Ambition and Buddhism

November 28, 2018 8:56 AM

I learned a bit about Meditation and Buddhism in Coursera’s Buddhism and Modern Psychology. It was both revelatory and intuitively correct. One piece of the puzzle that does not fit well yet, is ambition. Second Noble Truth, roughly speaking is “yearning for things is the cause of suffering”. Ambition to me, is yearning for success, ergo suffering. Yet the lack of ambition is stasis and stagnation. Where do you go from here?
posted by aeighty to Health & Fitness (11 answers total)

Best answer: Yearning to be free of ambition is also a cause of suffering. I always liked the formulation "downgrade your emotion-backed demands into mere preferences."
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:04 AM on November 28, 2018 [10 favorites]

I'd encourage you to read a number of different translations and sutras regarding the Noble Truths, because there is some quite specific exegesis surrounding the cause of suffering.

I was always taught that "attachment to desires" causes suffering. You can't by force of will turn your desires off, you're a human being with biological and emotional imperatives. Attachment to those desires is something different, though. If I am hungry and the desire arises for a milkshake, but I go down to the ice cream shop and it's closed, how do I react? Do I feel disappointment, unhappiness, or anger of the thwarting of my desire, or do I just move on and go get something else to fulfill my biological need for sustenance?

As Obscure Reference above also notes, yearning to be free from yearning is... also yearning. Or as the Third Zen Patriarch says, "When you try to stop activity by passivity your very effort fills you with activity. "
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:13 AM on November 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

If you google "buddhism career ambition" you will see many people discussing this set of questions. As a person with only limited understanding, I think that it may be key to adopt a different definition of ambition - not "yearning for success" but something more like "trying to do a productive thing well, accepting that the results may or may not come quickly, and not letting career ambition get in the way of other virtues."
posted by sheldman at 9:15 AM on November 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

I think there is common thing when we first learn about Buddhism where we approach it as an intellectual problem, something that can be learned by reading books. "Buddhism" can't be approached in that way. If fact, it's very dangerous and counter-productive to read various books and things without guidance from a guide (a roshi or a minister). That's what a friend of mine in Japan told me when I asked him a similar question about twenty years ago.

In the societies where Buddhism is practiced or nominally observed (Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, Nepal, Tibet and so on) people don't enter Buddhism from books. They enter into it at birth, basically, as a way of life -- it's a gestalt.

My suggestion is to participate in a community of some sort where there is strong, wise and compassionate leadership who can help guide you through some of these questions while helping you learn about Buddhist practice, which is more than book learning.

There are many Soto or Rinzai Zen communities in the U.S. and Canada, for example. Learning seated meditation is a better way to understand some of the intellectual concepts of Buddhism, as opposed to reading books.

I think what's most important is that you trust the community you're joining, and you trust the leader/teacher/roshi. Whoever guides you must be accredited in some way and be qualified to teach.
posted by JamesBay at 9:18 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

(I myself would also never try to interpret or explain what the precepts mean -- it's counterproductive, and I'm probably wrong anyway)
posted by JamesBay at 9:19 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Dan Harris's 10% Happier spends a LOT of time on this question. I'm not sure his solution is the one I'd give, but basically he says it comes down to learning to put your energies into actions rather than outcomes: it's fine to, say, work hard on a project that matters to you, but being invested in whether that project finds acclaim, earns you money, etc. will lead you to become attached to something beyond your control, and will therefore lead to suffering.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 10:12 AM on November 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

Best answer: One source of motivation that I've heard actively praised in convert-oriented Buddhism* is compassion, sometimes described as wishing for all beings to be at ease. And since you're a being too, you're part of "all beings," so that can include compassion-for-yourself.

So. It's one thing to be attached, in a codependent way, to the idea of making someone else successful. It's another, different thing to wish for them to be at ease, and to let that wish motivate how you treat them. And if having a secure and satisfying job is a factor in their happiness, then your wish for them to be at ease can include hoping they find such a job, and even offering help when you can.

Similarly. It's one thing to be attached, in a clinging, grasping way, to the idea of your own success. It's another, different thing to think you deserve compassion in the same way all beings do. And then your wish for all beings (including yourself) to be at ease can motivate how you handle your own life. That can mean doing kind things for yourself in the same spirit as you'd do them for another, including cultivating skills and working relationships that comfort and support you.

If you approach it that way, you end up not with ambition per se, but with another, calmer, kinder source of motivation that can lead to you doing a lot of the same things: studying, working hard, meeting people and networking. It's just that you do that stuff out of compassion and not out of the need to win at life.

*I specify "convert-oriented" because traditionally-Buddhist countries have a different attitude towards how non-monks should live, and I don't know if this advice applies there.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:14 AM on November 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I'm going to talk about career success as a householder. One out of many answers straight from a Tibetan monastic tradition is that householder life requires many compromises. "Killing the fish to feed the dog." Those compromises may be materially good for you or your family, but we shouldn't pretend that compromising gets us closer to enlightenment. Something that Buddhism borrows from some schools of Hinduism is a concept of development over the entire lifespan. Having a profession and family is dukkha (translating that as "suffering" involves lots of cultural baggage) but that dukkha is unavoidable unless you're spiritually ready to engage in renunciation. Renunciation becomes more important and easier as you grow older, and those Tibetan Buddhists play the long game that Nirvana will likely require many lifetimes of favorable rebirth to achieve.

For householders, you practice your profession within the guidelines of right livelihood (for which there's entire books of guidelines) as part of preparing yourself for future renunciation, which could be as an elder or in a favorable rebirth.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 10:17 AM on November 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

A perspective which may be helpful is that, assuming that what you are doing is right livelihood, doing a job well (which includes wanting to be better at what you do and advancing in your career to be able to do that) is a kindness to the sentient beings who are benefitting from the output (product and/or service) of that job. One of my teachers would help us reflect upon this by using their eye glasses as an example. Many different people doing different types of jobs are involved in getting that pair of glasses to the end user. The quality of that service/product is not just dependent on people getting paid to do the job and the level of expertise that they have (although those are critical components), but also the care that they put into creating the most beneficial service/product for the end user.
posted by jazzbaby at 11:58 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

In my own personal understanding one of the ways I recast this is to not let attachment/ambition get in the way of playfulness and curiosity. I wouldn't say it's a lack of ambition that leads to stasis and suffering, so much as a lack of engagement with the present and the world. You can let go of ambition for outcomes, as said above, without letting go of engagement, curiosity, playfulness, mindfulness of the world around you.
posted by ch1x0r at 11:59 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Yet the lack of ambition is stasis and stagnation.

I can't give you a fully Buddhist answer as I'm a terrible one but I can share with you my own personal snapshot and journey of a change in perspective about this. I used to chase a reasonably high-voltage career in media (not top-flight, and I kind of fell into it) and I worked soooo hard looking for success in all the metrics - traffic, feedback, awards, promotions, opportunities to advance.

I didn't actually do my best work though, because sometimes what you have to do to fulfill ambition if it's a traditional kind, striving for the next brass ring, is lousy. I had to be strategic rather than doing what needed to be done. And I was asked to treat my staff in a particular way and I found myself....unable to do it, actually. I can't say that I was doing great work by that time but I did find my own centre which was that I cared more about how I treated my staff than how I was perceived by anyone and whether I met increasingly impossible goals.

A few years later I made a career change from both that job and a pretty much equally prestigious one to work in the back office of a small martial arts organization. I have ambitions here too but they are quietly my own, like to do certain things really well to position other people to do well, and I get upset when I fail.

But on a day-to-day basis I make less money, I work just as hard, I wear a company polo which results in people treating me both like a minimum wage worker (I have never had so many free 'accidental' upgrades in coffee shops) and a dumb jock. My son's English teacher, who knows I work "in martial arts" but was unaware that I used to lead an editorial staff broke down for me in very tiny words what a good paragraph might look like based solely on that information about me and, I guess, my son's writing which I know is what it is (but I didn't get that kind of attitude before.) I also clean toilets, literally wipe poo off walls sometimes, mop floors...because the buck stops with me and my end job description is "do what needs to be done." Not what's correct for my position or role or rank or what will position me for the next big story, but what needs to be done.

And...I suffer less. Not because my job is easier or less stressful, au contraire, if I screw up my job now people who make minimum wage do not get paid on time or kids are left at the side of the road when they should be picked up from school and other things that are way way worse than I used to handle. But I don't have to manage my ego, and I don't have to plan my advancement. I will never advance, except by watching things get better, because my role is a permanent spot.

So I can interact with people and the things around me in the present and not have to plan how I will look tomorrow. (Mostly.)

I still harbour literary ambitions and there, I do suffer, I have to tell you. But I'm hoping to apply my big job to that and see if just writing can be enough again, the way it was in my early 20s, which I very much miss.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:51 PM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]