Basics of Buddhism - 1 - The Three Catalysts of Experience

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This morning we start a series of talks about the basics of Buddhism.  I’ll be referring to this book, Buddhism for Non-Buddhists.  If you already think you might be a Buddhist, that’s okay too. But, I want to clarify that what I will be talking about is American Buddhism.  I’m going to try and strip away the Asian cultural overlay and the dogma and doctrine that have seeped in over the years.  Many Buddhist teachers today, like Lama Surya Das and Jack Kornfield are doing the same.  The truth of what the Buddha learned over 2500 years ago is just as true today as it was then.  You don’t have to shave your head or wear special clothing.  This is about how you show up in your life right now. In this moment. 

American Buddhism is not about being Buddhist.  It’s about using the practices of Mindfulness, Meditation and Visualization to ease suffering and be happy.  You get to continuing to be a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, Atheist, Agnostic, “Spiritual but not Religious”, or “none of the above”.   Buddhism wasn’t even a word until the mid-1800’s when Westerners came to Asia and found that people there were practicing something they called “The Way” or “the Path”.  The Western translators wanted to compare it to Christianity, because many of the early translators were Christian missionaries.  So they made it an “ism”.

But, the way of the Buddha is different.  The Buddha, this man who emphasized that he was just a regular guy, not a god or anything special, except that he was “awake”.  He encouraged anyone hearing his teachings to NOT believe him just because he said it.  Question these teachings!  Try them out!  See if they work for you!  Don’t take my word for it!

The Buddha taught that EVERYONE has the potential to awaken, to be fully present and to live abundantly in each moment, regardless of who you are or where you were born or what has happened to you up to this exact point in your life, regardless of even of what may happen in the future.  We all have this incredible potential for happiness, because there is this innate potential for goodness within each and every single person.  No one is left out.  If you find a thought, a practice, or an action that adds value to your life, keep doing it.  If not, toss it aside.  Buddhism is the opposite of many other “isms”, because you are enthusiastically encouraged to think for yourself. 

One of my favorite quotes is by John Lennon:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

-John Lennon

If you are willing to consider radically changing the way you experience you and the way you experience the world, then you must first ask yourself, “How DO I want to experience life?”

The entire practice of Buddhism is about becoming aware of our current thoughts and feelings, then transforming our experience through the specific practices of mindfulness, meditation and visualization.  We can learn to focus our energy with laser-like precision into creating the experience we want.  We can learn to ease suffering and be happy regardless of our external circumstances, regardless of the thoughts and emotions that will continue to arise and fall away within us. We can learn to create a sense of well-being in each moment. How awesome is that?????

Here, in this moment, we can start now.  We can find heaven, not in the future or on some far off planet.  Here, when we decide how we want to experience life, and then invest all our energy into that pursuit, we can ease suffering (both our own and others) and become happy on a more regular basis.  We can practice being present, and we can cultivate qualities that create more happiness in our life:  qualities like loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. 

When we ask ourselves how we want to experience life, we can then begin to explore what caused us to have a certain experience in the past.  Let’s start with what’s been happening right now in your life?  So far, what has been creating whatever life you’ve been experiencing?  I offer first these two possibilities:

Experiences are often caused by two catalysts: 

1.         How we allow the outside world to impact us.  Something happens in our external world, and it creates certain thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations.  It might seem that the external circumstance is CAUSING us to think or feel in a certain way, BUT the experience is actually being created within us.  It may seem like someone or something is making us angry or happy, but we are the ones creating the anger or happiness.  Consciously or unconsciously, we are choosing!  When we think we want a new car or a new relationship, what we really want is the feeling that those things will give us …we want to feel happy or loved or safe or whatever the specific experience is that you are searching for, the one you might think you don’t yet have, the one that you might think can only be created by changing your external circumstances.

2.         How our internal electrical impulses and bio-chemical processes arise and fall away. We all have them. These electrical impulses in the form of thoughts and bio-chemical mashups in the form of emotions and sensations can drive our thoughts and feelings from high to low, low to high, often without any external reason whatsoever.  We sometimes assume that we’re irritated because of what is happening outside of us, when in fact it’s just the arising and falling away of a thought or just a hormonal experience—and this ain’t just girls having these hormone things going on!  Guys, if you have every lusted after a person who you knew was absolutely wrong for you but you had to had “have” them anyway, there might have been some testosterone overload involved.  I’m just sayin’….

When we realize that we are often allowing external circumstances and internal processes to create our experience of the world, we now have the secret weapon, THE THIRD CATALYST, the power tool, the greatest insight that life can offer.  You can choose how you respond to life, regardless of external circumstances or your internal thoughts or feelings.  You can choose how you respond to thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations.  THIS IS WHAT THE BUDDHA DISCOVERED WHILE SITTING UNDER THE BODHI TREE.  Now, you can see how important it is that you decide how you WANT to experience life!

I have a dear friend, Laura, who was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. It was devastating news, and I’m sure, one that carried with it much fear and anxiety.  But I was so proud of the way she pro-actively decided how she wanted to go through the process. She said that she decided early on that she wanted the experience to be transformational and wanted it to be an opportunity for her to cherish her friendships and her family.  Whenever things got tough, whenever the pain and the treatments were excruciating, she said that she would ask herself the question, “How do I want to experience this situation?”  She didn’t want to grovel in self-pity or ask “why me?” She looked for ways to respond with love and kindness to herself and to those around her.  She wondered how she might inspire others by her actions.  She is my role model for how we can experience the best and worst of life in a pro-active and positive way.

When I see the Dalai Lama, he is so often laughing--laughing in spite of a very difficult situation for his people.  The Dalai Lama is deciding how he wants to experience life.  It doesn’t mean that he is diminishing the difficult facts.  It doesn’t mean that he is ignoring reality.  It doesn’t mean that he’s not working hard to transform the situation.  But it does mean that along the way, he has decided that happiness is a choice.

It turns out that deciding to be happy has an incredible benefit.  By focusing our energy on happiness, we create more energy to work with.  We create more energy to change ourselves and the world for the better.  Life doesn’t have to seem so difficult.   We can actually create happiness by changing our responses.