The most famous of Bodhidharma’s teachings, and what many consider the essence of Zen, can be found in these four points:
Zen is a special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not depending on words and letters;
Directly pointing to the mind,
Seeing its nature and becoming Buddha
Of course, Zen also can be said to begin every time anyone wholeheartedly practices. The word Zen (non-dual meditation) makes clear that meditative practice is central, even as it challenges the notions we may have about what meditation comprises.
But let’s start by looking into the very first formal teaching of the Buddha, the first “turning of the dharma wheel,” called the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.
WHAT IS ZAZEN?
Zazen (literally sitting meditation) is a form of silent meditation that can be understood in several ways. In one sense, it is a method to achieve enlightenment. You become still, you concentrate body, breath, and mind, and you set a clear intention. In another sense, though, zazen is a direct and clear expression of the practitioner’s already-awakened, undivided nature. So, to do zazen is both to seek the truth and to embody it. In both of these senses, zazen is the real heart of Zen practice.
The great Zen master Dogen said, “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be awakened by the ten thousand things.” Essentially, zazen is the study of the self. To be enlightened by the ten thousand things—the myriad joys and sorrows of this embodied human life—is to recognize that oneself and all things are one.
The historic Buddha awakened in seated meditation. This archetype of sitting down—resting, if you will—in the truth that is ever-present is Zen’s central image. Zen spread from India to China, to Japan, to other parts of Asia, and then finally to the West. It is a simple practice, yet in its simplicity there is untold depth.
The Four Noble Truths
Of all the possible ways the Buddha could have begun his teaching, the way he did so is somewhat counterintuitive. He gave his first discourse at the Deer Park in Sarnath. He could have started with words about freedom, love, and wonder. Instead, the Buddha’s first teaching acknowledged that life is essentially suffering. And not just “sometimes in some ways”—no, his point was that humans are always, due to the impermanent nature of all things and the grasping it inspires, somewhat or profoundly ill at ease.
The Sanskrit word dukkha, which we translate as “suffering,” has a broader meaning as well. It points to the pervasive sense of dissatisfaction about things not being as one wants. It includes the shadow of discomfort existing even in times when we do have what we want, but know that change is unstoppable and there is no way to secure our pleasant situation. This “disease” was the first of his Four Noble Truths.
Was the Buddha trying to depress the monks by emphasizing suffering and dissatisfaction in his first offering? It certainly doesn’t seem to be a good sales pitch to start a new religious venture. Many, upon first hearing of this first truth, assume Buddhism will be hopelessly pessimistic. But the Buddha, like a good doctor, was simply starting with a diagnosis based on the actual, if not often acknowledged, human condition that each and every one of us shares; then, having gotten the patient’s attention, he offers medicine. In other words, if we try to skip over the reality of our own pain, our practice will be forever weak: We can’t encounter truth until we get true with ourselves. He said, “Both in the past, and now, I have set forth only this: dukkha and the end of dukkha.”
So, it is important to note that the Buddha didn’t end his discourse on a hopeless note, but rather continued with the very good news of the Four Noble Truths: 1) life suffers dis-ease, 2) this dis-ease has a cause, 3) it is possible to relieve this dis-ease, and 4) the path to that relief. Let’s see what these four teachings really point to and how they might inform our daily practice.
FIRST NOBLE TRUTH: LIFE SUFFERS
When the young prince Siddhartha went on his first journey out of the protected palace in which he had lived all his youth, he encountered four sights that brought about a shift from innocence toward a more mature awareness. His story of encountering these sights models the process of how our livescome to include the poignant realities of vulnerability, lack, aging, and death. What did he see?
First, an old man, suffering the fragility and decline of body and mind that aging brings. Then, a very ill person, suffering the pains of disease to which we are all vulnerable. And finally, a dead person, who suffered the loss of life itself. As he struggled to integrate all this suffering into what had to that point been a naive and privileged worldview, he also saw a holy person, someone who had devoted their life to ultimate truth.
For the young prince, these four sights meant one thing: He could no longer live having not seen them. His innocence, and any denial of the suffering all sentient life is subject to, was over. He’d been shaken forcibly from one kind of trance: that he or anyone could be safe, immune to life’s shadow. He had left “the palace”—the place in his heart that was walled off from vulnerability and impermanence—and began his spiritual journey in earnest.
WHAT IS SUFFERING?
Buddha talked about three kinds of suffering. The first is linked to the first three sights the Buddha saw on his first journey outside his palace: old age, sickness, and death—the suffering of painful experiences. A second was suffering caused by the fact of constant change—we inevitably lose the things, people, and situations to which we become attached and experience the stress of not being able to secure ourselves to anything permanent. Even in states of pleasure, we know things will change. The third was the suffering of existential unease—when we sense we’re not really awake to our true nature.
Buddha taught that everyone is subject to suffering. What happens when we accept that everyone inevitably hurts in these ways? Perhaps our own suffering becomes less of a personal affront. Perhaps we taste a bit of kind commiseration or empathy. At the very least, we’re freed from a kind of pretense and denial.
The Buddha said: Start by taking suffering in. Notice it in the most complete way possible. In our culture, with its tendency to cast blame on those suffering poverty, chronic illness, overwork, aging, etc., it may be especially challenging to slow down and really register this first truth of the Buddha’s teaching. Given that, it is especially important, if we seek the truth, to take that challenge.
SECOND NOBLE TRUTH: SUFFERING HAS A CAUSE
From its beginnings, the key insight of Buddhism has been that the way we normally live, in terms of a separate “self,” causes great suffering. When we identify as a separate self, immediately everything the self needs is by definition “out there,” and we’ve got a recipe for nonstop craving and isolation. This is the Second Noble Truth: The cause of suffering arises from this habit of separating what is actually and always whole.
Still, the Second Noble Truth is easily misunderstood. It is usually translated as “the cause of suffering is craving and attachment.” But when we’re suffering a toothache, how does it help to be told that the cause is “my personal craving” not to have excruciating pain and my “selfish attachment” to feeling good? We wouldn’t want dental care based on such blithe advice . . . nor a spiritual path. So we need to see deeply into what’s at play here. We need to be caring and careful, in order to not add more suffering to what is already present (and hurts, like a sore tooth or worse!). Discernment is subtle, but be clear: It never demands being cruel to oneself, but rather being in a radical integrity where this body and all bodies are cared for.
When the Buddha taught that there is a cause to suffering and that it comes from our holding on to a particular, solid sense of the self, he wasn’t being glib. He wasn’t denying that an infant goes through the natural developmental stage of becoming an individual within surroundings, with a functioning dynamic of “inner world” and “outer world,” an internal space confronted by a space beyo
nd the borders of the skin. He was, however, pointing to the possibility of seeing more completely and not confusing our sense of selfhood with ultimate reality. He taught that we could also realize a kind of equilibrium in which the body exists, impacted by but not apart from the environment. The key to that equilibrium? Not attaching wholly to our self-view.
WHAT IS SAMSARA?
Buddhism teaches that samsara arises from living in terms of a false notion: the idea that our ego is a single, separate entity with an unchanging essence. Because we believe in, and function in terms of, this ego, we can waste a lifetime defending it. We generate anger and fear when we perceive a threat to it, we use others to satisfy its hungers, and we live with a basic indifference to those not useful to it. In other words, we are busy causing ourselves and others endless suffering. This rather sad, seemingly endless process is called samsara. We create an ego-defined world, place ourselves in it, and eventually it falls apart, over and over and over again. Samsara has a taste of being trapped in a story we can’t get out of.
Samsara is also a bit of a coyote. Most of us would scoff at the idea that we might find some thing or person that will “solve” all our problems, yet what our words deny, our days reveal as our project. Put up a barrier or proscription to having some “needed thing,” and we need it all the more. Prohibit a drug (or a relationship) and voilà: That’s what we crave; having it would make things perfect. Tell a child he can’t have a toy: That toy becomes the only thing he wants, and he wants it in every cell in his body. Put the capacities of perfect health beyond reach, or desired weight, or . . . and samsara spins and twists our lives into sadness.
THIRD NOBLE TRUTH: SUFFERING CAN END
The Buddha did not just teach the truth of suffering—he, quite radically, taught the relief of suffering. He was addressing the profound mental suffering we feel when the habit of holding on (often as if our life depended on it) comes up against the flowing stream of life. Our habit is to again and again seek out a kind of idol, a thing that will solve our sensed lack of connectedness and permanence . . . and we can do that with absolutely anything—a relationship, a better job, health, Christ, even the idea of enlightenment. It’s only when we leave the market where “this-is-the-thing-I-need-to-be-whole” is bought and sold that our suffering eases. The seeking, the shopping, and the idol-making put what we need forever on the outside.
The Buddha taught that in any experience, we can, in a sense, come home to the reality that nothing is outside (nor inside, for that matter). There is no ultimate line. Face-to-face with suffering, how does that really work? How does it work in the midst of tremendous pain and disappointment? Isn’t it natural to run away into distractions and addictions? But if there is nowhere to run, the possibility is that this moment and place is It. Is home. Every moment: thus. This is why the Buddha taught not to deny the moments of pain, but instead, in the barest of ways, to acknowledge them, to put no distance between oneself and them, or any state. He’s not saying that we should become resigned to suffering and fall into apathy, but rather that we open our hearts to include everything, without that habitual distance and without judgment.
The Third Noble Truth is that by not separating our self from things—even noble things, even painful things—we embody our wholeness. But how does one “not separate” oneself, especially from painful things? In his Fourth Noble Truth, the Buddha talks about the ways to do just that.
FOURTH NOBLE TRUTH: THE PATH TO END SUFFERING
The fourth of the Noble Truths basically follows up on the first three: There is suffering, it has a cause, it’s possible to relieve it, and now, here is the way or “path” to doing so. The Buddha presented a path that has eight different parts (the Eightfold Path) in order to make clear that absolutely every aspect of our life, activity, understanding, and attitude would be involved in waking up.
When the Buddha taught the Eightfold Path in his first sermon after his enlightenment, he faced an excruciating assignment. He saw the discontent of the monks gathered around asking that he give instruction and inspiration; he could not turn away. Their pain was evident. They were caught in samsara (“wandering” through the veils of illusion).
But how do you give what can’t be given? Though the Eightfold Path is sometimes treated as a sort of “how-to” map to reach enlightenment, it’s important to recognize that, though it is a sobering message in many ways, it also arrives with a kind of wink. The path must be taken, and it doesn’t lead somewhere else. The metaphor of a path is a paradox—it takes you on a journey to the center of being, which you’ve never been apart from and couldn’t leave if you tried. For this reason, it is sometimes called a “pathless path” or a “path without a goal.” The path is leading you squarely back to yourself, albeit with a new awareness of what that self is.
The Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path looks like a list of eight discrete steps, but the order is random and each aspect of the path complements and amplifies every other aspect. Like flower petals enfolded to create a blossom, each “fold,” or petal, has a unique position and all of them together create something greater than the parts individually.
Each aspect of the path is an area of practice meant to be brought to realization. (In fact, one of my teachers created a training program called the Eight Gates, considered a modern expression of the Eightfold Path.)
Right in this teaching is not right as opposed to wrong. The word translated as right, samyanc (Sanskrit) or samma (Pāli), means wise, wholesome, skillful, and ideal. It describes something that is complete and coherent. It’s helpful, too, to understand right in the same sense we might talk about how a boat riding the waves can “right itself.”
The Path is divided into three main sections: wisdom, ethical conduct (discipline/disposition), and mental discipline.
THE EIGHTFOLD PATH
THE WISDOM PATH
Right View
Right Intention
THE ETHICAL CONDUCT PATH
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
THE MENTAL DISCIPLINE PATH
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
The Wisdom Path: Right View and Right Intention comprise the wisdom path. Right View is about perceiving the true nature of ourselves and the world around us. Right Intention is about commitment that penetrates down to our bones, speech, thoughts, and silence.
The Ethical Conduct Path: Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood call us to take care in our speech, our actions, and our daily lives to not only do no harm to others and cultivate wholesomeness in ourselves, but also to stand for and speak on behalf of others as called. This part of the path relates to the Precepts (or principles), which describe the way an enlightened being conducts their life in the world.
The Mental Discipline Path: Mental discipline and seeing through delusion is realized through Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. Meditation, in both its seated and active forms, is identified with this part of the path.
RIGHT VIEW
One of the first books I’ve always recommended to new students is What the Buddha Taught by Theravada scholar Walpola Rahula. In it he calls this first of the Eightfold Path practices “seeing a thing in its true nature, without name and label.” So, Right View is the naked truth, if you will. Right View shows us life outside the trance and makes possible, because it is not content with artifice, both genuine love and genuine peace.
In a way, both our happiness and the happiness of those around us actually depend upon the degree to which we bring Right View to life. It begins when we shift away from being okay with the suffering we create by basing everything on our mixed-up perceptions. It is practiced when we commit to the ongoing clearing out of our confusion, misunderstanding, and deluded thinking.
RIGHT INTENTION
The Buddha taught that what we think—along with what we say and how we act—creates karma,
which creates our life. In this way, intention is critically important. Right Intention together with Right Understanding make up the Wisdom Aspect, the parts of the Eightfold Path that cultivate prajna (direct insight, non-discriminating knowledge).
THREE KINDS OF RIGHT INTENTION
1.Renunciation—which counters attachment. The Diamond Sutra famously says, “Thus shall you regard this fleeting world: a drop of dew, a bubble floating in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”
All people need housing, clothing, food, and medical care (and too many do not have them). Some people have access to much more than the essentials. We get lost, however, when we forget that all of it is that flash of lightning, a drop of momentary dew. To find that dew, radiant and luminous, presented on the grass tips of this life is good fortune; to try to hold onto that dew as the sun rises is confused and impossible. Letting it be and letting it go is the renunciation of Right Intention.
2.Goodwill (loving-kindness or metta)—which counters ill will. To cultivate a love that does not discriminate between good and worthless beings, a love in which rejection and alienation fall away, akin to the unconditional love (idealized) parents feel for their child: This is the goodwill of Right Intention.
3.Harmlessness—which counters harmfulness. The Sanskrit word for non-harming is ahimsa, and it describes a practice of not doing violence to anything. Not creating harm also requires karuna, or compassion, which is an active sympathy, a willingness to bear and respond to the pain of others as oneself. When the bug you squash (or the person you hurt) is recognized as yourself, the harmlessness of Right Intention enters practice.
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