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Introduction
The content of this book is an amalgamation of public talks and study group discussion forums within Western Australia during 2006 to 2019 on various topics, by those who engage with the Dharma journey within the context of this secular western approach to Buddhism, meditation, life and actuality. This context was developed as a current functional understanding of actuality that was realized within a period of meditation on the 13th June 1980 and then followed by an actualization process throughout the various schools of Buddhism over the course of thirty years, which is still on-going. This collective journey is an attempt to make intellectual sense of the awakening experience, so it can be communicated to a new secular western audience, without recourse to anything supernatural, religious dogma, institutionalized belief, or other non-western cultural influences.
The communication of the Dharma has never been about the communicator. It’s always been about the communication. It’s always been communicated, so that it can be tested, challenged, refuted, or realized within direct experience, without the need of any belief aspect imposed by the confused and conditioned, self-referential mind.
The full context of this secular western approach is set out in the book “No Worries” and is explored further in the books “Talking Dharma,” and “Choosing Dharma.”
B. Cumming
Acknowledgments
It would possibly fill this entire book, if everybody who has contributed in some way towards its development were individually acknowledged. There have been so many teachers and mentors within each of the main traditions of Buddhism, both formal and informal. There have been so many Dharma friends who have been there, supporting and encouraging this journey. It’d take a lifetime to be able to express the depth of gratitude that is owed to each and every one of them. They know who they are, and so do I, and that is all that really matters.
I’m indebted to the kindness and dedication of Abhayagita (Susan Connell) who has somehow painstakingly managed to untangle my uneducated scribbling, into something that sounds possibly half intelligent and has apparently put all the dots and squiggly bits in all the right places for my work and the work of others in this book. Thanks also to Shaktidana (Michelle Mainwaring) for creating the art work for the cover. But most of all, my thanks go to all those people who have embraced the context in which this secular western approach has been communicated and are now sharing their own knowledge and experience of this amazing Dharma journey that we call life with others, here in Western Australia and other parts of the globe.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my late parents, who provided me with the opportunity of human life and encouraged me, from a very early age, to be a critical, free-thinking, creative individual and to my wife Mudita (Julia) who has been there supporting me every step of the way since the age of 13.
Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Buddhism, plain and simple
Self-kindness
Being awake
Grief
The Dharma Journey
Impermanence
Becoming Buddhist
Sustainability
Karma explored
Creativity
Living Kindness
Equanimity
Inner Peace
Gaming
Mind Matters
Protection
Fine Tuning
Anger
The White Lotus
Caring
Causality and the Middle Way
Parenting
Mind Ful or Mindfull
About the authors
Buddhism, plain and simple
by Tiratnadana
Part One
It could be said that Buddhism begins with the birth of the historical figure Siddhartha Gautama over 2,500 years ago in Lumbini, which is situated today in Nepal very close to the border with Northern India. But, in fact Buddhism as we know it today, did not begin until long after his death. The life story of the Buddha plays an integral part in the study and practice of the Dharma, as it serves as an inspirational reminder to us, that this birth was not by any kind of divine intervention. He was just a normal human being the same as us. By his efforts alone, he reached his full potential within the awakening experience and therefore so can we.
He sets out the Dharma journey before us and invites us to walk it in search of our own awakening and from the outset he encourages us not to believe or accept what he says on the basis of blind or unevidenced (not personal anecdote) faith. He urges us, time and time again, to challenge his teachings and test them for ourselves against our own direct experience. If, by practicing what we read and hear of the Dharma (the Buddha’s teachings) we find that we are becoming kinder, more generous, more honest, more compassionate and more content in our daily lives, then we can be sure, from within our own direct experience, that the teachings are helpful for us. If, from within our own experience, we find that the opposite applies, then the Buddha encourages us to disregard what he says.
According to the traditional story, Siddhartha was born into a life of privilege. His father, Shuddhodana was a very wealthy man, and head of a powerful warrior clan called the Shakya’s. No matter what our own personal circumstances are, I would suggest, that in comparison with the majority of the world’s population, we too have been born into a life of privilege. Perhaps we can begin to see how the story of the Buddha is in parallel to our own from the outset. Soon after the birth of Siddhartha, the much respected religious hermit, Asita arrived at their home and declared that the boy would either grow to become a great leader of the Shakya clan or, if he ever left to become a seeker of awakening, he would become a source of guidance for the whole world.
This clearly was of great concern to Shuddhodana, who wanted his son to inherit his title and the power associated with it. So, during Siddhartha’s childhood and teenage years, the harsh realities of life such as sickness, old age and death were said to have been hidden from him and he apparently spent his life surrounded by untold pleasures. In many ways, we too try and protect our children from the unpleasantness in the world in the way we relate to them the facts about sickness and dying and we too try and give our children all that we consider the good things in life. So again, perhaps we can see that the story of the Buddha continues to mirror our own lives in so many ways.
At the age of 16 Siddhartha was married to his cousin, Yashodhara, who was the daughter of a neighbouring clan chief. Although the marriage was more to do with strategic alliances than anything else, it’s said that despite this, they were very much in love. They settled down into married life and produced a son who they called Rahula. For the many of us this also mirrors our own lives. By the age of 29, Siddhartha had become restless. He had everything he could wish for; a loving wife, a son, and untold pleasures in his daily life. But he experienced a sense of being unfulfilled. He experienced a sense of emptiness inside, perhaps best described as a sense of dissatisfaction. He had reached that time of his life when he began to ask himself questions like: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life? Perhaps we too have our own experience of this kind of thing. This underlying restlessness led Siddhartha outside of the confines of his home into the village with his charioteer Channa. This, we are told, was the first time he had ventured outside to witness the lives of ordinary people. What he saw came as such a shock to him, that it was the defining thing that began his search for awakening. Within the Buddhist traditional story this is known as the four sights.
The first sight was seeing for the first time, a human being in physical pain, coughing and feverish. When Channa explained that everyone at some stage in their lives suffers in this way, Siddhartha was overcome with sadness at the realization that his family, friends and he himself could, at any moment, experience such pain and misery. The second sight was seeing for the first time an old person, bent double, walking with the aid of a stick, hair grey and face wrinkled. When Channa explained that everyone must get old, the realization that he too would get like this added another layer of tension to Siddhartha’s unhappiness. The third sight was seeing for the first time a dead body being carried to the cremation grounds. When Channa explained that everyone has to die Siddhartha was devastated. The combination of these three sights affected Siddhartha so deeply that he could barely think of anything else as he reflected on the very purpose and meaning of his own existence.
It’s may be hard for us to imagine for us how things such as sickness, old age and death caused so much difficulty for Siddhartha, because we see so much of it in our own daily lives. But just try and imagine coming across something that you had never seen before for the very first time. Imagine you’re walking down the road and a pig flies overhead. You never knew they could do that. You’d be shocked. It’s a bit like that with Siddhartha, but much worse, because the things that he saw for the first time related to him, his family and friends. The fourth sight was that of a homeless wanderer, a Sadhu (good person). This was a common sight in India, as it still is to some extent today. But for Siddhartha this was his first encounter with such a person. He was immediately struck by the calm demeanor and the sense of stillness in the way this man went about his daily life. The ever- curious Siddhartha asked the wanderer what his purpose in life was, and he was told that he had given up the life of a householder to go in search for an end to the suffering of the world and immediately Siddhartha knew that this too was to become his quest.
Siddhartha left his home without saying a word to any of his family. He was aware that if he made it known what he intended to do, he would have been prevented from doing so. When he was some distance away, he gave all his possessions to Channa and sent him back. He cut off his hair and exchanged his clothing for rags. He was now ready to let go of his past life. For us today our own going forth takes many forms, from those that take up the monastic life, to those that Ordain outside of the monastic system and to those that choose to live a family life within a Dharma context. But fundamental to all these different lifestyles is a willingness to change, to leave something of ourselves behind and make progress towards a higher ideal. Perhaps within our own lives we may have experienced some resistance from friends and family members when we told them that we were taking an interest in the Dharma journey. It’s quite normal. Being a Dharma practitioner is about change and human beings don’t like change. It brings up too many concerns for them. Are you going to have to shave your head? Are they going to have to watch their P’s & Q’s when they’re around you? Are you going to become all holy and precious? Are you going to leave them to go off and live in a monastery? The list is endless.
For the next six years, Siddhartha wandered around, seeking out teachers who he thought could show him the way. He explored their practices, which included extreme physical pain and starvation to the point of certain death. He mastered their meditation techniques and his determination to succeed earned him a reputation as the one who would go all the way. The end to this period came with the first of his great realizations as he experienced, that whilst in his weakened state, he could no longer think clearly and was further from his goal than ever. The answer, he discovered, was the need to tread a journey between self-indulgence and self-denial, what is commonly known today as ‘The Middle Way.’ This is the avoidance of the two extremes of self-indulgence, which retards progress and self-mortification which weakens the intellect. This realization itself led to his fellow travelers abandoning him as a failure and Siddhartha was left alone to continue with his quest. Perhaps we too have tried many things to try and overcome this underlying dissatisfaction. Perhaps we too have tried almost everything from mainstream religion, fortune telling, astronomy, psychics, stone therapy, reiki, right through to tantric sex or colonic irrigation. There is so much out there that holds out great promises, but I would venture to suggest that, whatever it is you’ve tried, it may have brought you some short-term comfort, it might have left you with an experience of being all warm and cozy, but that underlying worry soon creeps back in and you have to go back for more of the same.
In Bodh Gaya, Northern India, we are told that, Siddhartha sat beneath a large fig tree and vowed to himself that he would not get up again until he found the answer he was searching for. The story of that experience itself is one of epic proportions and very dramatic imagery as this experience we refer to as mind, fought to retain its own existence. Siddhartha’s meditation deepened to a state of concentration where the layers of confusion were peeled back, to the extent that he could see and experience directly the actuality of the way things were. He discovered within that experience the answer to all of his questions. It’s said that on the full moon of May now celebrated throughout the Buddhist world as Wesak, awakening was realized. He was awake to the actuality of all things. He was now a Buddha, which translates as ‘One who is awake’.
Dharma Tweet: Awareness without perception, clinging or labeling is pure meditation. A concentrated mind is the fertile soil for the growth of insight.
Dharma Tweet: Stop seeking or asking big questions. Pay attention to what is, without wanting it be different than it is & you will realize peace of mind.
Part Two
So what exactly was this great awakening? What did the Buddha wake up to? It was ‘Pratityasamutpada’ or ‘conditioned co-existence’, ‘conditionioned co-production,’ or within this context ‘conditioned causal continuity,’ or in short ‘causality.’ In essence it means that all things (physical, emotional or psychological, or any combination thereof) arise and come into existence in dependence on preceding causes and conditions in which no first cause of any thing (as defined) can be established. The Buddha here was quite a revolutionary in many ways. He cut through all notions of there being a first cause, creator, deity/entity/being or divine intelligence, that refutes the belief system that even now is the dominant factor in all theistic religions. Although its’ helpful to point out that within the ancient Buddhist texts he never claimed directly that no such entity existed or did not exist.
Out of this direct seeing into the nature of actuality, arose all of his other teachings. For the next 45 years the Buddha taught to anyone who wanted to hear, and today we are heirs to that lineage of teachings and other communicators of the Dharma of the awakened mind of Buddha. Beginning with his first teaching at the deer park in Sarnath, ‘The Four Noble Truths,’ or in this context ‘the four principal assignments,’ to his last ‘The Parinirvana Sutta’ at the age of 80 in Kushinagar, where he reiterated and summed up all his teachings as ‘all things are impermanent. His last words have been recorded as words to the effect: ‘with awareness strive on’.
And the significance of that last teaching is far-reaching. Just as the Buddha died, we too will die. The inevitability of death and the uncertainty of its timing provides us with an opportunity to experience for ourselves the results of our helpful and unhelpful thoughts, speech and actions in now-ness. It gives us the choice of seeking some meaning and purpose to our lives right now and not as some kind of insurance policy for a possible future life in which there is no credible evidence to support will happen.
Within the story of the historical Buddha, we learn that our lives mirror his life in so many ways and that the story itself can be used as an inspiration for us on our own Dharma journey. It’s clear, that just as he was able to put an end to the underlying worry that is symptomatic of all unrealized human beings, without recourse to a belief or faith system, so can we. The journey he set out has a built-in guarantee of success, but only if we are prepared to make an effort to put it into practice. I would suggest, that the moment you begin to put into practice his teachings into your daily lives, you will notice the helpful difference it will make almost immediately. You may not recognise it yourself at first, but those around you certainly will and this is a very common experience.
On that full moon evening in May over 2,500 years ago under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, Northern India, Siddartha Gautama broke through the confused state of being a separate ego-identity and realized awakening. This experience did not create a divine being, nor did it make him any kind of special person in that respect. What it meant, was that he could no longer see or know things as he previously did. He had broken through that confusion which is common to all unrealized human beings. At first he struggled with the decision of whether or not he was capable of teaching what he had realized to others, as it was so different from anything else that had previously been offered by any other teacher.
He was contemplating this dilemma one day, about three weeks after this experience, by a large lotus pool where he had settled down to meditate. Within this period of meditation he saw the image of the lotus pool as being representative of the human race. Some humans were so bogged down in unhelpful mental states in the layers of smelly mud at the bottom of the pool that they were incapable of understanding what he had to say. Others had begun to grow shoots and found themselves in the murky waters of confusion where they were capable of understanding, in a limited way, but had made the decision that they wanted to be out of the mud. Others had begun to grow and were in the clearer waters and would be able to understand what he had to say so that they could eventually break free onto the surface of the water. Some, who were prepared to go all the way, would be in a position to break free of the water fully and be in the full bloom of awakening. What arose within the Buddha, within this experience, was such a profound sense of compassion that he knew that he could no longer keep what he had discovered to himself. He had no option but to share this experience for the benefit of all beings.
This awakening experience forms the basis of the Buddha’s entire teachings. Over time, they’ve been expanded by others, and in many ways have been over-complicated. The primary aim of the secular western approach is to do its best to put to one side all of the esoteric dogma that has developed over the past 2,5000 years so it can promote the Dharma, as best as it can, in a clear, helpful and practical way and in accordance with his original message. The first teachings the Buddha gave, was to a small group of ascetic wanderers in a deer park in Sarnath. Throughout the Buddhist world this teaching is known as ‘the four noble truths,’ but in this context are known as the four principle assignments, as this term reflects that they are things to do and not just believe.
The four principle assignments themselves can be aligned with an ancient but still used medical formulation.
Identifying that someone has a disease.
Identifying the cause of the disease.
Finding the right medicine to cure the disease.
Administering the medicine in such a way that the disease is cured.
The First Principle Assignment
The first assignment, as taught by the Buddha, is that we need to establish for ourselves, within our own direct experience that suffering exists. In the west, it’s not uncommon for people to have a bit of a problem with regard to the traditional Buddhist word ‘suffering’, after all how many of us think that our lives are full of suffering in the usual sense of that word. But when you begin to unpack the meaning behind the word, within the context of the teaching, things become a bit clearer and we can perhaps begin to see something of the actuality of it. There are many ways of describing this term suffering. Perhaps words such as dissatisfaction, unsatisfactoriness, sorrow, stress, misery, depression, anxiety, unhappiness, or in this secular western context, ‘worry.’ They could all be used to try and get to understand what the Buddha meant, when he used the term dukkha, which is most often translated as suffering. Within causality, because all human experience is in a constant process of change and therefore impermanent, it contains within it the potential for the mind to worry. Can we think of any thing that doesn’t change, that isn’t impermanent?
Human beings tend to have a capacity for self-deception. We close our eyes to how things really are and simply hope they will change for the better. We build up expectations that inevitably lead to disappointment. We’ll go to almost any length to avoid looking directly and honestly at the ways in which we really live our lives. We just seem to stumble from one unsatisfied state to the next, in search of something to make us happy. Like a hamster on a wheel, we chase after sensory experience getting nowhere. Gain turns to loss, happiness gives way to sadness. We always think that final, complete satisfaction is just around the corner. “If only I can do this, or get that, then everything will be OK and I’ll be happy”. As a result we’ll do almost anything to distract ourselves from facing the actuality of our situation. Maybe we reach for recreational drugs, alcohol, holidays, a fictional novel, T.V or even perhaps a Buddhism course. But at least this last option might give us an opportunity to at least realize, that although we can’t control what happens to us, we might find an answer that will help us to take responsibility for our reactions, and this will make a huge difference in the way we can choose to live our lives.
If you were to ask yourself the question, why am I taking an interest in Buddhism, and looked beyond any kind of superficial answer to a deeper understanding, you will discover that the motivational factor behind your decision to take a look at Buddhism is likely to be rooted in some degree of worry. Worry is a huge part of our lives, because we are never satisfied with the way things actually are. We always want things to be different. We build up expectations of things and of people that can never be fulfilled and therefore it will only lead us to be disappointed. Of course we have moments of happiness, even joy but they never last. We get pleasure out of many things, but it’s too often so short-lived. We buy the latest mobile phone and are really happy with it. It can do e mail, take pictures and we get 500 free texts a month, but a month later a newer model comes out that does so much more. How long are we going to remain happy with our old model? We save up all year to go on our holiday abroad. We build up all kind of hopes and expectations, but even before we get there we start to wonder if the hotel is going to be any good? Will the food be OK? Will it be sunny enough for us to top up our tans? Even if these expectations are met when we’re there, and we have a great time distracting ourselves from our underlying sense of being somehow incomplete, with copious amounts of shopping and enjoying the lovely cocktails during happy hour, the moment we have to come back home and get back into our daily routines we experience a sense of loss. This is worrying.
If we can’t recognise this situation within us, then we are either awakened or we are trying to avoid facing actuality for whatever reason. From the very outset of Dharma practice it’s helpful to develop honesty with ourselves. Not the kind of honesty that weighs us down with irrational guilt. There is no room for this most damaging emotional state within the Dharma Journey. If we really do aim to overcome this sense of unease about the way things are in our lives, if we really do want to find contentment and fulfillment, it’ll always be helpful to begin from the standpoint of honesty. Otherwise it just becomes another pointless exercise and we will be thrown back to where we started. We’ll be forever searching for an answer to the fundamental situation of all unrealized beings. Of course it’s not for everyone. Dharma practice is not easy. It’s an on-going challenge. But that challenge is a helpful one. However much progress we have made, we can always be kinder, more generous and compassionate. None of these things are finite. It’s living in this way that we begin to see how much happier we are in ourselves. Although the actuality of worrying might paint a pretty bleak picture initially, it’s helpful to recognise that our day to day contact with this provides us with an opportunity to recognise the worrying of others, and help us to develop empathy and kindness towards other beings.
Part Three
We identified in part two, within the first principle assignment, the existence of the worrying mind. That it exists in all un-realized human beings. It’s the underlying sense of discomfort that is with us in any given moment of our daily lives. It’s where we spend our time endlessly searching for anything that will occupy us, keep us busy, give us something to do and stop us from being bored. We seek to find anything that will stay the same and not change. Our minds drift back to past memories which we hold dear to us or project into the fantasies of the future. We are forever making plans, building up expectations. We continually try to bring close to us things that we like and try to push away anything that we don’t like. We become so attached to things, that when they fail us, or come to an end, we worry even more than usual. Is it no wonder then that the effect of this first principle assignment is likened to a disease? It hurts. It’s painful. Although we might be able to subdue the pain for a short time by giving it a big dose of distraction, it keeps coming back. To be able to cure this disease once and for all we now have to identify its cause and then we can find the appropriate medicine to treat it.
The Second principle assignment
The root cause of the disease of worry is the want for any experience to be other than it is. There are a number of other factors that contribute to the disease, but it’s the wanting that lies at the very centre of the problem. Human beings live by sensory experience. We see, hear, taste, touch and smell. All of these sensory experiences are going on during every moment of our lives. The results of those sensory experiences are processed by this experience we refer to as mind. We catch sight of something and an immediate decision is made. We either find what we experience through our senses pleasant or unpleasant. We hear something and we react in a helpful or unhelpful way towards the sound depending on whether or not we find it pleasant or unpleasant. We put something in our mouths and we either go mmmm that’s nice or we spit it out and go yuck. We touch something and we either like it or we don’t. We are drawn towards pleasant smells and are uncomfortable with unpleasant odours. Of course, as human beings, we are aware that we have the ability to make choices, but all of these instantaneous pre-conscious instinctual decisions are far removed from actually making choices. They are in effect out of our control because they are driven by want and not want.
In those rare moments when we are not on auto-pilot and simply reacting to our sensory experiences, we make choices. But even these choices are based on the two primary emotional tones of finding something pleasant or unpleasant. We either like something or we don’t. If we examine our daily lives, we can see it going on all the time. We may have a particular circle of friends and may steer clear of some people. We may order this off the menu in a restaurant and not that. We watch this TV program and not that one. We listen to this kind of music and not that kind. Putting the power of advertising to one side for a moment, we buy this product and not that one. Underlying all of these decisions and almost every other choice we make, on a moment by moment basis, is the fact that we find something pleasant or unpleasant. Just as we mentally spend our time either stuck in the memories of the past or projecting into the fantasies of the future and not actually being present with things as they are in now-ness. It’s the same for our physical experience as well. But we know, within the meditation experience at least, we can, even if it’s only for short periods, remain aware in now-ness as experience arises and subsides without giving in to the pulls of want and not want.
It’s the wanting things to be other than they are therefore, that is the root cause of our worrying. What this means, is that no matter what we get, no matter how good, we always want more. Or we want something else. Or we want something to stop. Want, and its counterpart not want, set the pattern of basic human behaviour. It defines us. We confuse ourselves into thinking we are fixed things that don’t change. We cling to our own myths of who we are and what we do. We develop habitual patterns of behaviour so that we convince ourselves we are who we are. I like this. I want that. I don’t like this. I don’t want that. Such is the unrealized human predicament, endless worry, driven by want and not want.
What the Buddha suggests, is that if you really want to begin to eradicate the cause of your worrying mind, then we have to look inside ourselves with complete honesty. Worrying isn’t a punishment inflicted on us by other people, life circumstances, or some unknown supernatural force or creator being. It isn’t anything to do with luck, fate or chance. He teaches that the worry we experience in now-ness is directly linked to the way we think, speak and act.
Now, it would be helpful to add in a few more things to fully unpack the word want. It has a much wider definition that includes craving, desires, clinging or attachment. To do this let’s look at an everyday experience that perhaps at one time or another we’ve all done. We have a wardrobe jam packed with clothes all in good condition. But we’ve become bored with them or they’re out of fashion and we want something new. We tell ourselves that if we buy just one more shirt or dress we’ll be happy. We can add into that experience all sorts of fantasies. Perhaps if we buy that shirt or dress, people might find us more attractive. We might fit in a bit more with everybody else. But in actuality all we’re walking out of the shop with is an unrealistic expectation of what this shirt or dress can do. It’s a piece of cloth and nothing more. Are we still going to be happy with it when it fades, or rips, or goes out of fashion and spends years hidden in our wardrobe with all the other stuff that we were once happy with?
When the Buddha spoke about craving, desire, clinging or attachment as the cause of worry, he was pointing towards the problem of us believing that we actually exist as some thing separate from every other thing. That we cling to a fixed and unchanging sense of ‘I’ and as a result of this craving for a separate existence, we set up the conditions for a life of continual disappointment. According to the Buddha, there is a way out for all of us from this everyday experience of worry and that is to eradicate the cause. What he said in this first teaching was words to the effect: “It is the complete separation from and destruction of this very craving, its forsaking, renunciation, the liberation therefrom and non-attachment thereto that will bring an end to worrying”. So the solution to this problem is, in everyday language, to let go. Let go of all unrealistic expectation. Let go of all harmful behaviour. Let go of our clinging attitude towards people, possessions and even our own body, by eradicating all confused attachment from our minds.
The word attachment is another one of those words that causes us problems because it can conjure up a picture of a cold, unemotional, unloving person. But it’s possible to live a very loving, caring life, fully involved with your family and those close to you without worrying, as a result of the kind of attachment that the Buddha is referring to when he links it with craving or want. In many ways, it’s a more fulfilling life, when you allow those around you to grow and develop without too much interference from you, when you try to live with someone that gives them their own space and have no expectations of them. If we’re honest with ourselves we do it all the time. There is an underlying manipulation going on within most of our relationships, including our partners and our children. Behind all of this is the unrealized state of knowing and experiencing all things as not being separate. Recognising that, attachment to anything that is impermanent is driving us crazy.
It’s important to understand that it’s not our preferences and wants or desires themselves that are the problem. It’s our relationship to them that is the problem. The secret to a happy life, according to the Buddha, is to accept what you have and not want what you don’t have. At first sight this might seem very simplistic, but if you reflect on it for a while perhaps you can come to see that it provides us with an opportunity to accept life the way it presents itself to us in now-ness. No one said it’s going to be easy. After all we’ve been clinging to this confusion and unrealistic sense of self for as many years as we have been breathing, so breaking these habits is going to take effort. But as we begin our journey towards our own awakening, perhaps we can experience the helpful changes to our everyday lives that letting go delivers.
Part Four
We have discovered so far in this chapter that it’s worry, the unsatisfied state of all unrealized human beings, that is the disease referred to as dukka (suffering/worry) by the Buddha in his first teaching. We’ve also learned that the root cause of this problem is the wanting for things to be other than they are in the form of craving, desire and our attachment to things that are impermanent and insubstantial in or of themselves. So, we have identified the disease, found what’s causing it and we now have to discover if there is a medicine available to treat it.
The third principle assignment
The third principle assignment is that there is a way to cure this problem. The Buddha himself discovered the cure during his own awakening experience. If you remember, during the six year period from when he left his home and his family to go off in search of his own awakening, he went to great lengths to try out and test all of the other methods that were on offer by the leading teachers of the time. Although he excelled in all of their practices and in many cases became more proficient in them than the teachers themselves, they all failed to deliver. It was towards the end of this period of experimentation that he almost died of starvation. When he was at his weakest he had an insightful experience in which he realized that what he had been doing was unhelpful. He’d become a kind of an extremist. He realized that there was an option that went straight down the middle and could avoid extremist behaviour. He also recalled a time when he was a young boy sitting under an apple tree in his fathers’ orchard and had become absorbed in deep concentration, just paying attention to the flow of the plough going back and forth. It was this recollection that gave him the idea that it would be through meditation that he would finally find the answer he had been searching for.
It’s this middle option that would be helpful for us to try and engage with. If when you’re taking a bath you reach down into the water and try to pick up the bar of soap, one of two things can happen. If you try and grab hold of the soap too tightly, it’ll shoot out of your hand and onto the floor on the other side of the room. If you try and pick it up too gently it’ll slip back into the water and you’ll have to rummage around trying to find it. What would be helpful to do is find the balance between the two efforts to succeed in picking up the soap. It’s the same with us in meditation. If we make too much willed effort, we find ourselves even more distracted than when we started. If we don’t make enough effort we doze off to sleep. Although there is much to do within Dharma practice that helps us to change who and what we currently are, helping us to break our unhelpful, habitual patterns of behaviour, helping us to become kinder, more generous and compassionate, it is meditation itself that will provide us with the insight to cure the disease. It was through meditation that the Buddha himself put an end to his own worrying mind and became free from the disease.
The third principle assignment is simply that worrying can be brought to an end. There is a cure. On a simplistic level, if we understand that it is want, in the form of craving, desire and attachment that’s the cause of our worrying, then all we need to do is to stop wanting things to be other than they are and we’ve cracked it. But in our confused and unrealized state, what happens is that we kid ourselves that we already have. We will tell ourselves all sorts of nonsense because we will be doing so with the confusion created by the conditioned self-referential mind that we have created for ourselves. If we begin to look at our motivational factors, the intent that drives all of our thoughts and actions with complete honesty, we will begin to notice how we are so easily deceived by ourselves. Perhaps I could suggest that we begin to look at the way we spend our money as a starting point by adopting a ‘Do I need this or do I want it’ approach to what we buy. Not just the big things but everything. Learning to watch our motivational factors with honesty is the most direct way to change our unhelpful behaviour patterns. Of course it’s always important to remember that we don’t give ourselves a hard time when we realize that it is want that is feeding our action, or that we don’t pile on another layer of guilt to our already overloaded shoulders.
So, we now know that we have a disease, we know what’s causing it and we know that it can be cured. Now we have to begin to take the medicine that will cure us. This immediately throws up a problem for us. We’ll know from our own experience of life that any treatment or medicine is rarely pleasant. Whether we have to have surgery, or we just have to take a few pills, it’s not something that we would choose to do, which means we begin with a bit of an uphill struggle as nobody it seems, likes taking their medicine. All I can offer you is my own personal experience of taking the medicine, and that is, if you approach it with a helpful frame of mind it can taste like the kids medicine that is sometimes loaded with sugar. If we really accept the actuality of the first two principle assignments ie worry and its cause from within our own experience, then we’ll be motivated to take the medicine. If you don’t, then you better make sure your private health insurance is up-to-date because you’re going to be spending a lot of time at the doctor’s surgery or the hospital.
Part Five
The fourth principle assignment
Preventing the arising of unarisen unhelpful mental states.
Eradicating arisen unhelpful mental states
Developing unarisen helpfulmental states
Maintaining arisen helpful mental states
What they mean, in very basic terms, is that we are seeking to prevent unhelpful thoughts arriving in the first place and if they do arrive we try and let go of them or transform them and at the same time we are making an effort to develop helpful thoughts and maintaining those that arise. Another way of looking at this is to make an effort to become aware of what our mental state is in now-ness and if it’s unhelpful don’t let it overwhelm us and if it’s helpful, then we can rejoice.
7. Appropriate/helpful Awareness
Paying close attention to what’s happening in now-ness is essential to Dharma practice. Letting go of thoughts of the past and not fantasising about the future, but being as present as possible moment by moment in everything we do. Meditation and living a more meditative life is the key. We human beings are a very distracted and un-integrated species. We’re mostly lost in a haze of preoccupation and worry or just numbed by sensory overload. Meditation training and practice are the bedrock of Dharma practice. It was the very thing the Buddha was doing immediately prior to his awakening and he had tried everything else and failed. So this is our clue to what will be most helpful for us to do. I’m sure that even now, those of you who have taken up a regular meditation practice will have some awareness of how much of a helpful difference it has made to your lives.
8. Appropriate/helpful Concentration
In order to develop insight into causality and thereby finding liberation and freedom from worrying, it’s helpful if this experience we refer to as mind becomes sharp and free from distractions and dullness. Through meditation, you will eventually be able to place your full attention on any object you choose and keep it there without wavering. This one-pointed attention is the very process that enables us to gain life-altering insights into actuality. Without this, whatever understanding we have of the way things are, will always remain superficial or intellectual. Appropriate concentration therefore represents the culmination of the journey. It’s the point at which one’s initial vision has been realized in full and one’s whole being has been irreversibly transformed.
Within the eight-themed journey, it’s always helpful to bear in mind that it doesn’t, in itself, have a beginning, middle and end, as if each stage has to be traversed once and only once. It’s helpful to look at it as having a cumulative effect. With each step we take within the journey of transformation, our capacity for appropriate vision deepens. The stronger our vision, the more impelled we will be to work on transforming ourselves. Sometimes we make slow, steady progress, at other times we can have quite a dramatic breakthrough. Sometimes we might appear stuck or even fall back a little, but as long as we keep on making the effort, according to the Buddha, progress is eventually assured. In many ways when we begin to notice how our lives are being transformed in the direction of a more contented and helpful lifestyle, this alone is the thing that will spur us on. But probably the most crucial factor in many ways, is being in a position to be able to spend time with like-minded people, fellow travelers on the journey, to help and support us.