From a Discussion at a Comparative Religions Class
By Connie Parker
It is not a verbatim report, but I hope it conveys a fairly accurate
representation of the discussion.
definitely not a religion. What do you say about that?
A: I say our understanding and agreement on anything we try to talk about is more important than the words we use and that the everyday words we just assume we understand are very misleading if we don't question them. Religion is one of those words people tend to be adamant about. To me, all our beliefs and everything about our lives is our religion. I'm more concerned with whether our beliefs are true and beneficial than what we call them because whether we call ourselves religious or not, our beliefs determine how we live and when our beliefs are wrong, we don't live according to the truth and I think that's harmful. Buddhism has also been called 'the religion of skeptics' because of what is called the Charter of Free Inquiry, a sutta where Buddha says we should discover the truth for ourselves and not just accept things on other people's authority, including his. Buddha called what he taught Dhamma-Vinaya, Doctrine and Discipline. Dhamma, what we usually call his teachings, comes from a root meaning 'to uphold'... the pure natural law or reality or truth that upholds everything. That is all that exists and you might call Buddhism a science or discipline, vinaya, because whatever exists can be proved by the methods he gave us.
Ultimate truth doesn't change because we call it one thing or another but if by religion, you mean seeing a world where we have to placate gods who have the final say in what happens to us, then no, Buddhism is not a religion... unless you call Truth God and say that the more you uphold the Dhamma, the more you are upheld or saved. What we usually think of as gods are beings in higher planes who ultimately face the same fact of death that we do and have their own salavation to work out.
They're just less likely to be concerned with it than we are. Actually, we have the advantage there, because we know we are in deep dukkha. There is also the sense that gods are natural functions and not actual beings, like what we call Mara or the devil is just negative forces or aspects that we follow to our own detriment. When we talk about non-attachment, we mean learning to see things as they really are, not as we like to think of them in our blindness or moha and ultimately, we'd let go of even our ideas of religion, which I'm pretty attached to.
Q: So you don't think God can help us?
A: As positive or protective functions, yes, gods help us. On the other hand, Mara is also called the Devil King of the Sixth Heaven, so he can also be considered a god. But I believe the best help we ever got from God was when Buddha was sitting under the bo tree and might have decided not to teach the Truth he had Enlightened to if Brahma had not said some people would be able to understand. There are other stories where gods and humans interact, but gods only help us on a fairly gross, physical level and as understanding develops more, we are on our own. Only right understanding will save us... not praying for divine intervention or relying on rites and rituals. For the most part, I think we are insignificant to the beings in other planes but you might like to be on the safe side and extend metta, but not with any expectation of reward or them saving you from yourself. Buddha said to "Be a lamp (or island) unto yourself; work out your own salvation with diligence."
Q: You're talking about just doing things for their own sake without being attached to the outcome, letting go?
A: Yes, even to talking about wanting and trying to develop right understanding. What's done is done and what happens next depends on different causes and conditions that are beyond our control. At the same time, we can't be nihilistic and just give up or think it doesn't matter what we do. It's about non-attachment or freedom and the ultimate freedom is Nibbana, the Unconditioned. I can't really tell you about Nibbana because I haven't experienced it, so I can only talk about ideas. I accept it on faith because everything else Buddha taught seems right to me as far as I understand it, even the things I haven't wanted to be true. In fact, everything I talk about is just my understanding and I'm pretty ignorant. There's a saying that "the truth can only be shared and understood between Buddhas" or Awakened Ones.
Ethically, Nibbana is freedom from what we call the three akusala roots that play the biggest part in our lives: moha, dosa and lobha. Akusala means something like unwholesome or unskillful as opposed to kusala or what we might call good, skillful. Moha is ignorance or not seeing what is true, being in the dark. Lobha is desire or greed. Dosa is dislike, aversion or anger. These things are not us even though we say things like 'I am angry'. Anger is angry. Why do we want to identify that as who we are? These are the three main roots we've been all tangled up in since beginningless time and it takes a lot patience to get out of the mess. For most of us, the saying that "they've lived in hell so long they've come to think of it as playing in a garden" applies.
Metaphysically, Nibbana is freedom from suffering or sorrow. This is what Buddha meant when he said he only taught "dukkha and the cessation of dukkha." It might help to think of dukkha as imperfection. It involves the idea that there is constant change or flux... what we call anicca, impermanence. Anicca tells us that everything arises and falls away again, never to return. No single moment or thing is ever the same as another... snowflakes. If you just think about physics, you know that things aren't really the way we are used to thinking about them, but are constantly changing, the same as us. We separate things out of this flux and imagine that they are lasting people or things and in the conventional or conceptual sense, this is true and helps us get along in society but it hides the eventfulness or anicca and we start believing that's the whole truth.
You might think rebirth is only about a whole life-time from conception to death, but really, our whole life is only as long as a single moment of consciousness. The whole world is only that long and the kind of world it is depends on the type of consciousness... whether it is a world of sound or taste or any other sense. The next moment, it's different. We talk about being reborn in different planes, but can also think of them as being different mind states and see how we make our own heaven or hell as we go thru a single day. We react to things with joy and we're in heaven. We justify rudeness or war and are more concerned with getting what we want than who we might hurt and we act like animals or people in hell. But if we catch ourselves thinking or feeling certain ways, maybe we can see how we got there. We can say, "there's anger and that's not really me, I don't have to keep feeding it and make it worse".
What we see as the continuity of a life or 'you', is what is carried along from each moment to the next, accumulations... the past feeding the present feeding the future. Whether it is the life cycle of a universe, which is something like 37,000 million years, or a human life-time, a sub-atomic particle or a thought moment, what follows, the reborn thing, is 'the same yet another'... like the past, present and future are all Time. If we ignore the magnitudes of the events, we can see the process is the same.
Q: I've heard that science is proving that space and time are just concepts.
A: A friend of mine says science is proving Buddhism, but even if it does, we'll still have to prove it to ourselves on an experiential level. Science is a useful tool but it's just another way of viewing things and we have to get beyond views and theories. We're not just going to read some 'Copernicus Proves Buddhism' book and get it because we have faith in Science. And we don't need all the complicated explanations. Some people understood what Buddha was saying just from hearing simple things like 'we all die' or 'all conditioned things perish'.
Dukkha is also tied in with anatta or non-self and psychologically, Nibbana is freedom from Ego. It involves learning to see that there is no abiding essense of a self or soul, but a stream of changes as physical and mental events, rupa and nama. Our bodies are rupa and our consciousness or mind is nama, which we break down into citta and cetasika. Citta is what knows or experiences anything. That anything is what we call an aramanna, object... or object as reflected in our perception of it. Citta, awareness, is colored or flavoured by certain combinations of 52 mental factors or cetasikas that arise with it. We usually see rupa translated as form or physicality. Rupa is 28 different kinds of things like sound or colour or hardness, the realities that don't have any awareness. For instance, our bodies are rupa and when we think our belly is hungry, it is citta that knows hunger and decides to have the body eat. When there is pain, the body doesn't know it, citta does.
Q: Oh... so that's why the dentist gives you laughing gas. There is still pain, but you're not so aware of it.
A: I don't know how nitrous oxide works, but citta would be less aware of the pain. There are also a lot of different kinds of citta depending on the method of classifying them, but we won't get into all the different kinds of nama and rupa today. The important things are that everything, all dhammas, can be classified according to the two main divisions of nama and rupa and that anyone who claims to be Enlightened should be able to explain this.
Q: If you are for non-attachment, what do you think about people getting married?
A: What people?
Q: You know, people who are in love and want to spend their lives together. Is that wrong?
A: I think I haven't explained non-attachment or anatta very well, but there is a difference between what we call love as metta and love as attachment. A lot of what we call love is just selfish attachment and wanting sensual pleasure but not really about the other person and what is best for them. We like to think of love as all pure and good, something sacred, but we are caught up in our own ideas of what we call people and what we get out of being in love. Buddha spoke of two kinds of truth... conventional and ultimate and to some extent, right and wrong mean different things depending on what kind of truth we mean. 'People in love' is a conventional expression, but if they have the same real love and beliefs or understanding, they can be together in many lifetimes. You can read about different people's past lives and how they were related at different times in the Jataka tales.
In another sense though, 'people' are just what we call certain groupings or aggregates of five components: consciousness, rupa, feelings, perception and forces that condition psychic activity. Nothing special to be in love with or to want someone else to love. It's said that it's not even kind to encourage someone else to become attached to you and one of the five things we should think about every day is that "All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me." More love, more pain. But non-attachment is about giving up things like all forms of delusion, conceit and aversion, not depriving ourselves and spending all our time thinking about how miserable we are. "Enjoy what there is to enjoy and suffer what there is to suffer" without thinking it is who we are or that things last. You might hear "don't be swayed by the winds of fortune", which are worldly concerns like fame and praise or loss and pain and their opposites. We want to keep reminding ourselves that every step might be our last and should be on the path to freedom. We talk about the world being on fire or how we should have the same sense of urgency we would have if there was a fire on our heads.
Q: Does the goal for this lifetime have to be Nirvana?
A: Maybe in the back of our mind somewhere we'd like it to be, but it's just a fantasy until the first time it happens. If we learn to be in the present with wise attention, I think there is no goal and no one to reach it. We should be more concerned with accumulating the causes that would eventually lead to that... to developing right understanding of realities and taking advantage of opportunities to accumulate merit or kusala. There's also the Mahayana Bodhisattva ideal that says you would delay Nibbana in order to help other people.
I do not mean to imply that Nibbana is not an ultimate reality or that it isn’t the the highest goal and ultimate refuge of Buddhism, but it is not realistic to expect that everyone will be able to reach it in this lifetime. I think we all have our own ideas or fantasies about what Nibbana would be like until our accumulations are such that we actually experience it and I think these ideas can get in our way and obstruct actual attainment. Having our own ideas as a goal carries the danger that we would reach them and think we had attained what we had not attained… like mistaking calm with lobha for a pure peace. Certainly, the goal is there, but we have to pay attention to the path along the way. Also, we might remember that it is not really a person, but citta that would experience it.
Q: I read that only monks can reach Nirvana.
A: There are quite a few householders in the Suttas who attain some level of Nibbana, but there is something about anyone who has reached a certain level would have to join the Order to stay alive... I'm sorry I don't remember it right now. It's either that same day or within three days.
The Suttas are probably what most people think of when they think about the Buddhist Canon, but the Tipitaka is actually 3 Collections or Baskets of books about eleven times the size of the Bible. The Vinaya or Discipline section covers everything from a monk not licking his bowl or his lips when he eats and how to behave at people's houses to how the Order conducts meetings and what happens when different rules are broken. All the different rules came about in response to different situations and problems that came up with more and more monks living together and the stories behind them are also there. The Sutta-Pitaka are the books where you find things like how a couple should live together or Buddha's thoughts on an ideal ruler. Suttas are the teachings according to the level of the audience's understanding and what would be the most beneficial thing for them to hear at the time. The Abhidhamma or Higher Doctrines explains ultimate truths and doesn't talk about things like people. Some people also call it the Buddha's moral psychology. I know you're familiar with some of the suttas, so I'd like to read part of a paragraph explaining a thought process in Abhidhamma terms just to give you some idea of the difference:
"The millionth of the second that the arammana is experienced by the vinnana cittas of the different panca dvaras is followed by the vithi vara cittas of the dvara and then the mano dvara arises to experience the same arammana in sequence, so the arammana is always known by its own dvara vithi vara and the mano dvara vithi vara, after some bhavanga interposes."
But you don't have to learn to talk like that to realize it and even though the Baskets are written differently, they talk about the same things. I wouldn't say that one was more right than another, just that they address different levels of practice or understanding and different people can find the approach that suits them best.
Q: Were they written in Sanskrit?
A: The Theravadan or Elders' Doctrines were originally in Pali, but most of the later, Mahayana or Great Vehicle texts were in Sanskrit and you find a lot of variation in the different translations. The Tibetan Vajrayana or Diamond Way texts came from Mahayana. When you see karma, sutra or nirvana, that's Sanskrit and if it's kamma, sutta and nibbana, that's Pali, but it seems like even Theravadan writers are using the Sanskrit forms more now, especially when they have a Western audience, so it doesn't necessarily tell you which tradition you're reading about.
Q: What language do you chant in?
A: In Theravadan countries, like Thailand, they chant in Pali but most of the Mahayana Buddhists chant in their native tongue. I was taught to chant in Japanese and recite a portion of one sutra in Classical Chinese, but I don't read those languages.
Q: How does chanting relate to meditation?
A: Basically, there are two kinds of formal meditation: samatha and vipassana. Samatha or tranquility meditation is not strictly Buddhist, but also practiced by other religions and the form people did even before Buddha. That's the one with the different jhana or 'altered consciousness' levels and that'll get you to different heavens, but not out of samsara, the endless wandering through the cycle of birth and death. For that, you need vipassana or insight. Chanting would be related to tranquility if you think of it as a kind of meditation. What you hear about chanting or meditation will depend on who you ask. Some people don't even like to use the word practice and some people I know who chant are very vehement when they say it's not meditation. Ideally, we would all be aware of whatever reality is happening at any time, regardless of what it is, with wise attention, and there would be constant bhavana, mental development.
Q: I've heard that drinking isn't really prohibited as long as you keep it under control and don't lose mindfulness.
A: It is an individual choice and I think you're right that the ideas behind the rules are more important than the actual words, but I disagree with whoever said that. I also think intoxicants can be any number of things that distract us from the path, not just drugs and alcohol. I would wonder how clearly the person who says that really sees things, but that's me and I should be more concerned with how I see things. Just being human, I am already limited by what my senses can pick up and how much of that do I not even notice? I also tend to twist things around to fit my understanding. If you write it down, you can see a lot of ignorance is just ignoring truth. Another point to that precept is that we are less guarded about what we might do and end up having cause for regret. But I'm not saying that just because I don't care for laughing gas, that I'd turn down novocaine, either.
The five basic precepts involve non-injury, metta, sexual propriety, honesty and sobriety and are more like guidelines than vows or commandments. Sometimes, usually full moon days, you might also fast after noon, not dance or sing or watch shows and not get all decked out like a peacock. Novice monks add 2 more rules to the eight for lay-people and change the third one to include celibacy and fully ordained monks have over 200 precepts, but even monks don't take vows and are free to leave the Order if they decide they don't have the right accumulations to make it the best way for them to live or whatever their reason.
When we talk about the Eightfold Path as Three Trainings, we group the steps under panna or wisdom, sila or morality and samadhi or concentration but either way, it's like a positive feedback loop where each step feeds the next and comes back around to feed the previous ones to higher and higher levels. There has to be a balance, but we have to start where we are. There are some people who say that it doesn't do any good to take precepts at all anymore and I think they might be saying we shouldn't put too much emphasis on just the morality aspects, but to ignore it is wrong, too. And we don't have to think in terms of precepts per se. We can think about being respectful, giving, metta or even just having a positive attitude.
I don't mean we can just say 'Ok, today I'm not going to do this or that or I would never hurt anyone'. We don't know what's going to happen and all we can do is our best. We can't even say we won't hear something unpleasant and get angry about it. Even if I have no right understanding, I can follow rules until I learn to see that they really are the best way and then I have a little more understanding, at least on a worldly level.
Q: Do you think we are more responsible or have a higher responsibility the more advanced we become? That there are higher standards for our behaviour?
A: Yes. There is a sutta about one of the monks being reproached by a deva for stealing when all he had done is smell a flower and when he protested that he hadn't hurt anything the deva basically said he had to hold himself to higher standards and that smaller things should be more important to him than to someone who wasn't as pure. It also goes back to how far the gods will help us because when he asked the deva to watch over him and let him know if he was going to do something like that again, the deva told him he should be able to figure it out himself.
Q: Would karma be worse for someone like that than say an innocent baby?
A: I don't know about that. First, being born human is a result of good kamma and I'd agree that a baby is ignorant, but I'm not sure how innocent any of us ever is or what that really means. Then, not everything that happens to us is a result of kamma. Kamma is just one of the five natural orders of laws and 24 paccayas or conditions that come into play and is so complicated that Buddha called it one of the four imponderables, saying it would make us crazy to think too much about it. Even when something is due to kamma, like when you see something, it's a result or vipaka. People usually don't make a distinction and call both the cause and the result kamma, but that's not right. Kamma is formed during the seven thought moments called javanas and involves cetana, volition, so that is where the question of 'innocence' or purity would come in. Do we inform our thought process with right understanding or do we let akusala propel us forward? I think real innocence wouldn't create any new kamma. Actually, both kamma and vipaka are mental.
No two people will have the same kamma or the same circumstances for the result to happen in the same way and not all kamma will ripen during this lifetime. We can't say bad things don't happen to good people. Even one of the early monks who had attained a high level was beaten to death for something he'd done in a previous life.
Q: Can you practice Buddhism and another religion?
A: Truth is truth wherever you find it and just because I call it Buddhism doesn't mean only Buddhists can know it. Anyone who walks the path Buddha pointed out would be Buddhist to my mind and my calling myself Buddhist doesn't mean that I have it right. In fact, I think you could argue that no one is a true Buddhist until they have attained what we call 'change of lineage' or stream entry, but that probably wouldn't make you a lot of friends. Also, a lot of what we think of as Buddhism is really mixed with other religious and cultural traditions, so you have to look beyond the ritual and display and not just accept that everything called Buddhism is what Buddha taught. You have to ask yourself if it fits the guidelines. A lot of Buddhists make Nibbana sound like some kind of heaven where the soul lives happily ever after. American Buddhism is going to look different than say, Tibetan Buddhism, which has a lot of the traditional Bon beliefs mixed in.
Q: When I read the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" I really got confused about the different states and everything the dead person goes through. Can you explain that?
A: The dying process and bardo states. I don't remember very much about that and don't understand a lot of the Tibetan things I read. There are other Mahayana stories, too about the dead person going before the court of Yama, the Lord of Hell, to have his whole life replayed before them to decide where he'll go next, but I think the idea is just about how we are 'heirs to our kamma'. I think that if there are intermediate states, whether they last 3 days or 7 weeks or that's just a way of saying it's outside of time as we know it, those could be considered as the next lives in a series, but I don't remember ever being dead. We're dying right now and on some level, all the stories are pointing to something that's happening now, I think.
