It's very true that people who are very idealistic have more self-guilt, self-hatred, self-pity as well. In order to be more realistic, you have got to look outside of yourself. If you are looking a lot at only yourself with your own ideals about yourself, then it builds into a kind of massive bomb, which can often explode. But if we look outward a bit, we can relax a lot of that idealism. It's like this; there are eleven of you here in the hall, there are how many Westerners on this island, maybe four or five thousand? Are they interested in mental development, are they interested in personal growth? A few of them, yes, many of them, no. Many, many people, many of the Westerners on this island are just here to have a fun time. A bit of social excitement, romance, whatever. But they are not thinking much about the rest of the world, they are not thinking much about purifying within themselves. We look at the world in general, the cities that you have all come from, the Western cities. How many back there are actually interested in purifying? OK... we want to put this into perspective, just what kind of human being are we? What is the reality of who we are at this moment? Whenever we bring in an idealistic nature, say the Buddha, it can be inspiring if we use it properly, but if we use it to beat ourselves up, if we use it to have self-hatred and guilt, then we are using it in the wrong way.
Let's bring back the thought of going to school, the normal six year old kid in school, doing their addition, adding 5 plus 7, they don't feel guilty because they can't do Calculus. It just doesn't happen to any six year old, there's no thought of putting that ideal onto themselves. When they are six years old, it's very clear; it's very clear that they cannot do Calculus yet. If we are brand new at playing guitar, piano, anything, any sport, tennis, whatever it is; when we are very new we know we are not going to be in the Olympics or play in front of a music show tomorrow, and so on. So we have got to bring that same understanding into the practice here.
If we have very high ideals and very high morals, then that's okay in itself to have this as a direction. But we have to see where we are, we have to see where we are at the present time, and so often as I mentioned at the beginning, so often this needs to be in connection to seeing where other people are. Because if we only have our ideals and me, then we are never going to feel satisfied, we are never going to feel content, etc., and we are going to feel that we are no good. But when we have our ideals, me, and the rest of the world, we can take more joy with what we are doing.
This joy brings us more into a place of reality, knowing where we are at. We do not want to lose our ideal, we want it to inspire us, we still want to have the ideal of where we are going, our direction, but we can take joy with the fact that we are growing in our own practice. Now when you think about this, imagine you have two trees, you have a Mango tree about 15 years old, it's giving fruit, and you have got a Mango tree about 5 weeks old, it's very small. They are both Mango trees. Now imagine going up to that little Mango tree and getting angry at it. Imagine telling it that "It's stupid, it's dumb, it's not big enough yet." When you think about this, it is totally ridiculous, it is totally dumb, and yet this is what a lot of meditators are doing to themselves, who have too high ideals that they put onto themselves at this present time. This is not realizing that OK, they are just a small mango tree now. So put on the water, put on the fertilizer, and be patient and wait.