How Free Can We Be?

What Buddha Said and Didn't Say About Suffering

What if it was possible not to suffer?

Sounds crazy, right? Hit your finger with a hammer and you have physical pain. Eat Chinese food in Nebraska, and you have stomach pain. Sometimes human suffering is devastating. Lose someone you love, you have emotional pain. You don’t have food to eat, you experience hunger pains. A tornado destroys your home, you suffer all the consequences of property loss. You get laid off from work, you experience the hardship of financial strain. You become seriously ill, and your health declines.

I’m pretty sure that suffering is just part of the lived human experience, and there’s no escaping it. Right? To claim otherwise would be absurd.

I want to introduce you to a philosopher who actually claimed it’s not necessary to suffer, and that each of us are actually the cause of our own suffering. Before you X-out of this article because of how ludicrous this sounds or smacks of victim-blaming/shaming, let me explain what he meant by “suffering”, and his remedy for fixing it. If at the end you feel it’s hogwash, so be it.

The fact that you’ve never heard this name in conversations of philosophy is a reminder that when most people speak of philosophy, they are really meaning Western philosophy, which is the philosophical thinking of Western culture, particularly Europe and North America. It’s highly likely that every philosopher you’ve ever heard of are from Greece, Germany, and Great Britain.

But there is also this thing called the Eastern Hemisphere, which includes the likes of the Middle East, China, Japan, India, Egypt and Australia. If you’ve done some digging into Eastern philosophers, Al-Kindi, Lau Tzu, and Confucius are a few names that most commonly come up.

I want to briefly discuss the Buddha. We’ve all heard of Buddha, just not in conversations of philosophy. Most people think of the Buddha as a religious figure. Right? We think of Buddha as the founder of Buddhism. Look on any list of “world religions” and you will find “Buddhism”. Case closed - Buddhism is a religion.

But just as the life and teachings of Jesus were later morphed into the Christian religion, the Buddha’s life and teachings were also canonized into Buddhism, which can have religion-like characteristics. Neither Jesus nor Buddha had any interest in formulating a religion. Buddha is best understood not as a religious figure, but a philosopher and a psychologist, terms that were not yet applicable to his time and place in history.

One could say that Buddha’s insights is a science of mind — a way of exploring how we think, feel, and act that leads us to profound truths about who we are. You could also take Buddha’s teachings as a philosophy of life — a way to live that maximizes our chances for happiness. Sometimes this philosophy is described as the “Middle Way”, which is a rejection of extremes often identified as “attachment” and “aversion”. We will discuss this later.

What Buddhism is, 2,500 years after his death, is out of the Buddha’s hands. His teachings passed into the hands of his followers in antiquity. They passed from wandering beggars to monastic institutions, from the illiterate to the learned, from the esoteric East to the outspoken West. In its travels, Buddhism has been many things to many people.

But what did the Buddha intend when he taught?

As an antidote to equating “philosophy” exclusively with Western minds, it’s important to be aware of these noteworthy distinctions:

• Eastern Philosophy

• Hindu Philosophy

• Buddhist Philosophy

Atheist neuroscientist, Sam Harris, says that most religions hide the path to great truths behind a maze of superstition, ritual, and dogma. But, according to Harris,

“Buddhism approaches spirituality with an almost scientific focus on experiment and observation. This opens a path for the non-religious to experience a transformation of consciousness without paying heed to any supernatural claims.”

Sam Harris and evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright have an interesting discussion about Buddhism you might find interesting.

Harris isn’t alone in noting Buddhism’s applicability outside the realm of religious belief. In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari classifies Buddhism as a form of religion based on natural laws rather than the laws of a deity. Harari notes that the particular rules upon which Buddhism is founded are those of psychology—the behavior patterns of the human mind.

A word about this article. It’s fairly link-heavy in this introductory part. In virtually every Substack article I write, it requires some difficult choices about what to address and what to leave out, given the constraints of a reasonable word-count of a short essay. The following links are meant to offer resources for you to explore these topics further, which I hope you will.

If you have an interest in exploring Buddhist philosophy, here are a few useful resources:

• The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy by Jan Westerhoff

• Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction by Jan Westerhoff

• A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy by Steven M. Emmanuel

• Paving the Great Way by Jonathan C. Gold

• Buddhism as Philosophy by Mark Sederits

• Buddhist Psychology by Geshe Tashi Tsering

• The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism by Byung-Chul Han

• Secular Buddhism: Eastern Thought for Western Minds by Noah Rasheta

• The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

• No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism by Chris Niebauer PhD

Who was Buddha?

The historical Buddha was named Siddhārtha Gautama. The term “Buddha” means “one who is awake.” This is significant because the great insight of the Buddha was that human suffering is the result of a catastrophic misunderstanding of the nature of reality. To “awaken” is to see things as they truly are, which is the secret to true liberation. A related term, “enlightenment”, means the removal of blindness.

It should be noted that many spiritual teachers understood clear perception as a gateway to human liberation. The most common miracle attributed to Jesus in the gospels was the restoration of eyesight, which is understood by many to be symbolic of his central teaching. In Matthew 6:22, Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” In other words, to see things as they truly are is to be free.

Siddhārtha Gautama was born in Nepal in the city of Lumbini, where, according to Buddhist tradition, Queen Māyā of Sakya gave birth to him in 563 BCE. The historical Buddha grew up in a life of wealth, privilege, and comfort. His father, King Suddhodana, wanted his son to be a great ruler. He built a palace for his son with gorgeous surroundings so that his son could not see the woes of life. Gautama married a beautiful princess, Yasodhara. They had a son, Rahula. As the story goes, Siddhārtha Gautama, takes a royal tour of the city outside his palace and is confronted with suffering for the first time, which distresses his heart deeply.

From that moment forward, he was consumed with the quest of understanding human suffering. After exhausting all religious and spiritual means that failed to produce satisfactory results, he sat under a Bodhi tree with the resolve to find his answer through deep meditation. As the story goes, under that tree the nature of reality opened itself to the Buddha and he found his answer, which he shared through what is called, The Four Noble Truths.

The Buddha’s wisdom and compassion are considered by many to be without equal. His insight into the nature of reality and the mind is unparalleled. Through his own personal experience and inner work, Buddha is said to have discovered both the cause and remedy of suffering. That’s quite a claim.

My initial introduction to Buddha and his insights came through my friendship with a neighbor who had devoted his life to living and practicing the wisdom he discovered through the Buddha's teachings. He did scholarly translations and paraphrases of the prominent Mahayana Buddhist sūtras such as the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the Heart Sūtra. Over the years, many others have contributed to my knowledge and understanding of the Buddha and his teachings including the late Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Buddhist scholars Robert Thurman, Lex Hixon, Eugène Burnouf and Robina Courtin.

The Buddha emphasized above all else that one should not accept his insights unless they could verify them on the basis of their own direct personal experience. The Buddha never asked people to have faith in his teachings but to put them to the test in their own life. Buddha did not claim to be God or a supernatural being. His did not hold a belief in God. His insights did not come through revelation but through penetrative observation and direct experience.

One of the most useful and creative introductions to the historical Buddha and his discoveries and insights is a PBS documentary that you can watch in two parts on YouTube:

PBS Buddha Documentary Part One

PBS Buddha Documentary Part Two

A few useful books about the historical Buddha are:

• Historical Buddha: The Times, Life and Teachings of the Founder of Buddhism by H.W. Schumann

• The Biography of Sakyamuni Buddha by Yun and Wong

• The Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Ñanamoli

• A Life of the Buddha by Sherab Chodzin Kohn

• The Living Buddha: An Interpretive Biography by Daisaku Ikeda

The Road to Enlightenment

There are many aspects of the Buddha’s journey to enlightenment that are relatable to anyone. Many people spend their entire life seeking peace and happiness through religion, self-improvement, and other means. I often use the Buddha’s story in my work with people who have been disillusioned hurt by religion, and left.

• The Buddha failed

Before the historical Buddha’s enlightenment, he poured himself into many different religious teachings and practices that ultimately failed to achieve his aim. He became a devout ascetic, and sat under the teachings of great gurus. But these pursuits proved futile and got him no closer to his goal of liberation. Like Buddha, we all have poured ourselves into various strategies and formulas, followed guru after guru, and immersed ourselves in various religious or spiritual systems, which did not ultimately lead to the depth of transformation and happiness we desired.

• Liberation in everyday life

There is a common idea that true liberation involves an escape from our current reality. This is sometimes referred to as “spiritual bypassing”, the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing the complexities and difficulties of the lived human experience. This could include escape through pouring oneself into highly developed meditative practices or devoting oneself to the dogma and rituals of religion. Traditional Christianity, for example, teaches that departing the body and world entirely through death, provides entrance into a realm of paradise such as heaven. Perhaps the Buddha’s greatest discovery is that one does not have to escape the world or become a yogi to find true liberation, happiness, and freedom from suffering. We can live as normal human beings in the world as it is and find liberation and happiness.

• Determination, not revelation

The Buddha's discoveries, insights, and understandings into the nature of reality, suffering, and liberation were not the result of supernatural revelation. They were not channeled through prophets or gurus from the past. They were not discovered through the teachings of a sacred text. They were not imparted to him as a special blessing or through divine intervention. Buddha's discoveries, insights, and understandings were the result of his determination and resolve to be free. Buddha relied upon direct experience, personal observation, critical thinking, introspection, and personal reflection in his journey toward enlightenment, something any of us could do.

• Buddha faced opposition and rejection

The historical Buddha endured opposition and rejection in his journey toward enlightenment. He challenged the status quo of many of the religious and spiritual systems of his time, which drew scorn and rejection. He was ridiculed, doubted, mocked, and derided by many. I think we can all identify with the hardships and difficulties of going our own way, especially in defiance of our religious or spiritual traditions and communities.

• True sign of enlightenment

There is a story that says that when the Buddha truly saw the nature of reality, when he came to a complete understanding of the way things really are, when he grasped the truth... he simply smiled. His enlightenment was not some out-of-body, transcendental, super-mystical, hyper-metaphysical, paranormal event. The moment of the Buddha's enlightenment was beautiful and monumental, but it was also very simple, tender, and touching. He saw the truth, and he just sat there and had a moment, and a big smile filled his face. This is the true sign of the moment of enlightenment. You simply smile. It's a smile of peace, joy, release, freedom, and happiness.

The Four Noble Truths

A person could start in many different places to understand the Buddha's philosophical insights. I chose the Four Noble Truths because they provide a useful framework for grasping the Buddha’s wisdom. I also chose the Four Noble Truths because they are so elementary that any one of us could have come to them on our own if we applied a similar resolve.

As mentioned, Buddha did not receive these truths through divine revelation. He did not discover these truths because he was special. Buddha did not attain these truths because he was using advanced spiritual practices. The way the Buddha discovered these truths is the same way you and any person could if we wanted to. The Buddha was not utilizing specialized guru abilities that were unique to him. The very same tools, processes, capacities, and competencies the Buddha utilized and relied upon, which led to his liberation and enlightenment, are the same tools, processes, capacities, and competencies that you and every person can use to gain their own liberation and enlightenment.

For example, take the First Noble Truth - the truth of suffering. You do not need a divine download, advanced spiritual practices, or a pilgrimage to Mecca, to realize we experience suffering in the form of inner discord and discontent, as well as a chronic or reoccurring dissatisfaction with life. This is self-evident, right?

What is also self-evident, is that we can never seem to get rid of this perpetual sense of lack. No matter what we try, do, achieve, attain, acquire, possess, change, improve, or correct, this inner disharmony and unhappiness always comes back. Right? The amazing new car eventually becomes just a thing you have to drive around from one place to another. Your latest career success only moves the bar higher with more to achieve. It turns out that the new perfect relationship requires work like every relationship. Your new dream home suddenly feels like a lot of upkeep, maintenance and cleaning. It just seems that nothing can make and keep us happy enough.

Life is like a leaky faucet that can’t be fixed. There’s always a drip, drip, drip, drip of discontent. You use every possible tool, you tighten every screw and bolt as much as possible, and still drip, drip, drip, drip. There always seems to be something missing, lacking or not quite good enough. Buddha discovered within himself and the world that there is this constant drip of discontent.

Knowing this doesn’t make you a rare guru, it simply shows you are observant and slightly introspective.

The historical Buddha once said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” This was his way of saying that there is no one person who was, is, or will be “the Buddha” because we all are Buddha's - we all share the same Buddha-nature, and we are all capable of the same insight and wisdom Siddhārtha Gautama discovered.

Truth #1: The Truth of Suffering

We already discussed the First Noble Truth - the truth of suffering. You don’t need to be an analytical psychologist or Indian guru to figure this out. Just observe and reflect upon your own life.

But there is something more to understand from the Buddha’s insight here. The word the Buddha used for “suffering” is dukkha, which means “incapable of satisfying” and “standing unstable”. In other words, the Buddha said that the nature of the entire world and the lived human experience is characterized by instability and impermanence. Sometimes, dukkha is translated as “change”. In other words, all things are in a constant state of flux.

The First Noble Truth could be translated a few different ways:

• Life is suffering

• Life is change

• Life is instability and impermanence

The point is the same - the lived human experience is not a dependable source for the lasting happiness we all desire. We will never be able to mix and match together life circumstances in the perfect arrangement to keep us happy. Believe me, I’ve tried!

I have spoken of these dynamics of the lived human experience previously with the VUCA acrostic:

In other words, you can’t control life to always get what you want. The First Noble Truth collaborates one of the givens of human existence, human insatiability. I discuss this more extensively in my recent article, The Rules of the Game.

Truth #2: The Cause of Suffering

The Second Noble Truth is the identification of the cause of suffering. This truth is based upon the law of causation, which states that every effect has a cause. In other words, our suffering - our chronic inner disharmony and discontent - is rooted in a cause. The First Noble Truth is the diagnosis - you are suffering. The Second Noble Truth is the explanation why.

What’s the cause? Ignorance.

Ouch!

“Ignorance” sounds like a harsh word. It’s an affront to our ego that prides itself in how smart we are. Ignorance is simply incorrect understanding.

The Buddha’s insight, known as the Second Noble Truth, is that the cause of our incurable inner discord, disharmony and discontent is that we have a fundamental and catastrophic misunderstanding of the true nature of reality.

The Second Noble Truth says that the root of our suffering is that we don’t know the way things really are. Perhaps you have reached the pinnacle of academic achievement or you hold mastery or brilliance in a particular field, discipline or skill. In my case, it was a Master of Divinity degree and many years as an ordained minister. As humbling as it might be, you must acknowledge that there is something that you do not currently comprehend, and you have been paying for it every day of your life.

This is not just a slight misunderstanding about a few little things here or there. No, the Buddha said, it’s a monumental misknowledge of the most essential, foundational, and bedrock realities that undergird how the world works. The Second Noble Truth states we have constructed an idea about the world that isn’t true, and ultimately and always leads to our chronic unhappiness.

What is this catastrophic misunderstanding?

Our delusion is imbuing the world with a power it does not have. Nothing in the world can “make” us happy or sustain our happiness because everything in the world is subject to change, fragility, and instability. You are never going to be able to make the world cooperate with your demands for happiness. Anything you depend upon in the world as a source of peace and contentment will deeply disappoint you. This is not because there is something wrong with the world or that the world is out to get you or because you are too dumb to get it right.

Like the First Noble Truth, the Second Noble Truth is self-evident. You can’t make the world do what you want it to do. Right? There are countless factors that influence your life that are outside your control. A person can be fit and healthy today, and become ill and lose fitness tomorrow. You can be stress-free financially one day, and a set of circumstances turn your financial outlook upside down. You can be married this year, and divorced next year. A person can enjoy their job today, but a new manager makes it unbearable. You can love where you live, until the new neighbor moves in with two constantly barking dogs.

You see this, right? The world and lived human experience are not dependable in the way we think and wish it was. If we are not careful, we will spend the entirety of our lives suffering through this mistaken notion over and over and over and over again.

The Buddha’s further insight is that we employ a doomed philosophy or strategy for life, based upon attachment and aversion. Our energy is either spent in seeking, striving, grasping, maintaining and protecting the things we think will being us happiness (attachment), or we invest our energies trying to stave off whatever we might think will threaten it (aversion). Either way, it is based on the false thinking that the trick to contentment is achieving and maintaining desirable circumstances and preventing unfavorable ones.

This flawed mindset is often found in religion. The notion of pleasing, obeying or pleading with God in order to gain favorable life circumstances as “God's blessing” is problematic. The idea that obedience, faith, and religious devotion should result in God bettering your station in life lacks credibility. Expecting increased professional or financial success, or the fulfillment of one's wishes and desires, or the elimination of adversity, struggle and hardship, as a reward to being a devout believer, are unfounded. If this is true, it doesn’t say much for Jesus who experienced every kind of hardship and difficult one can imagine.

So:

Truth 1: We suffer.

Truth 2: We suffer because we don’t understand the way things really are.

Truth #3: The Solution to Suffering

The Third Noble Truth is as simple as the first two. It essentially says that every effect has a cause. Suffering is the effect, symptom, result or fruit of our doomed strategy of attachment and aversion, which is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of reality.

Therefore, if we know that this is the cause, it follows that if we correct our fundamental misknowledge we will cease from practicing our doomed strategy for happiness. Instead, we will follow a pathway that has wisdom and insight into the true nature of reality, and be liberated from our suffering.

The Buddha’s discovery was that you really can be free of suffering by understanding and treating the cause. There is some logic here, right? If your lamp is out because the bulb is bad, replacing it with a new bulb will resolve it. If you have a bacteria infection, taking an antibacterial agent (antibiotics) will cure it. If your chronic disharmony and discontent in life is based on a misknowledge, you replace this misknowledge with clear perception to fix it. Right? Is this so hard?

The most important of the Four Noble Truths is the Third Noble Truth, the Buddha’s discovery that there is freedom from suffering. This is a very unusual thing for someone to claim. Most religion and philosophy claim that suffering is an unavoidable reality of the lived human experience. Yet, the Buddha claimed that it is possible for living human beings to understand the world in a way so as not to fall victim to it.

The Third Noble Truth says that our suffering - our chronic unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and disharmony - is the result of our clinging, grasping, and attachments. So it only stands to reason that to let go of our clinging, grasping, and attachments would mean the end this suffering.

The fundamental delusion is how we think reality is structured, which includes how we understand ourselves. The world appears as a diversity of things that are separate, independent, self-existent, permanent, unchanging, and absolute within themselves. We understand ourselves also to be a separate, independent, self-existent, and absolute thing in this world of other absolute things. Despite how it appears, we have made too much of this appearance and projected upon it a substantiality it does not have.

Buddha’s view of the world is often described with the term “dependent arising”, which essentially means that everything exists only in relationship to everything else. Despite how it appears, the world does not consist of separate and independent things that exist on their own. According to the Buddha, if you went on a search for a stable center in anything, including yourself, you would not find it. It appears there is a me here and a you there, as two separate self-existing entities, but if we looked more closely we would discover this is not so. These days, this isn’t a terribly unique way of understanding the world. Physics and Quantum Mechanics essentially says the same thing.

“Dependent arising” is viewed as the most fundamental law underlying all things. It’s the law of conditionality. That is, whatever arises, arises in dependence on conditions. Without the support of the appropriate conditions, any given phenomena will not be able to sustain its existence. With some reflection, you could easily prove this to yourself. Right now, you could take any object in your view, or any thought, feeling, perception or sensation, and discover that it exists only in relationship to countless other things, and will change the moment these conditions change.

Truth #4: A Path to Cultivate

The Fourth Noble Truth is that there is a process that one could follow to cultivate the kind of mentality conducive to getting the first three truths. This plan of application is referred to as The Noble Eightfold Path.

The Noble Eightfold Path is eight components that are divided up into three groups: Virtue, Meditation, Wisdom.

The first group of virtues (right speech, right action, right livelihood) are about cultivating integrity in how we live in the world on the most fundamental level - our relationships with others and living responsible lives.

The meditation group (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration) is about one’s inner life. The central Buddhist term here is “samadhi”, which means “to collect” or “bring together”, and is often translated as “concentration”, “unification of mind”, “calm abiding” and “one-pointedness of mind”.

The wisdom group, “prajna” (right view, right intention) is presented as the culmination of the path. Wisdom is the antidote to the ignorance (“avijja”) at the root of suffering. Wisdom is seeing the true nature and reality of all things. This insight (“vipassana”) is a deep and comprehensive seeing into the nature of existence. A term associated with this wisdom is “rigpa”, which means "knowledge of the ground of being." This “wisdom” is also viewed as inseparable from compassion. In Buddhism, the term “bodhichitta” is central, which means an enlightened mind that strives toward awakening, empathy, and compassion for all sentient beings.

Don’t think of the The Noble Eightfold Path as religious rules to follow. The eight components are all quite simple and practical. You might say that this application plan facilitates some of the dynamics that were present in the Buddha’s life before he sat under that Bodhi tree and awakened.

We tend to think that transformation and liberation should be effortless, instantaneous, and magical. But it actually requires resolve and effort to disentangle ourselves from a lifetime of ignorance, delusion, and misknowledge. The Noble Eightfold Path is meant to help us do this. It’s like a detox process for extinguishing from our lives any mindsets, attitudes, beliefs, actions, habits, and conduct that perpetuates any reality that is contrary to liberation, wisdom, and compassion.

The Four Noble Truths Summary

A simple summary or paraphrase of The Four Noble Truths is as follows

• Though there will always be normal human physical and emotional pain, there is an unnecessary deep and inescapable disharmony and discontent, and chronic lack of peace and happiness, which plagues our lived human experience.

• The cause of this inner suffering is a fundamental misknowledge of the nature of reality, namely that the world is characterized by fragility, instability and contingency, which makes it unsuitable for achieving and maintaining peace, and happiness no matter how hard we try.

• The solution to our suffering is to correct our misknowledge and adopt a new way of being in the world, which involves getting off the rollercoaster ride of attachment and aversion, and discovering a middle way.

• Though the Buddha’s insights are largely self-evident, one can begin to cultivate a new path forward by growing in virtue, cultivating one’s mind, and living with wisdom and compassion.

I feel it’s important to mention that it would be a gross misapplication of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths to use them in any kind of way that are victim-shaming. An example might be telling someone who is victimized, abused or suffering from a mental health disorder, that they are “the cause of their own suffering.”

Another misuse of the Buddha’s teaching would be to assert that some human emotions (anger, sadness, grief, heartache, distress) are a sign one is not truly enlightened. In my understanding, the Buddha never dismissed or repudiated the full range of human emotion, and further argued that the aversion or denial of one’s feelings is as detrimental as attachment to them.

You might say that the “middle way” is a path of moderation. Having a donut or two because the Krispy Kreme “How Now” sign calls to you is different from binge eating two dozen donuts. Allowing yourself space for feelings of grief or sadness is a normal part of being human, but there’s also processing those feelings in order to move through them to places of release and healing.

Moderation does not come easily for those who have learned to live in extremes. I can be guilty of this. Given a box of donuts, I can easily walk away and eat none, or I could eat the whole dozen in one sitting. But the idea of only eating one or two seems tortuous. It can be the same with feelings. Denying or stuffing feelings is one path, and over-indulging or going nuclear with your feelings can be another. The “middle way” is neither denial nor nuclear. The middle way is to respond to your feelings as they require, but to also honor the nature of feelings to both come and go. Feeling resentment is a normal human emotion, but the Buddha would say that holding onto or overindulging resentment causes unnecessary suffering for ourselves.

One could argue that the assertion that our existence is characterized by fragility and impermanence, suffering is the result of expecting something from life it can’t deliver, and that moderation is a safeguard against the dangers of excess, are hardly epic insights to enshrine Siddhartha Gautama as the enlightened one. These insights seem self-evident. But consider that the greatest truths are often not complicated nor elaborate.

In my view, the value of Buddha’s teachings lie in their application to everyday life. You don’t have to become a self-proclaimed “Buddhist” in order to devote yourself, if only for a season, to a greater understanding and the practice of his insights. Don’t make it a religion but be earnest in putting these teachings to the test in your life. Don’t think of Buddha’s discoveries as a magic-bullet, fix-it formula or theory of everything. Simply explore it in the interest in becoming a more profound, liberated, and compassionate human being.

The Buddha Smiled

As the story goes, when the veil of ignorance was lifted and the Buddha saw the way things really are, he simply smiled. It was a smile of relief, awe, joy and liberation. The smiling Buddha is one of the most prevalent depictions of the Buddha around the world.

If the Buddha was your therapist he might say that the great opportunity and invitation of this life between birth and death is to know true happiness. He would further point out that, paradoxically and counter-intuitively, seeking happiness causes suffering because it implies that happiness is something you must achieve and attain by arranging one’s life accordingly.

To the Buddha, true happiness is causeless, it flows from our true nature. In other words, in the moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment, he realized that once you take it all apart and perceive the ground of being, from which it all arises, that everything is complete unto itself - no seeking, no conflict, no drama, no striving, no clinging, no lack - just pure life and existence itself. In that moment of the Buddha’s breakthrough, not only did he realize that this is the way things are at the most fundamental level, but that he himself was this pure life and pure existence. For this reason, the Buddha said that happiness is not outcome or circumstance dependent. Nothing can be added to or removed from the complete happiness that you fundamentally are.

The Buddha would say, do not take my word for it; investigate it for yourself.

A Buddha-Based Thought Experiment

To conclude this article, I want to suggest an personal experiment, based upon the Buddha’s insights.

Liberating Everything from Making You Happy

When we place the responsibility for our happiness on anything other than the true source of happiness, we cause our own suffering and corrupt our relationship to the thing we are depending upon and expecting or demanding to make us happy. What would it mean for you to liberate everything in your life from your expectation or demand that it “make you happy”?

For example, what if you made the choice to…

• Liberate the weather from your demand that it make you happy.

• Liberate your hobbies from your demand that they make you happy.

• Liberate your possessions from your demand that they make you happy.

• Liberate food from your demand that it make you happy.

• Liberate your bank account from your demand that it make you happy.

• Liberate your work from your demand that it make you happy.

• Liberate your social media activity from your demand that it make you happy.

• Liberate Netflix from your demand that it make you happy.

• Liberate your relationships from your demand that they make you happy.

• Liberate your health from your demand that it make you happy.

• Liberate your spirituality from your demand that it make you happy.

What if you stopped demanding that the world make you happy, and strengthened your knowing of your innate being AS happiness.

Rethinking Your Happiness Strategy

This personal investigation has three different parts.

Part One: Investigating the nature of suffering and happiness

Spend some time today in introspection, self-reflection, critical thinking, and exploration of your personal life experience.

Ask yourself:

• Do the truths that the Buddha discovered line up with your own lived experience, and hold a sense of legitimacy and validity in your own knowing?

• Do the Buddha’s insights about the nature of happiness resonate with your own direct experience, critical thinking and intuition?

Part Two: Liberating your life from the demand of happiness

Here are a few questions designed to guide you in exploring the demands you are placing on the world for your happiness:

1. When I am brutally honest with myself, what I am really depending on to make me happy is __________. (identify 3) What can I learn from this?

2. Is there something I am corrupting in my life such as a relationship, pursuit, behavior, activity, possession, status, etc… because I have a misplaced dependence upon it to make me happy?

Part Three: Returning to the true source of happiness

What is one mindset, choice or action you can make on a daily basis to break your misplaced dependencies for happiness, and become more connected to and stabilized within my true nature that IS happiness?

Jesus and Buddha

One of the reasons I have great respect for Jesus and Buddha is that they came to their truth through their own journey and experiences of living, and followed the truth they found deep within themselves and the world.

Jesus had a religious tradition that he could have easily followed but he forged a different path based on the spiritual reality and authority he found within himself. The Buddha poured himself into finding the root cause and solution to human suffering. He had many failed attempts looking for the answer but his resolve kept him going until he discovered it.

Both Jesus and Buddha discovered truths that stood in opposition to the prominent beliefs and views of their day. They both trusted themselves and their direct personal experience. In the face of resistance, disapproval, rejection, danger and even death, they did not waver. The both lived their truth - owned it, expressed it, demonstrated it... became it.

The Buddha and Jesus had moxie and did not mince words. The Buddha laid out the entire cause and solution to human suffering in four simple points. Jesus said, "I am the truth." They were often misunderstood, dismissed, ridiculed and treated unkindly. Neither one held back or flinched, and I deeply regard them for that.

I sometimes wonder what more we would have gained if Jesus and the Buddha had lived many more years. We tend to think that their significance lies in their teachings and truths, but consider the possibility that perhaps the greatest lesson is how they arrived at them, and how completely they lived and embodied their truths.

Look inside yourself deeply. Don't blindly follow. Put everything to the test of your human experience. Go to the heart of it all. Be willing to walk away from what you've been told. Find the truth within yourself. Don't just find it or talk about it... be it.

The point was never to worship Jesus but to turn ourselves into a Jesus; not to worship Buddha but to turn ourselves into a Buddha. This was the meaning of their lives. To turn yourself into a Jesus or a Buddha is to awaken to the nature of reality, to embody truth, to walk in wisdom, to grasp your true nature, to live with deep peace and joy, to open your heart with compassion to the whole world. The problem is that people substituted turning themselves into a Jesus or Buddha, and instead turned them into a religion.

There is a story of how one of Buddha’s students came to him with a question. It goes like this:

“Buddha, are you the messiah?”

“No”, answered Buddha.

“Then are you a healer?”

“No”, Buddha replied.

“Then are you a teacher?” the student persisted.

“No, I am not a teacher.”

“Then what are you?” asked the student, exasperated.

“I am awake”, Buddha replied.

In Summary

• Though Buddhism is considered a world religion, one could think of Buddha as a philosopher with insights into the the nature of reality, the science of the mind, and psychological health and well-being.

• The Four Noble Truths seem self-evident and anyone might come to them if they applied resolve, self-reflection, and critical thinking.

• The Buddha’s insights do not deserve a pass, and should only be adopted if you find them to be credible for yourself.

• A misunderstanding of the nature of reality results in thinking we can achieve and maintain lasting peace and happiness by clinging to our attachments and getting the world to do what we want it to.

• The Middle Way involves not demanding that the world make us happy, but discovering a place of composure and contentment within ourselves, so we can enjoy life as it unfolds without trying to control it.

• The Buddha’s philosophy - The Four Noble Truths, The Middle Way, The Noble Eightfold Path - were never meant to require quitting your day job, checking out of life or a pilgrimage to Tibet. All of Buddha’s insights can be applied to real life in the real world.

• The true sign of enlightenment is always wisdom and compassion.