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We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. —Marcel Proust PREFACE I HAVE TRIED to write a book on Buddhism in ordinary English that avoids the use of foreign
Anguish, he says, is to be understood, its origins to be let go of, its cessation to be realized, and the path to be cultivated.
He awoke to a set of interrelated truths rooted in the immediacy of experience here and now.
AN UNAWAKENED EXISTENCE, in which we drift unaware on a surge of habitual impulses, is both ignoble and undignified. Instead of a natural and noncoercive authority, we
Likewise, the Buddha acknowledged the existential condition of anguish. On examination he found its origins to lie in self-centered craving. He realized that this could cease, and prescribed the cultivation of a path of life embracing all aspects of human experience as an effective treatment.
The four ennobling truths are not propositions to believe; they are challenges to act.
If we try to avoid a powerful wave looming above us on the beach, it will send us crashing into the sand and surf.
But if we face it head-on and dive right into it, we discover only water.
To understand a worry is to know it calmly and clearly for what it is: transient, contingent, and ...
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Letting go of a craving is not rejecting it but allowing it to be itself: a contingent state of mind that once arisen will pass away.
This is emptiness: not a cosmic vacuum but the unborn, undying, infinitely creative dimension of life. It is known as the “womb of awakening”; it
is the clearing in the still center of becoming, the
We have set foot in the territory for which these words are just a map.
THE ACTIONS THAT accompany the four truths describe the trajectory of dharma practice: understanding anguish leads to letting go of craving, which leads to realizing its cessation, which leads to cultivating the path. These are not four separate activities but four phases within the process of awakening itself. Understanding matures into letting go; letting go culminates in realization; realization impels cultivation.
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They too understood anguish, let go of craving, realized cessation, and embarked on the cultivation of the path. They too achieved freedom of heart and mind from the compulsions of craving.
Awakening is indeed close by—and supreme effort is required to realize it.
Awakening is indeed far away—and readily accessible.
First and foremost the Buddha taught a method (“dharma practice”) rather than another “-ism.” The dharma is not something to believe in but something to do. The Buddha did not reveal an esoteric set of facts about reality, which we can choose to believe in or not.
The dharma is not something to believe in but something to do.
The Buddha did not reveal an esoteric set of facts about reality, which we can choose to believe in or not. He challenged people to understand the nature of anguish, let go of its origins, realize its cessation, and bring into being a way of life. The Buddha followed his reason as far as it would take him and did not pretend that any conclusion was certai...
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The dharma is not a belief by which you will be miraculously saved. It is a method to be investigated and tried out.
It confronts the enormity of having been born instead of reaching for the consolation of a belief.
Who “I am” appears coherent only because of the monologue we keep repeating, editing, censoring, and embellishing in our heads.
You relax and discover a poignant tranquility. This is a centered stillness from which you can engage attentively, caringly, with the world.
Anguish emerges from craving for life to be other than it is.
It is the symptom of flight from birth and death, from the pulse of the present.
Craving can vanish in awakening to the absurdity of the assumptions that underlie it.
It forces me to seek again the impulse that moves me from the depths, and to turn aside from the shallows of habitual patterns.
It might be that all I can trust in the end is my integrity to keep asking such questions as: Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do? And then to act on them.
A purpose may be no more than a set of images and words, but we can still be totally committed to it. Such resolve entails aspiration, appreciation, and conviction: I aspire to awaken, I appreciate its value,
and I am convinced it is possible.
Dharma practice is founded on resolve. This is not an emotional conversion, a devastating realization of the error of our ways, a desperate urge to be good, but an ongoing, heartfelt reflection on priorities, values, and purpose. We need to keep taking stock of our life in an unsentimental, uncompromising way.
Awakening is the purpose that enfolds all purposes. Whatever we do is meaningful to the extent that it leads to awakening, meaningless to the extent that it leads away from it.
The process of awakening is like walking on a footpath. When we find such a path after hours of struggling through undergrowth, we know at last that we are heading somewhere. Moreover, we suddenly find that we can move freely without obstruction. We settle into a rhythmic and easy pace. At the same time we are reconnected to others: men, women, and animals who have walked here before us. The path is maintained as a path only because of the tread of feet. Just as others have created this path for us, so by walking on it we maintain it for those who will come after us. What counts is not so much
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Self-confidence is not a form of arrogance. It is trust in our capacity to awaken. It is both the courage to face whatever life throws at us without losing equanimity, and the humility to treat every situation we encounter as one from which we can learn.
ETHICAL INTEGRITY REQUIRES both the intelligence to understand the present situation as the fruition of former choices, and the courage to engage with it as the arena for the creation of what is to come.
Not only do we forget to remember, we forget that we live in a body with senses and feelings and thoughts and emotions and ideas.
To stop and pay attention to what is happening in the moment is one way of snapping out of such fixations. It is also a reasonable definition of meditation. WHILE MEDITATION MAY be cultivated as a formal practice once or twice a day for half an hour or so, the aim is to bring a fresh awareness into everything we do.
Awareness is a process of deepening self-acceptance. It is neither a cold, surgical examination of life nor a means of becoming perfect.
Focused awareness is difficult not because we are inept at some spiritual technology but because it threatens our sense of who we are.
The apparently unthreatening act of settling the mind on the breath and observing what is occurring in the body and mind exposes a contradiction between the sort of person we wish to be and the kind of person we are. Restlessness and lethargy are ways of evading the discomfort of this contradiction.
Once the breath has settled, we can expand awareness once more to bodily sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, until the mind is calm and clear enough to detect the very first hint of a disturbing impulse.
To meditate is to probe with intense sensitivity each glimmer of color, each cadence of sound, each touch of another’s hand, each fumbling word that tries to utter what cannnot be said.
By focusing on each detail of experience with the same scrutiny, awareness discloses how I too am part of this, that there is nothing within it that I can rely on, nothing I can hold on to as “me” or “mine.” I OPEN THE refrigerator.
I have a strange sense of inhabiting a reality in which I do not quite seem to fit. I suspect that I keep getting tangled up in things not because I fail to see them but because I imagine myself to be configured other than I am. I think of myself as a round peg trying to fit into a round hole, while unaware that I have become a square peg.
The closer you look, the more you might discover how every candidate for self dissolves into something else. Instead of a fixed nugget of “me,” you find yourself experiencing a medley of sensations, moods, perceptions, and intentions, working together like the crew of a boat, steered by the skipper of attention.
Just as rainfall runs along the gutters and drains designed to catch it, so my interaction with the world tends to follow the most familiar and least resistant course.
But these seemingly irresistible feelings, perceptions, and impulses are not the only options. For in the immediacy of that experience lies the freedom to see more clearly. I can stop, pay attention to the breath, feel my beating heart, and remember to be aware. Then I may respond with care and intelligence to the snake’s presence. Or realize it is just a coil of hose.
I can stop, pay attention to the breath, feel my beating heart, and remember to be aware. Then I may respond with care and intelligence to the snake’s presence. Or realize it is just a coil of hose.
Yet underpinning both attraction and aversion is craving: the childish and utopian thirst for a situation in which I finally possess everything I desire and have repelled everything I dislike. Deep down I insist that a permanent,
