An Australian Approach to Buddhism, Life & Reality - Week Twenty Eight

“NO WORRIES”

(an Australian approach to Buddhism, life & reality - Week Twenty Eight)

In his attempt to communicate an experience that is beyond words and intellectual understanding, the Buddha communicated a number of different progressive methods that are all connected in some way with each other. Possibly the most well know of these is the eight step development plan, where each step of the plan needs to be worked on all at the same time, but is still also progressive by nature at the same time. Another example would be the three-fold way of ethics, meditation and insight, which operates on a circular basis with each aspect supporting the other. By working on our ethical lives, we create the conditions for the mind to be clear of negative obstructions, which in turn gives rise to insights that may include the reality that perhaps we need to go a little further with our ethical life, which clears a deeper level of negative obstructions that gives rise to insight that may include the reality that perhaps we need to go a little further with our ethical life and so on.

When you have explored the twelve links of conditioned causal continuity in detail, you could be excused if you began to form an idea that the Dharma path appears, in many respects to be a negative one. It seems, at first, to be all about trying to get rid of things within the process of worrying. In reality, it is about undermining the process of the conditioned reactive way we think, speak and act in accord with our sub-conscious or unconscious habitual patterns of thought and resultant action. When we do this effectively it sets free the creative responsive mind which brings forth a worry free world of endless positive opportunity. This approach is set out in a teaching known as the spiral path and it begins at that point in the twelve link chain where we find the gap in the link that connects the feeling tone of, I like or I don’t like and the thirst for wanting the experience to be different than it is. This path could be described as the meditational guide to awakening and sets out, in detail, an upwardly mobile, ever increasing subtle, graduated path of meditational experience that lead us all the way to the realization of clarity within the realization experience of conditioned causal continuity.

The spiral path could be said to be the positive counterpart of the seemingly negative aspect of the twelve link chain of conditioned causal continuity. In a discourse found in the early Buddhist texts, the Buddha sets out the twelve links in their positive formulation as follows: Birth gives rise to worrying. Worrying gives rise to confidence. Confidence gives rose to joy. Joy gives rise to rapture. Rapture gives rise to tranquillity. Tranquillity gives rise to bliss. Bliss gives rise to concentration. Concentration gives rise to knowledge and vision of reality. Knowledge and vision of reality gives rise to disenchantment. Disenchantment gives rise to dispassion. Dispassion gives rise to liberation. Liberation gives rise to knowledge about destruction.

Obviously, we couldn’t even begin walking the Dharma path unless we were born in the first place, so perhaps we can take that as read. Let’s also be honest here, we wouldn’t even be considering walking the Dharma path unless we have discovered within our own experience at least some degree of worrying. So, these two factors could be said to be the motivational drive to begin to explore, even tentatively at first, what the Buddha had to say. We read and we listen. We spend time with like-minded individuals. We begin to meditate and take a look at our ethical lifestyles and all the while we do these things with a mind set of test and challenge and checking results against our own experience. As a result of our own experience we then begin to develop a degree of confidence that we are in the right place and doing the right thing. We discover for ourselves things are beginning to move us away from worrying into a happier state of well-being and joy begins to surface as we have found something at last that seems to work on a very practical level.

From that moment on it is all about the integration of our sub-conscious and unconscious conditioned drives and our newly discovered authenticity releases the negative energy and transforms it into the creative energy of rapture, tranquillity, bliss and concentration. The meditative quality of concentration then becomes the working ground for the arising of insight into the totality of the human condition which eventually leads to the final preparatory stages of disenchantment, dispassion, liberation with the resultant destruction of the idea of being a fixed or separate and enduring ego-identity, personality, self, soul, spirit, essence, mind-stream, conscience, energy or any other thing that can be identified and referred to as you, me, or I.

So, as always, it starts with openly acknowledging the reality of our worrying about the apparent insecurity of the human condition. Generally speaking we think were OK when we’re getting what we want and like, it’s the other end of the see-saw where we find we notice our worrying the most, in the moments when we-re trying our hardest to avoid or escape from anything we experience as unpleasant. In many ways it is when we are in this state of mind that we have the greatest opportunity to bring some awareness to our situation so we can respond in more creative ways. We might even begin to notice that it is us who are the major contributory factor in creating our own worries and often it is nothing to do with any external factor including other people. So, it is our awareness of worrying that creates the opportunity for the development of confidence.

What is that we begin to develop confidence in? This can be broken down into two self-supporting aspects. First we begin to have confidence in ourselves. We begin to experience the positive changes that our practice brings into our daily lives. As a result of that we gain a great confidence in the actual Dharma path of going for refuge to the three jewels. We begin to recognise that the Buddha is the very symbol of our own potential for the alleviation or eradication of our own worries. We begin to recognise that he provided within his body of work, a very down to earth, practical, step by step development method to realize that goal which is based on direct personal experience and not belief. We begin to recognise that although the path is individual to us, a crucial aspect of that development is being supported by like-minded individuals, especially those that may have a greater experience of the path.

I suggest that confidence in the Dharma path is developed in three different ways. There is the intellectual aspect where we listen, read, reflect on, contemplate or discuss with others, the Buddha’s teachings. Then there is an emotional response where we may be inspired by one of our Dharma friends when we observe the positive qualities of their practice. Some people find that they develop some kind of devotional aspect to their emotional response to the path, maybe by creating inspirational shrine areas or engaging in devotional practices such as prostrations, chanting or puja. Maybe that emotional aspect will arise as some kind of heartfelt response to the path itself. The area where I suggest our confidence grows more than anything is in the doing aspect of the path. We have confidence in our capacity to live the Dharma life as best as we can, within our own individual life circumstances. Perhaps we begin to take a closer look at our ethical lifestyle and are prepared to stand up and be counted when it comes down to those core values. Perhaps we even drag ourselves out of bed every morning in the depth of winter to meditate.

Confidence needs to be developed, in my view, on the basis of intuition, reason and direct experience. Why would we even get started unless we had some kind of hunch that it might be helpful? We see something, hear something or read something of the Dharma and it quite naturally sparks our curiosity. And that initial intuition might throw us in head first and we can’t get enough if it. Don’t worry. It soon wears off and starts to settle down. The Dharma path could easily be described as a long distance hurdle race and it’s this first of many hurdles along the way that is the hardest to jump over. This is because the initial worrying that brought you through the door in the first place, may have been lessened to the extent that it is now manageable or comfortable. If we manage to look past the hurdle to the finishing line that is way off in the distance and continue to question, test and challenge our practice then our confidence grows because it is grounded in a reason to continue. That final element of confidence brings everything together in a realized experience of the benefits of walking the path.

It’s possibly that moment when we have actually landed on the others side of that first hurdle, or maybe even the first few hurdles as they do tend to come thick and fast sometimes, especially if we’re running too fast, is when that first glorious moment of joy pops up and gives us a big hug and a sloppy wet kiss. It’s that moment when that first wave of doubt, and I can assure you that there will be many more, is overcome. In different Buddhist texts you find that the experience of joy can not only arise as a result of confidence in the path, but it can equally arise from simply the sense of the freedom from guilt, regret or remorse as our ethical lifestyle begins to clear away a lot of the worrying that arises when we are not being mindful of what we think, say and do and they way that impacts on us, others and the world around us.