Last Sunday I talked about letting go of the “shoulds”
in our lives.  Here’s a delightful poem by Tilopa, who
was a tenth century yogi in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Neither giving nor taking

Neither for nor against

Leave your mind at rest

With perceptions remain unconcerned

The great Way is a mind open to everything

Which clings to nothing

Radiant and stainless

Rest in the unmoved, uncreated and

spontaneous

And you will soon find Buddhahood.

When we look at how we make choices in our lives, often we will find that we think there are certain things that we “should” do. All those shoulds that we have in our lives—from the simplest, “I should go to the grocery store” to the most complex, “I should live this sort of a life” or “I should have a certain type of car/house/partner”. This common pre-occupation with telling ourselves and others what we or they should be doing can be a dangerous activity. Who would have thought that such a simple word could be so powerful? What are the shoulds in your life? What do you tell yourself that you should do? What do you tell others that they should do? And the most important question to ask yourself is, “why”?

Even if we tell ourselves that we should be good Buddhists or good Christians, even using the word should in this way can be potentially unskillful. How do we decide what a good Buddhist or good Christian should do? What is the source of our actions? What is the source of our thinking? How do we decide what to do or be?

From the moment we are born, most of us are given pictures of how we should be. Some of these shoulds are mostly innocent—we should be kind, we should share, we should do our homework. But often, on top of these simpler shoulds, more complex shoulds are added. We should go to college; we should have a relationship; we should get married; we should buy a house. It’s important to emphasize that deciding to do these things is not good or bad in and of itself. What the Buddhist teachings ask us to do is to question why we do these things. What is our motivation? From where or how do we get guidance on how to live our lives?

In Buddhism, there are several teachings that offer an alternative way for making decisions. For example, we can begin by taking refuge in the Buddha, dharma and sangha–the Buddha or the Christ Spirit within us, the dharma—the truth that helps us see everything in a fresh way, and sangha—the community of fellow beings that are here is support us on our journey. Note that the refuge vows don’t say, I should take refuge in the buddha, etc. it is a choice that you can make. I’m reminded of a teaching that Ben Worth did several year ago entitled, “or not”. You can take refuge…or not. You can choose to live your life in a different way, or not. Every day we have an opportunity to choose differently. Every moment, we have a fresh opportunity to choose a new way of living.

One of the preliminary practices in Tibetan Buddhism is a mandala offering, which is a visualization of offering everything we have or think we have, or even what we think we should do, to a higher good, to the Buddha. This practice is said to be important because there is a danger, even in the noblest of spiritual practices, that our egos will let us think that by doing these spiritual practices that we as individuals are becoming better than others, that we possess something or do something or are something better than other sentient beings. So, to overcome this delusion, Tibetans have this practice of offering up of all those things that we have or think we have to a higher good.

What if you were to offer up all the shoulds in your life? What if we experimented with a different way of making choices in our lives? When we begin to look at the subtle shoulds in our lives, it might seem difficult to give them up, or even to hold them up to the light to determine why they are in our lives. The first experience of giving up our preconceived notions about what we should be doing may be that it stops us immediately in our tracks. I know for myself, I have often and continue to live my life with a long list of shoulds. I should do this or I should do that, without examining my motivation. The first reaction I’ve had when starting to question my shoulds is that I’ve lost my rudder, I’ve lost my ability to easily steer my way through life. Yet, on closer inspection, it seems that when we live our lives making choices with a long list of shoulds, it causes us to live our life on auto-pilot, not truly understanding what is motivating us to act and live the way we do. Stopping to think about what are the shoulds in our lives can help us more honestly assess whether those shoulds are really the best criteria for making choices that are creating the life that we want for ourselves.

So, how might we live life without shoulds? What could be our new rudder? Imagine that everything you need to live your life exists within you, within your buddha nature, your Christ spirit. That instead of thinking up in advance what is right for a particular situation, imagine that you could stay present in each moment, stay connected to the divine spirit, your buddha nature, that is available to you in every moment of every day. Imagine that every answer or action that you will ever need is available to you by just staying present.

Imagine knowing what to do or what to say or how to live by simply staying present. What would it be like to not know exactly what you were going to do five years from now or even next week? Or to perhaps still make plans but with an open heart an open mind about what to choose. Imagine praying and living by being open to the highest good in each new moment.

I invite you to try trusting the innate wisdom within you, your buddha nature… That is always with you, just waiting patiently to be heard.

In closing, the words of Tilopa:

Neither giving nor taking

Neither for nor against

Leave your mind at rest

With perceptions remain unconcerned

The great Way is a mind open to everything

Which clings to nothing

Radiant and stainless

Rest in the unmoved, uncreated and

spontaneous

And you will soon find Buddhahood.