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by Jayaram V
Don't put a head on your head. What is wrong with the
head you already have? -Nyogen Syenzaki
Listen to the one who is listening - Master Bankei
Practice is enlightenment. Enlightenment is practice. Just sit. -
Daido-shi as said to Dinty W.Moore.
In its ultimate essence, Buddhism aims to help you end your
suffering through
awareness and conscientious intelligence. It helps
you understand how you become what you are and what factors shape your
life and your personality. You learn it by paying close attention to
yourself and the world in which you live. In the process you gain
control over your own thoughts, actions and responses and find peace
and stability in yourself. The teachings of the Buddha are the
guidelines. But you are under no compulsion to follow him or the millions of monks and teachers who are
venerated by various schools of Buddhism. What
you need is a head on your own shoulders that is truly yours, free
from illusions, deceit and worldliness. The teachings of the Buddha are preserved in
the Buddhist canon. But there are a thousand variations in which they
are practiced. The differences are inevitable, because Buddhism aims to
save you from the conditioning of your own mind and from the
deceptions and the defenses you entertain ignorantly to distract yourself
from the real suffering in your life. A Buddhist may
disagree with his fellow Buddhists on finer aspects of practice and theory. But
he generally accepts the
dhamma-vinaya, consisting of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold
Path, as the core philosophy of his life.
In Buddhism there is no place for blind
faith. Every principle has to be tested in real life situations and
understood through personal experience. The Buddha himself advised his followers
to guard themselves against religious authority and be lamps unto themselves. Centuries later a similar theme was echoed by
J.Krishnamurthy, though not a Buddhist in the strict sense of the
word, when he said that religion was a
pathless land in which each one had to find one's own path. Rinzai Roku, a Zen
master, summed up the same approach beautifully when he said,
"If you become the master of each circumstance, wherever you
stand, whatever you do, is Truth itself." Scholars of
various schools of Buddhism may spend time in putting forth arguments and
subtle nuances of their respective schools of
philosophy in
defense of their beliefs and practices. But if you have studied
Buddhism in some detail and understood its deepest essence or its core
values, you will realize that Buddhism is all about knowing yourselves
by being grounded in reality and living with right intentions, with a sense of ethical responsibility,
to break through the conditioning to which you are susceptible and end your suffering
which is the dominant aspect of your life. It is about
being who you are
and what you are, living
consciously and righteously, in the present
moment, with loving kindness and total body and mind awareness.
Buddhism does not concern itself with speculation about the nature
and existence of soul and God. Its
emphasis is on using our own experiences to know what causes our
suffering so that we can end it. It asks you to focus on the present
reality, in a state of relaxed awareness, using your own body and mind
as the vehicles of truth. Most religions encourage meditation on God and soul.
But Buddhism views them as distractions having no real value in ending
human suffering. A Buddhist practitioner, who is grounded in objective
reality, will not concern himself whether they
exist or not because in his opinion such a pursuit will not lead him
to Nirvana or
freedom from suffering. For him we cannot resolve our current
illusions by means of newer illusions. If we want to break out of our
illusions and the deceptions that we build around, we ought to learn
to look at reality with pristine clarity. So he aims to cultivate mindfulness
to make sense of his existence and the suffering that characterizes
it. He tries to understand how his thoughts, intentions and actions
are constantly shaping his reality and precipitating his reactions and
responses. By doing it he comes to know the importance of righteous
living according to the Eightfold Path to escape from the
consequences of his own karma.
From a Buddhist perspective, life is not about having goals or
reaching somewhere. It is not about striving and seeking or fulfilling
our desires. It is about knowing who you are
and live mindfully with a sense of responsibility, following the
Dharma consciously, intelligently and ethically as the means
to end your suffering. Ethical living is indispensable in Buddhism because it is
the only way you can end the suffering caused by your own karma.
Remember, in Buddhism there is no God who can drop whatever He has
been doing to come and rescue you. In life you are your own savior.
You are the doer and your are the sufferer. What matters most is your
own actions and intentions. When you realize how the
inexorable law of karma works, you will understand the immense
responsibility with which you should live in the world to escape
from its awful consequences. You will realize how you have been constantly drawing
yourself into the vortex of life through your own actions and
responses. In Buddhism, the emphasis, therefore, is not on going somewhere, but
staying where you are, being who you are, living responsibly and conscientiously, and
discover the truth concerning yourself and the world in which you
live.
Monastic life is one of the distinguishing features of Buddhism.
The Buddha established monasteries in various parts of India, to
encourage the monks to live together and benefit from their
collective wisdom, learning from each other, so that the practice and promulgation
of Dharma would continue simultaneously. However, strictly speaking,
in Buddhism, monastic life is not indispensable for the practice of
Dharma, although it is a recommended ideal.
A lay Buddhist can live amidst the world and use his very house as a monastery
and his very life as an opportunity to practice
the Eightfold Path and realize the significance of the Four Noble
Truths. The monastery provides an ideal setting for stabilizing the
mind and overcoming the monkey nature. But it can be done in
ordinary life also. One does not have to
become a monk to experience mindfulness. What is important is constant
practice for practice sake without expectation. As an ancient Zen saying
declares, "One monk has left home but is not on the way. The other
has never left home, but is on the way." Monkhood is a state of
mind rather than a religious observance. For a Buddhist, the world
offers endless opportunities to practice mindfulness and experience life in its totality. Every moment of
your life, everything you do in your wakeful state, is a good
opportunity to know the underlying truths that drive you to action, the illusions
that you use to avoid the real issues of your life and the suffering
that arises from your ignorance as you play your role in the drama of
your life.
The Buddhist meditation is the means where by one can test the
truths taught by the Buddha. In the earlier stages, a Buddhist initiate
may set aside a specific time and place to practice meditation. But as
he progresses on the path, he is advised to bring meditation to his daily life and
use it continuously throughout his
waking hours. In Buddhism some meditation practices are simple and
some very complex, but both aim to develop in you total awareness
through mindfulness. Every object and every activity is an opportunity
to practice meditation. You can do the practice, using your normal and
routine activities such as breathing, walking, sitting, standing, cleaning, talking,
bathing, eating, drinking, writing or any of the myriad activities
that you do every day. It is in the observation of mundane life that
you find extraordinary truths concerning yourself. What you are
expected to do is to pay attention to
your thoughts, feelings or emotions in the present moment, as the
world floats by, and use the awareness so gained to practice the
virtues of the Buddha through righteous living. In subsequent stages
you may consciously practice virtues by cultivating thoughts of non-injury,
truthfulness, compassion, love,
forgiveness and peace and extend them selflessly towards the rest of
the creation for the welfare of all.
This is basically the structure and content of the Buddhist
meditation. While it looks simple, its practice is not so, because it
would require years of regular practice and right effort before you
can reach anywhere near the ideal of total mindfulness and freedom
from illusion. By declaring that there is no such thing as an absolute
and immortal soul, Buddhism brings salvation closer to our lives and makes
it an earthly concept,
central to human life and its main purpose, which is ending suffering. If you are a non Buddhist and want to
make the best use of its meditation practices, simply do this. Be
mindful of whatever you do. Pay attention to everything that goes on
in your life. Stay in the present. Live your life with full
awareness. Breath consciously, eat consciously, walk consciously, read
consciously and, in short, live consciously, as if there is nothing else
in the world and nothing else matters at this very moment. Also make
sure that you live righteously and your actions are guided by right intentions, right thoughts, right
effort and right views. Spread thoughts of love, compassion, peace and
forgiveness towards everything that you find
in your wakeful consciousness: the people, the trees, the plants, the
creatures, the sky, the earth, the air, the water, the rivers, the
stars, the houses and everything else. In short, be a lamp unto
yourself.
Suggested Further Reading
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