Some Revealing facts of Buddhist Philosophy, I was enlightened upon

Some revealing facts of Buddhist Philosophy I was enlightened upon

The mind can be purified though the body cannot 

However much we wash and clean our body it becomes foul soon and needs cleaning over and over again. A permanent cleansing of unwanted matter is impossible. But on the other hand can the mind be purified? Fortunately yes! Why fortunately? Because, a mind harboring defilements such as anger, worry, jealousy, sadness, greed etc. is a polluted mind. And such a mind brings suffering because these ‘thorns’ keep on pricking and it hurts. Really hurts. A few words of consolation or advice from a friend, elders or priests would help sometimes. But this condition could easily recur. The very next time you encounter a bitter situation you get disturbed. So it seems that there is no permanent solution to this problem. But there is! That is why you are fortunate and it is a great relief to know that there is a way out.

The signals for unwholesome thoughts are picked up by the five sense doors namely, eye, ear, nose, tongue and body. These are recognized as vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch respectively. Once recognized they get registered and established in the mind. This way the mind gets attached to defilements. And wherever you go they follow you like a shadow. You cannot escape from their curse. No Super Natural Power can help you. This is something you have to do by yourself and yourself alone. Yet how to do it? The only solution to put an end to this suffering is to sever the bond - the attachment. The technique of meditation based on the Noble Eightfold Path (article 1) effect the breakage by detaching the defilements from the mind and letting go of them with complete mindfulness on the matter. So, one has to practice this meditation technique to purify the mind.

In this method of meditation, you engage in the technique while observing its procedure. You will see what is going on within and without you. Whenever a thought comes into being you become aware of it and let go of it. If it is stubborn you bless it with ‘Loving Kindness’ and pass it off. Once it is gone you go back to the technique. This way you don’t let the thought whether good or bad get established and thus get attached to the mind. That is, you become aware of the thoughts and shut the entrances before they come in. Purification of the mind is something that you have to experience by practicing this meditation.  

One has to realize that it is a great blessing to be engaged in this method of meditation. Just imagine how one would feel if the mind cannot be purified. One would feel unhappy for ever; feel helpless; feel hopeless; feel miserable, suffering for the whole lifetime. A pure mind will be happy and healthy and is a blessing to one and the others as it will bring happiness to all.

The mind does feel but the body doesn’t 

The body and the mind are two different entities. Yet they are so closely bound together that we can never even imagine them as separate. For us these two are inseparable. But the truth is that the body doesn’t feel anything. But the mind does. For instance imagine your finger got accidentally pricked by a pin. You will feel pain only as long as you think of the injured spot.  In other words pain is felt only when the mind comes into being in the affected area. As soon as you divert your mind over to something else, there is no feeling of pain. Similarly, any other sense coming in from the sense doors are felt only by the mind. This means the suffering solely is something of the mind. Once this is realized it would be somewhat easy to cope with the challenge of suffering. This fact helps to understand the attachment of the mind to things including the body which will in turn be instrumental in detachment, thus freeing the mind.

Not realizing suffering as suffering

Perhaps not realizing ‘suffering as suffering’ is the single, biggest stumbling block that prevents us from entering the path to end suffering. Almost all mankind do not see suffering as suffering. The suffering is being taken for granted. For them suffering is part and parcel of life; suffering should be there, otherwise life is meaningless; no suffering no happiness; have obligations, commitments and duties, so must not complain about suffering; one fine day all suffering will be over and there will be permanent happiness etc. etc. Various reasons, theories and excuses are given.

This misconception is put into our thinking from childhood by our parents and elders. We are conditioned by it and it is no easy task to liberate our minds from its grip. It’s only a handful of people who realize suffering as suffering and seek some means to end it. So the wise immediately grasp the Eightfold Path when they get access to it and make use of it, ending suffering forever.

The qualities of Buddha, Dhamma and Sanga

The Supreme qualities of Buddha, Dhamma and Sanga (Lord Buddha, His Philosophy and the organization of Buddhist priesthood respectively) as stipulated in the recitals of virtues of these 3 refuges, are also the qualities accrued upon by the developing mind in its journey through the Eightfold Path. These are not just the qualities of the Lord Buddha, His Doctrine and the monk community alone as has been traditionally taught. This conventional teaching makes one feel alien to or out of reach for them. But everybody is potentially capable of possessing these and these are right within one when one follows the procedure of the Eightfold Path and free the mind of its attachments.

Of Buddha statues and pictures  

Lord Buddha has once stated that his Supreme Mind Existence will fade away from this world, the day a picture of him is created. This means that the lay people will gradually forget the essence of His doctrine and instead of following the Noble Eightfold Path will resort to worshipping the symbol i.e. the statue or the picture. There is no harm in worshipping a Buddha statue recollecting the noble qualities but this will not bring the result that the Buddha wanted all of us to get. This is more so as people worship the statue thinking that it is a wholesome deed and that it will bring something good for them. This is expecting something in return and thus based on greed which leads to attachment; exactly opposite of what Buddha preached.

The three selves of ‘I’

The notion ‘I’ comes into being when the mind feels senses in the fetus for the first time. From this moment onwards until a person’s life ends, this egoistic concept ‘I’ prevails in everything a person does, even though there is no permanent self, as both mind and body are constantly changing entities. ‘I’ is made of three components namely, the past self, the present self and the future self. The past self is the consciousness of the body which is experienced at the earliest stage of life. The present self is the one that experiences senses brought in by the sense doors eye, ear, nose, tongue and body at a given moment. The third one that is the future self that   remembers or bring back whatever information stored in the mind to be put to use.

The Noble Eightfold Path     

The constituents of the Noble Eightfold Path are the Right Vision, the Right Attitude, the Right Speech, the Right Action, the Right Livelihood, the Right Effort, the Right Mindfulness and the Right Concentration. According to conventional teaching these eight disciplines have to be practiced in daily life in sequence in order to achieve Nirvana. This sounds as if it is a long process which would take a life time for completion. This is completely misleading. The truth is that you can embark on the path with the eight components altogether in a matter of few moments.

You sit getting ready to meditate. You have realized that the ultimate happiness comes by freeing the mind of all attachments. This is the Right Vision. You are all out to enter the path and go on it to your destination. You have the Right Attitude. You keep the mouth closed and do not speak. You fulfill the third requirement that is Right Speech by refraining from wrong speech. You keep your body still and you are doing the Right Action as you are not engaged in any wrong doing. Both Right Speech and Right Action get you engaged in Right Livelihood i.e. you refrain from wrong livelihood. Normally it is not possible for you to sit still in a place even for a few moments without changing position or making some other movement or noise. So you need a lot of commitment and tolerance to spend the time in meditation which is the Right Effort. With the Right Effort you observe the process of going through the technique. Now you have the Right Mindfulness. Right Mindfulness leads to Right Concentration. It is noteworthy that the ‘Concentration’ here does not imply just concentration of the mind or ‘one pointedness’ as it is generally known but it is ‘Right Concentration’. The ‘one pointedness’ tends to get the mind attached to the object of concentration.  Whole idea here is ‘letting go’ or detachment. Thus what is meant here is the observation of the meditation procedure mindfully.                                                                                                                                                              

This completes the constituents of the Noble Eightfold Path. Practicing the meditation incorporating this Path brings you right on to it. All the elements of the Path manifest altogether at the same time. The result is the dawn of wisdom which sees attachment as the cause of suffering and effect detachment thus freeing the mind making it supreme.

Knowledge and wisdom

From the time of birth to the end of our life we gather knowledge and intelligence by experience and by learning. These are essential ingredients for us to lead a happy and successful life. But knowledge cannot end suffering because the root cause of suffering is attachment; attachment of the mind to worldly things including our own physical body. No attachment; no suffering! The foundation of knowledge we acquire is attachment. This is why knowledge and intelligence cannot end suffering. A complete understanding of our existence in its real perspective only will help free the mind from its bonds. And such an understanding could only be obtained by wisdom. The path to achieve wisdom is meditation with mindfulness.

The technique of meditation based on the Noble Eightfold Path is such a meditation. When you practice it the attachment gets reduced gradually dawning wisdom instead. This process will go on till the knowledge and intelligence linked to worldly matters are completely replaced by wisdom when the mind will be free of all attachments becoming supreme.

Blessing selected sites with ‘Loving Kindness’ in the meditation technique    

In the meditation technique (article 1) a number of zones or sites of the body are selected for contemplation. Locations in head, chest, abdomen and legs form these sites. Each of these is made of trillions of cells. The cells have all the constituent elements of a unit of life except the infusion of the mind component. In a physiological sense, whether mind is focused or not a group of cells is considered live. But in a spiritual sense when the mind is focused to a location in the body each cell in this particular area is taken as a living being. Therefore, when a selected body site is blessed with ‘Loving Kindness’, the individual cells in the area are considered as living organisms.

The blessing, ‘May all beings be healthy, happy and peaceful’, also is done with a certain understanding and in sequence as follows.  

‘May all beings be healthy!’

The cellular units in a site would be affected with sickness with or without our knowledge. It is wished for them first to be healthy with no sickness.

‘…..be happy’

The living cells are in a state of constant change. They form, age and perish. This is suffering. Absence of suffering is meant by wishing ‘be happy’.

‘….. be peaceful’

This is wishing them to be peaceful in the absence of agitation, sickness and suffering which are the results of birth, existence and death.

The reason for the blessing of the sites with compassion is a difference of opinion. Thus several explanations can be given. But what is important to remember is that the main idea of this exercise is to practice ‘letting go’. You ‘take’ a site observe it without getting attached to it; without thinking that it is a part of your body and then leave it with compassion and not with an unwholesome thought. So the blessing is only a tool to follow the meditation procedure and that itself is of no significance.

Nirvana and the mind    

The final target of meditation is the achievement of Nirvana. This is the blissful state the mind attains once it is free of all attachments inclusive of the desire to obtain it. Contrary to the age old teaching that mind ceases to exist after the death of a person who has attained Nirvana, it does prevail. It exists in its supreme state, free and powerful, with the ability to see anything in and out, possessing the ability to explore anything in the universe, no matter how many light years away it is. It will stay this way eternally but will never again will it access a fetus resulting in another birth.

                                                                                                                                               

‘Letting go’

‘Letting go’ is the foundation of the meditation based on the Noble Eightfold Path. It is the nucleus around which the whole meditation process revolves. It is simple logic. You let go a thing and you don’t have it anymore. You let go of the defilements of the mind and you don’t have them anymore. In real practice however, unless you have a proper understanding of this concept, it is not so smooth sailing. You have to apply it in relation to the meditation technique and see how it works. During the meditation exercise when you feel pain, you become aware of it and then bless it with ‘Loving Kindness’ and let it go. When you hear a noise you become aware of it and let it go. When a thought arises you become aware of it and let it go. So it fundamentally is a process of ‘letting go’. You let the defilements go and you are left with a pure mind. When this exercise is developed and when all the defilements of the mind exit, it will culminate in a free and Supreme Mind. This is attainment of Nirvana.

You have to experience this all by yourself. Experience and realize the results. Results are immediate. It wouldn’t cost you a cent. Isn’t it wonderful if you can achieve the end of suffering free of charge?

Attaining nirvana is a reality

We have been taught that attaining nirvana during our life time is a remote possibility. We hardly or never heard about people in society who have gained Higher States of the mind which are the steps up the ladder reaching Nirvana. These higher levels and Nirvana are within our grasp in our life time. This is wonderful news! Great news! We must make use of this rare opportunity and make a firm effort to put an end to suffering and attain Nirvana.