“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? – Matthew 6:25
Having examined The Buddha’s great teaching of the Four Noble Truths in last month’s column, let us review briefly.
1st Noble Truth – To be human is to experience a unique kind of subjective suffering, a suffering of the mind that comes from thinking our experience of Life is never quite satisfactory.
This brings unhappiness and causes behavior that increases unhappiness in ourselves and others. Our sense of place in existence feels uncertain. Our experience of being a separate self in a vast world brings insecurity and our mind creates many strategies to compensate for this insecurity, but all these strategies are doomed to create more insecurity and unhappiness for ourselves and others. Human existence is marred by this cycle of suffering.
2nd Noble Truth – There is a reason for this suffering, and it is because of the unique characteristic of the human mind to abstract its experience out of the natural unfolding of Life, to create a kind of virtual reality with the principle experience being of a separate self in a Universe of separate objects. For people it is a struggle for safety and significance. This is called ego, and it creates a delusional sense of self that wants Life to be stable, safe, reliable, and happy — without end. This is not what happens, and we experience much emotional suffering because of it.
We cling to this idea of a separate self we call “me” with its creative mind capable of endless scheming in its quest for happiness through material possessions, social standing, relationships, even philosophies and religions that promise the specialness and security we crave. We lose touch with our natural self and mind that is an expression of the infinite and harmonious Universe. Rather, we look to what we are instructed to believe, to our psychological conditioning from family, society and culture, all of whom are as lost in the “wrong view” of egoic thinking as we are.
We become more or less crazy trying to figure it all out, but there is no figuring it out because this egoic view of self and the world is delusional. Yet we cling to it because we know of no other way. This is the “clinging” and “grasping” commonly associated with this teaching.
3rd Noble Truth — There is a way out of this suffering, this unsatisfactory way of living, thinking and feeling.
4th Noble Truth – Through releasing attachment to this artificial reality and idea of self, we can “awaken” into the Way that Life really is, and when we realize and live within this Way, we will be free of this unnecessary suffering. To help us, the Buddha offered what is called “The Eightfold Path,” instructions on how to live so as to achieve this release.
The Eightfold Path
Right View – Of course it all begins with Right View, that is, the view that sees things-as-they-are with clarity, which sees the interconnectedness and interdependence of all phenomena. Right View sees the source of unnecessary suffering as self-centeredness, which gives rise to the insecurity of an isolated self that manifests greed, callousness, conflict, exploitation, envy, disrespect, and abusiveness. In the experience of separateness, only the small self and that which is believed to enhance the self is valued. All that is not within the circle of self is irrelevant or threatening, opening the way to harmful, disharmonious action without conscience.
Right View also sees that Life exists as both form and energy in perfect balance. To fail to experience Life in its energetic dimension, the energy that gives rise to form, and the energy that gives rise to mind, is to fail to experience the unifying principle of existence. Without the experience of energy as ever-present and necessary for form to hold itself together and relate, there is no understanding of harmony and balance.
Ultimately, without a living relationship and experience of the underlying energy of existence we are unable to experience the Source of Everything that is often assigned the word “God.” This “Right View” takes us to a transcendent experience of Life, to a bigger picture where what is experienced as suffering can be understood, and in understanding, managed, even transcended.
Right Speech – Speech is the intermediary between thought-form and physical-form. It has the power to shape reality for those who speak and those who hear. It can be a conveyor of compassion and understanding, or of contempt and violence. It can be a conveyor of indifference. We can soothe and make peace with a word or we can violate, disrespect and create conflict with a word, with an angry or contemptuous inflection of speech. Right Speech is using the power of the word as an instrument of connection, harmony, compassion and peace. This kind of speech is an antidote to suffering.
Right Action – Right Action, like Right Speech, is being mindful that our actions shape Karma. Everything that happens is the result of preceding conditions and actions. Every choice we make sets in motion results we often cannot imagine. Mindfulness of action helps us consciously to be instruments of peace and well-being.
We are at a choice-point with every action to be in service of self — which will be divisive and disharmonious — or to be in service of the moment as an instrument of harmony, skill, peace, creative expression, and celebration of Life and its wonder, what can be called the realm of Being. Honoring the right of others, through our actions, to exist, express themselves, and be in dignity and freedom is essential if we are to be a presence in the world that alleviates rather than causes suffering.
Right Livelihood – Is the work we do, the means of support of ourselves and our family, an expression of service and honoring the community of Life, or is it exploitive, a source of harm, diminishment, fraying at the bonds of community and dignity for all? Ultimately, much of what society assigns us as livelihood, in the big picture, is in the service of someone’s selfishness at the expense of others.
A society is an aggregate of occupations that define whether the society is compassionate or exploitive in its expression and purpose. Exploitation is violence. Occupations that exploit human weakness or vulnerability or defile Nature are not expressions of Natural order and harmony and are therefore sources of suffering. The redirection of human society into mutual service and honoring of all Life will require a redirection of human occupation toward the elimination of suffering of all life on the planet.
Right Diligence (or Effort) – This has to do with intention. In everything we do, including our spiritual practice, we must be diligent that our effort is guided by an intention to express selfless wisdom, to not do harm. This is closely linked to Right View, brought into the world of action. Do we truly understand why we do what we do, and is it motivated by noble and compassionate rather than self-aggrandizing motives? Diligence in these choices will determine whether our lives are sources of well-being or suffering for ourselves and others.
Right Mindfulness – The Eight-fold Path to the cessation of suffering cannot be actualized without Right Mindfulness, for Right Mindfulness is the awareness of the moment-as-it-is and allows our intuitive knowing to inform us, that is, to “in-form” us, to bring into form the energy of a wise mind, of Buddha-mind. Only with Right Mindfulness can we see the-moment-as-it-is and let it be our guide to actualize harmony, skill, compassion, action and view.
It is to see this moment, to feel this moment, to hear this moment, to know this moment as who we are. It is to realize awareness as who we are and that all that co-arises with us in this moment are our sacred brothers and sisters, and to live in this realization is the key to living the Buddha’s teaching as an agent of well-being rather than of suffering.
Right Concentration — If we cannot tame the wild swirling mind of ego; if we cannot stop the momentum of our conditioned mind through concentration into the moment, then we cannot break free of the fog of egoic delusion. The swirling activity of the mind has one primary purpose, and it is to hold together the conditioned false view of reality built around the primacy of self-interest. To stop this swirling virtual reality of mind-activity is of absolute necessity. This is realized through Shamatha – “Peaceful Abiding” meditation, without which, our progression into Vipassana — Wisdom and Insight — and Vastness – Right View of the truth of the nature of existence – is impossible.
We must learn to stop, to look deeply, non-judgmentally yet with discernment, into the what-is of the moments of our existence and into the unboundaried vast interconnectedness of our existence to be freed from suffering. This is why our first step in realizing The truth of the nature of suffering and its transcendence is to learn to concentrate clearly through our meditation practice — first into the immediacy of the present moment with awareness of our senses and the physical world they connect us to, and then into the interconnections and infinity of the energetic present moment with our silent intuitive awareness.
In the stillness we will discover that awareness is who we are, and therefore, Buddha is who we are. We will have come full circle to naturally discover Right View where the nature and cause of suffering and the path to liberation from suffering is as clear to us as it was to Siddhartha Gotama twenty-six hundred years ago. Suffering happens again and again, but by looking deeply into suffering so as to understand its cause, and constructing our lives based on the Eightfold Path, we have the opportunity to transmute it into enlightened understanding and action — again and again.