Buddhism 101

by Arnie Kozak

  If you like being a Buddhist because of the colorful rituals and the exotic association with Asian cultures, and the message of compassion and peace, but don’t “get” these four seals, Rinpoche suggests you are not a Buddhist in the important sense of being a Buddhist. In other words, to be a Buddhist is to understand Buddhist psychology—to have a direct experience of what the Buddha discovered and that you can discover if you devote yourself to any of the Buddhist meditation practices.

  SECULAR BUDDHISM

  A Western Dharma

  Stephen Batchelor is the leading voice of a growing movement toward secular Buddhism. His books, spanning the last twenty years from Buddhism Without Beliefs to his recent Secular Buddhism, articulate a vision of the Buddha’s teachings that are free from dogma, ritual, and metaphysical beliefs. Separating Buddha from the Buddhist traditions that emerged from his teachings retains a rich set of practices—centered on the Four Noble Truths. Batchelor recommends these as a series of tasks to complete rather than a set of beliefs. The goal of these four tasks is not to achieve some ultimate spiritual experience but, rather, to flourish in one’s life in the here and now.

  INNOVATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS

  Little can be known about the Buddha’s teachings with absolute certainty. They were persevered orally for centuries until they were written down by the Buddhist councils. None of these original writings still exist and scholars must rely upon commentaries and translations written centuries later. One approach to understanding the Buddha is to try to understand the worldview that he was teaching within. At the time in ancient India, beliefs in karma, rebirth, and concerns over the ultimate reality of self and reality were prevalent. The Buddha would have had to use this language to reach his audiences (through skillful means). Whether he believed these things or not, he didn’t find them useful for thriving in one’s life. It is more useful to look at what the Buddha’s unique contributions were. Batchelor identifies these four:

  1. Conditionality—the observation that what happens now gives rise to what happens later, whether these are events in the world or mental events. Things don’t occur randomly; it’s cause and effect.

  2. The practice of the Four Noble Truths (or tasks).

  3. The central importance of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation.

  4. An emphasis on self-reliance over the authority of priests, dogma, or speculative beliefs.

  * * *

  “A great deal of modern education and psychotherapy consists of making people aware that they are responsible for themselves. In fact, we consider that it constitutes a large part of what we mean by becoming a mature person. It is amazing that someone should have promulgated this idea in the fifth century B.C.E., and hardly less remarkable that he found followers.”

  —Noted Buddhist scholar Richard Gombrich

  * * *

  These four unique contributions comprise a Buddhism that is secular, psychological, and personal. It also lends itself to a contemporary scientific worldview.

  A SCIENTIFIC WESTERN BUDDHISM

  Mindfulness meditation has been brought into the laboratory and has been the subject of hundreds of research studies, many focusing on neuroimaging. There is an explosion of interest in what is happening in the brain both functionally in terms of attention and structurally in terms of how the brain changes in response to meditation. These studies are still in their infancy but they hold great promise toward understanding the positive effects of meditation.

  Traditional Buddhists have been critical of this scientific study of Buddhism arguing that it will corrupt, distort, or dilute Buddhism since it is removed from its ethical context. Nevertheless, the research agenda continues and might be the emergence of a contemporary dharma (version of Buddhism) that is unique to the secular scientific Western world.

  As Buddhism spread throughout Asia, it always changed in dramatic ways as it integrated with the host culture. As Buddhism comes to the West, it will also change by integrating the values of this culture. These include secularism, science, and materialism. Despite the protests of traditionalists, the Buddha might approve the scientific study of his teachings because it is consistent with the practical approach that he advocated.

  To the extent that scholars such as Stephen Batchelor, John Peacock, and Richard Gombrich can unearth the intentions of the Buddha (separate from Buddhist religions that followed), he appears pragmatic with an attitude consistent with the stance of science—test things out for yourself rather than accepting anything on authority, tradition, or faith.

  The shape of Western dharma will, no doubt, evolve in the future to arrive at its unique historical form. In the meantime, there is a rich and growing secular tradition available to those who do not wish to engage in any of the formal Buddhisms that are available. To be secular, you would still seek to understand the influence of the three fires and to work to undermine their influence. You would seek nirvana not as some mystical abstraction but as an experience in the here and now that is mindful, compassionate, and filled with equanimity.

  MINDFULNESS IN ALL THINGS

  Emotional Intelligence

  Mindfulness can be thought of as a skillful way of engaging with your emotional life, which is critical to functioning in the world. According to researchers John D. Mayer, Peter Salovey, and David R. Caruso, “emotional intelligence” (EI) is composed of four features:

  1. Perceiving emotions accurately in oneself and others

  2. Using emotions to facilitate thinking

  3. Understanding emotions, emotional language, and the signals conveyed by emotions

  4. Managing emotions so as to attain specific goals

  Emotional intelligence is the “ability to engage in sophisticated information processing about one’s own and others’ emotions and the ability to use this information as a guide to thinking and behavior. That is, individuals high in EI pay attention to, use, understand, and manage emotions, and these skills serve adaptive functions that potentially benefit themselves and others.” Emotional intelligence was popularized by Daniel Goleman’s book by that name. As you will see, EI can be directly affected by meditation in areas such as empathy and emotional regulation.

  NINE BENEFITS OF MINDFULNESS MEDITATION

  Mindfulness can bring your brain into an integrated state of harmony, balancing chaos on the one hand and rigidity on the other. This scientific wisdom is brought to you by neuroscientist, Daniel Siegel, author of several important books, including The Developing Mind, The Mindful Brain, Mindsight, and The Mindful Therapist. The middle prefrontal cortex (a portion of the newest part of the brain evolution-wise, located behind the forehead and known as the “rational brain”—in contrast to the “emotional brain” that is older evolutionarily) is critical to the following nine functions:

  • Bodily regulation

  • Attunement

  • Emotional balance

  • Response flexibility

  • Downregulation of fear

  • Insight

  • Empathy

  • Morality

  • Intuition

  Research suggests that each of these functions is positively affected by meditation. When you meditate, your prefrontal cortex will change. It will become thicker in places, indicating new neural connections and perhaps even new neurons. It will be more efficient and more integrated.

  Bodily Regulation

  Bodily regulation is accomplished by regulating arousal and relaxation through the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system (think of the gas pedal and a brake in a car). If you are overly stressed or anxious, your sympathetic nervous system is overly active—think of a lead foot on the gas pedal; the car lurches forward and uses a lot of gas. Mindfulness helps to regulate the sympathetic nervous system, making it less reactive (no more lead foot) so that you can drive the car more slowly. This cuts down on the wear and tear of your body and reduces the risk for long-term health problems.

  Attunement

&n
bsp; Attunement is being connected to others, or being “in tune.” By being mindful you can better connect to others because you are more present and less preoccupied with your own story. Attunement sows the seeds of compassion. Attunement provides the optimal environment for babies to develop in; healthy development happens when caregivers are attuned with their babies.

  Emotional Balance

  Emotional balance refers to how you engage with experiences. It balances apathy on the one hand and feeling overwhelmed on the other. Like bodily regulation, it’s a Goldilocks phenomenon: not too much and not too little. This is the optimal place for neural integration. Like bodily regulation, mindfulness helps you to be more nuanced and less clumsy in your emotional responses. This will come in handy in your relationships and when dealing with the day-to-day frustrations of life.

  Response Flexibility

  Response flexibility refers to the pause that can develop between a stimulus and response. It aims at the impulsive reactions that often occur in response to a stimulus. This pause comes from mindful awareness and can help you to be less impulsive and less destructive with what you say and do.

  Downregulation of Fear

  The emotional brain, which is responsible for emotions like fear and anger, has the job of keeping you safe. It does so by figuring out what you should be paying attention to. It is prone to make mistakes that err on the side of caution. “Is that a snake or a stick? Let’s assume it’s a snake and let’s get the hell out of here.” That kind of mistake is less costly than guessing wrong. It takes longer to recover from a snakebite than to catch your breath for running away for no good reason.

  To be more accurate in detecting what should really get your precious attention resources, the prefrontal cortex (the rational brain) needs to have more nerve fibers going from the rational brain to the emotional brain to tell it, “Hey, it’s a false alarm.” This is accomplished through the development of inhibitory nerve fibers that go from the middle prefrontal cortex to structures like the amygdala in the emotional brain (limbic system). The practice of mindfulness helps you develop those pathways.

  Insight

  Insight refers to what Siegel calls mental time travel, or what you might call imagination. Mindfulness can help you to refine this capacity in the service of living skillfully rather than being subjected to out-of-control worry, regret, and self-criticism. If you are not using your imagination for these destructive purposes, it will be free to be creative.

  Empathy

  Empathy, or what Siegel calls “mindsight,” refers to the ability to take the perspective of the other. Obviously, this is connected to compassion and once again hinges upon the ability to transcend your own self-preoccupied stories to meet the person you are with where they are. While some people are naturally more empathic than others, you are not stuck in the place where you are. As with all of these functions, empathy is a trainable skill. The more you meditate the more empathic you can become.

  Morality

  Morality is also a function of the middle prefrontal cortex and includes not just your ability to be moral in public settings but also in private. As you already know, morality or ethics is a cornerstone of Buddhist teaching and practice, so it may not be a surprise to find morality showing up on this list too. Buddhist meditation practice helps you to discern skillful from unskillful actions in all domains. In the context of morality, this may require inhibiting an impulse, or inserting a pause before you say something.

  Intuition

  Intuition is the capacity to access the wisdom of the body by monitoring your bodily sensations. For example, a brain structure called the insula has a map of the interior body, and studies have found the insula gets thicker with meditation practice. The more you meditate the more aware you will be of your body. This awareness can help you to cope with whatever the body is experiencing, whether that is pain, anxiety, or discomfort.

  Before he took an interest in mindfulness, Siegel independently came up with the same list of brain functions as mindfulness researchers had compiled. And it’s not just brain researchers; this list has been utilized in many spiritual traditions since ancient times. When you recognize the plasticity of the brain (that is, its capacity to change in response to experience) you can understand why you respond to certain situations the way that you do. Your previous conditioning will cause you to react in sometimes-harmful ways. However, it is your responsibility (and potential) to change these conditionings through mindfulness and meditation. The middle prefrontal cortex develops optimally in an interpersonally attuned environment during infancy. Mindfulness provides the possibility of self-attunement to affect these same brain areas. So sit down and change your brain! (For more information visit: http://drdansiegel.com.)

  MINDFUL YOGA

  Easing Pain and Suffering

  Siddhartha Gotama was an accomplished yogi before he became the Buddha. The word “yoga” derives from the verb yuj: “to yoke” or “to bind together.” The yogi seeks to yoke body and mind and the future and past with the present moment. Yoga has become enormously popular in the United States with an emphasis on the physical postures or asanas. Yet, according to Frank Jude Boccio in his book, Mindfulness Yoga, only three of Patanjali’s 195 aphorisms deal with asana.

  Patanjali

  * * *

  Patanjali is the author of the Yoga Sutras, an important text for many of the yogas practiced today, especially Ashtanga Yoga. He lived in the second century B.C.E. These sutras outline an eight-limbed system for yoga. One of the principle purposes of performing yoga asanas (postures) is to prepare the body for meditation.

  * * *

  Like any activity, yoga can be done with or without mindfulness. However, when done with mindfulness, yoga can be a powerful practice for alleviating chronic pain and suffering. Yoga is an integral component in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), where the emphasis is not on performing the postures correctly or getting a great workout. The emphasis, rather, is on bringing mindfulness to the postures where they are done very slowly. Mindful yoga provides you with an opportunity to take mindfulness into motion and facilitates its integration into daily life.

  BUDDHISTS AS ACTIVISTS

  Healing the World

  Melvin McLeod is the editor of the book Mindful Politics. “Politics is really about how we live together as human beings, and all spiritual practices point to one simple but profound truth about human life—that only love leads to peace, hatred never does. This is as true for nations as it is for individuals.”

  His proposed political platform (if the Buddha was a politician he might base his politics on the Four Immeasurables) states:

  May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.

  May they be free from suffering and the root of suffering.

  May they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.

  May they dwell in the great equanimity free of passion, aggression, and ignorance.

  Politics is emotions gone awry—vengeance, war, persecution of difference. The dualistic and false sense of “us” versus “them” underlies much of the conflict. As Buddhism, particularly through mindfulness, promotes emotional and social intelligences, it might have something to offer the world an an antidote to hostility, inequity, and damage. The dualistic and false sense of “us” versus “them” underlies much of the conflict. If everyone is not in this all together then there is the risk of being divided one against another. According to McLeod the keys to change are forgiveness, awareness, kindness, and selflessness. Politics is ultimately about relationships and all relationships brook in power and conflict. How will these conflicts be resolved? With mindful awareness or through the perpetuation of the three fires.

  Individual transformation is the prerequisite for societal transformation. The first step is not to save the world, but to save yourself. If everyone works to limit or even eliminate hatred, greed, and ignorance, then the world will be made a better place through the agg
regation of this absence.

  * * *

  “When we talk about preservation of the environment, it is related to many other things. Ultimately, the decision must come from the human heart. The key point is to have a genuine sense of universal responsibility, based on love and compassion, and clear awareness.”

  —The Dalai Lama

  * * *

  Consider this statement from Buddhist monk and Vietnam veteran Claude Anshin Thomas in his book At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace: “Peace is not an idea. Peace is not a political movement, not a theory or a dogma. Peace is a way of life: living mindfully in the present moment . . . It is not a question of politics, but of actions. It is not a matter of improving a political system or even taking care of homeless people alone. These are valuable but will not alone end war and suffering. We must simply stop the endless wars that rage within . . . Imagine, if everyone stopped the war in themselves—there would be no seeds from which war could grow.”

  ENGAGED BUDDHISM IN ACTION

  Here are two examples of American Zen teachers who took their practice out of the zendo to serve their communities and the sangha.