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#2467 -
This issue is about practical
nonduality, if I may coin that term. Buddhist teachings
are great examples of practical nonduality and probably the
foundation for all practical nonduality.
This issue features a sermon entitled Wisdom
of the Ages: The Four Noble Truths. It is taken with
permission from the website for The Emerson Center for
Spiritual Awakening. Dr. Susanne Freeborn is Senior
Minister and Rev. Linda S. Siddall is Assistant
Minister.
The
New Thought is founded in
the philosophy of monism, which means there is
only one essence or energy by which ultimate reality is known.
Monism falls under a broad definition of nonduality,
but not under a strict or radical definition of nonduality.
Nonduality does not say there is only one essence or substance as
a statement of what is. Nonduality only makes such a statement
because it is not possible to state the actual condition of
reality. However, if such statements as "There is only
God," are studied closely what emerges is a meaning closer
to something like, "there is neither God, nor the absence
of God." The latter statement is a way of defining
"nonseparateness," which is the hallmark of nonduality.
New Thought has value in
that it relates to the broad definition of nonduality and because
it is practical. It helps us focus our minds to get things done
efficiently in the home, the workplace, the marketplace, and the
world while not being too far flung from our knowledge of the
nondual nature of reality.
The
http://www.angelfire.com/amiga/emerson-center/wisdom_Four_Noble_Truths.htm
Wisdom
of the Ages: The Four Noble Truths
When
you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away.
You don't actually "become" a buddha, you simply cease,
slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some
omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human
being.
The
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche
However
many holy words you read
However
many you speak,
What
good will they do you,
If
you do not act upon them?
Buddha
"If
you want to be no different
from
the Buddhas and Zen masters,
just
don't seek externally.
The
pure light in a moment of awareness
in
your mind is the Buddha's essence within you."
Zen
Master Linji (
…[W]e
have rediscovered that which the great, the good, and the wise
have sung about and thought about – the imprisoned splendor
within ourselves and within each other –and have direct
contact with it. Whether we call it the Christ in us, or the
Buddha, or Atman, or just the Son of God the living Spirit, makes
no difference. You and I are witness to the Divine fact and we
have discovered an authority beyond our minds, even though our
minds utilize it.
Ernest Holmes, Sermon
by the Sea
Today we are going to study the Four Noble Truths as the Buddha
taught them. I cannot hope, in one morning, to do more than
give a sturdy beginning to what these wise teachings can mean in
our lives. Buddhism is about rediscovery of our
"primordial nature" -- our Natural Perfection. We
know that our growth is in consciousness. We are not
"becoming." We are already there. So, let us, for this
hour, open ourselves to the awareness that we are also Buddhas,
with the same potential for enlightenment.
This
is in harmony with the Science of Mind, of course. All the
spiritual practices and teachings of Buddhism have as their end
the realization that we are integrally connected to all of life.
Even when we don't consciously have that awareness, it is true,
nonetheless.
There
are these four amazing and simple realizations that Buddha taught
and they are known as the Four Noble Truths. Here they are:
1.
First: Life is difficult; it holds for living beings
imperfection, dissatisfaction, impermanence, suffering and pain. The
Buddhist term for this is dukkha. That
is, life includes pain, getting old disease and ultimately death.
We also endure psychological suffering like loneliness
frustration, fear, embarrassment, disappointment, and anger. This
is an irrefutable fact that cannot be denied. It is realistic
rather than pessimistic because pessimism is expecting things to
be bad. Instead, Buddhism explains how suffering can be avoided
and how we can be truly happy. We don’t need to be rocket
scientists to recognize that life does involve some suffering,
that things change, folks struggle with this and sometimes
experience deep pain over the way life seems to be.
2.
Second: Dukkha is caused by desire for
things to be other than they are. The second truth is
that suffering is caused by craving and aversion. We will suffer
if we expect other people to conform to our expectation, if we
want others to like us, if we do not get something we want, etc.
In other words, getting what you want does not guarantee
happiness. Rather than constantly struggling to get what you
want, the effort is best to modify your wanting. Wanting
deprives us of contentment and happiness. A lifetime of wanting
and craving and especially the craving to continue to exist,
creates a powerful energy that causes the individual to be born.
So, Buddhism teaches us that craving leads to physical suffering
because it causes us to be reborn.
Desire
is the reason the Buddhists say we are always changing
things. Now we each know that desire comes in a wide
variety of guises. Our egos work with these desires to
motivate us to act in certain ways. In fact, if we stop and
think about the nature of our thoughts for a moment, our minds
mechanically cannot tell the difference between an appearance, a
thought, and something that actually occurred. How many
times have you thought you had done something, only to discover
that it was all thought and no action ever occurred? When
we are dealing with desires we really need to develop some
discernment between skillful fulfillment of desire and having the
desires in charge or our lives via the management provided by the
ego.
3.
There is a way to eliminate this dukkha;
that is to uproot its cause: desire. The third truth is
that suffering can be overcome and happiness can be attained;
that true happiness and contentment are possible, if we give up
useless craving and learn to live each day at a time. This
is accomplished in not dwelling in the past or the imagined
future, then we can become happy and free. A great by product of
this change in our selves is that we then have more time and
energy to help others. This is Nirvana or
enlightenment.
Now
I am not going to say that you should not want anything.
But each of us knows what it is like to get what we want.
The thrill doesn’t last very long. Not long after you get
what your want, you no longer want it as much as you once did, or
you want it to be different. This is a vicious cycle that
can run your whole life, digging you into a deep well of
debt and longing for things that you can only hope to have.
Simply stated, the addiction or attachment to fulfilling ones
temporary desires can foreclose possibilities that would bring
peace and contentment within the lives we are given.
This
cycle is much like bailing a boat out with one hand and drilling
a hole in the hull with the other! In the Dhammapada,
Buddha says: “Those ... who find delight in freedom
from attachment in the renunciation of clinging, free from the
inflow of thoughts, they are like shining lights, having reached
final liberation in the world.”
4.
The way to do this is by following the Eightfold Path which
leads to desire and extinguishes suffering. It is said
that by following this path that it is possible to attain
enlightenment, and that life becomes a more joyful and fulfilling
experience. The Buddha, as well as Jesus, warned us that
there will be suffering. This fact does not preclude
joy! Nor does it say that we shall be devoid of
desire. Consider this, what if we were to develop some
discernment about the appropriate use of desire? What if it
is a tool that we have been using for a purpose other than what
it is appropriate to do? It is the attachment to our own
idea of how our desires can be met that is the source of much
suffering. Lets be honest, there will always be something
we would prefer be different. Nevertheless, we can still find joy
within by letting go of our attachment to the outcome. In
treatment the release step is essential to the effectiveness of
the prayer. The same is true here.
Victor
Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author, said it most powerfully,
"everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the
last of the human freedoms-to choose one's attitude in any given
set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." [i]
Frankl wrote that one can discover the meaning in life in three
ways: "by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing
something or encountering someone; and by the attitude we take
toward unavoidable suffering." [ii]
The Eightfold Path is a tremendous model of how we can, through
changing our thinking, change the way we experience our own
lives. Let’s take a quick tour through the eight
points on the Eightfold Path.
The
first point on the Eightfold Path is also called Right
Understanding—the right way to view and understand the
world. Misunderstanding occurs when one imposes one's
expectations onto things; expectations about how one hopes
things will be, or about how one is afraid things might be. Right
Understanding occurs when one sees things simply, as they are. It
is an open and accommodating attitude. One abandons hope and fear
and takes joy in a simple straightforward approach to life.
There
is a miracle in beginning to embody that there is more than one
possible point of view. When we learn to actually stand in
another’s shoes and try out their perspective, to actually
allow the idea within our consciousness that others come up with
good ideas, reasonable and valuable ways of approaching life, we
can loosen our own grip and thus become more fluid in our
approach to discovery of any idea.
The
second point of the path is also called Right Intention. It
proceeds from right view. If one is able to abandon one's
expectations, hopes and fears, one no longer needs to be
manipulative. One doesn't need to try to force situations into
preconceived notions of how they should be. One works with what
is. Our thoughts are pure. The ego's greatest triumph is to
trick us into believing its best interests are our best
interests, and even into identifying our very survival with its
own. This is a savage irony, considering that ego and its
grasping are at the root of all our suffering. Yet, ego is
so convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the
thought that we might ever become egoless terrifies us. It
isn’t that that is necessarily possible, but the threat of
it is frightening when the ego is busy being the President of
“You Incorporated!”
The
best, and simplest rule I have for knowing whether an idea is
ego-based or divinely inspired is to look for what would happen
if I were to follow the idea to its ultimate conclusion.
Divine ideas never do any permanent damage, to be sure, there may
be some feathers ruffled, but not one loss occurs out of a divine
idea. Ego driven ideas generally glorify someone at an
others expense. It may be our selves, it may be someone
whom we want something from, but the boost comes at a cost to
someone. Right thinking has no such cost.
This
is speech that causes no harm. Once one's intentions are
pure, one no longer needs to be embarrassed about one's speech.
Since one isn't trying to manipulate people, one don't have to
hesitate about what one says, nor does one need to bluff one's
way through a conversation with phony confidence. One says what
needs to be said, very simply in a genuine way.
The
fourth point on the path, Right Action or Discipline, involves a
kind of renunciation. One needs to give up the tendency to
complicate issues. One practices simplicity. One has a simple
straight-forward relationship with one's dinner, job, house, and
family. One gives up all the unnecessary and frivolous
complications that usually clouds our relationships.
"It
did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what
life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the
meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who
were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must
consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in
right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to
find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks
which it constantly sets for each individual." p.122 [iii]
Right
Livelihood is the fifth step on the path. It is only natural that
we should earn our living. There are, however, jobs that exploit
or damage others, and ourselves, work which may not be on the
path of Right Livelihood. Often, many of us don't particularly
enjoy our jobs. We should form a simple relationship with it, and
one needs to perform it properly, with attention to detail.
The
sixth aspect of the path is Right Effort. Struggling is not Right
Effort. One often approaches a spiritual discipline as though one
needs to conquer one's "evil side" and promote our
"good side." When we are locked in combat with our
selves and try to obliterate the tiniest negative tendency, we
are missing the point! Right Effort doesn't involve
struggle or resistance at all. When one sees things as they are,
one can work with them, gently, and without any aggression.
Right
Mindfulness, the seventh step, involves precision and clarity. We
become mindful of the tiniest details of our experience, and in
so doing, we become more conscious of the unity of all of life.
One is mindful of the way one speaks, performs one's job, one's
posture, and attitudes toward our friends and family, in every
detail. This may sound as if it is over the top, but imagine
what a difference it would make in our lives if we were mindful
in our relationships with our families?
The
final point on the Eightfold Path is sometimes called Right
Concentration, or Absorption. Usually folks are absorbed in
absentmindedness. With our minds completely captivated by all
sorts of entertainment and thoughts run amok, it is more like we
are a sea sponge soaking in a sea of race mind. Right
Concentration means that one is completely absorbed in Now-ness,
in things as they are. This can only happen if one has some
sort of discipline, such as meditation. We might even say
that without the discipline of meditation, we can't walk the
Eightfold Path at all. Sitting meditation cuts through our
absentmindedness. It provides a space or gap in our preoccupation
with our selves. It is as if we regularly practice what my
teacher, Dr. Bill, would call “dying to the world.”
Meditation is a committed and divinely focused break from the
status quo and it provides us with a readily available method of
knowing that we can discipline our minds, that there is more to
us than the sea of unconscious thoughts, that consciousness can
be directed intentionally.
Everyone
knows that if we are instructed to stop thinking about something
that we cannot stop, that the command to stop doing something
works upon us in a perverse way. But we know that we can
gently and lovingly substitute a particular focus for the
thoughts when they arise, say returning ones focus to the flame
of a candle, to ones breath, or to the contemplation of a brief
bit of inspiring text.
Most
people have heard of nirvana. It has become equated with a
sort of eastern version of heaven.
Actually,
nirvana simply means cessation. It is the cessation of
obsession, hostility and ignorance; the cessation of the
struggle to prove our existence to the world, to survive.
One does not have to struggle to survive after all. We have
already survived. We are surviving now, and the struggle was just
an extra complication that was added to life because we lost
confidence in the way things are. With the Eightfold Path as a
conscious practice, we no longer need to manipulate things as
they are into things as one would like them to be.
How
do we reconcile the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path with
the Science of Mind? Was there some illegal move on the
field of consciousness in our considering these ideas or in
practicing them? Do they violate our beliefs about
prosperity or metaphysics? I don’t think so. I
think that these points on the path have us develop our clarity
about what it is that we truly want in our lives. We are
all subject to desire, but desire unmet with consciousness is
race consciousness left in charge of a large part of our
being. Unmet desires are the source of great suffering just
as the Buddha and Jesus have said. Being mindful of what
one truly desires opens one to the Divine flow of abundance and
gets the “bloated nothingness” of ego off the divine
circuits. Dr. Bill called this retiring the ego for lack of
work. It reinstalls the rightful leadership in ones
life. The principles and practices arising from the
eightfold path lead us in the same way that the realizations
represented by the spiritual hero of the Old Testament, Job,
leads us, to the realization that we have been the obstacles to
our own good and that in getting our bloated nothingness off of
the divine circuits, we place ourselves in the direct flow of
divine happiness and true wisdom. Job said:
"I
am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words.
I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on
marvels beyond me and my knowledge . . . . I knew you before only
by hearsay; but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract
all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent."
Job
42:1-6
The
idea is to get whatever ideas, behaviors, habits, emotions,
random thoughts, whatever might be there—to get these things
out of the way of our direct relationship with God. Now it is
true that Buddhism doesn’t view ultimate reality in the same
way that we do. There is no anthropomorphic God in
Buddhism. In fact, Buddha was a man, a man like Christ who said
that you could do these things and be enlightened. "In
the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have
overcome the world." John 16:33
Thank
you for being here today.
[i]Frankl,
Viktor E., Man's Search for Meaning,
Washington Square Press, Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1963
[ii]
Ibid
[iii]
Ibid
The