Great Determination

or how to become a mature human being

---

PRIVATE TEACHING   |   CALENDAR  |   PODCAST  |   WRITING

---

Photo by Ales Krivec

In one of my favorite early sutras, a man called Pukkusati leaves home and goes searching for the Buddha, hoping to become his disciple. One night, he’s taking shelter in a potter’s shed when the Buddha, who’s also traveling, joins him. But having never met the famous teacher, Pukkusati doesn’t recognize his new roommate, which means he’s neither self conscious nor impressed when the Buddha takes out his grass mat and prepares to sit. Pukkusati just follows his lead, and in this way the two of them spend most of the night in meditation.

Afterward, the Buddha is struck by the other man’s presence and practice, so he asks him, “Who’s your teacher?” When Pukkusati says it’s the Buddha, and acknowledges he’s never actually met the man, the real-life Buddha is touched. He decides on the spot to give Pukkusati a teaching and speaks to him, among other things, of the four determinations (also called the four foundations or resolutions): not neglecting wisdom, protecting truth, practicing renunciation, and training for peace. It’s not until the Buddha finishes his discourse that Pukkusati finally realizes who’s before him. Delighted, he immediately asks to receive ordination.

I was thinking about this when a newsletter popped into my inbox. It quoted Tristan Harris, a technology ethicist and the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, saying that the rapid development of AI is asking that humanity meet it from a place of maturity, scarce as this quality appears to be at the moment. I don’t know enough about AI to speak intelligently about its dangers or promises—although I’ve read enough to feel both awed and scared—yet it strikes me that these four determinations would come in very handy here. They seem like a good description of what we need to step into our maturity, whether what we’re facing is the advent of artificial superintelligence or anything else we don’t fully understand (which is pretty much everything, if we’re honest).

Not neglecting wisdom is a good idea no matter what, wisdom being the foundation for mature development. Without wisdom, anything that we decide to build will wobble, prey to the currents of fickleness and greed, or to our confused ideas about what we need to be well and happy. A wise person sees what is there, not what they want to see, and is not flooded by ideas, to paraphrase the Buddha. And so, although we can think of wisdom in different ways, a useful one might be as “precise understanding.” We must precisely understand what’s going on so we can respond appropriately, instead of based on our whims. Building a house on a flood plain is possible, but it isn’t wise. Wisdom is precise because it doesn’t kid itself. It’s ruthlessly true, irrespective of our wants and feelings. That’s why it’s so intimately tied to the second determination, protecting truth.

We can’t really see clearly unless we’re willing to be honest with ourselves about what we’re seeing, and also about what we might be missing. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should, at least not without carefully considering the risks. Good, well-meaning people created the social media apps that have contributed to this being our most anxious and depressed generation. Of course there have also been benefits, but whether they outweigh the harm is debatable. Better to put the brakes and wonder at the outset: are we missing anything? The answer to this question is reliably Yes, which means a good dash of humility would also help us enormously. And patience. Not every endeavor needs to become a race to the finish line. (“If we don’t do X, someone else will” has to be one of the most immature arguments around.) Maturity would include studying the ramifications of doing X based on some basic principles we’d have stablished thanks to our precise understanding of what works and what doesn’t—and not just for a select few. It’s not like we don’t have the information. It’s not like we don’t see the evidence of our greed or our haste. It’s just that we choose to ignore it for the sake of our own gratification, which is why the third determination, renunciation, is also crucial.

Renunciation is a tough sell, I’ll admit. No one likes to talk about renunciation. No one likes to think about it. Well, perhaps not no one, but not many of us are willing to give up our hard-earned possessions. The word itself sounds heavy and off-putting, doesn’t it? Like you’re being forced to clean a houseful of stuff you sense you’d be better off without but are too overwhelmed to tackle. So and So isn’t giving anything up, why should you? And what if you need it later? A slight reframing might therefore be useful. We can approach renunciation less as a relinquishment of anything we’d like to hold onto and more as a redirecting of our attention. We don’t have to give up things we like; we can learn to like those things that are good for us.

In the 1960s, a researcher at Stanford conducted an experiment. He had preschoolers sit in a room alone and placed before them a plate with a single marshmallow. The choice, he told them, was to eat one marshmallow now or wait fifteen minutes to receive a second one. The experiment was supposed to be a predictor of life outcomes, with the kids who could delay gratification having a higher likelihood of turning into mature, responsible adults capable of exercising self control in service of their future benefit. The results, it turned out, were a bit more nuanced than that—the kids’ socioeconomic status and family environment affected their capacity to wait much more than will power alone—yet duplicate studies did share an important conclusion: self control isn’t an inherent quality but a learned skill, and the easiest way to learn it is to redirect our attention. The kids who could focus on something else were better able to wait for the second marshmallow, as were the ones who reimagined it as something totally other—a cloud, a ball of cotton, a picture of a marshmallow and therefore inedible.

We have the capacity to focus closely, and to take a wider view. We have the ability to learn from our past mistakes and to imagine possible futures. We have a choice to put our attention on this, not that, and to do so for as long as we want, with a little training. Our power of attention may be our single most underused resource, but we all have it, and it shows us very clearly what leads to peace, the fourth determination.

Training for peace doesn’t require specialized knowledge, but it does demand of us something that I’ve no idea whether AI can develop, ultimately, and that’s the ability to care. We must want to be at peace and make the choices that will lead to it. Then again, humanity’s track record is not so good on this one, so maybe AI will do a better job? I certainly hope so. But again, we do all have the capacity for peace, and if you look at the four determinations, you see that, as before, this one is a direct result of establishing renunciation. In fact, it’s a direct result of the other three. Someone who’s developed in wisdom and committed to truth, someone who’s willing to patiently study all the options and generously direct their attention to the best ones, will end up with a clear mind and a stable life—a life free of confusion, greed, and animosity.

In Zen, great determination is the resolve to wake up regardless of the obstacles. It’s the bridge between doubt and faith—the courage to move beyond the first and enact the second. With so much unknown and so much at stake, we’d do well to engage all three in our lives and decisions. We can always choose to question our certainty, trust our wisdom, and use our capacity.

When I asked Claude to give me a metaphor for these three principles, this is what it said: great doubt is standing at the edge of a dense forest, afraid to go inside. Great faith is realizing you have a compass in your pocket. Great determination is walking into the woods and through to the other side. Not the most creative, but serviceable. Using my own natural intelligence, I took the metaphor and tweaked it like so: great doubt is standing at the edge of the forest, wondering whether it’s all there is. Great faith is knowing that it isn’t. Great determination is deciding you’ll spend your life finding out what else is there and on the other side—not just for your own benefit, but for everyone’s.

---

If you benefit from my writing, please consider sponsoring this newsletter or offering a donation through my website. Writing is long, patient work, so please know that even small gifts make it possible for me to continue doing it. Spreading the word also helps, so feel encouraged to do that too. Thank you, always, for your presence, your practice, and support.

---

---