No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

by Noah Rasheta

It became clear that trying to eliminate suffering was actually causing me more suffering.

In our day-to-day lives, we’re continually making meaning and creating stories about everything that happens. A thought arises, we create a story about it, the story evokes an emotion, we create another story about that, and on and on until, before we know it, we’re hardly paying attention to our lived reality at all, trapped in a habitual reactivity to our own thoughts.

Buddhism teaches that there’s reality as it is, and then there’s reality as we humans perceive or understand it. Our perception of reality is influenced by how our minds are conditioned; in other words, our ideas, cultural beliefs, concepts, and opinions all directly affect how we see reality.

Should you find a wise critic to point out your faults, follow him as you would a guide to hidden treasure.

The Buddha taught that we are essentially prisoners of our own minds, bound by our beliefs, perceptions, and ideas. We see an inaccurate version of reality—a version, not coincidentally, that causes us unnecessary suffering.

How many realities are we blind to simply because we already hold an idea, concept, or belief that prevents us from seeing reality as it is?

Buddhist teachings are not something you’re meant to believe; they’re something you do—you put them into practice.

The Buddhist conception of enlightenment isn’t intellectual. It’s experiential.

To be enlightened is to be liberated from our habitual reactivity, freed from our perceptions and ideas in order to see reality as it is without wanting it to be different.

Buddhism teaches that enlightenment is our true nature. It’s not something we can become, because it’s something we already are. We just have to realize it.

I think of enlightenment as the experience and understanding of reality just as it is, without the influence of the concepts, ideas, and beliefs that so often muddy our perception of it. Awakening, on the other hand, is the process by which this new way of seeing life begins to unfold. I see awakening as a path with several stages and levels, while the final, radical shift in perspective is the moment of enlightenment.

This idea is conveyed by a famous koan (a paradoxical statement that Zen Buddhists meditate on) that says you can enter this state of awakening only through a gateless gate. This is a seemingly simple but rather profound teaching: As long as you think there is a gate, you will not be able to enter the awakened state. You enter it by realizing there is no gate; you’ve been in that awakened state all along. You arrive there by realizing there is no “there” there. The only thing keeping you from seeing this is the mistaken belief that you were ever outside a gate in the first place.

From the Buddhist perspective, good and evil are not inherent forces out in the universe; instead, they’re internal states of mind. Buddhism teaches us to look inward. There we can find the source of all the good things we say, think, and do, and likewise discover that we ourselves—our own minds—are the source of any evil. This understanding gives us a greater sense of responsibility over our own thoughts, words, and actions.

A skillful way of dealing with the poison of greed is to try to understand it. We start that process by looking at the things we desire and asking ourselves, “Why?” Why do I feel such a strong desire to have this thing or that person? Why do I feel the need to achieve this or that?

As a mental state, hatred affects the emotional well-being of the person doing the hating more than the person being hated.

Buddhism teaches that there are truths that are true whether we believe them or not, and then there are truths that are true simply because we believe they are true.

Buddhism teaches that we all see the truth from a unique perspective and that, like the blind men, we can’t see all perspectives. We’re bound by space and time to one unique view in the here and now.

The nature of reality is that all things are constantly changing, and therefore all things are impermanent.

At this very instant, you are physically undergoing change as the cells in your body die and regenerate. You are not the same exact person from moment to moment. Instead of seeing ourselves as fixed, semipermanent entities, we can start to see ourselves as we truly are: collections of impermanent, momentary experiences.

It just means that the suffering of loss will go more smoothly when we learn to see things as they really are: that loss is a natural part of the course of life, rather than something we need to fight against. When we understand that all things are impermanent, we can begin to find meaning and joy in every moment as it passes.

This teaching doesn’t imply that you don’t exist; rather, it means that you’re not what you think you are because there is no inherent essence in anything. In other words, things are because of, and in relation to, other things, but things do not exist by themselves as permanent or separate entities. Everything is interdependent.

We’re always making adjustments as we go, so there’s no fixed, permanent version of us, only the continually changing combination of causes and conditions.

The Buddhist teaching of nonself says that there is no permanent or fixed you—there’s only a complex web of inseparable, impermanent causes and effects.

Ask yourself, “Which me is the real me?” This question helps me remember that there is no permanent me. There is only the momentary me that is continually changing and being changed by everything around me. The me of now is not the me of yesterday or five years ago or five years from now. This is what Buddhism teaches with regard to nonself.

Buddhism teaches that it’s our ignorant view of a separate self that causes us to cling to “other” things: people, relationships, material objects. In other words, attachment is what we experience when we’re living inside the illusion of a permanent, separate self. Nonattachment occurs when we have realized the truth of nonself.

Our tendency is to think that we must be either attached strongly to an idea or detached from that idea entirely. Buddhism proposes a different option: We can be non-attached to our ideas. Without dropping our labels and concepts completely, we loosen the death grip we have on them. When someone attacks a belief or opinion we hold, we can see that they’re attacking the idea, not us directly. When we’re nonattached to our ideas, they no longer own us—we own them.

The Buddhist understanding of emptiness is that all things are devoid of meaning until we assign meaning to them. Reality is like a blank canvas, bare until the painter comes along and creates something on that emptiness.

From the Buddhist perspective, all things are like this: empty of inherent meaning. That’s not to say they’re meaningless. It’s just that the meaning comes from us, the givers of meaning, not from the things themselves. There’s what is, and then there’s the story we create about it.

This is emptiness. It’s the understanding that as life unfolds, it doesn’t mean anything. It is neither positive nor negative. All things simply are as they are.

Life is a lot like music, and our lives are like songs. While songs all have a starting note and an ending note, even when a song ends, music itself goes on, regardless of what song is playing. And the beauty of each song is found in the continual changing of the notes, including the eventual final note that marks the end of the song.

Death represents the end of what is familiar, and we’re often uncomfortable with or scared of the unknown music that’s beyond the final note in the song of our own lives. But in reality, there’s no need to fear death, because while it may be the end of the song, it’s not the end of music.

An understanding of impermanence and interdependence can ease the fear of death by reminding us that birth wasn’t the start and death won’t be the end. Every beginning has an end, and every end gives birth to a new beginning...

We’re changing form every day, experiencing rebirth even from one moment to the next. The you that’s reading this page is literally not the same you who will be reading the last page of the book. If there is no permanent you, what part of you could transcend death to become reincarnated?

What was, for a time, a cloud is transformed into something new. We don’t say the cloud dies when it changes form into raindrops. Are we really any different from the cloud? When we die, our bodies change form as they decompose and become part of nature, but they never cease to exist. Buddhists believe that humans, like everything else in nature, are part of a continual cycle of change.

Buddhism teaches that thinking about death is a wise way to live. We don’t need to spend our lives meditating in a cave to prepare for death, and we don’t have to wait for the painful experience of losing someone we love (or even getting a terminal diagnosis ourselves) to shock us into living. We can begin here and now to make life meaningful by understanding that meaning isn’t out there waiting to be found—it’s in you, waiting to be created.

Ask yourself, “What if I knew today was going to be my last day to live? How would that change my interactions with everyone I talk to today?” Then flip the question: “What if I knew that the person I’m talking to had only one more day to live? Would that change how I’m interacting with that person?”

Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes.

At any given moment, we’re all acting upon the karma that has been set in motion by others. The central teaching of karma is that we can pause and break the cycle of reactivity. In that mindful pause, we have the freedom to choose a more skillful action to contribute to the never-ending web of causes and effects going on all around us.

Agnosticism, the stance that whether or not there’s a God is ultimately unknowable, can play an important role on the path of awakening. In Buddhism, not knowing is an ideal mental state, because that’s when we’re open to learning and experiencing.

while most other major religions focus on the answers to big existential questions (Who am I? Why am I here? What happens to me when I die? Is there a God or creative force behind everything?), Buddhism focuses on the questions themselves. It approaches the existential dilemmas of life by turning the question around and asking, “Why do I want to know the answer to these questions?” or “Who is the ‘I’ who wants to know who I am?”

Additionally, while some religions focus on external sources of goodness and evil, like God and the devil, Buddhism holds that good and evil are found within and that the mind is the source of it all.

We live life moment by moment, with uncertainty our only certainty because the present moment is all we’ll ever have. This includes happy moments, sad moments, moments when we feel anger or compassion. They’re all just moments, completely unique and precious.

What we learn from the Buddha about embracing suffering is that life is going to be easier for us when we truly accept that suffering is a part of life for everyone; there’s no way around it.

Try this: The next time you experience suffering or distress, instead of saying, “Life’s not fair” or, “Why is this happening to me?” tell yourself, “I was aware that this could happen. I’m not alone. Others are also experiencing this same thing.”

Once you know that suffering is an unavoidable part of the experience, you can embrace the fact that it will happen at some point, worry less about it, and be prepared to recover more quickly when it comes.

From the Buddhist perspective, it’s not that we’re accepting the bad things that happen; we’re just accepting that bad things happen. Once I accept the reality of a situation, I can ask, “Now what am I going to do about it?” Acceptance is about working with reality, not against it.

The main cause of our suffering is the way we habitually react to life as it unfolds: telling ourselves stories that ascribe meaning to events, wondering why painful things happen to us, wishing things were different, and so on.

Reactivity becomes a vicious cycle. The more we dwell on our sense of suffering, the more we reinforce the very cause of it: wanting life to be other than it is. The more intense the suffering, the more we want to be rid of it. But the more we want to be rid of it, the more intense the suffering will be.

As mentioned before, we suffer when we crave for life to be other than it is. The third noble truth, nirodha, helps us understand that in the cessation of suffering, it’s not suffering that ceases, but rather our craving not to suffer.

Right, or wise, understanding starts by simply recognizing that what we’re seeing might not actually be what it appears to be.