Let's be honest. Anytime anyone does anything, it is for a reason, and with a motive. Even if you are the most altruistic person in the world, selflessly helping people wherever you go, there is still some subtle motive. Perhaps it is the motive of feeling good about yourself, or of pleasing God, or creating good karmas or merits for your future. There are millions of possible motive configurations. Each person carries within themselves a unique mixture of pure and impure motives.

Once we've recognized that our actions are ultimately motive-based, then, instead of always struggling to rein in our outer behavior, we can focus more of our efforts on improving our knowledge, understanding, and spiritual vision in ways that will uplift our motives, thereby naturally purifying and clarifying our actions.

For some, their primary motives may be as simplistic as materialistic greed or a desire for power over others. We all know how that kind of movie eventually ends. Others may be motivated by a wish to have as good a time as possible, without harming others. Still others may dedicate their lives to serving humanity, and will receive a sense of fulfillment from that. Then you have the extremes of Buddhist Bodhisattvas, some of whom take vows to keep reincarnating into human form until every single other soul has reached enlightenment and freedom from the cycles of birth and death.

Most of us are somewhere in-between the corrupt and greedy executives who have wrecked their companies, resulting in misery for many innocent investors who lost their life savings, and the saintly Bodhisattvas who vow to uplift every soul and stay to clean up after the whole "party" ends.


...more of this chapter is available in the book, "Secrets of Spiritual Happiness," by Sharon Janis.

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