The purpose of all religious teachings and spiritual practices are to come to the know the Truth beyond distorted perceptions, ideas, views and beliefs about the Truth.
When we are overly living in our heads, which means living in the stories we tell our selves about ourselves and about life, we are in our ideas, views and beliefs about the Truth, rather than in our hearts which is where we find the real life, the direct Truth. It is where the so called born again experience happens.
As
a scientist and artist of Awakening, the Buddha was extremely clear and direct
in his teachings on the Truth, and how to find Truth and live by it.
He
was a man who knew how to be concise and precise when needed and so when asked
once what do you teach….he replied, “I teach the cultivation of the wholesome
and the removal of the unwholesome”.
The
Buddha taught the Truth about this mindbody process, he taught about the law of
cause and effect. He taught about how to live a life of happiness, peace, love
and compassion and he taught about what helps these things awaken and what
hinders.
This
the work of purification or spiritual development which no one else can do for
you, but we can be aided by the presence of others of like mind and we can be
guided and inspired by teachers and by the teachings themselves.
If
we look at this world in which we live both the internal world of most humans
and the external world of relationships and exchange of all kinds between humans…..we
see that it is a world of continuous ups and downs
It
is a world of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, fame and
shame……..no one is except. The eight vicissitudes
This
internal and external world in which we live is constantly changing, it is
largely unpredictable and not ours to control.
Out
of this rather massive collective tendency to try control what is not meant to
be controlled…………one of the greatest problems and challenges we face in our
time is the destruction of the eco-system due to over consumption and increased
population. And it is happening much quicker then most of us are aware or
wanting to actually face.
When
we try to control what is not ours to control we are subject to the effects of
such actions of controlling…… which is stress and tension, unhappiness and
suffering. Understanding cause and effect is called understanding karma………the
light of the world (how things work)
The
degree of tension that one is presently holding in the mind and body is in
direct proportion to the attempts to control what we are not by design meant to
control.
What
are we not designed to control ?….. the
movement of the planets, the weather, other people, the economy, creatures of
nature, innumerable physiological actions of the body (digestion, elimination,
breathing) and eventually when you go deep enough you see that you’re not
designed to control anything about the mind either.
When
we see that feelings and thoughts have their own nature, they are their own
masters not only can we then let go of much of what causes stress and
unhappiness, but we can then also begin
to use / manage thoughts and feelings in a truly creative effective manner,
rather than be used by them. This service is to serve happiness and peace in
this world.
How
does this happen……it happens thru the cultivation of a particular mental
faculty, which is at the heart of effective meditation, prayer and spiritual
development.
Mindfulness
– direct and clear and continuous observation (not controlling)
of
what is happening in the mind and body and how this mindbody process
makes
contact with the world around us thru the six sense bases…..seeing, hearing,
taste, touch, smell and mind objects (thoughts, images, etc.)
The
Buddha centered all of his teachings around it and even though the same word is
not often used in other traditions……the essential role of being present, of
being mindful to life and in life in a non-judgmental, unbiased way is crucial
to spiritual insight and the release from suffering and unhappiness.
This
non-judgmental, unbiased awareness is already present within everyone and we
can see that as and when it is developed more fully it begins to naturally get
expressed as love, kindness, generosity and equanimity.
At
one point in his teachings Jesus asked those around him to look at the
flower……he wasn’t asking them to analyse the flower or pick the flower, but
rather to see the nature of the flower….the nature of the flower is to open, to
offer itself to the world, to radiate, to bring happiness…..in a way what Jesus
was asking us to do when he asked us to look at the flower, was to become like
the flower, and to go to the direct metaphor…to Be the flower
This
is what the practice of mindfulness is all about.
And
thru paying close attention to how the mind is actually working we can begin to
see the Truth of Suffering in the mind…..we see painful states of mind that
come uninvited, we see painful conditions and circumstances in the world, we
see the painfulness of disease, old age and dying. We see the fleeting nature
of pleasurable experiences also………… Not getting what we want and getting what
we don’t want.
This
Truth of Suffering (First Noble Truth) is never a pessimistic or negative
interpretation of life, it does not discount that there is also happiness, joy,
love, pleasure, serenity and contentment in this life.
What
it is says it that all that can be know in this temporal plane is subject to
the same law or Truth and that is the truth of change or impermanence and
therefore what is happening is incapable of bringing a lasting happiness
and is therefore ultimately unsatisfactory.
Intellectually
we all know this, but intellectual insight or analysis will not
bring
fulfillment, we need to know this experientially. Living life brings this
wisdom, but meditation and contemplation bring it quicker.
Now
everything can be learned from and much in this world can be deeply enjoyed and
bring lots of different kinds of happiness (not lasting) when we are seeing
clearly, when we have a right understanding……and this is to relate to what the
moment brings with openness and not clinging, that means non-controlling
The
First Noble Truth leads to the second……. which is the cause of
suffering…..clinging, attaching to things.
When
we honestly look at all woes and troubles in this world we can trace it all
back to three roots which are greed, hatred and delusion.
Greed,
hatred and delusion are the unwholesome roots of suffering and the causes for
all forms of unhappiness and discontent.
Greed
is wanting what you don’t have, hatred is not wanting what you do have and
delusion is being confused about what’s truly of value and what isn’t. In other
words what’s worth cultivating and what isn’t.
These
roots of suffering in the mind are removed thru the cultivation of their
opposites…….. generosity, love and clarity.
Now
where do these forces of suffering in the mind come from…..again the Buddha
being the true scientist and artist that he was, looked very deep in his
meditation and found that there is an even deeper root out of which G,H,D grow.
G, H, D have to come from somewhere, have their cause.
This
deeper root is ignorance, this is not about a lack of intellectual knowledge or
worldly experience, but rather is it the habitually conditioned tendency to
ignore what is true.
This
ignorance of what is true has a number of different parts to it.
The
two primary parts to understand is that when there is ignorance in the mind we
don’t see that everything is changing, not to be possessed, not to be owned,
does not belong to you and if you don’t see that everything is unpossessable
then the second level of ignorance can take hold….which is to form a
controlling, attaching relationship with what you like and an aversive,
resistive relationship with what you don’t like, which is inverted attachment.
Third
Zen
Mindfulness
of these roots gradually removes them, just seeing that they too are
impermanent uproots them.
But
also there is the cultivation of the opposites…..the special power of
generosity and love…..giving everytime the thought to give comes up and thus
inclining the mind towards non-greed……choosing to act with love and kindness,
which is to really accept the differences between us all at the level of
personalities and let go of judgments, opinions and distorted perceptions, this
disspells hatred
What
we can begin to see is that all goodness comes from generosity, deep happiness
comes from giving, and its not what you give or how much, but intention behind
the giving, purest giving is to give without expecting anything in return….to
give because we can, not because we should
And
what in time gets revealed is that the fruit of generosity is abundance and
that the true abundance is the happiness and peace born from a mind that has
stopped clinging. And when the mind stops clinging then the heart which is ever
patient and humble can awaken in love and kindness…and this is what it means to
remove the roots of suffering from this world.
Good
Will sermon of the Buddha