The Myth of No Consequences — The Myths Series

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The Myth of No Consequences — the consequence, or result, is caused by the actions preceding it, 100% of the time

Of Wayne’s many books, the one clos­est to today’s top­ic is: This End­less Moment

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In Buddhism, there is endless talk about the myth of independent origin. Usually, it’s put the other way around: the reality of dependent origin.

Briefly, one of the marks of Bud­dhism is its insis­tence on the inter-relat­ed­ness of all things. This means that no mat­ter how unique and “sin­gu­lar” an event seems, it is tied into a long string of oth­er things.

Here’s a Soto Zen Gatha that expresses this (especially in the first paragraph)

First, sev­en­ty-two labors brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us.
Sec­ond, as we receive this offer­ing, we should con­sid­er whether our virtue and prac­tice deserve it.
Third, as we desire the nat­ur­al order of mind — to be free from cling­ing — we must be free from greed.
Fourth, to sup­port our life, we receive this food.
Fifth, to real­ize the way, we accept this food.
First, this food is for the Three Trea­sures.
Sec­ond, it is for our teach­ers, par­ents, nation, and all sen­tient beings.
Third, it is for all beings in the six worlds.
Thus, we eat this food with every­one. We eat to stop all evil, to prac­tice good, To save all sen­tient beings, and to accom­plish our Bud­dha Way.

OK, so here’s the kick­er. The idea of depen­dent ori­gin also applies to each of us. We are not unique, nor self-suf­fi­cient. We are the result of a long stream of genet­ics and choices. 

• First, we are the result of our genet­ics. We were made in the caul­dron of relat­ing and mating.
• Sec­ond, we have formed our­selves as a result of the choic­es we have made regard­ing events of our life, much as a pot­ter forms a pot on a wheel. We are what we have made.
• We there­fore are the result of the above; we have no inde­pen­dent being.

What this means is that we are the consequence of our choices.

Let us con­sid­er the lump of clay that is a new­born. The child is a genet­ic amal­gam of both par­ents, who each are an amal­gam, and back and back to when we climbed down from the trees. 

Infants are hard-wired, for exam­ple, to nurse — to “latch on.” This is one of many instinc­tu­al behav­iours. Some brain sci­en­tists would argue that mood and tem­pera­ment are equal­ly hard-wired in — our base­line view of the world, for example. 

The rest of who we “be” is learned.

Our par­ents and tribes set us on a path; we — lit­tle bun­dles of “no-noth­ing” autism — are giv­en struc­ture, expla­na­tions, and exam­ples. Each of these things is dic­tat­ed by our cul­ture (i.e. most of us eat what our cul­ture or reli­gion eats — we did­n’t choose this — we absorbed it.)

Then, there are the quirks of our parents.

From with­in the allow­able para­me­ters of each child’s cul­ture, par­ents have the free­dom to tilt us in par­tic­u­lar (pecu­liar) direc­tions. They pro­mote cer­tain aspects of our aris­ing per­son­al­i­ties, and block oth­ers (or at least try to.) 

Because this struc­tur­ing is hap­pen­ing to us from infan­cy on, we tend to believe the sto­ry we are told, and at some lev­el, become the peo­ple our par­ents want us to be.

So, what about no consequences?

When we are chil­dren, con­se­quences are typ­i­cal­ly expressed in the form of pun­ish­ments. “You hit your sis­ter, you’re hav­ing a time out!” 

A sto­ry: I, age 3 was at the chi­ro­prac­tor’s, would­n’t stop act­ing up. I think I did an entire vaude­ville rou­tine. Mom, non-vio­lent mom, warned me that there would be con­se­quences if I did­n’t stop. I didn’t. 

We got home, my butt and I met the wood­en spoon. Consequences. 

Where this went off the rails for me is this: I nev­er real­ly “got” that my behav­iour led to the appli­ca­tion of the wood­en spoon. I got it intel­lec­tu­al­ly, but nev­er got past the “It’s not fair!” response. To repeat:

• As kids, when we were pun­ished, we learned a skewed view of con­se­quences . We’d break some­thing and get sent to our room. Most kids have trou­ble think­ing, “Gee, I broke that, and this is a fair con­se­quence.” No, we come up with, “It’s not my fault. I did­n’t know bet­ter.” Or, we go to: “They don’t love / appre­ci­ate me.”
• And then, because some­thing else will always hap­pen, we learn to lie. We blame oth­ers. “I did­n’t do it, Tom­my did!”
• If no one else is around, we’re lim­it­ed to “It was­n’t me!” or “It was an acci­dent. I should­n’t have to pay the price of an accident!”

Kids hate consequences. And most kids never grow up.

Despite the wood­en spoon, my upbring­ing was pos­i­tive; I would now say over­ly-pos­i­tive. My mom espe­cial­ly would inter­vene so I would­n’t fail. As a result, I got all the way to Uni­ver­si­ty think­ing I could do any dumb thing, and some­how, mag­i­cal­ly, I’d get what I wanted. 

And then, because mom­my was­n’t there, I start­ed expe­ri­enc­ing con­se­quences. I hand­ed in a paper late, I got a bad grade. And low and behold, my profs did­n’t care if I was “sup­posed to” get a good grade. 

I slow­ly start­ed to fig­ure out the con­nec­tion between “this” and “that.” And I do mean slowly. 

This “end­less learn­ing” thing is anoth­er thing that does not set well with “mod­ern” peo­ple. So it becomes a com­pound prob­lem — the game is a game of a life­time, and where you are and who you are is about where you’ve been and what you’ve done. 

Back in my coun­selling days, I briefly worked with a guy who was the spouse of a long-term client. He came in twice. He also had a PhD, which says some­thing — I’m not sure what. I nev­er had time to learn how he devel­oped his world-view, because, only two sessions. 

But his was very much the life of Peter Pan — the boy who nev­er grew up. 

He fer­vent­ly believed that Nev­er-nev­er Land was real – that he was des­tined for great­ness, bliss, end­less great sex, and no issues — and all of this would hap­pen with no effort on his part. All of this would hap­pen no mat­ter what he did. 

He loud­ly declared that he knew for a fact that rela­tion­ships were easy. All you had to do was meet the right per­son and there would be no prob­lems, great sex and noth­ing to resolve. 

I tried to help him to under­stand that his beliefs and behav­iours were the cause of his dilem­mas, but he could­n’t see it. He real­ly believed in Never-land. 

We briefly decid­ed to talk about mar­riage and sex, as this was real­ly on his mind. He was in his 50s when I saw him, and was baf­fled that his vision of “how things should be” did not match with “how things are.” He told me that he was­n’t hap­py in his mar­riage with my client, because “her” issues kept aris­ing and “bad things kept hap­pen­ing.” Oh. And the sex was “mediocre at best.” 

His mar­riage to my client was his fourth mar­riage, and he’d had sev­er­al rela­tion­ships on the side dur­ing all of them, and had yet to find “Ms. Perfect.” 

I again tried the, “It is your beliefs that have led you to this place,” but he was­n’t buy­ing it. Who he was and where he was was not his respon­si­bil­i­ty — he had no respon­si­bil­i­ty. All the women he chose and lived with mys­te­ri­ous­ly end­ed up to be some­how “wrong.”

Peter Pan-like, he left ther­a­py, and left Cana­da to search the world for “the per­fect rela­tion­ship, which for him meant no con­se­quences, no hassle.” 

It’s all so easy — be a kid, look around, find some­one to blame, and to ignore that where you are “now” is exact­ly and pre­cise­ly where you brought yourself. 

Yet doing so means remain­ing for­ev­er a kid. Act, get lousy results, and just keep doing that, because that’s what you do. Fig­ure every­one ought to cut you some slack, because “That’s who I am.” 

Because, of course, you are where you are by mag­ic, or you got dragged where you are by oth­ers. “It’s not my fault!!” 

Or, you can see the wis­dom of depen­dent ori­gin, the wis­dom of con­se­quences (my choice — my behav­iour — led to this, and this leads to this…) Still con­fused? Let me simplify:

The consequences of your behaviour are simple to discover. The consequence of your behaviour is your life.

It’s oh so easy to jus­ti­fy our­selves to our­selves, to believe any­thing about our­selves, and to com­plete­ly miss how we, and we alone, get our­selves into the mess­es we find our­selves in. 

We get all dewy-eyed when we begin… what­ev­er… and con­grat­u­late our­selves for what we have (sin­gle-hand­ed­ly and per­fect­ly, of course!) set in motion. 

Then, as time goes by and the nov­el­ty wears off, and the inevitable dif­fi­cul­ties arise, well, that’s the fault of others. 

Decades ago two drunk Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents climbed over a fence at the top of a moun­tain on their cam­pus, this being the Uni­ver­si­ty of Colorado. 

They went down the hill on a tobog­gan, despite promi­nent warn­ing signs. 

The fence they climbed was 8 feet high. 

They crashed into a tree; one was killed the oth­er became a quad­ri­pleg­ic. The sur­vivor sued. She won. 8 mil­lion or so. 

Rea­son? The Uni­ver­si­ty did­n’t do “every­thing pos­si­ble” to stop her. 

I won­der if the judge expect­ed machine gun turrets? 

See, to me, here’s a cou­ple of adults, mak­ing choic­es, dis­re­gard­ing warn­ings, because, hey, every­one knows they have rights!!!!! 

They have the right to a drunk­en slide down a moun­tain on a tobog­gan. How dare the Uni­ver­si­ty put up signs and fences. Don’t they know they’re adults, wise in the ways of the world? 

Well, spare me from the self-declared wise. They usu­al­ly can’t find their ass with both hands and a map. 

Then, crash. “Hey! Wait a minute! I did­n’t know bet­ter. I’m just a kid. I should­n’t be par­a­lyzed. It’s your fault. You should have stopped me, post­ed a guard, tack­led me and dragged me, kick­ing and scream­ing (so I could sue you for drag­ging me, touch­ing me, some­thing) from the hill.”

In other words, I expect unlimited freedom of action, and absolutely no responsibility when I screw up. And our world condones this crap. 

Every choice, every action, has consequences. 

They are your con­se­quences, cre­at­ed when you chose and/or act­ed. The state of your job, your rela­tion­ships (all of them) your health — all of it is a con­se­quence of your choices. 

No exemp­tions, no excus­es. And if you want to scream, “It’s not fair!” see last week’s article.

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