It Is What It Is...How Our Opinions Blind Us To Reality

Let me begin with a quick primer on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. They are: Life means suffering; The origin of suffering is attachment; Cessation of suffering is possible; There is a path to the cessation of suffering (The Eightfold Path). I have been taking a course in the concept of non-duality and no-self from a Buddhist teacher here in Mesa. It is very interesting, but a real challenge to wrap one’s mind around. However, there is one concept that I have been contemplating during meditation, that I think I’m beginning to understand, and that I’d like to share with all of you.

I came across a quote last week that states this concept pretty clearly: “It’s not our preferences that cause problems but our attachment to them.” In the Four Noble Truths, the key word seems to be suffering. However, I have come to understand that the suffering is not the acute kinds of suffering that we might bring to mind upon hearing the word, but rather a state of being we allow ourselves to remain in. One of the primary ways in which we do that is by clinging to our preferences and opinions about the way we think things or people ought to be, and believing that perspective to be the reality of that which we experiencing.

Almost reflexively, we tend to categorize our experiences into things we like or don’t like; things never seem to be just as we want them and that is a big part of constant suffering. Certainly this is quite easy to see  in the polarization occurring during the acrimonious election season in which we currently find ourselves, but it pervades how we see almost everything we experience and everyone we meet. Rather than accepting things or people as they are, we immediately make a judgment about them. It is important to understand that it doesn’t make a difference whether that judgment is positive or negative, but rather that we are making one at all. Now, right at the outset, let me say that I know that we are conditioned to do this from the time we are infants. We are taught what (and who) we should (or shouldn’t) like according to our parents’ preferences and biases, and are also often asked what we would like in any given situation.  That said, actually suspending judgment and giving up our attachment to our preferences is a very difficult thing to accomplish, and one that most of us (including me) will probably never attain. So what’s the point?

The point is that our preferences and opinions are something we ourselves impose on our experiences from our own minds, and in so doing are unable to see the truth of them that is being distorted by our biases and prejudices (also known as preferences and opinions). If we are able to look at each person and thing we experience without wanting them to conform to our notion of what they should be, we are then able to see them as they are. You may say, “Okay, how is this related to the suffering you mentioned earlier?” The fact that the world of experience does not conform to our ideas of how it should be is our suffering. Many of us are pretty anxious about how the upcoming election will come out. Regardless of which party or candidate we prefer, we are all suffering because we want it to come out a certain way and can in no way be sure it will. If we were truly able to view it with no preference as to how it should come out, and were able to accept the outcome as it is, with no judgment as to its rightness or wrongness, our suffering in this instance would disappear.

 So it is with everything we experience. Whether it is as simple as the way our spouse puts the roll of toilet paper on the holder or as momentous as not wanting a loved one to have died, our attachment to our preferences keeps us in a constant state of discontent, and that unremitting discontent is the nature our suffering. An important thing to understand is that trying to erase our attachment to our preferences does not mean that we stop caring about things or that we stop trying to improve our world, only that we wish to experience the truth of everything just as it exists. When we do that, then the actions we take in response to that truth will be appropriate and in harmony with reality. The goal each time is to be able to say, “It is what it is”, and more importantly, to accept it.

The last line of the poem “Hsin Hsin Ming”, by the ancient Zen patriarch Sosan, expresses what I have trying to say quite succinctly. It reads:

       

                          “Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”

Whatsoever You Do To The Least Of My Brethren

Weird title for a Buddhist Blog? Not really.

While I was responding to a post on Facebook, I was reminded of the words of a folk song we used to sing when I was still connected to a church. The lyrics said, ”Whatsoever you do for the least of my brethren, that you do unto me.” It is based on a quote attributed to Christ in the New Testament.  When I thought about it after I had written that response, it occurred to me that the quote beautifully expresses one of the main tenets of Buddhism: we are indeed all one and each of us has within us the Buddha nature. There is more than one religious scholar who has posited the suggestion that given where Christ lived, and how extensively he travelled, it is quite possible that during the period of his life which is unaccounted for, he came in contact with Buddhist thought that had already existed for 600 years. Regardless of whether or not that is so, many of the teachings of Buddha and of Christ are strikingly similar. There is an excellent book by the well-known Buddhist monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, called Living Buddha, Living Christ that explores these similarities quite well.

I couldn’t help but notice that Christ does not say treating those in need compassionately is because of him or through him or in his name, but rather is in fact actually treating him that way. He is quite clearly stating that the divinity many believe to have resided in him exists in each and every one of us, and that in extending loving-kindness to the lowest elements of our society we are showing it to ourselves and to every other being because we are all one great inter-dependent entity.

There is a joke that goes, “What did Buddha say to the hot dog vender? Make me one with everything!” This is one of the most central but also most difficult tenets of Buddhism; there is no real self, we are all part and parcel of every living being and all of nature, even the earth itself.  On that basis, every act directed at another person is directed at ourselves and the universe that dwells within all of us. When asked what were the greatest laws, the second part of Christ’s reply was, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I believe that this statement relates directly to the one quoted above. I used to think it meant to love other people as much as you love yourself, but since I have embraced Buddhism, I interpret it to mean literally to love your neighbor AS yourself and yourself AS your neighbor. There is no difference…it is the same act. What is honored in that act is the shared humanity, or perhaps as my youngest would have it, the shared divinity, that links all living beings.

Ultimately, what Christ and Buddha both have tried to teach us is that when we look at that homeless person, or that mentally ill person, or photographs of suffering persons all over the world, we are looking at ourselves in our shared humanity. If I may parody another oft-stated maxim, “There, but for different circumstances I can’t control, go I.”

We are indeed our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers because they are us and we are them. Knowing and embracing that  simple reality engenders neither pity nor revulsion, but true compassion, which, after all,  means, “to feel with.”

The Paths of Fear and Love

Searching for thought on which to meditate this morning, I was thumbing through my well-worn (falling apart, actually) copy of Jack Kornfield’s Buddha’s Little Instruction Book and came across a statement that really grabbed me. It said simply, “There is the path of fear and the path of love. Which will you choose?” As I began to contemplate this seemingly simplistic statement, it occurred to me that much of the strife, political and otherwise, that we see all around us relates strongly to this statement.

The path of fear manifests itself in many, many human attitudes and actions.  It is the path of divisiveness and the path of exclusion. Choosing the path of fear, we believe that we need to be sure we have unfettered access to guns so we can be armed for the conflict and personal attacks that we are told are sure to be coming by those who have also chosen fear. Called readiness by some, it is born of dark imaginings about the intentions of our “enemies.” The path of fear is the path of discrimination, bias and hatred for “the other”, whoever the other might be. The path of fear causes us to see our relationship with others as some kind of competition, whether those others are a different gender, a different race, a different religion or a different socio-economic group; a competition in which someone must lose (them) and someone must win (us). It is couched in the belief that those who are unlike us are hell-bent on taking what we possess and relegating us to some amorphous lesser status. It is couched in the belief that who we are, how we worship, and who we choose to love are a threat to those with whom we disagree. The path of fear teaches us to exclude all those people and thoughts with which we take issue because if everyone is “like us” then we have little to fear. The path of fear teaches us to grasp and accumulate whatever we can to better our lot in life, rather than sharing resources to better us all. The path of fear is one of hyper-vigilance and the result is never to find tranquility or peace.

The path of love is a direct result of recognizing that we are all one, that we are indeed our “brother’s keeper.” The path of love teaches to be inclusive and celebrate the diversity of people and nature that is all around us. The path of love causes us to seek the answers that will benefit all living beings and the environment, rather than those that will allow us to exploit each other and the earth. The path of love causes us to focus on our similarities rather than our differences. It causes us to be willing to forego judgment and to look for common ground. Dr. Albert Schweitzer believed that the greatest human calling is service in benefit of our fellow human beings. It is only the path of love that leads us to that service, whether it be small acts of ordinary kindness or great acts of philanthropy. To choose the path of love is to choose to spend our lives in harmony with the world and people around us, rather than in discord and distrust. On the path of love we recognize the Buddha-nature (some would call it the spark of the divine) in each person with whom we come in contact, and therefore meet them in a place of peace. The path of love is not without sorrow, but it is without hatred, and it allows for forgiveness in place of anger or a desire for vengeance. It is the path to a sense of peace and well-being that is simply not possible on the path of fear.

To quote one of my favorite poems, by Robert Frost, “I chose the path less-travelled-by…and that has made all the difference.”

Everything Has A Shelf Life

I was cleaning out the refrigerator a couple of days ago and in doing so was checking on the “sell by” and “use by” dates on the various containers. This inspired me to do the same with the cabinets and drawers in which we store the “non perishables.” It was while I was doing that it occurred to me that there is nothing that is in fact non-perishable…not even us. More and more often I seem to be struck by an increasing awareness of the impermanence of everything. I guess I’m really beginning understand this simple tenet of Buddhist philosophy.

Put in simple terms, everything has a shelf life.  There is absolutely nothing that is not in the process of perishing or changing. Every living thing is dying…our bodies, our parents, our children, our pets, our flower gardens, our vegetable gardens, the insects we encounter, all of the animal kingdom, all of the creatures in the sea, the trees in our yards and the jungles…everything. Even the things that appear to be inanimate are wearing out, rusting, weakening, changing. The mountains are slowly eroded by the wind, the seashore by the waves…the very rocks around us are turning to dust as we sit and read this. Certainly we know that our houses, cars, computers, electronics, tools, the streets we live on and the highways and bridges on which we drive, all are in a constant state of decay and must continually be maintained to preserve their use for the longest possible time.  Our careers, our relationships, things we love to do and things we hate to do all eventually will end. There is no escape. Now you may be saying to yourself, “ I don’t want to think about this…it depresses me.” It’s this very attitude that causes pretty much all of us to do anything we can to support the illusion that we can hold on to things or to people we love forever. Sales of make-up, cosmetic surgery, miracle cures for obesity and many other ailments are in the billions and billions of dollars, all in an attempt to stave off the inevitable.

The irony is that truly embracing the reality of impermanence in our existence enhances the worth of everything and everyone around us. It leads us to appreciate each and every moment and experience, rather than letting our lives pass by unnoticed, as if it were to go on forever. There is a small book I love called Buddha’s Little Instruction Book by Jack Kornfield, a renowned Buddhist teacher. It consists of short phrases and sayings that illustrate Buddhist philosophy. One of my very favorites is, “The trouble is you think you have time.” Rather than recognizing that our time on the planet is indeed limited, we “spend” much of it as if it were an endless resource. Thinking that we indeed possess time, causes us to view many things as routine and not worthy of attention, when in fact these are the things that our lives consist of. Accepting the reality of impermanence causes us to treasure and recognize the significance of each moment and each experience. It allows us to take joy in all the good things we experience and also allows us to realize that the bad things we experience will also pass. Isn’t what makes a beautiful sunset such a joy to behold the fact that literally before our eyes, it is changing color and disappearing within minutes. We are awed by it because it is so gorgeous and yet so fleeting. The reality is that each moment of our lives is actually doing the same thing…we should be awed by that as well.