Buddhist Belief – Are You “UP” for It?
“It is important to recognize the power of our emotions–and to take responsibility for them by creating a light and positive atmosphere around ourselves. This attitude of joy that we create helps alleviate states of hopelessness, loneliness, and despair. Our relationships with others thus naturally improve, and little by little the whole of society becomes more positive and balanced.”~~~ Tarthang Tulku
We’ve been going through the basic teachings of
Buddhist Belief. We began with the enlightenment experience of the Buddha and some information about how he came to reach this place in his own life. That enlightenment experience is the crucial experience that we could all have by choosing the Buddhist path. And from those basics we wrote about the first teachings given by the Buddha about the dissatisfactoriness of all conditioned things; the dukkha, the suffering. And the Second Truth, the cause of suffering: the clinging, the greed, the thirst for more and more. And the Third Truth: the end of suffering, Nirvana, the relinquishment of craving, attachment, and greed.
In the past few articles we’ve written about the Fourth Truth, which is the Eightfold Path. This is the eight-faceted way of enlightened living — the eight principles of living a life without suffering — living with Nirvana. It is the way to the relinquishment of attachment, of greed, of resistance, of partiality — the ultimate alleviation of insatiable thirst; not just temporarily alleviating thirst by drinking more and more salt water, (the salt water of our desires), which just makes us more thirsty, addictive, and dependent. Rather, it is the ultimate fulfillment of our thirst for freedom and peace and love; the end of suffering, the end of doubt and despair.
As we said in previous articles, The Eightfold Path of awakening is divided into three trainings: sila, samadhi, and prajna — morality or self-discipline, meditation or reflection, and wisdom or awareness. This path is explained further in eight principles, so we can see better how to apply these trainings in our own life.
The first two principles pertain to wisdom. We explain the principles of wisdom first because we often think we live our lives in order to develop wisdom, when we should realize we can live our lives according to wisdom.
* Right, or Perfect or Faultless View and Understanding: Seeing things as they are in the present moment, without coloration, without distortion, without self-deception, without projections; seeing karma at work, seeing that as we sow so shall we reap. Seeing that we are responsible for the kind of experiences we encounter in our lives. Virtue brings its own reward. Wholesomeness furthers itself, and negativity brings back negativity to us. By seeing this deeply, moment by moment, we become more and more at one with this understanding, rather than out-of-tune with it and unaligned.
* Right, or Perfect or Faultless attitude: Impeccable thought, free from aversion and desire and ignorance. To put this principle in more practical terms, we could say it’s about being more cheerful, friendly and positive. A term we hear often these days is loving-kindness, a term which means friendliness. It means to be positive. It means to be buoyant. It means being “up”. This principle even goes deeper. It’s not about making this some ideal we should strive to include in our lives, rather we should be cultivating this behavior as normal wherever we go in life. Why not? Think about it. What could be wrong about unleashing our spontaneity and having a more child-like nature? What could be wrong about wishing the best for one and all?
I think as children most of us probably wanted everybody to be happy. Did you? Of course, as children, our universe is much smaller — our “everybody” most likely didn’t go much beyond our families and our friends. As some of the readers of my blogs know, I lost my desire for happiness at an early age, not only for myself, but for many others as well. Because of a dysfunctional home life, I grew up living on the streets of Detroit, Michigan. I became a part-time “street kid” when I was eight years old — and graduated to full-time when I was eleven. In order to survive living “on the streets” there were certain lessons I had to learn, and learn well. The two main lessons were how to fight better than the “other guy” and how to con or frighten people into giving you money, food and jobs. When I was just a kid and throughout my teen years, these lessons did help me to avoid many disasters.
But where did my innate desire for happiness go? I didn’t know any other way to live, so I continued to apply these same lessons as a young adult. However, applying these to adult life began to bring the karma back around. Eventually, as the Buddha taught, sure enough, I was more than dissatisfied with my life. I realized everything was more complex. I was highly competitive and would do anything to better the “other guy”. Any notion of purity of heart seemed washed out of me. I didn’t like my life, but I also didn’t seem to have the wisdom to see how to make the changes needed.
Was there still some element of innate wisdom in me to reconnect with loving-kindness, happiness, friendliness and respect for others? Was there a way to discover the principles of faultless thought and attitude? Fortunately, the universe works in mysterious ways. It brought into my life circumstances which taught me the value of seeing things as they really are. (The “circumstances” mentioned are an entire story unto itself and beyond the scope of this blog.) With that wisdom working in me it became possible to develop an attitude towards life, and others, which was one-hundred-eighty degrees the opposite of how I had always lived. That wisdom began with an understanding of how violence always leads to more violence. This wisdom eventually worked its way into a new attitude about compassion and peace.
Today, when I think of compassion I think of this sense of empathy. Compassion has become a kind of buzzword today. When you feel what others feel, or if you put yourself in their shoes, then you can treat them like you would like to be treated — you become more helpful, compassionate, and kind, rather than abusive, exploitative, and aggressive.
The more we cultivate compassion, loving-kindness, well-wishing meditation and prayers, charity, service, and altruism, then we discover how our actions warm up the whole environment. It truly is a major force. Not just that we radiate light and compassion, but out of that comes a natural way of being, caring, and helping. It also resonates with others in a way that generates similar behavior in them.
As a part of the principles of faultless view and understanding, and perfect, faultless attitude, come the other group of ethics, self-discipline, character and virtue. Also faultless speech which we touched on previously, faultless action and faultless livelihood.
We’ll write more about these in coming articles about the Eightfold Path of Buddhist Belief.
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Here’s an article by Karen Armstrong a prominent author on religious history. Karen Armstrong’s books about different religions, including her highly acclaimed “A History of God,” have made her one of the most prominent authors on religious history. The London-based “On Faith” panelist also is the author of three television documentaries and took part in Bill Moyers’ television series “Genesis.”
I thought you might find it interesting since our article today is related.
Calling All Religions to Compassion
Compassion is indeed central to every one of the major world religions — but sometimes you would never know it. Increasingly religion is associated with violence and intolerance; it seems preoccupied with dogma, belief, getting to heaven, or enforcing correct sexual behavior. There are magnificent exceptions, of course, but it is rare to hear religious leaders speaking of the primary importance of compassion.
People don’t even seem to know what it means. It is often assumed to mean “pity” or “feeling sorry” for somebody. But the root of this Greco-Latin word is “to experience with;” compassion compels us to dethrone the egotism, self-preoccupation and selfishness that hold us back from the divine and put ourselves in the place of another.
All the great religious sages insist that compassion is the chief religious duty. The first person to do so was Confucius, who, five hundred years before Christ, was the first to formulate the Golden Rule: “Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” It was the central “thread” that ran through all his teaching and should be practiced “all day and every day.” Every single faith has evolved its own version of the Golden Rule, which requires us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain and refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else.
“My religion is kindness,” said the Dalai Lama; you can have faith that moves mountains, says St Paul, but it is worthless without charity; Rabbi Hillel said that the Golden Rule was the essence of Torah: everything else was “only commentary.” Muslims begin every reading of the Qur’an by invoking the compassion of God. But the religions also insist that you cannot confine your compassion to your own kind; you have to have “concern for everybody,” love your enemies, and honor the stranger.
The major task of our generation is to build a global community where people of all persuasions can live together in mutual respect. If we do not achieve this, we will not have a viable world to hand on to our children. We must implement the Golden Rule globally, treating other peoples ~ whoever they may be ~ as we would wish to be treated ourselves. Any ideology ~ religious or secular ~ that breeds hatred or disdain will fail the test of our time.
The religions should be making a major contribution to this essential task ~ and that is why it is important to sign on to the Charter of Compassion, change the conversation, and make it cool to be compassionate.
We hope that hundreds of thousands of people ~ Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Confucians and atheists all over the world will contribute their insights on line on our multi-lingual website.
The world will help to write this Charter to return religion to the spirit of the Golden Rule. Can we make a difference? “Yes We Can!”
Please e-mail On Faith if you’d like to receive an email notification when On Faith sends out a new question.
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For those who wanted me to repeat the links for the books I’ve mentioned in the last few articles, here they are again:
Eckhart Tolle’s amazing best seller, “A New Earth”
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s wonderful book, “My Stroke of Insight” — “Nirvana is just a breath away!”
And this one by Sharon Salzberg and is entitled: “A Heart as Wide as the World: Living with Mindfulness, Wisdom and Compassion“.
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Always remember this wonderful quote from Buddha ….
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”~~~ Buddha
Shanti everyone, … (A sanscrit word meaning, “Let there be Peace. Peace, beautiful Peace. Peace within, Peace without. Peace in this world. Peace for all beings.”)
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”~~~ Buddha
Have a peaceful day!! —
Ron Rink
http://www.theleaderinside.com
http://www.wecould2.com
http://www.buddhistbelief.com
Tags: attachment, Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhist, Buddhist Belief, detachment, Eightfold Path, First Noble Truth, Four Noble Truths, Fourth Noble Truth, inner peace, karma, Nirvana, Peace, Second Noble Truth, Third Noble Truth