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Stumbling
I don't know how many other people stumble over,
or back into, a spiritual practice. I certainly
did. For several years I had been reading translations
of Rumi's poetry, attending men's retreats, and
reading Eckhard Tolle's The Power of Now.
Actually, the stumbling may have gotten underway
30 or 40 years ago when I was reading Carlos Castaneda's
books while in an agnostic stage between Roman Catholicism
and the Episcopal Church.
Anyway, there came a point when I started meditating
and thinking even more about alternate realities
and thinking about the attachments that hold us
back. I had experienced moments of ecstasy in doing
holotropic breathwork, in which time and space had
collapsed to a single point and nothing in the material
world mattered.
A friend, after I described some of these feelings
and experiences, said, "You're beginning to
sound like a Buddhist." I guessed it was time
to begin exploring what I had apparently stumbled
upon.
Excitement and Confusion
There's always an initial period of excitement
when starting out on a new path. On the Internet
and in the few books I bought or borrowed, I found
more than I could absorb about the various forms
of Buddhism and their practices. I began to learn
a new vocabulary - dukkha, dharma, samsara, karma
- and tried to incorporate the concepts into my
thinking.
Then things began to get too complicated. I started
to visit a discussion website on religion in which
Buddhists of various stripes were savaging each
other for not following the "right" way,
or not knowing Sanskrit or Pali (the traditional
languages of Buddhist texts), or not having read
all of the tens of thousands of pages of the sutras
(texts written by followers of the Buddha and containing
his discourses). I did not want to become a Buddhist
scholar, but choosing from among the masses of text
seemed impossible.
Then a question occurred to me: Who taught the
teachers? Much religious scholarship in almost every
religion, it seems, has come from followers and
students trying to capture the essence of the dogmas
and turn them into guidelines for others to follow.
The original teachers and philosophers - Moses,
Jesus, Mohammed, Siddhartha, and others - got to
where they were by living their lives. Maybe the
dharma - the vast body of teachings about Buddhism
- also meant life experiences, and the conclusions
we might draw if we pay attention. Live and learn.
Somewhere along the way, I had learned of various
versions of Zen, and the closest thing I found to
the live-and-learn way of exploring things was Soto
Zen, the main practice of which is sitting and breathing
mediation. The idea, as I understood it, was to
quiet the busy, thinking mind so that peace and
insight could enter.
Meditation became the simplest possible, something
my third-grade teacher could have taught in three
sentences to her rowdy students: Sit down. Shut
up. Pay attention.
The Collapse
My world of book-knowledge began to collapse in
on itself. What was the absolute minimum I needed
to know? What's the minimum for any religion or
philosophy?
For the Judeo-Christian tradition, we have the
Ten Commandments. If people took them literally
and followed them faithfully, little or none of
the theology that flows from them would be necessary.
But wait, there's less. Jesus had just two commandments:
Love God, love your neighbor. It seems
that one could go deeply enough into just those
commandments to lead a righteous life.
For Buddhism, the minimum seems to be the Noble
Eightfold Path. There's the Four Noble Truths, of
course, but they're incorporated into the Eightfold
Path. And there are several other numbered lists
of virtues and hindrances, but they seem to be less
fundamental than the simplicity of the Eightfold
Path.
I started reciting a short version of the Eightfold
Path before beginning meditation. Now the problem
was to make sense of the steps. What did they mean?
A partial answer came from, of all places, a business
writing course I teach. The principal lecturer emphasized
the clarity, brevity, and vigor needed in effective
business communications but also mentioned three
other tests: Is it kind? Is it the truth? Is it
necessary? In my reiterations of these principles
to my students, I changed "Is it the truth?"
to "Is it honest?" My rationale was that
the results of simply telling the truth could be
unkind, unnecessary, or in many cases simply misleading.
My concept of honesty was that it is focused more
on results and not misleading people.
The Steps
Here's my working version of the steps in the Eightfold
Path. You should understand that it's not the "orthodox"
version, and that if it works for me it may not
work for you. The eight steps can be divided into
three categories: spiritual underpinnings (Steps
1 and 2), proper behavior (Steps 3 through 5), and
spiritual practice (Steps 6 through 8). The steps
are not meant to be sequential.
1. Right View.
The Four Noble Truths.
- Life is basically unsatisfactory, full of disappointments
and often painful.
- Much or all of the pain is mental. Mental anguish
can make even physical pain less bearable. This
pain is caused by clinging to things in an unhealthy
way.
- There is a way to stop the pain.
- The way is the Eightfold Path.
2. Right Intention.
This has three parts:
- Loving-kindness - this is the sometimes very
difficult requirement that we love not only the
lovable but all beings, including unsavory folks,
our enemies, and worse.
- Harmlessness - this is the commitment to behavior
that does not harm others. It's a bit like the "do
unto others" rule, but with an underpinning
of compassion.
- Renunciation of desire - this does not mean we
have to be puritanical drudges; for me, it means
not letting the desire for things become a clinging
attachment. The renunciation extends beyond physical
pleasures to other kinds of attachments: pain, knowledge,
our own ideas, and so forth.
3. Right Speech.
Traditionally, this means no lying, no meanness,
no idle or silly speech. I like the more positive
approach of the three tests I mentioned above:
- Is it honest?
- Is it kind?
- Is it necessary?
4. Right Action.
Traditionally, this means no stealing, no killing,
no sexual misconduct. The details of these injunctions
may include not eating meat, no premarital sex,
and the like, depending on one's interpretation
of the various Buddhist scriptures. Again, the positive
approach seems to be better. For any action:
- Is it honest?
- Is it kind?
- Is it necessary?
5. Right Livelihood.
This seems to be a combination of the previous
two. I think it probably came into the list in a
realization that people often feel they must make
moral compromises to make a living, and sometimes
just to survive. Putting Right Livelihood in a separate
step highlights the need to be moral in all our
activities. Traditionally, Right Livelihood would
exclude military service, butchering, loan sharking,
and other activities that might cause pain, death,
or other harm. The positive approach answers the
same questions as for the other behaviors:
- Is it honest?
- Is it kind?
- Is it necessary?
6. Right Effort.
This is a tough one for me to grasp. Effort involves
controlling good and bad mental impulses while meditating.
But the principles could apply to one's daily attitudes
as well. Right Effort acknowledges that our mental
state can often be controlled by conscious choices:
- Abandoning negative states and keeping them from
arising: anger, boredom, ennui, meanness, agitation,
hopelessness, depression, lust.
- Preserving positive states and encouraging them
to arise: calm, cheerfulness, interested engagement,
hopefulness, kindness.
7. Right Meditation.
There are many formulas and rules for how to sit,
where to sit, what to surround ourselves with. For
those of us trying to simplify things, what more
is there to say than the following:
- Sit down.
- Shut up.
- Pay attention.
8. Right Concentration.
For me, this is a byproduct of Right Meditation.
If I pay attention long enough, I can focus on a
single point or idea.
- Sometimes it's pure mental discipline, erasing
the ego for a time.
- Sometimes it's loving-kindness directed at a
particular person or group.
- Sometimes it's a sending/receiving kind of meditation
(the Tibetan term is "tonglen") in which
we breathe in other people's pain and suffering
and breathe out light and healing. This is not like
intercessory prayer; the goal is not the immediate
alleviation of another's suffering. It's more like
a breaking down of the barriers between ourselves
and other people by becoming a part of their suffering.
Conscious and Unconscious
Even with a simple list - even if it's just Jesus'
two commandments - it's very hard to keep everything
in mind as we go about our daily lives. That's where
practice comes in. Through meditation, I might be
able to drive deep into myself the principles of
proper behavior and intentions. Then, like the practiced
athlete, I might have a chance, at least, that proper
behavior and intentions will be partly automatic.
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