Living in a developed western country like Australia, people often experience competition from a very young age. This is a complex experience that involves personal characteristics, values, self esteem, family dynamics and sometimes the unavoidable reality of surviving in a modern world. As a practicing Buddhist, how does one approach competition as a constructive development towards one’s own enlightenment and also contribute to the greater happiness of others?
We have all experienced competition in one way or another. Starting from our first conscious thoughts as babies, we may be competing for the attention of our parents. As we progress through childhood, it may change to competition for the best toys or our favourite books. However, competition becomes a lot more complicated when we reach our teenage years as we suddenly become more aware of the differences between the beautiful and the ugly, popular and ordinary, smart and average, fat and thin and all the emotions attached to being praised, accepted or rejected. Throughout our lives, we are met with experiences that challenge us with how we compete and compare. Are we going to be friendly or jealous about the neighbours buying another new car, our friends getting into better universities, our colleagues getting promoted or our partner making more money? As a Buddhist, what should we do when competition is necessary to defeat others, and withholding knowledge to protect our personal interests or withholding the truth from others to get ahead seems to be the simplest approach? It is the underlying principles of Buddhist teachings that allow us to understand how to wisely deal with these everyday experiences. They are the ethical decisions we make that become the building blocks of our character, values and principles. Our life experiences, when taken seriously, can help us develop wisdom, insight and give us the opportunities to grow as human beings, however, when these situations are treated carelessly, they can lead to regrets which may cause unnecessary suffering upon ourselves and others or have long term damage to our conscience, integrity and self esteem.
Ethical and compassionate modes of competition are practiced Buddhist principles that we can apply to our everyday lives. This transforms the way we approach competitive behaviour by firstly acknowledging that negative or ‘mutual destructive’ competition is a direct reflection of our conscious attachment to ‘self’ and the affirmation of ‘ego. Activity that thrives on self-aggrandising through the destruction of others is the sort of competition discouraged in the Buddhist practice. However, competition in itself is not an inherently negative activity. In fact, when viewed and practiced from the right intentions, competitions can be a mutually beneficial experience. It becomes a diligent practice of our own personal betterment when competition is directed ‘inwards’ instead of ‘outwards’. This kind of Buddhist competition is a drive to seek the perfection of our mind and actions. With this competition comes the practice of high moral and ethical disciplines, careful actions to create zero harm upon others and the effortful self reflections and corrections to rid the greed, hatred, ignorance, arrogance and doubts that infest our minds. Indeed, it is often mentioned in the Buddhist literature that these ‘poisons’ of the mind are our enemies to defeat and crush at all costs because they are the roots of perpetual suffering.
Compassionate competition moves a step beyond ethics to provide an ‘outward’ example of competition. Instead of aiming for the destruction of others, compassion becomes the driving motivation to strive for improvement of ourselves, our company, industry or nation. By having the right intentions, it becomes easy to ‘shift gears’ from destructive to constructive competition. We should compete not with the aim to defeat others but to ‘lift the game’ for both parties. This way, the energy is very different yet wholesome. We are in the position to help our competitors so that they themselves can be a better competitor, able to create a better product, and hence put pressure on ourselves to strive to reach an even higher benchmark. An example of this can be seen with the recent movement to ‘open access’ research, where top universities around the world are participating to make their research findings free and available for others to browse in the hope to create a climate of better research through positive competition.
In fact, the most successful and respected people in this world are positive competitors. They constantly strive to better others and in the process, better themselves. These people build an energy of mutual assistance. When we start helping others, the energy of the relationship changes from self-help to collective enlightenment. This is essentially a ‘mahayana’ or ‘greater vehicle’ concept, in that our enlightenment is caught up in the enlightenment of all because our consciousness and energies are linked. This idea can be explained when we cannot find personal security living in a dangerous neighbourhood or are unable to find personal peace in the midst of war. Our fates are much more interconnected and mutually dependant than we think, thus our achievement is ultimately tied up with the happiness and success of those around us.
Finally, as we compete with ourselves and one another towards enlightenment, we are forever reminded to dedicate all our merits and efforts for the collective enlightenment of all living beings. In this spirit, we can learn the idea of ethical and compassionate competition and integrate Buddhist teachings within contemporary life situations to succeed without compromising ourselves or others.
