Making Sense of Suffering

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NOT SO, I WOULD SUGGEST

Judeo-Christian theologians and philosophers, while admitting to the horror and uselessness of suffering, are struggling to make sense of it. Not so, I would suggest, in Buddhism.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the central question is whether suffering is a good thing or a bad thing. Not so, I would suggest, in Buddhism.

Seen through Judeo-Christian eyes, since suffering cannot be eliminated, and, in an attempt to make it bearable, suffering is portrayed as somehow beneficial.  Not so, I would suggest, in Buddhism.

From a traditional Judeo-Christian perspective, God created suffering to purify and/or punish us for our sins. Thus, suffering is part of the divine order. Not so, I would suggest, in Buddhism.

Many Judeo-Christian thinkers suggest that suffering is a necessary test of faith. The greater the suffering, the stronger the faith.  Not so, I would suggest, in Buddhism.

In Judeo-Christian terms, suffering is not inherently negative and serves a higher purpose. Not so, I would suggest in Buddhism.

Often in Judeo-Christian thought, those who see themselves as “saved” or “chosen,” see their suffering as somehow special, different from the suffering of others. Not so, I would suggest in Buddhism.

And finally, in the Judeo-Christian traditions, the answer to the question “Why me?” is that God acts in mysterious ways, ways we cannot know. Not so, I would suggest, in Buddhism.

In the Buddhist view, suffering is neither good nor bad.  It is neither to be borne nor to be endured for the sake of some higher good. It is not the creation of a God. It is not the source of salvation. In Buddhism, I would suggest, suffering is not inexplicable and it does not need to be justified. For Buddhists, faced with the challenges of suffering, there is no question “Why me?”

In Buddhism, suffering is the result of ignorance, errors in our way of perceiving our true nature and the nature of reality, errors which ripen into faulty actions (karma).  If, by dint of diligent, hard, spiritual work, we trade ignorance for wisdom, suffering ends. Therefore, to a Buddhist, the end of suffering is entirely in one’s own hands. We can increase it, decrease it, or eliminate it, depending on how we think and what we do. It really is that simple!

Practicing Without Tolerance

Tolerance and Intolerance, No Difference

For the religions of the West, tolerance is an important spiritual teaching.  Buddhism, on the other hand, does not consider tolerance to be an appropriate spiritual practice.

From a Buddhist perspective, tolerance reinforces an erroneous sense of self and other, hardens the ego and increases selfishness, and encourages passivity in the face of the human imperative, which, in the Buddhist view, is to awaken to truth by virtue of one’s own self-power.

The core of Buddhist practice is to cultivate positive mental states and renounce negative mental states for the simple reason that positive mental states manifest in positive actions, which increase happiness; while negative mental states manifest in negative actions, which decrease happiness. Since, in the Buddhist view, tolerance promotes unwholesome states of mind which bear fruit as unwholesome actions, for a Buddhist, tolerance is unsuitable as a spiritual practice. 

In fact, in the Buddhist view, tolerance promotes intolerance.

How can that be?

To find out, let’s take a look at two definitions of tolerance, one religious and one secular

The first, from the Catholic encyclopedia, defines tolerance as “Forbearance in the presence of an evil which one is unable or unwilling to prevent….Considered in the abstract, tolerance contains two ideas: the existence of an evil; and the magnanimous determination not to interfere with the evil, but to allow it to run its course.”

The second, from Webster’s dictionary defines tolerance as:

1. sympathy or capacity to endure pain or hardship

2. the capacity of the body to endure or become less responsive to a substance

Here is how Buddhists take exception to these ideas.

1.     For a Buddhist, there is no external force, whether it is evil or good.  One of Buddhism’s central teachings is non-duality, sometimes expressed in the phrase “gift, giver, receiver, no difference.”

2.     In the Buddhist view, nothing is permanent, including no permanent forces, whether they are evil or good.

3.     Buddhists emphatically reject “blind faith” as wrong view and as being counterproductive the quest for liberation.

4.     Buddhism rejects attitudes which generate unwholesome mental states. When tolerance means  putting up with something in a rather grudging or resentful manner, a mental pattern of resentment is formed; or, when tolerance implies weakness, such as an inability to stand up for oneself, weakness becomes a habit. Buddhist practice renounces these and all negative  mental states as not conducive to increased well being.

5.     Buddhism avoids unwholesome actions by renouncing the states which give rise to them. Since tolerance relies upon mental states such as exclusivity, magnanimity, arrogance, conceit, and possessiveness, states which give rise to an array of unwholesome actions ranging from minor irritation to armed conflict, in the Buddhist view, tolerance is not a suitable practice. As the Mahanidana Sutta, DN 15, explains in the dark chain of causation: when there is possessiveness, there is the arising of stinginess, and in dependence on stinginess there is the arising of defensiveness, and in dependence on defensiveness various unwholesome things originate, such as conflicts, quarrels, disputes, insults and accusations, the taking up of arms, and all kinds of wrong speech, such as slander, lies and divisive speech.

6.     Tolerance, requires non-agreement.  Since non-agreement, in the Buddhist view, as we have just seen in the sutra, leads to conflict, non-agreement is not a suitable Buddhist practice.

As a Protestant Minister said to me when I asked about him about tolerance: “Both tolerance and intolerance are the same Cross upon which those who are different get crucified.” Indeed.

Then, what do Buddhists teach in situations where other faiths promote tolerance?

Buddhism has two unique teachings to offer:

1.     The practice of reflective acceptance

2.     The practice of reconciliation and non-differentiation

Let’s very briefly look at each:

Reflective Acceptance  means looking deeply, seeing clearly, and accepting circumstances as they are: Impermanent and fleeting. When we see clearly and accept reality, we can respond appropriately. As we learn in the Canki Sutra (MN 95), reflective acceptance is one of the critical conditions needed for us to arrive at the capital “T” Truth of Buddhism.

Reconciliation and Non-differentiation –– Reconciliation means learning to be peaceful with whatever conditions are in front of us. In our practice, whether on the cushion or off, we have countless opportunities for reconciliation, countless moments in which we may gratefully embrace the world of differences we live in. And the most effective way to embrace differences is with a practice of non-differentiation, the practice which dissolves differences: my ideas, their ideas, no difference.

Closing Thought

Recently, I saw this bumper sticker: Truth, not Tolerance. Would you be willing to put it on your car?

Intention

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It’s All About Intention

Enlightenment is not reserved for nuns and monks sitting alone caves in the Himalayas or practicing in isolated kutis in the tropical, evergreen forests of Thailand.  On the contrary, enlightenment, the end of suffering, is available to us all. It is possible to live a life without stress, without dukkha, in every moment of every day, right where we live now. It’s the same for a Buddha as it is for Layman Pang and for any of us. It is this universality that makes Buddhism a spiritual system, and not just a transformative or behavioral psychology.

But, what exactly do we have to do to free ourselves from dukkha, from suffering?

To end our struggle, to terminate our lease in samsara, we must reset our intention. We must go from selfish to selfless, from impure to pure.  Purity means our intention must be unmitigatingly for the welfare of all beings. This is the wisdom that arises from our practice. This is how we end our struggle.

Where intention is fixed, attention is focused. If our intention is fixed on the Bodhisattva ideal, bodhicitta, and we are committed to living a life for the benefit of others, our attention will necessarily be selfless and focused in the present moment. The meaning of this is simple but the ramifications are profound. When we are without fear or perturbability, we are able to see conditions clearly.  When we can see conditions clearly, we can respond appropriately, which means, we are of benefit.

That is the meaning of abiding in conditions. Chapter one of the Diamond Sutra, which describes the daily activities of the Buddha, is a lesson in just this “abiding in conditions”. For a Buddha, the rhythm of being present in each moment is as natural as breathing:

One day before noon, the Bhagavan [the Buddha] put on his sanghati robe and picked up his bowl and entered the Sravasti to seek offerings. After begging for food, moving from house to house in the prescribed manner, and eating his meal of rice, he returned from his daily round in the afternoon, put his robe and bowl away, washing his feet, and sat down on the appointed seat. After crossing his legs and adjusting his body, he turned his awareness to what was before him.

As we see in this passage, it is our wise intention and consequent attention to our everyday activities that makes us bodhisattvas.

On another level––

What we don’t need to do is suggested by Master Yin Shun in this passage:

Ever since the propagation of materialism—where human existence is seen as a phenomenon of material composition and decomposition that ends with death—and theories of evolution by natural selection and survival of the fittest—most often represented today by Darwin, the human mind has undergone a dangerous degeneration. On the one hand, since death brings an end to everything, humans don’t have to be responsible for their behavior during their lifetime.  On the other hand, they must constantly fight and compete with other people in order to survive.  Such materialistic and competitive thinking has brought humanity to the brink of calamity.

The intentions which arise from materialism and social Darwinism are the antithesis of our practice. Such destructive thinking must not become the source of our intentions or the fuel for our actions.

What we do need to do is suggested by Master Yin Shun in the next paragraph of this excerpt:

There are two aspects to address in order to rectify [our] perverted thinking: First, [we must realize that] life is not just a physical existence; it does not end at death.  We must be responsible for our actions in life.  Second, the purpose of life is not to constantly fight and compete with each other.  Instead, we should develop an attitude of mutual respect, care and co-operation.  The alleviation of human suffering lies in our willingness to assume responsibility [for the well-being of all beings] and to make peace with each other.

How we approach this challenge, whether in our everyday moment-by-moment activities, as described in the story of Layman Pang and in the Diamond Sutra, or in the broader perspective described in the passages from Master Yin Shun, depends on our karma, on who we are right now in this moment.

Resetting Our Intentions

While there is no easy fix for our misguided minds, there is a simple chant that can, in my experience, be of considerable benefit in moving us toward bodhicitta. Recited every morning and evening, this metta [lovingkindness] chant goes a long way toward undermining one’s current afflicted intentions and resetting the mind to bodhicitta:

Metta Chant for Intention Setting

May I be free from anger and hatred.

May I be free from greed and selfishness.

May I be free from fears and anxiety.

May I be free from all pain and suffering.

May I be free from ignorance and delusion.

May I be free from all negative states of mind.

May I be happy and peaceful.

May I be liberated from bondages.

May I experience peace and tranquility within.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from anger and hatred.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from greed and selfishness.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from fears and anxiety.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from all pain and suffering.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from ignorance and delusion.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be free from all negative states of mind.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be happy and peaceful.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me be liberated from bondages.

May those whom I love, those whom I like, those who have angered or done harm to me experience peace and tranquility within.

May all beings be free from anger and hatred.

May all beings be free from greed and selfishness.

May all beings be free from fears and anxiety.

May all beings be free from all pain and suffering.

May all beings be free from ignorance and delusion.

May all beings be free from all negative states of mind.

May all beings be happy and peaceful.

May all beings be liberated from bondages.

May all beings experience peace and tranquility within.

Tonglen

Another way of establishing and maintaining right intention is the practice of Tonglen, which is a Tibetan meditation in which you visualize the suffering of another person, then breathe that suffering into yourself, transform it into radiant light, and finally send it back out again.

Tonglen trains the mind to be in a steady state of bodhicitta. I was introduced to tonglen by James Hicklin, who is serving a life-without-parole sentence at a maximum-security prison in Missouri. James has written several articles for Rightview Quarterly (Shame and Unhitching the Cart ).  His use of tonglen inspired me to start my own practice.  If it worked in the face of the bitterness, anguish and anger of a maximum-security prison, I thought, it should certainly work for me. My own tonglen practice, though still young, has been of enormous benefit and I wholeheartedly suggest tonglen to you.  Find a qualified Lama to teach it to you and, for the sake of all beings, maintain tonglen as a daily practice.

Rafts and Raft-Making

The Raft

Founding your religion on a doctrine that you say should be abandoned was revolutionary 2500 years ago. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what the Buddha did in the simile of the raft.

Students of Buddhism frequently joke about the raft.  While a light-hearted approach can be of value in seeing its larger meaning and its place in our lives, the raft has a serious role to play in our practice.  But just what is this raft?  How should we use it? How is it constructed? How many do we need? And from where, in the experience of the practice, does the raft come from?

When we first encounter the raft, in the Pali Canon, MN 22 and SN 35, for instance, as well as in the Diamond Sutra, Chapter 6, it is a metaphor for our progression from samsara to nirvana. We know immediately, from its position in the sutras, and later, from our direct experience of its efficacy, that the raft is extremely beneficial to the practice.  Having carried us on the essential first leg of our journey, when we go from contemplative examination to a full acceptance of the teaching, the raft becomes for us an engine for our enthusiasm, the crucible of our love for the practice.

Each of us will need many rafts, specific to our karma, to cross from this to the other shore. Even if, as we are told, we are “already enlightened,” “already Buddhas,” and even if we have had a glimpse, or a so-called “enlightenment experience,” we are not enlightened beings. To become that, we will need to become dedicated and diligent raft makers.

How do we construct a raft? The sutras tell us to gather grass, twigs, branches, and leaves, and to bind them together to make a raft. Then, we are told, we must use the raft, along with the power of our own hands and feet, to carry us safely to the other shore.  The grass, twigs, branches and leaves stand for the teachings. Our paddling hands and feet represent diligent energy and exertion.

Early in my practice, in Raft-Making 101 when I made my first raft, it had four sides, corresponding to the four noble truths. Back then I saw the raft as imploding when I stepped out of it onto the other shore. Later, I construed the eight aspects of the noble path as structural elements of a more complicated raft. This raft, I imagined, I would send back toward samsara when I stepped out of it.

After that, I developed a sort of raft-making-methodology as I continued to study and practice.  Sometimes I used the same raft over and over again as I worked through bad habits. Sometimes I made new rafts.  Some, my “antidote rafts,” were fashioned in response to my defilements. I stayed on the antidote raft until it was replaced by another raft, the “equanimity raft.” Eventually, the equanimity raft would be replaced by an enlightened mind-state. This transformative teaching, going from defilement to antidote to equanimity to tranquility, along with the steady presence of another raft, a "right effort" raft, has been prominent in my spiritual growth. 

Now, I have several other key rafts in my boat house, including the faith raft, the dana raft, the dukkha raft, and the right speech raft, each of which is described in previous blog.

By the time I reached Raft-Making 201, I had created lots of rafts.  After I made them, I noticed, the rafts were always there, available to me whenever I needed them. It was as if I had a ninth consciousness, a “boathouse consciousness,” which gave me the ability to paddle myself to increasing purity in body, speech and mind. I realized then that the rafts were my tools for self-purification.

I see now that I have developed a raft making habit.  I build new rafts all the time to move me through the agitated waters of my defilements. These days, when irritation, for example, arises, I can jump onto the dana raft or the patience raft (the first and third paramitas) and float, if not all the way to the other shore, at least to a place of less dukkha, a purer place. I think of these rafts as practice vehicles which can weaken or lessen and eventually eliminate my dukkha.

There is one raft in my boathouse consciousness that I use more and more often. This is a high horsepower raft, my capital “D” Dharma raft, which can stop dukkha dead in its tracks and carry  me straight to my own true, enlightened nature. I call this my “wholesome mind-states” raft. To make it, I used Asanga’s eleven beneficial mind-states: trust, diligence, humility, generosity, patience, wisdom, tranquility, attentiveness, equanimity, not harming and regret, plus a handful of twigs and leaves I gathered myself: compassion, dependability, honesty, lovingkindness and sympathetic joy, amongst others.

We can use our rafts to set us free from craving and clinging, to separate us from beginningless suffering, to carry us across the sea of our afflictions. But, and here is the revolutionary teaching, once we arrive on the other shore we must step out of the raft and released it. We must let the Dharma itself go. Until we do that, we are not truly there, on the other shore. There is another way of interpreting the raft simile, from the standpoint of the Diamond Sutra rather than the Pali canon. In the Diamond Sutra, we use the raft to get to the water’s edge, and then we abandon it to cross over.

As always in the practice, we need to be alert to the increasing treachery of the ego, whose desperate disguises multiply as we progress and are increasingly subtle and hard to detect. If the raft is used incorrectly, the raft itself, which was contrived to bring us to the other shore, will instead, tether us to this.

We need to be careful not to parade around samsara holding a raft aloft, perching it on our heads for all to see. This boastful display, this wrong view of the teaching, is the conceit, the sense of superiority, the arrogance that entrenches us on this shore. And we must be careful not to use the raft to spin speculative views that then need to be protected and defended, leading to a whole host of new defilements, like self-righteousness and aggression, which more deeply mire us in wrong view.

If the raft has become so precious to––after all that time and energy we spent building it––that we drag it onto the shore with us, to keep it “just in case,” we will find that the raft hasn’t taken us anywhere and that we even more deeply sunk in the coastal mud of samsara than before.

Some people mistake the raft for liberation.  Having no interest in traversing the water, they like to carry the raft along this shore.  Instead of being purified by the eight aspects of the path, for example, they recite them with pride and conceit. They don’t know that the raft, the teachings. are not the goal of the practice but the practice itself.

Some people think that if they simply learn the teaching they will become enlightened. If that were the case, I would quickly ask someone to throw me their “pre-owned” raft and be done with it!  But, needless to say, knowing and reciting the eightfold path does not mean one has “realized” the path.

Some people use rafts contentiously, as a way for the mind to avoid devoting itself to the actual practice of the dharma. After all, it’s easier to talk about it than do it. Under the guise of advocating for the dharma, they are inadvertently attaching more firmly to their sense of Self, to the I-Me-My-Mine discussed in the previous blog.

The sole purpose of the raft is to break our bonds of attachment. If we use our rafts for any other purpose, if we praise ourselves for building them, if we treasure them, if we cling to them, or, if we prefer talking about them to using them, our longed for vehicles for liberation will instead tether us to this, the suffering shore.

Exercise: In your practice now, this month, this week, this day, this moment, which raft(s) are you using. Are you holding yourself in a state of awareness so thatyou can see which raft(s) is needed to purify afflictions of body, speech and mind when they arise? Are you a relentless paddler and raft-maker?

Do you need to know more about rafts and raft-making to steady and hasten you along the Path?

Please feel free to post your thoughts about rafts and raft-making by clicking comment below, or email if you have a question.

Riding the Raft of Optimism to Peace

Discovering Optimism in My Buddhist Practice

Vow of Humankind

Calm and composed

Let us awaken to our True Self

Become fully compassionate humans

Make full use of our abilities

According to our respective vocations

Discern suffering

Both individual and social

And its sources

Recognize the right direction

In which history should proceed

Joining hands as kin

Beyond the differences of

Race, nation or class

Let us, with compassion

Vow to bring to realization

Our deep desire

For emancipation

And construct a world in which

All can live truly and fully.

–Hosekei Shinichi Hisamatsu, Zen scholar and missionary

A casual look at the first noble truth–that life is suffering–rather than a real understanding of it, can make Buddhism seem pessimistic. In fact, the opposite is true. The teachings of the Buddha are unmitigatingly optimistic. Buddhist teachings view life as a moment-by-moment opportunity to become more and more peaceful and happy until all our suffering is gone. And the teachings view all sentient beings as being on the spiritual path to more peaceful and happy lives. What could be more optimistic?

To understand what makes this view so optimistic we need to understand what the Buddha meant when he described life as suffering. Then we need to understand the meaning of “the Buddha” and of “faith,” and the implications of “emptiness.” Hopefully we will grow to understand these intuitively rather than discursively, since all discursive understanding is speculative, and, while perhaps useful in our early practice, all speculative views are “wrong view.”*

For a discussion of what is meant by the First Noble Truth, the Noble Truth of Suffering, which says that life is suffering, please read the link to the previous blog entry, Parsing This Is Suffering.

Now let’s look at the meaning of the words “the Buddha.” To do that, let’s first consider where our current idea of “the Buddha,” as purely a man, came from.

In seventeenth century Europe, for Westerners, only four religions were identified in the world: Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedism, and Paganism. The history of religion is, in a sense, as Donald Lopez explains in The Story of Buddhism, a Concise Guide to Its History and Teachings, a process of replacing Paganism with a larger list of isms: Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, and, of course, Buddhism.

To do this, to create an ism such as Buddhism, scholars have to establish such obligatory constituents as a founder, sacred scriptures, and fixed doctrines. So Siddhartha Gotama became the Buddha. This personification, however, distorts the real meaning of the term, at least as I see it from my practice now.

What I see from my cushion is that “the Buddha” isn’t a man or a woman*, isn’t “a Self, an ego entity, a living being,” in Diamond Sutra terms. “The Buddha” is a mind-state, a mind-state universal to all sentient beings. “All sentient beings” is everything that is and isn’t, and is neither and is both. “The Buddha”, therefore, is the ultimate nature of reality–emptiness, shunyata.

If it were any other way, then the Buddha would be just another dukkha-ed being, another one of us in samsara. But that is not the case. Were that to be the case, there could be no Buddhanature, no enlightenment, and the ending of our dukkha would not be possible. There would, in fact, be no “Buddhism.”

As I understand it, The Buddha is our default setting, our original nature, which, unfortunately, is hidden in the fog of samsara by my current choice to live in dukkhaland. This simple understanding–that it is a choice–made me see what I need to do to clear away the fog so I could live in peace instead: I simply need to make the choices that move me in the direction of the Buddha.

Once I understood this, I saw the raft** that have been readied for me by the Four Noble Truths, the eightfold path, etc., and I realized I could use my hands and feet to paddle to the other shore, leaving all my defilements behind me.

So Buddhism isn’t about suffering; it is about me as an enlightened being, about what I can do everyday to be happier. All of the teachings are aimed at helping me to remove the hindrances and obstacles, the taints and fetters, the attachments that obscure my true nature. 2500 years of teachings, all aimed at helping me find my enlightened nature. That’s optimism.

Now let’s take a moment and look a little more deeply at “the Buddha” as emptiness, shunyata.

We have to be careful when we talk about emptiness not to objectify it. Not to inadvertently make emptiness into a thing with a self, or even a doctrine, for that matter. We must be careful not to confuse emptiness with fullness or unity, which are misunderstandings of the term. It is definitely not that everything is one, it is definitely not about merging with some ultimate or divine.

Emptiness isn’t simply a philosophical insight into the nature of reality. Emptiness is a spiritual practice. In other words, the realization of emptiness is the way we liberate ourselves from delusions; it is the way we liberate ourselves from the defilements that attach us to samsara and bind us to our self-made suffering. Attachment to the mind-state of emptiness is not possible.

My sense of optimism comes from precisely this point. The more deeply I understand and realize emptiness, the less there is to attach to, the less self there is, so to speak, and the more optimistic I feel about the human condition. When I realize that suffering is empty, then I realize how peaceful this very moment is, how bright my future is.

It is, for me, the understanding that everything is empty that is the springboard to my optimism. If everything is empty, then I can change anything in my life. I can, on the most important and fundamental level, change the conditions that bind me to samsara. One moment at a time, one decision at a time, I can move myself away from a lifetime of anxiety, delusion and depression, away from a lifetime of anger and ill-will, towards a life which is ever increasingly peaceful, compassionate, and content.

So, it is shunyata, emptiness, that leads me to see Buddhism as profoundly optimistic, and it is shunyata, emptiness, that gives me faith.

As I say that, of course, I recognize my greediness, my wanting to be optimistic, my liking optimism better than my old pessimism. On a deeper level, I confess, I understand that Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, it is utterly realistic. And the transition from seeing things as pessimistic to seeing them as optimistic, to finally seeing them as they really are, by being realistic, is about moving from dukkha to peacefulness, about letting go of the greed. Faith, of course, is what holds me steady in this movement. This movement being from defilement to antidote to equanimity to shunyata. But let’s go back to faith.

“Faith” in Buddhism has a different meaning than it has in Abrahamic religions. Faith in Buddhism is the confidence that arises from knowing that dukkha is end-able. Faith is knowing with absolute certainty from within that, with diligence and consistency, I will become free.

As I became more aware of the Buddha within me, as I practiced more faithfully from a position of emptiness, my awareness of the suffering of other sentient beings, of all other sentient beings and of their need to be saved, of their “deep desire for emancipation,” arose powerfully with me. It led me to understand how in each moment I make a choice, and that that choice is a socially engaged choice.

By following the path and by abandoning the unwholesome and developing the wholesome (right effort in action), I see that in each moment my practice is one of being of benefit to all beings. And that too makes me optimistic, about my future about the future of all sentient beings, and about the future of the environment.

Far from becoming distant and detached, the bodhisattva is right there, out front, engaged in the world, working for the benefit of all sentient beings.

May we all have the “blazing energy" of Vimalakirti as we paddle with joyful and optimistic hearts to the other shore.

*The gender ambiguity of many Buddha statues is a symbolic way of expressing shunyata, emptiness; not, as is often explained, an attempt at gender non-differentiation.

**A blog on rafts and raft-making will be the next posting.

Please feel free to post your thoughts about this blog by clicking below on “comments.”

Who Am I Anyway

Who Am I Anyway?

One way to find out who you are is to understand who a bodhisattva isn’t. The Diamond Sutra says, in chapter after chapter, starting in chapter three, that a bodhisattva does not entertain the idea of “a self, a person, a being, a soul” (atman, pudgala, sattva, jiva).

The question that arises on reading that phrase, when one gets past the erroneous idea that the repetition is meant solely as a teaching strategy, is why did the monk who authored this important sutra use those four phrases to describe the Self?  And how can I use that understanding of Self to relieve me of some of my sense of Self?

Master Ji Ru, our Abbot, pointed out in a recent class that the monk, or perhaps monks, who authored the Diamond Sutra was enlightened. Learning that about the author changed the whole perspective and meaning of the sutra for me. It gave me a fresh way of understanding who I am, or more accurately, who I am not, or even more accurately, both and neither.

The monk who authored this important wisdom (prajnaparamita) sutra used the phrase “a self, a person, a being, a soul” to describe us, here in samsara, from his perspective on the other shore. Once having had a self and renounced it he was looking back at the Self in others and seeing it and seeing it without delusion. The author was not someone in samsara describing a self from within the delusion of self. This is not a word game. Neither is it a rhetorical devise. Neither is it a linguistic strategy of some sort. That’s samsaric thinking. It is, instead, a simple description of what really is. And what was seen is that a self has these four aspects: a self, a person, a being, a soul.

The answer to the question, “Why did the author of the Diamond use these four phrases?” will take us a long way toward understanding the “a Self” so that we can deconstruct our Self in a way that lessens dukkha. It is, in fact, like the Four Noble Truths and all the other teachings, just another raft to make our journey to the other shore possible.

The author was using this phrasing to help us to understand our own deluded sense of Self, the four wrong views by which we define ourselves. From a samsaric point of view, our deluded understandings of “us” make Us seem real, solid, substantive, and abiding. But from an enlightened point of view, “a self, a person, a being, a soul” are seen for what they really are––“illusions, shadows, bubbles, dew.” Regardless of how much it appears so to us in samsara, we are not objectively real. “We” are fabrications created out of elements that are themselves empty.

By using this phrasing, “a self, a person, a being, a soul”, the author of the Diamond is telling us that deluded individuals, living in samsara, construct their sense of self  in these four ways. These are, in fact, the very words we use to trick ourselves into believing we are permanent entities.  Now they are being used to show us that there can be no such thing. Let’s look at each of the four separately.

A Self, Atman, “Ego Entity”

Our “Self” is the delusion we form through the operation of the five skandhas. “Self” is meant to indicate the artificial construct we create when we appropriate and identify with our sensory contacts. In Buddhism there is no belief in a self outside of the five skandhas.

The skandhas work like this: (1. Form) when we see something (2. Form) we develop a physical and emotional response to it, positive or negative, (3. Perception) we then label it, next (4. Volitional Formations) we create a story about it from past memory fragments, called seeds, and finally, (5. Consciousness) we appropriate and identify ourselves as that sensory contact “I see…whatever”. This is the ownership element. Ownership is when we take possession of a sense contact and define it as “I, me, my or mine.” This is the part of us that says we are simply the sum total of all our past sensory experiences.

When we realize that the five skandhas are impermanent and shunyata, we see how foolish it is to say: “I am the kind of person who…. And that weakens our ability to cling and attach. Which ends the dukkha, at least for me in that moment. Actually, we can stop this creation of Self at any of the five skandhas. We can shut our sense doors; not develop feelings about sense objects; stop labeling and naming; stop creating new volitional formations and stop relying on old habitual patterns retrieved from our seed consciousness. And, as already mentioned, we can stop appropriating and identifying, stop saying “I am the kind of person who (gets upset when he sees a big dog)” or “I am the kind of person who (gets anxious when the phone rings),” or whatever.

For more about the five skandhas, start with Peter della Santina’s introduction to the five aggregates (skandha is the Sanskrit word for aggregate). If you want to delve more deeply, I suggest comtemplatively working your way through Mathieu Boisvert’s short but intense book, The Five Aggregates, Understanding Theravada Psychology and Soteriology. 

Both are also available in print editions.

A Person, Pudgala

A “Person” is “Us” as a social entity. It is the way we define ourselves relative to others and to the environment. A Person is our idea of Us as a permanent entity, separate and distinct from all other phenomena. Personhood is about establishing differences, the difference between self and other, the difference between me and a tree, and so on.

If we look at how we fabricate ourselves as a Self and as a Person, we can begin to see non-self and no-self––shunyata, for these fabrications of a Self and a Person are composites of elements that are themselves empty of any permanent and abiding nature. With this new right view, samsara’s grip on us is weakened, reducing the strength of our attachment to ourselves as a Person.

A Being, Sattva

A Being is the sense we have of ourselves as the same individual at all times. As a Being we believe that we must differentiate the us from the unity of the subject-object relationship, and segregate the experiencer from the experienced. Once we see how making ourselves into a Being causes us dukkha, we can stop differentiating ourselves in this way and move further along the path to the peace and tranquility of no-self and shunyata.

It takes enormous energy and attention in order to construct and maintain a Self, as a Person, and as a Being. That alone should alert us to its implausibility. But instead we work even harder to complete the illusion. And it seems we are not finished until we fabricate a “Soul and Lifespan”, a Jiva,  for our “selves.”

A Soul, A Lifespan, Jiva

A Jiva is generally thought of as a soul, that is, unifying life-giving force and spiritual entity, which persists in us, unchanged from conception (or at least birth) to death. It is this permanent, abiding aspect of ourselves, we generally think, which migrates from this life to the next. This is also how we identify with body and mind.

When the Buddha realized experientially that no phenomenon is permanent and abiding, he realized there can be no soul. Everything, after all, is conditioned. We too must learn to understand this, as the Buddha did, experientially, if we are to leave behind our jiva and its attendant dukkha and cross to the other shore.

 “Jiva” also has another meaning. It can be an entity that exists for a certain period of time. a Lifespan. My suspicion is that the author of the Diamond saw our Jivas as both a life-giving spiritual entity and a lifespan.

Conclusion

Clearly, in order to construct an “Us” we need to do a whole lot of work, First, we must develop a series of unexamined assumptions (atman). Then we must formulate a special use of the language to validate those assumptions (pudgala). Then we have to convert those assumptions into rigid beliefs (sattva). Finally, we give our rigid beliefs a new name. We call them a unifying, life-giving entity, which has a duration (jiva). And even after all this work, “We” are fragmented and fragile and dukkha.

Just look at all the mental and emotional contortions we need to go through in order to create this fictitious entity. For me, in my practice, anything that requires that much effort to create and maintain is suspect and problematic! Whether one views this from samsara, as we do, or from the other shore, as the author of the Diamond did, what other way is there to see all this than as nonsense?

That insight makes all clinging, attaching, protecting or defending, any attraction or aversion to anything conceived of as I or me or my or mine seem silly. It only serves to trap us in dukkha and keeps us in samsara.

The more clearly I see this trap, this delusion, the more difficult it is for it to arise in my mind, and, if it does arise, the more difficult it is for me to maintain the attachment. As soon as I realize that I am clinging or attaching to one of these senses of Me, the clinging and attaching weakens and then disappears. And as my “I” becomes weaker, the Buddha in me becomes stronger. Or put another way, my Buddhanature begins to shine where there was previously only fog.

This is the big Zen stick that the monk who wrote the Diamond Sutra is wielding for our benefit. Whappp!

Faith

Buddhist Faith, Believing in the Seen and See-able

We tend to think of faith as belief in something that cannot be proven. This type of faith is a conviction in the absence of evidence. We commonly call this “blind faith,” though more accurately it is “cognitive” faith.

If we look closely at the idea of faith, we can differentiate between “cognitive” and “affective” faith. To have faith in the cognitive sense is to believe something is true without being able to verify it. For example, tenets of cognitive faith might be a belief that the plagues of the Exodus stories actually occurred ancient Egypt, or a belief that the physical resurrection of Jesus actually happened as a historical event.

Interestingly, cognitive faith is generally rejected in Buddhism as not conducive to spiritual awakening. This is seen most emphatically in the often quoted Kalama Sutra AN 3.65    where the Buddha explains how to decide the veracity of a spiritual belief system.

Affective faith, on the other hand, refers to faith that arises from observation and reflection, to a sense of confidence and trust in a practice or a person or a certain set of values. This kind of faith is more experiential, or intuitive, than intellectual.

In Western Buddhism today faith (saddha) is understood in the affective sense, as confidence in the Buddha as a symbol of the potential of his beliefs; in his teachings, the Dharma; and in the spiritual community, the Sangha.

Why affective and not cognitive becomes somewhat clearer when we realize that the Buddha claimed to have discovered that certain thoughts, actions and practices lead to the cessation of suffering. Rather than having invented reality either speculatively or miraculously, and then exacting from us blind faith as payment for his revelation,  Buddha discovered something about reality, requiring nothing of us other than a willingness to do what he did and discover it ourselves. And as we see that the general principles work, we develop trust that the more subtle aspects of the teachings will also work.

In my life, faith in the Buddha, Dharma,  and Sangha (the Triple Gem) is the natural consequence of the practice. In other words, mine is affective faith, which comes from an examination, both on and off the cushion, of my experience with suffering.  I suggest you use your practice to do the same.  Generate faith in the practice from your practice by becoming aware of experience with the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in reducing and ending your suffering. See if your dukkha is weaker than it was. Is it fading away? Therein is the source of the faith that will sustain your practice.

When I saw, dramatically and profoundly how the practice had brought peace and happiness to my life, when I realized that the tools it gave me really did work to reduce dukkha, I understood the great value of the Sangha. It is the monastic sangha who are dedicating their lives to preserving the teachings for us all. And as I realized deeply that my own true nature already is enlightenment, I began to develop a reverence and appreciation for the Triple Gem from an unshakeable place inside my practice.

Without faith, I suggest, we cannot get to the other shore. For while the teachings can be secularized, and can be useful when pulled out of context and used, for example, to help us with an anxiety disorder, when we use the teachings simply to get what we want, rather than to end our suffering in the spiritual sense, we are using the teachings unwisely.  When our actions are not informed by wisdom, the raft stays securely anchored on the samsara shore. It is faith that allows us to lift the anchor and paddle our way to liberation on the other shore.

Being faith is so important, eventually we must ask, how can we strengthen our faith? I see two avenues for strengthening faith. The first is through meditation. The second is through developing a contemplative practice, starting with a contemplation of the four noble truths and then continuing with a contemplative study of key texts and sutras.

Graphically, it looks like this.

Practice: In a blog, all that can reasonably be said about anyone’s practice, especially as it relates to faith, is that it should neither be too loose nor too tight, as the Buddha suggested to the monk Sona in the Sona Sutta. And that the practitioner needs to meditate, as conditions permit, as energetically and diligently and effectively as his or her karma allows. Both of these suggestions will increase faith.

Contemplation: As to contemplation, a contemplative understanding of the four noble truths is always beneficial if faith is to be strengthened, as well as some study of dharma texts and sutras. But it isn’t possible in the context of a blog to suggest specific texts or scriptures for study. For advice on your meditation practice or on appropriate texts or teachings or sutras for contemplation, I suggest asking a capital “T” Buddhist Teacher. Strengthening faith strengthens and builds our intention for and our attention to our practice, giving us the critical tools needed to progress along the spiritual path.

EXERCISE: Consider where you are in your practice now in terms of (1) the strength of your faith, the amount of time and the materials in your contemplative practice, and (3) how much meditation you do and the type and effectiveness of your meditation. Place a dot inside the triangle to indicate where you are. Is that where you belong in terms of your understanding of your spiritual journey, in terms of your spiritual needs and growth, in terms of your karma? Do you need to develop or differently emphasize one or more of these three aspects? Discuss this with a Buddhist Teacher or spiritual friend, if possible, to see what might be most beneficial for you.