Sayadaw U Pandita: Saving Oneself is Not Selfish

Extract of teachings by Sayadaw U Pandita from “Timeless Wisdom”.

Defilements arise due to “seeing”, “hearing”, “smelling”, “tasting”, “touching” and so on. The Buddha eradicated all forms of defilements without anything remaining. The Buddha was endowed with the knowledge and compassion to guide beings. The Buddha knew what was beneficial and what was harmful to beings. Both knowledge and compassion are essential to guide others. If one does not have this knowledge, one does not know what is beneficial and what is harmful. The Buddha taught dhamma and vinaya that enabled beings to reap the benefits of the practice and to eradicate all defilements.

Only those who have practiced satisfactorily can guide others. Without direct knowledge and a realisation of the path, it is impossible to guide others. Some teachers try to teach without a realisation of the dhamma and from theoretical knowledge only. This can be dangerous as their understanding of the dhamma is incomplete. To teach others, one should clearly understand what is beneficial and what is harmful.

Years ago, when Sayadawgyi was teaching in Hawaii, a question was posed whether it was more important to work to free others first or free oneself first. Some felt that it was selfish to free oneself first. If two people are sunk in mud to nose level and one says to the other ‘I will save you”, it is not possible. One must free oneself first from the mud before saving the other. When Sayadawgyi was in USA, criticisms were made that practising to free oneself was selfish and that one should be selfless and save others. In actual practice, we must free ourselves first. Then, when we are free from defilements, we can save others and show them the way to be free from their defilements. During the time of the Buddha, there were those who attained mundane absorption, but didn’t know how to free themselves from defilements. It is only by cutting the currents of defilements through insight knowledge, stage by stage, that can free oneself and be in a position to save others!

-end of extract-

My comments

I do agree with the view that ultimately if you want to be able to help sentient beings, first you need to have some genuine dhamma realisation and some spiritual ability that comes with it. For example, the ability to read the person’s karma will definitely come in handy in understanding how to help a person. Otherwise, you could possibly make the person’s situation worse. Also, if the meditator has strayed from his/her path, if the teacher has been through the same path and fruition before, then the teacher can guide the meditator the pitfalls to avoid and/or how to overcome any problems that may have arisen. It is absolutely risky to be guided by  a teacher who can only make guesses. However, to strive for oneself, one MUST have a strong cause that is deeply rooted in the aspiration to safe others. This is referred to as “Aspiration Bodhicitta” in Mahayana Buddhism. At the very least, this should be present as a motivation to saving oneself. Otherwise, if it is just saving oneself for one’s own sake, then such efforts may result in other “issues” along the way. One example is, by having a strong aspiration for saving others, one can avoid getting stuck for too long in any deep samadhi states. One would then apply more effort on Vipassana methods to cut off one's defilements. This is just my personal opinion.

I invite you to read this other post - https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2011/11/peaceful-means-may-not-always-be.html

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