Realizing Well-Being September 23, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Four Noble Truths, Four Nutriments, Fourth Noble Truth, interbeing, Noble Eightfold Path, suffering, Third Noble Truth, transforming suffering, well-being
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On September 13 we read Chapter 8, “Realizing Well-Being,” from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. Here’s a summary.
Practicing mindfulness helps us appreciate the well-being present to us now – helps us appreciate our “non-toothache” days. Thay encourages psychotherapists to practice walking meditation and tea meditation with their patients, to water the seeds of joy in them. With the Third Noble Truth, we ask ourselves questions about what nourishes joy in ourselves and others. Well-being is available if we know how to enjoy the precious jewels we already have: eyes that see, lungs that breathe, legs that walk, lips that smile.
In the first turning of the Third Noble Truth, we have some happiness or freedom, but aren’t aware of it: “recognition” of the possibility of the absence of suffering and the presence of peace. In the second turning, we “encourage” ourselves to find peace and joy, to put our hands in the soil and grow new happiness, to embrace our suffering and discover the source of happiness that is right there within it. Buddhas and bodhisattvas suffer too, but they know how to transform garbage into flowers, suffering into joy and compassion. Rather than throw away suffering, we can learn the art of cultivating joy. When we practice this way, we come to the third turning, the “realization” that suffering and happiness are not two, that joy is not fragile but true.
In the first turning of the Fourth Noble Truth, we “recognize” without yet knowing how to practice it that the way out of suffering is the Eightfold Path: Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. In the second turning, we “encourage” ourselves to learn this path by reflecting and practicing. We don’t need a path that doesn’t address our real difficulties; we can see this path does by gradually transforming irresponsibilities in our lifestyle, increasing our freedom daily. The Buddha advises us to identify and stop ingesting the nutriments that feed our pain. When we resolve to do this, the Noble Eightfold Path appears before us. The third turning is our “realization” that we are on this path.
It is important for us to remember that the Four Noble Truths inter-are. Looking deeply into one, we see the other three and how they are related to each other. We need suffering to see the path. “The origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path leading to the cessation of suffering are all found in the heart of suffering.” We will not find peace, joy and liberation if we are afraid to touch our suffering. Thay reframes and renumbers the Four Noble Truths, “for the benefit of the people of our time:
“(1) Well-Being (traditionally number three, ‘cessation of suffering’);
(2) Noble Eightfold Path That Leads to Well-Being (traditionally number four);
(3) Suffering (traditionally number one);
(4) Ignoble Eightfold Path That Leads to Suffering (traditionally number two, ‘arising of suffering’).”
If we practice the ignoble eightfold path, suffering – craving, hatred, ignorance and fear – will be the outcome. But if we live according to the Noble Eightfold Path, we will find joy, ease, and wonder. Our practice is to face our suffering and transform it, bringing about well-being.
The First Dharma Talk / The Four Noble Truths July 31, 2009
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: awakening, Buddha, Four Noble Truths, interbeing, Middle Way, Noble Eightfold Path, suffering, well-being, wheel of the Dharma
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On July 19 we read Chapters Two and Three from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. Here are summaries.
Chapter Two: “The First Dharma Talk” Siddhartha Gautama left home at 29 years old. After studying with many teachers, he sat under a bodhi tree, vowing not to stand until he was enlightened. He sat all night and had a profound breakthrough. After 49 days of enjoying the peace of his realization, he walked to the Deer Park in Sarnath to share his understanding with the five ascetics with whom he had practiced earlier. He explained to them that everything has to inter-be with everything else and that all things have the nature to awaken.
He taught them the Four Noble Truths: the existence of suffering, the making of suffering, the possibility of restoring well-being, and the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to well-being. He described how he had become a free person, and at that moment the Earth shook and the voices of all living beings throughout the cosmos said that “an enlightened person had been born and had put into motion the wheel of the Dharma, the Way of Understanding and Love.” Since then the wheel has continued to turn and it is up to us to keep it turning for the happiness of the many.
The three points of the sutra On Turning the Wheel of the Dharma are: the Middle Way – avoidance of the extremes of austerity and sensual pleasure; the teaching of the Four Noble Truths; and engagement in the world – relating to ourselves and the world as thoroughly as possible. The Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma teaches us to recognize suffering and transform it into mindfulness, compassion, peace, and liberation.
Chapter Three: “The Four Noble Truths” The Four Noble Truths are “the cream of the Buddha’s teaching.” The First Noble Truth is suffering (dukkha). The Chinese character for suffering means “bitter.” We all suffer to some extent, and must recognize it and touch it. We may need a teacher and a Sangha to do this.
The Second Noble Truth is the origin, roots, nature, creation, or arising (samudaya) of suffering. After we touch our suffering, we have to look into it deeply to see what spiritual or material foods we have ingested to cause it.
The Third Noble Truth is to stop creating suffering (nirodha) by refraining from doing the things that make us suffer. The thought that “Everything is suffering and we cannot do anything about it” is the opposite of the Buddha’s message. The Third Noble Truth is that healing is possible.
The Fourth Noble Truth is the path (marga) to refraining from doing the things that cause suffering, called the Noble Eightfold Path. The eight practices making it up are Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.
The Way to Well-Being July 20, 2008
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Eightfold Path, fear, Four Noble Truths, nirvana, Sister Annabel Laity, store consciousness, watering the seeds, well-being
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This and last week’s dharma reading was “The Way to Well-Being,” by Sister Annabel Laity, in The Mindfulness Bell, Issue 48, Summer 2008, pp. 6-11. The reading is a transcription of a Dharma talk Sister Annabel delivered on August 24, 2007, at the retreat at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, CO, on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. A summary follows.
The Four Noble Truths can be expressed by adding a word to each subsequent one:
- Ill-being.
- The way to ill-being.
- The end of the way to ill-being.
- The way to end the way to ill-being.
Here’s one way to practice: You can take a piece of paper and fold it two times, to form three columns. Only three are needed; the third and fourth Noble Truths can be combined from the point of view that “there is no way to well-being; well-being is the way.”
The First Noble Truth: Ill-Being
The first column is for the First Noble Truth. Write down each thing that in your personal life you feel to be “ill-being,” psychological, physical, or physiological; a painful emotion, or perhaps a physical pain. There is something deep in our consciousness wanting to be transformed. Anger, depression, denial; you may have to look very deeply to recognize it. Having written it down, look it in the face. This alone can be a tremendous relief. By facing the truth, we begin to see it as it is. Don’t magnify it or diminish it. Look at it and acknowledge it “just as it is.” This is the first step to healing.
The Way to Ill-Being
By practicing looking deeply, you’re already in the second column: it is the way that led to the first column. Nothing emotional, physical, or psychological can survive without its food. The Buddha said that if you stop ingesting the food feeding the emotion, you are liberated. The “way” is the causes. What are the causes of each ill-being in your first column? Write them down in the second column. It may be what you consume through your mouth. It may be desire for fame or praise, or fear of losing things, or misunderstanding of the practice. It may be difficulties remaining from your childhood, or yesterday’s TV programs or newspaper articles or conversations. Write them down.
The Way to End the Way to Ill-Being
We are going to remove the causes, because we don’t want to just treat the symptoms, of our ill-being. The Buddha taught that the way to well-being is the Noble Eightfold Path. Adapt each of the eight to your own sickness or ill-being. Note that the Five Mindfulness Trainings provide guidance with most aspects of the Eightfold Path.
Right View: the way you have of looking at reality, acknowledging impermanence, no-self, and nirvana. When we are at peace with the impermanence of our health and life, we can profit from the time left to us. When I recognize I do not have a separate self, my happiness is your happiness; our relationships benefit. Nirvana is not being caught in views, not fighting and dying for them. We can only save our planet by sisterhood and brotherhood, letting go of our views.
Right Thinking: being mindful of our thinking and where it is taking us. Our constant thinking keeps our fictional notions of a separate self alive. Consequently, we compare our “selves,” judging and blaming others, which then leads to ill-being, both our own and others’. We may have intentions not necessarily in our conscious minds, driving us with tremendous energy in a direction we don’t consciously want to go. Examples are desire for fame, money, or sex. While meditating and making our lists, we need to look deeply and identify these unconscious unprofitable motivations. Once discovered, we may be able to stop them, giving us more time for those things that make us most happy: family, nature, sangha.
Right Speech: learning to speak lovingly and listen deeply. When angry, rather than watering those seeds in yourself and others, you can look after anger with mindful breathing and walking, embracing it just as it is. Afterwards, talk about it, or write about it in a letter for your loved one.
Right Action: of the body, perhaps in terms of consumption. What do we eat? Do we eat in the right time? in the right way? If we eat the flesh of animals that suffer while being raised for our consumption, we ingest their suffering. Meals should nourish us spiritually as well as physically.
Right Livelihood: Does our work bring us happiness, or does it bring us stress? We can lessen the stress by bringing compassion to the workplace; we can bring a flower or a green plant, or when we ask “How are you?” we can really want to know.
Right Effort: Store consciousness stores the seeds of all kinds of emotions, positive and negative. They either manifest or remain dormant at different times in our lives, depending on which ones we water, and when. The longer or more frequently the plant (the mental formation) from the seed manifests, the stronger it becomes, whether beneficial or non-beneficial. An example is anger. The more often we “rehearse” it, the stronger and more easily it will come up each successive time. Right effort is learning how not to rehearse it without repressing it; how to express it in a beneficial manner.
Another example is the story told by the Buddha about the “One Hundred Stab Wounds,” in which a criminal is punished by being stabbed a hundred times, followed by a hundred more, and again by yet a hundred more. This kind of suffering “beyond belief” is described by the Buddha as “the food of consciousness.” The genetic makeup, the body and mind and consciousness, of we, the human species, is inherited from all the species that came before us. We are the little fish eaten by the big fish, including the fear it experienced upon being eaten, and then the small animal and its fear when eaten by the big animal. The pain is cumulative, increasing with each “stabbing” in the same place. With Right Effort we can avoid watering this seed of fear. Often, Right Effort is not feeling you have to do something, but just sitting, embracing the emotion and allowing yourself enough time to look after it.
Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration: living deeply in the present moment, aware of what is happening with our whole attention to discover its full reality. Full awareness of what is nourishing and wonderful in life brings very deep happiness.
Write down your intentions in the third column: Where are you going to walk daily with concentration and mindfulness? What time are you going to do sitting meditation? What time are you going to spend with your family, in loving speech and appreciation? When you begin this practice, well-being is there. There is no way to well-being; well-being is the way.
