The Lotus Still Blooms (3 page)

In magical thinking we wish the good and pleasurable aspects of life would last forever, just like the noble prince’s father, the King. Nothing on our bodies would ever sag or wrinkle, our children would always adore us, our parents would never grow old and die. Nor would we grow old and die.

The entire subject of impermanence is often ignored by metaphysicians, somehow caught up in the magical thinking that—if we do not look at the unsettling aspects of life such as disease, aging and death as the Buddha saw on his first journey beyond the palace walls—undesired events will not occur in our lives. This is not a psychologically sound way to approach life, yet many are caught in such upside-down thinking.

The Buddhist teaching is that our attempt to avoid
all
aspects of life is the cause of our suffering. By acknowledging the full spectrum of our human experiences, we take the crucial first step toward alleviating our suffering.

When we are willing to mature in our thinking, we can then begin to understand that life is always in a state of flux. Everything is always changing in the world. The only aspect of life that does not change is the absolute—call it God or Christ nature, your Buddha nature, the Holy Spirit. We must draw our strength and find refuge from and in the Divine. All else is impermanent.

I attended a ten-day retreat based on the teachings of Sogyal Rinpoche and his magnificent book
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
The retreat was held at a lovely lodge in a bucolic setting in Northern California. I personally had gone through much effort and expense to get there, traveling more than six thousand miles in the middle of a long-awaited, three-month sabbatical.

On the first day of the retreat the approximately 350 retreatants learned that Sogyal Rinpoche had been hospitalized as soon as he arrived in the United States from Europe. His senior students would carry on in his stead. There was much disappointment, myself included, but surely he, a Rinpoche and recognized spiritual master, would be well quickly and released from the hospital to assume his role as leader and teacher.

But that did not happen. He was released after several days, but he was in need of rest and recuperation. He telephoned the retreatants and spoke very mindfully on impermanence and the nature of illness. He implied that even the great ones can get sick. He said, “Illness is a kind of warning, a reminder. We believe we have time, we believe we have time, we believe we have time—and then we have no time.” He was living for us all in what he called “the ever-present theme of impermanence.”

When we embrace the universality of impermanence, we are then no longer thrown off our pins when it stops to pay a call in our life or in the life of a loved one. Do you sometimes look in the mirror and see your mother’s face looking back at you? That’s impermanence. Can you barely get out of bed in the morning because of all your many aches and pains? That’s impermanence. A child gets sick and dies. That’s impermanence. A young soldier does not return from Iraq. That’s impermanence. The most glorious vacation comes to an end. That’s impermanence. You now live in an “empty nest” where your nuclear family once lived. That’s impermanence. The examples are endless, and each one causes us to suffer to the degree that we are attached.

THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH

During that retreat Sogyal Rinpoche said that the First Noble Truth could be better understood by limiting your thinking to “life
is
suffering.” It is not simply that life causes us to suffer, but rather “samsara” is suffering.Samsara is this delusional world we have been conditioned to see as real, but it is not real. It is the endless cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth over and over again. The Dalai Lama called samsara “unenlightened existence.” And when we insist the world be what it is not, we cause ourselves to suffer. Why is life—samsara—suffering? It is because nothing in this world is permanent. When we recognize rather than deny the fact of impermanence and its tie to suffering, we have taken the first step.

The Second Noble Truth is quite logical. We experience suffering because we cling, grasp, have unmet expectations, have addictions. A while back I saw a TV feature on women addicted to plastic surgery. These weren’t the common eye lift, face-lift or tummy tuck. These women had dozens upon dozens of surgeries. One young woman still in the bloom of her youth at twenty-nine had had more surgeries than her age.

I am definitely one for taking the best care that we can of our physical selves. But no matter what we do, we are—as the years roll by—getting older, having a sickness or two or more, perhaps experiencing an accident or two. And each one of us is going to die, as well as everyone you love. Cling to this not happening and you will just suffer all the more.

The good news begins with the Third Noble Truth, the cessation of suffering. There is a way out, since suffering is not our eternal fate. If we are willing to look deeply at the nature of life, we can rise up and truly experience happiness. On a number of occasions I have heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama say that the purpose of life is to be happy. The happy life begins when we realize that life is boundless. This can only come as the result of looking deeply at what is, rather than what we wish it to be.

Here is the really good news! The Fourth Noble Truth explains how we can achieve happiness through engaging fully in the Noble Eight-fold Path. Here we find the cure to our suffering. We can call it “spiritual medicine” or “soul medicine.” We must ingest this medicine and take the teachings out of the textbooks and into our hearts and lives.

Remember, clinical observation of the Four Noble Truths can be summed up as the diagnosis, the prognosis, the cure, and engaging in the cure. Buddha did not teach the extinction of all desire (trishna). Our desire can become zeal, enthusiasm toward our spiritual awakening. Nothing is overcome (i.e., desire) by crushing it, only by transforming it. The Tibetan Buddhist scholar Dr. Robert Thurman said, “We can each become a noble person, and all of us are destined to do so.”

I had a conversation on wanting good and pleasant experiences in my life with my Hawaiian cardiologist, Dr. Hinson Chun, a Tibetan Buddhist. He said, “Of course we must have pure ‘desire’ to ever make progress on the Eight-fold Path.” When we engage in the cure, we move into the Eight-fold Path. It is how we can systematically cease doing what causes us to suffer and embrace the eight steps that lead to a noble life and happiness.

—BUDDHA

—
THE DHAMMAPADA,
VERSES 1-2

INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHT-FOLD PATH

THE EIGHT-FOLD PATH, the Fullness of the Fourth Noble Truth, offers a timeless blueprint for living the spiritually realized life. It was first offered by the Buddha at his very first sermon, called the “Deer Park Sermon,” delivered at Benares, India.

Here for the first time the Four Noble Truths were presented, followed

by the Eight-fold Path, which are really the steps of the Fourth Noble Truth. Again they are: Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.

A chapter has been created for each, illustrating how each has been applied in my life and how I have in turn taught its value and use to others. Each of the eight chapters offers practical, real-life examples, along with exercises to assist the reader in integrating each step into his or her own life.

The first two steps, Right View and Right Thought, give the reader the preliminary conditions that must be established in the individual’s life in order to make further spiritual progress. The third, fourth and fifth— Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood—speak of one’s willingness to align these most important aspects of life with one’s spiritual intentions. Here the practitioner learns to live his life consistent with this high aspiration. Also, the foundation is laid to progress to the final three— Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.

These final three are the fundamental conditions necessary to progress toward ultimately achieving an awakened mind or enlightenment.

The Eight-fold Path is a methodical process for moving toward an enlightened state of being using spiritual tools to get there. Tibetan Buddhism has preserved the enormous treasury of what is original Indian Buddhism, the studies of the ultimate nature of being. To attain Buddhahood /Christhood requires a radical shift in consciousness. Buddhism teaches that the old paradigm has to go. Suffering, victimhood and separation become union, empowerment and oneness when one spends years, if not lifetimes, studying and practicing Buddhist principles. The Eight-fold Path is key to this growth.

—HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

RIGHT VIEW

RIGHT VIEW IS THE first point on the Buddhist Eight-fold Path. Here is where one begins the journey of living as a Noble Being. What exactly is a Noble Being? It is one who cares for others as much as she cares for herself. This requires a huge shift in consciousness, an enormous shift in perception. You are saying: “Others are as important as I am.”

In this section a road map is presented, giving you tools to a path that, when followed, offers you an awakened state of consciousness. We can study, practice and come to know these eight points on a soul level. It is not sufficient just to know them intellectually. We must integrate their wisdom into our very essence. We must have our inner beliefs so joined with these ancient truths that we even
dream
them. Then we can begin to move into a more awakened consciousness and live our lives in a more conscious state.