MindYourBuddha

I was asked to present to the Hoza after this Sunday's service so I thought I would prepare by blogging about this important subject. There is so much excellent literature available on this core Buddhist teaching I felt it would be unfair to summarize from the small collection works I own. Instead I present extracts from different Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources to try and frame the concepts in the Four Noble Truths which deal in depth with suffering. I like to think of the Four Noble Truths as the physics of suffering. The various authors texts are presented in a different font with credit to the specific work provided. Quotations from the Buddha are emphasized.

Steve Hagen ... Buddhism Is Not What You Think
If you visit a Buddhist temple in Japan, you'll likely encounter two gigantic, fierce, demonlike figure standing at either side of the entrance.  These are called the guardians of Truth, and their names are Paradox and Confusion.

To understand these truths you will need to unravel the paradox of who you are and clear away the confusion of the reality you are experiencing.

The Four Noble Truths are:

The First Noble Truth is that life includes pain and suffering. The term Dukkha has multiple meanings. It is true that the Pali word dukkha (or Sanskrit Duhkha) in ordinary usage means 'suffering', 'pain', 'sorrow' or 'misery' ... but additionally means 'imperfection', 'impermanence', 'emptiness', 'insubstantially'. It is difficult therefore to find one word to embrace the whole conception of the term dukkha as the First Nobel Truth.

The conception of dukkha may be viewed from three aspects:

1. As ordinary suffering, such as

   - Birth, old age, sickness and death

   - Association with unpleasant persons and conditions

   - Not getting what one desires, grief, sorrow, distress

   - All forms of physical and mental suffering

2. As produced by change

- Good times and happy feelings fade away producing unhappiness, longing, pain and suffering

3. As conditioned states

   - Through the falseness of the Ego (the Five Aggregates).  This requires some analytical explanation of what we consider as a 'being', as an 'individual', or as 'I'.

What we call a 'being', or an 'individual', or as 'I', according to Buddhist philosophy, is only a combination of every-changing physical and mental forces or energies, which may be divided into five groups or aggregates. The Buddha says:

The Five Aggregates

1. The Aggregate of Matter

   - Includes the Four Great Elements (solidity, fluidity, heat and motion)

   - Includes the Derivatives of the Four Great Elements (our five sense organs, eye, ear, nose, tongue, and skin, and what is considered the sixth organ, the mind)

2. The Aggregate of Sensation

   - All our physical sensations, pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, experienced through the five sense organs and mental sensations by thinking.

3. The Aggregate of Perceptions

   - Like sensations, it is perceptions that recognize objects whether physical or mental through contact of the six sense organs in the external world.

4. The Aggregate of Mental Formations

   - Includes all volitional activities both good, bad and neutral. What is generally known as karma comes under this group. The Buddha says that sensations and perceptions are not volitional actions and do not produce karmic effects. It is only volitional action - such as attention, confidence, concentration, wisdom, energy, desire, repugnance or hate, ignorance, conceit, idea of self, etc. - that produce karmic effects.

5. The Aggregate of Consciousness

A reaction or response which one has to the six faculties. Consciousness has both a basis and a object. For example, in visual consciousness the eye is the basis and the form being viewed is the object. Consciousness does not recognize the object, its only and awareness of the presence of object. When the eye comes in contact with a color, say blue, there is no recognition of color. It is perception that recognizes the color is blue.

Every experience which we perceive with our senses and our rational mind exists for us according to the projection we have of it by comparing it to some sort of scale or system of values.  It's not the thing in its entirety that we perceive; it's only what we mentally make of it. ... We naturally let our senses dictate to us what reality is since those are the only tools we have to sample the environment.

In Buddhist philosophy there is no permanent, unchanging spirit which can be considered 'Self', or 'Soul', or 'Ego', as opposed to matter, and that consciousness should not be taken as 'spirit' in opposition to matter. The Buddha declared in unequivocal terms that consciousness depends on matter, sensation, perception and mental formations, and that it cannot exist independently of them.

What we call a 'being', or an 'individual' or 'I', is only a convenient name or label given to the combination of the Five Aggregates. They are all impermanent, all constantly changing.

The Five Aggregates of Attachment are dukkha. They are not the same for two consecutive moments. They are in a flux of momentary arising and disappearing. One thing disappears, conditioning the appearance of the next in a series of cause and effect. There is no unchanging substance in them. There is nothing behind them that can be called Self (Atman), individuality, or anything that can in reality be called 'I'. These Five Aggregates which we popularly call a 'being', are dukkha itself. There is no other 'being' or 'I', standing behind these Five Aggregates, who experience dukkha.

      As Buddhaghosa (5th century Buddha scholar) says:

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement - life is not moving, it 'is' movement. There is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found. The Buddhist view is diametrically opposed to the fundamental element of Western philosophy; "Cogito ergo sum" - I think therefore I am.

The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at one" and therefore at peace. At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested - at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!

Its extremely important to to understand the Noble Truth of Dukkha clearly, because, as the Buddha says,