No Idea of Helping People
If you have this category called helping people you can’t help anyone. It’s like if you’re a parent of a baby or a toddler and you hear them crying in the middle of the night you don’t sit there and say, “how can I help this person?” You just get up and pick them up and you try to figure out whether they need a diaper change or they need to be fed or whatever it is and you do it. So there’s no idea of helping people. If you have an idea of helping people then you have a problem because it comes between you and the situation. Any idea—whether it’s happiness or compassion or helping people or sadness or grief or whatever—any idea comes between us and experience.
If you have the idea of happiness then you have something to cling to and then immediately you have a problem. Just: every moment, every moment — what is this, what is this, what is this. What is the situation, what is your relationship to the situation, what is your function in that situation. Then happiness comes, no problem, happiness goes away, no problem. Helping people, no problem, not helping people, no problem…