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..:: Buddhism ::..
By
Alan Schneider
Buddhism as an independent philosophy
originated with Prince Siddhartha, who was born in the ancient Indian
community of Lumbini, and later raised in Kapilavastu. His father was
the regional King Suddhodana. Suddhodana was visited shortly after
Siddhartha’s birth by a wise man who foretold that the infant Prince
would either become a king himself, or a spiritual teacher – a sadhu.
King Suddhodana did his best to bias the outcome of the wise man’s
prediction in the direction of kingship by keeping Siddhartha sheltered
within the palace walls, but, at age twenty nine, the young Prince
observed four sights outside the palace that deeply effected him – an
elderly man, an ill man, a decomposing corpse, and a religious esthetic
– the Four Sights of Buddhism.
These sights set him on the path of spiritual
investigation. He first conducted this enquiry through the practices of
asceticism and austerity, as a wandering, begging mendicant, but later
rejected these severe approaches in favor of the more moderate practice
of meditation, which eventually came to be known in Buddhist philosophy
as the Middle Path between selfish gluttony on one hand, and
harsh renunciation on the other. At age thirty five, he vowed to enter
meditation and not release the condition until he had solved the riddle
of human suffering. After forty nine days spent in seated meditation
under a pipel tree, which subsequently became known as the Bodhi (or
Wisdom) tree, sustained only by an initial offering of a small bowl
of rice from a local village girl, and becoming emaciated and nearly
dying in the process, he achieved full Enlightenment and became
known as Guatama Buddha. He subsequently accepted his Dharma as a
spiritual teacher, and spent the remainder of his life offering his
insights to others. He died at age eighty in India.
Although there eventually came to be a multitude of
interpretations of the original philosophy of Gautama, Buddhist
teachings can be summarized in a series of concepts that are generally
accepted by all schools and traditions of the practice. The first, and
foundational, belief of Buddhism is that all life is dukkha, or
suffering. This is the First Noble Truth. This suffering has several
origins – birth trauma, illness, old age, fear (including the primary
fear of death), and temporary or permanent separation from what one
loves caused by any number of things. The ultimate, root cause of
suffering, however, apart from the surface factors just mentioned, is
tanha, the condition of desire or craving for something. This is the
Second Noble Truth. Therefore, the way to end suffering is to end
desire and attachment, the Third Noble Truth. This is no mean feat for
the appetite-driven, ego-mediated ordinary personal consciousness, so,
in response to this condition, Buddhism prescribes the Noble Eight Fold
Path as the Fourth, and final, Noble Truth.
The Noble Eight Fold Path is the curative for ordinary
consciousness, which is virtually enslaved to desire by the ego. These
are eight steps toward Enlightenment as stipulated by Gautama himself.
The first step is is Right Knowledge obtained by intensively
studying the Four Noble Truths listed in the preceding paragraph as a
means of deeply pondering and understanding their full significance. The
second step is Right Thought – the positive, assertive decision
to set one’s life on the correct moral path. The third step toward
Enlightenment is Right Speech, practiced by refraining from
lying, harsh language, unjust criticism, and gossip about others and
their activities. The fourth step is Right Conduct, which is
comprised of the Five Precepts – Do not kill, Do not steal, Do
not lie, Do not fornicate, and Do not consume intoxicants. The fifth
step is Right Livelihood – one must earn one’s living in a manner
that does not cause harm to living things. Right Effort,
the sixth step, implies continuous effort to maintain and enhance good,
positive thoughts and mental conditions, while eliminating all evil,
negative thoughts and impulses. The seventh step, Right Mindfulness,
involves becoming intensely aware of all states of manifestation in the
body, emotions, and mind. Finally, the eight step, Right
Concentration, entails practicing the deepest possible, ongoing
meditation to develop higher consciousness and ultimately attain full
Enlightenment. Additionally, The Noble Eight Fold Path is frequently
summarized as Right Wisdom, steps one and two above, Right
Morality, steps three and four above, and Right Concentration,
seen in steps five through eight. Taken together as a system of living,
these prescriptions are held to free the individual from suffering,
ignorance, and desire.
The principles of Buddhist thought and philosophy can be
traced to some of the earlier beliefs and practices of the Yoga
tradition in India. Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga, the foundational
doctrine of Indian asceticism, and in particular, the Yamas and Niyamas
of Yoga, are very similar to many of the steps in the Noble Eight Fold
Path. But there are several critical philosophical distinctions that
separate the Buddhist from the Yogi. Gautama felt that the austerity of
Yoga practice, including the severity of physical discipline required to
attain the postures of both Kundalini and Hatha Yoga, was so extreme in
and of itself that it was fundamentally imbalanced as a doctrine, and
would tend to prevent the attainment of Enlightenment for just that
reason. He was mirrored in this sentiment by the much more recent
Bengali Avatar Ramakrishna, who also disavowed renunciation and
austerity as sacred paths, along with several other gurus and pundits in
contemporary Indian history. Gautama was convinced that more relatively
moderate measures represented the best route to spiritual freedom for
most individuals. And Buddhism also does not officially idealize
the highest human qualities into Gods and Goddesses, nor the lowest ones
into Demons, as does Hinduism.
Buddhism is a set of practical measures designed to relieve
human suffering at the source of that suffering – psychological
attachment through ignorance to the twin problems of desire, as
an ego-driven mental condition, and the objects of desire, as
mental distractions that prevent the attainment of inner peace. These
are the two horns of the human perceptual dilemma. Buddhism is not
concerned with the religious definition of evil per se, nor with this or
that God, or Name of God, or form of God, but with the direct
elimination of suffering alone. In the words of the Native American ”If
your philosophy doesn’t grow corn, I don’t want to hear about it!” That
which is of little or no practical consequence is of no interest to the
Buddhist, who finds the self faced with the enormous task of
deconditioning and retraining basic human nature away from its
self-sustained mirage of gratification, and into a humble appreciation
and acceptance of reality as it is. The sincere practice of Buddhism
begins in the Heart Chakra with the attainment of humility and the
practice of compassion for all living beings as they struggle
through this frequently (inevitably?) difficult physical existence. For
human beings, the focus of this struggle is customarily ego
awareness.
We have evolved to be obsessive problem solvers, with the
ego as the crowning achievement of that trend. The ego is always ready
to laud its prodigious abilities as the provider of solutions to all
problems, but always conceals its true nature as a problem
creator, and the true nature of life as an endless series of
lasting problems punctuated by transitory gratifications. Very few of us
realize the folly of endless problem solving, and turn away from the
hopeless dream of utopia to embrace the truth of living – that lasting
happiness depends on realistic acceptance of life’s limitations. We are
by nature frustrated creatures doomed to suffer in ignorance, with the
hope of releasing that suffering through the attainment of inner wisdom
and Enlightenment.
Although the Noble Eight Fold Path is comprised of many
techniques to relieve human suffering, I believe that it would
ultimately be doomed to obscurity without the Eight step of Right
Concentration – meditation. The core Buddhist meditation
technique is Mindfulness Meditation – essentially a process of
self-hypnosis that uses the natural sequence of breathing to induce the
required trance and state of deep relaxation. In order to utilize
Mindfulness Meditation, one simply needs to: 1) assume a comfortable
posture, 2) close the eyes, and 3) begin slow, deep breathing while
maintaining attention on that breathing to the exclusion of other
things. Clearly, the Buddha was not interested in complicating things in
life! The entire thrust of the many Buddhist meditation, chanting, and
visualization techniques is the de-emphasis of ego-driven “rational”
thought. This supports the primary goal of inducing relaxation and
relieving stress and other related suffering. Some techniques are
pointedly, intentionally, and utterly irrational – many of the
well-known Buddhist Temple Chants are often exactly what they first
appear to be to the uninitiated – senseless mumbles that, however, have
the very sensible purpose of aiding relaxation and supporting the
attainment of inner peace through negation of the ego and its incessant
demands to live in a comfortable, predictable world of logic and
coherence. Only in meditation and related spiritual practices can inner
peace be found, hopefully culminating with patience and practice in the
attainment of Satori, the highest state of Enlightened consciousness
attainable in the Buddhist paradigm. At the level of Satori all of the
fundamentally egoistic distinctions of subject and object dissolve into
the unified perception of non-dual consciousness – Oneness with
the totality of existence experienced as the One – a profound
submergence in the great ocean of existence-and-non-existence.
In its real-world focus on the relief of suffering, Buddhism
does not necessarily deal with reincarnation any more than it deals with
the existence of God. But, typical of the all-inclusive nature of this
philosophy, to not deal with either God or reincarnation is to
become egoistically attached to the concepts of not-God
and not-reincarnated, something as unacceptable to the Buddhist
as all other attachments. Thus, many schools of this tradition do
allow for the existence of Divinity, the Soul, and reincarnation of the
Soul. This an example indicating why so much divergence has occurred in
Buddhist development – if the ego is the root problem of human
existence, it is also the root manifestation of physical human
consciousness, and cannot be eliminated without the resultant
disintegration of that consciousness into the pre-existing, non-rational
field state that permits the illogical existence of simultaneously
manifest opposites. Is there a God? Yes. Is there a God? No. Is there a
God? Possibly. Is there a Soul? Yes, no, and maybe, but whatever and
wherever it is can only be contacted in the Unified Field of
Consciousness – the One beyond fragmented dualist perception!
Perhaps Buddhism is what happens when our sentience attempts
to observe itself, and realizes that nothing is there but an empty
mirror, devoid even of a background reflection. Perhaps the ultimate
truth of Satori is that nothing exists once we suspend the
desire for existence, or possibly that everything exists, but once
we find true, lasting peace this no longer is of consequence to the self
joyfully released from the bonds of desire and attachment. The student
once asked the Buddhist Master “Master, what did you do before attaining
Enlightenment?” the Master answered, “Chop wood and carry water.” The
student then asked “And what do you do now that you have become
Enlightened?” The answer came “Chop wood and carry water!” without
expectations, of course; the Master had become the wood, the
water, the chopping, and the carrying.
Buddhism is very probably the final destination of a biologically funded
human consciousness that is fated to pass through a very brief interval
of linear existence having an ill-defined beginning, turbulent
expansion, and apparently terminating in another ill-defined conclusion.
Even if all we can do for the term is manage our stress as effectively
as possible, this is certainly a very worthwhile goal. The Buddhist
philosophy and lifestyle provide one of the most effective stress
management systems in the world, through the practice of enhanced
self-observation and appetite redirection into wisdom and Enlightenment.
I have nothing but reverence for it.
- With Love, Alan -
(CR2008, Alan Schneider)
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