Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Buddhism

[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]

Zen refuses to lock itself into a verbal casing; it is not founded on written words, and is outside the established teachings. Zen is not interested in theories about enlightenment; it wants the real thing. 

After Buddhism split into Theravada and Mahayana, Theravada continued as a fairly unified tradition, whereas Mahayana divided into a number of denominations or schools. The most popular of these, the Pure Land Sect, resembles the Pauline strand in Christianity in relying on faith—in its case faith in the “other power” of one of the Buddhas—to carry devotees to the Pure Land of the Western Paradise. In its popular reading this paradise bears many resemblances to the Christian heaven, though both admit of subtler interpretations in which paradise is regarded as an experiential state rather than a geographical place. Another important Mahayana school (Ti’en Tai in Chinese; Tendai in Japanese) introduced into Buddhism the Confucian predilections for learning and social harmony. It sought to find a place for all the Buddhist schools in a culminating treatise, The Lotus Sutra. We shall not go into these and smaller sects of Mahayana Buddhism; we shall reserve our space for, first, the Buddhism that Taoism profoundly influenced, namely Ch’an (Zen in Japanese), and second, the Buddhism that evolved in Tibet. The selection is partly determined by the fact that these are the branches of Buddhism that have attracted the most attention in the West, but there is the added advantage that they will take us to two quite different lands in which Buddhism has flourished. 

After Buddhism split into Theravada and Mahayana, Theravada continued as a fairly unified tradition, whereas Mahayana divided into a number of denominations or schools. 

Because the Communist takeover of China disrupted its religious life, we shall pursue the Ch’an/Zen sect in its Japanese guise. Like other Mahayanist sects, this one claims to trace its perspective back to Gautama himself. His teachings that found their way into the Pali Canon, it holds, were those the masses seized upon. His more perceptive followers heard in his message a higher, subtler teaching. The classic instance of this is reported in the Buddha’s Flower Sermon. Standing on a mountain with his disciples around him, the Buddha did not on this occasion resort to words. He simply held aloft a golden lotus. No one understood the meaning of this eloquent gesture save Mahakasyapa, whose quiet smile, indicating that he had gotten the point, caused the Buddha to designate him as his successor. The insight that prompted the smile was transmitted in India through twenty-eight patriarchs and carried to China in A.D. 520 by Bodhidharma. Spreading from there to Japan in the twelfth century, it contains the secret of Zen.

The Zen sect of Mahayana Buddhism claims to trace its perspective back to Buddha’s Flower Sermon. The Buddha did not on this occasion resort to words. He simply held aloft a golden lotus. 

Entering Zen is like stepping through Alice’s looking glass. One finds oneself in a topsy-turvy wonderland where everything seems quite mad—charmingly mad for the most part, but mad all the same. It is a world of bewildering dialogues, obscure conundrums, stunning paradoxes, flagrant contradictions, and abrupt non sequiturs, all carried off in the most urbane, cheerful, and innocent style imaginable. Here are some examples: 

A master, Gutei, whenever he was asked the meaning of Zen, lifted his index finger. That was all. Another kicked a ball. Still another slapped the inquirer. 

A novice who makes a respectful allusion to the Buddha is ordered to rinse his mouth out and never utter that dirty word again. 

Someone claiming to understand Buddhism writes the following stanza:

The body is the Bodhi-Tree;
The mind is like the mirror bright.
Take heed to keep it always clean,
And let no dust collect upon it.

He is at once corrected by an opposite quatrain, which becomes accepted as the true Zen position:

Bodhi (True Wisdom) is not a tree;
The mind is not a mirror shining.
As there is nothing from the first,
Why talk of wiping off the dust?

A monk approaches a master saying, “I have just come to this monastery. Would you kindly give me some instruction?” The master asks, “Have you eaten your breakfast yet?” “I have.” “Then go wash your bowls.” The inquirer acquired the understanding he was seeking through this exchange. 

A group of Zen masters, gathered for conversation, have a great time declaring that there is no such thing as Buddhism, or Enlightenment, or anything even remotely resembling nirvana. They set traps for one another, trying to trick someone into an assertion that might imply the contrary. Practiced as they are, they always artfully elude traps and pitfalls, whereupon the entire company bursts into glorious, room-shaking laughter.

What goes on here? Is it possible to make any sense out of what at first blush looks like Olympian horseplay, if not a direct put-on? Can they possibly be serious in this kind of spiritual doubletalk, or are they simply pulling our legs? 

The answer is that they are completely serious, though it is true that they are rarely solemn. And though we cannot hope to convey their perspective completely, it being of Zen’s essence that it cannot be impounded in words, we can give some hint as to what they are up to. 

Zen’s essence is that it cannot be impounded in words. It is simply a presentation of anomalies to be resolved.

Let us admit at the outset that even this is going to be difficult, for we shall have to use words to talk about a position that is acutely aware of their limitations. Words occupy an ambiguous place in life. They are indispensable to our humanity, for without them we would be but howling yahoos. But they can also deceive, or at least mislead, fabricating a virtual reality that fronts for the one that actually exists. A parent can be fooled into thinking it loves its child because it addresses the child in endearing terms. A nation can assume that the phrase “under God” in its Pledge of Allegiance shows that its citizens believe in God when all it really shows is that they believe in believing in God. With all their admitted uses, words have three limitations. At worst they construct an artificial world wherein our actual feelings are camouflaged and people are reduced to stereotypes. Second, even when their descriptions are reasonably accurate, descriptions are not the things described—menus are not the meal. Finally, as mystics emphasize, our highest experiences elude words almost entirely. 

Words have limitations in describing the reality. Zen’s anomalies serve to keep the attention focused while unrestrained mindfulness meditation occurs in the mind leading to realizations.

Every religion that has developed even a modicum of semantic sophistication recognizes to some extent the way words and reason fall short of reality when they do not actually distort it. However much the rationalist may begrudge the fact, paradox and the transrational are religion’s life blood, and that of art as well. Mystics in every faith report contacts with a world that startles and transforms them with its dazzling darkness. Zen stands squarely in this camp, its only uniqueness being that it makes breaking the language barrier its central concern. 

Zen makes breaking the language barrier its central concern. 

Only if we keep this fact in mind have we a chance of understanding this outlook, which in ways is the strangest expression of mature religion. It was the Buddha himself, according to Zen tradition, who first made the point by refusing (in the Flower Sermon we have already alluded to) to equate his experiential discovery with any verbal expression. Bodhidharma continued in this tradition by defining the treasure he was bringing to China as “a special transmission outside the scriptures.” This seems so out of keeping with religion as usually understood as to sound heretical. Think of Hinduism with its Vedas, Confucianism with its Classics, Judaism with its Torah, Christianity with its Bible, Islam with its Koran. All would happily define themselves as special transmissions through their scriptures. Zen, too, has its texts; they are intoned in its monasteries morning and evening. In addition to the Sutras, which it shares with other branches of Buddhism, it has its own texts: the Hekigan Roku, the Mumonkan, and others. But one glance at these distinctive texts will reveal how unlike other scriptures they are. Almost entirely they are given to pressing home the fact that Zen cannot be equated with any verbal formula whatsoever. Account after account will depict disciples interrogating their masters about Zen, only to receive a roared “Ho!” for answer. For the master sees that through such questions, seekers are trying to fill the lack in their lives with words and concepts instead of realizations. Indeed, students will be lucky if they get off with verbal rebuffs. Often a rain of blows will be the retort as the master, utterly uninterested in the disciples’ physical comfort, resorts to the most forceful way he can think of to pry the questioner out of his mental rut.

Zen has its own texts, in addition to the sutras, which are almost entirely given to pressing home the fact that Zen cannot be equated with any verbal formula whatsoever. 

As we might expect, this unique stance toward scripture is duplicated in Zen’s attitude toward creeds. In contrast to most religions, which pivot around a creed of some sort, Zen refuses to lock itself into a verbal casing; it is “not founded on written words, and [is] outside the established teachings,” to return to Bodhidharma’s putting of the point. Signposts are not the destination, maps are not the terrain. Life is too rich and textured to be fitted into pigeonholes, let alone equated with them. No affirmation is more than a finger pointing to the moon. And, lest attention turn to the finger, Zen will point, only to withdraw its finger at once. Other faiths regard blasphemy and disrespect for God’s word as sins, but Zen masters may order their disciples to rip their scriptures to shreds and avoid words like Buddha or nirvana as if they were smut. They intend no disrespect. What they are doing is straining by every means they can think of to blast their novices out of solutions that are only verbal. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Zen is not interested in theories about enlightenment; it wants the real thing. So it shouts, and buffets, and reprimands, without ill-will entering in the slightest. All it wants to do is force the student to crash the wordbarrier. Minds must be sprung from their verbal bonds into a new mode of apprehending. 

Zen refuses to lock itself into a verbal casing; it is not founded on written words, and is outside the established teachings. Zen is not interested in theories about enlightenment; it wants the real thing. 

Every point can be overstated, so we should not infer from what has been said that Zen forgoes reason and words entirely. To be sure, it is no more impressed with the mind’s attempts to mirror ultimate reality than was Kierkegaard with Hegel’s metaphysics; no amount of polishing can enable a brick to reflect the sun. But it does not follow that reason is worthless. Obviously, it helps us make our way in the everyday world, a fact that leads Zennists in the main to be staunch advocates of education. But more. Working in special ways, reason can actually help awareness toward its goal. If the way that it is employed to do this seems at times like using a thorn to remove a thorn, we should add that reason can also play an interpretive role, serving as a bridge to join a newly discovered world to the world of common sense. For there is not a Zen problem whose answer, once discovered, does not make good sense within its own frame of reference; there is no experience that the masters are unwilling to try to describe or explain, given the proper circumstance. The point regarding Zen’s relation to reason is simply a double one. First, Zen logic and description make sense only from an experiential perspective radically different from the ordinary. Second, Zen masters are determined that their students attain the experience itself, not allow talk to take its place.

But it does not follow that reason is worthless. Working in special ways, reason can actually help awareness toward its goal. 

Nowhere is Zen’s determination on this latter point more evident than in the method it adopted for its own perpetuation. Whereas on the tricky matter of succession other religions turned to institutionalized mandates, papal succession, or creedal dicta, Zen trusted its future to a specific state of consciousness that was to be transmitted directly from one mind to another, like flame passed from candle to candle, or water poured from cup to cup. It is this “transmission of Buddha-mind to Buddha-mind” that constitutes the “special transmission” Bodhidharma cited as Zen’s essence. For a number of centuries this inward transmission was symbolized by the handing down of the Buddha’s robe and bowl from patriarch to patriarch, but in the Eighth Century the Sixth Patriarch in China concluded that even this simple gesture was a step toward confounding form with essence and ordered it discontinued. So here is a tradition that centers in a succession of teachers, each of whom has in principle inherited from his master a mindstate analogous to the one Gautama awakened in Mahakasyapa. Practice falls short of this principle, but the following figures suggest the steps that are taken to keep it in place. The master of the teacher under whom the author of this book studied estimated that he had given personal instruction to some nine hundred probationers. Of these, thirteen completed their Zen training, and four were given the inka—which is to say, they were confirmed as roshis (Zen masters) and authorized to teach.

It is this “transmission of Buddha-mind to Buddha-mind” that constitutes the “special transmission” Bodhidharma cited as Zen’s essence. 

And what is the training by which aspirants are brought toward the Buddha-mind that has been thus preserved? We can approach it by way of three key terms: zazen, koan, and sanzen. 

Zazen literally means “seated meditation.” The bulk of Zen training takes place in a large meditation hall. Visitors to these are struck by the seemingly endless hours the monks devote to sitting silently on two long, raised platforms that extend the length of the hall on either side, their faces toward the center (or to the walls, depending on which of the two main lineages of Zen the monastery is attached to). Their position is the lotus posture, adopted from India. Their eyes are half closed as their gaze falls unfocused on the tawny straw mats they are sitting on. 

Zazen literally means “seated meditation.” The bulk of Zen training takes place in a large meditation hall. 

Thus they sit, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, seeking to waken the Buddha-mind so they may later relate it to their daily lives. The most intriguing feature of the process is the use they make of one of the strangest devices for spiritual training anywhere to be encountered—the koan. 

In a general way koan means problem, but the problems Zen devises are fantastic. At first glance they look like nothing so much as a cross between a riddle and a shaggy dog story. For example:

A master, Wu Tsu, says, “Let me take an illustration from a fable. A cow passes by a window. Its head, horns, and the four legs all pass by. Why did not the tail pass by?” 

Or again: What was the appearance of your face before your ancestors were born? 

Another: We are all familiar with the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping? (If you protest that one hand can’t clap, you go to the foot of the class.) 

One more: Li-ku, a high-ranking officer in the Tang dynasty, asked a famous Ch’an master: “A long time ago a man kept a goose in a bottle. It grew larger and larger until it could not get out of the bottle any more. He did not want to break the bottle, nor did he wish to harm the goose. How would you get it out? 

The master was silent for a few moments, then shouted, “O Officer!” 
“Yes.” 
“It’s out!”

In a general way koan means problem, but the problems Zen devises are fantastic. Anyway, Zen is a direct practice of how to resolve anomalies. You let the answer form itself from deep inside you.

Our impulse is to dismiss these puzzles as absurd, but the Zen practitioner is not permitted to do this. He or she is ordered to direct the full force of the mind upon them, sometimes locking logic with them, sometimes dropping them into the mind’s deep interior to wait till an acceptable answer erupts, a project that on a single koan may take as long as a doctoral dissertation. 

During this time the mind is intently at work, but it is working in a very special way. We in the West rely on reason so fully that we must remind ourselves that in Zen we are dealing with a perspective that is convinced that reason is limited and must be supplemented by another mode of knowing. 

Beyond reason is letting the answer to deep questions simply bubble up.

For Zen, if reason is not a ball and chain, anchoring mind to earth, it is at least a ladder too short to reach to truth’s full heights. It must, therefore, be surpassed, and it is just this surpassing that koans are designed to assist. If they look scandalous to reason, we must remember that Zen is not trying to placate the mundane mind. It intends the opposite: to upset the mind—unbalance it and eventually provoke revolt against the canons that imprison it. But this puts the matter too mildly. By forcing reason to wrestle with what from its normal point of view is flat absurdity; by compelling it to conjoin things that are ordinarily incompatible, Zen tries to drive the mind to a state of agitation wherein it hurls itself against its logical cage with the desperation of a cornered rat. By paradox and non sequitur Zen provokes, excites, exasperates, and eventually exhausts the mind until it sees that thinking is never more than thinking about, or feeling more than feeling for. Then, having gotten the rational mind where it wants it—reduced to an impasse—it counts on a flash of sudden insight to bridge the gap between secondhand and firsthand life.

Light breaks on secret lots….
Where logics die
The secret grows through the eye.

Zen is not trying to placate the mundane mind. It intends the opposite: to upset the mind—unbalance it and eventually provoke revolt against the canons that imprison it. 

Before we dismiss this strange method as completely foreign, it is well to remember that Kierkegaard regarded meditation on the paradox of the Incarnation—the logical absurdity of the Infinite becoming finite, God becoming man—as the most rewarding of all Christian exercises. The koan appears illogical because reason proceeds within structured perimeters. Outside those perimeters the koan is not inconsistent; it has its own logic, a “Riemannian” logic we might say. Once the mental barrier has been broken, it becomes intelligible. Like an alarm clock, it is set to awaken the mind from its dream of rationality. A higher lucidity is at hand. 

There is a higher lucidity than rationality.

Struggling with his koan, the Zen monk is not alone. Books will not avail, and koans that are being worked on are not discussed with fellow monks, for this could only produce secondhand answers. Twice a day, though, on average, the monk confronts the master in private “consultation concerning meditation”—sanzen in Rinzai and dokusan in the Soto sect. These meetings are invariably brief. The trainee states the koan in question and follows it with his or her answer to date. The role of the master is then threefold. In the happy event that the answer is correct, he validates it, but this is his least important role, for a right answer usually comes with a force that is self-validating. A greater service is rendered in rejecting inadequate answers, for nothing so helps the student to put these permanently to one side as the master’s categorical rejection of them. This aspect of sanzen is fittingly described in the ninth-century Rules of Hyakujo as affording “the opportunity for the teacher to make a close personal examination of the student, to arouse him from his immaturity, to beat down his false conceptions and to rid him of his prejudices, just as the smelter removes the lead and quicksilver from the gold in the smelting-pot, and as the jade-cutter, in polishing the jade, discards every possible flaw.” The master’s other service is, like that of any exacting examiner, to keep the student energized and determined during the long years the training requires.

A right answer usually comes with a force that is self-validating. 

And to what does this zazen, koan training, and sanzen lead? The first important breakthrough is an intuitive experience called kensho or satori. Though its preparation may take years, the experience itself comes in a flash, exploding like a silent rocket deep within the subject and throwing everything into a new perspective. Fearful of being seduced by words, Zennists waste little breath in describing satoris, but occasionally accounts appear.

Ztt! I entered. I lost the boundary of my physical body. I had my skin, of course, but I felt I was standing in the center of the cosmos. I saw people coming toward me, but all were the same man. All were myself. I had never known this world before. I had believed that I was created, but now I must change my opinion: I was never created; I was the cosmos. No individual existed.

This explanation is beautiful.

From this and similar descriptions we can infer that satori is Zen’s version of the mystical experience, which, wherever it appears, brings joy, at-one-ment, and a sense of reality that defies ordinary language. But whereas the tendency is to relate such experiences to the zenith of the religious quest, Zen places them close to the point of departure. In a very real sense Zen training begins with satori. For one thing, there must be further satoris as the trainee learns to move with greater freedom in this realm. But the important point is that Zen, drawing half its inspiration from the practical, common-sense, this-worldly orientation of the Chinese to balance the mystical other-worldly half it derived from India, refuses to permit the human spirit to withdraw—shall we say retreat?—into the mystical state completely. Once we achieve satori, we must

get out of the sticky morass in which we have been floundering, and return to the unfettered freedom of the open fields. Some people may say: “If I have [achieved satori] that is enough. Why should I go further?” The old masters lashed out at such persons, calling them “earthworms living in the slime of self-accredited enlightenment.”

A Satori is not the end-all of enlightenment. There are many satoris ahead.

The genius of Zen lies in the fact that it neither leaves the world in the less-than-ideal state in which it finds it, nor withdraws from the world in aloofness or indifference. Zen’s object is to infuse the temporal with the eternal—to widen the doors of perception so that the wonder of the satori experience can flood the everyday world.

Zen’s object is to infuse the temporal with the eternal.

“What,” asks the student, “is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?” The master answers, “The cypress tree standing in the garden.” Being’s amazingness must be directly realized, and satori is its first discernment. But until—through recognizing the interpenetration and convertibility of all phenomena—its wonder spreads to objects as common as the tree in your backyard and you can perform your daily duties with the understanding that each is equally a manifestation of the infinite, Zen’s business has not been completed. 

But until you can perform your daily duties with the understanding that each is equally a manifestation of the infinite, Zen’s business has not been completed. 

With the possible exception of the Buddha himself, in no one is that business ever completely finished. Yet by extrapolating hints in the Zen corpus we can form some idea of what the condition of “the man who has nothing further to do” would be like. 

First, it is a condition in which life seems distinctly good. Asked what Zen training leads to, a Western student who had been practicing for seven years in Kyoto answered, “No paranormal experiences that I can detect. But you wake up in the morning and the world seems so beautiful you can hardly stand it.” 

There is a continuing sense of world’s beauty and life’s goodness.

Along with this sense of life’s goodness there comes, secondly, an objective outlook on one’s relation to others; their welfare impresses one as being as important as one’s own. Looking at a dollar bill, one’s gaze may be possessive; looking at a sunset, it cannot be. Zen attainment is like looking at the sunset. Requiring (as it does) awareness to the full, issues like “whose awareness?” or “awareness of what?” do not arise. Dualisms dissolve. As they do there comes over one a feeling of gratitude to the past and responsibility to things present and future. 

Zen attainment is like looking at the sunset. Requiring (as it does) awareness to the full, issues like “whose awareness?” or “awareness of what?” do not arise. 

Third, the life of Zen (as we have sought to emphasize) does not draw one away from the world; it returns one to the world—the world robed in new light. We are not called to worldly indifference, as if life’s object were to spring soul from body as piston from syringe. The call is to discover the satisfaction of full awareness even in its bodily setting. “What is the most miraculous of all miracles?” “That I sit quietly by myself.” Simply to see things as they are, as they truly are in themselves, is life enough. It is true that Zen values unity, but it is a unity that is simultaneously empty (because it erases lines that divide) and full (because it replaces those lines with ones that connect). Stated in the form of a Zen algorithm, “All is one, one is none, none is all.” Zen wears the air of divine ordinariness: “Have you eaten? Then wash your bowls.” If you cannot find the meaning of life in an act as simple as that of doing the dishes, you will not find it anywhere.

My daily activities are not different,
Only I am naturally in harmony with them.
Taking nothing, renouncing nothing,
In every circumstance no hindrance, no conflict…
Drawing water, carrying firewood,
This is supernatural power, this the marvelous activity.

The life of Zen does not draw one away from the world; it returns one to the world—the world robed in new light. 

With this perception of the infinite in the finite there comes, finally, an attitude of generalized agreeableness. “Yesterday was fair, today it is raining”; the experiencer has passed beyond the opposites of preference and rejection. As both pulls are needed to keep the relative world turning, each is welcomed in its proper turn. 

There is a poem by Seng Ts’an on “Trust in the Heart,” that stands as the purest expression of this ideal of total acceptance.

The perfect way knows no difficulties
Except that it refuses to make preferences;
Only when freed from hate and love
Does it reveal itself fully and without disguise;
A tenth of an inch’s difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart.
If you wish to see it before your own eyes
Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it.
To set up what you like against what you dislike—
That is the disease of the mind.
The Way is perfect like unto vast space,
With nothing wanting, nothing superfluous.
It is due to making choices
That its Suchness is lost sight of.
The One is none other than the All, the All none other than the One.
Take your stand on this, and the rest will follow of its own accord;
I have spoken, but in vain, for what can words tell
Of things that have no yesterday, tomorrow, or today?

Even truth and falsity look different. “Do not seek after truth. Merely cease to hold opinions.” 

Fifth, as the dichotomies between self and other, finite and infinite, acceptance and rejection are transcended, even the dichotomy between life and death disappears.

When this realization is completely achieved, never again can one feel that one’s individual death brings an end to life. One has lived from an endless past and will live into an endless future. At this very moment one partakes of Eternal Life—blissful, luminous, pure. 

The dichotomies between self and other, finite and infinite, acceptance and rejection are transcended. Even the dichotomy between life and death disappears.

As we leave Zen to its future we may note that its influence on the cultural life of Japan has been enormous. Though its greatest influence has been on pervasive life attitudes, four ingredients of Japanese culture carry its imprint indelibly. In sumie or black ink landscape painting, Zen monks, living their simple lives close to the earth, have rivaled the skill and depth of feeling of their Chinese masters. In landscape gardening Zen temples surpassed their Chinese counterparts and raised the art to unrivaled perfection. Flower arrangement began in floral offerings to the Buddha, but developed into an art that until recently was a part of the training of every refined Japanese girl. Finally, there is the celebrated tea ceremony, in which an austere but beautiful setting, a few fine pieces of old pottery, a slow, graceful ritual, and a spirit of utter tranquility combine to epitomize the harmony, respect, clarity, and calm that characterize Zen at its best.

There is the celebrated tea ceremony, in which an austere but beautiful setting, a few fine pieces of old pottery, a slow, graceful ritual, and a spirit of utter tranquility combine to epitomize the harmony, respect, clarity, and calm that characterize Zen at its best.

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Reference: Buddhism

[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]

The Buddha listed his Three Marks of Existence  as impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and the absence of permanent identity or a soul (anatta). We are freed from the pain of clutching for permanence only if the acceptance of continual change is driven into our very marrow.

The Buddha’s total outlook on life is as difficult to be certain of as that of any personage in history. Part of the problem stems from the fact that, like most ancient teachers, he wrote nothing. There is a gap of almost a century and a half between his spoken words and the first written records, and though memory in those times appears to have been incredibly faithful, a gap of that length is certain to raise questions. A second problem arises from the wealth of material in the texts themselves. Buddha taught for forty-five years, and a staggering corpus has come down to us in one form or another. While the net result is doubtless a blessing, the sheer quantity of materials is bewildering; for though his teachings remained remarkably consistent over the years, it was impossible to say things for many minds and in many ways without creating problems of interpretation. These interpretations constitute the third barrier. By the time texts began to appear, partisan schools had sprung up, some intent on minimizing the Buddha’s break with Brahmanic Hinduism, others intent on sharpening it. This makes scholars wonder how much in what they are reading is the Buddha’s actual thought and how much is partisan interpolation.

We are not certain how much we are reading is the Buddha’s actual thought and how much is partisan interpolation.

Undoubtedly, the most serious obstacle to the recovery of the Buddha’s rounded philosophy, however, is his own silence at crucial points. We have seen that his burning concerns were practical and therapeutic, not speculative and theoretical. Instead of debating cosmologies, he wanted to introduce people to a different kind of life. It would be wrong to say that theory did not interest him. His dialogues show that he analyzed certain abstract problems meticulously; that he possessed, indeed, a brilliant metaphysical mind. It was on principle that he resisted philosophy, as someone with a sense of mission might shun hobbies as a waste of time. 

Buddha’s burning concerns were practical and therapeutic, not speculative and theoretical. But his silence at crucial points is puzzling.

His decision makes so much sense that it may seem a betrayal to insert a section like this one, which tries forthrightly to identify—and to some extent define—certain key notions in the Buddha’s outlook. In the end, however, the task is unavoidable for the simple reason that metaphysics is unavoidable. Everyone harbors some notions about ultimate questions, and these notions affect interpretations of subsidiary issues. The Buddha was no exception. He refused to initiate philosophical discussions, and only occasionally did he let himself be pried from his “noble silence” to engage in them, but certainly he had views. No one who wishes to understand him can escape the hazardous task of trying to discover what they were. 

Buddha refused to initiate philosophical discussions, and only occasionally did he let himself be pried from his “noble silence” to engage in them, but certainly he had views.

We may begin with nirvana, the word the Buddha used to name life’s goal as he saw it. Etymologically it means “to blow out,” or “to extinguish,” not transitively, but as a fire ceases to draw. Deprived of fuel, the fire goes out, and this is nirvana. From such imagery it has been widely supposed that the extinction to which Buddhism points is complete, total annihilation. If this were so there would be grounds for the accusation that Buddhism is life-denying and pessimistic. As it is, scholars of the last half-century have exploded this view. Nirvana is the highest destiny of the human spirit and its literal meaning is extinction, but we must be precise as to what is to be extinguished. It is the boundaries of the finite self. It does not follow that what is left will be nothing. Negatively, nirvana is the state in which the faggots of private desire have been completely consumed and everything that restricts the boundless life has died. Affirmatively, it is that boundless life itself. Buddha parried every request for a positive description of the unconditioned, insisting that it was “incomprehensible, indescribable, inconceivable, unutterable”; for after we eliminate every aspect of the only consciousness we have known, how can we speak of what is left? One of Buddha’s heirs, Nagasena, preserves this point in the following dialogue. Asked what nirvana is like, Nagasena countered with a question of his own: 

“Is there such a thing as wind?”
“Yes, revered sir.”
“Please, sir, show the wind by its color or configuration or as thin or thick or long or short.”
“But it is not possible, revered Nagasena, for the wind to be shown; for the wind cannot be grasped in the hand or touched; yet wind exists.”
“If, sir, it is not possible for the wind to be shown, well then, there is no wind.”
“I, revered Nagasena, know that there is wind; I am convinced of it, but I am not able to show the wind.”
“Even so, sir, nirvana exists; but it is not possible to show nirvana.”

Buddha maintained that Nirvana is incomprehensible, indescribable, inconceivable, unutterable. [NOTE: Etymologically nirvana means “to blow out,” or “to extinguish.” This could refer to the “blowing out of all prior considerations or preconceived notions.”]

Our final ignorance is to imagine that our final destiny is conceivable. All we can know is that it is a condition that is beyond—beyond the limitations of mind, thoughts, feelings, and will, all these (not to mention bodily things) being confinements. The Buddha would venture only one affirmative characterization. “Bliss, yes bliss, my friends, is nirvana.” 

The Buddha would venture only one affirmative characterization. “Bliss, yes bliss, my friends, is nirvana.” 

Is nirvana God? When answered in the negative, this question has led to opposite conclusions. Some conclude that since Buddhism professes no God, it cannot be a religion; others, that since Buddhism obviously is a religion, religion doesn’t require God. The dispute requires that we take a quick look at what the word “God” means. 

Buddhism forces one to look carefully at the meaning of “God”.

Its meaning is not single, much less simple. Two meanings must be distinguished for its place in Buddhism to be understood. 

One meaning of God is that of a personal being who created the universe by deliberate design. Defined in this sense, nirvana is not God. The Buddha did not consider it personal because personality requires definition, which nirvana excludes. And while he did not expressly deny creation, he clearly exempted nirvana from responsibility for it. If absence of a personal Creator God is atheism, Buddhism is atheistic. 

If God is defined as a “personal creator” then Buddhism is atheistic. 

There is a second meaning of God, however, which (to distinguish it from the first) has been called the Godhead. The idea of personality is not part of this concept, which appears in mystical traditions throughout the world. When the Buddha declared, “There is, O monks, an Unborn, neither become nor created nor formed…. Were there not, there would be no deliverance from the formed, the made, the compounded,” he seemed to be speaking in this tradition. Impressed by similarities between nirvana and the Godhead, Edward Conze has compiled from Buddhist texts a series of attributes that apply to both. We are told

that Nirvana is permanent, stable, imperishable, immovable, ageless, deathless, unborn, and unbecome, that it is power, bliss and happiness, the secure refuge, the shelter, and the place of unassailable safety; that it is the real Truth and the supreme Reality; that it is the Good, the supreme goal and the one and only consummation of our life, the eternal, hidden and incomprehensible Peace.

We may conclude with Conze that nirvana is not God defined as personal creator, but that it stands sufficiently close to the concept of God as Godhead to warrant the name in that sense.

If God is defined as “Godhead” (the idea of personality is not part of this concept) that is unborn, uncreated and without form, then Buddhism is the truest religion.

The most startling thing the Buddha said about the human self is that it has no soul. This anatta (no soul) doctrine has again caused Buddhism to seem religiously peculiar. But again the word must be examined. What was the atta (Pali for the Sanskrit Atman or soul) that the Buddha denied? At the time it had come to signify (a) a spiritual substance that, in keeping with the dualistic position in Hinduism, (b) retains its separate identity forever. 

Buddha denied the existence of soul—that aspect of self, which retains its separate identity forever.

Buddha denied both these features. His denial of spiritual substance—the soul as homunculus, a ghostly wraith within the body that animates the body and outlasts it—appears to have been the chief point that distinguished his concept of transmigration from prevailing Hindu interpretations. Authentic child of India, the Buddha did not doubt that reincarnation was in some sense a fact, but he was openly critical of the way his Brahmanic contemporaries interpreted the concept. The crux of his criticism may be gathered from the clearest description he gave of his own view on the subject. He used the image of a flame being passed from candle to candle. As it is difficult to think of the flame on the final candle as being the original flame, the connection would seem to be a causal one, in which influence was transmitted by chain reaction but without a perduring substance. 

The Buddha did not doubt that reincarnation was in some sense a fact, but to him it was like a flame being passed from candle to candle. Here influence was transmitted by chain reaction but without a perduring substance, much like the DNA passing various characteristics from one generation to the next.

When to this image of the flame we add the Buddha’s acceptance of karma, we have the gist of what he said about transmigration. A summary of his position would run something like this: (1) There is a chain of causation threading each life to those that have led up to it, and to those that will follow. Each life is in its present condition because of the way the lives that led up to it were lived. (2) Throughout this causal sequence the will remains free. The lawfulness of things makes the present state the product of prior acts, but within the present the will is influenced but not controlled. People remain at liberty to shape their destinies. (3) The two preceding points affirm the causal connectedness of life, but they do not entail that a substance of some sort be transmitted. Ideas, impressions, feelings, streams of consciousness, present moments—these are all that we find, no spiritual substrate. Hume and James were right: If there is an enduring self, subject always, never object, it never shows itself.

Buddha’s acceptance of karma is consistent with the transmission of influence from one life to the next, as in the sense of the transmission of DNA programming.

An analogy can suggest the Buddha’s views of karma and reincarnation in a supporting way. (1) The desires and dislikes that influence the contents of my mind—what I pay attention to and what I ignore—have not appeared by accident; they have definite lineages. In addition to attitudes that I have taken over from my culture, I have formed mental habits. These include cravings of various sorts, tendencies to compare myself with others in pride or envy, and dispositions toward contentment and its opposite, aversion. (2) Although habitual reactions tend to become fixed, I am not bound by my personal history; I can have new ideas and changes of heart. (3) Neither the continuity nor the freedom these two points affirm requires that thoughts or feelings be considered entities—things, or mental substances that are transported from mind to mind, or from moment to moment. Acquiring a concern for justice from my parents did not mean that a substance, however ethereal and ghostlike, leapt from their heads into mine. 

Our tendencies, attitudes and mental habits have lineages, but these are not permanent substances that are transported from mind to mind. We are not bound by them.

This denial of spiritual substance was only an aspect of Buddha’s wider denial of substance of every sort. Substance carries both a general and a specific connotation. Generally, it refers to something relatively permanent that underlies surface changes in the thing in question; specifically, this more basic something is thought to be matter. The psychologist in Buddha rebelled against the latter notion, for to him mind was more basic than matter. The empiricist in him, for its part, challenged the implications of a generalized notion of substance. It is impossible to read much Buddhist literature without catching its sense of the transitoriness (anicca) of everything finite, its recognition of the perpetual perishing of every natural object. It is this that gives Buddhist descriptions of the natural world their poignancy. “The waves follow one after another in an eternal pursuit.” Or,

Life is a journey.
Death is a return to the earth.
The universe is like an inn.
The passing years are like dust.

Substance refers to something relatively permanent that underlies surface changes in the thing in question, but there is no substance that may be considered absolutely permanent or everlasting. The only thing that comes closest to being permanent is the impulse to evolve.

The Buddha listed impermanence (anicca) as the first of his Three Marks of Existence—characteristics that apply to everything in the natural order—the other two being suffering (dukkha) and the absence of permanent identity or a soul (anatta). Nothing in nature is identical with what it was the moment before; in this the Buddha was close to modern science, which has discovered that the relatively stable objects of the macro-world derive from particles that barely exist. To underscore life’s fleetingness the Buddha called the components of the human self skandas—skeins that hang together as loosely as yarn—and the body a “heap,” its elements no more solidly assembled than grains in a sandpile. But why did the Buddha belabor a point that may seem obvious? Because, he believed, we are freed from the pain of clutching for permanence only if the acceptance of continual change is driven into our very marrow. Followers of the Buddha know well his advice:

Regard this phantom world
As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp—a phantom—and a dream.

The Buddha listed his Three Marks of Existence  as impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and the absence of permanent identity or a soul (anatta). We are freed from the pain of clutching for permanence only if the acceptance of continual change is driven into our very marrow.

Given this sense of the radical impermanence of all things finite, we might expect the Buddha’s answer to the question “Do human beings survive bodily death?” to be a flat no, but actually his answer was equivocal. Ordinary people when they die leave strands of finite desire that can only be realized in other incarnations; in this sense at least these persons live on. But what about the Arhat, the holy one who has extinguished all such desires; does such a one continue to exist? When a wandering ascetic put this question, the Buddha said:

“The word reborn does not apply to him.”
“Then he is not reborn?”
“The term not-reborn does not apply to him.”
“To each and all of my questions, Gotama, you have replied in the negative. I am at a loss and bewildered.”
“You ought to be at a loss and bewildered, Vaccha. For this doctrine is profound, recondite, hard to comprehend, rare, excellent, beyond dialectic, subtle, only to be understood by the wise. Let me therefore question you. If there were a fire blazing in front of you, would you know it?”
“Yes, Gotama.”
“If the fire went out, would you know it had gone out?”
“Yes.”
“If now you were asked in what direction the fire had gone, whether to east, west, north, or south, could you give an answer?”
“The question is not rightly put, Gotama.”

Whereupon Buddha brought the discussion to a close by pointing out that “in just the same way” the ascetic had not rightly put his question. “Feelings, perceptions, forces, consciousness—everything by which the Arhat might be denoted has passed away for him. Profound, measureless, unfathomable, is the Arhat even as the mighty ocean; reborn does not apply to him nor not-reborn, nor any combination of such terms.”

Born and not-reborn are the two ends of a dimension that applies to the average person. This dimension simply does not apply to an Arhat, who has extinguished all desires, feelings, perceptions, forces, and consciousness.

It contributes to the understanding of this conversation to know that the Indians of that day thought that expiring flames do not really go out but return to the pure, invisible condition of fire they shared before they visibly appeared. But the real force of the dialogue lies elsewhere. In asking where the fire, conceded to have gone out, had gone, the Buddha was calling attention to the fact that some problems are posed so clumsily by our language as to preclude solution by their very formulation. The question of the illumined soul’s existence after death is such a case. If the Buddha had said, “Yes, it does live on,” his listeners would have assumed the persistence of our present mode of experiencing, which the Buddha did not intend. On the other hand, if he had said, “The enlightened soul ceases to exist,” his hearers would have assumed that he was consigning it to total extinction, which too he did not intend. On the basis of this rejection of extremes we cannot say much with certainty, but we can venture something. The ultimate destiny of the human spirit is a condition in which all identification with the historical experience of the finite self will disappear, while experience as such not only remains but is heightened beyond recognition. As an inconsequential dream vanishes completely on awakening, as the stars go out in deference to the morning sun, so individual awareness will be eclipsed in the blazing light of total awareness. Some say, “The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.” Others prefer to think of the dewdrop as opening to receive the sea itself. 

The ultimate destiny of the human spirit is a condition in which all identification with the historical experience of the finite self will disappear, while experience as such not only remains but is heightened beyond recognition.

If we try to form a more detailed picture of the state of nirvana, we shall have to proceed without the Buddha’s help, not only because he realized almost to despair how far the condition transcends the power of words, but also because he refused to wheedle his hearers with previews of coming attractions. Even so, it is possible to form some notion of the logical goal toward which his Path points. We have seen that the Buddha regarded the world as one of lawful order in which events are governed by the pervading law of cause and effect. The life of the Arhat, however, is one of increasing independence from the causal order of nature. It does not violate that order, but the Arhat’s spirit grows in autonomy as the world’s hold decreases. In this sense the Arhat is increasingly free not only from the passions and worries of the world but also from its happenings in general. With every growth of inwardness, peace and freedom replace the turbulent bondage of those whose lives are prey to circumstance. As long as spirit remains tied to body, its freedom from the particular, the temporal, and the changing cannot be complete. But sever this connection with the Arhat’s final death, and freedom from the finite will be complete. We cannot imagine what the state would be like, but the trajectory toward it is discernible. 

We cannot imagine what the state would be like, but the trajectory toward it is discernible. The Arhat’s spirit grows in autonomy as the world’s hold decreases.

Spiritual freedom brings largeness of life. The Buddha’s disciples sensed that he embodied immeasurably more of reality—and in that sense was more real—than anyone else they knew; and they testified from their own experience that advance along his path enlarged their lives as well. Their worlds seemed to expand, and with each step they felt themselves more alive than they had been before. As long as they were limited by their bodies, there were limits beyond which they could not go; but if all ties were loosed, might not they be completely free? Once more, we cannot concretely imagine such a state, but the logic of the progression seems clear. If increased freedom brings increased being, total freedom should be being itself.

A thousand questions remain, but the Buddha is silent.
Others abide our questions. Thou are free.
We ask and ask; thou smilest and art still.

If increased freedom brings increased being, total freedom should be being itself.

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Reference: Buddhism

[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]

Our evolution depends on resolving the anomalies of the universe and not the fictitious “anomalies of self.”

When the Buddha finally managed to break through the spell of rapture that rooted him to the Immovable Spot for the forty-nine days of his enlightenment, he arose and began a walk of over one hundred miles toward India’s holy city of Banaras. Six miles short of that city, in a deer park at Sarnath, he stopped to preach his first sermon. The congregation was small—only five ascetics who had shared his severe austerities but had broken with him in anger when he renounced that approach, only to have now become his first disciples. His subject was the Four Noble Truths. His first formal discourse after his awakening, it was a declaration of the key discoveries that had come to him as the climax of his six-year quest. 

The first sermon of Buddha was on Four Noble Truths. It was a summarization of his key realizations of his six-year quest.

Asked to list in propositional form their four most considered convictions about life, most people would probably stammer. The Four Noble Truths constitute Buddha’s answer to that request. Together they stand as the axioms of his system, the postulates from which the rest of his teachings logically derive. 

The For Noble Truths stand as the axioms of Buddha’s system.

The First Noble Truth is that life is dukkha, usually translated “suffering.” Though far from its total meaning, suffering is an important part of that meaning and should be brought to focus before proceeding to other connotations. 

The First Noble Truth is that life is dukkha, usually translated “suffering.”

Contrary to the view of early Western interpreters, the Buddha’s philosophy was not pessimistic. A report of the human scene can be as grim as one pleases; the question of pessimism does not arise until we are told whether it can be improved. Because the Buddha was certain that it could be, his outlook falls within Heinrich Zimmer’s observation that “everything in Indian thought supports the basic insight that, fundamentally, all is well. A supreme optimism prevails everywhere.” But the Buddha saw clearly that life as typically lived is unfulfilling and filled with insecurity.

Buddha saw clearly that life as typically lived is unfulfilling and filled with insecurity.

He did not doubt that it is possible to have a good time and that having a good time is enjoyable, but two questions obtruded. First, how much of life is thus enjoyable. And second, at what level of our being does such enjoyment proceed. Buddha thought the level was superficial, sufficient perhaps for animals but leaving deep regions of the human psyche empty and wanting. By this understanding even pleasure is gilded pain. “Earth’s sweetest joy is but disguised pain,” William Drummond wrote, while Shelley speaks of “that unrest which men miscall delight.” Beneath the neon dazzle is darkness; at the core—not of reality but of unregenerated human life—is the “quiet desperation” Thoreau saw in most peoples’ lives. That is why we seek distractions, for distractions divert us from what lies beneath the surface. Some may be able to distract themselves for long periods, but the darkness is unrelieved.

Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life:
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.

By Buddha’s understanding even pleasure was gilded pain. 

That such an estimate of life’s usual condition is prompted more by realism than by morbidity is suggested by the extent to which thinkers of every stripe have shared it. Existentialists describe life as a “useless passion,” “absurd,” “too much (de trop).” Bertrand Russell, a scientific humanist, found it difficult to see why people should take unhappily to news that the universe is running down, inasmuch as “I do not see how an unpleasant process can be made less so [by being] indefinitely repeated.” Poetry, always a sensitive barometer, speaks of “the pitiful confusion of life” and “time’s slow contraction on the most hopeful heart.” The Buddha never went further than Robert Penn Warren:

Oh, it is real. It is the only real thing.
Pain. So let us name the truth, like men.
We are born to joy that joy may become pain.
We are born to hope that hope may become pain.
We are born to love that love may become pain.
We are born to pain that pain may become more
Pain, and from that inexhaustible superflux
We may give others pain as our prime definition.

Such an estimate of life’s usual condition is prompted more by realism than by morbidity.

Even Albert Schweitzer, who considered India pessimistic, echoed the Buddha’s appraisal almost to idiom when he wrote, “Only at quite rare moments have I felt really glad to be alive. I could not but feel with a sympathy full of regret all the pain that I saw around me, not only that of men, but of the whole creation.” 

In my opinion, the whole purpose of life is to evolve, and that is not easy. But with that purpose all pain becomes tolerable.

Dukkha, then, names the pain that to some degree colors all finite existence. The word’s constructive implications come to light when we discover that it was used in Pali to refer to wheels whose axles were off-center, or bones that had slipped from their sockets. (A modern metaphor might be a shopping cart we try to steer from the wrong end.) The exact meaning of the First Noble Truth is this: Life (in the condition it has got itself into) is dislocated. Something has gone wrong. It is out of joint. As its pivot is not true, friction (interpersonal conflict) is excessive, movement (creativity) is blocked, and it hurts. 

The exact meaning of the First Noble Truth is this: Life (in the condition it has got itself into) is dislocated. Something has gone wrong. It is out of joint. As its pivot is not true, friction (interpersonal conflict) is excessive, movement (creativity) is blocked, and it hurts. 

Having an analytical mind, the Buddha was not content to leave this First Truth in this generalized form. He went on to pinpoint six moments when life’s dislocation becomes glaringly apparent. Rich or poor, average or gifted, all human beings experience: 

1. The trauma of birth. Psychoanalysts have in our time made a great deal of this point. Though Freud came to deny that the birth trauma was the source of all later anxiety, to the end he considered it anxiety’s prototype. The birth experience “involves just such a concatenation of painful feelings, of discharges and excitation, and of bodily sensations, as have become a prototype for all occasions on which life is endangered, ever after to be reproduced again in us as the dread of ‘anxiety’ conditions.”

2. The pathology of sickness. 

3. The morbidity of decrepitude. In the early years sheer physical vitality joins with life’s novelty to render life almost automatically good. In later years the fears arrive: fear of financial dependence; fear of being unloved and unwanted; fear of protracted illness and pain; fear of being physically repulsive and dependent on others; fear of seeing one’s life as a failure in some important respect. 

4. The phobia of death. On the basis of years of clinical practice, Carl Jung reported that he found death to be the deepest terror in every patient he had analyzed who had passed the age of forty. Existentialists join him in calling attention to the extent to which the fear of death mars healthy living.

5. To be tied to what one dislikes. Sometimes it is possible to break away, but not always. An incurable disease, a stubborn character defect—for better or for worse there are martyrdoms to which people are chained for life. 

6. To be separated from what one loves. 

All human beings experience the trauma of birth, the pathology of sickness, the morbidity of decrepitude, the phobia of death, to be tied to what one dislikes, and to be separated from what one loves. 

No one denies that the shoe of life pinches in these six places. The First Noble Truth pulls them together by concluding that the five skandas (life components) are painful. As these skandas are body, sensations, thoughts, feelings, and consciousness—in short, the sum of what we generally consider life to be—the statement amounts to the assertion that the whole of human life (again, as usually lived) is suffering. Somehow life has become estranged from reality, and this estrangement precludes real happiness until it is overcome. 

The five components of life—body, sensations, thoughts, feelings, and consciousness—are painful. 

For the rift to be healed we need to know its cause, and the Second Noble Truth identifies it. The cause of life’s dislocation is tanha. Again imprecisions of translations—all are to some degree dishonest—make it wise to stay close to the original word. Tanha is usually translated as “desire.” There is some truth in this—the kind we encounter in Heartbreak House when George Bernard Shaw has Ellie exclaim, “I feel now as if there was nothing I could not do, because I want nothing,” which assertion moves Captain Shotover to his one enthusiasm in the play: “That’s the only real strength. That’s genius. That’s better than rum.” But if we try to make desire tanha’s equivalent, we run into difficulties. To begin with, the equivalence would make this Second Truth unhelpful, for to shut down desires, all desires, in our present state would be to die, and to die is not to solve life’s problem. But beyond being unhelpful, the claim of equivalence would be flatly wrong, for there are some desires the Buddha explicitly advocated—the desire for liberation, for example, or for the happiness of others. 

The Second Noble truth: The cause of life’s dislocation is tanha, usually translated as “thirst.”

Tanha is a specific kind of desire, the desire for private fulfillment. When we are selfless we are free, but that is precisely the difficulty—to maintain that state. Tanha is the force that ruptures it, pulling us back from the freedom of the all to seek fulfillment in our egos, which ooze like secret sores. Tanha consists of all “those inclinations which tend to continue or increase separateness, the separate existence of the subject of desire; in fact, all forms of selfishness, the essence of which is desire for self at the expense, if necessary, of all other forms of life. Life being one, all that tends to separate one aspect from another must cause suffering to the unit which even unconsciously works against the Law. Our duty to our fellows is to understand them as extensions, other aspects, of ourselves—fellow facets of the same Reality.”

Our duty to our fellows is to understand them as extensions, other aspects, of ourselves—fellow facets of the same Reality.

This is some distance from the way people normally understand their neighbors. The customary human outlook lies a good halfway toward Ibsen’s description of a lunatic asylum in which “each shuts himself in a cask of self, the cask stopped with a bung of self and seasoned in a well of self.” Given a group photograph, whose face does one scan for first? It is a small but telling symptom of the devouring cancer that causes sorrow. Where is the man who is as concerned that no one go hungry as that his own children be fed? Where is the woman who is as concerned that the standard of living for the entire world rise, as that her own salary be raised? Here, said the Buddha, is where the trouble lies; this is why we suffer. Instead of linking our faith and love and destiny to the whole, we persist in strapping these to the puny burros of our separate selves, which are certain to stumble and give out eventually. Coddling our individual identities, we lock ourselves inside “our skin-encapsulated egos” (Alan Watts), and seek fulfillment through their intensification and expanse. Fools to suppose that imprisonment can bring release! Can we not see that “tis the self by which we suffer”? Far from being the door to abundant life, the ego is a strangulated hernia. The more it swells, the tighter it shuts off the free-flowing circulation on which health depends, and the more pain increases.

Instead of linking our faith and love and destiny to the whole, we persist in strapping these to the puny burros of our separate selves, which are certain to stumble and give out eventually. 

The Third Noble Truth follows logically from the Second. If the cause of life’s dislocation is selfish craving, its cure lies in the overcoming of such craving. If we could be released from the narrow limits of self-interest into the vast expanse of universal life, we would be relieved of our torment. The Fourth Noble Truth prescribes how the cure can be accomplished. The overcoming of tanha, the way out of our captivity, is through the Eightfold Path.

The Third Noble truth: If the cause of life’s dislocation is selfish craving, its cure lies in the overcoming of such craving. 

The Fourth Noble truth: The way out of our captivity, is through the Eightfold Path.

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