Call For a New Buddhism

"Intelligence is the ability to ascertain the essential." Jiddu Krishnamurti

Who and what is a Buddhist?

Historians tell us that Siddhartha Gautama (563? to 483? BC) was the founder of the organized religion we call Buddhism. The fundamental meaning of the word 'Buddha' is 'Enlightened One.' We know that there were many enlightened ones, many Buddhas, before Siddhartha Gautama's birth and there have been many Buddhas after Siddhartha's death. The historic Buddha was born a Hindu and the evidence suggests Siddhartha wished to reform Hinduism rather than reject it completely. Siddhartha Gautama died a Hindu, not a Buddhist, just as Jesus died a Jew, not a Christian.

What we call Buddhism today is an amalgamation of the true teachings of Siddhartha combined with invented myths and large amounts of culture derived from the country in which the Buddhism is practiced. Tibetan Buddhism, for example, is as much Tibetanism as it is Buddhism. Buddha's words were handed down for several centuries through oral tradition before a committee was formed to commit the communal heritage, not memory, of Buddha's teaching to written text. No human being who actually met the Buddha wrote any of the famous Buddhist scriptures that present day followers take so literally and seriously.

Can we separate the essential teachings of the many enlightened ones, the many Buddhas, from mere tradition? Can we bring Buddhism up to date by keeping the essential tools of enlightenment, while discarding the cultural biases that burden the path with unnecessary obstacles? I believe we can create a new Buddhism if we consciously analyze our situation as present day seekers of truth. With this most fundamental definition of the word 'Buddhism,' anyone who seeks enlightenment can be called a Buddhist.

Is Buddhism pro-family?

Our lives have changed dramatically since the days of the historic Buddha. Technological advances such as birth control have reshaped our most basic human behavior. In Siddhartha's time, if you had sex you were always potentially creating a new child. The strict sexual disciplines of Buddhism were born in a era when sex meant children and children meant no time to meditate. Surviving with primitive farming methods was difficult and raising a family under such severe conditions left little energy for introspection. Today many people are able to have a full life, a family, and still have the time and energy to meditate. The average adult American watches over four hours of television a day, so most of us can easily spare 40 minutes a day for meditation. Scientists have proven through brain scans that meditating just forty minutes a day is enough to physically increase the size of the portions of the brain involved in inner awareness (see scans prove meditation alters the brain). You do not have to give up a full normal life and all contact with the opposite sex in order to find your existential identity.

A rich society brings with it the possibility of creating a more complete human being than Siddhartha's era could afford. Which is more important for society: sex, family, and wealth creation, or meditation, solitude, and detachment? Don't we have a need for all? If you live for seventy years you can easily spend a few years in solitude and then go on to have a rich family life. Will the added experience of wife and children make you a smaller person or a bigger person? By repressing our procreative desires we are not becoming more whole or holy, but rather we are simply building a firewall inside ourselves that divides our being into two. Cut into parts we will have less energy, not more energy. I believe it is more wholesome to become a fully functioning human being than to retreat into the misperceived safety of half a life.

Back in 1971, when I was twenty-one years old, I had an experience I would never forget. I was walking around the large Baudhanath Stupa near Katmandu, Nepal. There was a large group of monks walking that day, spinning prayer wheels and chanting in the brilliant morning sunlight. A middle aged monk in his forties came up to me and asked: "What's it like to be with a woman?" I was shocked that a good looking and healthy man in his forties should have to ask a twenty-one year old what sexual intercourse was like. I had decided years earlier never to become a celibate monk, and that day engraved my feelings even deeper into my soul.

The Catholic Church has made sex a taboo for priests and the priesthood has been plagued with scandals of sexual perversion and pedophilia. Many famous gurus from the East have taught celibacy in public while seducing female disciples in private. I am not against any human being having having a normal, healthy sex life. I am against lying and hypocrisy. Sex is as natural to human beings as breathing, eating, and sleeping. How can such an essential activity for the survival of the human race be thought of as "unspiritual" and why make it a big secret?

Extreme Buddhism and self-defense

Some, but not all Buddhist circles have a politically correct insistence on absolute nonviolence. Tibet had no effective army to fight off the Chinese invasion of 1950. The less politically correct and more pragmatic Nepalese fought off Chinese incursions with ease. The Nepalese Gurkha fighters have a reputation for being among the bravest soldiers in the world. Tibet is enslaved and Nepal is free because Tibetan Buddhism went too far in the direction of extreme philosophical purity. Idealism is a form of mental opium. It may feel good for a short while, but the long term effects can be disastrous. I do not call for war mongering or aggressive behavior toward one's neighbors. I do call for a strong sense that self-defense is normal, natural, and a basic necessity of life. Every animal on this planet has some form of defense mechanism, and human beings should have many layers of defense to protect ourselves, our families, and our society. Having an army is not evil; it is just good common sense.

What is relevant in Buddhism?

Over the centuries Buddhism has collected a great deal of hocus pocus and excess baggage. Meditation is not a very complicated affair. It takes time, patience, and whole hearted commitment, but it is not intellectually difficult. Meditation is a gentle and loving step beyond the mind, not a complicated new philosophy that the mind must learn.

The cosmic consciousness we seek is the ultimate blank page. Nothing can be written on it and there is no dogma inside it. No individual can claim ownership of it and no country can pollute it with its customs and prejudices. Cosmic consciousness remains an eternally wild and pure phenomena because it is beyond all of our minds. Our methods may be organized, but the thing itself is anarchic and beyond the realm of society and culture. Some Buddhist teachers give the false impression that superconsciousness is a mapped out empire that has been conquered and controlled by the great masters. This is simply not the case, and it is an absolute impossibility.

I have met people who think that by learning to speak Tibetan, Japanese, or Sanskrit they will somehow become more spiritual. The cosmic blank page does not care about your language. It is simply there and available to anyone who is open enough to perceive it. Frankly, Buddhism and all the other religions of the world have become, in large part, just nonsense. People are given the impression that if they become enlightened they will have spiritual thoughts and will be talking to deities and angels. A safer bet is that when you become enlightened, you will become totally silent inside. You will be able to think or not think, turning the thinking part of your mind on and off like a radio at will.

As an example of the insanity of some Buddhist circles, one Taiwanese Buddhist group constructed a Godzilla Buddha. It is a steel statue of a standing Siddhartha, so grotesquely monstrous in proportions, that I am not sure if it is meant to scare little children or prove that my God is bigger than your God. Two even larger giant steel Buddha statues are being built in India (500 feet tall) and China (509 feet tall), in a war to see who can build the worlds tallest religious superhero.

Some Buddhist sects still preach that there is a "Western Paradise" where good Buddhists go to live after they die. Are they talking about Beverly Hills? Buddhism has its carnival of nonsense, just as Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam.

Buddha's Four Noble Truths

(1) Life is suffering. Is human life essentially painful from the moment of birth to the moment of death? Even ordinary life can be full of fun, adventure, friends, romance, good food, music and art. Buddhism has been, in many ways, an anti-life religion that appeals to those who always see the glass half empty rather than half full. Why should we deny the fact that life can be an enjoyable adventure and not just a pitiful veil of tears?

(2) All suffering is caused by ignorance. Much suffering is caused by poverty, accidents, disease, and countless other factors that can be addressed by the positive application of science. Even the fully enlightened suffer physically if they fall down and break a leg. We have modern pain killers for physical pain, and psychological suffering can be lessened by the practice of meditation. Traditional Buddhist meditation techniques alone have proven inadequate for the Western mind. More relevant and powerful methods are available today (see Meditation Handbook).

Many Buddhists love to debate the meaning of the word 'dukkha,' which was the word Siddhartha used for 'suffering.' The current fad in Buddhism is to claim that Siddhartha was only refering to some subtle and esoteric discontent with life, the boredom and unsatisfactory burden of having a heartbeat. I find this intellectual, analytic trend to be particularly odious as it shows a lack of compassion for all forms of suffering. If Siddhartha was a wise and compassionate man, and I believe that he was, then he must have been concerned with all forms of sorrow and pain, not just with the decadent discontent of the pampered elite. A real Buddha would never ignore the terrible anguish of a man who suffers the loss of a wife, or a mother who suffers the loss of a child. The overly analytic trend of modern Buddhism comes from the head, not from the heart or the hara, and for me real Buddhism is from the heart and the hara.

When Buddhists get to the point where they can only talk about life using foreign languages and cryptic and obsolete terms, then in my opinion they have missed the experience of meditation itself, because meditation has no pedantic element to it at all. The historic Buddha tried to use the ordinary language of his day to speak to people because he wanted to help them deal with life as it existed right then and there. Nowadays Buddhism has to some degree become a history lesson for cult snobs. Many modern Western Buddhists are incapable of speaking in terms of the here and now, and continuously rely on parroting second hand Buddhist slogans to get through any important conversation. For me it is pointless to debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or the thousand and one definitions of the word 'dukkha.'

(3) Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment. A positive spirit is also needed to overcome suffering and dwelling on the potential misery of life only amplifies that misery. Friendship, jokes, and high spirits alleviate suffering more quickly. Love, an experience rarely mentioned in Buddhist scriptures, is such a powerful force that suffering retreats in its presence. The loveless negativism of the extreme forms of Buddhism may lead to a sickly and unloving mind just as easily as an enlightened spirit. [see pictures of Vietnamese Buddhist monks burning themselves alive in 1963]

(4) To suppress suffering, Buddha recommended the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation. What are right views? Is a theocracy of Buddhist priests going to dictate to the sangha (monastic community) how to think and what to say? Intense meditation is needed by all, but the difficulties of determining what is "right action" and "right speech" is fraught with dangers. Was it "right action" for Tibet to fail to develop an effective military with which to fight off an obvious Chinese threat? What brilliant monk dictated that "right action" to the sheep like sangha?

I am not saying that Siddhartha's Four Noble Truths are wrong, but rather that suffering should not be the centerpiece of a meditation based religion for the West. A more positive path to enlightenment is possible that is every bit as valid as traditional Buddhism and more suited to the positive Western mind. I see this new Buddhism as an offshoot of traditional Buddhist and Hindu practice, with both the old and new schools coexisting without conflict. This new path has been gradually evolving for decades in the West and this essay is simply meant to help codify and clarify that which is already being born.

Buddhism started in India, but the countries to which it spread modified Buddhist teachings to fit their own temperament and culture. Tibetans now practice Tibetan Buddhism and the Japanese practice Japanese Buddhism. The original form of Indian Buddhism has become extinct. The West is far removed from Asian culture. It therefore seems obvious that a new Western Buddhism should be quite different in philosophy and methodology, while retaining the ultimate goal of enlightenment.

Siddhartha left his life as a recluse in the forest to create an esoteric philosophy for the masses. The problem is, there is no such thing as an esoteric philosophy, because esoteric people do not need any philosophy. All doctrine is a product of the mind, and the esoteric leap beyond the mind leaves all philosophies far behind. Therefore, if you create a new religion, it should be with the common man in mind. Religion should be life affirming: value honesty, family, democracy, and reasonable nonviolent behavior. Organized religion is useful to elevate the masses to the point where real religion begins. That point is beyond the mind and beyond any organization, scriptures, rules, or teaching.

Is traditional Buddhist compassion hollow?

In traditional Buddhism you don't hear much talk about love, joy, and romance. That is because the essence of traditional Buddhism is to keep one's focus on suffering and death. This constant remembrance of the negative is supposed to help one become detached from life and thus attain the ultimate freedom of nirvana. The word "compassion" is used by traditional Buddhists repetitiously and unconsciously. Buddhist monks are sometimes taught to visualize sick and starving people and then feel "compassion" for their suffering. Christians are taught to feed the sick, cure the ill, and to love their spouses and children dearly. In this way Christianity is a superior religion to Buddhism, because Christian compassion leads to helpful positive action and is not just a self-absorbed, self-centered pretense.

Unlike Christians, Buddhists are not known for doing great charity work, because the Buddhist focus is always on the negative. Why develop a cure for a disease if nature is just going to come up with a new disease sooner or latter to take its place? Aging, decay, and death are always on the Buddhist's mind, so why bother fighting a futile battle against the inevitable physical collapse? If your religion makes suffering the centerpiece of your attention, you will not nurture life to make it better. All your effort is invested in trying to escape life, not in trying to improve the art of living. If your attitude is defeatist at its core, then why even bother to try? Thus Tibet was in a state of physical ruin when the Chinese army simply walked into Tibet in October of 1950. The Chinese took control with little effective resistance because Tibetans had not developed a strong and viable society.

Is attachment to guru better than attachment to money or sex?

Another great problem for Buddhism has been the excessive worship of gurus, which is an irrational contradiction for a religion that puts such a great emphasis on detachment. Intense love can be very positive, but worship and idolization quickly degrade into enslavement. Just because a human being realizes his or her own true identity does not make that human being a deity. I have been with many teachers, some of whom were fully enlightened, but none of whom were perfect human beings. It is my understanding that all enlightened human beings remain human, with weaknesses and the potential for corruption. Self-realization is not self-perfection in any total sense. It could more accurately be described as self-expansion. You become vast inside, but not perfect and not all knowing. Even after full enlightenment you can still be fooled by others and make blunders yourself.

Existential intelligence, the knowledge of one's self, does not automatically give you a higher IQ or a degree in science. The enlightened men I have know have all been pretty miserable at science, mathematics, and economics. They end up living in ivory towers, part created by themselves and part created by their own disciples. Spiritual teachers can even lose their basic common sense through lack of contact with the more ordinary world we live in. The last person you should go to for advice about politics or science is the guru on the mountain, because he is divorced from the world that works, creates wealth, and continues the human race.

For Westerners, the East represents an imagined source of pure spiritual inspiration. Unfortunately, for many poor Asian monks and teachers, the West has meant a source of income and a new livelihood. Many in the East have long felt that only Asians could comprehend the inner art of meditation, and their focus in the West has been largely motivated by a desire to raise funds. If you are living in a hut in India or ramshackle monastery in Nepal, a journey to the West is an opportunity to increase your standard of living. Many Asians wrongly assume that they own meditation as if it were a proprietary cultural commodity. Westerners must beware that the East is no more innocent than the West, and many Asian gurus are just as impure in motivation as our own homegrown variety of spiritual opportunist.

Is traditional Buddhism pro-freedom?

The East has always had an imperial model for the teacher-student relationship. At worst it has degraded into a corrupt, authoritarian charade of spirituality. Tibetans still enthrone their high lamas in elaborate royal ceremonies. Are we in the West going to enthrone those Westerners among us who attain enlightenment in future years? The very idea is ridiculous and counter to our finest principles of equality and democracy. I have never met any human being who was so enlightened that they did not occasionally come up with some truly bad ideas. Likewise, it is rare to find an individual so low that on occasion they don't have a positive suggestion. The West must develop its own path, based on our most noble principles of dignity and respect for all.

A new path is possible

Buddha said that life exists as constant change, but many Buddhist leaders want Buddhism to remain fixed and dead like a rock. A new, more direct path to self-realization is possible that avoids trying to make Westerners look and act more like people from the East. If Westerners are to find their own self, they will have to look deep inside their own self, and not merely imitate the persona of others. Americans and Europeans are not the same as Tibetans and Indians. Trying to think and act like a Tibetan will only make you a false Tibetan, never a real Tibetan, and never a real enlightened Western human being.

I love and respect many Buddhist teachers who are alive today. I just hope a newer breed of teacher will one day appear that will actively encourage students of meditation to become total human beings. We need a new living Buddhism that changes with the times and the condition of the seekers traveling the path. Westerners can afford the luxury of being lovers, parents, meditators, and creators of wealth, all in the same lifetime. Buddha gave up his wealth because he thought that was the only way to achieve enlightenment. I am saying that you can keep your wealth, your spouse, your home, and still make spiritual progress. Science can give us the added energy we need to have it all. It all is important, and nothing of importance should be discarded in the name of spirituality.

"The Last Word on Learning Buddhism" - by William R. Stimson

I was at the Sunday morning service at the Ch'an Meditation Center. The speaker lectured on and on as we all sat cross-legged on cushions on the carpet. Individuals to the left of me and to the right moved now and then, rearranging their legs, making themselves comfortable. Because of my early Zen training, I sat all the while erect and still, without moving a single muscle — deep in a peaceful meditation. I wasn't inattentive to the talk but mainly paid close attention to my own mind. Suddenly, it began to stir.

For that one instant, it was as if I were simultaneously inside and outside time. From the spacious and unperturbed dimension of the meditation, I watched closely as a vast complex came forward to claim me. Because I had been sitting so still for almost an hour already, I was attentive enough to see myself begin to fall into an identification with it. From within the complex, I realized the speaker was really enjoying hearing himself talk and I felt concern he wasn't about to wind down anytime soon and ring the bell. At the same time, I began getting the first unpleasant sensations in my folded legs. From long experience, I knew they were going to start aching unbearably. All this was familiar stuff from my early years meditating and so I recognized the complex was "me." It was me as I existed in time — my conditioned self.

The arising of this "self" and the identification with it happened almost simultaneously — that's the conditioning. Being "me" was a habit I had. Had I not been in such an attentive state, I wouldn't have noticed I could equally well do without it.

But I did notice. That's all I did — nothing else. Immediately, I was free. Like the two wings of a bird, the noticing and the freedom operated in unison. The moment I saw I had begun to fall into an identification with "me," I was immediately free of "me."

I could see with such beautiful clarity that this "me" was not at all central to who or what I was. It was central, though, to the onset of the leg pain. To have let my consciousness be hijacked by it, I perceived in a flash, would have been tantamount to delivering my peaceful meditation into an agonizing bout of endurance. As it was, the pain was stopped dead in its tracks. It had dropped away of its own accord. I sat on for a long time after this, free of pain and immobile in peaceful meditation.

All this happened in the blink of an eye and, in that same blink, I realized it was happening. The realization was like the drop of a pebble in a pond. Ripples spread out in larger and larger circles. They vanished and the surface of the pond was still again. I sat a long time meditating in that stillness. Eventually the speaker did stop. It came as a surprise to me to hear the bell ring. It was as if no time had gone by at all.

I hardly gave the whole thing a second thought. The next morning I almost didn't write it down. It just chanced to spring to mind as I sat at my computer, as I do first thing every morning, and began typing.

Leg pain in sitting meditation is a mental attitude. The feeling "It's impossible. I can't bear it." is an ego feeling. When there is no "I", there is nothing to bear. In contrast, the more self-centered the sitting is, the more painful.

Only as these sentences started pouring down on the page, did it dawn on me: I had experienced the great Buddhist truth: "The source of suffering is the illusion of a separate self." It stunned me to have realized this myself — on my own. It wasn't some big earth-shattering realization of enlightenment; only a plain everyday observation of the obvious.

I became sensitive, after that experience, to the way the Sunday lectures kept presenting the Buddha's realizations from the outside. Not a single lecture ever gave a view of how it was to experience one of these truths for oneself. In fact, the possibility that this could happen was never entertained. All the lectures presented the Buddha's insights as if they were necessarily foreign to any experience we ourselves could possibly have. The lectures called upon us — not to experience these truths for ourselves, but to believe them and accept them as truth. In other words, the Buddha's great and timeless realizations had been turned into dogma and were being passed on to us as a belief system.

It seemed wrong to push the Buddha away from us like this and make him larger than life. If the historical Buddha had thought he was special and unlike anyone else, he wouldn't have gone around trying to share his realizations with others. Rather he must have immediately recognized that what he'd experienced of his own nature held true also for all sentient beings. Surely, he saw Buddhas everywhere. The idea was to touch them and spark it to start happening on the inside of those Buddhas like it had in him.

I began to see the Sunday lectures at the Ch'an Center twisted the kinds of simple and profound clarifications I was beginning to have into something cosmically grandiose and impossible for the ordinary mortal to achieve in this lifetime. I got the feeling I was at the wrong end of a long historical progression that had started out with plain insights that were real and immediate — the kind of realizations that could possibly occur, even if only partially, to some stupid jerk like me in a world like this — and transformed them into a package for the consumption of the masses. Similarly, the big polluted river that snakes its way like a mudflow through the coastal industrial city started out high in the distant mountains as a pristine stream. When things come into the crowded human world, this happens. They get corrupted.

We realize today what we've done to our rivers and oceans, skies and forests. There are concerted efforts afoot to clean back up what we've sullied. Why not do the same with the spiritual rivers that reach our shores as muddied with popularizations and misrepresentations as our actual rivers are with filth and poisons? If we are to find what is pristine and unpolluted in these traditions, we must go back upstream — back to what is pure, what is real. "How?" one might ask, "can we do this? We can't travel back in time!"

We can do it because the real river of Buddhism doesn't extend from the life of the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago forward to our time. That's only the river of institutions. That's a business of history and dogma, doctrine and national churches. The real river, like always — just like it did in the time of the Buddha himself, at the moment of his enlightenment — extends from the unknown that's deep within us to our realization and experience and then onward into the world in the form of our changed behavior, altered perceptions and different concerns. This is the living river. It is pristine and unsullied so long as we always draw from the source. The source is within us, not somewhere back in history.

The institutions of Buddhism have done a great service to us by bringing us, in as pure and unadulterated a form as possible, the actual fact of the Buddha's enlightenment, as well as a rich array of methods and techniques. We owe them so much!

Their failures are only the failures of institutions everywhere. Institutions survive and accomplish their mission to the extent they can further themselves. Over time they get corrupted so that this comes to be their main goal — to further themselves. The justification, of course, is that to the extent they do this, they further their mission — spread the dharma. What happens though is that, as they come increasingly into the world, they have to come, like the river, lower and lower. Repackaged again and again for more and more popular consumption, the dharma gets diluted into dogma. The great truths of enlightenment are reduced to popular religion. What is innate and unfolds from inside of us is pushed onto some great godlike figure of the past whose legacy is tightly held in the keep of the institution and its hierarchy in the form of a creed or orthodoxy that is sacrosanct. These institutions develop, in other words, "institutional egos" which take over and "unenlighten" them. This is what I was beginning to see in the Sunday morning lectures at my beloved Ch'an Meditation Center.

Increasingly I saw that the everyday and ordinary was more real to me than the intellectual ideology of the long Sunday morning lectures. Meditation was beginning to change my life in significant ways. For instance, I was simply walking down the street one day when I espied a bent-over little black woman directly in front of me. The sight of her labored walk suddenly overwhelmed me with a wave of something completely new and different — the likes of which I'd never felt before. "What is this?" I asked myself, curious and inquiring.

"Compassion," came the immediate answer, as if the Buddha himself had whispered it softly into my ear. I felt compassion at that moment burst forth full-blown, for the first time in my life. So pure, so different, so real it was! To live a life without this: what a sad loss!

The subsequent Sunday, the lecturer at the Ch'an Meditation Center went on and on about how we should "develop a mind of compassion." The lecture did not accord with my own experience. The entreaty to force a compassionate attitude, to impose it upon our experience — seemed phony to me now. I had seen for myself the real thing doesn't need to be imposed from outside. It arises spontaneously from within, in its own proper time.

Some months later, I was crossing town and came to a street corner. The brilliant sunlight blazed in reflection on an old white stone building illuminating it splendidly. "Thank you!" my heart cried out. "Oh, thank you so much!" I stood there mesmerized and overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude.

This rush of feeling stopped me in my tracks. "Who am I thanking?" I asked myself. It struck me odd and wonderful that I should be so grateful for a simple sunlit building and that this gratitude should touch me so deep. I knew immediately I was thanking life that it could be so beautiful, and that it would expose its splendor so openly to me. I felt grateful to the historical Buddha and his practice of meditation transmitted to me through so many generations of teachers, for giving me the capacity again to be moved deeply and purely by the simple everyday miracle of life on this planet. I felt grateful to the Ch'an Meditation Center for everything that had started happening to me since I began going there.

I was taken aback, though, on a subsequent Sunday at the Ch'an Center, when the lecturer droned on and on about "engendering a mind of gratitude." I sensed those seated around me were hanging on the speaker's every word. I suddenly realized I didn't belong in these lectures. The notion of trying to impose gratitude struck me as absurd and superficial. To consciously control our behavior we have to split in two. One part tries to make the other be something it's not. What can come from this? I thought of the episodes that were beginning to happen to me day in and day out. The difference between what was real and what was fake stood out so pronounced in my mind. Nothing forced or imposed could be as sweet or beautiful as that which arises spontaneously because it is intrinsic and its time has come.

Around this time I came down with the flu. One of the devotees at the meditation center phoned to ask where I'd been. I told her I was sick in bed and at pains to get a good night's rest. The next evening, after I had finally managed to doze off into a deep healing sleep, the phone rang. It was this woman. I tactfully informed her I had at long last managed to get to sleep and her call had woken me. She explained she worked at a restaurant until 11 pm and could only call me after she got off. The next night the same thing happened, and the next night too. Finally I asked bluntly, "Why do you keep calling and waking me up just when I get to sleep? I'm not going to get better if I can't sleep."

"Shi Fu teaches us it is part of the Buddhist practice to call people when they are sick," she lectured, to correct my erroneous view.

"That's not real Buddhism," I blurted without thinking, "When you're just blindly following what somebody tells you to do. You end up doing the opposite of what's right."

I didn't get the feeling my comment was well-received. Next time I ran across the woman, I could see she viewed me as some kind of renegade who dared to question the teaching of the master and the meditation center's "party line."

I attended the Sunday lectures more and more infrequently. Instead, Sunday mornings I started taking my meditation cushion over to the Hudson River and meditating outdoors beside the river, under the open sky. It was a wasteland in those days of wrecked piers and junk-strewn cobblestone. There was one little Ailanthus tree struggling up out of a heap of rubble. But its green branches against the sky beside the mighty river imparted a magic to the place for me. I could understand why Herman Hesse's Siddhartha sat for so long beside his river. One day as I was meditating there, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a figure running and dodging. "Is it some dangerous or deranged derelict?" I wondered; for I was in a very isolated area. There was no one around to call for help. Nevertheless, I didn't look up or move a muscle but continued with my meditation. A few moments later, with the movements of an agile youth running and jumping, the figure came closer and entered my field of vision.

It was a tarpaulin, a square of canvas such as constructions workers used to tie down over a pile of materials. It had gotten lose. The wind gave it life and sent it dancing across the pavement. Momentarily, the brisk gust died down and the tarpaulin collapsed on the ground like the empty thing it was. Then, the wind blew up again and the "ghost" scampered energetically off into the distance — looking every bit like a human figure on the run.

In the same way my mind made a person of that empty tarpaulin pushed around by the wind, I suddenly saw I created an illusory "myself" from having been blown this way and that through life by larger forces. I saw that the separate and independent self I'd always thought I had was just a fabrication of my own mind.

One of the next times I made it over to the Ch'an Meditation Center, the Sunday morning lecturer talked on and on about how we must "drop the self." Did he really imagine a realization of the illusory nature of the self could be grafted on to our experience by lecturing at us? It seemed so obvious to me it was an intrinsic and natural development that arose from the meditation practice. To each it arrives in its due time, when the requisite conditions are in place. And each person has the realization in his or her own unique way.

I work evenings and used to go out after work for pizza and beer to relax and get sleepy. As I meditated more and more, I didn't need beer to relax. Besides, I didn't want to wake up anymore with a headache in the morning and waste the little bit of precious time I had for writing. I also realized I was spending a lot of money I didn't need to spend — and I was getting fatter. One night I was about to go out as usual for the beer and pizza and changed my mind. Instead, I sliced up an apple and had it with peanut butter as I prepared a hot cup of chamomile tea. Then I nestled in bed with the tea reading an interesting book. I came upon some profound passage that catapulted me right to sleep and into the most interesting dream. Next morning, my writing was deeper, more rewarding. This whole thing happened spontaneously, again and again. In the end, I stopped going out for beer and pizza altogether. "How much richer," I marveled, "to stop drinking this way than to just do it because I was told to obey some outside 'precept'!" I began to feel the lectures on precepts at the Ch'an Center had gotten it backwards. My resolve not to drink didn't come from making a vow but arose spontaneously from within as part of the gradual and organic unfolding of my intrinsic nature. It seemed obvious to me the precepts presented a picture of those traits which arose like this of their own accord in a mind purifying itself. They were not rules to be followed but a depiction of what actually happened to one naturally as a result of meditation. Looked at this way, the vows to maintain these precepts took on new meaning for me. I saw them as promises not to betray my own true nature. Many a time I slipped up and many a time the vows came to my assistance. And so even the vows themselves came into play on their own. I never imposed them on myself as the lecturer instructed.

That which comes from within like this is its own reward. No mention is made of this in the lectures at the meditation center. Instead there is much talk of "building up merit." I don't need to think of "building up merit." I'm not interested in amassing a bank account for some future lifetime. Doing the right thing is scintillating and enlivening in its immediate and beautiful effect. The lectures instruct us that we should transfer our merit to others. I don't need to "transfer the merit" to other people. The moment I do something right, everyone around me benefits from the enhancement of life in me. Just by being real I do more good than I could ever possibly do by trying. That bent over little black woman on the street — she gave me to feel compassion. She didn't do it by a long lecture but just by being herself. I wonder how many other people she liberated. I doubt she'd ever heard the word "Buddhism." This is the way it works. This is the way it's real to me now. I stopped going to the Sunday lectures altogether.

I'm guessing it all started out right many hundreds of years ago and that the original Ch'an Buddhist teachers in ancient China didn't harangue their disciples about what they should do but instead gave them a beautiful picture of what happens in the enlightenment process. Instead of foisting upon them doctrinal objectives to be imposed on their behavior, I'm supposing these masters of old shared with their students a realization of the kinds of things which unfold naturally in them as they make their way along this path of inner development. As Ch'an Buddhism became acceptable to the intellectual establishment of those times and eventually to the power elite, money started pouring in for bigger and bigger temples and monastic centers. We can see the same happening in American today. And so we can supposed that, like it is doing today in America, in ancient China Ch'an Buddhism got off track somewhere along the way. What was real started getting turned into a church. What was wisdom became preaching.

I feel "taught Buddhism" sadly misses the essence and substitutes something fake for what is real. What everybody is sitting at the Ch'an Center Sunday mornings striving so hard to glean from the lectures are subtle and evanescent states of mind they themselves have certainly experienced on many occasions without even realizing it. They don't have to learn how to get enlightened. They only have to pause and grow still enough in meditation to notice what's already there inside them — that beautiful symphony drowned out by the din of noisy conditioned ways. The truth plays in their bones. It dances in their gut. It runs in their blood. Meditation brings them to the river where they are part of the same flow as everything around. Without words, it teaches. By drowning out what's lesser, which can't sustain itself in silence, it takes hold — until which point it bursts out like flowers in their path. Wherever they walk, it blooms and they gain that exquisite delight of being inside the miracle. When it happens it is so simple, so immediate, and so direct. It doesn't seem like a big thing! It's just rudimentary, basic, fundamental, ordinary. Above all, it's practical! It works: that day when I had the realization about suffering and self, my legs were understandably sore when I unfolded them at the end of the two-hour lecture and stood up, but while I was sitting I was not in pain.

Buddhism, in my experience, is a creative endeavor. It has to do with the discovery of reality. To discover reality I have to reinvent myself in such a way that I am true. Being true, I can see truth. Thus when my core is enlightened, even a little bit, my ego goes dancing in its wind, like the tarpaulin down by the river. The innate joy of this dance from the authentic beauty within is so powerful and so real, and so much more compelling than anything else the world has to offer, that my ego doesn't need outside incentive. It desires with its whole little deluded heart to make itself transparent in every way to that which occasionally shines through it. Like a stained glass window, it delights when the light blazes through, making its true colors show — because this is when it's most truly itself: when it lets the light through. It wants not itself, but that which comes through to do the magic. It vanishes before this with savor and with relish. Not because it was counter-conditioned by some imposed religious belief system, but because it has come to taste the delight of a sensuous abandon to the unconditioned, and the unconditional. Freedom is its own reward!

It seemed to me that to try to "learn" Buddhism in the way a student learns engineering or dentistry involves displacing the source of what is real onto the institution and its hierarchy. It's not my experience that Buddhism is primarily a matter of intellectual endeavor. My friend Nancy Joyce and I formed a Saturday meditation group — free and open to anybody. The Ch'an Center graciously allowed us the use of its second floor meditation hall and now schedules us in almost every Saturday. Over the years that our Saturday group has been in existence, I have witnessed a remarkable transformation in those who attend on a regular basis for the all-day sittings. Nancy says she can see the same transformation in me and I can definitely see it in her. I feel that in our own small but significant way we have played a role in the reclamation of Buddhism's purest stream — we who know nothing and are just ordinary people. Buddhism's highest power is when it becomes small and everyday and enters into the trickle of life.

For me, Buddhism is about my deepest and most innate nature. It isn't in the keep of the Ch'an Meditation Center or any other institution or belief system. The enlightened master doesn't have it. Buddha himself didn't have it. There's no place to go and get it because it's not some place else. It never left me. It's right inside what I am. I have only to go there deeply to find it. Meditation provides the conditions for it to emerge in the spontaneous and creative way that's most real.

The legalistic following of rules is too surfacy, too superficial — ultimately it's fake. A much more profoundly rooted code of behavior and action arises naturally from the direct realizations that come while seated quietly in deep stillness. This code refines itself progressively as the realization deepens with further meditative practice. Daily life increasingly comes into focus as a primary form of practice.

To sit in quiet meditation. To notice the most self-evident truths. To delight in the spontaneous change in everyday behavior. To live more and more of life out of truth because such living is so much more deeply rewarding and beneficial. This is a Buddhism that for me is real.

There is a joy in reading and studying and attending informative lectures. The language of Buddhism is a delight — a poetry that speaks the deepest truths about being. The heart's most profound currents are reflected in the texts and commentaries of the great and accomplished masters. None of this need have anything to do with indoctrination into a creed or climbing up through an institutional hierarchy.

Buddhism, for me, is not about climbing up and getting big but going down — opening progressively down to a deeper level of existence. Becoming small. If anything, it entails shedding belief systems, layer by layer, that have nothing whatsoever to do with reality.

On his deathbed, the Buddha summed it all up nicely. He didn't say anything about imposing rules and codes of behavior on oneself or buying into belief systems. He simply admonished his disciples to be true. His dying words: "Be a light unto yourselves." To my mind, after some 2,500 years, this is still the last word on learning Buddhism.

© William R. Stimson

Dr. William R. Stimson left academia and opted for a life of radical simplicity centering on meditation, martial arts, yoga, dream analysis and writing. He is the founder and former editor of the Dream Network Journal and led evening dream groups in Manhattan. For years he conducted the free all-day meditation group every Saturday at the Ch'an Meditation Center in Elmhurst, Queens. His writing on simple living, dreams, meditation and consciousness has appeared in numerous journals and magazines and can be found on his website www.my-hope.com/Bill. He has recently moved to Taiwan with his wife Shuyuan Wang and is devoting himself to writing.

Flashy Graphics Are Working for Buddhanet

If you haven't seen Buddhanet lately you haven't seen Buddhanet. If you've been following me elsewhere, and who hasn't, you know I've been working on blog templates. I finally got around to Interpretation today, and while I was thinking of how much to put in the links section I decided to take a look at Buddhanet. I thought these guys had a class act before but WOW what a design. Tables and Java. Man, if I only knew what I was doing.

Actually, I think the complexity of your design should really reflect the quantity of your content, and Buddhanet is a BIG site. (I think it spreads across three states.)

I have goofy great ideas for this blog everyday, but none that will actually work, and none that would really help anyone understand Buddhism any better. As I said in TFD, I'm happy with what I've posted so far.

Thought I'd share what I discovered today. Enjoy.

Destroy 'the ego'

Destroy 'the ego', hound it, beat it, snub it, tell it where it gets off? Great fun, no doubt, but where is it? Must you not find it first? Isn't there a word about catching your goose before you can cook it? The great difficulty here is that there isn't one.

-'Posthumous Pieces' by Wei Wu Wei

REALISATION

This is to be realised. The Buddha said emphatically: ‘This is a Truth to be realised here and now.’ We do not have to wait until we die to find out if it’s all true - this teaching is for living human beings like ourselves. Each one of us has to realise it. I may tell you about it and encourage you to do it but I can’t make you realise it!

Don’t think of it as something remote or beyond your ability. When we talk about Dhamma or Truth, we say that is here and now, and something we can see for ourselves. We can turn to it; we can incline towards the Truth. We can pay attention to the way it is, here and now, at this time and this place. That’s mindfulness - being alert and bringing attention to the way it is. Through mindfulness, we investigate the sense of self, this sense of me and mine: my body, my feelings, my memories, my thoughts, my views, my opinions, my house, my car and so on.

My tendency was self-disparagement so, for example, with the thought: ‘I am Sumedho,’ I’d think of myself in negative terms: ‘I’m no good.’ But listen, from where does that arise and where does it cease?...or, ‘I’m really better than you, I’m more highly attained. I’ve been living the Holy Life for a long time so I must be better than any of you!’ Where does THAT arise and cease?

When there is arrogance, conceit or self-disparagement - whatever it is - examine it; listen inwardly; ‘I am....’ Be aware and attentive to the space before you think it; then think it and notice the space that follows. Sustain your attention on that emptiness at the end and see how long you can hold your attention on it. See if you can hear a kind of ringing sound in the mind, the sound of silence, the primordial sound. When you concentrate your attention on that, you can reflect: ‘Is there any sense of self?’ You see that when you’re really empty - when there’s just clarity, alertness and attention - there’s no self. There’s no sense of me and mine. So, I go to that empty state and I contemplate Dhamma: I think, ‘This is just as it is. This body here is just this way.’ I can give it a name or not but right now, it’s just this way. It’s not Sumedho!

There’s no Buddhist monk in the emptiness. ‘Buddhist monk’ is merely a convention, appropriate to time and place. When people praise you and say, ‘How wonderful’, you can know it as someone giving praise without taking it personally. You know there’s no Buddhist monk there; it’s just Suchness. It’s just this way. If I want Amaravati to be a successful place and it is a great success, I’m happy. But if it all fails, if no one is interested, we can’t pay the electricity bill and everything falls apart - failure! But really, there’s no Amaravati. The idea of a person who is a Buddhist monk or a place called Amaravati - these are only conventions, not ultimate realities. Right now it’s just this way, just the way it’s supposed to be. One doesn’t carry the burden of such a place on one’s shoulders because one sees it as it really is and there’s no person to be involved in it. Whether it succeeds or fails is no longer important in the same way.

In emptiness, things are just what they are. When we are aware in this way, it doesn’t mean that we are indifferent to success or failure and that we don’t bother to do anything. We can apply ourselves. We know what we can do; we know what has to be done and we can do it in the right way. Then everything becomes Dhamma, the way it is. We do things because that is the right thing to be doing at this time and in this place rather than out of a sense of personal ambition or fear of failure.

The path to the cessation of suffering is the path of perfection. Perfection can be a rather daunting word because we feel very imperfect. As personalities, we wonder how we can dare to even entertain the possibility of being perfect. Human perfection is something no one ever talks about; it doesn’t seem at all possible to think of perfection in regard to being human. But an arahant is simply a human being who has perfected life, someone who has learned everything there is to learn through the basic law: ‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.’ An arahant does not need to know everything about everything; it is only necessary to know and fully understand this law.

We use Buddha wisdom to contemplate Dhamma, the way things are. We take Refuge in Sangha, in that which is doing good and refraining from doing evil. Sangha is one thing, a community. It’s not a group of individual personalities or different characters. The sense of being an individual person or a man or a woman is no longer important to us. This sense of Sangha is realised as a Refuge. There is that unity so that even though the manifestations are all individual, our realisation is the same. Through being awake, alert and no longer attached, we realise cessation and we abide in emptiness where we all merge. There’s no person there. People may arise and cease in the emptiness, but there’s no person. There’s just clarity, awareness, peacefulness and purity.

ALLOWING THINGS TO ARISE

Before you can let things go, you have to admit them into full consciousness. In meditation, our aim is to skilfully allow the subconscious to arise into consciousness. All the despair, fears, anguish, suppression and anger is allowed to become conscious. There is a tendency in people to hold to very high-minded ideals. We can become very disappointed in ourselves because sometimes we feel we are not as good as we should be or we should not feel angry - all the shoulds and shouldn’ts. Then we create desire to get rid of the bad things - and this desire has a righteous quality. It seems right to get rid of bad thoughts, anger and jealousy because a good person ‘should not be like that’. Thus, we create guilt.

In reflecting on this, we bring into consciousness the desire to become this ideal and the desire to get rid of these bad things. And by doing that, we can let go - so that rather than becoming the perfect person, you let go of that desire. What is left is the pure mind. There is no need to become the perfect person because the pure mind is where perfect people arise and cease.

Cessation is easy to understand on an intellectual level, but to realise it may be quite difficult because this entails abiding with what we think we cannot bear. For example, when I first started meditating, I had the idea that meditation would make me kinder and happier and I was expecting to experience blissful mind states. But during the first two months, I never felt so much hatred and anger in my life. I thought, ‘This is terrible; meditation has made me worse.’ But then I contemplated why there was so much hatred and aversion coming up, and I realised that much of my life had been an attempt to run away from all that. I used to be a compulsive reader. I would have to take books with me wherever I went. Anytime fear or aversion started creeping in, I would whip out my book and read; or I would smoke or munch on snacks. I had an image of myself as being a kind person that did not hate people, so any hint of aversion or hatred was repressed.

This is why during the first few months as a monk, I was so desperate for things to do. I was trying to seek something to distract myself with because I had started to remember in meditation all the things I deliberately tried to forget. Memories from childhood and adolescence kept coming up in my mind; then this anger and hatred became so conscious it just seemed to overwhelm me. But something in me began to recognise that I had to bear with this, so I did stick it out. All the hatred and anger that had been suppressed in thirty years of living rose to its peak at this time, and it burned itself out and ceased through meditation. It was a process of purification.

To allow this process of cessation to work, we must be willing to suffer. This is why I stress the importance of patience. We have to open our minds to suffering because it is in embracing suffering that suffering ceases. When we find that we are suffering, physically or mentally, then we go to the actual suffering that is present. We open completely to it, welcome it, concentrate on it, allowing it to be what it is. That means we must be patient and bear with the unpleasantness of a particular condition. We have to endure boredom, despair, doubt and fear in order to understand that they cease rather than running away from them.

As long as we do not allow things to cease, we just create new kamma that just reinforces our habits. When something arises, we grasp it and proliferate around it; and this complicates everything. Then these things will be repeated and repeated throughout our lives - we cannot go around following our desires and fears and expect to realise peace. We contemplate fear and desire so that these do not delude us any more; we have to know what is deluding us before we can let it go. Desire and fear are to be known as impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self. They are seen and penetrated so that suffering can burn itself away.

It is very important here to differentiate between cessation and annihilation - the desire that comes into the mind to get rid of something. Cessation is the natural ending of any condition that has arisen. So it is not desire! It is not something that we create in the mind but it is the end of that which began, the death of that which is born. Therefore, cessation is not a self - it does not come about from a sense of ‘I have to get rid of things,’ but when we allow that which has arisen to cease. To do that, one has to abandon craving - let it go. It does not mean rejecting or throwing away but abandoning means letting go of it.

Then, when it has ceased, you experience nirodha - cessation, emptiness, non-attachment. Nirodha is another word for Nibbana. When you have let something go and allowed it to cease, then what is left is peace.

You can experience that peace through your own meditation. When you’ve let desire end in your own mind, that which is left over is very peaceful. That is true peacefulness, the Deathless. When you really know that as it is, you realise nirodha sacca, the Truth of Cessation, in which there’s no self but there’s still alertness and clarity. The real meaning of bliss is that peaceful, transcendent consciousness.

If we do not allow cessation, then we tend to operate from assumptions we make about ourselves without even knowing what we are doing. Sometimes, it is not until we start meditating that we begin to realise how in our lives so much fear and lack of confidence come from childhood experiences. I remember when I was a little boy, I had a very good friend who turned on me and rejected me. I was distraught for months after that. It left an indelible impression on my mind. Then I realised through meditation just how much a little incident like that had affected my future relationships with others - I always had a tremendous fear of rejection. I never even thought of it until that particular memory kept rising up into my consciousness during meditation. The rational mind knows that it is ridiculous to go around thinking about the tragedies of childhood. But if they keep coming up into consciousness when you are middle-aged, maybe they are trying to tell you something about assumptions that were formed when you were a child.

When you begin to feel memories or obsessive fears coming up in meditation, rather than becoming frustrated or upset by them, see them as something to be accepted into consciousness so that you can let them go. You can arrange your daily life so that you never have to look at these things; then the conditions for them to actually arise are minimal. You can dedicate yourself to a lot of important causes and keep busy; then these anxieties and nameless fears never become conscious - but what happens when you let go? The desire or obsession moves - and it moves to cessation. It ends. And then you have the insight that there is the cessation of desire. So the third aspect of the Third Noble Truth is: cessation has been realised.

MORTALITY AND CESSATION

With the reflection upon the Noble Truths, we bring into consciousness this very problem of human existence. We look at this sense of alienation and blind attachment to sensory consciousness, the attachment to that which is separate and stands forth in consciousness. Out of ignorance, we attach to desires for sense pleasures. When we identify with what is mortal or death-bound, and with what is unsatisfactory, that very attachment is suffering.

Sense pleasures are all mortal pleasures. Whatever we see, hear, touch, taste, think or feel is mortal - death-bound. So when we attach to the mortal senses, we attach to death. If we have not contemplated or understood it, we just attach blindly to mortality hoping that we can stave it off for a while. We pretend that we’re going to be really happy with the things we attach to - only to feel eventually disillusioned, despairing and disappointed. We might succeed in becoming what we want, but that too is mortal. We’re attaching to another death-bound condition. Then, with the desire to die, we might attach to suicide or to annihilation - but death itself is yet another death-bound condition. Whatever we attach to in these three kinds of desires, we’re attaching to death - which means that we’re going to experience disappointment or despair.

Death of the mind is despair; depression is a kind of death experience of the mind. Just as the body dies a physical death, the mind dies. Mental states and mental conditions die; we call it despair, boredom, depression and anguish. Whenever we attach, if we’re experiencing boredom, despair, anguish and sorrow, we tend to seek some other mortal condition that’s arising. As an example, you feel despair and you think, ‘I want a piece of chocolate cake.’ Off you go! For a moment you can absorb into the sweet, delicious, chocolate flavour of that piece of cake. At that moment, there’s becoming - you’ve actually become the sweet, delicious, chocolate flavour! But you can’t hold on to that very long. You swallow and what’s left? Then you have to go on to do something else. This is ‘becoming’.

We are blinded, caught in this becoming process on the sensual plane. But through knowing desire without judging the beauty or ugliness of the sensual plane, we come to see desire as it is. There’s knowing. Then, by laying aside these desires rather than grasping at them, we experience nirodha, the cessation of suffering. This is the Third Noble Truth which we must realise for ourselves. We contemplate cessation. We say, ‘There is cessation’, and we know when something has ceased.

THE TRUTH OF IMPERMANENCE

Here at Amaravati, we chant the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta in its traditional form. When the Buddha gave this sermon on the Four Noble Truths, only one of the five disciples who listened to it really understood it; only one had the profound insight. The other four rather liked it, thinking ‘Very nice teaching indeed,’ but only one of them, Kondanna really had the perfect understanding of what the Buddha was saying.

The devas were also listening to the sermon. Devas are celestial, ethereal creatures, vastly superior to us. They do not have coarse bodies like ours; they have ethereal bodies and they are beautiful and lovely, intelligent. Now although they were delighted to hear the sermon, not one of them was enlightened by it.

We are told that they became very happy about the Buddha’s enlightenment and that they shouted up through the heavens when they heard his teaching. First, one level of devata heard it, then they shouted up to the next level and soon all the devas were rejoicing - right up to the highest, the Brahma realm. There was resounding joy that the Wheel of Dhamma was set rolling and these devas and brahmas were rejoicing in it. However, only Kondanna, one of the five disciples, was enlightened when he heard this sermon. At the very end of the sutta, the Buddha called him ‘Anna Kondanna’. ‘Anna’ means profound knowing, so ‘Anna Kondanna’ means ‘Kondanna-who-knows.’

What did Kondanna know? What was his insight that the Buddha praised at the very end of the sermon? It was: ‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.’ Now this may not sound like any great knowledge but what it really implies is a universal pattern: whatever is subject to arising is subject to ceasing; it is impermanent and not self....So don’t attach, don’t be deluded by what arises and ceases. Don’t look for your refuges, that which you want to abide in and trust, in anything that arises - because those things will cease.

If you want to suffer and waste your life, go around seeking things that arise. They will all take you to the end, to cessation, and you will not be any the wiser for it. You will just go around repeating the same old dreary habits and when you die, you will not have learned anything important from your life.

Rather than just thinking about it, really contemplate:‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.’ Apply it to life in general, to your own experience. Then you will understand. Just note: beginning....ending. Contemplate how things are. This sensory realm is all about arising and ceasing, beginning and ending; there can be perfect understanding, samma ditthi, in this lifetime. I don’t know how long Kondanna lived after the Buddha’s sermon, but he was enlightened at that moment. Right then, he had perfect understanding.

I would like to emphasise how important it is to develop this way of reflecting. Rather than just developing a method of tranquillising your mind, which certainly is one part of the practice, really see that proper meditation is a commitment to wise investigation. It involves a courageous effort to look deeply into things, not analysing yourself and making judgements about why you suffer on a personal level, but resolving to really follow the path until you have profound understanding. Such perfect understanding is based upon the pattern of arising and ceasing. Once this law is understood, everything is seen as fitting into that pattern.

This is not a metaphysical teaching: ‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.’ It is not about the ultimate reality - the deathless reality; but if you profoundly understand and know that all that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing, then you will realise the ultimate reality, the deathless, immortal truths. This is a skilful means to that ultimate realisation. Notice the difference: the statement is not a metaphysical one but one which takes us to the metaphysical realisation.

THE THIRD NOBLE TRUTH

What is the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering? It is the remainderless fading and cessation of that same craving; the rejecting, relinquishing, leaving and renouncing of it. But whereon is this craving abandoned and made to cease? Wherever there is what seems lovable and gratifying, thereon it is abandoned and made to cease.

There is this Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

This Noble Truth must be penetrated to by realising the Cessation of Suffering....

This Noble Truth has been penetrated to by realising the Cessation of Suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

[Samyutta Nikaya LVI, 11]

The Third Noble Truth with its three aspects is: ‘There is the cessation of suffering, of dukkha. The cessation of dukkha should be realised. The cessation of dukkha has been realised.’

The whole aim of the Buddhist teaching is to develop the reflective mind in order to let go of delusions. The Four Noble Truths is a teaching about letting go by investigating or looking into - contemplating: ‘Why is it like this? Why is it this way?’ It is good to ponder over things like why monks shave their heads or why Buddha-rupas look the way they do. We contemplate...the mind is not forming an opinion about whether these are good, bad, useful or useless. The mind is actually opening and considering. ‘What does this mean? What do the monks represent? Why do they carry alms bowls? Why can’t they have money? Why can’t they grow their own food? We contemplate how this way of living has sustained the tradition and allowed it to be handed down from its original founder, Gotama the Buddha, to the present time.

We reflect as we see suffering; as we see the nature of desire; as we recognise that attachment to desire is suffering. These insights can only come through reflection; they cannot come through belief. You cannot make yourself believe or realise an insight as a wilful act; through really contemplating and pondering these truths, the insights come to you. They come only through the mind being open and receptive to the teaching - blind belief is certainly not advised or expected of anyone. Instead, the mind should be willing to be receptive, pondering and considering.

This mental state is very important - it is the way out of suffering. It is not the mind which has fixed views and prejudices and thinks it knows it all or which just takes what other people say as being the truth. It is the mind that is open to these Four Noble Truths and can reflect upon something that we can see within our own mind.

People rarely realise non-suffering because it takes a special kind of willingness in order to ponder and investigate and get beyond the gross and the obvious. It takes a willingness to actually look at your own reactions, to be able to see the attachments and to contemplate: ‘What does attachment feel like?’

For example, do you feel happy or liberated by being attached to desire? Is it uplifting or depressing? These questions are for you to investigate. If you find out that being attached to your desires is liberating, then do that. Attach to all your desires and see what the result is.

In my practice, I have seen that attachment to my desires is suffering. There is no doubt about that. I can see how much suffering in my life has been caused by attachments to material things, ideas, attitudes or fears. I can see all kinds of unnecessary misery that I have caused myself through attachment because I did not know any better. I was brought up in America - the land of freedom. It promises the right to be happy, but what it really offers is the right to be attached to everything. America encourages you to try to be as happy as you can by getting things. However, if you are working with the Four Noble Truths, attachment is to be understood and contemplated; then the insight into non-attachment arises. This is not an intellectual stand or a command from your brain saying that you should not be attached; it is just a natural insight into non-attachment or non-suffering.

(Again, I think this could go further. There is a tendency to define attachment as an unusual desire that bad people have, and I think that's mistaken. Is it bad to become wealthy? Lets take it down a notch from wealthy. Is it bad to have a nice home and things? Can you have those things without being attached to them?)

ACCOMPLISHMENT

It is important to know when you have let go of desire: when you no longer judge or try to get rid of it; when you recognise that it’s just the way it is. When you are really calm and peaceful, then you will find that there is no attachment to anything. You are not caught up, trying to get something or trying to get rid of something. Well-being is just knowing things as they are without feeling the necessity to pass judgement upon them.

We say all the time, ‘This shouldn’t be like this!’, ‘I shouldn’t be this way!’ and, ‘You shouldn’t be like this and you shouldn’t do that!’ and so on. I’m sure I could tell you what you should be - and you could tell me what I should be. We should be kind, loving, generous, good-hearted, hard-working, diligent, courageous, brave and compassionate. I don’t have to know you at all to tell you that! But to really know you, I would have to open up to you rather than start from an ideal about what a woman or man should be, what a Buddhist should be or what a Christian should be. It’s not that we don’t know what we should be.

Our suffering comes from the attachment that we have to ideals, and the complexities we create about the way things are. We are never what we should be according to our highest ideals. Life, others, the country we are in, the world we live in - things never seem to be what they should be. We become very critical of everything and of ourselves: ‘I know I should be more patient, but I just CAN’T be patient!’....Listen to all the ‘shoulds’ and the ‘should nots’ and the desires: wanting the pleasant, wanting to become or wanting to get rid of the ugly and the painful. It’s like listening to somebody talking over the fence saying, ‘I want this and I don’t like that. It should be this way and it shouldn’t be that way.’ Really take time to listen to the complaining mind; bring it into consciousness.

I used to do a lot of this when I felt discontented or critical. I would close my eyes and start thinking, ‘I don’t like this and I don’t want that’, ‘That person shouldn’t be like this’, and ‘The world shouldn’t be like that’. I would keep listening to this kind of critical demon that would go on and on, criticising me, you and the world. Then I would think, ‘I want happiness and comfort; I want to feel safe; I want to be loved!’ I would deliberately think these things out and listen to them in order to know them simply as conditions that arise in the mind. So bring them up in your mind - arouse all the hopes, desires and criticisms. Bring them into consciousness. Then you will know desire and be able to lay it aside.

The more we contemplate and investigate grasping, the more the insight arises: ‘Desire should be let go of.’ Then, through the actual practice and understanding of what letting go really is, we have the third insight into the Second Noble Truth, which is: ‘Desire has been let go of.’ We actually know letting go. It is not a theoretical letting go, but a direct insight. You know letting go has been accomplished. This is what practice is all about.

(I like this but I'd like to see more on "letting go of desire", and after I'm done with this reading I'll look up more.)

LETTING GO

If we contemplate desires and listen to them, we are actually no longer attaching to them; we are just allowing them to be the way they are. Then we come to the realisation that the origin of suffering, desire, can be laid aside and let go of.

How do you let go of things? This means you leave them as they are; it does not mean you annihilate them or throw them away. It is more like setting down and letting them be. Through the practice of letting go we realise that there is the origin of suffering, which is the attachment to desire, and we realise that we should let go of these three kinds of desire. Then we realise that we have let go of these desires; there is no longer any attachment to them.

When you find yourself attached, remember that ‘letting go’ is not ‘getting rid of’ or ‘throwing away’. If I’m holding onto this clock and you say, ‘Let go of it!’, that doesn’t mean ‘throw it out’. I might think that I have to throw it away because I’m attached to it, but that would just be the desire to get rid of it. We tend to think that getting rid of the object is a way of getting rid of attachment. But if I can contemplate attachment, this grasping of the clock, I realise that there is no point in getting rid of it - it’s a good clock; it keeps good time and is not heavy to carry around. The clock is not the problem. The problem is grasping the clock. So what do I do? Let it go, lay it aside - put it down gently without any kind of aversion. Then I can pick it up again, see what time it is and lay it aside when necessary.

You can apply this insight into ‘letting go’ to the desire for sense pleasures. Maybe you want to have a lot of fun. How would you lay aside that desire without any aversion? Simply recognise the desire without judging it. You can contemplate wanting to get rid of it - because you feel guilty about having such a foolish desire - but just lay it aside. Then, when you see it as it is, recognising that it’s just desire, you are no longer attached to it.

So the way is always working with the moments of daily life. When you are feeling depressed and negative, just the moment that you refuse to indulge in that feeling is an enlightenment experience. When you see that, you need not sink into the sea of depression and despair and wallow in it. You can actually stop by learning not to give things a second thought.

You have to find this out through practice so that you will know for yourself how to let go of the origin of suffering. Can you let go of desire by wanting to let go of it? What is it that is really letting go in a given moment? You have to contemplate the experience of letting go and really examine and investigate until the insight comes. Keep with it until that insight comes: ‘Ah, letting go, yes, now I understand. Desire is being let go of.’ This does not mean that you are going to let go of desire forever but, at that one moment, you actually have let go and you have done it in full conscious awareness. There is an insight then. This is what we call insight knowledge. In Pali, we call it nanadassana or profound understanding.

I had my first insight into letting go in my first year of meditation. I figured out intellectually that you had to let go of everything and then I thought: ‘How do you let go?’ It seemed impossible to let go of anything. I kept on contemplating: ‘How do you let go?’ Then I would say, ‘You let go by letting go.’ ‘Well then, let go!’ Then I would say:

‘But have I let go yet?’ and, ‘How do you let go?’ ‘Well just let go!’ I went on like that, getting more frustrated. But eventually it became obvious what was happening. If you try to analyse letting go in detail, you get caught up in making it very complicated. It was not something that you could figure out in words any more, but something you actually did. So I just let go for a moment, just like that.

Now with personal problems and obsessions, to let go of them is just that much. It is not a matter of analysing and endlessly making more of a problem about them, but of practising that state of leaving things alone, letting go of them. At first, you let go but then you pick them up again because the habit of grasping is so strong. But at least you have the idea. Even when I had that insight into letting go, I let go for a moment but then I started grasping by thinking: ‘I can’t do it, I have so many bad habits!’ But don’t trust that kind of nagging, disparaging thing in yourself. It is totally untrustworthy. It is just a matter of practising letting go. The more you begin to see how to do it, then the more you are able to sustain the state of non-attachment.

(Just pretend that I highlighted the whole thing.)

GRASPING IS SUFFERING

Usually we equate suffering with feeling, but feeling is not suffering. It is the grasping of desire that is suffering. Desire does not cause suffering; the cause of suffering is the grasping of desire. This statement is for reflection and contemplation in terms of your individual experience.

You really have to investigate desire and know it for what it is. You have to know what is natural and necessary for survival and what is not necessary for survival. We can be very idealistic in thinking that even the need for food is some kind of desire we should not have. One can be quite ridiculous about it. But the Buddha was not an idealist and he was not a moralist. He was not trying to condemn anything. He was trying to awaken us to truth so that we could see things clearly.

Once there is that clarity and seeing in the right way, then there is no suffering. You can still feel hunger. You can still need food without it becoming a desire. Food is a natural need of the body. The body is not self; it needs food otherwise it will get very weak and die. That is the nature of the body - there is nothing wrong with that. If we get very moralistic and high-minded and believe that we are our bodies, that hunger is our own problem, and that we should not even eat - that is not wisdom; it is foolishness.

When you really see the origin of suffering, you realise that the problem is the grasping of desire not the desire itself. Grasping means being deluded by it, thinking it’s really ‘me’ and ‘mine’: ‘These desires are me and there is something wrong with me for having them’; or, ‘I don’t like the way I am now. I have to become something else’; or, ‘I have to get rid of something before I can become what I want to be.’ All this is desire. So you listen to it with bare attention, not saying it’s good or bad, but merely recognising it for what it is.

THREE KINDS OF DESIRE

Desire or tanha in Pali is an important thing to understand.

What is desire? Kama tanha is very easy to understand. This kind of desire is wanting sense pleasures through the body or the other senses and always seeking things to excite or please your senses - that is kama tanha. You can really contemplate: what is it like when you have desire for pleasure? For example, when you are eating, if you are hungry and the food tastes delicious, you can be aware of wanting to take another bite. Notice that feeling when you are tasting something pleasant; and notice how you want more of it. Don’t just believe this; try it out. Don’t think you know it because it has been that way in the past. Try it out when you eat. Taste something delicious and see what happens: a desire arises for more. That is kama tanha.

We also contemplate the feeling of wanting to become something. But if there is ignorance, then when we are not seeking something delicious to eat or some beautiful music to listen to, we can be caught in a realm of ambition and attainment - the desire to become. We get caught in that movement of striving to become happy, seeking to become wealthy; or we might attempt to make our life feel important by endeavouring to make the world right. So note this sense of wanting to become something other than what you are right now.

Listen to the bhava tanha of your life: ‘I want to practise meditation so I can become free from my pain. I want to become enlightened. I want to become a monk or a nun. I want to become enlightened as a lay person. I want to have a wife and children and a profession. I want to enjoy the sense world without having to give up anything and become an enlightened arahant too.’

When we get disillusioned with trying to become something, then there is the desire to get rid of things. So we contemplate vibhava tanha, the desire to get rid of: ‘I want to get rid of my suffering. I want to get rid of my anger. I’ve got this anger and I want to get rid of it. I want to get rid of jealousy, fear and anxiety.’ Notice this as a reflection on vibhava tanha. We are actually contemplating that within ourselves which wants to get rid of things; we are not trying to get rid of vibhava tanha. We are not taking a stand against the desire to get rid of things nor are we encouraging that desire. Instead, we are reflecting, ‘It’s like this; it feels like this to want to get rid of something; I’ve got to conquer my anger; I have to kill the Devil and get rid of my greed - then I will become....’ We can see from this train of thought that becoming and getting rid of are very much associated.

Bear in mind though that these three categories of kama tanha, bhava tanha and vibhava tanha are merely convenient ways of contemplating desire. They are not totally separate forms of desire but different aspects of it.

The second insight into the Second Noble Truth is:

‘Desire should be let go of.’ This is how letting go comes into our practice. You have an insight that desire should be let go of, but that insight is not a desire to let go of anything. If you are not very wise and are not really reflecting in your mind, you tend to follow the ‘I want to get rid of, I want to let go of all my desires’ - but this is just another desire. However, you can reflect upon it; you can see the desire to get rid of, the desire to become or the desire for sense pleasure. By understanding these three kinds of desire, you can let them go.

The Second Noble Truth does not ask you to think, ‘I have a lot of sensual desires’, or, ‘I’m really ambitious. I’m really bhava tanha plus, plus, plus!’ or, ‘I’m a real nihilist. I just want out. I’m a real vibhava tanha fanatic. That’s me.’ The Second Noble Truth is not that. It is not about identifying with desires in any way; it’s about recognising desire.

I used to spend a lot of time watching how much of my practice was desire to become something. For example, how much of the good intentions of my meditation practice as a monk was to become liked - how much of my relations with other monks or nuns or with lay people had to do with wanting to be liked and approved of. That is bhava tanha - desire for praise and success. As a monk, you have this bhava tanha: wanting people to understand everything and to appreciate the Dhamma. Even these subtle, almost noble, desires are bhava tanha.

Then there is vibhava tanha in spiritual life, which can be very self-righteous: ‘I want to get rid of, annihilate and exterminate these defilements.’ I really listened to myself thinking, ‘I want to get rid of desire. I want to get rid of anger. I don’t want to be frightened or jealous any more. I want to be brave. I want to have joy and gladness in my heart.’

This practice of Dhamma is not one of hating oneself for having such thoughts, but really seeing that these are conditioned into the mind. They are impermanent. Desire is not what we are but it is the way we tend to react out of ignorance when we have not understood these Four Noble Truths in their three aspects. We tend to react like this to everything. These are normal reactions due to ignorance.

But we need not continue to suffer. We are not just hopeless victims of desire. We can allow desire to be the way it is and so begin to let go of it. Desire has power over us and deludes us only as long as we grasp it, believe in it and react to it.

THE SECOND NOBLE TRUTH

What is the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering?

It is craving which renews being and is accompanied by relish and lust, relishing this and that: in other words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being. But whereon does this craving arise and flourish? Wherever there is what seems lovable and gratifying, thereon it arises and flourishes.

There is this Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering:such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

This Noble Truth must be penetrated to by abandoning the origin of suffering....

This Noble Truth has been penetrated to by abandoning the origin of suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

[Samyutta Nikaya LVI, 11]

The Second Noble Truth with its three aspects is: ‘There is the origin of suffering, which is attachment to desire. Desire should be let go of. Desire has been let go of.’

The Second Noble Truth states that there is an origin of suffering and that the origin of suffering is attachment to the three kinds of desire: desire for sense pleasure (kama tanha), desire to become (bhava tanha) and desire to get rid of (vibhava tanha). This is the statement of the Second Noble Truth, the thesis, the pariyatti. This is what you contemplate: the origin of suffering is attachment to desire.

(Take note here what the three kinds of desire are. He is not talking about unusual desire, or abnormal want. All forms of desire are suffering. Suffering isn't a condition that happens to people you don't like. When you read the suttas Buddha is always talking about you.)

INSIGHT IN SITUATIONS

Sometimes insight arises at the most unexpected times. This happened to me while living at Wat Pah Pong. The Northeastern part of Thailand is not the most beautiful or desirable place in the world with its scrubby forests and flat plain; it also gets extremely hot during the hot season. We’d have to go out in the heat of the mid-afternoon before each of the Observance Days and sweep the leaves off the paths. There were vast areas to sweep. We would spend the whole afternoon in the hot sun, sweating and sweeping the leaves into piles with crude brooms; this was one of our duties. I didn’t like doing this. I’d think, ‘I don’t want to do this. I didn’t come here to sweep the leaves off the ground; I came here to get enlightened - and instead they have me sweeping leaves off the ground. Besides, it’s hot and I have fair skin; I might get skin cancer from being out here in a hot climate.’

I was standing out there one afternoon, feeling really miserable, thinking, ‘What am I doing here? Why did I come here? Why am I staying here? There I stood with my long crude broom and absolutely no energy, feeling sorry for myself and hating everything. Then Ajahn Chah came up, smiled at me and said, ‘Wat Pah Pong is a lot of suffering, isn’t it?’ and walked away. So I thought, ‘Why did he say that?’ and, ‘Actually, you know, it’s not all that bad.’ He got me to contemplate: Is sweeping the leaves really that unpleasant?....No, it’s not. It’s a kind of neutral thing; you sweep the leaves, and it’s neither here nor there....Is sweating all that terrible? Is it really a miserable, humiliating experience? Is it really as bad as I am pretending it is?...No - sweating is all right, it’s a perfectly natural thing to be doing. And I don’t have skin cancer and the people at Wat Pah Pong are very nice. The teacher is a very kind wise man. The monks have treated me well. The lay people come and give me food to eat, and....What am I complaining about?’

Reflecting upon the actual experience of being there, I thought, ‘I’m all right. People respect me, I’m treated well. I’m being taught by pleasant people in a very pleasant country. There’s nothing really wrong with anything, except me; I’m making a problem out of it because I don’t want to sweat and I don’t want to sweep leaves.’ Then I had a very clear insight. I suddenly perceived something in me which was always complaining and criticising, and which was preventing me from ever giving myself to anything or offering myself to any situation.

Another experience I learned from was the custom of washing the feet of the senior monks when they returned from the almsround. After they walked barefoot through the village and rice paddies, their feet would be muddy. There were foot baths outside the dining hall. When Ajahn Chah would come, all the monks - maybe twenty or thirty of them - would rush out and wash Ajahn Chah’s feet. When I first saw this I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that - not me!’ Then the next day, thirty monks rushed out as soon as Ajahn Chah appeared and washed his feet - I thought, ‘What a stupid thing to be doing - thirty monks washing one man’s feet. I’m not going to do that.’ The day after that, the reaction became even more violent...thirty monks rushed out and washed Ajahn Chah’s feet and....’That really angers me, I’m fed up with it! I just feel that is the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen - thirty men going out to wash one man’s feet! He probably thinks he deserves it, you know - it’s really building up his ego. He’s probably got an enormous ego, having so many people wash his feet every day. I’ll never do that!’

I was beginning to build up a strong reaction, an overreaction. I would sit there feeling miserable and angry. I’d look at the monks and I’d think, ‘They all look stupid to me. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’

But then I started listening and I thought, ‘This is really an unpleasant frame of mind to be in. Is it anything to get upset about? They haven’t made me do it. It’s all right; there’s nothing wrong with thirty men washing one man’s feet. It’s not immoral or bad behaviour and maybe they enjoy it; maybe they want to do it - maybe it’s all right to do that....Maybe I should do it!’ So the next morning, thirty-one monks ran out and washed Ajahn Chah’s feet. There was no problem after that. It felt really good: that nasty thing in me had stopped.

We can reflect upon these things that arouse indignation and anger in us: is something really wrong with them or is it something we create dukkha about? Then we begin to understand the problems we create in our own lives and the lives of the people around us.

With mindfulness, we are willing to bear with the whole of life; with the excitement and the boredom, the hope and the despair, the pleasure and the pain, the fascination and the weariness, the beginning and the ending, the birth and the death. We are willing to accept the whole of it in the mind rather than absorb into just the pleasant and suppress the unpleasant. The process of insight is the going to dukkha, looking at dukkha, admitting dukkha, recognising dukkha in all its forms. Then you are no longer just reacting in the habitual way of indulgence or suppression. And because of that, you can bear with suffering more, you can be more patient with it.

These teachings are not outside our experience. They are, in fact, reflections of our actual experience - not complicated intellectual issues. So really put effort into development rather than just getting stuck in a rut. How many times do you have to feel guilty about your abortion or the mistakes you have made in the past? Do you have to spend all your time just regurgitating the things that have happened to you in your life and indulging in endless speculation and analysis? Some people make themselves into such complicated personalities. If you just indulge in your memories and views and opinions, then you will always stay stuck in the world and never transcend it in any way.

You can let go of this burden if you are willing to use the teachings skilfully. Tell yourself: ‘I’m not going to get caught in this anymore; I refuse to participate in this game. I’m not going to give in to this mood.’ Start putting yourself in the position of knowing: ‘I know this is dukkha; there is dukkha.’ It’s really important to make this resolution to go where the suffering is and then abide with it. It is only by examining and confronting suffering in this way that one can hope to have the tremendous insight: ‘This suffering has been understood.’

So these are the three aspects of the First Noble Truth. This is the formula that we must use and apply in reflection on our lives. Whenever you feel suffering, first make the recognition: ‘There is suffering’, then: ‘It should be understood’, and finally: ‘It has been understood’. This understanding of dukkha is the insight into the First Noble Truth.

PLEASURE AND DISPLEASURE

We can investigate: Where has this hedonistic seeking of pleasure as an end in itself brought us? It has continued now for several decades but is humanity any happier as a result? It seems that nowadays we have been given the right and freedom to do anything we like with drugs, sex, travel and so on - anything goes; anything is allowed; nothing is forbidden. You have to do something really obscene, really violent, before you’ll be ostracised. But has being able to follow our impulses made us any happier or more relaxed and contented? In fact, it has tended to make us very selfish; we don’t think about how our actions might affect others. We tend to think only about ourselves: me and my happiness, my freedom and my rights. So I become a terrible nuisance, a source of great frustration, annoyance and misery for the people around me. If I think I can do anything I want or say anything I feel like saying, even at the expense of others, then I’m a person who is nothing but a nuisance to society.

When the sense of ‘what I want’ and ‘what I think should and should not be’ arises, and we wish to delight in all the pleasures of life, we inevitably get upset because life seems so hopeless and everything seems to go wrong. We just get whirled about by life - just running around in states of fear and desire. And even when we get everything we want, we will think there is something missing, something incomplete yet. So even when life is at its best, there is still this sense of suffering - something yet to be done, some kind of doubt or fear haunting us.

For example, I’ve always liked beautiful scenery. Once during a retreat that I led in Switzerland, I was taken to some beautiful mountains and noticed that there was always a sense of anguish in my mind because there was so much beauty, a continual flow of beautiful sights. I had the feeling of wanting to hold on to everything, that I had to keep alert all the time in order to consume everything with my eyes. It was really wearing me out! Now that was dukkha, wasn’t it?

I find that if I do things heedlessly - even something quite harmless like looking at beautiful mountains - if I’m just reaching out and trying to hold on to something, it always brings an unpleasant feeling. How can you hold on to the Jungfrau and the Eiger? The best you can do is to take a picture of it, trying to capture everything on a piece of paper. That’s dukkha; if you want to hold on to something which is beautiful because you don’t want to be separated from it - that is suffering.

Having to be in situations you don’t like is also suffering. For example, I never liked riding in the Underground in London. I’d complain about it: ‘I don’t want to go on the underground with those awful posters and dingy Underground stations. I don’t want to be packed into those little trains under the ground.’ I found it a totally unpleasant experience. But I’d listen to this complaining, moaning voice - the suffering of not wanting to be with something unpleasant. Then, having contemplated this, I stopped making anything of it so that I could be with the unpleasant and un-beautiful without suffering about it. I realised that it’s just that way and it’s all right. We needn’t make problems - either about being in a dingy Underground station or about looking at beautiful scenery. Things are as they are, so we can recognise and appreciate them in their changing forms without grasping. Grasping is wanting to hold on to something we like; wanting to get rid of something we don’t like; or wanting to get something we don’t have.

We can also suffer a lot because of other people. I remember that in Thailand I used to have quite negative thoughts about one of the monks. Then he’d do something and I’d think, ‘He shouldn’t do that,’ or he’d say something, ‘He shouldn’t say that!’ I’d carry this monk around in my mind and then, even if I went to some other place, I’d think of that monk; the perception of him would arise and the same reactions would come: ‘Do you remember when he said this and when he did that?’ and: ‘He shouldn’t have said that and he shouldn’t have done that.’

Having found a teacher like Ajahn Chah, I remember wanting him to be perfect. I’d think, ‘Oh, he’s a marvellous teacher - marvellous!’ But then he might do something that would upset me and I’d think, ‘I don’t want him to do anything that upsets me because I like to think of him as being marvellous.’ That was like saying, ‘Ajahn Chah, be marvellous for me all the time. Don’t ever do anything that will put any kind of negative thought into my mind.’ So even when you find somebody that you really respect and love, there’s still the suffering of attachment. Inevitably, they will do or say something that you’re not going to like or approve of, causing you some kind of doubt - and you’ll suffer.

At one time, several American monks came to Wat Pah Pong, our monastery in Northeastern Thailand. They were very critical and it seemed that they only saw what was wrong with it. They didn’t think Ajahn Chah was a very good teacher and they didn’t like the monastery. I felt a great anger and hatred arising because they were criticising something that I loved. I felt indignant - ‘Well, if you don’t like it, get out of here. He’s the finest teacher in the world and if you can’t see that then just GO!’ That kind of attachment - being in love or being devoted - is suffering because if something or someone you love is criticised, you feel angry and indignant.