Going Against The Stream: The Not-Self Teaching of the Buddha

The Buddha is alleged to have said, in regard to the Dhamma he discovered, the following: “This Dhamma that I have attained is profound, hard to see and hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise.” (MN: 26; 19, Ariyapariyesana Sutta, Bodhi, 2005: 69) He is also reputed to have said that his teaching and yogic practices “go against the stream.” (Levine, 2007: 17) By this it is meant that much the Buddha teaches, and what he asks us to practice, goes against the stream of our conditioning: the biological, environmental, cultural, and social conditioning we are all heirs to. His Dhamma is often what we might call, “counter-intuitive.” For instance, when we experience anger, the conditioned (natural) reaction to the discomfort and pain of anger is to either attempt to repress it or express it. Both strategies are designed to “get rid of it”: to avoid feeling the anger. But the Buddha suggests the third, counter-intuitive approach of feeling the anger non-reactively, in order to investigate its characteristics. In seeing the true nature of anger, he tells us that we can free ourselves from anger and find the freedom to creatively respond to the situation.
Most students do not want to hear this. They find it difficult to understand how opening to experience, just as it is, can ultimately lead to freedom. But of all the difficult to understand, subtle and profound teachings of the Buddha, perhaps none has presented as much difficulty as his teaching of anatta or not-Self. The idea that there is no Self to be found in phenomenal experience seems so counter-intuitive to most people that it borders on the nonsensical and irrational. But most of this difficulty is due to unquestioned assumptions, as well as misconceptions and misunderstandings of experience. The Buddha offers the teaching of anatta in order to question these assumptions and to make clear the misconceptions and misunderstandings through the yogic practice of mindfulness meditation.

Perhaps the most basic unquestioned assumption people tend to hold that is challenged by the teaching of not-Self is that they have a Self and they know what it is. Until they are asked what it even means to say “I have a Self,” or “I am a Self,” they have rarely given it much thought. When finally asked, they tend toward statements referring to an “inner life.” Cognitive scientists have shown that the felt sense of an “inner life” is based on a fundamental distinction between what they call the Subject and one or more Selves. “The Subject is the locus of consciousness, subjective experience, reason, will, and our ‘essence,’ everything that makes us who we uniquely are. There is at least one Self and possibly more. The Selves consist of everything else about us – our bodies, our social roles, our histories, and so on.” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 268) For most people, what Lakoff and Johnson call “the Subject” is what they mean by the “Self.” Often, they distinguish this “Self” as their “True Self” from their “small self.”

Cognitive science seems to say that this “Subject/Self,” or as I notate it, “Self/self” distinction is far from arbitrary, but in fact expresses apparently universal experiences of an “inner life.” The metaphors for conceptualizing our inner lives are grounded in universal experiences (from learning how to manipulate and control objects as well as our body, to the disparity we may feel between our conscious values and the values implicit in our behavior, to the inner dialog and internal monitoring we engage in) that appear to be unavoidable, arising as they do from common experience. What is most revealing about this is that each metaphor conceptualizes the Self (Subject) as being person-like, with an existence separate and independent from the self (body/mind/social roles etc.). Thus the Self takes on a metaphysical import.

“…the very way that we normally conceptualize our inner lives is inconsistent with what we know scientifically about the nature of mind. In our system for conceptualizing our inner lives, there is always a Subject that is the locus of reason and that metaphorically has an existence independent of the body. … this contradicts the fundamental findings of cognitive science. And yet, the conceptualization of such a Subject arises around the world uniformly on the basis of apparently universal and unchangeable experiences. If this is true, it means that we all grow up with a view of our inner lives that is mostly unconscious, used every day of our lives in our self-understanding, and yet both internally inconsistent and incompatible with what we have learned from the scientific study of the mind. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 268)

The neuroscience researcher, Antonio Damasio, in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, describes how the sense or feeling of an inner self that is conceptualized as “an observer, a perceiver, a knower, a thinker and a potential actor” arises. (Damasio, 1999: 10/11) Briefly, he asserts that first there is a totally unconscious “interconnected and temporarily coherent collection of neural patterns which represent the state of the organism, moment by moment” which he calls the “proto-self.” Then, a “second-order nonverbal account occurs whenever an object modifies the proto-self.” This “core self can be triggered by any object” but it too is transient, ceaselessly recreated for each and every object with which the brain interacts. (Damasio, 1999: 17/174)

However, the traditional notion of self is linked to identity and the collection of unique facts that characterize a person. Damasio calls this the “autobiographical self” that depends upon “autobiographical memory that is constituted by implicit memories of multiple instances of individual experience of the past and of the anticipated future.” (Damasio, 1999: 174) Each of the two higher order “selves” requires the lower order ones in order to manifest.

"When we discover what we are made of and how we are put together, we discover a ceaseless process of building up and tearing down…. It is astonishing that we have a sense of self at all, that we have – that most of us have, some of us have – some continuity of structure and function that constitutes identity, some stable traits of behavior we call a personality….

… the brain reconstructs the sense of self moment by moment. We do not have a self sculpted in stone and, like stone, resistant to the ravages of time. Our sense of self is a state of the organism, the result of certain components operating in a certain manner and interacting in a certain way, within certain parameters. It is another construction, a vulnerable pattern of integrated operations whose consequence is to generate the mental representation of a living being." (Damasio, 1999: 144/145)

From this apparently universal and inescapable intimation of an “inner self,” the notion of an indwelling “ghost,” “spirit,” or “soul” became part of many folk traditions. (Feuerstein, 1996: 17) In India, this led to the concept of the Ātman defined by Georg Feuerstein as:

“Self” or “self.” Since Sanskrit does not have capital letters, the context alone determines whether the empirical self, or ego personality (jīva) or the transcendental Self is intended…. The word ātman, though primarily a reflexive pronoun, has been used to denote the transcendental Self since the time of the ancient Upanishads. As such it is a key concept of Hindu metaphysics, notably Vedānta and Vedānta-based schools of Yoga…. The problem is that the Self is by definition not within reach of the mind and the senses…. As the archaic Brihad-Āranyaka-Upanishad (3.7.23) declares in a well-known passage, the Self cannot be grasped because it is the grasper, the seer of everything. In other words, the Self reveals itself only to itself. Hence the Shiva-Samhitā (1.62) states: “The renouncer of all volition certainly beholds the Self in the Self by the Self.” (Feuerstein, 1997: 42)

We are not who or what we think we are. This is the evidence of scientific research, as well as the hypothesis and assertion of the Indian religious/spiritual/yogic imagination. As Stephen Cope summarizes it, “the single most pervasive theme in yogic scriptures and folktales: Our true self remains deeply hidden, incognito, submerged beneath a web of mistaken identities.” (Cope, 1999: xix)

At the time of the Buddha, as it is now in many spiritual traditions, the spiritual quest was seen primarily as the search for, the realization of, and the liberation of one’s “True Self” (Sanskrit ātman; Pāli atta) from the misidentification with the “small self.” As we have seen from the above, the sense of an “inner life” led to the postulation of such an entity thought of “as a person’s permanent inner nature – the source of true happiness and the autonomous ‘inner controller’ of action.” (Harvey, 2001: 79)

"To feel that, however much one changes in life from childhood onwards, some essential part remains unchanged as the ‘real me’, is to have a belief in a permanent Self. To act as if only other people die and to ignore the inevitability of one’s own death, is to act as if one had a permanent Self. To relate changing mental phenomena to a substantial self which ‘owns’ them – ‘I am worried… happy… angry’ – is to have such a Self concept. To identify with one’s body, ideas, actions, etc., is to take them as part of an ‘I’ or Self-entity." (Harvey, 2001: 79)

The Buddha too, agreeing with the larger Indian tradition, taught that we are not who or what we think we are. However, he differed from them in saying that the Self sought by his contemporaries did not exist. By analyzing what we consider as a ‘being,’ ‘individual,’ an ‘I’ or a “self,” the Buddha came to the startling, counter-intuitive understanding that no such permanent, unchanging, independent, autonomous entity can be found to exist.

What he found is that what we call a ‘being’ or ‘self’ is in fact a combination of ever-changing physical and mental forces or energies, which may be divided into five groups or aggregates (pañcakkhandha). (Rahula, 1974: 20) They are the ‘form aggregate,’ the ‘feeling aggregate,’ the ‘perception aggregate,’ the ‘volitional formations aggregate,’ and the ‘consciousness aggregate.’ The Buddha says: “So long as I did not directly know as they really are the five aggregates subject to clinging in four phases, I did not claim to have awakened to the unsurpassed perfect enlightenment…. But when I directly knew all this as it really is, then I claimed to have awakened….” (SN 22:56; III 58 – 61, Bodhi, 2005: 335)

In directly knowing the four phases of form, its origin, its cessation and the way leading to its cessation (and the same for the other four aggregates), the Buddha saw that all five aggregates are impermanent and conditioned, dependently arising upon causes and conditions and falling away with the falling away of causes and conditions. The view of “self” or “identity view” arises when the “uninstructed worldling” takes form as self, or self as possessing form, or form as in self, or self as in form. These same four possibilities are possible for each of the other four aggregates. When one does this with any one or any combination of the aggregates, identity view comes to be.

The Buddha offered a critique of this by saying that if any individual aggregate or combination of aggregates were self, they would not lead to affliction, and it would be possible to control them saying “Let my form be this; let my form not be this… let my feelings… let my perceptions… let my volitional formations… let my consciousness be this; … not this.” (SN 22:59; III 66 – 68, Bodhi, 2005: 341)

In another teaching, the Buddha compares form (the body) to a lump of foam; feeling to a water bubble rising and bursting on the surface of water; perception to a shimmering mirage; volitional formations to the trunk of a banana tree; and consciousness to a magical illusion. He says a wise person “with good sight” would inspect, ponder and carefully investigate these phenomena and would come to see each of them as “void, hollow, insubstantial.” He ends by saying that when this ‘emptiness’ of any essential core or substantiality is truly seen, the practitioner becomes disenchanted with the aggregates, which leads to dispassion and thus the release of grasping and clinging. And through dispassion, the mind is liberated. (SN 22:95; III 140-42, Bodhi, 2005: 343 – 345)

The Buddha’s not-Self teaching does not deny the conventional usages of the word ‘self’ as in reflexively speaking of ‘yourself’ or ‘myself.’ What we call a ‘being’ or a ‘self’ in this conventional manner is simply a consensual, convenient name or label we apply to the collection of the five aggregates, each and every one of them impermanent and constantly changing. There is nothing behind the changing flux, no permanent substance or entity that can be rightly called ‘I.’ There is an empirical ‘self,’ but no metaphysical ‘Self’ to be found. This is the ‘autobiographical self’ Damasio speaks of.

"A ‘person’ is a collection of rapidly changing and interacting mental and physical processes, with character-patterns recurring over some time. Only partial control can be exercised over these processes; so they often change in undesired ways, leading to suffering. Impermanent, they cannot be a permanent Self. Suffering, they cannot be an autonomous true ‘I’, which would contain nothing that was out of harmony with itself. While nirvāṇa is beyond impermanence and dukkha, it is still not-Self. Though it is unconditioned, it has nothing in it which could support the feeling of ‘I’-ness, for this can only arise with respect to the conditioned khandhas and it is not even a truly valid feeling there." (Collins, S., 1982, Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravada Buddhism, pp. 98 – 9, as cited in Harvey, 2001: 80).

It is clear from the preceding that the Buddha, and the Buddhist tradition accepts the existence of a conventional, empirical ‘self’ understood to be the unique aggregation of physical and mental factors (the khandhas) that are individually and collectively impermanent, ever-changing, dependently conditioned. What is not accepted is that there exists within or without these physical and mental factors a permanent, independent, autonomous Self, individual or ‘I.’ There is no mover behind the movement; no thinker behind the thought.

This all seems to agree with the most contemporary findings of cognitive and neuro-science, as shown above. Science helps explain how the feeling that “Self” exists can arise based upon conditions. The Buddhist tradition also offers an explanation. Mahāyāna Buddhism built upon the not-Self teaching to emphasize the ‘emptiness’ of all phenomena of any self-nature (sva-bhava). That all phenomena are empty of self-nature means they are all inter-dependently arisen. That all phenomena are inter-dependently arisen means they are empty of self-nature. Contemporary physics tells us that because all phenomena are ‘coreless,’ each part of the universe contains the whole and each part depends on all the other parts. An object’s mass – it’s resistance to movement – comes from the influence of the entire universe. (Ricard, M. & Thuan, T., 2001: 70)

In the book, The Quantum and the Lotus, we ‘sit-in’ on a discussion between Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and Trinh Xuan Thuan, a professor of astrophysics. In an interesting and very telling exchange, Ricard begins:

R: Phenomena are interdependent because they coexist in a global reality, which functions according to mutual causality. Phenomena are naturally simultaneous because one implies the presence of the other. We are back with ‘this can only be if that also exists; this can change only if that also changes.’ Thus we arrive at an idea that everything must be connected to everything else. Relationships determine our reality, the conditions of our existence, particles and galaxies.

T: Such a vision of interdependence certainly agrees with the results of the experiments I’ve just mentioned…. This is extremely disturbing for physicists.

R: I think that we have a good example here of the difference between the scientific approach and Buddhism. For most scientists, even if the global nature of phenomena has been demonstrated in rather a disturbing way, this is merely another piece of information, and no matter how intellectually stimulating it may be, it has little effect on their daily lives. For Buddhists, on the other hand, the repercussions of the interdependence of phenomena are far greater.
The notion of interdependence makes us question our basic perception of the world, and then use this new perception again and again to lessen our attachments, our fears, and our aversions. An understanding of interdependence should demolish the wall of illusions that our minds have built up between ‘me’ and ‘the other.’ If not only all inert things but also all living beings are connected, then we should feel deeply concerned about the happiness and suffering of others…. Thus knowledge of interdependence leads to a process of inner transformation, which continues throughout the journey of spiritual enlightenment.

T: So the interdependence of phenomena equals universal responsibility. What a marvelous equation! It reminds me of what Einstein said: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.’” (Ricard & Thuan, 2001: 71 – 72)

The not-Self teaching offered by the Buddha is not meant to be a philosophy to adopt, a belief to accept or simply a ‘good idea.’ It is not, even, as such, a denial of the existence of a permanent Self. Like the body of the Buddha’s teaching, the not-Self teaching is meant primarily as a practical teaching aimed at the overcoming of attachment because the clinging and grasping after phenomena that are by nature impermanent, and ever changing, causes pain (dukkha) and is itself painful.

To grasp at not-Self and emptiness as concepts, failing to see that the teaching is just the means to accomplish the task Einstein refers to in the quote above, to break through what Georg Feuerstein calls “the Self-contraction,” can lead to much confusion and suffering. “In the Maharatnakuta Sutra, the Buddha says: ‘It is better to be caught in the idea that everything exists than to be caught in the idea of emptiness. Someone who is caught in the idea that everything exists can still be disentangled, but it is difficult to disentangle someone who is caught in the idea of emptiness.’” (Hanh, 1993: 33)
To engage with the teaching of not-Self, we must first bring into awareness what we may have unconsciously identified with as Self. Apparently, cognitive science shows us that all human beings develop a sense of some ‘inner self’ behind their thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, consciousness and actions. This sense of self arises so naturally that we rarely question it. Once we bring the unquestioned assumption into the light of inquiry, we are then asked to carefully, mindfully observe all experienced phenomena until we can see for ourselves that nowhere can be found any such entity.

Many people, when they hear the Buddha’s teaching on not-Self and emptiness find this frightening and disturbing: “You mean I will cease to exist?” But as I’ve attempted to make clear in this paper, such a question itself is based upon the false assumption that an ‘I’ ever exists at all. The Buddha did not teach, as many spiritual traditions do, that we must destroy the self, but that this idea of a self is illusory to begin with, based upon ignorance of reality. When this ignorance eases, so too does our misperception of self. When that has been clarified, there is no basis for fear. Through continual practice we get to taste ‘drops of emptiness,’ intimations of freedom from the attachment to self. Either through many such ‘tastes,’ or through an intense and deep draught, one’s life may be transformed. Ultimately, it isn’t a matter of letting go of self or the idea of self, but rather, the idea itself dissolves, letting go of ‘you.’

The final step of the Ānāpānasati Sutta is patinissaggā, meaning to throw back or to give back. We give back or return everything to which we have been attached. The Buddha tells us that the highest understanding is to take nothing as self or belonging to self. In describing this step, Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu says “Throughout our lives we have been thieves. All along, we have been stealing things that exist naturally, that belong to nature, namely, the sankhāra. We have plundered them and taken them to be our selves and our possessions…. Don’t claim anything to be ‘I’ or ‘mine’ ever again!” (Buddhadāsa, 1997: 97)

Bibliography
Bodhi, B., 2005, In The Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the P āli Canon, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Buddhadāsa, B., 1997 Mindfulness With Breathing: A Manual for Serious Beginners, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Cope, S., 1999, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, NYC, Bantam Books

Damasio, A., 1999, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, NYC, Harcourt Brace & Company

Feuerstein, G. 1997, The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga, Boston, Shambhala

Feuerstein, G. 1996, The Philosophy of Classical Yoga, Rochester, VT, Inner Traditions International

Hanh, N., 1993, Thundering Silence: Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake, Berkeley, Parallax Press

Harvey, P. ed., 2001, Buddhism, London, Continuum

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., 1999, Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and it’s Challenge to Western Thought, NYC, Basic Books

Levine, N., 2007, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries, NYC, Harper Collins Publishers

Rahula, W., 1974, What The Buddha Taught, NY, Grove Press

Ricard, M. & Thuan, T., 2001, The Quantum and the Lotus, NY, Three Rivers Press

Embodied Zen

I think it's safe to say that (early) Buddhism is to a fairly large extent, empiricist in its approach and general tenor. And I would also agree it is not the kind of empiricism found in Logical Positivism, nor for that matter, any other form of western philosophical empiricism. However, it is an empiricism that is conditioned by it's particular cultural/historical context, specifically the lack of understanding and knowledge that contemporary brain/cognitive science brings to light. Because of this, ontological assumptions were made based upon ‘experiences’ that may not be born out by recent empirical study.

Findings of cognitive science tell us that our bodies, brains, and environmental interactions provide the mostly unconscious basis for our sense of what is real. What cognitive science shows is that our sense of what is real begins with and depends upon our bodies, most especially our sensorimotor system, and the structures of our brains, which have been shaped by evolution and experience.

I would also agree that Buddhist meditative practices allow us to ‘go beyond’ our higher order concepts to a greater degree than perhaps most western scientists might agree possible (but perhaps with practice would understand), but I am convinced by the findings of cognitive science that categorization and primary order conceptualization, being a consequence of how we are embodied, cannot be ‘transcended’ or ‘left behind.’ Categorization is, for the most part, not conscious and rational; we categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact with the world in the way we do. In fact, not only do we not have full conscious control over how we categorize, we cannot have such control. Even when we think we are intentionally forming new categories, our neural unconscious categories enter into our choice of possible conscious categories. It is not merely that our bodies and brains determine that we will categorize; they also determine what kinds of categories we will have and what their structure will be.

For instance, the fact that we have muscles and use them to apply force in certain ways leads to the formal structure of our system of causal concepts. Yet, we often think of ‘causality’ as something independently existing in the world. Our concepts of causes, conditions, actions, states and change represent ontic features of the world. These concepts are taken literally, not metaphorically, yet cognitive science shows how these concepts are metaphorically constructed, emerging from everyday bodily experiences. They arise from human biology.

“Living systems must categorize. Since we are neural beings, our categories are formed through our embodiment, What that means is that the categories we form are part of our experience! They are the structures that differentiate aspects of our experience into discernible kinds. Categorization is thus not a purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact of experience. Rather, the formation and use of categories is the stuff of experience. It is part of what our bodies and brains are constantly engaged in. We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, ‘get beyond’ our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that.” Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1999, p. 19

What Lakoff and Johnson show is that these findings from cognitive science point out that our very concept of a disembodied mind arises from common, phenomenological experiences we all have throughout our lives. The very concept of the ‘unconditioned’ comes out of our embodied phenomenological experience. Our mistake, cognitive science seems to say, is we take it literally and draw some misguided conclusions. As they conclude, this has dramatic consequences for our understanding of religion and spirituality, which, in our culture – and throughout much of the East as well – has been defined in terms of disembodiment and transcendence of this world. What they (and I have long called for) is an alternative conception of embodied spirituality that begins to do justice to what people experience. There is another way – an embodied sense – to understand the experience of transcendence, of the ‘unconditioned’ or the ‘unborn.’ A mindful, embodied spirituality is a possibility, and I believe that the Buddhist practice (but I agree not tradition) can perhaps best provide a structure for creating it.

The Meaning of Duhkha for Zen Naturalism:A Revaluation of the Four Noble Truths

In as much as Buddhism, which as the larger Yoga tradition of which it is a part, is a moksha-śāstra, or “liberation teaching,” Buddhism’s whole purpose is the cultivation of freedom from dukkha. The engagement with dukkha, thought of within the broad Yoga tradition as the existential situation within which living beings find themselves, is at the heart of all yoga practice. How dukkha is defined and conceptualized, and the myriad ways how one goes about addressing it, are intimately related, and are also at the base of many of the distinctions found among the various teachings throughout the Yoga tradition: Hindu, Buddhist and Jain.

As dukkha and our relationship to it are at the heart of all Yoga, including the Buddhist traditions, it is imperative to have a clear understanding of how dukkha is conceptualized, for this will determine first, whether there is anything we can skillfully and constructively do about it, which will further involve investigating its causes, and second, if we find we can do something about dukkha, we then need to examine what it is we can and should do.

Georg Feuerstein describes dukkha thusly:

Duhkha originally meant “having a bad axle hole,” but early on came to signify “sorrow,” “suffering,” or “pain.” According to the spiritual traditions of India, existence is inherently sorrowful. This doctrine has frequently led Western critics to summarily portray Indian philosophy as profoundly pessimistic. This typification is demonstrably misleading, however, since the avowed goal of Indian spirituality is the perfect transcendence of sorrow or pain. Indeed, most schools of Indian spirituality describe the ultimate Reality as utterly blissful. Sorrow, then, pertains only to the ego-ensconced individual, not to the Self. What more optimistic orientation could there be? (Feuerstein, 1997: 94)

Leaving aside for now Feuerstein’s commentary regarding the issue of Indian spirituality’s alleged pessimism, the nature of “ultimate Reality” and issues of the “Self,” we see that Buddhism shares with the larger Yoga tradition the notion, paraphrasing Feuerstein above, that existence is inherently dukkha.

At the Sanskrit-EnglishDictionary found at: http://www.srimadbhagavatam.org/downloads/SanskritDictionary.html,
is the following entry for duhkha, duhkham and dush:

duHkha = sorrow * = 1 mfn. (according to grammarians properly written {duS-kha} and said to be from {dus} and {kha} [cf. {su-kha4}]; but more probably a Prâkritized form for {duH-stha} q.v.) uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult R. Hariv. (compar. {-tara} MBh. R.); n. (ifc. f. {A}) uneasiness, pain, sorrow, trouble, difficulty; to be sad or uneasy, to cause or feel pain.

duHkhaM = distress

dush*= ind. a prefix to nouns and rarely to verbs or adverbs (Pân. 2-1, 6; 2, 18 Vârtt. 2 Pat.; iii, 3, 126 &c.) implying evil, bad, difficult, hard [488, 2]; badly, hardly; slight, inferior &c. (opp. to {su}),

And finally, The Digital South Asia Library, sponsored by the University of Chicago has the following definition for duhkha, and its related etymology of dus (or dush) and kha:

duhkha [ duh-khá ] a. unpleasant, fraught with hardship, wretched; n. pain, hardship, misery, suffering: -m, in., ab., °ree;-, with difficulty, scarce ly, hardly, reluctantly; -m âs, stand sorrow fully. (Digital South Asia Library, http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=82&table=macdonell&display=simple,

dus°ree; [ dus- ] px. (=dush-) bad; wrong; hard.
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgibin/romadict.pl?page=83&table=macdonell&display=simple

kha [ kh&asharp; ] f. [hole], spring, well.
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgibin/romadict.pl?page=61&table=macdonell&display=simple

If we do accept the etymological roots of the word dukkha to mean “bad” or “wrong hole,” as relating to a faulty axle hole, we can get a visceral understanding of the feeling-tone associated with dukkha. A faulty hole in the wheel of an ox cart, for instance, would lead to a rather bumpy, unsettling and painful ride. If the bad hole were in a ceramic wheel, it would be quite difficult, if not impossible, to create anything truly beautiful and useful. The strain might even lead to one making a mess of things. As a metaphor for the human condition, it tells us that when we live ‘un-centered,’ out of alignment with truth or reality (to align a wheel is said to ‘make it true’), life is painful. It is difficult or impossible to make of our lives something beautiful and useful.

Various translations have been offered for the word dukkha: e.g. suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, anguish, unease, dis-ease, stress, ill, affliction, discontentment. It has been described as the feeling that ‘something is missing’ or just not right with things. Of all these different translations, “suffering” is the one that has been used most frequently by most teachers in the West.

But how did the Buddha himself elaborate on what dukkha is? The Pali Canon tradition states:

And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of ? Birth is < dukkha,> ageing is < dukkha,> death is < dukkha,> sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness and distress are < dukkha,> Being attached to the unloved is < dukkha,> being separated from the loved is < dukkha,> not getting want one wants is < dukkha.> In short, the five aggregates of grasping are < dukkha >. (DN 22.18, Walshe, 1995: 344)

And in other places we find “illness” is also enumerated. (SN 56.11, Bodhi, 2000: 1844)

Looking at what is elaborated as dukkha in this passage attributed to the Buddha, we see that while it may be the most conventionally used translation of dukkha, the word “suffering” is ultimately inaccurate and misleading. At best, it is only appropriate in a general, inexact sense. Perhaps the main difficulty with translating dukkha as “suffering” is that “suffering” has primarily a psychological and emotional connotation. The oft-heard statement, made by many students and practitioners of Buddhism, that “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” leads one to assume that the Buddha was talking only about mental suffering: anguish, dissatisfaction, unease etc. However, it is clear from the above that physical pain is indeed dukkha as well.

Peter Harvey points to this when, for example, he says that to say “birth is suffering” makes it sound either like suffering is something birth is doing, or that birth is a form of suffering, which he argues is not the case: birth and ageing “can only be occasions for or causes of suffering, which is an experience, a mental state.” (Harvey, BUDMO1, Session 7, Section 2.1) Re-reading the above quote from the Buddha, substituting “stressful” and “painful” for dukkha where Walshe has “suffering” gives a fuller and more accurate understanding.

I think it’s important to give some time to this, because of the prevalence of the psychologizing of dukkha we find so common in the west, as made explicit by Philip Moffit:

The Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths begins with the injunction that if you are to attain liberation, you must understand and fully experience how your life is entwined and defined by “dukkha,” meaning your mental experiences of discomfort, pain, anxiety, stress, instability, inadequacy, failure, and disappointment, each of which is felt as suffering in your mind. This teaching is often referred to as the “Truth of Suffering,” (Moffitt, 2008: 27)

While this understanding has its merit when dealing with mental anguish, when passages where the Buddha defines dukkha are examined, it seems to be missing an essential point. In fact, the psychological understanding of dukkha as the “mental experiences of discomfort etc.” listed by Moffitt as a reaction to birth, aging, illness, pain, not getting what one wants, being separated from the loved and attached to the unloved seems more a description of the “second dart” kind of dukkha that the Buddha describes in the Connected Discourses on Feeling:

"Bhikkhus, when the uninstructed worldling is being contacted by a painful feeling, he sorrows, grieves, and laments; he weeps beating his breast and becomes distraught. He feels two feelings -- a bodily one and a mental one. Suppose they were to strike a man with a dart, and then they would strike him immediately afterwards with a second dart, so that the man would feel a feeling caused by two darts. So too, when the uninstructed worldling is being contacted by a painful feeling… he feels two feelings -- a bodily one and a mental one.

“Bhikkhus, when the instructed noble disciple is contacted by a painful feeling, he does not sorrow, grieve, or lament; he does not weep beating his breast and become distraught. He feels one feeling – a bodily one, not a mental one.”(SN 36.6, Bodhi, 2000: 1264)

The Buddha’s disciple, Sāriputta, when asked “What is dukkha?” replies:

“There are, friend, three kinds of painfulness (dukkhatā): the painfulness of pain (dukkha-dukkhatā), the painfulness of conditioned things (sankhāra-dukkatā) and the painfulness of change (vipaiṇāma-dukkhatā). (SN 38.14; translation by Harvey, BUDMO1, Session 7, Section 2.2)

This understanding of the three types of dukkha is seen as pointing to the subtle aspect of dukkha that permeates even happiness (other than the happiness of nirvana) so that even happiness is declared to be dukkha. The point is that all happiness, other than that of nirvāṇa, is conditioned, limited and thus not ultimately satisfactory. The sheer fact of its impermanence is seen as dukkha. It is said that a subtle feeling of unease often accompanies happiness because deep down we know it is impermanent.

The matter becomes further complicated when samudaya, said to be the cause of dukkha is, examined. In its most succinct formulation, the Buddha says the origin of dukkha is craving (DN 22.19, Walshe, 1995: 346), specifically sensual craving, craving for existence and craving for non-existence. The word translated as craving is taṇhā, which means “thirst.” Harvey describes this craving as referring to “demanding desires or drives which are ever on the lookout for gratification.” He goes on to say that such craving leads to dukkha in three primary ways:

Firstly, they lead to the suffering of frustration, as their demands for lasting and wholly satisfying fulfillment are perpetually disappointed by a changing and unsatisfactory world. Secondly, they motivate people to perform various actions, whose karmic results lead on to further rebirths, with their attendant dukkha. Thirdly, they lead to quarrels, strife and conflict between individuals and groups. (Harvey, 1990: 53)

Thich Nhat Hanh points out that while the Buddha mentions craving as the cause of dukkha in the Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma, in an oral culture this is understood to be the first item of a list of afflictions (kleshas) used to represent the whole list. (Hanh, 1998: 21) Among these other causes are views, conceit and ignorance.

“Views” (diṭṭhi) refers to speculative view-points, theories, opinions, or perspectives, most especially when they lead to dogmatic and unyielding positions. Such clinging to views is seen as blocking the vital process of inquiry and awakening. When we are caught in our views, even if truth comes knocking at our door, we refuse to let it in. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Clinging fanatically to an ideology or a doctrine not only prevents us from learning, but also creates bloody conflicts.” He goes on to emphasize the importance of this point in reference to the First Precept (ahimsa or non-harm). “We usually think that killing occurs in the domain of the body, but a fanatical mind can cause the killing of not just one, but millions of human beings.” (Hanh, 1993: 22)

The Buddha placed a great emphasis on views of “Self,” which tend towards positing the existence of a substantial Self within the five khandhas (form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness). Such views were said to lead to clinging identification with one or some combination of the khandhas as Self, and this attachment was a form of dukkha as well as a cause of dukkha. Even in advanced practitioners who have overcome such views, “conceit” as the sense of “I am” is said to remain in a vague, unspecified way.

In what is perhaps the Buddha’s core teaching of Conditioned Arising (paṭicca-samuppāda) variously translated as “Dependent Origination” or “Dependent Co-origination,” craving is said to lead to, or condition, grasping. This grasping is both for, and conditions, existence, which then leads to birth, leading to ageing, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. In short: dukkha!

While not technically considered a “first cause,” the whole chain of conditioning in one sense certainly, can be said to arise because of a fundamental mis-perception. Ignorance (avijjā), can be thought of as a kind of ignore-ance or, in contemporary language, “denial.” It literally means “not-seeing,” and what is not seen is ‘things as they are.’ Because of this fundamental not-seeing or ignoring of the reality of not-Self, the reality that all conditioned things are impermanent and not-Self, beings get caught in views of an existing Self, and then are compelled to act in ways to aggrandize the Self/self, protecting and defending what is ultimately at best an illusion of perception. Buddhism, like its other Yoga siblings, sees this spiritual ignorance as the fundamental cause or root of dukkha.

The question then becomes, whether things are dukkha in themselves, or only when craving for things is present. For instance, when we say ageing, or not getting what one wants is dukkha, are we saying that by its very nature, ageing or not getting what one wants is painful or stressful, or are we saying that ageing and not getting what one wants is only painful when there is craving for staying youthful and getting what one wants?

There have been varying responses to this question, with both perspectives seeming to be implied in the Pali Canon. Craving and grasping at anything most certainly leads to psychological pain or dukkha. This is true in that the very act of grasping and holding on are tension-filled and painful as well as that whatever conditioned phenomenon one might grasp and attempt to hold on to is by it very nature impermanent and subject to change. But the Pali Canon also seems to imply that “conditioned things are to be seen, in themselves, as dukkha in the sense of being limited and imperfect.” (Harvey, BUD01, Session 7, Section 2.5)

But some problems arise with this viewpoint, most notably that the concepts of “limited” and “imperfect” are themselves conditioned and lack any inherent, independent existence. It is most certainly possible to conceive of a viewpoint that does not see impermanence as inherently a limitation or imperfection. In fact, whole aesthetics of impermanence celebrate change. Again, it comes down to our pre-conceptions and grasping after what isn’t that underlies perceiving impermanence as necessarily dukkha.

Equating all conditioned things with inherently being dukkha leads to the idea that life itself is dukkha, which has led to a fairly common and persistent charge of pessimism made against Buddhism. In an essay on “The Four Nutriments of Life,” Nyanaponika Thera quotes a familiar saying from the Pali Suttas: “Only suffering arises where anything arises and only suffering ceases where anything ceases.” (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html)

Such an outlook can justifiably be called “pessimistic,” especially when it leads to the morbid perspective also found in the same essay:

The writer once visited large subterranean caverns which had long passages and high-roofed temple-like halls with huge stalactites and stalagmites resembling the lofty columns of a cathedral. For the convenience of the numerous visitors to the caverns, electric light was installed, and where the bulbs were low enough one could see around them a small spread of lichen, the only trace of organic life amidst the barren rocks. Life springs up wherever it gets the slightest chance through favoring conditions like warmth, moisture, and light. In the spectator's mind this little harmless proliferation of primitive plant life assumed the menacing features of a beast of prey that, having lurked long under the cover of darkness, at last got the chance for its hungry leap. (Emphasis added)
(http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html)

One could just as well marvel at the wondrousness of life that can subsist and thrive in such conditions, but mainstream Buddhism, seeing life as inherently dukkha tends toward this ‘world-weary’ view of existence. This is of course compounded by the belief in rebirth, which posits an almost numberless round of births and deaths.
Interestingly, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, in his essay “Life Isn’t Just Suffering,” argues against the charge that Buddhism is pessimistic by denying that phenomena are dukkha in themselves:

Other discourses show that the problem isn't with body and feelings in and of themselves. They themselves aren't suffering. The suffering lies in clinging to them. In his definition of the first noble truth, the Buddha summarizes all types of suffering under the phrase, "the five aggregates of clinging": clinging to physical form (including the body), feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness. However, when the five aggregates are free from clinging, he tells us, they lead to long-term benefit and happiness. (http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/lifeisnt.html)

Ironically, Thanissaro comes off sounding like Moffitt when he continues to say:

So the first noble truth, simply put, is that clinging is suffering. It's because of clinging that physical pain becomes mental pain. It's because of clinging that aging, illness, and death cause mental distress. The paradox here is that, in clinging to things, we don't trap them or get them under our control. Instead, we trap ourselves. When we realize our captivity, we naturally search for a way out. And this is where it's so important that the first noble truth not say that "Life is suffering." If life were suffering, where would we look for an end to suffering? We'd be left with nothing but death and annihilation. But when the actual truth is that clinging is suffering, we simply have to look for the clinging and eliminate its causes. (http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/lifeisnt.html)

This robust and confident call to action is a far cry from pessimism or world-weariness, but again seems to be addressing dukkha as merely psychological and ignoring the suttas that declare birth, ageing, death, being attached to the unloved, being separated from the loved, and not getting want one wants are dukkha, and not merely our mental distress at these phenomena.

Historically, the long-honored traditional way of understanding the Four Noble Truths (or as Harvey now prefers, “The Realities for the Noble Ones” Harvey, BUDMO1, Session 7) tells us that dukkha permeates life; samudaya is what causes the illness to arise. According to this understanding, the main cause is craving or grasping, sometimes even understood as desire. The Third Reality for the Noble Ones, nirodha, translated as “cessation,” tells us that dukkha can be absolutely ended with the letting go of craving. And we can do so by following a path (magga), taught by the Buddha as the Noble Eightfold Path.

The traditional formulation states that dukkha can be completely extinguished. Of course, even after the Buddha became enlightened, he got sick, was wounded, felt pain, and eventually died. Superficially, it would seem contradictory that he should suffer illness, pain and death (all forms of dukkha) if he were enlightened. The traditional understanding, especially in those Buddhist schools most influenced by Indian culture, such as the Theravada and Tibetan traditions, is that the Buddha meant that mental phenomena such as craving in one life gives rise to physical phenomena in another life. We are born into this life because of desire, craving and attachment in previous lives. The Buddha’s enlightenment meant that he would no longer be re-born into another life after he died in this life. You can see from this why so many have thought Buddhism to be a “life-denying” or escapist philosophy since our very birth and life is seen as dukkha, the result of previous desire and craving, (something seen as to be eradicated) and the goal is therefore to get off the cycle of rebirth and not be reborn again. This standard interpretation makes The Four Noble Truths into a metaphysical doctrine about cycles of life after life, and the great achievement of the Buddha was that he had finally reached a life from which he would not be reborn. The ultimate implication of such a metaphysic is that the best thing you can do with life is escape from it! Buddhism so understood may not be exactly “pessimistic” in that it sees an ending to dukkha as possible. But its postulating the cessation of dukkha as radically transcendent ultimately devalues life itself as something one seeks to escape from and avoid “falling into” again in future lives.

Some modernists, such as Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, have rejected a literal, metaphysical or ontological understanding of rebirth and given the following re-interpretation based upon the “birth” and “death” of the sense of “I” and “mine:”

A single emergence of the feeling of “I” and “mine” is called one birth (jāti). This is the real meaning of the word “birth.” Don’t take it to mean birth from a mother’s womb. A person is born from the womb once and gets laid out in the coffin once. That’s not the birth the Buddha pointed to; that’s much too physical. The Buddha was pointing to a spiritual birth, the birth of clinging to “I” and “mine.” In one day there can be hundreds of such births. The number depends on a person’s facility for it, but in each birth the “I” and “mine” arises, slowly fades, gradually disappears, and dies. Shortly, on contact with another sense object, “I” and “mine” arise again. (Buddhadāsa, 1994: 86)

Buddhadāsa also agrees with the understanding that it is clinging, specifically clinging to “I” and “mine,” that is dukkha:

“Anything that has no clinging to “I” or “mine” is not dukkha. Therefore birth, old age, sickness, and death, and so on, if they are not clung to as “I” or “mine” cannot be dukkha. Only when birth, old age, sickness, and death are clung to as “I” or “mine” are they dukkha…. Only when there is clinging to “I” or “mine” do they become dukkha. With the pure and undefiled body and mind, that of the Arahant, there is no dukkha at all. (Buddhadaasa, 1994: 17)

Such an understanding seems more life affirming in that it denies that life is inherently dukkha, and by establishing cessation within life and not as some transcendent realm.
Another, more radical understanding has been offered by David Brazier:

“When the Buddha says that affliction (dukkha) is a truth, I do not think that he is saying that it is something which can be escaped. Quite the contrary. He is pointing out that it cannot be escaped. Dukkha is inescapable. To suffer affliction is authentic. It is real and it makes life real.” (Brazier, 1998: 51 – 52)

Obviously we can escape from at least some particular afflictions, at least temporarily. When hungry, we can eat; if we’re cold, we can wrap up etc. But there is no way to set up our lives so that affliction, pain or stress (dukkha) will not occur. A life with no dukkha is an unreal life, purely conceptual. Remember, even when the axle is centered in the wheel, there is friction, without which, the wheel could not roll. Movement and life requires friction. Resistance is necessary. The very process of life requires dukkha! Trees grow strong by way of resistance to the wind. The very nature of The Middle Way, and how the Buddha came to realize it, embodies this understanding. The Buddha had tried to escape dukkha, first through sensual indulgence, and then through self-mortification, and found no way out. But like the balanced wheel, he found a Middle Way, which brings us to the “Noble” aspect of the Realities for the Noble.

While not a very fashionable word nowadays (and not for lack of good cause, perhaps, given what we have been presented with as “nobility”) what is noble is what is worthy of respect. It is the opposite of something to be ashamed about. We know of, and have deep respect for, many people who bore great pain and suffering for worthy causes. Like the NYC firemen who rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11/01, they may even have gone into situations knowing that they could very well be hurt or killed. The Buddha would often refer to himself as coming from the warrior caste. He knew that the honorable soldier faces hardship out of nobility: “the possessing of high or excellent qualities or properties.” (Woolf, 1975: 777)

A noble warrior is one who is courageous. It takes courage not to run away from dukkha. The Buddha called the truth of dukkha noble. Facing dukkha is the reality for noble persons. How could it be something to avoid or escape? As he says in his introduction to the Middle Way, it is ignoble to indulge oneself to excess, and it is equally ignoble to indulge in such self-mortification as extreme fasting and abusing the body in any way such as extreme exposure or flagellation. (SN 56.11) Both of these strategies have the avoidance of dukkha as their purpose.

There is an old story about a farmer who travels many miles to consult with the Buddha. Upon sitting at the Buddha’s feet, he tells the Buddha that he has 83 problems. The Buddha asks him about his problems. The farmer begins, “Well, I’m a farmer, and I love to farm. But last year we had a drought and we almost starved to death because of the meager harvest. This year, there was too much rain, and many of the crops were destroyed.”
The Buddha sat and sympathetically nodded his head. “Yes, go on.”
“Well, I love my wife very dearly, but I find myself growing bored and looking after other women.”
The Buddha continued to nod his head and encouraged the farmer to share his troubles.
“I have a son and a daughter. They’ve made me very proud. But they’re stubborn, and don’t take my advice,” the farmer continued.
After delivering his long litany of problems to the Buddha, he asked, “So can you help me? I hear you are a great teacher.”
The Buddha responds, “Well, it’s true you have 83 problems, and you haven’t even mentioned others like the fact that you are growing old and that you will die, and that everyone you know and love will also grow old and die.”
The farmer was aghast. Why wasn’t the Buddha helping him? Why was he loading on even more problems?
Then the Buddha said, “I cannot help you with any of those problems. But perhaps I can help you with the 84th problem.”
Exasperated, the farmer asks, “What is the 84th problem?”
“You want a life with no problems,” replied the Buddha.

We would like a life with no problems. Ideally, we would not grow old, infirm and die. We would not have to deal with such unpleasantness as losing our teeth, our eyesight growing dim, bad breath, wrinkles, graying and balding hair, let alone tumors, miscarriages, and the fact that, as the Golden Archies sing, “the number of ways to die is infinite.” (Gothic Archies, 2006)

The traditional Buddhist teachings tell us we can avoid all these problems by never being born again; by escaping from the wheel of life into nirvanic bliss. Other spiritual traditions offer visions of heavens where we’d always be surrounded by the pleasant and beautiful. And because it’s not how our life actually is, we are often led to feel shame. Many people actually feel shame when the body does something innocuously natural like fart, or when bellies make gurgling noises, when skin wrinkles or becomes diseased! And because of this conditioned shame, huge amounts of money, time and energy are expended trying to deny the fact that we are not “perfect,” distracting ourselves in myriad ways. Whole industries, anti-aging products, and body enhancing surgery, are devoted to this vain pursuit. The Buddha tells us that “imperfection” is real and we do not need to feel ashamed. It is “perfection” that is purely conceptual and unreal. And because we’ve fallen for this deluded conceptualization of “perfection,” we then conceptualize the real world we live in as “imperfect!” In fact, facing dukkha is noble and ennobling. Not turning away, and not exacerbating it, is the noble response taught by the Buddha. This noble response to existential reality is enlightenment itself. It is transcending the conceptual duality of “perfection” and “imperfection” and embracing just this, life as it is, perfectly imperfect!

This means we do not have to wait for some “ideal conditions” in order to practice enlightenment. The Japanese Zen Master Dogen (1200 – 1252) repeatedly teaches the identity of practice and enlightenment. We do not practice in order to reach awakening: practice is awakening and awakening is practice. His text, Shushogi, signifying “the meaning of enlightened practice” begins with the following words:

“The most important question for all Buddhists is how to understand, with a completely clear appreciation, birth and death completely. Buddha (enlightenment) exists within birth and death. Then birth and death vanish (as a problem). Birth and death (as reality) are nirvana. All you have to do is realize that birth and death, as such, should not be avoided and they will cease to exist for then, if you can understand that birth and death are nirvana itself, you will not seek nirvana by trying to avoid birth and death. This understanding breaks the chains that bind one to birth and death. This is the way to be free from birth and death. This is the most important point in all Buddhism.” (Yokoi, 1976: 58 / Brazier, 1998: 55)

If we understand “birth and death” as dukkha, then the above passage is telling us that Buddha (awakening) exists within dukkha. Seeing this clearly, dukkha stops to exist as a problem. Birth and death, as reality, are nirvāṇa. Problems exist only in relationship to our agendas. The noble life, the awakened life, is living one’s life just as it really is. It is in this sense that, the Buddha is reported to have said upon his awakening, according to the Zen tradition, “How marvelous, each and every being, just as they are perfect and whole, lacking nothing!”

We want birth, health, youth, pleasure, success, clarity. But life is what it is: birth and death, health and illness, youth and ageing, pleasure and pain, success and failure, clarity and confusion. An authentic life cannot be one in which we are desperately trying to have one half of the totality and not the other half. Dukkha is not a problem keeping us from happiness. The idea that Buddhism leads to happiness is correct. That it does so by eliminating dukkha is questionable. The Buddha taught the truth of drishta dharma sukha viharin: “dwelling happily in things as they are.” (Hanh, 1998: 22)

With this understanding of dukkha, a new interpretation of samudaya is offered. Rather than understanding samudaya as the cause of dukkha, samudaya is seen as the second step of a four-step process that leads to the wholesome (awakened) life. (Brazier, 1998: 124)

Traditionally understood as what causes dukkha to arise, the second half of the word, –udaya, means “to go up,” “to arise” or “be drawn out,” deriving from ut meaning “up.” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/contextualize.pl?p.0.pali.1605304) The first part of the word, sam, has “with” or “together” among its most basic meanings. (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgibin/philologic/contextualize.pl?p.3.pali.1444698) This differs from the etymology offered by Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga, where he similarly says sam denotes ‘coming together’ and u denotes rising up, but says aya denotes a reason. (Ñāṇamoli, 1999: 501) But as note 4 points out, aya as “reason” is not found in the Pali Text Society dictionary in this sense. (Ñāṇamoli, 1999: 823) As the compound word, samudaya, we get “coming up along with” or “co-arising,” or what we might call “response” or “reaction.” Dukkha samudaya can thus be understood as that which arises in the presence of dukkha. The First Reality for the Noble Ones relates to what happens to us, and The Second Reality concerns the feelings that are provoked by dukkha. That they are noble and true means there is nothing wrong, accidental or shameful about this situation.

As we have seen, the Buddha calls the feelings that arise with dukkha, the longing for things to be otherwise, taṇhā, meaning “thirst.” While mostly understood as “craving,” we should not forget the literal meaning is “thirst.” Taṇhā refers to the field of experience we call feelings, emotions or passions. I emphasize that as Noble Truths, or truths understood by noble persons, the Buddha can be seen as telling us that emotions are natural and as such pose no problem. However, problems do arise from how we respond to them; what we do with them, or from our attempts to avoid having them.

Taṇhā is the natural urge to move away from or to eliminate pain (dukkha). Even the amoeba moves toward food and away from what threatens it. Without the instinct to move away from pain we could not long survive as individuals or as a species. This is why the Buddha used the word “thirst” and not “craving.” Thirst is natural. You don’t feel ashamed of being thirsty on a hot summer day. Why feel ashamed of your natural proclivity to have emotional reactions?

The problem with emotions arises with how we relate to them. For instance we’ve been told that to suppress a feeling like anger correlates with the incidence of cancer. This led to the belief that it was healthy to express our anger, vent and “let it out” until it was discovered that those who vent their anger are more prone to heart disease. What to do? The Buddha points out that to suppress or express are both attempts to avoid or eliminate actually feeling the feeling! Actually opening to the raw experience is both noble and healing. Like the Buddha’s offering to help the farmer with the 84th problem, he wishes to show us how to avoid piling unnecessary suffering on top of the unavoidable reality of dukkha.

Strong emotions, passions such as grief, anger, fear, lust and greed are like fire. The spark that ignites the fire releases stored energy. When we lose a loved one, it is not just the absence of the loved one, but all the energy that is contained in the history of a long relationship that is released as grief. Generally speaking, our reaction to affliction, the experience of dukkha, is often out of all proportion to the event itself because of this release of what has been stored up in us. When such a fire is fanned, it has the sense of urgency and the compulsion of a raging thirst. It is extremely uncomfortable and in the moment feels like it will never end. It is at just such times as these when we may do something impulsive that can bring more pain to ourselves and to others.

The Buddha offered a strong image to convey this. He says that lepers sometimes experience intense itching. There is really nothing that can be done to prevent the itching. The itching is dukkha. The leper may experience a craving or thirst to be free from the itching that is so powerful that he will put his arm into a fire because, though it burns away his flesh, it relieves the itching for at least a short time. In order to escape a temporary affliction, the leper inflicts upon himself an even greater affliction that will cause suffering for years to follow. Like the leper, when we are in the grip of intense craving for things to be other than they are, we may act in ways that cause us to be seriously burned.
(MN:75 http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.075x.than.html#leper)

However, the fires of our passions need not be destructive. They need not be feared. Anyone who has faced the cleansing flame of grief knows how strengthening and healing it can be. It is like the process of smelting ore into precious metal. Passion can inspire, enliven and sustain us. When engaged, dukkha can be a source of learning and growth, though it is easy to forget this in the midst of the fire.

In the midst of the fire, we are likely to pursue one of three strategies: we seek and grasp after pleasure, we seek to create a new life or way of being, or we seek oblivion. The Buddha tells us that we should let go of operating from these three strategies, which is not the same as letting go of the feelings.

When we are faced with dukkha and the feelings that arise, the first strategy of grasping after pleasure is known as greed, grasping and clinging. We seek pleasure as a way to distract ourselves. In order to avoid feeling affliction, we grasp after some temporary relief like the leper who puts his arm into the fire, and we end up exposed to serious harm. In fact, the most serious harm we do is often the result of our attempts to avoid or run away from dukkha.

The second strategy is to seek a different life, to have things be different. This aversive reaction is called anger or hate, and takes the form of blaming. We blame ourselves: “If only I were thinner, then I’d be happy.” “If I made his salary, then I’d be secure.” “If my meditation were deeper, then I’d not be upset by anything.” Or we blame others: “If it weren’t for my husband, I’d have the perfect marriage.” “If it weren’t for my boss, I’d love my job.” “If it weren’t for the traffic noise, I could have a deeper meditation.”

And finally, in seeking oblivion, the poison of delusion, many of us reach for the bottle, or joint, or whatever our drug of choice is. It might be television or exercise, and it might even be meditation practice with which we intoxicate ourselves, seeking the peace of oblivion, looking for the ‘yoga buzz.’ Indeed, many people misunderstood nirvāṇa as a kind of spiritual oblivion. Commonly translated as “extinction,” it was said to refer to the extinguishing of fire. Many translate it as “to blow out.” David Brazier offers a different translation:

In fact, the word means ‘without-wind.’ Nir means ‘out of’ or ‘without.’ Va means ‘wind…’ Wind is what makes fires dangerous. Everybody who listened to the Buddha would have understood this. We need the fire, but we need it under control. A fire extinguished is no use to anybody. (Brazier, 1998: 85)

When we understand the meaning as “without wind,” we see that it isn’t at all about putting the fire out. Wind makes fire dangerous, but without wind, the fire is useful. The Buddha’s instructions for living a noble, awakened life and the meditation practices he taught, offer us the opportunity to become masters of the fire. The Korean Zen Master, Kyong Ho (1849 – 1912) taught: “Don’t ask for perfect health – that’s just greed: make medicine from the suffering in sickness. Don’t hope to be without problems – that’s just laziness: accept life’s difficulties. Don’t expect your path to be free from obstacles – without them the fire of your enlightenment will go out: find liberation within the disturbances themselves.” (Brazier, 1998: 58 – 59)

With this understanding, the Third Reality for the Noble Ones, nirodha also gets a fresh interpretation. Often translated as “cessation,” a perhaps more accurate meaning of nirodha is “confine,” “restrict,” “enclose” or “contain.” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=88&table=macdonell&display=simple) Rodha originally meant an earthen bank, dam or blockade, with the denotation of “holding back, restraining, and shutting up in” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=136&table=macdonell&display=simple) and ni means “down.” If you’ve ever gone camping and made a fire, you know this image as the earth and stone bank with which you surround the fire in order to confine it and keep it from spreading disastrously.

It is a wonderful realization that the Buddha, a true son of Yoga, can be seen to have revamped the fire imagery of the Vedas and the fire cult of the Brahmins, in a way similar to the UpaniṢadic sages. Rejecting the overt practice of the priests who ruled over the fire sacrifice, the Buddha taught a different, interiorized mastery of fire.

Fire is, and has served as, a worldwide symbol of power, energy, passion, and emotion, and is closely associated with the idea of spirit. Fire is both useful and potentially dangerous. Spirituality is the art and practice of mastering our fire. Wind is what makes fire dangerous. The bank of earth we place around a fire protects it from the wind dispersing the fire or from putting it out completely. If we want the most useful fire possible, we build up the bank and cover the fire so that it is nearly completely contained by making an oven. Wind is channeled in an ordered way. Now the fire can even smelt ore and shape metal, melt sand and make glass, and cook food. The fire is now extremely useful for channeling it to a variety of skillful and beautiful ends. Nirodha means to protect the fire from the wind so that it is rendered useful and safe. Nirvāṇa means safe from the wind.

In order to create the heat necessary to smelt metal, the fire needs to be regulated, provided with a proper flow of air, and the energy needs to be harnessed so that it doesn’t leak out and dissipate. When applied to spiritual energy this is the practice of Yoga. This is the practice of yoking, or restraining one’s conditioned reactivity. We all have enormous potential that is all too often frittered away on trivial pursuits, conflict, distraction, and destruction. The Buddha wants us to harness this energy for the good of all beings.

His Third Noble Truth tells us that nirodha is the complete containment or restriction of our reactivity, our impulsive reactions or thirst that arise when confronted with dukkha. The practice of yoking is to refuse to dwell on or cling to the object of our thirst. And, it is by bringing conscious awareness to our breath – the “wind” that we begin to yoke our reactivity.

There were without doubt some traditions at the time of the Buddha, as well as before and since, that sought extinction. But the Buddha’s Yoga is not about annihilating or repressing the energy of our passion. It challenges us to the conscious direction of that energy. Nirodha means to contain, not to destroy or extinguish. By containing fire, civilizations arose. By containing our inner fire, our passion, we can transform our world.

The way to contain the energy of our feelings is not by suppressing them but by letting go of our attachment to the object of the feeling. This is a primary distinction one must learn to see. Feelings are forms of thirst or craving and it is always a thirst or craving for something. The cause of craving is affliction, or dukkha, but rather than look to the affliction we are all too quick to place our attention on the object of our craving that often has no direct connection with the cause of affliction. The Buddha’s yoga asks us to notice as soon as a craving arises, and then unhook from the object of our craving. It takes “gumption,” as Henepola Gunaratana says, to restrain the hand that reaches for the craved for object, but that effort allows the opportunity to look into the real driving factors at work.

We need not give up our desiring, but rather we let go of our attachment to the object of our desire. We take the backward step from our conditioning, and in that step find the possibility of freedom and creativity. We create the opportunity to respond creatively. By returning to the still point within, there is stillness and passion. We are alive to the movement within the stillness, and when we act, we do so from the stillness within the movement.

Magga means “path,” and traditionally is seen as the path that leads to awakening; to the cessation of dukkha. With the naturalistic understanding presented here, dukkha is not ended. It remains a fact of life. Our relationship to it, however, is radically transformed. We can indeed use each of the eight limbs of the Noble Eightfold Path as “prescriptive” of how to act in the world, and in so doing, make transformative changes in how we relate to dukkha. However, the path is also descriptive of the awakened life that naturally and authentically enfolds when our feelings, our passions have been yoked. So understood, the Middle Way is not the means to eliminate dukkha. It is the noble result of facing dukkha and working through what dukkha provokes in a wholehearted, courageous way. This path includes both “no” and “yes.” We say no to being taken over by our conditioned reactivity, and yes to facing our lives just as they are.

The eight limbs of the path are generally presented in English as: Right View (or Understanding); Right Thinking (or Intention, Aim, or Resolve); Right Speech; Right Action; Right Livelihood; Right Effort (or Diligence); Right Mindfulness: and Right Concentration (sometimes Meditation). Another, perhaps more helpful way of thinking of samyak (the word translated as “right”) is as meaning “complete,” “whole,” “coherent,” “congruent,” “proper,” and “appropriate.”

Samyak has the implication of “all flowing (or moving) in one direction.” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=173&table=macdonell&display=simple) This emphasizes the idea of congruence, coherence and coalescence. When looking at a river, we’ll see that the current in the middle flows swiftly. The water is powerful because it all flows in one direction. It is unified. If you watch the water at the edges of the river, you’ll see it move in vortices, and crosscurrents. One possible interpretation of the term “Middle Way” is this sense of unification of energy, all flowing together, not wasting energy or being divided against oneself. The Middle Way is not some meek compromise. It is living an authentic, congruent life of integrity.

While this interpretation of dukkha and its significance for practice is certainly rejected by traditionalists, I believe it offers a congruent way to understand practice and offers a way for a naturalist approach to liberation. I fully realize it will not satisfy those looking for transcendence and the cessation of dukkha. There are many of us who do not feel the need, see the reality, nor value such a traditional, transcendental understanding. This re-valuation is for them.

Bibliography

Access to Insight: Readings in Theravaada Buddhism,

Bodhi, B., 2000, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Sa.myutta Nikaaya, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Brazier, D., 1998, The Feeling Buddha. NY: Fromm International

Buddhadaasa, B., 1994, Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Digital South Asia Dictionary,

Feuerstein, G., 1997, The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga, Boston, Shambhala

Gothic Archies, The, 2006, The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events, “The World Is A Very Scary Place,” NYC, Nonesuch

Zen Naturalism and Sutras

Zen Naturalism is a path of inquiry. As such, it avoids dogmatic fundamentalist statements. It has as its base the spirit of non-attachment from views, the spirit of personal inquiry through meditation and through the techniques of science and the scientific method, the spirit of appropriate and skillful means.

Many schools of traditional, mainstream Buddhism base thier teachings on various collections of sutras. For instance, the Theravada school found throughout Southeast Asia bases their understanding of Buddhism upon what is referred to as the Pali Canon. Most Mahayana schools of Buddhism either base their understanding on one single text, like Nicheren Buddhism which is based upon The Lotus Sutra, or a small collection of texts such as Pure Land Buddhism which bases its teachings on the Three Pure Land Sutras. Other schools like Zen are influenced by texts such as The Lankavatara Sutra and the Avatamsaka Sutra, and especially the Platform Sutra, as well as various other texts uniuque to the Zen tradition.

Zen Naturalism does not consider any sutra or group of sutras as its basic scripture(s). Zen Naturalism draws inspiration from the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma as found in all the sutras, interpreted through a Naturalist understanding. Thus, Zen Naturalism also draws inspiration from the continuing discoveries of western science.

Zen Naturalism does not accept the systematic, and often hierarchical arrangements of the Buddhist teachings proposed or endorsed by any school of Buddhism. Zen Naturalism is committed to realize the spirit of Dharma as found in the various interpretations over time and across cultures.

Along with accepting sutras from the various traditions as valuable and worthwhile studying, Zen Naturalism is also open to finding inspiration from texts of non-Buddhist traditions, both religious and secular. Zen Naturalism considers the Dependent Origination of Buddhism and the various schools of Buddhism throughout its history as the necessary means for keeping the spirit of Dharma alive. As a further development of this process, Zen Naturalism sees itself as a 'new' form of Buddhism reflective of a contemporary, western understanding of the world, the cosmos and life itself. It recognizes that it too will change as new understandings replace old understandings. Keeping the "Don't Know Mind" is essential in keeping this open-ended inquiry from solidifying into a rigid, dogmatic creed of beliefs.

This spirit of inquiry, this spirit of commitment to all forms of action that can sustain questioning, insight, and compassion, is considered to be more important that any Buddhist institution or tradition.

Is Zen Naturalism a Religion?

The question may arise, “Is Zen Naturalism a religion?” And of course, the response completely depends on how “religion” is defined. Richard F. Gombrich, in his excellent book, Theravada Buddhism: A social history from ancient Benares to modern Colombo, mentions a monk who told him, “Gods are nothing to do with religion.” For all Buddhists, gods are powerful beings who are seen as capable of granting worldly boons, but who themselves are not omnipotent nor omniscient, nor are any seen as a creator. And, like all other beings throughout the world system, they are subject to birth, decay and death.

For Buddhists, religion is a soteriology. Religion is a matter of proper understanding and practice of the Dharma with the purpose of attaining liberation which is seen as the complete eradication of greed, hatred and delusion. For traditional Buddhists, a person who accomplishes this is truly happy – the only happiness which is not transient and conditioned. For such a person, once the body dies, he or she will not be reborn, and thus will never have to suffer and die again. As Gombrich makes clear, “For Buddhists, religion is what is relevant to this quest for salvation, and nothing else.”

This soteriological approach to religion is akin to yoga, and the words themselves have a similar meaning. Religion comes from the Latin religio which means ‘to bind back’ and yoga has the meaning of uniting or yoking. Such a religion is often characterized as a ‘path.’ While Gombrich states that such a religion is primarily one of belief, I think it more accurate to say that the only belief needed is one that agrees with the hypothesis that life as commonly lived and thought about is a state of delusion and bondage, and that it is possible to wake up to truth or reality. Then, a kind of faith is required that is open to testing the practices to see for oneself. It is actually less an orthodoxy than an orthopraxy. And this has been true, historically, for Buddhism. Splits in the sangha were generally based upon differences in practice and not in doctrine.

Another kind of religion is one Gombrich calls “communal” and is characterized as a pattern of action, solemnizing major milestones in a person’s life such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death as well as celebratory rituals, benedictions etc. It is more social and centered around the ordering of society.

Hinduism, while giving forth various soteriologies, is primarily a communal religion, conceptualized and codified in Brahmanical law books. For instance, marriage occupies the most important position among the sixteen sacred rites of India, after which, one is seen as entering into the householder’s stage of life. The Buddha couldn’t care less about marriage, and in fact saw it and all other aspects of communal religion as something to be left behind as having nothing to do with liberation – and even, in fact, being obstacles to it! For most of its history, Buddhism had no such rite as a Buddhist wedding.

So, Zen Naturalism is, and can be considered, a kind of ‘secular religion’ or yoga as it too is soteriological at base. Only here, liberation means to be liberated from our conditioned reactivity and false identifications. It is not the world-wary attempt to leave the world altogether that is found in early traditional Buddhism. But also, as a contemporary movement, and one that does not reject the world, it is also a ‘communal religion’ that celebrates life in community and society. As such, it calls for active engagement to better life and the world for all beings. And rituals of celebration are designed to create meaningful relations among the various beings and experiences of the world.

In any event, Zen Naturalism does not need to seek meaning and validity in any transcendent realm. Zen Naturalism leaves most metaphysical questions open, including whether there is anything truly existent that is ‘metaphysical.’ That this may mean we must re-define 'physical' is also an open question.

A Response to Andrew Olendzki on "Papanca"

Andrew Olendzki has written an article on “papañca” (proliferation) and, like all his work, it is simply wonderful. Showing just what papañca is, its pervasiveness, and that it is just this aspect of our mental experience that we are working with in meditation provides a valuable clarification of practice. It is just here that we find a basis of commonality across all Buddhist traditions. In the Pali Canon, we hear the Buddha say, “In the hearing let there just be hearing…” and so on. In Zen, we say, “Take the backward step” from proliferation to “just this.”

All Buddhist meditation has as its purpose, “seeing things as they are,” or as Suzuki Roshi famously put it, “seeing things as it is.” Mr. Olendzki writes, “As the mind moves through the stages of assembling experience, from awareness to perception to conception to proliferation, it moves farther and farther into the realm of micro-construction. At each step we see less of things as they are and more of things as we construe them to be. Meditation practice works to reverse this process.”

I agree with this analysis of the situation and his description of practice up to a point. Too often we speak rather glibly about seeing things “as they are” and Mr. Olendzki’s use of the phrase “awareness itself” creates a kind of new "ghost in the machine."

Such phrases, and I use them myself, can ultimately lead to a reification of something that is better understood as dependently originated. Cognitive science shows us how awareness is constructed at every level. Since we are neural beings, our experience is categorized (constructed or conceptualized) from the cellular level. Categories are part of our experience from the first stage of contact, “the simultaneous coming together of a sense organ, a sense object, and a moment of consciousness that cognizes one by means of the other,” as Mr. Olendzki writes. His further assertion that “This basic awareness is merely an episode of knowing, carrying no content or qualities of its own” goes a bit further than the evidence provides. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write in Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, a book I believe every practitioner should read – if for no reason other then to be challenged to look deeper into their own concepts – “Categorization is not a purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact of experience. Rather, the formation and use of categories is the stuff of experience. It is part of what our bodies and brains are constantly engaged in. We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, “get beyond” our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that.”

I do believe that what vipassana meditation can and does do, is get us back out of the “stuff” we add on to the first knowing, but to assume that first knowing is truly “things as they are” is itself to be adding on a thought or conceptualization. This is why I prefer (as more accurate) the translation of the Mahayana poem, “Trust In Mind” that begins “The Great Way is easy for one who is not attached to picking and choosing (preferences)” rather than “The Great Way is easy for one who does not pick and choose (has no preferences).” We seem to pick and choose at the neuronal level before we are even aware that we’ve done so. Even the amoeba categorizes (picks and chooses) the things it encounters into food and nonfood, what it moves toward or moves away from.

We can, I believe, go beyond our attachment to intellectual concepts, but this is not the same as saying we can go beyond all concepts as neural structures that allow us to mentally characterize our categories and reason about them. It is not merely that our bodies and brains determine that we will categorize; they also dictate what kinds of categories we will have and what their structure will be. “In the hearing, let there just be the hearing,” but let us not forget that we have ears (and eyes and so on) that work in certain very definite ways and not in others. Hearing "itself" hears only some things, and not others. There is no hearing "as it is" that is not dependently conditioned. And that is enough to realize in order to live "freely" in this conditioned world.

Yours In Dharma,
Pobsa Frank Jude

As both a Yoga teacher and a Dharma teacher, I feel moved to respond to two articles in the January 2008 issue. While appreciating Shambhala Sun's publishing an interview with Hatha-Yoga teacher Rodney Yee, I am dismayed, once again, to find yoga conceptualized as postural practice! To ask if one "began yoga before beginning meditating" perpetuates this misunderstanding. Sadly, Rodney only offered a half-correction when he said, "in some ways yoga is meditation." Until recently, if you spoke of "yoga and meditation" in India, you would be met with the perplexed query, "But are they two?" For millennia before the arising of Hatha-Yoga, yogis (such as the Buddha) practiced yoga primarily by meditating. Patanjali's Yoga-Sutra is a concise model of yogic practice that would be extremely familiar to any Buddhist practitioner (who practices yoga every time she takes her seat on the cushion). This is especially so for a practitioner of vipassana. Patanjali’s definition of yoga is a description of meditation. It wasn't until just about 1,000 years ago that the postures (asanas) westerners now think of as "yoga" began to be practiced as a separate form or tradition of yoga known as "Hatha-Yoga." If one practices asana without the foundation of meditative mindfulness, you may be exercising, but it is not yet yoga. I believe this point is an important one to reiterate because a more accurate understanding of the relationship of Buddhism to the larger Yoga tradition helps us to see the family resemblances as well as the differences with greater clarity and appreciation.

I am also happy to see Shambhala Sun take up the very important issues raised by the so-called "new atheists" in "Mind, Matter, or God?" I too wish these writers would engage with the particular issues raised by the various Buddhist traditions and not limit themselves to the "Big Monotheistic Three."

However, I feel I must respond to erroneous statements made by Joan Sutherland Roshi and Ajahn Amaro. Roshi opens with the assertion that "belief per se tends not to be a central concern for Buddhists." This oft-made contention was one of the factors that drew me, a "scientific materialist" to Buddhism many years ago. But all too soon, I found much disguised -- and not so disguised -- theistic thinking presented by the various Buddhist Traditions. Roshi herself falls back on a belief that is itself not universally accepted within all Buddhist traditions (the Trikaya doctrine) when she says that the atheist writers fail to take account of "all three of the kayas." I was taken aback when she further says, "... they have lots of trouble with the sambhogakaya, the realm of the supernatural, the transpersonal, a fluid world between the other two, where things don't quite have solid form yet, a realm of dreams, imagination, art and creativity. To them, this is simply the realm of superstition, and therefore they deny sambhogakaya experience which is a vital part of who we are."

I believe Roshi presents a confused description of the sambhogakaya by conflating it with "dreams, imagination, art and creativity." And I wonder how does she arrive at the notion that science denies "dreams, imagination, art and creativity"? In fact, science studies these phenomena and has repeatedly shown their naturalistic basis. Does she really believe that dreams, imagination, art and creativity are based upon the supernatural? Would she then say Buddhism requires a belief in the supernatural? Wouldn’t this then make Buddhist thought a dualistic system, setting up the supernatural over and against the natural? It is true that naturalists or scientific materialists do not accept the existence of the supernatural; but in any case, there is simply no need to postulate some supernatural realm merely to explain the existence of dreams, imagination, art and creativity!

I have found it interesting that many Buddhists (including teachers) tend to denigrate the theistic beliefs of the Big Three, and then substitute "mind" or "buddhanature" as some salve for their wounded egos wishing to assert some fundamental difference between what we "truly are" from "nature." Despite Melvin Mcleod’s insulting dismissal, (“I don’t think anybody, no matter what they argue intellectually, actually believes their subjective experience doesn’t have some nonmaterial basis…”) I do indeed believe just that. His inability to imagine the heartfelt understanding of others is yet another subtle form of religious intolerance. My spirituality rejects all forms of “supernaturalism.” It seems to me, every so-called "spiritual" tradition that valorizes some postulated "non-material realm" ends up devaluing the material! You can hear the disdain for matter when he writes, "You don't have to believe in God to think you're more than just cells." I for one, stand in mute awe that "just cells" (which in fact, as inherently empty, are not and can not be "just cells" independent of the totality, and therefore neither are we -- science and Dharma both agree on this) are indeed among the myriad natural causes and conditions of just this radiant suchness! I don’t see how this diminishes us as humans – or as Buddhas! Perhaps an outdated understanding of matter is at the base of such sentiment? In response to his apparently rhetorical question, “So is this goodness, this human nature, purely material…?” I would recommend Michael Shermer's excellent The Science of Good and Evil for a completely naturalistic, evolutionary explanation for the origination of morality that can be shown to predate religion.
Ajahn Amaro also shows the confused thinking about what science really is and how it operates that is all too typical of many non-scientists, as shown by his contention that "what makes scientific materialism, which would aptly describe the atheist view, unrealistic and therefore unappealing is the incredible conceit that sooner or later we'll have the whole thing figured out." Could there perhaps be some projection at work here? I have found many Buddhists who feel that the Buddha “figured it all out” long ago, and that we should just accept all he is alleged to have taught uncritically. Oh, they say we are not to just accept, but question the teaching, but despite the Buddha’s clarion call for free inquiry, it has been my experience that many teachers and practitioners leave large areas of Buddhist doctrine exempt from such questioning. While I totally agree with Ajahn Amaro that the Buddha encourages inquiry, and that we don’t need to figure it all out, the Ajahn's assertion that "Scientific materialists are often frightened of uncertainty and not knowing" is absurd.

Scientists work happily with the understanding that all claims to any validity for both data and theory are provisional. Here's the physicist Richard Feynman on the subject: "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain. In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar."

Not only are scientists not afraid of uncertainty, they find life, purpose, and even a sacred truth in the uncertainty which they find lacking in religious certainties, and dogma. Here is Ann Druyan speaking of Carl Sagan: "He never understood why anyone would want to separate science, which is just a way of searching for what is true, from what we hold sacred, which are those truths that inspire and awe. His argument was not with God but with those who believed that our understanding of the sacred had been completed. Sciences's permanently revolutionary conviction that the search for truth never ends seemed to him the only approach with sufficient humility to be worthy of the universe it revealed. The methodology of science, with its error-correcting mechanism for keeping us honest in spite of our chronic tendencies to project, to misunderstand, to deceive ourselves and others, seemed to him the height of spiritual discipline. If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good sceptic." I think it a sad commentary on our culture that this noble word has become something of a pejorative. It simply means "thoughtful" from the Greek skepscepticus and its Latin derivative, scepticus means "inquiring" and "reflective."

Again, it is ironic that Ajahn Amaro would assert that materialists (atheists) are frightened of uncertainty and not knowing when as you can see from the quote above, it has long been a common argument of the atheists that it is the religionists (particularly theists) who fear the unknown and seek palliative solace in their "absolute truths." I don't think we can deny that the appeal of most religion for most people is the definitive, absolutist answers that end up leading to the intolerance we see all around us. In light of the current troubling state of political discourse we are witnessing, where presidential candidates are being asked how they believe the “truth” of the Bible, perhaps the results of a 1999 Gallup poll need to be pondered. The poll asked "If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be X would you vote for that person?" with X representing Catholic, Jew, Baptist, Mormon, black, homosexual, woman, and atheist. Six of the eight received more than 90 percent approval, with only 59% saying they'd vote for a homosexual and only 49% voting for an atheist!!!

I agree, based upon my own experience, with Ajahn Amaro when he says that Buddhadharma and Buddhist practice can help us to "greet uncertainty as the well of potential" and that "when we meet the unknown from a place of selflessness or self-effacement, then it is not frightening but rather full of wonder." And I also affirm that this is true of the scientific method as well. The very process of "doing" science requires one to accept and abide in "Don't Know Mind." In fact, I have found that it is much easier for Buddhists (including teachers) to pay mere lip service to Don't Know Mind, while abiding in a variety of unquestioned doctrinal beliefs that seem designed to give easy comfort.

I would like to conclude with the following quote from Carl Sagan's Gifford Lectures, where he succinctly states the position of scientific materialism: "I think this search does not lead to complacent satisfaction that we know the answer, not an arrogant sense that the answer is before us and we need do only one more experiment to find it out. It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us."
This is the kind of Dharma I can fully accept and practice with integrity.

Yours in Dharma
Rev. Pobsa Frank Jude Boccio
www.mindfulnessyoga.net