If you’re planning to do something, ask yourself, “What have been the results of my doing this in the past?” If doing it led to harm, you say, “Nah, I don’t want to do that again.” That’s a skillful decision.

"You watch yourself in action. And this, of course, starts with the Buddha’s instructions to Rahula. I know a lot of people who’ve commented they really wished that their parents had been like the Buddha, teaching them the way the Buddha taught Rahula. He’s basically saying to try to avoid mistakes, but if you find that you’ve made a mistake, this is what you do so you don’t have to make it again — probably some of the most valuable advice you can get.

If you’re planning to do something, ask yourself, “What have been the results of my doing this in the past?” If doing it led to harm, you say, “Nah, I don’t want to do that again.” That’s a skillful decision.

The Buddha here is teaching compassion. But he’s also teaching you to remember your actions. It’s a training in mindfulness and the ability to see connections: “I did x, and y happened as a result.” We don’t always see those connections, either because we don’t want to see, or because the cause and the effect were separated by time and we got distracted in the meantime. But here, the Buddha’s saying to look carefully at what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing so that you can learn from it.

But if contemplating an action you don’t see that it’s going to cause any trouble, go ahead and try it. Or if you’re not sure, if it’s something new you’ve never done before, say, “Well, this is an experiment.” But then you watch while you’re doing it: What kind of results are you getting right away? If you see that the action is causing harm, you stop. If you don’t see any harm, you can continue with it.

Then when you’re done, you look back on the long-term results. That, right there, teaches you a very important principle about causality. Some causes have an effect immediately, some have an effect over time, and sometimes they have both. You want to learn how to take advantage of that.

It’s interesting that the Buddha, when he gave the most condensed explanation of his awakening, expressed it as a principle of causality — the bare bones of the principle. Then he spent 45 years working out the implications of the principle. One of the most important implications is that you can learn from your mistakes so that you don’t have to repeat them, but it does require that you be mindful and alert so you know what you’re doing. You’re not just doing things on automatic pilot. You’re alert to what you’re doing; you notice what you’re doing. Then you remember when you see pleasure or pain coming up: “Okay, what is this connected with? What did I do that caused this?”

This way, you learn how to look after yourself. It’s probably one of the most important principles of the teachings. The Buddha is here to give you guidance on how you can be reliable in looking after yourself. You can take charge of yourself; you can be responsible. You don’t have to go around depending on other people all the time. But it does require that you learn how to admit your mistakes to yourself; otherwise, you never learn. It also requires that you learn how to notice when you did something well and not be embarrassed to think about it.

The principle of causality may be complex, but there’s enough regularity to it that you can learn from it. This is why we’re here practicing: developing mindfulness and alertness so that we can watch ourselves and evaluate our actions, learning how to step back a bit and ask how things might have been done better."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Evaluating the Practice"