Ornoth

This spring, my Experienced Practitioners practice group finally closed the book on their interminable preoccupation with metta. Next fall we will take up a new topic which I’m particularly excited about: renunciation!

In our final sitting of the spring “semester”, Narayan gave us a new homework exercise to practice with over the summer break: “What would it mean to me to renounce suffering?” So I’ve been sitting with that question for a few weeks.

“Suffering” is an important but somewhat ambiguous term in Buddhism. The similie of the two arrows, which I’ve mentioned before, is key. If you stub your toe, that’s simple, objective, factual, unavoidable suffering. That’s the first arrow.

The second arrow is all the optional, unnecessary mental proliferation that we add on top of that: “I’m such a klutz! I’m always stubbing my toe. I hate my body. I’m a worthless person and unlovable and everybody hates me and I should just be taken out behind a barn and shot rather than continue to be a burden on the rest of the universe!”

This might surprise some of you, but all that additional “stuff” actually didn’t come from your big toe or from other people or from the rest of the universe; it came from your head, and you piled all that on yourself. The second arrow only ever comes from one place: your head.

Unfortunately, when a Buddhist says “suffering”, it’s usually not clear whether she means only the first arrow, only the second arrow, or both. That’s why, when I was doing my year of karuna (compassion) practice, I specifically differentiated between those basic life experiences that we can’t avoid (the first arrow, which I call “pain”), and the unnecessary mental suffering we manufacture ourselves (the second arrow, which I call “angst”).

Having said all that… My navelgazing with respect to renouncing suffering pivots on understanding what the questioner means by “suffering”: pain, angst, or both? Between these two poles, I see five different ways to respond, but only one real answer.

Let’s begin by working with “suffering” as unavoidable pain, with or without the optional angst.

The first (and by far most popular) way to respond to pain is avoidance. If this is how you renounce suffering, you believe that life would be grand if only you could avoid everything that might be unpleasant. Or at least minimize it.

How’s that project going for you? That’s nothing more than reactively hiding from the unavoidable, just like any other unenlightened, pleasure-seeking slob out there glued to his recliner with a fistful of Doritos and a Bud. I think you’ll find lots of examples who’ll tell you that’s not a particularly effective method of “renouncing suffering”.

The second way to escape suffering is to deny that it even exists, which is a surprisingly popular option, especially among people younger than age 50. “Death isn’t going to happen to me, nor will I ever get sick. I’ll never be in pain, or grow old and frail, and I’ll never owe the government any taxes, either. When I look back on my life, it’s been one long series of easy but emotionally fulfilling victories.” A Buddhist would call this delusion, one of the three poisons, rather than any effective method of renouncing suffering.

Both of these strategies fail because there is no way to get through life without experiencing some form of pain and discomfort and dissatisfaction. A really smart guy once expounded a theory along those lines; he called it the First Noble Truth.

There is, however, one obvious way to avoid pain. Most discomfort (like all pleasure) comes through our sense doors: the familiar five senses plus the mental sense that encompasses thought and emotion. So one could theoretically escape pain by permanently closing all one’s sense doors, so that one never again receives any unpleasant (or pleasant) sensory input. The only catch is that you can only reach that state if you’re clinically dead. That seems like a suboptimal strategy for renouncing suffering.

Okay, so we can’t eliminate all pain, because it’s unavoidable in this lifetime. What if we accept that fact and limit the definition of “suffering” to only refer to the second arrow: that additional angsty proliferation that we cause ourselves? That sounds like something we might actually be able to control. That would be a much more achievable goal, right?

The question hinges entirely on whether you believe that we can truly eliminate all forms of self-loathing, anger, and greed. Sad to say, but so far human history doesn’t provide many practical examples. How many people do you know who never get angry, upset, or down, even under the most unfair or difficult circumstances? Any?

That same smart dude (above) said that the suffering we create for ourselves is the product of just three things: our compulsive desires, our consuming dislikes, and our confusion and delusion about how the world (and particularly our hearts and minds) work. He called that Noble Truth Number Two (this guy was really into making lists).

If you’re like me, getting rid of desire, aversion, and delusion sounds like a gargantuan task. How do you get rid of something that appears just as inherent to life as breathing or digestion? The only obvious alternative is acceptance; learn to live with it. But giving in to our ignorant emotional impulses is totally contrary to the idea of renouncing suffering.

There’s only one option left. We’ve already agreed that we can’t get rid of the pain inherent in living, and our only hope is to eliminate the angst that we make for ourselves in how we respond to that pain.

We can’t do anything about the first arrow, but as for that second arrow… That smart dude had something to say about that. Yeah, it’s his big Third Noble Truth, which states that it is absolutely possible to uproot and remove the causes and manifestations of suffering. That is, after all, the base philosophy that the whole Buddhist project derives from.

So for a Buddhist, there’s no question: of course you can eliminate those self-destructive negative mind states! Your whole life is built around both the premise and the practice of renouncing suffering. There is no more vital task for a Buddhist than abandoning all that unnecessary, self-generated angst.

So when asked “What would it mean to me to renounce suffering?”, my answer is immediate, unambiguous, and obvious. It means having an active practice, as expounded in the Buddha’s Fourth Noble Truth: the eight-step path (another of his lists) that describes how it’s done in detail.

Whatever my teacher intended with this question, for me there’s no need for a lot of intense inquiry about it. As a Buddhist, I have already renounced suffering, and while I have hardly defeated it, I have a pretty good idea what renunciation of suffering looks like.

QED, done, case closed. Next question please.

I just finished reading Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth”.

I’m not a big fan of Eckie. Like Landmark Education, he cherry-picks chosen philosophical points from various and diverse lineages and presents them largely as his own thinking. But more irritating to me is his penchant for making bald, specious assertions without bothering to support them with any argument or evidence. So I’ve got issues with some of his stuff.

The problem is that when he takes the time to explain his thinking, some of it is actually very insightful. His writing tends to be very accessible to people, and he’s gathered a loyal following. And I’m glad if anyone can instill any kind of spiritual change in our modern society.

The new book has more insight and fewer unjustified sweeping conclusions. Taken largely from Buddhism, it delivers one of Buddhism’s more difficult concepts (non-self) in a pretty palatable way.

The book is largely a deconstruction of how the human ego works, and its causal linkage to our inability to find happiness. If that sounds like a tough slog, it can be, but Eckie’s good at taking such stuff and making it real for people, and he does a good job of it here.

Not that I think this is a book for the masses. He assumes a fair level of familiarity with philosophy, meditation, and self-knowledge. In my opinion, this is an awesome book for someone who is partway down the path; it’s definitely too esoteric for a complete neophyte.

I’m not going to summarize the book here, since it’s chock full of subtle but vital points. But here are just a few nuggets that struck home for me.

Here’s one that amused me, because Eckie came to the same conclusion I did about the Existentialists: they got it right, but then wrung their hands over it, rather than figuring out how to live an ethical life based on their beliefs. “Some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, such as Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce, recognized alienation as the universal dilemma of human existence, probably felt it deeply within themselves and so were able to express it brilliantly in their works. They don’t offer a solution. Their contribution is to show us a reflection of the human predicament so that we can see it more clearly.” Thankfully, at least one group took the next step in human ethical development.

Here’s Eckie’s summary definition of enlightenment. It boils down to pure truth, although it does kinda hide the important implications of achieving that state. “Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate.” As I said in this blog post, your life is not what you *think*.

Tolle’s definition of karma was somewhat interesting. According to him, karma consists of the deeply-ingrained patterns of thought that you developed in the past, combined with unconsciously acting those patterns out through your behavior. In short, karma’s kinda like Socrates’ “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He’s emphasizing the importance of evaluating your thought patterns and behavior in every moment.

“Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.” This is definitional; if you’re looking for happiness, that means you haven’t got it, and you never will get it until you stop looking and realize that it’s not something you find or aquire at some other point in time. Happiness is something you *are*, not something you find or acquire.

“When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do—and with it the quality of your life—increases dramatically. […] On the new earth, enjoyment will replace wanting as the motivating power behind people’s actions.” This is interesting, because it confirms that wanting is the source of suffering, which comes straight out of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths. And it also points to the powerful joy to be found in enjoying the present moment. These are truths I have long lived by and can attest to.

Here’s a related observation about ego. “For the ego to survive, it must make time—past and future—more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment.” We are preoccupied with me, my potential, and my struggle to realize that potential. Every day, today—now—is perpetually viewed as nothing more than an uncomfortable interstitial state, a means to an end. It’s just the ego’s way of minimizing the importance of and distracting us from the all-important present moment.

Here Eckie addresses the question of how you set goals if you only live in the moment. “An enlarged image of yourself or a vision of yourself *having* this or that are all static goals and therefore don’t empower you. Instead, make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an *activity* that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole.” In other words, goals should not be things you *become* or *acquire*, but things you *are* or *are doing*. That puts them in the present and also makes them immediately actionable.

Finally, I want to describe something that happened to me as I began to understand Tolle’s explanation of the mechanics of ego. Basically, everything finally clicked for me, and it wasn’t merely a revelation about ego and non-self.

Looking back, I’ve spent much of the past seven years in philosophical inquiry and increasingly-earnest Buddhist practise. I’ve read thousands of pages of both source material and scholarly discourse. I’ve listened to over a thousand Dharma talks. I’ve spent man-months in formal meditation, both in retreats and in daily practise.

Over that time, I’ve become increasingly familiar with the Dharma, and gradually incorporated it more and more into my life. However, the Buddhist concept of non-self never really sunk in until now.

And now that it has, I think I’ve finally reached a turning point. I *know* the Dharma. I may not know every last little detail, but I know a lot of it. I want to say *enough* of it. It suddenly struck me that—in one sense—I’ve come to the end of the path. There’s nothing more I need to learn from written canon or Dharma talks.

I get it.

That’s not to say that I have mastered its application. Knowing the mechanics of surfing doesn’t mean one can go out and do a fins-free snap off the top. Actually living the Dharma is a lifetime’s practise, and much more difficult than merely understanding it. However, I think I can say that I know everything I need to know. Now it’s just a question of applying that knowledge, which, trust me, is challenge enough!

A couple weeks ago I discovered a Buddhist book club being run by the owner of Trident Booksellers. I promptly snatched the current book from the BPL and read through it. I took a few notes to bring to the discussion, and I thought I’d post them here, as well. So here’s my notes on Pema Chödrön’s “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”.

This was the first Chödrön book I’ve read, and I can’t say it lived up to her popularity. Her writing style didn’t come across as particularly noteworthy, and what she had to say… Well, the book is focused mostly on particular practices—tonglen and lojong—which might be useful to some, but which would raise a bunch of questions for beginners. So I found the book overall of limited value. Despite that, there were a few interesting things I could pick and choose from.

One thought pertained to the defensive barriers that we establish around ourselves. Those mental and emotional barriers keep our tender bits safe, but they also distance us and alienate us from other people, as well. But the thing Pema wrote that I found interesting was that this armor we surround ourselves with, which seems so solid, so trustworthy, is really just made of thoughts that we churn out. There’s nothing to them but what we think they are. I know, it’s one of those things that is kind of patently obvious, but it’s also something that we tend to forget on a daily basis.

The next point follows a similar vein. All your past: it’s just an idea. It has no real existence. Worse yet, it’s an idea that only you hold. For example, no one I know remembers the Jimmy Castor Bunch, or their 1974 album “Butt of Course”, featuring the “Bertha Butt Boogie”. Even people who shared your life with you—your first girl- or boyfriend—have a completely different image of that “shared” past than you. You think the past is a fixed thing that defines you, but ultimately it’s just a series of ideas that absolutely nobody but you holds. So is it really all that important?

Pema also stated one of the major themes of Buddhism fairly succinctly. I’ll paraphrase it here, but the basic idea is that helping others is one of the most effective methods of self-improvement, while improving yourself simultaneously helps others. It’s kind of a feedback loop of sorts, where helping others—something that’s all but forgotten in our competitive, acquisitive society—helps ourselves much more than our secular selfishness ever could.

Buddhism encourages its adherents to give of what they have to others, in part to reduce one’s attachment to material things. Even in western cultures we think of sharing as a good thing; however, Pema suggests we go further, being willing to give away things we might really value that would make others’ lives happier. While we can all relate to sharing, giving valued things away is much more difficult because it challenges our ideas of security and possession and attachment. If you’re serious about losing your attachment to material goods, you might well consider practicing this kind of “giving until it hurts”. According to Pema, it won’t actually hurt, but give you an enduring sense of happiness.

The lojong practice includes a number of pithy sayings that one is meant to contemplate. The one that seemed most interesting to me instructs you to “Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment”. That’s a very interesting instruction, because it asks us to step back whenever we feel hatred, anger, jealousy, or fear and analyze the origins of those feelings. Its at those points when we can work with the root causes of careless speech and action and overcome the unconscious behaviors that cause tension and conflict with the people around us.

The other saying that I found especially revelatory was “Don’t expect applause”. Even the best practices and living as the embodiment of lovingkindness and compassion will not guarantee others’ gratitude. Even that internal sense of satisfaction you get at having taken the moral high ground isn’t predictable. This can be incredibly frustrating, and is another emotional reaction which is worth studying. Perhaps the best orientation is to expect the unexpected and approach each situation with curiosity, rather than a sense that if you “do the right thing” you’ll be rewarded somehow.

One final topic that came up during the group discussion that I found interesting was the assertion that there’s limited value in reading about Buddhism. Buddhism is extremely practically focused, and the measure of one’s success is in how one lives, not in what doctrines one understands or agrees with or how frequently or long one sits in meditation. Most books on Buddhism echo a surprisingly small number of core tenets, and once you’ve heard them, there’s little point in further study. The real practice is in learning how to apply those beliefs to Real Life, and that’s where the real learning and growth happens. Buddhism isn’t about the books or the ideas, but about your mind, your heart, and your actions, and bringing them all into alignment.