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!