Just to say…

So, last week we talked about cling­ing, and how appeal­ing it is to stay stuck. To recap, we looked at the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, which I pre­fer to call the

4 Descrip­tors of the Way it Is.

The 4 Descrip­tors, hav­ing a party…

One of my online friends, Peter Hoban, com­mented about the blog post, and his com­ment reminded me to men­tion that many of the Bud­dhist texts were trans­lated in the late 1800s. “Life is Suf­fer­ing,” for exam­ple, is the first of the 4 Descrip­tors, and is a trans­la­tion that is apro­pos of the 1800s. The actual Pali word that is trans­lated as suf­fer­ing, dukkha, is really about the unsat­is­fac­tory nature of life. Dukkha is com­monly used to describe a range of feel­ing, from unease to suffering.

Peter’s point is accu­rate. Suf­fer­ing was a big deal to the­olo­gians and philoso­phers 100 year or more ago. For us, not so much.

It’s the same with “Noble Truths.” I cer­tainly don’t use the word “noble” in my daily speech. A bet­ter trans­la­tion is “impor­tant” or “pre­em­i­nent.” And “truth” does not cap­ture the essence of the Pali word sacca, which really means, “to be.” It refers to some­thing that is “right there, obvious.”

Thus, my shift­ing to 4 Descrip­tors of the Way it Is. Once you see them, they are “right there,” and oh so obvious.

For the next three arti­cles, let’s look at the 4^th descrip­tor, what is called the 8-fold Path.

Each of the 8 paths is typ­i­cally pref­aced with “Right,” as in Right View, Right Voca­tion, etc. For pur­poses of our dis­cus­sion, I’ll fol­low Glenn Wal­lis (I’m using his ideas for this entire series, as con­veyed in the book, Basic Teach­ings of the Bud­dha.) He notes the lan­guage trans­la­tion issue, and sug­gests that “Right” has the con­tem­po­rary mean­ing of “cor­rect,” as in right and wrong. He pro­poses using the word “sound,” as in “that which leads to the result we seek.” I agree. “Sound” it is!

The 8 can be put into three groups:

1. Under­stand­ing – Sound View, Sound Inclination
2. Con­duct – Sound Speech, Sound Action, Sound Liveli­hood, Sound Effort
3. Atten­tive­ness – Sound Aware­ness, Sound Concentration

A look at understanding

This is what this blog focuses on. Many times we’ve men­tioned how peo­ple oper­ate out of a skewed view of how life is, and who they are. This view is embed­ded into our sub-conscious minds through the nor­mal grow­ing up and learn­ing process—something I call the ego devel­op­ment project.

This project is absolutely necessary—it is through this project that we self-identify, sep­a­rate from “mother,” and develop a sense of “me / not me.” It, how­ever, is the basic, first step in a life­time of explo­ration – in a sense, it’s some­thing that pro­vides the con­ve­nience of a name, but very lit­tle insight into “the way it is.”

Most peo­ple, how­ever, stall right there, and spend the rest of their lives pro­tect­ing and defend­ing their ego iden­tity, to the detri­ment of find­ing true con­tent­ment and an ele­gant way of being. This is not their fault. It’s pretty hard to move past a socially accept­able place of being, to some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. In a sense, with­out exter­nal inter­ven­tion, or another point of ref­er­ence, all we can expect is to be just like, or a lit­tle worse than, the social stan­dard or norm.

Sound View

We could get into a long debate about what the alter­na­tive to the cul­tural norm is. Again, I’ve been writ­ing about this alter­na­tive view since 1999, on this blog, and in my e-zine, Into the Cen­tre, before the blog. I have con­sis­tently pointed to a view­point that is non dual, self-responsible, and one in which I see myself as “that which is engag­ing with life.” I have the choice to live in my head, lost in thought, find­ing myself dwelling in the past or the future. Or, I can come into moment-by-moment pres­ence, rec­og­niz­ing that, by choos­ing to view life in this way, I have no per­ma­nent reality.

I am as I am, and then I become that which is,
in the next moment.

From this place of expan­sive­ness, I can choose. I can engage, or I can step back. I can let go, or I can embrace. I can shut down, or open up. Noth­ing is right or wrong (the non dual part) and noth­ing is required, other than pres­ence. I begin to see my life as a series of com­ings and goings, with no per­ma­nence to attach to. Things are as they are, and then they are some­thing else.

This process of let­ting go (of non cling­ing) is
the key to the practice.

Our egos des­per­ately want to be impor­tant, and to ele­vate every­thing we touch to spe­cial, unique, and impor­tant. Our egos are exces­sively invested in keep­ing the sta­tus quo, and remain a part of our ongo­ing expe­ri­ence until we die.

So, part of a sound view is tied up in how I see my ego.

I choose, then, to make peace with my ego, with my thoughts, with my emo­tions and feel­ings, and with my body. In other words, I do not ignore, sub­li­mate, beat down, or dis­par­age any of the “stuff” that accom­pa­nies being alive in a body. Nor do I ele­vate any of the stuff to the level of demi-god. I am alive and hav­ing human experiences—and all of it is just as it should be.

The key to mov­ing past an old view to a new one is gen­tle accep­tance of what is, and who I am, while breath­ing into who I am becoming.

Sound Incli­na­tion

Incli­na­tion and view are paired. If our view is that the world is unfair, we will be inclined to be untrust­ing. If we view the world as scary, we will be inclined to be timid and reserved. If my view is that the movies I am run­ning in my head are both “right and true,” my incli­na­tion will be to look for evi­dence that matches the film, and also to try to con­vince or manip­u­late oth­ers into accept­ing my view.

And on and on.

If our view shifts to “the way it is, is the way it is,” our incli­na­tion will be to treat the world with open-eyed won­der and curios­ity. With this incli­na­tion, my eyes focus on what is before me to see. This includes thoughts which arise. I see “what is,” and I inter­act with it.

So, you might say that incli­na­tion is about inten­tion, and interaction.

In other words, it’s not enough to say that you have a new view. It’s not enough to com­mit to fol­low­ing that view.

What is required is that final step of actu­ally liv­ing in har­mony and coör­di­na­tion with the view you espouse.

Most have dif­fi­culty here. I say to clients, “I don’t care what you say you will do, or what you say you under­stand. The only thing that mat­ter is what you choose to do as you live your life.”

In the fol­low­ing sec­tions to this series, we’ll look at specifics for the “doing of our being.”