Is
Buddhism of actual importance to our age?
How I see Buddhism Lecture given before the Buddhist association of
Bonn, on August 19th, 2007?
Consider for a moment the following: Within the short time
of our communication here, hundred of thousands of people are being born
or are dying. These occurrences are so self-evident that we hardly take
notice of them. Nevertheless they belong to the few really important
indeed they are the most important events of all, for the individual as
well as for the whole of mankind. Now it is amazing how the language
circumscribes this important fact with no exact rigorously unyielding,
appropriate word – with the word suffering.
Did you ever notice
what force is appealed to characterized and expressed in this world? The
thought and action of all mankind have turned and are always turning
around this dynamic process. And does it not determine the tendency and
final purpose of every religion, philosophy, of all ethics essentially?
Does not the whole of medical science centre on this conception? Could
medicine subsist at all without the power of suffering?
Somehow,
slowly creeping and unexpected suffering successfully outwits the human
life with its destroying, decomposing effect: sometimes just at a
moment when man thinks himself altogether free from suffering. When he
is in his prime, in the full vigour of his life, he nourishes the
illusive idea that the beauty and perfection of his individuality could
never be destroyed. Imagine fully the power and violence of such a
tragedy: how the force of suffering proceeds without regard or pity
under so many masks. For instance when it forces man to glorify mourning
and pain (its characteristic marks) into something exalted and sublime
in art and poetry; and in singing (the sweetest form of the language)
the most deeply felt sorrows!
Yet, astonishing as it may be,
there exist counterforce’s enabling man to stand this power of suffering
and without resignation too. How strong and effective it ever may work –
finally it is nothing but one form of the lawfulness of life and by no
means comprehends or perhaps exhausts the human essence in its totality;
it is rather the most efficient, successful stimulus for learning to
employ the faculties and forces in such a manner as to see and know
suffering as it really is – some evanescent process. The other form is
to be and remain free of suffering.
In historical tradition, the
first man to deal with suffering, its origin and overcoming it, purely
with means of cognisance, was the Buddha. He explained how, with the use
of the faculties of intelligence, of reason, of will, understanding,
joy, tranquillity of mind – to name but some – sound humanity is
awakened and man, by evolving these powers, is enabled to joyfully,
quietly and with clearconsciousness, experiences the state of
liberation.
It is about this way of life, form of life, that I
want to speak to you today. The actual importance of a thing begins for
us, obviously, with the use we can make of it in our practical life.
Now, suffering is certainly the least “practical” thing in the world. It
paralyzes our energy, keeps us in the spell of fake hopes and despair,
convulses our feeling and perceptions, and our thinking and conscious
processes propel us downward in a whirl of peaceless entanglement. Thus
it makes us, in the literary sense of the word, a lamentable, helpless
caricature of what we really strive for and could also attain by
lawfulness. Everybody may have tried honestly and repeatedly, according
to his special nature, to clarify what I want to show you next. So you
may take it for a proof of your experiences as well as mine and let it
be, at the same time, encouragement never to yield in the endeavour of
putting en end to suffering.
You are acquainted with the
comprehensive and precious Buddhist literature and have read it more or
less intensely according to your gifts; you know by heart one or the
other verses from “song of the monks”, one or the other aphorisms from
the “path of verity”, you have discovered some parables as specially
proper, especially helpful to your own striving. I remember here, e.g.
the wonderful comparison with regard to five groups of individuality:
physical form resembling a bubble of foam; feeling raindrop; perception a
mirage; thinking resembling the apparently solid, but actually hollow
and void trunk of the banana-tree; and consciousness as resembling the
juggler practicing his deceiving tricks in the plain light of the open
market (Samyutta Nikaya 22). And now, you are giving way to a certain
state of mind which makes you – alas, for so short a time – forget the
world, life and sorrow. Soon, however, you may come to ask: why can I
not find even here the constant trust and support I longed for, because,
such a desire is based on an error. Trust and strengthening are not to
be attained by
giving way to ever so noble feelings, ever so clear thoughts. Trust and
support result from the equalization of the human faculties and forces.
But this balance is disturbed if man does not discern and make use of
this own specific potential of force. No arguing, no sophistry, no
logical reasoning will be of any help. The measure of the individual
life-potential cannot be pressed into rigid schemes, altered by rites or
ceremonies, or defined by standards and scales. Attentiveness and
always attentiveness is the only means of discerning it.
Let me
show you a practical example. You all know Buddha’s word: “Adhering is
the root of suffering” (Majjhima Nikaya 15). How can you make use of
this word in your daily life?
You experience this adhering as
the root of suffering if you have lost a beloved friend: the pain of
separation, the whole depressive force of suffering becomes effective.
Only if you learn how to let die away the dreary, weakening always
connected with mourning, will Buddha’s word become a help. If you
clearly see that loosing the beloved person and being separated from him
means on now account the weakening or, perhaps, the loss of your power
and that it is silly to mourn since it is impossible to change the
unchangeable lawfulness. Such cognisance may help to melt away the
painful spasm so that the disturbed volume of force can more easily and
quickly redress the sound proportion with the individual potential of
force.
Let me give you another example in order to show how in
daily life adhering can be experienced as the “root of suffering” and
how it may turn out to be of great help in overcoming suffering if
antipathy, disgust at a person or thing become so intensive that you can
see no way to free yourself other than turning away from it. In this
case, you have also experienced “adhering as the root of suffering”, at
the same time however the relief which is given with the turning away.
But if you should see in the turning away nothing except the elimination
of an annoying disturbance, right use has not been made of your
attentiveness.
To see only the annoying in whatever disturbances
you have, does not lead to right cognisance and its consequence:
successful practice of Buddha’s word: “Adhering is the root of
suffering.” Something is “annoying” only if we lack the concentration of
life force. And here my question is: Who can bring about this
concentration for you? In other words, can you, with this method of
turning away, win a concentration of life force? A hundred times you may
turn away – and always you will be slipping back into your own faults.
But
what is to do?
Man must be carefully attentive lest the
concentration of life force be troubled by whatever sentiment, whatever
perception or thought, lest it be drawn into regions where the disturbed
force of life would exhaust itself in a permanent circling around
desire, mental images, speculations (either pro and contra) and that –
instead of forming a sound resolution – man is taken by anger and
indignation, deploring his unfavourable circumstances bitterly; or
talking and talking them over again, writing and reading, musing,
painting restlessly, in short: making his adverse circumstances the very
pole of his entire conduct in which he comes to see even a helpful –
but in truth illusive – medicine against “adhering, the root of
suffering”. In this connection I remind you of the impressive
description the Buddha gave to Sariputta: “Once I was resting at a fork
in the road. And shepherd boys came spitting at me, throwing at me
excrements, passing their water over me and drilling sharp blades of
grass into my ears. But, Sariputta, I could not remember one evil
thought arising in me at that time” (Majjhima Nikaya 12). This is no
doubt one of the greatest examples of the concentration of life force
and its result – equanimity of mind. To find here the right practical
application for the individual does not seem so very difficult, even
nowadays.
Now examine your own organism quite unbiasedly! It is
the expression of perfect, immutable lawfulness. And I am asking once
more: Why don’t you acknowledge this lawfulness? In childhood you were
not able to, since energy, intellect, willpower, and understanding could
not yet be used in the right way.
Think it over: Could there
exist any human being with whom from the moment of conception, by taking
food and nothing but food, a something has come to shape itself in a
perfectly systematic way into what we call our organism and later on our
individuality? The organism is the very factor of order for your life,
no matter how we treat it. Its lawful order of the sense-organ processes
cannot be altered by you or anybody else without injuring the whole
course of life. Likewise nobody can exchange his sense organs or replace
one organ by another. It is no doubt possible to support the working of
the organs through a suitable assistance, though impossible to alter
their functional capacities, in the long run.
Now consider
yourself. Do you employ the “sixfold sixness” – of the sense organs of
seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking – with
necessary attentiveness? Or are you rather inclined to carelessness in using them? Are
you really clearly conscious of the functions of your senses? Maybe your
reply is: I cannot, I am not a monk, a nun who see therein their main
life work. – How thin then is this objection when you only observe the
fact that you as well as the monk and nun can but live by using these
sense organs. Or is the lawful functioning of the sense processes solely
applicable for monks and nuns? No!
“The cooperation of eye,
form and working consciousness is visual contact. The distinct visual
contact is visual sensation. The distinct visual sensation is visual
perception. And the fully distinct visual perception is visual concept”
(Majjhima Nikaya 148). Likewise with the remaining five sense processes.
Especially important is the participation of consciousness in the
occurring visual contact, hearing contact a.s.f., without which a
functioning of the organism could not be possible. Man would fall
senseless and, with continuous unconsciousness, die.
This
lawfulness guarantees the reasonable use of the organism for every man,
without respect of person, profession, or name. But attentiveness is the
indispensable postulate as it is the guarantee for the reasonable use
of the sense organs too. Lawfulness is incorruptible, not to be
influenced by either desire or craving, nor experiments of any kind.
Lawfulness would react with rejection only otherwise and man would
realize, sooner or later, that it is impossible that way.
Freedom
from suffering presupposes the unconditioned acknowledgement of the
lawful nature of our organism. But it is not at all unconditioned
acknowledgement if we continuously weaken the organism by overstraining
one sense or the other (how fair the purpose may be, on the other hand);
if we permanently fail to understand the symptoms of fatigue as
warnings for reasonable use, if we insist upon carrying through our
will, our opinions in order to perhaps evade occasional inconveniences
or to get advantages or to feed our personal ambitions.
With
impartial consideration, everybody must see that the fluctuating life
force never allows this functioning of the sense organs to be separated
from the totality process, as something independent. Also, special care
for every single process cannot guarantee a self-dependent sound
functioning. Life is no mechanical synthetic, no central or
self-directed occurrence. Every moment it is totality, dynamic
cooperation of uncountable manifestations’ of forces which maintains to
life’s end their lawful order as individuality (= indivisibility, i.e.
indivisible occurrence, efficaciousness, fluctuation of forces.
Beside
the order of the sense organs, there is some further order through
which the functioning of the sense organs is given its unity, purport
and value, and which is attacked likewise sharply, pitilessly, and
recklessly by the force of suffering. This is the regulation of the
processes of the five groups: bodily form, sensation, perception,
forming of conceptions or thinking, and becoming-conscious or the
experience of “I” (Samyutta Nikaya 22). The working combination of the
five in health as well as in illness decides the rhythm of life and is
the constant controller and caller: be attentive, be on the alert! Never
forget what being a man means, namely being endowed with intelligence
and understanding, with will, energy, insight and judgement! You have
the never failing potential for suffering – sensation – with its
grandiose simplicity, the grandiose triad: well-being, woe,
neither-wellbeing-no-woe or neutral, which works more precisely, more
speedily, more spontaneously than the most perfect electronic – this
offspring of you brains!
Now we are confronted with a second
astonishing phenomenon of our language: that we are accustomed to name
ourselves with one single word – “I” – comprising in it all processes of
our life force, good or bad, positive or negative, joyful or sorrowful
ones. The peculiar thing is that, here also, it is the matter of a
disguise of the force of suffering, so that everybody need attentively
take care in order to perceive the pranks and tricks of such a
camouflage and to raise the hiding place in which the force of suffering
retires – namely: the process of thinking – into bright light of
consciousness.
For a successful striving against suffering,
thinking can become a mischief maker not to be underestimated, as you
will know from many personal experiences. Nobody has the faculty of
clearly thinking from the first moment on, the physical forces,
sensation, perception, conception and becoming conscious are still but
one chaotic pressing. Therefore the developing human – you, your own,
the Buddha – looks instinctively for a secure, firm support. This offers
itself with the experience of “I”. Everything seems to encourage him in
this: I stand, I see, I hear, I think, I will, I can … “I” grows to be
the great measure for life.
Soon, however, man learns that this
measure is without a reliable scale. There are millions and millions of
“I’s” who more or less have, or at least think they had, standards of
their own which they want to employ and use successfully. This could
perhaps be corrected by some organizing or educational endeavours. But
in a short time these endeavours disclose themselves indeed as well
meant, but impracticable.
We can organize solely with the help of some secure, legitimate and
reliable correlative. But most alarming is the statement that there is
none. Hence the beloved, carefully cultivated and caressed “I” reveals
itself as a highly recalcitrant quantity “X”. Sometimes this does not
suit him, sometimes that; now he is too hot, now too cold; now things go
too quickly, now to slowly; this moment he thinks himself well
understood, the next fundamentally mistaken. In short, far from being a
secure correlative, “I” becomes a plainly frantic chaos of heterogeneous
desires: I will not get ill – and am getting ill; I will not get weary –
and am falling down with fatigue; I am sick and tired of living – but I
know not what life really means; I am ardently in search of the grand,
the beautiful, the sublime – and, in my carelessness, “I” am overpowered
by suffering in the form of joy, by the ugly in the form of the
beautiful, by bad luck in the form of luck. And still, this great
grotesque, this diabolic-satirical play is but a grandiose error sprung
from wrong thinking and cognition. Quiet, objective consideration,
however, shows that the individuality, this indivisible, inseparable
occurrence of totality, affords a power stronger than that of suffering.
It endows with the faculty of practical seeing, a practical
experiencing: “Soundness is the highest good and extinction of delusion
is most sublime well-being, happiness, highest bliss” (Majjhima Nikaya
75).
Soundness that is vital energy attentively checked and
gathered with the use of the sense organs and the five groups.
Extinction
of delusion that is the state of liberation from the compulsive
erroneous idea: this “I”, condensed in the conscious process, were mine,
is myself. To see things like that, means to convulse the practice of
the five groups, and the whole individuality and means senselessly
opposing an incorruptible Lawfulness. If life could indeed be exhausted
in nothing but the power of suffering the necessity of the
transistoriness of the five groups would be the sole manifestation of
life force. Neither of us would be here, then. Life would be one single
frightful outcry from misery and pains. But it is not! For the force of
suffering (as perishableness) has for its antithesis freedom from
suffering (as immortality).
Confidence is the root of such
practical knowledge, its basis being quiet, sensible envisaging of the
reality. And yet, all the positive human faculties and forces would not
suffice for the labour necessary here, were there not what is called
“equalization” in the Buddha-Dharma – evolution, the unfolding of those
faculties and forces. Having confidence means to examine this power of
evolution carefully. It enables man to operate the strong and at times
exceedingly strong force of evolution in thoughts, words and deeds for
the benefit of himself, of others, of both of them.
Now,
thinking, as you may often come to find, has two aspects: one of
cognition and one of greed, the latter making man rather easily blind -
face to face with reality. He cannot become aware of the fact that what
he is taking for something constant, abiding – in short for his “I” – is
but the culmination of the physical processes ever changing, arising
and passing away, of sensation, perception, conception and of their
compilation in the conscious process of “I”. Man cannot – or will not –
see and understand that in the course of life-dynamics nothing static,
steadfast is to be found and that the moment of consciousness always
again brings about the delusion of “I am”. Though he is shown by reality
with utmost clearness a permanent becoming and passing away; though to
be born and to die are evidently the polar manifestations of the stream
of “life” – man sticks to his illusion. Should he test himself in
earnest he must agree that there cannot be made any valid, convincing
objection against lawfulness and that it is rather the idea of his
strong and wilful individuality could possibly be without essence,
without substance, hollow and void which fills him with fear and
anxiety. It is the erroneous thought: This “I”, this belongs to me; this
is mine, which man takes for constant, for the very heart of his
individuality. Whereas the present shows him in every phase of life that
emptiness, nothing less the nought, is rather force.
The
thought of “This is ‘I’, this is mine, this belongs to me” is so strong,
rigid and comprehensive that it incessantly blocks the whole process of
becoming-conscious. Here again every judicious person is offered a
field of rich activity. The thought of “I am” has restlessness for its
consequence. How could it be otherwise, since the strain of will (to
make possible the impossible, to turn dynamic into static, arising and
passing away into something permanent, into an immutable “I am”) must
overcharge any human force potential, in the long run! The nervous
system as well as metabolism is confronted with impracticable demands.
What
can be done?
Not relax in the activation of will, energy,
intelligence and reason! Carefully observe and control the physical
process of breathing, though on no account practice childish trainings
of respiration which, in the long run, would bring restlessness and disturb a
perfect concentration of life force! Cut out every urge in restlessness,
keep constantly at hand those four faculties and forces! Strive to
become quiet and remain quiet!
Only then, the increasing
emptiness, the emptiness of the conscious process will evolve into
strong force of pacified thinking, of a higher happiness. Happiness
flows through the whole organism, joy and stillness contribute to the
strived for concentration of life force which is, at the same time,
intensification of strength. The waving, restless ocean of thinking has
lost its might. Under the control of attentiveness “the thoughts are
coming consciously, consciously they are holding on, consciously they
are fading away” (Majjhima Nikaya 123).
“Inner stillness” is not
the silence of death from unconsciousness, not darkness. It is, on the
contrary, the fair shining light of cognition in clear-consciousness.
Then the sensible and judicious can see: “If this is – then that too; if
this is not – than also not that” (Udana I, 3). Is this (namely the
illusory thought “I am”) – then is that (namely liberation from
suffering).
With attained stillness of thought the individual is
free to survey the great string of efficacy, chain of efficacy, which
the captive in “I am” sees as causality, as the Nidana chain or Paticca
Samuppada. He does not consider that in transistoriness no “living”
creative force is inherent. Creative power is embedded in transcendence,
in the unfathomable, incomprehendable. Human creations are certainly
manifestations of this transcendental power not to be defined. But they
are subject to transistoriness. He who has stilled his thought sees
furthermore that the illusive thought of “I am” is also ignorance. Is
ignorance –then the three great processes of our individuality
(breathing, speaking, thinking) are appealed to as “mine” and “belonging
to me”. Likewise with the remaining parts of the Nidana Chain: “Are the
three great processes of breathing, speaking, thinking – then is
becoming-conscious. Is becoming-conscious – then the intellect divides
the indivisible individuality into mind-corporeality. Is
mind-corporeality - the six domains come to work. With these coming to
work, contact is given. If there is contact, then thee is sensation. If
there is sensation, then there is thirsting and craving. If there is
thirsting and graving, then there is apprehension. If there is
apprehension, then there is coming into existence. If there is coming
into existence, then there is being born, and if there is this, then
there is growing old, growing ill and dying (Samyutta Nikaya XII; Digha
Nikaya XV).
For the captive of thinking, this indivisible
life-suffering process always comes to pass under the compelling
thought: that is “I”, that is mine, that belongs to me, namely this
working string, this Paticca Samuppada. And it is all the same whether
the series is looked at, valued and treated as 12, 10 and 8 links or as
the two pole points only: coming into existence and dying. It is not
solely a matter of methodical, intellectual knowledge but of the
practical ending the illusive, compelling thought: this is I, this mine,
this belongs to me. In other words, it is the matter of the realization
of the anatta truth. Purely intellectual cognition is still hanging on
and adhering, it is blocking evolution, the equilibrium of the saps and
forces.
He who has been able to quiet down his thinking
comprehends this working-chain as the greatest force in the world. He
can see it thus, because he has experienced it himself. He who is under
the spell of the illusory “I am” can but understand the simply
unconquerable mass of suffering as alpha and omega, meaning and
substance of his life. He knows well the shock produced by suspicion
that this monumental building, this force-concentration of suffering –
“I” – might fall in, might perish. Again, it is anxiety caused and fed
by the right in it self notion of this structure of suffering to be
hollow and empty! No doubt it is, but hollow and empty of “mine” and
“belonging to me”. The total experience of emptiness is, in truth,
liberation from spasm of thought and consciousness and no loss of force
is connected with it.
Finally every Buddhist meditation serves
to attain this emptiness.
Thus the founder of Chan and first
Patriarch, the Indian Prince Bodhidharma, could answer the question of
Emperor Wudi: “What is the Holy of Holiest in Buddhism?” with “There is
nothing of holiness, it is emptiness”.
Without the very
experience of both great forces, suffering and liberation of suffering,
man can but face the flaring up of cognisance, whether flash-like or
slowly developing, devoid of understanding and nearly helpless, seeking
and reproachfully, complaining and accusing, until he is lived to see
it. Then, he has definitely gone beyond Hinayana and Mahayana, Chan and
Amithaba, Dharma and Abhidharma. Such a one has, to say it plainly and
without pretention, gone the way of liberation from suffering with or
like the Buddha. He has attained his end.
That is how I, in
broad outline, see the Buddha-Dharma. That is how I have lived it since
37 years.
I
hope my words might help you see that the Buddha-Dharma has, in truth,
something to say to the man of our age. Its concern is, purely and
simply, the human problem of the cognisance of suffering. And what age
can do without that!
Let me finish with the brotherly Buddhist
salutation:
Bliss and happiness to all sentient beings!