Basics of Buddhism - 2 - The Buddha's very first teaching

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This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism.  Last week, we talked about the three catalysts of experience:  external circumstances, internal thoughts and feelings that arise and fall away, and the most power potential: our ability to choose how we WANT to experience life.

When Siddhartha Gautama sat under the Bodhi tree, he realized this powerful third option, and it opened his eyes to the way things really worked.  It is said that he walked around for weeks in bliss, assuming that he would be unable to describe this new way of seeing things to others.  Finally, he realized that he should at least try!  The Buddha had discovered that we can pro-actively manage our response to the world, create our thoughts and our feelings, AND by doing so, we relieve suffering, both our own and others, and can actually be happy.  Great news!

So he wandered 259 kilometers to the Northwest of Bodh Gaya, to a place called Sarnath, and  found his five ascetic friends so he could teach them what he had discovered.   It’s said that they saw him coming, and dis’ed him as “There is Siddartha, that luxury-loving fellow who gave up fasting and fell back into a life of ease and comfort. Don’t talk to him or acknowledge him, that jerk!”  Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly what they said, but it could have been something similar.  When he came closer, they felt like something had profoundly changed him.  It was then that he began to teach The Four Noble Truths.

The first teaching by the Buddha after his enlightenment was the Four Noble Truths (translation is from Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das)

• Life is difficult.
• Life is difficult because we seek to satisfy ourselves in ways that are inherently unsatisfying.
• The possibility of liberation from difficulties exists for everyone.
• The way to free ourselves is to practice the Eightfold Path that results in enlightened living.

The first Truth is that life is difficult.  The word in Pali, the original language used to write down the teachings, was dukkha. In his book, Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom, Joseph Goldstein translates dukkha in three ways:  suffering, insecurity or just feeling unsatisfied.  The Buddha realized that most of us live life with some sense that things, or we, are just not quite right.  Sometimes, this feeling lingers in the background, or sometimes it slaps us in the face.  We might get close to passing sense of pleasure, by achieving a goal, or feeling successful for a bit, then we often go right back to feeling that there is something more to be done, that something is missing.  Our culture encourages this sense of “not enough”, encourages doing over being.  In fact, doing can be confused as the thing that gives us value as a person.

The Buddha recognized that there is also unavoidable pain in life--we get old, we get sick, we die.  Those that we love get old, get sick, and die. This is the reality of living, and we often suffer because of it.  The First Noble Truth is to face this reality honestly. Buddhism is sometimes misunderstood as having a very negative perspective on life.  I offer the exact opposite perspective.  Buddhist practices encourage us to face the facts!  Be honest!  And out of that honesty, comes a starting place for real joy, real happiness, regardless of these cold hard facts. 

Another misconception about Buddhism is that we are trying to detach from our thoughts and feelings, to pretend that they aren’t there, or even trying to STOP our thoughts or emotions.   Many of us may have probably tried to not get involved in order to avoid being hurt.  Sometimes, this method seems to work for awhile.  But in the long run, we lose the most precious gift of life—being fully and completely engaged in living.  If we don’t engage, then we might then suffer from a feeling of isolation and loneliness. 

The word “non-attachment” is often used in the translation of Buddhist texts, and it is sometimes misunderstood that the teachings are encouraging us to deny our thoughts, our emotions, deny anything that causes us suffering.  THIS IS AN INACCURATE TRANSLATION.  The truth is the exact opposite.  We are encouraged to get to know ourselves in a deeply honest and compassionate way, to get to know our thoughts, our emotions, our sensations, our reactions.  We are encouraged to make friends with the thoughts and emotions and situations that might scare us.  “Non-attachment” is to realize that these thoughts and emotions are NOT who we truly are. FIRST, we have to SEE them clearly in order to transform our response to them.  Compassionate awareness and honesty are key ingredients to the Buddhist path.  Buddhist Nun, Adrienne Howley, in her book, Naked Buddha, goes so far as to say that, “Buddhism can be of no real value to an individual unless one learns to be perfectly honest with oneself.”

I encourage you, in this moment, to finish this sentence, “If I were perfectly honest with myself, …”  What would you say? This level of questioning doesn’t stop at the first answer that might arise.  Sometimes when we’re in pain, we feel angry, but when we probe deeper, there might be fear underneath the anger.  This process of compassionate honesty is a method to retrace the steps of our difficulties, to get to the root cause of suffering.

THE SECOND NOBLE TRUTH IS Life is difficult because we seek to satisfy ourselves in ways that are inherently unsatisfying.  We keep trying to rearrange our external world and respond with clinging, aversion or ignorance to our thoughts and emotions, hoping to create a sense of happiness.  This DOES NOT WORK LONG TERM.  We might get a passing sense of happiness or pleasure, or avoid some pain, or ignore some unpleasantness, but in the long run, we are chasing after an ephemeral experience.  We are waiting for happiness to be created by either our external world, our passing thoughts or our ever-changing emotions.  THIS METHODS ARE INHERENTLY UNSATISFYING and also a whole lot of work.  It takes so much energy to constantly be trying to rearrange things and people and places to make them make us happy. 

Here’s the good news:  The Third Noble Truth is that the possibility of liberation from difficulties exists for everyone.  We each have within us the incredible potential to be happy, to have a deep sense well-being REGARDLESS OF OUR EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES OR PASSING THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS!  Oh happy day!  This realization is what catapulted the Buddha into a radically different life.  This is what caused people to flock around him to listen to his every word, to follow him wherever he went.  He taught to anyone who would listen:  kings and paupers, men and women, anyone who might have a glimpse that his teachings might true.  He was egalitarian at a time when solely supporting your tribe was seen as the safest bet for safety.  He threw out the idea that some people were better than others.  He realized that we all have this great potential within us.

The Fourth Noble Truth became the Eightfold Path, eight ways to see and experience yourself and the world differently to create this inner happiness and Peace.  For today, we’ll stop here, and talk in more depth about the Eightfold Path next week.  For now, we can delight in this realization that we can change the way we see ourselves and the world by first getting fully honest with ourselves.