry up; flowers bloom when springtime comes. Like the Buddha said, it's all a gradual process.

This is mettā, isn't it? It's often translated as 'loving-kindness', which is unconditional love, gentleness, goodwill, kindness, etc. But what I've learned from listening to Ajahn Sumedho is that mettā is really just acceptance with the way things are. That's what love, gentleness, goodwill and kindness is, isn't it? When you can accept anything as it is, not trying to change it, resist it, judge it. Just allowing it into conscious awareness. There's lots of space around it, whatever it is. Giving it the space to be what it is.

That's so important because that acceptance is how we teach ourselves to get to know suffering and our defilements. We must first make friends with it, not push it away... which a lot of people (including me, of course) do! We tend to do it because we don't like how it feels, it's not a pleasant state of mind, we feel uncomfortable. But the First Noble Truth is to know there is suffering. If we don't look at suffering, how will we ever get to know it? If we don't get to know it, how will we ever overcome it?

A few months back, I started having these freak unwholesome thoughts which were driving me crazy. They were really unpleasant and I got so anxious and frustrated when they arose -- I didn't know what to do. I tried avoiding them by suppression -- of course that doesn't work, they just come back stronger. I couldn't just look at them and let them pass because I had fear towards these thoughts. Nothing I did worked because all I was doing was trying to control them and obviously that's impossible because, the Buddha, the Ajahns, the kalyana-mittas, have all said time and time again, they are not ours. They just arise and pass away based on the causes and conditions that come into place -- you don't get to decide when they arise and when they pass away. But no, I couldn't understand that -- I identified too much with the thinking process.

During one of my freak-out sessions I went to Damian, and he said, first of all, have mettā for whatever it is; you are not your thoughts and feelings second...
Two very important things among other things he said. But the thing that got me was when he said, "This is the best thing you've told me so far" and I was like ????

He said it was because I would have to look directly at the experience and learn from it. When I did that, I would overcome it and I would be able to help people in the future who have the same experience. This was something so telling coming from him, because he's been through heaps, and that's why he was so compassionate and understanding.

Then he said something which I keep in my heart:

"... [a story about Ajahn Sumedho dealing with difficulties] He learned a lot from it and it seems you are also! That is the point of the path! So thank these things for happening! It's forcing you to investigate! Don't feel guilty, feel grateful!! Such a great opportunity!"

There's so much wisdom (and exclamation marks hahaha) in this statement! Whatever phenomena that arises is meant to arise -- whether now or later. If it arises now, you have the opportunity to explore it and overcome it, no matter how unpleasant it is. So don't feel guilty that this defilement has appeared in your mind, feel grateful that it has revealed itself - you have the chance to deal with it sooner rather than later! It's such a positive way of approaching problems. Thank you, Damooooo!

It reminds me of something in Ayya Khemā's book, Be An Island:

"Everything we do is an exercise and a challenge. This is our purpose as human beings, our only reason for being here. We use the time on our little planet for learning and growing. We should think of our life as an adult education class. Any other life purpose is mistaken."

Having this attitude is so important -- otherwise, where is joy? To see failures or difficulties as just roadblocks and burdens is to miss the point of life, which is to learn.

Remembering that the world is dukkha

As I said before, because of having lots of ideals and expectations from myself, the slightest mistakes that I made would make me feel very guilty. For example, if I didn't fulfill a promise, I would basically go crazy, thinking the very worst of myself. I think for many people it's pretty easy to forgive themselves but to people who cling on to these crazy ideals about how they should be, you can probably relate to the difficulty.

For months, I'd been working with this guilt and self-expectation by using the teaching of all things as anattā, not self -- that all feelings and thoughts do not belong to us. They arise and pass away based on their conditions. So when we feel guilty about things, we should look at that strong sense of guilt too, knowing that we shouldn't take it personally because it's not our feeling to begin with.

Although that helped me deal with the feeling immediately, it didn't help me manage or understand the guilt. I think society places a lot of emphasis on remorse as a sign that you really regret your mistake and that you know you have done wrong and that this is good. Nah mate. When you feel worthless as a human being because you didn't smile back at someone, that's not a healthy sense of remorse hahah.

So yeah, I didn't really ever overcome guilt because I didn't understand it. Sure, it's anattā, but I felt like I was giving myself excuses for making mistakes. As if everytime I made a mistake, I could just tell myself, it's ok, don't identify with the feeling, and that would be that. It felt like a cop out. (Note this is just me not understanding it well enough!).

Then one day, I was feeling immense guilt about something and I was on the hunt for a talk that would help me and I stumbled across this gem. I don't know if you've experienced this but I tend to hack at a problem for ages and it always resurfaces when I haven't fully dealt with it, until one day, someone wise says something that completely does it for me and all the bulbs light up, everything clicks, and that problem or defilement just shatters immensely and loses a lot of its power on me. That's what it was like listening to this talk.

Ajahn Sumedho uses the jackal as a representation of the inner critic that we have; nothing we do ever seems to be good enough for it, and it's always throwing toxic imperatives at us like you shouldn't have or you need to. Ajahn then goes on to talk about ideals, and this is the part that just does it for me.

"Ideals are beautiful. That's why we attach to them -- it's how things should be. So we're back into the 'should' phases, of how things should be...

If it doesn't live up to that... we become critical, disillusioned. In awareness, we're aware - we're using the situation with awareness, to develop wisdom rather than wasting our lives trying to find some place or somebody that will live up to your ideals. Because you will never do that, that will never happen -- you'll just end up being cynical and bitter. Because the world is not an ideal world. Its nature is dukkha, is unsatisfactoriness, is change. You can't sustain the best as a permanent state. That's just not the way it is -- it's not Dhamma. It's desire -- wanting everything to be perfect. Because we can create images of perfection with our intellects -- the perfect government, the perfect mother, perfect father, perfect monk, perfect monastery. I can create superlative, images, beautiful, wonderful, lovely like paintings...

So ideals are not to be despised -- but put them in their proper place. They are saññā (perception), they are impermanent. You can't sustain an ideal. You can create them but whatever you create disappears, is destroyed, dies -- that's the law of karma: whatever is born dies, whatever begins ends.

So ideals are -- I refer them to like images, like guiding stars -- they give direction. When you're on a journey, you need direction, you need to know which way to go. But you can't travel very far if you're always looking up at the star. You'll fall off the cliff. You need to know where you are in terms of practical terrain, the situation on the ground. So living in a world of ideals, you're always falling off cliffs or falling into ditches, getting stuck in bogs. Idealists are always set up for disappointment, for despair."

I'd been focusing so much on the truth of anattā that I completely missed the dukkha. We often see dukkha as just 'suffering'; like yeah sure life sucks, but there's more. Dukkha is also unsatisfactoriness, in the sense that things in this world, conditioned phenomena, will never be perfect or fulfilling. While our hopes are sometimes fulfilled because of our good karma from the past, there is no ultimate fulfillment, no 'dream life' that can be achieved, because it's just not the nature of things.

And that includes oneself. Ajahn Sumedho says, "Whatever you think you are, that's not what you are." It's all saññā, perception, illusion. It's not reality. To demand an ideal version of yourself, a you that is more than who you really are -- like, look, how can there not be suffering?

This teaching was particularly impactful for me because I've always been a dreamer, always fantasising about all things perfect. What I've realised is that the mind proliferates around its object -- whether it's an object of desire or expectation of a future experience -- talking it up and creating stories about it that are just too good to be true, and when I encounter the object in real life, whatever it is, there's often a let down. Because that's how things are -- they are the way they are, not how you want them to be.

A final word on guilt

What I've learned about guilt is that it is dead-weight. Its only function is to distract ourselves from the present. Society has taught us that guilt is good, but no -- it's just a game and not a fun one. The most effective way to deal with a mistake is to acknowledge it honestly and resolve not to repeat it. This is not running from our mistakes -- it's dealing with it head-on by preventing a repeat without unnecessary emotional baggage.

And if we do repeat it? That's okay. Have a little mettā for yourself. Ayya Khemā:

"... If we look at ourselves in this manner, we will learn to love ourselves in a wholesome way -- just as, the Buddha says, "a mother at the risk of her own life loves and protects her child." If we want a realistic relationship with ourselves that is conducive to growth, then we need to become our own mother. A sensible mother can distinguish between behaviour that is useful for her child and that which is detrimental, but she does not stop loving the child when it misbehaves. This may be one of the most important aspects to consider in ourselves. Everyone, at one time or another, misbehaves in thought, speech or action -- most frequently in thought, fairly frequently in speech, and not so often in action. What do we do with that? What would a mother do? She would tell the child not to do it again, reassure the child of her continual love, and get on with the job of bringing up her child. Maybe we can start bringing up ourselves."

Another way I learned to forgive myself was taught by big brother Ash. He said, the Buddha could forgive Angulimala, who did really horrible things. Now pretend you're a Buddha -- can you forgive your own mistake?

It's not so bad when you look at it that way.

We all just need to stop being so serious

My friends, we just need to laugh a little and stop taking ourselves so seriously. If a tree falls on us tomorrow (unless you live in the city, maybe a building? sorry, touch wood), what was it all for?

This has been a long post but it's sort of my master post on ideals. Bit ironic because I definitely tried to make it perfect by putting in all the things. If you've read up to here, I thank you deeply!

I would like to leave you with this last quote from Ayya Khemā.

"The contemplative life is often lived with a heavy heart. Lacking joy, we may compensate by being outgoing. This does not work. One should cultivate lightheartedness but stay within. There is nothing to be worried or fearful about, nothing that is too difficult. Dhamma means the law of nature, and we are manifesting this law all the time. We cannot escape the law of nature. Wherever we are, we are the Dhamma, we are impermanent (anicca), unfulfilled (dukkha), and have no core substance (anattā). It does not matter whether we sit here or on the moon, it is the same everywhere. We need a lighthearted approach to our difficulties and those of everyone else. No exuberance and outpouring, but rather a constant inward that contains a bit of amusement. That works best. If we have a sense of humour about ourselves, it is much easier to love ourselves properly. It is also much easier to love everybody else."