In this chapter, we look at the guidance found in Buddhism for living a life that keeps you on a path toward lasting happiness. The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice is enlightenment and nirvana. To be enlightened simply means to see reality as it is. It means to be “awake” to reality. Enlightenment comes from being aware of what is happening, moment to moment.[246] Some believe that the ultimate aim of life is to be awake.[247]
Of course, we mostly attach ourselves so strongly to the way we want things to be that we cannot see things as they are. Most of us do not have the clarity in life that we seek, and this causes us to suffer. Once we can see things as they are, suffering in life disappears. Happiness, peace, and joy all arise as you see the truth of reality.
Once you realize nirvana, you live in the world in a state of permanent knowledge, peace, and bliss. One of the milestones on the path towards nirvana is happiness.
Three Main Reasons We Are Often Dissatisfied and Unhappy
The Buddha gives three fundamental reasons for our suffering and dissatisfaction with life. According to the Buddha, the causes of unhappiness all boil down to personal desire, thirst and craving to get what we want, have things our way, and keep what we have.[248]
Humans are willful creatures. We want what we do not have, and we want to keep the things that we do have. We want sense pleasures for their own sake, but we also want them because we mistakenly think they will bring us happiness. Our strong need for happiness turns simple desire into hunger, thirst, and craving. We selfishly want things for ourselves, and all too often would willingly deny them to others.
However, we can seldom have all that we want, and our unfulfilled desires result in dissatisfaction. Even if we do get what we want, we are dissatisfied when they do not bring us the lasting happiness we seek. We are also dissatisfied because they do not last. Dissatisfaction turns into the craving for more favorable situations and material goods, in the hope that if we can just get more, we will be satisfied.
We are, in short, addicted to having things, and to “having” people, and when we adapt to what we have, we want still more. There is never enough to satisfy the addiction.
We are also attached to our ideas and ideals, views, opinions, theories, conceptions, and beliefs. We believe that happiness will come from having the right beliefs, being smart, being admired, and thinking well of ourselves. Dissatisfaction can set in when others hold beliefs different from our own, or when someone or something challenges our beliefs. One such belief is what we believe ourselves to be (the self-image). We are unhappy if someone or something threatens that self-image.
The desire to keep what we have includes desire for life itself. We do not want to age, become infirm, get sick, and die. We want to continue. The fact that everyone dies is a huge source of dissatisfaction.
Finally, we sometimes thirst for nonexistence or self-annihilation.[249] The burden of living can be heavy and painful. Many times one would like life to stop, or at least slow down, so there could be a little relief. The fact that life continues relentlessly can be a huge source of unhappiness.
The Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha (the “Awakened One” or “Enlightened One”), began teaching his principles of liberation 2,500 years ago. Unlike yoga, whose exact origins are unknown, we know a lot about how Buddhism started. We know when the Buddha was born, when he died, and when he attained nirvana.
There is disagreement as to exactly what the Buddha was. When asked if he was a god or saint, the Buddha answered by saying, “I am awake.” [250] Some schools of Buddhism consider the Buddha to be divine, while others view him as a great teacher. You will likely be attracted to a school that fits your needs for Buddha-as-teacher, or Buddha-as-God. The Buddha would have no reason to care what you thought of him, as long as you followed his teachings.
Roots in Yoga
The Buddha was trained by Hindu masters and practiced raja yoga, so Buddhism has its roots in Hinduism and yoga. Buddhism emphasizes the same goal as yoga, reducing the power of attachments to self-centered desires as a way to obtain nirvana. The core of what I discussed in Appendix 2 is relevant to the practice of Buddhism.
There are important differences. Unlike yoga, the Buddha did not include in his teaching anything about the individual soul or Self (atta or atman). Buddhism, as he originally taught it, emphasized anatta or anatman (non-soul or non-Self). When Buddha talks about dropping selfish attachments, thereby obtaining enlightenment, he does not say who or what becomes enlightened. It was his way not to theorize or speculate. His teaching emphasized experience. If you become enlightened, the experience will speak for itself.
Compassion and Wisdom
In both practice and theory, Buddhism is centered upon compassion and wisdom. Both are necessary for a complete person. Practicing compassion alone results in a loving and compassionate fool, while focusing on wisdom alone produces a heartless intellectual.
Compassion
His Holiness the Dalai Lama never tires of reminding people that, “The entire teaching of Buddha is founded on compassion.” [251] He elaborates: “The basic sources of happiness are a good heart, compassion, and love…Our altruistic mind is the key to our happiness as individuals, families, nations, and as an international community.”[252]
All ethical conduct, which is key to fulfilling the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, springs from compassion. Not all schools of Buddhism make compassion their priority, but for all schools, it is very important
I think about compassion in two ways. First, I may have compassion for a particular person or thing. For example, if I see that a person is unhappy, angry, or in pain, I feel compassion. This feeling is quite natural.
Second, I think of compassion itself, not connected to a particular person or thing. Here, compassion is an experience or sense of the way things are. My sense of compassion is that it is a natural element of the universe. It is the essential theme of the natural order of things. If I do not have compassion, then I am not in harmony with the universe.
Compassion is a quality of being that is absolutely necessary to have a good and happy life. His Holiness says, “Compassion, love, and forgiveness…are not mere luxuries. They are fundamental to the continued survival of our species.” [253]
This quality draws you out of the isolation of your mind, so you can become aware of the world around you, and your true nature. To live with compassion for all is to walk the path of the Buddha.
Wisdom
The wisdom I refer to here is spiritual wisdom and knowing how to look at reality. I talk about wisdom later on when I discuss the Eightfold Path. Two elements of that path, right view and right intention, represent those aspects of the path that concern spiritual wisdom.
Mental Tranquility
In Buddhist practice, mental tranquility (or calmness) is a requirement for happiness. According to the Dalai Lama:
An external enemy, no matter how powerful, cannot strike directly at our mental calmness, because calmness is formless. Our happiness or joy can be destroyed only by our own anger. The real enemy of joy is anger.[254]
“Be Lights unto Yourselves”
The Buddha taught that individual effort is the way to the goal. Some religions (even later forms of Buddhism) view salvation (enlightenment) as a matter of grace from God. However, the Buddha said, “Work out your own salvation with diligence.” [255] He restated this many times, and in many ways. Here are the Buddha’s own words on this subject.
Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in our books, nor because it is in accord with your belief, nor because it is the saying of your teacher. Be lights unto yourselves. Those who, either now or after I am dead, shall rely upon themselves only and not look for assistance to anyone besides themselves, it is they who shall reach the topmost height.
The Four Noble Truths
The foundation of all Buddhist teaching is the Four Noble Truths.[256] These truths were the first teaching of the Buddha, spoken immediately after his enlightenment.[257] The Four Noble Truths have to do with the nature of unhappiness/suffering (dukkha); the nature of craving for pleasure/permanence/things to be other than they actually are (tanha), which is the origin of dukkha; permanent cessation of dukkha; and the Eightfold Path that leads to the cessation of dukkha (nirvana).
Dukkha
Our primary focus will be on dukkha — how it arises and how to make it stop. In using the term dukkha, I am not trying to be obscure. I am trying to describe the problem in the most straightforward way possible, so we can explore how to resolve it.
Dukkha is from a Pali word that means “dirty hole.” In its time, the word described a cart’s axle hole. If the hole was dirty, it threw the wheel off-center, making for an unpleasant ride as the cart rolled down the road. [258] Sometimes it was just an unsatisfactory ride; sometimes it made the cart unsteady, which was dangerous in the high mountain passes; and sometimes it made the passengers suffer physical pain.
In Buddhism, dukkha refers to the mental states of anxiety, unsatisfactoriness, stress, or suffering. I am using the word dukkha because none of these other words individually gets at the problem that the Buddha identified in human existence.
He saw that the way we usually interact with the world, and the way we see the world, are not right. We are off-kilter. It is as if we are trying to go through life moved by a part of us that does not work quite right. The problem as he saw it is that we do not see reality as it is, a dissonance that causes anxiety, unsatisfactoriness, stress, and suffering. In other words, it creates dukkha.
The Nature of Dukkha
The first truth in this teaching is that all human life is suffering, dukkha, whether we know it or not. Dukkha expresses in three primary ways.
First, dukkha is the physical and emotional suffering caused by the basic challenges of life: birth, aging, sickness, injury, and death. The five aspects of life are unavoidable. Although these are all painful in themselves, that pain is not dukkha. Dukkha is emotional pain in the form of dissatisfaction and unhappiness that we inflict on ourselves in response to these realities of life.
The second expression of dukkha is the emotional reaction to not having what we desire, or losing what we have. When we do not get what we want, or when we lose what we have, we suffer painful dissatisfaction and unhappiness. For example, when we lose a loved one, the dukkha that we feel from the severed attachment to that person can be extremely painful.
The third form of dukkha is our emotional dissatisfaction with the way the conditional, circumstantial world works. For example, in our world of favorable and unfavorable conditions, we try to find happiness by doing things or having things. As explained in Chapter 2, this provides us with conditional happiness, which is inherently transitory. This is not the lasting happiness that we all seek.
Dukkha can arise from the knowledge (conscious or not) that in this ephemeral world, lasting happiness will always be denied to us. In fact, most humans exist in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction.[259] Of course, you do not need to be a Buddhist to know this. As Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” [260]
Tanha as the Origin of Dukkha
The second truth states that the primary cause of dukkha is our compelling desire (tanha) for things to be other than as they are, or for things to remain as they are.[261] This is no ordinary desire. In Pali, tanha means thirst. This thirst is personal. It relates to what you personally need or want. Tanha is also self-centered desire (craving) to have and keep pleasurable experiences and avoid unpleasant ones. The Buddha called hunger for things the supreme disease.
It is this “thirst” (craving, ta?hā) which produces re-existence and re-becoming, and which is bound up with passionate greed, and which finds fresh delight now here and now there, namely, (1) thirst for sense-pleasures, (2) thirst for existence and becoming, and (3) thirst for nonexistence.[262]
Thirst for sense pleasures. We thirst for and seek out sense pleasures, in the mistaken belief that they will give us happiness, or as a substitute for the happiness that is out of reach for us. Sense pleasures are temporary, and when they are over we suffer for their loss, or we suffer the effects of oversatiation.
Thirst for existence and becoming. We want to be alive and stay alive. We suffer because we all must die. Some believe that after we die we thirst to live again, which results in the endless cycle of death and rebirth.
Thirst for nonexistence. We thirst for the burden of living to be lifted, and we suffer from the weight of life. However, life is ever-present and ever-pressing, until we die. Unwholesome methods of alleviating this suffering include drugs, alcohol or suicide.
If you have tanha in relation to something or someone, you have dukkha. If you possess something that you like and want to keep, you have tanha, and you will have dukkha in the future because nothing lasts. You may even have dukkha now because tanha causes you to fear losing what you have. If there is a condition that you cannot accept and desperately want to change, you have tanha and dukkha.
If you have tanha in relation to yourself, because you fear dying, you have dukkha. One of your greatest anxieties is the knowledge that you will someday die.
Tanha in relation to your image of yourself (your ego) can be a constant source of dukkha. You want to carry within yourself a pleasing self-image, and avoid assaults on that image. If your self-image pleases you, you want to keep it that way. If it does not please you, your need to gratify your ego may cause great dukkha.
The Cessation of Dukkha
The third truth explains that dukkha ceases as you clearly see the world as it is, and not as you wish it to be or as you fear it might be. To see the world clearly, you must reduce your desire for it to be other than as it is, and for you to be other than as you are.
The Eightfold Path that Leads to the Cessation of Dukkha
The fourth truth is that dukkha will cease if you follow the Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha. This path is a detailed guide to living and working in a way that promotes your ability to see the truth of reality, live an ethical life, concentrate your mind, and earn wisdom.
“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” [263]
One way of approaching the teachings of the Four Noble Truths is by looking at the Two Arrow Metaphor. Buddhism teaches that when we are touched by physical pain, we usually also feel sorrow, grief, or distress. In other words, we feel two pains, the physical and the mental. It is as if an arrow hits you, and then you immediately shoot yourself with another one. The first pain may be unavoidable, but there is no reason you have to augment your suffering by inflicting upon yourself another wound. [264]
The first arrow is the actual pain that you suffer, which comes from such events as losing your job, or injury. These things happen, and your mind and body react with pain. The second arrow is one that you shoot yourself. You do it to yourself by holding on to the emotional pain of sorrow, grief, or distress, or any number of other painful reactions, such as guilt or regret. By inflicting this second wound on yourself, you both worsen and prolong the pain. In other words, the first arrow happens, and there is nothing you can do about it. The second arrow, suffering, is all on you.
The Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path is a guide for moving through life that enables you to steadily find your way out of dukkha. As you progress along this path, you find the joy and happiness that are natural to you. As the name suggests, there are eight individual areas of guidance: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation (or concentration).
The Eightfold Path is not one on which you take things in any particular sequence or order. For example, you do not work on developing right view and then move on to right intention. To be anywhere on the path is to be on the entire path. All characteristics of the path interrelate to one another. You cannot work on right livelihood, for instance, without at the same time working on right action and all of the other characteristics of the path.
There are two ways to examine the path. One way is to look at the individual characteristics of the path (right view, right intention, etc.). The other is to group its many features within the three categories of wisdom, ethics, and concentration, which is what we will do here.[265]
Wisdom
One aspect of the path is wisdom, which includes right view and right intention.[266] To learn wisdom means to gain a deep understanding of how oneself, others, and things interact in the world.
Right view. Right view means understanding and seeing the world as it is, including the inherent impermanence of things, and the nature and cause of dukkha. It starts with understanding and accepting the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path. It does not end there, however.
You also have to see reality as it is, right now. Seeing is integral to your success in walking the path because a primary cause of dukkha is the inability to see reality as it is. You filter what you permit yourself to see of reality, and then focus much of your attention on subjective memory of the world. Filtering and remembering work very well when it comes to navigating the day-to-day world, but also put you in a mental cage. You can interact with your world as you imagine it to be, but because you are always dealing with a filtered and remembered reality, things are never quite right.
Not seeing reality as it is means you do not know what is happening, nor do you know who you are. You do not know why you are here and you do not know how to find happiness. Such ignorance leads to a general state of unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). When something bad happens, it pushes you over the edge to actual suffering. You may say to yourself, “Things were already bad, and now this happens!”
To have the right view means to know the way things are, and not to be caught up in concepts and beliefs about “how things are going.”[267] Of course, if your attention is continually fixed on your personal model (internal image) of the world, all you have are your images, concepts, and beliefs about the world. Often, what you think you know of the world does not change, because it is largely a remembered world. The real world, however, is always in a state of flux. Until you learn how to see reality, as it is, moment to moment, you will always be out of sync with the world. Being out of sync is a primary cause of dukkha.
Right intention. You have right intention if you have made a commitment to being awake to reality, and to be present. You make a commitment to resist selfish desires, to exercise good will and compassion toward all, and to do no harm. Right intention refers to the motivation to wake up. When you are single-minded in your effort to wake up, you have right intention.
In one sense, if a cure for dukkha is to see reality, then right intention is to constantly try to see reality in the moment. If your primary motivation is to be awake and free of delusions, then you have right intention. Any motivation based on self-interest, or thought of gain, would not be right intention.[268]
Ethics
The next aspect of the Eightfold Path is ethics, which includes right speech, right action, and right livelihood.[269] Here we are concerned with living and working ethically, and doing what is right. Ethical conduct springs primarily from compassion. If you live your life taking into account the feelings, perspectives, and rights of others, you are well on the way to living an ethical life. [270]
Knowing what you are doing now. The first step towards either right speech, action, or livelihood is to know what you are doing and where you are now. You can’t get there from here unless you first know where “here” is. What kind of speech are you practicing right now? Is it truthful or untruthful? Is it helpful or harmful? Is it clear? What are the motivations behind your actions? Are they selfish or altruistic? What kind of work do you do? Does it help or hurt yourself or others?
You need to notice what you are doing all of the time. You must examine each thing you say, and every action you take, on and off the job. Quite simply, if what you do or say is truthful, unselfish, charitable, and beneficial to others, you are on the path. If what you do or say is untruthful, self-centered, avaricious, or harmful to others, you are not on the path.
Right speech. You practice right speech when you tell the truth, speak with warmth and compassion, and refrain from angry, malicious, or idle speech. Right speech is also speech that does not harm others or waste their time, and in fact, betters the lives of those around you.
Right speech is speech that is right for the current moment. It is also the kind of speech that helps you to be aware of the moment. It is based on the reality of what you see, and not on your concepts or beliefs about the world. [271]
Right action. You practice right action (or right conduct) when all that you do issues from selflessness, kindness, charity, and compassion. Right actions are selfless actions. They are actions that do not harm anyone, yourself included. They are actions dictated by seeing in the moment, and motivated solely by the needs of the moment.
Right actions are without self-serving aim or purpose, and are spontaneous and natural. Perhaps the archery master, in Zen in the Art of Archery, was referring to right action when he said that the archer practices his art in a state “in which nothing definite is thought, planned, striven for, desired or expected, which aims in no particular direction…” [272]
While these are the general requirements for right action, the Buddha spoke about specific things that were not right action. These are killing, stealing, lying, being unchaste, and drinking intoxicants.
Right livelihood. You engage in right livelihood if you earn a living without harming anyone, including yourself. In other words, earning a living through right livelihood means working in an occupation that does not harm you physically or emotionally, and does not bring harm to others. It should also be something that does not impair your ability to be awake and aware.
If your job affects you negatively, causing you to be frequently subject to negative emotional reactions, if it prevents you from sleeping or from finding peace in meditation, then clearly it is not the right job for you. [273]
Concentration
The final aspect is concentration, which includes right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation (or concentration).[274] The goal is to gain the ability to control your mind, to focus your awareness and concentration on anything you choose, and hold that focus for long periods of time. As we learned in earlier chapters, the ability to control the mind is key to finding happiness.[275]
Right effort. To have right effort, you must put as much effort as you can into living both the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, while at the same time not striving for any particular selfish goal. If you remain steadfastly focused on the goal of waking up, and you are constantly aware of the moment, you are engaging in right effort.
To be aware of the moment does not mean to strain or force present-moment awareness. It means being present and seeing what is happening.