Many people come to meditation with a simple wish. They want less worry, better sleep, a calmer mind at work. This is a natural wish, and there is nothing wrong with it. But Tsoknyi Rinpoche speaks about it in a surprisingly strict way: the wish to feel better is a samsaric goal.

What this means

In Buddhism, samsara is a circle in which the mind goes round and round through the same suffering. The goal “I want to feel good” belongs to this circle, because it grows out of it. It borrows methods from the dharma, but uses them to adjust the ego and make it work better.

Rinpoche describes a familiar pattern. We get upset, we meditate, we calm down, we forget about practice. A week later we get upset again and sit down again. The balance does come back, and that is useful. But each time we return to the same level where we started. There is no progress, only repair.

Where the problem is

The source of our troubles is attachment, aggression and a closed mind. According to the tradition, all of them grow from ignorance, a basic misunderstanding of how the mind works. If we practice for the comfort of the “I”, this “I”, the main object of our clinging, stays untouched. We treat the symptoms and feed the cause.

That is why Rinpoche’s question sounds almost like a riddle: how can we find freedom if we are guided by selfishness? Freedom means getting out of the power of the ego. To go toward it while serving the same ego is to walk in the opposite direction.

A self-deception that is hard to notice

Rinpoche also speaks about something more subtle. For years we can behave like a practitioner: take refuge, keep the forms. And inside we hold a hidden aim: “so that I feel better.” With time we may stop hiding it and openly use spirituality as self-help. But the result is the same: after a certain point, this kind of practice does not lead any further.

He warns about a wider result too. If practice is reduced to tuning our mood, there will be very few real teachers, people who are able to lead others to freedom.

What to do instead

Motivation must be wider than “I will feel better.” It is the wish to be free from negative emotions and to lead all beings to freedom. The dharma works when it is aimed in this way: the explanations we hear turn into personal insight, and insight opens the nature of the mind.

This does not cancel care for ourselves. It means that care for ourselves should not be the last stop.

A question for every day

Before practice we can ask ourselves honestly: why am I sitting down? If the answer is “to feel better,” that is a fine starting point. The important thing is to see it as a starting point, not the end, and slowly widen the intention. First toward ourselves: to be free from what torments us. Then toward others: so that this freedom becomes useful not only to me.

Based on a teaching by Tsoknyi Rinpoche, from his book Fearless Simplicity.