Buddhist Spectrum

The core of the Buddhist teachings:

Four Noble Truths

Chathuri Randika Sarathchandra

Right effort is indispensable for Samadhi. It is the effort to prevent the arising of evil states of mind that not arisen. The next factor in the middle path of right mindfulness is the quality of awareness which brings about powerful repercussions. Right concentration, which ensures one pointedness of mind, is also essential for the middle path. Long continued exercise of mental concentration makes the mind highly penetrative.

Buddhism is the realization of the eternal verities of life which the Buddha had gained by attaining Enlightenment under the spreading branches of banyan tree by the bank of Neranjana River in Gaya. The Buddha proclaimed the nature of the suffering over 2500 years ago to a suffering world, in just four formulae, which is called the Four Noble Truths. When he was meditating under the banyan tree in the last watch of that memorable night the Ascetic Gothama reached the blessed and glorious eternal happiness – we call it Nibbana now. Happiness engulfed him, and he uttered this stanza:

Through many a birth in Sansara have I,

without success, wandered

searching for the builder of this house.

Painful indeed is repeated birth.

Now O house builder, thou art discovered.

Never shalt thou build again for me.

Broken are all thy rafters

The ridge pole is shattered

My mind has attained the unconditioned.

Achieved is the cessation of craving.”

The Four Noble Truths are the only way that leads to attainment of purity, to the overcoming of sorrow, and lamentation, to the end of pain and grief, to the entering to the right path and to the realization of Nibbana, the highest bliss or Supramandane state of eternal happiness.

Following the Enlightenment

Seven weeks after his Enlightenment, the Buddha preached these Noble Truths in the very first sermon, Dhammcakkappavattana Sutta, the wheel of Dhamma.

In order to purify the mind, the Buddha instructed, we must contemplate the Four Noble Truths: suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the way leading to the cessation of suffering.

At the outset, one may be tempted to ask why these truths are called noble. These truths are called noble because they have been discovered only by the Buddha, they can be fully realized only the noble ones like the Buddha, Pacceka Buddha and the Arahaths.

The first Noble Truth deals with the indisputable fact of suffering. Birth, old age, sickness, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are sufferings. To be vainly struggling to satisfy one’s need is suffering. In fact life that is not free from desire and passion is always involved with distress. These facts prove that the whole world is suffering.

Change and unsatisfactoriness

The cause of suffering, the second Noble Truth, is undoubtedly found in the thirst of the physical body and in the illusion of worldly passion. Everything pertaining to our life is subject to a change and unsatisfactoriness. That is why the Buddha has explained that as long as there is craving for worldly pleasures or desires for existence, there is no way one could escape from the suffering.

If desire, which leads from birth to birth at the root of all human passions, will die out, all human suffering will reach completion. This is called the truth of the cessation of suffering.

We now come to the fourth and last truth, the Noble Truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering. This is the prescription of the Buddha for the suffering world. In order to enter into a state where is no desire and no suffering, one must follow the Noble Eightfold Path. This path is also called the Middle path, which thoroughly maintains that all life is suffering. To those who choose the Middle path that leads to not only Enlightenment but also the light of life there are two extremes that should be carefully avoided: extreme of indulgence in the desires of the body and the opposite extreme of ascetic discipline torturing one’s body and mind unreasonably.

Extremes

Avoiding these extremes the Middle path leads to insight, wisdom, knowledge, peace and ultimately to Nirvana. The Noble Eightfold Path is the most important way of practice which refers to right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. Another feature in regard to these eight factors is that they fall into three different categories of virtue (sila), concentration (Samadhi) and wisdom (panna). These are known not only as the three-fold division of the Eightfold Path but also they are basic principles in Buddhism. This is very important for the practical purpose. It represents the three stages of spiritual progress.

Virtue or moral development gains through self disciple. Under this category appears three of the eight factors such as right speech, right action and right livelihood. Sila (virtue) is the first step of spiritual progress. It is also the foundation for further progress along the path.

Right speech is essential for sila: we should not engage in false, harsh and idle speech. Right action means the purity of conduct by ensuring abstention from killing, stealing and doing any illegal social acts and wrongful sex indulgence.

Modern livelihood

The fact of right livelihood is also a very significant theme in the modern world because the 21st Century life is quite exciting. Hence the right livelihood means the purity of conduct by ensuring abstention from trading in arms, animals, slaughter, intoxicating drinks and poison. These are the only forms of wrong bread and butter.

Sila helps the development of mental concentration and the relation of the highest wisdom. Into the second category of concentration falls three factors: right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

Right effort is indispensable for Samadhi. It is the effort to prevent the arising of evil states of mind that not arisen. The next factor in the middle path of right mindfulness is the quality of awareness which brings about powerful repercussions. Right concentration, which ensures one pointedness of mind, is also essential for the middle path. Long continued exercise of mental concentration makes the mind highly penetrative.

Achieving the wisdom

We now come to the third category of this path. The attainment of great wisdom, which is called panna, is a supreme factor. Right understanding is one of the factors in the category of panna which helps at the start to begin the practice of sila. When we are in lower levels of the right understanding, right and wrong things can be understood. Right thought is the other factor in this group. We know thoughts are very important because they rule the world. We should always treat others with pure thoughts. Dear friends, the description of the four noble truths is now over.

If we contemplate deeply, we have to agree that life is indeed an eternal suffering. Every moment we are suffering, either physically, emotionally or mentally. Can we ever find a single person in this world who is free from all above pains? Both life and the suffering go hand in hand. They are inseparable.

The way to eradicate suffering or purify the mind is to practice meditation, especially Vipassna. Once we begin practising meditation, the small candle starts growing brighter and brighter, until we are able to see the eternal happiness which is Nibbana.

The law of the garbage truck

Lotus Heart

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. I mean, he was really friendly.

So I asked, ‘Why did you do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to hospital!’ This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call ‘the law of the garbage truck’!

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.

Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So… Love the people who treat you right.

Forgive the ones who don’t. Life is 10 percent of what you make it and ninety percent how you take it! A very inspiring story, indeed. But how many of us can actually carry that out? Almost none. Raise this question from yourselves: do I have enough patience if I come across something like that? I am sure most of you would answer in negative.

Perhaps the taxi driver would have been in a mood of merriment – a sort of intoxication, I mean. So he didn’t much take notice of the yelling. On the other hand the best way to avenge and revenge is just laughing off. Say someone keeps on scolding you, and you just keep a happy face. Your foe gets even angrier. Is it good to make your foe angry, if you practice metta? No it is not, but you have no option.

Your foe, though gets even angrier, learns a lesson: not to be hot tempered another instance. Whether it will be successful or not, is not the matter, but he learns his lesson at the least.

The Buddha likens anger to an inscription on three forms: rock, sand and water. The rock inscription lasts almost forever, sand inscription will be washed away over time, and inscriptions on water wouldn’t last awhile. Our anger is mostly like the inscription on sand, more than on rock and water – it lasts, but for a certain period.

I know it is very hard to control our anger at times. But that is what we need so essentially.

Make everyday a garbage-free day!’

Bringing wisdom to the Brahma-viharas:

Head and heart together

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Some people say that unlimited goodwill comes naturally to us, that our Buddha- nature is intrinsically compassionate. But the Buddha never said anything about Buddha-nature. What he did say is that the mind is even more variegated than the animal world. We’re capable of anything. So what are we going to do with this capability?

The brahma-viharas, or ‘sublime attitudes’, are the Buddha’s primary heart teachings — the ones that connect most directly with our desire for true happiness. The term literally means ‘dwelling place of brahmas’. Brahmas are gods who live in the higher heavens, dwelling in an attitude of unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited equanimity.

These unlimited attitudes can be developed from the more limited versions of these emotions that we experience in the human heart.

Of these four emotions, goodwill (metta) is the most fundamental. It’s the wish for true happiness, a wish you can direct to yourself or to others. Goodwill was the underlying motivation that led the Buddha to search for awakening and to teach the path to awakening to others after he had found it.

Mental feelings

The next two emotions in the list are essentially applications of goodwill. Compassion (karuna) is what goodwill feels when it encounters suffering: It wants the suffering to stop. Empathetic joy (mudita) is what goodwill feels when it encounters happiness: It wants the happiness to continue. Equanimity (upekkha) is a different emotion, in that it acts as an aid to and a check on the other three.

When you encounter suffering that you can’t stop no matter how hard you try, you need equanimity to avoid creating additional suffering and to channel your energies to areas where you can be of help. In this way, equanimity isn’t cold hearted or indifferent. It simply makes your goodwill more focused and effective.

Making these attitudes limitless requires work. It’s easy to feel goodwill, compassion, and empathetic joy for people you like and love, but there are bound to be people you dislike — often for very good reasons. Similarly, there are many people for whom it’s easy to feel equanimity: people you don’t know or don’t really care about.

But it’s hard to feel equanimity when people you love are suffering. Yet if you want to develop the brahma-viharas, you have to include all of these people within the scope of your awareness so that you can apply the proper attitude no matter where or when. This is where your heart needs the help of your head.

All too often, meditators believe that if they can simply add a little more heart juice, a little more emotional oomph, to their brahma-vihara practice, their attitudes can become limitless. But if something inside you keeps churning up reasons for liking this person or hating that one, your practice starts feeling hypocritical. You wonder who you’re trying to fool. Or, after a month devoted to the practice, you still find yourself thinking black thoughts about people who cut you off in traffic — to say nothing of people who’ve done the world serious harm.

This is where the head comes in. If we think of the heart as the side of the mind that wants happiness, the head is the side that understands how cause and effect actually work. If your head and heart can learn to cooperate — that is, if your head can give priority to finding the causes for true happiness, and your heart can learn to embrace those causes — then the training of the mind can go far.

Body and mind

This is why the Buddha taught the brahma-viharas in a context of head teachings: the principle of causality as it plays out in (1) karma and (2) the process of fabrication that shapes emotions within the body and mind. The more we can get our heads around these teachings, the easier it will be to put our whole heart into developing attitudes that truly are sublime.

Role of saints in reaching the Buddha:

Understand your target

Dr. K. jamanadas

You try Marx, Buddha, Phule, and Ambedkar. Only the Brahmins and Ambedkarites would understand. What about the others? They are the majority, and they will not listen to you. So what is remedy? The remedy lies in

the teachings of the saints.

The situation all over the country demands that we look to preaching of the saints. If we have to go to Buddhism, the Dalit Bahujans are the target group.

Let us see what this group is doing in the field of religion. Look at the annual trip of Warkaris in Maharashtra, count the people in rows standing for darshan of idol at Siddhi-vinayak, Shirdi and Tirupati. See the hazardous journey undertaken by ‘Ayappas’ every January to Sabarimala and see the toils of devotees going to Kashmir and Vaishnodevi. Look at the crowd coming forward to pull the Ratha of Jagannath at Puri and other places and even at an infested Adivasi region of Dantevada. And again see the crowd at Kumbh Melas.

TV blarings

Then see the twenty-four hours blaring TV programs of Gurus, Babas, Ammas, Matas and similar dignitaries. See the whole of Indian women folk watch such serials and sermons on TV telling the glory of this or that god, in the afternoon, when husbands go to office and children to schools.

Then there are satsangs, and pravachans and pujas andkirtans organized throughout the year.

Then you watch millions of Ganpatis during festival in Maharashtra, for ten days there is nothing in the heads of men, women and children except Ganpati. Then same happens during the Navaratra for nine days.

Then Dasara comes and Ram-leelas take place and Ravan is burnt with a great fanfare.

During Durga puja in Bengal and Divali in rest of the country, the relations come to house, the married women craving to see parents come home for family gathering. Holi is celebrated in different forms in different parts of the country.

The festivals of South India are different and they celebrate Pongal, Onam and Mahabali puja.

Target group

This is the target group you have to address. These people have diverse views about religion, but one thing is common in them. They all believe the God exists. To this group, if you want to convert to Buddhism, you have to tell them, god does not exist.

Are they going to listen to you?

The chances are zero.

How do you convince them? You try Marx, Buddha, Phule, and Ambedkar. Only the Brahmins and Ambedkarites would understand. What about the others? They are the majority, and they will not listen to you. So what is remedy?

The remedy lies in the teachings of the saints.

Bring out saints

If you tell them saints, they will listen to you. They believe, rather wrongly, that saints talked about God. Saints have originated from no-God philosophy of the Buddha, through various stages of Thervada, Mahayan, Vajrayan, Kalchakra and Sahajyana through Siddhas, Yogis and Nathas. And what they preached Nirgun was not God but the Buddha. All that you have to convince these gullible masses is that saints also said no God.

That is not difficult. Kabir said, ‘by worshipping a stone if I get god, I would worship the mountain; better than stone of god is the stone of grind mill, which feeds the world’. Such slogans abound in the saints’ preaching. You have approached each individual with saint of his own group and convince him: “your saint also preached no God.”

Warning

Do not stop at the saints. Saints are not our goal. They are to be used as means to teach the ideology of no God to gullible masses. Many followers of the saints, today, I find, are behaving as if the goal is Saints. No sir, you have to amend your ways. Our goal is reaching the Buddha.