Religion 101 (21 page)

— The Buddha

The Three Marks of Existence

Dukkha
is the first of the three marks of existence.
Dukkha
is descriptive; it’s the diagnosis. The second two marks are part of the diagnosis.
Anicca
is best translated as “impermanence.” Things are constantly changing.

Religion 101 Question

Do I need to isolate myself to realize enlightenment?

The Buddha believed the Path was for everyone and no matter who you are you can realize
nirvana
. Sometimes the most challenging practice takes place in the outside world as you are forced to work harder when confronted with the many distractions of daily life. Enlightenment may be easier in a monastery, but is available anywhere.

Anatta
is the next mark and means “no-self” or “not self.”
Anatta
suggests that what appears to be “me” is not something solid, enduring, or stable. Whatever this “me,” it is also subject to
anicca
. It’s always changing from one moment to the next and only gives the appearance of solidity. The Buddha rejects the idea of an eternal soul. Whatever this self appears to be it is not solid and is always changing.

The Three Poisons

The unawakened mind is inextricably intertwined with three poisons:

1. Greed (craving, desire, thirst)
   
2. Hatred (aversion, aggression)
   
3. Delusion (ignorance)
   

They arise out of misunderstanding the three marks of
dukkha
,
anicca
, and
anatta
and, in turn, greed, hatred, and delusion are the primary cause of
dukkha
. In awakening you greatly reduce your involvement with these poisons and it is by reducing these poisons that you can progress toward the awakened mind.

The Five Aggregates

In order to understand the nature of the self, the Buddha broke down the individual into five groups or aggregates of attachment.

The five aggregates he named are as follows.

1. The aggregate of matter (eye, ear, nose, throat, hand, etc.).
   
2. The aggregate of feelings and sensations (sight, sound, smell, taste, thought, form).
   
3. The aggregate of perception.
   
4. The aggregate of volitions or mental formations.
   
5. The aggregate of consciousness (response).
   

Each aggregate is subject to change. Your body changes constantly. In fact, most cells of your body change every seven years and, in fact, every atom in your body changes over about once every year. Feelings and sensations change constantly as well. Your ideas change. Your intentions change; these are the basis for your actions.

Since you cannot act on that which you do not experience (you do not act on a sound you do not hear), the fifth aggregate, consciousness, depends on all the other aggregates for its existence. The action or response you make based on the intention you had based on your perception of your senses from your body is
solely
dependent on each of the preceding phenomena. This is the Buddha’s teaching of
dependent origination.

These five aggregates together comprise
duhkha
, or suffering. If you think of a river you will notice that the river is constantly changing. You cannot see one part of the river and stop to examine it and find it as fixed. Just like the river, you are ever changing.

The Second Noble Truth: The Cause of Suffering Is Desire

The Second Noble Truth can be summed up in one word:
desire
, and is known as the truth of arising (of suffering). Desire is like an overflowing river carrying you away to
samsara
.

The teaching of Buddha

is like a great cloud

which with a single kind of rain

waters all human flowers

so that each can bear its fruit.

— Lotus Sutra 5

You suffer because you reach out for certain things, push other things away, and generally neglect to appreciate that everything is changing constantly (
anicca
). The Buddha calls upon you to examine your relationship to your senses. Are they pushing you around, leading you into trouble, becoming an excessive preoccupation? Find the middle way, neither indulging in nor avoiding sensory experiences.

The Third Noble Truth: Suffering Can End!

Nirvana
literally means “cooling by blowing” or “blowing out.” What blows out? Adherence to the three poisons (
kleshas
): greed, hatred, and delusion. The misery can stop if life can be approached with wisdom (
Prajna
) instead of desire. With meditation you can see into the three marks of existence and are no longer fooled by them:
dukkha
(suffering; pervasive dissatisfaction),
anicca
(impermanence), and
anatta
(no-self). Advanced meditation provides the opportunity to burn up past karma or the conditionings that you have experienced. It is akin to untying knots that have accumulated in your mind over a lifetime of experiences. Each knot that is untied, each conditioning that is deconditioned, every bit of karma that is burned up moves you closer to awakening.

The Fourth Noble Truth: The Way

To get to nirvana, you must traverse the Noble Eightfold Path (more about this in the following section). This path can be divided into three sections: morality (
sila
; right speech, right action, right livelihood), meditation (
samadhi
; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration), and wisdom and insight (
Prajna
; right view, right thought). This is an entirely self-sufficient path. No outside intercessor is required to reach this salvation.

This, O Monks, is the Truth of the Path which leads to the cessation of suffering. It is this Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of:

1. Right View
   
2. Right Resolve
   
3. Right Speech
   
4. Right Action
   
5. Right Livelihood
   
6. Right Effort
   
7. Right Mindfulness
   
8. Right Meditation
   

— The Truth of the Path (
Magga
)

The Four Noble Truths are the basic teachings of the Buddha. They embody action and have the potential to guide you toward a radical transformation. These teachings revolutionized the spiritual and later political landscape of ancient India. These simple truths are not abstractions. Each one is testable through your own experience. To work through the Four Noble Truths, you recognize, realize experience, and practice. These are the actions for enlightened living. The Four Noble Truths are a wake-up call to how your life is being encumbered with self-inflicted misery and offers a way out of this misery.

THE EIGHTFOLD PATH

The Middle Way

The Middle Way, or the Noble Eightfold Path, is the roadmap for Buddhist living. There are three sections of the Path that contain the eight “right” or “wise” ways to be, and each section is a platform for the next in a continuous process.

The Path

1. Right Action
   
2. Right Speech
   
3. Right Livelihood
   
4. Right Effort
   
5. Right Concentration
   
6. Right Mindfulness
   
7. Right View
   
8. Right Resolve
   

The Buddha uses the word
right
in the way we would say something is appropriate. The Buddha is not prescribing or proscribing specific actions because appropriate action depends on context. These right approaches stem from directly experiencing which actions lead to happiness and which actions lead to misery.

The Eightfold Path is divided into three categories. They are:

1. Morality (
   Sila
   )
   
2. Meditation (
   Samadhi
   )
   
3. Wisdom (
   Prajna
   )
   

Morality includes numbers one, two, and three: right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Meditation is made up of the middle three steps (four, five, and six): right effort, right concentration, and right mindfulness. And finally, Wisdom is comprised of numbers seven and eight: right view and right resolve.

Practice, Practice

The eight steps are not meant to be done sequentially but are to be practiced all the time, simultaneously, each and every one. The Middle Way is a program of action.

Right Speech

Speech is a powerful force and can be used for good or for harm. To practice right speech, you must speak the truth and avoid unnecessary communications such as gossip. While you might not always be certain of the right thing to say, you probably know the
wrong
things to say:

• Lies
  
• Slander
  
• Cursing or abusive language
  
• Raising one’s voice unnecessarily
  
• Harsh words
  
• Speaking too much (rattling on)
  
• Gossip
  
• Creating enmity
  

Right Action

Right action can be understood through the directive “Do no harm,” at least not intentionally. Right action is similar to right speech. Your actions should be harmonious with your environment leading to peace rather than ill will. Do nothing that will cause harm to others. Obviously harmful acts include the following:

• Stealing
  
• Taking of life, human and otherwise
  
• Destruction of person or property or peacefulness
  
• Overindulging
  

Right action includes sexual responsibility — no adultery or prostitution. It also includes abstaining from alcohol and recreational drugs.

Right Livelihood

Right livelihood means to avoid harm through your work in the world. Just as with sensory perceptions of the body, the goal is not renunciation, but rather a lack of attachment. There is no prohibition against the accumulation of wealth or of having luxurious possessions. It all depends on the relationship you have to these things.

Occupations a Buddhist might want to avoid include but are not limited to the following:

• Arms dealer
  
• Drug dealer
  
• Working with intoxicants and poisons
  
• Butcher
  
• Executioner
  

Religion 101 Question

Where did the name for the Lotus 1-2-3 computer program come from?

Mitch Kapor, computer programmer and developer of the program, is a practicing Buddhist. In Buddhism, the lotus flower symbolizes the purity of mind, body, and spirit floating above the muddy waters of attachment.

Right Effort

The next three disciplines are all mental disciplines and directly relate to meditation practices.

All this practice takes quite a bit of effort, so now you need to make sure you are using the appropriate amount of effort, somewhere in between the extremes of laziness and overdoing it. Right effort also means getting rid of improper attitudes and thoughts. When unproductive or unsavory thoughts arise you must expend the necessary level of effort to return your attention to what is happening in the present moment.

Right Concentration

As mentioned earlier, progress along the Path requires meditation. The mind must be your ally and not your enemy. The Buddha did not invent meditation; such techniques were being practiced in his day and for thousands of years before his time. As a child, the Buddha was a meditation prodigy, falling into a meditative state spontaneously under the Rose Apple Tree when he was eight years old.

Mindfulness was the method that most directly spoke to the impermanence of things and helped the Buddha to realize his awakening.

Right concentration is an important foundation for right mindfulness. It is by practicing the appropriate forms of concentration that you make mindfulness more available.

Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness requires a foundation of right concentration. While practicing mindfulness meditation or
vipassana
you will have a direct experience of the three marks of existence. By paying attention to, for instance, the rising and falling of your breathing or the arising and fading away of sensations in the body, you will have a direct experience of impermanence (
anicca
). When you see how your mind engages with painful stories or identifies with themes of loss or deprivation, you have a direct experience of suffering (
dukkha
). When you practice and the mind gets concentrated and stays with the moment-to-moment phenomenological energies of being alive you have a direct experience of no-self (
anatta
).

Right mindfulness asks you to retrieve your attention from the future, especially if that future-oriented attention takes the form of worry. Right mindfulness asks you to retrieve your attention from the past, especially if that past-oriented attention takes the form of regret. Once retrieved, bring your attention back to the present moment and notice with interest what is happening.

Right View

Right view means to have a total comprehension of the Four Noble Truths. Right thought means a detachment from hatred (and cruelty). These factors are unique to the Buddha’s teachings. The culmination of these views, based on morality and meditation, is the experience of Prajna (wisdom or insight into the ultimate reality of things).

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make our world.

— The Buddha

What did the Buddha mean by right view? Right view is the ability to experience things beyond conditioned experience. It removes the biasing filters of past experience and allows you to experience reality closer to the way it actually is. It requires letting go of preconceptions, judgments, and reactivity developed over a lifetime of habit. Meditation (and its constituents, right effort, concentration, and mindfulness) will help you to identify your preconceptions, judgments, and reactivity, and to see how they are active in your experience.