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

by Noah Rasheta

Buddhist teachings can give us a new perspective. Our stories sometimes seem to comfort us because they give us a sense of certainty, even when they’re not true. But there is great freedom in releasing ourselves from the stories that cloud our perceptions and starting to feel okay with not always understanding the situation we’re in. This is why Buddhism is often referred to as the Path of Liberation. Liberation is the moment you don’t react to being cut off in traffic—because you don’t know what actually happened, so there’s nothing to react to. Liberation is experiencing reality as it is.

Buddha is a word that means “awakened one” or “a person who is awake” in both Sanskrit and Pali.

Buddhism teaches that there’s reality as it is, and then there’s reality as we humans perceive or understand it.

After his enlightenment, the Buddha dedicated the rest of his life to teaching others how to realize enlightenment for themselves.

The Buddha was a teacher, not a god. When you see Buddhists bowing to statues or images of the Buddha, they’re not necessarily worshipping him but rather making a physical expression of their humble intent to follow the Buddha’s teachings in order to overcome an ego-centered life.

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

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.

The Buddha said that the greatest of all teachings is the teaching of impermanence.

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? It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with the feeling of desire; it’s that we can become blinded by it, especially when we don’t have a thorough understanding of the intent or causes behind why we feel what we feel. Simply following our desires without taking time to understand them can lead to destructive behavior and mental confusion, which is why greed is considered a poison.

Clinging to hatred is simply an unwise action because it creates unnecessary suffering for ourselves and others. As a mental state, hatred affects the emotional well-being of the person doing the hating more than the person being hated. So it’s not wrong to feel hatred; in fact, it’s natural to feel this emotion from time to time. It is, however, wise to try to understand why we feel it. What other emotions might be hidden underneath the hatred? Are feelings of sadness, loneliness, or vulnerability in some way causing the emotion of hatred to arise? Rather than evading the painful truth of how we feel, Buddhism encourages us to embrace the reality of our feelings, including any feelings of hatred we might be experiencing. We strive to understand the causes and conditions that allow the feeling of hatred to arise, turning inward for understanding rather than acting on destructive impulses.

There’s a story about a monastery in Thailand where the resident monks covered a golden statue of the Buddha in clay to hide its value from an invading army. Those monks were killed during the invasion. Over the course of many years, a new group of monks moved in, and the golden Buddha remained hidden under a layer of clay. One day, the new monks decided it was time to relocate the old clay statue of the Buddha, and in the process of moving it, a piece of clay broke off to reveal the brilliant golden Buddha underneath. This story symbolizes how Buddhists view the natural state of awareness, kindness, and compassion in us all. To see this inherent nature in ourselves and others, we have to peel away the clay—all the ideas, opinions, and beliefs that are preventing us from seeing how things really are.

We live in a world full of conceptual truths, but it’s easy to forget that. Our incredibly complex social, political, financial, and religious systems all depend on shared, agreed-upon beliefs. We wouldn’t be able to trade paper money for goods, like bread and milk, unless we collectively believed that a piece of paper or metal had real value. But the value of a five-dollar bill is not true in the same way the existence of snow is true.

This Buddhist understanding of truth is encapsulated in the parable of the six blind men who stand around an elephant and begin to describe it on the basis of what they can feel by touch. One feels the tail and thinks he’s touching a rope, while another feels the trunk and concludes it’s a snake. The other men describe what they touch as a tree trunk (the elephant’s leg), a fan (its ear), a wall (its side), and a spear (its tusk). Each man is certain that his experience of the elephant is the accurate one, failing to understand that the other descriptions are also accurate—and that all the descriptions are inaccurate as well, in that they each take into account only one part of the elephant. Buddhism teaches that we all see the truth from a unique perspective and that, like the blind men, we can’t see all perspectives.

There are also, however, some absolute or universal truths taught in Buddhism, and these are not bound by space and time or constructed by collective agreement. The Buddha taught that there are three universal characteristics of life, also known as the three marks of existence: dukkha (suffering), anicca (impermanence), and anattā (nonself). These three concepts form the core of what could be considered the truth in Buddhism.

You’ll see very quickly how all things are dependent on causes and conditions, the parts that allow a thing to be what it is. When we understand this, we experience a major shift in how we see the world. We start to see ourselves as dependent on everything that makes us who we are. We are the sum total of all our parts (and we ourselves are parts of families, communities, societies). 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.

Think about attachment in the context of the labels we apply to ourselves: our job titles, belief systems, political views, opinions, and so on. We attach to these concepts and identify with them to the point that we feel tremendous suffering when they’re attacked or we lose them. 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.

So rather than focusing on life after death, we can instead choose to focus on life before death—the life we’re living now. Rather than speculating about what happens when we die, we can anchor ourselves in the present moment.

The Buddhist understanding of karma is actually quite different. Karma is simply the law of cause and effect. There is no justice, intelligence, or moral system behind it, no punishment or reward. It’s less “If I do something good, I will get something good” and more “If I do something, something will happen.” Karma is not mysterious or hidden. It’s the action that’s taken, not the result.

When you begin to understand the nature of reality, that all things are interdependent and connected, you can start to see karma working all around you. For example, let’s say someone gets into an argument with her coworker. Later, she drives home and, still upset, aggressively tailgates another car. The person being tailgated is now also upset, and when he arrives home to find his kids have spilled something on the floor, he yells at them. You can see how one act affects another act; this is karma in action. At any given moment, we’re all acting upon the karma that has been set in motion by others.

There’s a story about a student who went to visit a famous Zen master, who quietly served tea as the student talked on and on about everything he knew about Zen. The master poured the student’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. As the student watched the cup overflow, he blurted out, “It’s full! No more will go in!” “This is you,” the master replied. “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

When I interviewed him on my podcast, Buddhist scholar and author Stephen Batchelor discussed the Four Noble Truths as tasks with an easy-to-remember acronym: ELSA. E - Embrace the instance of suffering. L - Let go of the reactive pattern. S - See the stopping of the reactivity. A - Act skillfully.

The nature of reality is that difficulties will arise, and we’ll experience suffering. We can begin to embrace that fact by recognizing that suffering in general is not personal. It’s simply part of the experience of existence. And we will experience suffering, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. Whether we search for a magic formula to remove it, chase after money to buy it off, or seek fame to drown it out; no matter if we pray, meditate, or perform rituals to shield ourselves from it; suffering, in some form, will find us. It is the central problem of human existence.

“Morality is doing what’s right regardless of what you’re told. Obedience is doing what you’re told regardless of what’s right.”

Should a person do good, let him do it again and again. Let him find pleasure therein, for blissful is the accumulation of good.

One of my favorite mantras to recite is “May I be happy, may I be at peace, and may I be free from suffering.” Then I extend that thought out to others—friends, family, even strangers. “May you be happy, may you be at peace, and may you be free from suffering.”