My Buddhist Journey Chapter 4
Buddhism emerges from a 5000 year old Hindu Culture. The history voluminous and this story is an attempt to simplify this history.
Chapter 3 left off with the Buddha’s first sermon which I will be the first to admit is not very easy to understand, particularly at the end where he says “There will be no more repetitive existence.” What I think he means is that he has fully understood this human existence for what it is and moved beyond it. For the Buddha human existence is not self determined as much as we would like to think it is. We humans are a natural phenomenon like everything else in our world. What makes us think that we are self determined is first of all our instinct for survival and then the many cultures in which we live which perpetuate, exaggerate and reinforce that instinct. Of course an instinct for survival is necessary for all living things but our intelligence has taken us well beyond what is necessary for survival.
The Buddha presented his first sermon to the five ascetics whom he had originally joined in the forest to begin his search to find an end for human suffering. The ascetics were impressed enough to become his disciples and joined him as he started out on his life long journey to teach his new found philosophy. There is much of his teaching that appeals to me. For example what I have called the three “imps” that remind me that life is impermanent, imperfect and impersonal all of which cause suffering unless we learn to accept them as part of our lives. Impermanence and imperfection are self explanatory but accepting the impersonal is not so easy for us.
We live in a human world of personality; ours and everyone else’s. This, if you haven’t noticed, is a big problem. The Buddha saw this personality as the root cause of our suffering. I have already talked about our lack of self determination ase are creatures of nature. Much of what we do is in service to our biological natures but in order be someone special we have been given the intelligence to be so much more in wonderful and also terrible ways. I have been familiar with a poem for many years about non-duality (love) that speaks to the opposite of personality. The original version of the poem is called Xinxinming by the third Chan (Zen) patriarch Sengsan. The version of the poem I first encountered is called Believing in Mind and is more appropriate to include here:
Believing in Mind
The great Way is not difficult
For those not attached to preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
You see it clearly.
Make a thousandth of an inch distinction,
Heaven and earth swing apart.
If you want it to appear before your eyes,
Cherish neither for nor against.
To compare what you like with what you dislike,
That is the disease of the mind.
You pass over the hidden meaning;
Pease of mind is needlessly troubled.
It is round and perfect like vast space,
Lacks nothing, never overflows.
Only because we take and reject
Do we lose the means to know its Suchness.
Do not get tangled in outward desire
Or get caught within yourself.
Once you plant deep the longing for peace
Confusion leaves of it self.
Return to the root and find meaning;
Follow sense objects, you lose the goal.
Just one instant of inner enlightenment
Will take you far beyond the emptiness of the world.
Selfish attachment forgets all limits;
It always leads down evil roads.
When you let go of it, things happen of themselves;
The substance neither goes nor abides.
If the eye does not sleep
All dreams will naturally stop.
If the mind does not differentiate
All things are of one Suchness.
When you fathom the realm of Suchness
You instantly forget all selfish desire.
Having seen ten thousand things as one
You return to your natural state.
Without meditation
Consciousness and feeling are hard to grasp.
In the realm of Suchness
There is neither self nor other.
In the one, there is the all.
In the all, there is the one.
If you know this,
You will never worry about being incomplete.
If belief and mind are make the same
And there is no division between belief and mind
The road of words comes to and end,
Beyond present and future.