Buddhism Basics

Each of us has experienced loss and confusion, and anger and remorse. We pine away for things no longer within our grasp, strive for achievement or objects of delight, constantly searching for things that are going to make us happy. We avoid anything that may bring us unpleasantness, and we become paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, continually blaming others for our unhappiness.

The Buddhist views says we cause our own misery, our own upset, and we can cause our own happiness. To be happy, to end our own suffering, we have to stop looking outside ourselves, stop blaming others for our discomfort or misery, and we must stop looking to others to provide our happiness. Happiness comes from within; it comes from clearing away the false projections of our own minds, and the many delusions that obstruct our view of life. We are the creators of our own suffering, and we can be the creators of our own happiness.

Looking into our own minds is not an easy task, and even harder is clearing out the muck that prevents us from seeing reality as it is. Each of us looks at the world through our own perception, which has been distorted through the experience of pain, fear, ego and self-rightousness. Dropping our massive sense of self is not easy. Taking on responsibility for all of our feelings can seem overwhelming, yet doing just that is what empowers us to create change within ourselves, our own minds, and we can begin seeing and being.

Buddhist Toolkit

How can we clean the closets of our minds, end our own suffering, and create happiness for ourselves? The two main tools of Buddhism are meditation and compassion. Meditation teaches us to look within our minds, learn to still the constant churning and turmoil of thoughts, and to become focused enough to delve deeply into important topics and various levels of consciousness. Compassion, on the other hand, teaches us to look outward in new ways. Through compassion we look outward not to seek or blame, but instead to put others first, to reach out to that we all share, our very humanity. In this way, we end the me, me isolation loop, and connect more deeply with others.

Meditation

The practice of meditation trains us to look inward instead of outward. We learn to see how we've developed habitual responses over the years, how attached we've been to our thoughts and emotions, deeming them concrete reality, even though we sometimes change our minds. Meditation is a tool to begin detaching from our powerful attachments, our negative habits, and to instead see with greater awareness and neutrality. We explore the concept of me, myself, and I, where it comes from, how it's evolved, how cemented we are to our ideas of ourselves. Do we have to stick with the stagnant definition of ourselves, or can we recreate ourselves, moment by moment as needed? Can we be present, in the moment, or are we constantly finding ourselves thinking about the past, worrying about the future, and blindly ignoring now, the present? Can we sit, be in the present, and focus only on our breath? Can we still the mind, then sharply focus it on a topic and stay on that topic without thoughts and emotions leading us astray?

Buddhist meditation consists of two parts for most traditions: Samatha, or single point meditation, and Vipassana, or insight meditation. Some Buddhist traditions focus more on one type of meditation, while others employ both regularly and within each meditation session.

The purpose of samatha meditation is to still the mind by focusing on a single object, very often the breath. As thoughts arise, simply let them go, resist following or judging them, and return to the breath. Feelings also arise during this practice. Sometimes boredom or sleepiness arises, or restlessness and anxiety. These can also become the object of focus, or you can watch them, then let them go. Samatha meditation is not easy for those of us who have busy minds, either creative, analytical, or both. In the beginning, it's difficult to let go of thoughts such as, I'm wasting time just sitting here! Over time that feeling appears less frequently. We can watch as our ego tries to protect the old notion of self, and as openness moves into little by little.

Once the mind is settled and concentration is developed, then vipassana meditation provides the means for deep inner exploration. Questions are generally chosen beforehand as the object of study, such as what and where is the self, who is I, where do thoughts come from, in what ways are we attached to our thoughts? Or a meditator might choose instead to delve deeply in topics instead, such as death and impermanence, anger and how it arises, how precious this human life is, and so forth. The Mahayana tradition has sets of specific meditations that focus on the lamrim, stages of the path to enlightenment. The Zen tradition frequently meditates on Koans, or questions that can't be answered logically. All of these meditations are designed to teach us to look inward, to see in new, open ways, to explore what we thought we knew, and instead discover where we are going.

There is much more to the topics of meditation, and there are many good books and web sites about it.

Compassion

The Buddhist view considers compassion a tool because it reminds us of our connection to others, all living beings, animals and people. Our limited I view, on the contrary, separates us from others and creates feelings of loneliness and grief, longing and heartache. The anticodote to this suffering we create within ourselves is to develop compassion for others, to stop always viewing the world from our own limited, clouded viewpoint. We cannot be loved until we can love others. Instead of looking for love, see how you can show love and be compassionate to others.

This compassionate view is not easy, especially for those of us in the west who are so used to thinking in terms of I. We don't want others getting in the way of what we want to accomplish, our success, our right to have, our need for space and privacy, our

"An eye for an eye just makes the world go blind." -- Ghandi

reputations we've built, and so forth. We are afraid that by feeling compassion towards others that we will be made vulnerable, lose what have worked hard to gain. But as we dig deep into this view, we see how limiting and false all of that is, how it separates us from the very love we crave. It's ironic that the people who lack compassion the most are themselves the most grasping, always reaching, trying to seek approval, looking to others for happiness and sense of self, while they clutch tightly to their false sense of who they think they are.

But how can we develop compassion? It's not easy, but meditation is one tool that helps. By exploring and tearing apart our old modes of thinking, we start to see that every living being wants to be happy and does not want to suffer. We train ourselves to start looking at the commonalities instead of the differences. We have to break down our stereotypes, the ignorant views we've developed without realizing it, without thought. We have to learn to tear apart labels and see them for what they are, see how we ourselves have attached labels everywhere.

The Buddhist view is one without a judgmental god. We take responsibility for all our actions and thoughts, or we ourselves suffer the repercussions. In the physical world, matter is determined by cause and effect. Drop glass onto the floor and it may break or bounce, depending on conditions of surfaces, weight, etc. In the mental realm, karma works much the same way as cause and effect in the physical world. Every negative action or thought causes suffering of a like kind. Every positive thought or action causes positive occurrences of a like kind.

The Buddhist view adds to this the concept of rebirth. Karma drives rebirth, so to speak, so if you die in fear and with grasping, and your karma has the momentum of all kinds of negative energy, you may end up being reborn a rat or snail. Or maybe you're born human again, but karma has you attracted to negative conditions, where you may be born into poverty or filthy conditions.

We can and do experience our karma in this life too though. You can experience meeting generous people when you make a point to be generous. Walk around feeling angry, with a dark cloud over your head, and it's likely people will react negatively to you, bad things may always seem to happen to you, even when you're doing good things.

To keep our karma pure, we have to keep our thoughts, actions, and behavior pure. Acting through compassion, produces virtuous karma, and sometimes can lessen the impact of negative karma.

Buddhism teaches the Eightfold path, which helps Buddhist students learn better behaviors, and meditation and compassion help each person to work on their minds.

In the End There Is Enlightenment

Where this ends is in a way where it began, with Shakyamuni Buddha. Buddhism is based on Shakyamuni's teachings from 2,500 years ago, in which he discovered the path to enlightenment. Buddha means Awakened, and when a person reaches Buddhahood, they are fully awake, free of delusions, of all causes of suffering, filled with compassion for all living beings. So it is to this enlightened, or awake, state that we strive, little by little, moment by moment.

To discover resources on learning more about Buddhism, see Sites & Resources