Why be good?

There are many ways of “being good” and many lessons in the Buddha’s teachings that encourage us to cultivate wholesome actions of body, speech, and mind.

In a classic sutta, the Buddha lays out a very simple reason to behave towards others with the specific intention to do no harm.

With Queen Mallikā SN3.8 (translated by Sujato Bhikkhu)

At Sāvatthī.
Now at that time King Pasenadi of Kosala was upstairs in the royal longhouse together with Queen Mallikā. Then the king said to the queen, “Mallikā, is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?”

“No, great king, there isn’t. But is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?”

“For me also, Mallikā, there’s no-one.”

Then King Pasenadi of Kosala came downstairs from the stilt longhouse, went to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and told him what had happened.

Then, understanding this matter, on that occasion the Buddha recited this verse:

“Having explored every quarter with the mind,
one finds no-one dearer than oneself.
Likewise for others, each holds themselves dear;
so one who loves themselves would harm no other.”

This king and queen were very wise. The king essentially asked his wife whether she loved him more than herself, to which she honestly answered, “no”. The king then realized that he also didn’t love anyone more than himself – how could he? Don’t we all have self-preservation at the very root of our physical and psychological being? Could anyone truthfully answer that they loved someone else more deeply than they loved themself? Having discovered this (perhaps unsettling) truth, King Pasenadi went to the Buddha to think it through with him. And the Buddha confirmed that all of us hold ourselves more dear than anyone else, which is not to say we don’t love others deeply.

The point is that if we understand our own instinct for self-preservation, then with only a little effort we can remember that everyone else feels the same way! We can imagine that intentionally harming someone else is the next thing to harming ourselves.

The Dalai Lama makes this point regularly: everyone wants to be happy. Marshall Rosenberg says essentially the same thing: whatever words we use, we are all trying to satisfy our perceived needs. We may be frightfully unskillful as we go about it, but however misguided we are sometimes, we are all trying our best to be happy (or happier).