Basics of Buddhism - 2 - The Four Noble Truths

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"The Four Noble Truths" was the first teaching given by the Buddha after his enlightenment experience under the Bodhi Tree in what is now Bodh Gaya, in northern India.  But first, let’s explore how he ended up sitting under a tree trying to get enlightened in the first place.  2500 years ago, this young man named Siddhartha Gautama was raised in the lap of luxury—his father was the leader of a small kingdom in Northern India.  The story is told that he was given whatever he wanted—the best clothes, food, women and entertainment.  He lived the first 29 years of his life as a life of excess.  Then, one day he traveled outside the palace walls, and discovered that people were suffering—from accidents, sickness, old age and death.  He realized that he had led a very sheltered life and decided to leave behind the luxury and go forth to find an end to suffering. 

He made friends with a group of men who were living in the forest and practicing a spiritual lifestyle called asceticism.  Ascetics eat very little, have no possessions and sleep on the ground.  They believe that taking away all the comforts of life will lead to enlightenment.  So, Siddhartha went from excess to asceticism in search of the “cure” for suffering.  After six years, he found that he was no closer to enlightenment, but was close to dying.   Isn’t this often the way we view the world?  Hoping for a black and white answer to our own suffering?  He was bathing in the river and almost drowned when he passed out from lack of food.  A woman named Sujata saw this and gave him milk and rice, which he accepted gratefully.  So, if not for that woman, there may never have been a Buddha or Buddhism! (Go Sujata!) At that moment, it’s said that he realized that there must be a middle way, between the extremes, that would end suffering. 

I'll interject a great question from Joseph who added that Siddhartha's experience as an ascetic and learning yoga in those six years prepared him for his awakening, by training his body and mind to become more focused and highly tolerant of uncomfortable experiences.  I'm sure this training was very supportive of his awakening.  Is it truly possible for us, here in the 21st Century, with our flabby focus and avoidance of discomfort, to become enlightened?  Although we might be ready for the spiritual Olympics, I have found that we can create major change in our experience by starting with a program of meditation, focused awareness and positive imagery (more on that next week).  These simple tools can help tone and tighten our focus and ability to tolerate discomfort, enough to transform our perspective quite a lot.  As Joseph added, we can change over time, like water wears down rocks.  

Back to the story of The Buddha--When his friends found him eating, they were disgusted that he had given up asceticism and left him.  He walked a few miles and decided to sit down under a peepal tree, determined to sit until he discovered the “cure” for suffering.  The folklore varies about how long he sat there, but he experienced what we all here experience when we simply sit in silence.  Our minds create a never-ending display of stories and drama and restlessness and boredom and feelings and sensations, trying desperately to distract us.  Siddhartha decided to sit with it all.  When he quit responding to every whim and whisper of his mind and body, he realized he could create a gap between stimulus and response, and that precious gap enabled him to be awakened to the possibilities that life has to offer.

The whole trajectory of his life changed when he discovered that GAP.   It is said that he walked around for weeks in bliss, no longer held hostage by his thoughts, emotions and sensations.  The Buddha had discovered that we can pro-actively manage our experience of life by creating a gap between stimulus and response, by going beyond conditioned reactions and old ways of experiencing ourselves and the world around us.

He went and found his five ascetic friends so he could teach them what he had discovered.   They could see that something tremendous had happened to him, so they sat down and listened. Siddhartha, who then became known as the Buddha, meaning “The Awakened One”, began to teach, and his first talk was called, “The Four Noble Truths”.

•        There is suffering in life.

•        There is suffering because we seek to satisfy ourselves in inherently unsatisfying ways.

•        The possibility of liberation from suffering 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 includes suffering.  The word in Pali, the original language used to write down the teachings, was dukkha. Dukkha can be translates 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 a 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 “never enough”, encourages doing over being.  In fact, “doing” can be confused as the thing the only thing that gives us value as a person.

The Buddha also recognized that there is 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. 

Another misconception about Buddhism is that we are trying to trying to STOP our thoughts or emotions.   Many of us may have probably tried denying our true thoughts and emotions 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. 

We are encouraged to get to know ourselves in a deeply honest and compassionate way, to become aware of what we are thinking, feeling and sensing.  The Buddhist concept of “non-attachment” is to realize that thoughts, emotions and sensations are NOT who we truly are. But FIRST, we learn to SEE them more clearly in order to transform our response to them.  Compassionate awareness and honesty are key ingredients to the Buddhist path. 

THE SECOND NOBLE TRUTH IS that life includes suffering 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.  It might work for a short while, but never for the long term.  THESE 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 WHATEVER MIGHT BE OUR RANDOM THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS.  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.

The question we can ask ourselves this week is:  What is it in my life right now that is causing me a sense of suffering, insecurity or dissatisfaction?  What makes this moment feel like something is quite right or not enough?

 

Turning The Mind Into An Ally - 2 - The Bewildered Mind

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This morning we continue a series of talks based on the book,  Turning the Mind into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham.  This book is a rich overview of the basic Buddhist principles, but he approaches them in new and accessible ways. I highly recommend it!

In Chapter Two, he begins the explanation of the Four Noble Truths by drawing the link between a bewildered mind and suffering.  Each of you here today are somewhere on the spectrum of suffering.  Some of you may have some serious,s obvious struggle, illness, injury or issue that you are grappling with, maybe the kind that consume your thoughts. “How can I relieve this suffering?”  Or if it is about someone dear to you, “How can I relieve their suffering?”  Our minds are designed to pose questions and look for answers.  On the other end of the spectrum, you might not feel like you’re suffering at all today, feeling at peace with all things.  Nothing to change, nothing to fix, just resting in a moment when everything is okay.  Ahhhhh.  And the rest of us….we’re somewhere in the middle.  The Buddha discovered, that this sense of suffering or dissatisfaction is often lurking in the background--we might not even be aware of it most of the time--causing us to feel a little off-centered, not satisfied, some vague sense that things are quite right, that we should be doing something, and then if we did something, then maybe sometime in the future, everything will be okay. 

It is as if we are all living out the fairy tale about Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  She goes into the Bear’s house when they are not home—first of all, what was she doing walking into a stranger’s house?  But that’s another issue,   She begins to try out chairs and porridge and beds.  She’s trying to make her external circumstances just right so that she feels happy. 

I was surprised to read that the initial telling of the tale had the main character as an old woman, who was a thief, and when discovered by the bears, she was taken to the town square and impaled on the steeple.  Somehow, along the way, that story got Disney-ized, so that the old woman became a young lovely girl, named Goldilocks, and she simply runs home and gets a strong reprimand from her mom.  The story was told about being safe and not messing with other people’s stuff!

But Goldilocks can also be a tale about the Four Noble Truths.  Number One:  life involves suffering and dissatisfaction.  We are tired and hungry or lacking in some way.  Number Two:  We often seek happiness in inherently dissatisfying ways, by craving other people’s stuff and other people’s lives—doesn’t it often seem like other people have something better going on than we do?  The grass is just a little bit greener on their side. We judge our situation, we judge our thoughts and emotions and sensations, and we often try to find relief in very unskillful ways (like Goldilocks breaking in and stealing).  We are trying to fix this feeling of something being wrong, by buying something or getting into a relationship or simply distracting ourselves with the many devices our environment has to offer.  In Buddhism, this constant cycle of grabbing at happiness and trying to avoid suffering is called Samsara, the  repetitive cycle of acting in ways caused by our ignorance about happiness.

When my family and I were in the ICU with my mom three weeks ago, there was a moment.  I was just sitting trying my best to be present and realizing that I was having this dissatisfying feeling that I ought to be “doing” something for my mom.  At that moment, I happened to look around the room and saw single one of my family members was engaged with their phones.  No one was paying attention to Mom, lying in the bed in the middle of the room.  Now, granted after three days in the hospital, it can wear anyone down, but it was as if I could feel the lure of the cellphones distracting everyone away from the extremely painful situation of watching my mom die.  I admit there was a moment I felt superior, just for that moment, that I wasn't on my phone and was trying to fully present.  A smugness arose silently inside me. 

Then, just a few nights ago, I went out to dinner with some friends and was walking home, and there was a moment when I felt an overwhelming sense of great peace, joy and happiness—what a beautiful night, the perfect weather, a great meal, good friends.  A few moments later, someone texted me, and before I knew it, I found myself lost in the distraction, completely oblivious to the beauty all around me.   Aargh! 

Perhaps we all have a little Goldilocks in us, that desire to try out other stuff to see if we can relieve this sometimes relentless feeling of suffering or dissatisfaction.

Number Three:   we have met the enemy, and it is us.  We can find a deep sense of happiness and well-being without anything, not one thing, in our outside word changing.  In the book, Sakyong says, “It’s not the place we are in that is samsaric, but our mind’s perspective of it.”   This is one of the most amazing lessons that Buddhism teaches.  Happiness can be cultivated as a positive mental state, regardless of external circumstances, regardless of whatever thoughts, emotions or sensations might arise. 

Number Four:  We can find this peace and happiness by following the Eightfold Path: Wise View, Intention, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Meditation and Concentration.  These eight practices lead one to experience more happiness in one’s life and less suffering.  It doesn’t mean that suffering and pain never arise again, but we now know that we can all, every single one of us, cultivate a sense of peace amidst the chaos of life. 

The last point made in the chapter is that most of us cling to a solid, separate, permanent sense of self, when that entity simply does not exist.  We are all this fluid, ever-changing, evolving, bundle of processes that we have come to identify as our “selves” but is really all an illusion.  You might have eaten something for breakfast or had a cup of coffee—at what point does the scrambled egg or coffee and milk cease to be them and start to be you?  We are breathing the same air right now, inhabiting the same space, very interconnected and interdependent and ever changing in this very moment.  Clinging to the illusion of a solid, separate, permanent self causes suffering.  This practice has proven that to be true for thousands of years.

When we learn to ride the waves of being, when we become a little less identified with our thoughts, our emotions and our sensations, an experience of peace ultimately arises.  Contentment, courage and curiosity arise naturally when we  loosen our grip on needing everything to be a certain way.  Don’t be so sure of who or what you are, and who or what anyone else is.  I encourage you to practice being curious like a young child—what is this experience in this moment?  What if you were experiencing this activity/event/person/feeling/thought/sensation for the very first time.  We can bring a fresh perspective to each moment, and find that peace is there waiting for us to discover it.

  

Come to Rest

“You do not need to change or fix whatever you are trying to escape from. Just recognize the patterns of escape.  Experience both the dynamics of the impulse to escape and the possibility of not following that impulse, of tolerating the impulse with no story, no strategy, and no preferred outcome. Simply be here, doing nothing. Give up every effort to escape, and recognize what truly holds you. Surrender and come to rest in the peace of your being.”

~ from: The Diamond in Your Pocket, by Gangaji