Ch.14 - One Life

Virtue is the Bedrock of All Spiritual Teaching

The Law of Dependent Origination

We Are All Part of a Single Process: One Life

The Dharma is a Living Principle That we are All Experiencing

[This chapter investigates The Buddha’s teaching within the context of other religions and spiritual practice as a whole as well as the wider scope of Life itself.]

Virtue is the Bedrock of All Spiritual Teaching

So, there are three aspects of the Buddha’s teachings, of which the practice of meditation is the core of the second part. It is important to understand that historically one would not have received instructions in the cultivation and purification of mind until becoming well established in the first part of the practice, which is the cultivation of right conduct, or virtue. Virtue has always historically been the bedrock of all spiritual practice and teachings. Our mind simply will not develop concentration beyond a certain point if we are not restrained in our behaviour.

The Buddha taught meditation within the context of a whole approach to life. He would not have taught meditation to anybody who had not previously made a really big commitment to virtuous conduct, or an effort to live as harmlessly as possible.

All religions, essentially, are trying to teach us to behave appropriately and considerately. When the Buddha spoke of the time when humanity would degenerate, he did not talk of the degeneration of religion but the degeneration of the basic moral principles of behaviour, motivation and conduct that underpinned our societies. And the first branch of the Buddha’s Eightfold Noble Path, the aspect of virtuous or right conduct, is teaching us to behave kindly and considerately rather than selfishly. This is something you find in all religions.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, one of his few direct teachings, was a teaching on virtuous conduct. It was imploring us to behave considerately. He does not tell us that to get to heaven we must go to church on a Sunday, but that the only way to improve our current condition and reach a place where we might experience the end of suffering beyond this life is through virtue.

So it is clear that faith alone is not going to carry us all the way, any more than simple understanding will. Studying the principles of swimming without ever getting in the water is no more going to keep us alive if one day we should fall overboard than just believing we will float. Somewhere along the line we will have to learn to swim if we are going to know that we will be safe in the water.

So all religions at their heart are trying to implore us to behave considerately. These days we live in a secular society in which we have tended to become a little bit cynical about religion. But the problem is, while rejecting the formulaic side of faith, we seem sadly to have also rejected the importance of putting moral conduct at the forefront of our social values. So with the decline of religion, sadly, has also come the decline in morality, and this is most unfortunate. Certainly it does not bode well if we are seeking to free ourselves from suffering.

Being the independent, free-thinking people that we are so proud of being we do not like being told what to do, and because of this we have also rejected the essence of much of the spiritual guidance that in the past has helped to provide a moral compass by which to find our way. Of course, if we were all going to choose to behave considerately we would not need such a compass, but the jury is out as to whether we do make intelligent choices with regard to our welfare and that of those around us.

With no guidance on how to behave over recent history we have tended to see a degeneration of the moral values which have always been at the heart of all religious teachings. There is a danger then that we might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater on that one, just because we do not like to be told what to do.

In our insistence on personal freedom and freedom of expression, non-compliance often starts to feel like the most empowered response. We are all intelligent enough to see that we will need to consume less and learn to live simpler lives if we are going to either flourish individually or flourish as a species. While it seems we are driven almost entirely by the survival instinct these days, there is little regard for the quality of the world in which we survive. As I have said already, our technology is probably not going to kill us, but have we yet asked what it might be doing to the essence of us as humans?

The Buddha, like all great teachers of the past, implored us to behave kindly and considerately. He did not say, 'Because otherwise you are not going to get to heaven', although he did make clear that such abodes are only reached through virtue and kindness. He explained the mechanisms by which we sow the seeds for suffering, usually without knowing that we are doing it, and how we bring suffering to ourselves now and in the future on account of our behaviour and what prompts it.

So on top of pointing out a moral framework as the basis of our welfare, he taught the process by which we might train the mind in such a way that its propensity to come to suffering would be diminished. That training was the practice of meditation, through the development of both concentration and mindfulness, and through the refinement of character.

The purification of mind through meditation Sama Samādhi formed the second part of the Buddha's Eightfold Noble Path. The third aspect of the Buddha’s teaching is in Pali called Panna, or wisdom. This is the development of the insight that comes upon us as we learn to look more carefully, objectively and self-honestly at life. When we start to see how life really functions we see what is called the law of Dependent Origination, or the creative intelligence behind life. We see the causal process, the creative process that we are a part of, and in seeing it our sense of entitlement is gradually dismantled and our feeling of responsibility or accountability develops.

Seeing this for ourselves is an extremely compelling experience, and when we do see for ourselves what is really going on here in life the urge to behave selfishly is cut off at the root. Prior to that we have to learn to behave ourselves as an act of choice and through restraint, because the tendency to be selfish or greedy or unkind may still arise in us.

The first stage is to be asked to behave nicely, which is what all religions have asked us to do. The second stage is the process of mental training by which we can start to make friends with our mind and stop fighting with it. It is the gradual training of the mind that brings it into a really coherent, organised state. From that coherent state we start to see what an extraordinary thing this life actually is. Not seeing that is only on account of our minds being in a muddle, and the suffering we create is all on account of that confused and muddled mind.

As our mind starts to settle and become calm, we begin to see what is going on and we realise, ‘Wow, OK, that’s how it is'. At that point we start to restrain ourselves not just as an act of will but because we are beginning to taste the sweet fruits of having an organised mind and to recognise the misery of a messy mind.

All of the spiritual teachers of the past had at heart our best interests, because they longed for us to be free of suffering. In their different ways they had various ideas about how we might free ourselves from suffering, but all of them would agree on the fact that the first way to free yourself from suffering is to behave properly.

The Law of Dependent Origination

What marks the Buddha as profoundly different from other spiritual teachers, although not so much from the Hindu religion, is the way in which he explains the law of Dependent Origination, or the creative process, the law of cause and effect or what we call karma. Now karma does not appear on the radar of western religious thought much at all, although the Bible does indeed teach us that as we sow, so shall we reap. The effect of behaving badly according to western religious principles is that you would not be approved of by your god, or maker, or whatever, and may not thus be granted access to a higher state after death.

What the Buddha extremely skilfully pointed out was the way in which we can bring the mind into a state of coherence and focused concentration whereby we can investigate the effects of our behaviour for ourselves. This process finally takes us beyond judgement of better or worse and beyond the point where we have to stand on the word of others, be they scientists or religious leaders, to the point where we start to see the intelligence behind life. He also explained how to investigate the functioning of consciousness so that we can see what happens to us as a result of our behaviour and actions.

These religious teachings have all pointed out that you do not come to a pleasurable experience at the end of this life unless you live this life in a reasonably considerate and meritorious way. The Buddha explains and teaches us how to investigate for ourselves the process by which we get there. He showed life to be an intelligent causal process, as a chain of what we call dependently arising conditions. The conditions we find within our life are the fruiting of, or the effects of, past conditions. Seeds sown in the past fruit as conditions now.

And this is absolutely at the heart of what the Buddha was teaching us. He was teaching us how to see for ourselves that we are now experiencing the effect of past actions, and that the way that we act and behave and think and speak now will be the ground of what we experience in the future. What the Buddha taught us was that only by seeing for ourselves how things are do we reach the point of acceptance of them as they are. This acceptance is what we call equanimity.

That is what marks the way the Buddha taught as being so different. Because our western religious teachings would have us believe that what we are experiencing is the result of a creator that decided to make it like this. What the Buddha showed us is that when you look really deeply into the law of Dependent Origination and you watch it functioning, you will see the same principle at work in absolutely everything, everywhere.

We Are All Part of a Single Process: One Life

And you’ll understand that we are all part of a single process: One Life. A single creative intelligence that does not vary from time to time, and certainly does not favour one person over another. And that you will always see, when you really look in depth, that there is not a hair out of place in this process.

Now that is an extraordinary thing to take on board. That is a very profound realisation to come to. But it is that realisation, when we come to it, that cuts off at the root all the conflict that we have with life and our place within it. When we see what is actually going on here we sit so exquisitely and naturally in our place within it and there is no ground for conflict with it.

The path out of suffering starts with the act of acceptance that this is what it is. Because whether you understand how or why it is the way it is, it is the way it is. And the only thing you can really do if you are going to get on is to accept that it is the way it is.

Beyond that the Buddha showed us that not only is it blatantly obvious that it is the way it is, but he showed us that it was always only ever going to be like that. And then we come to the realisation, 'Why ever did I expect it to be something different?' That puts us right bang in the centre of our own predicament, right in the driving seat, utterly accountable and responsible for ourselves, and that is a very empowering place to be.

As the Buddha said to those around him just before he died, 'Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own salvation with diligence'. What he was basically saying was, 'Look, I may have shown you a way, but I have not saved anyone. I have not worked anybody’s way out of suffering.'

Each and every single one of us has to free ourselves from suffering, and no-one else is going to do that for us. Though someone may come along and give us a helping hand from time to time, nobody else is going to take away from us our own tendency to bring ourselves to grief but us. And that is what the Buddha said. He said look, the Buddha has not saved anyone. Nobody has ever saved anyone else. Work it out for yourself.

So what he was doing was showing us how to take responsibility for ourselves. The path that he taught was the process by which we take that responsibility, and as such meditation is only a part.

This word Dharma is used in Sanskrit, and in Pali the word is Dhamma. One of the meanings of it is truth. It is an extraordinarily loaded word. But what it means is the way of things, the suchness of it. The Buddha was teaching us the way of things. He was asking us to look directly into the nature of our experience, unclouded by news or expectations. Once we have come to see things as they are, this becomes our teacher.

It is the understanding of what is suffering which is the first Noble Truth. The understanding of the cause of suffering is the second Noble Truth. The understanding of what is the cessation of suffering is the third Noble Truth, and the way, or the path, that leads to the cessation of suffering is the fourth Noble Truth. This is what the Buddha was asking us to see for ourselves.

The Dharma is a Living Principle That We Are All Experiencing

That effectively is what the Buddha taught but it is also what we come to see. And it is when we see it that it becomes a living Dharma. As I stated at the very beginning of the book, The Dharma is nothing more than a living principle that we are all experiencing. It is not just a doctrine that we read on the page or hear expounded by a teacher. It is the very process of life that we are living. The Dharma points directly at life and the principles by which it functions, manifests, works, behaves, that we are all a part of. It is a living and dynamic principle, and meditation is a way to look deeply enough into it to stop being confused or surprised by what is going on.

Overcoming our confusion is surely a worthwhile achievement. But the Buddha is not suggesting we solve our confusion by having a jolly good think about life. He is asking us to learn to pay attention. If you had spent an hour meditating for every hour you spent trying to figure out what on earth this is all about, you may well have got there by now. You would probably have come to see for yourself, without standing or leaning upon the word of others, which is something else the Buddha told us to be careful of. He said, 'Do not believe what I say because people call me the Buddha, learn to look and see for yourselves.'

So what do we see when we glimpse beyond the veil of appearances to the truth that lies behind them? We see that what we might have assumed to be the roots of suffering, things like greed, selfishness, anger and hatred, are not innate within any being. These things are all the result of confusion. It is ignorance, or not understanding, that is the real cause of our suffering.

Any being who is not confused about what is going on here will experience the fading away, in stages, of greed, selfishness, anger and hatred. It is the very seeing of what you are a part of that performs the function of cutting off those things. So if you think that it is greed and hatred, selfishness and all the other things that is the root of suffering, it is not. Confusion, not understanding, ignorance is the cause of suffering.

Ignorance is resolved by coming to know, by coming to see for yourself. So this exercise of meditation, if you really see it for what it is, is a little bit more than an exercise in how to manage your stress or concentrate upon your breath. It is a doorway through to an understanding of life and your part in it. And at many levels it is probably what we came here for, is it not? To figure this lot all out for ourselves so we can make our peace with it?

As the Buddha said, there is a way that leads to certainty, to clarity, beyond doubt. That place of being beyond doubt is the place of seclusion and peace and the end of suffering. We are only afraid, we are only full of doubt because we are confused. We do not know. But the extraordinary and wonderful thing is that when you see for yourselves, what you see is awesome.

We only made a right old muddle of it because we did not understand what was going on. It is a great shame really, and one over which many tears have been shed. I suppose if we just got given a proper user’s manual when we arrived here, a proper set of instructions, we might not have made such a muddle of it.

But the encouraging thing is that of all those who have walked the path to the point of seeing for themselves, none of them have come back and said, 'Oh dear, what a frightful place this is'. They have all come back convinced that it is truly amazing. It is in their inability to express just how amazing it is that it comes to be called divine.

It was not that the Buddha failed to recognise this extraordinary process, but that he recognised how in our confusion we are at great risk of causing so much suffering for ourselves and others. But when you see it, when you see the extraordinary intelligence at work in all of this, your willingness to harm yourself in the pursuit of what you want will end.

That stillness that I ask you to connect to when you start your meditation - there is more intelligence in that stillness than you have even begun to understand. Behind the arising and passing of things and their display, behind our entanglement with it, our true nature rests effortlessly within itself, in a state of stillness and peace that has never been disturbed, and it has never been in conflict.

When we stop for a moment and really look out at the world, not the one we as humans have created but the one that is expressing itself everywhere as nature, we do not see that it is in conflict, but that it rests effortlessly within itself, as it has done for countless ages. It has maintained itself, kept itself in balance, tidied itself up on its own and maintained the life that flows through it effortlessly. The world is not inherently in conflict. The only thing in conflict is our idea of ourselves as humans, each of us individually and as a group. And it is the letting go, in stages, of our intoxication and fixation with the idea of ourself that puts us gradually back in touch with that intelligence that really governs life. And that process is the process of coming gradually out of suffering.

So in your insistence on having your own way and not liking to be told what to do, and all the freedoms you seek to grant for yourself, before you insist on them, ask if you yet know better. It is not your personal freedom, and securing it, that marks the end of your suffering. It is your willingness to live in accordance with the principles and intelligence that is actually governing life. Coming into alignment with that and not being in conflict with it is the only path out of suffering there has ever been. The Buddha did not create this path, he simply pointed it out in case we could not see it for ourselves.