Empty Cup

Often times we hear people denouncing Eastern religions and spiritual teachings as being world-denying. Buddhism, being of Eastern origins, gets bundled into the same category of world-denying practices. I should like to add that these accusations often seem to originate from the Christian-based thinkers.

Obviously, Christianity itself could just as easily be accused of the ‘world denying’ propensities, seeing how eager Christian practitioners are to denounce the world, or as they call it, the valley of tears. Their teaching and practice is all about suffering and tolerating the unpleasantness of this world in order to earn the reward of life everlasting in Heaven (Heaven being, of course, the absolute denial and negation of this world.)

But here I want to ask the question what is meant by ‘world’ and what is meant by ‘denying it’?

For most religious practitioners, ‘world’ is synonymous with ‘creation’, and ‘world denial’ is synonymous with destruction. The truth of creation is the highest value and the highest goal in the minds of the ‘creationists’. Is there an equivalent to that in the Buddhist teaching?

Four Truths in the Buddhist Teaching

We as Buddhist practitioners are aware of four kinds of truths. These truths inhabit our practice, and are detectable at various times to variously trained practitioners.

The first kind of truth is the truth we tend to uphold while being in the state of sleep and dreaming some dreams. At that point, the content of our dreams appears to us as undeniable truth, something that is simply self-evident. We do not feel, at the time when we’re engulfed in dreams, that we have to stop and step back and reevaluate the truth of what’s unfolding before us in our dream.

However, when the conditions change, that is to say when we wake up, the simple truth that was so self-evident to us a moment ago, ceases to be the truth and turns out to be untrue. The states we were experiencing while dreaming did not continue to hold true when our conditions changed from sleeping to being awake. So that, for example, while I may have been unbearably embarrassed in my dream where I was under the impression that I have showed up at the office without wearing my pants nor my underwear, upon waking up I immediately realize the falsity of that fact and the foolishness of feeling embarrassed about something that never happened.

So we see that the first kind of truth is subject to conditions. At one point in time it appears to be holding true, but the next moment its truthfulness simply evaporates.

The second kind of truth that we can talk about in Buddhism is the truth of the optical or other apparitions, as they may occur to us while being awake. Thus a person could find himself wandering in the desert, not having any water to drink. At some point, that person may look toward the horizon and joyously discover that there is a little lake full of fresh water awaiting him. He may then rush toward that lake, hoping to quench his thirst. But sooner or later, the conditions will change for that person, and he will be forced to recognize the falsity of this, the second level truth. Such truth used to hold true for the time being and under certain conditions, but as soon as the conditions change, the truth evaporates. Therefore, the second kind of truth in Buddhism is also conditioned. It arises under certain conditions, and then it perishes when those conditions cease to be present.

The third kind of truth is the truth of the so-called normal waking living. This truth holds that there are space and time which possess certain attributes (i.e. up, down, left, right, west, east, south, north, before, now, after, etc.). Also, it holds that there are various objects that come into being, stay around for a while, and then vanish. All these objects are distinct and separate from each other.

What Buddhist practice reveals is that this third kind of truth is also completely conditioned. Same as the first two kinds of truth (i.e. the truth of dreams while being asleep and the truth of optical illusion while being under duress), the normal everyday truth of being born, growing up, aging, getting sick and dying is also applicable only under certain circumstances. Remove those circumstances and conditions, and the normal everyday truth evaporates in the same way that the truth contained in the dreams evaporates upon waking up.

The fourth kind of truth is the so-called absolute truth, that is, truth of the totality. Unlike the first three kinds of truths, this truth is unconditioned. It is unborn and unperishable. Regardless of how violently and abruptly the conditions and the circumstances may change, absolute truth cannot be affected.

What is being denied in Buddhism?

Buddhism negates and denies the unconditional validity of the first three kinds of truth (that is, the truth contained in dreams, the truth contained in optical and similar illusions, and the truth contained in everyday norms accepted by the consensus). Buddhism does not negate the validity of the absolute truth. But if anyone blindly believes that the first three kinds of truths contain immutable validity that is not affected by the changing conditions and circumstances, than such person is being delusional.

So is Buddhism denying the world? It would depend on the definition of the notion of ‘world’. If by world we mean the world of dreams, then yes, Buddhism is denying the unconditional validity of that world. Also, if by world we mean the world of optical illusions, then the answer is also positive. Same for the world of socially constructed norms, such as our regular daily world of sowing seeds and harvesting crops, chopping wood and carrying water. Buddhism does indeed deny the unconditional validity of that world. In other words, Buddhism claims that such worlds are only relative, being dependent on conditions and circumstances, and thus being at their whims.

What is not whimsical, according to the Buddhist teaching, is the undeniable validity of totality, of absolute truth. Buddhism does not deny nor negate this world. Buddhism only denies the world where the truth, even though appearing to be self-evident, cannot withstand protracted scrutiny.

Shunyata (often translated as emptiness) is at the heart of experiencing reality as it is. Anyone who’s been in the position to taste the unsurpassed flavor of freedom had actually been in intimate touch with shunyata at that moment. And that moment is, of course, timeless.

From the phenomenological perspective, that is, from the perspective of attempting to describe the indescribable experience of shunyata, one can only say that there is an unmistakable realization that all the everyday things and concepts are unreal. Everything that we cherish and everything that we feel brings meaning to our lives is perceived as false and irrelevant once we experience enlightenment by getting in touch with shunyata.

What then tends to be rather confusing to the innocent bystanders, who may become aware that someone in their community has experienced liberation, is why is it that liberation invariably brings love? Why is it that, once someone realizes how utterly futile all human hopes and dreams are, all that’s left for that person to feel is love? Why not feel hate instead of love, or feel anger, or cynicism, or any other arbitrary emotion?

The reason is very simple: love is the most immediate manifestation of intimacy. When a person experiences liberation, enlightenment, shunyata, what becomes immediately apparent is how intimate every apparition, every manifested as well as every unmanifested phenomenon is. All separation is gone, disappeared in the same way the night disappears with the light of dawn. And all that is left is absence of separation, absence of anxiety, absence of vexation. In other words, love.

The above description may be naive and simplistic, but it is nevertheless true.

Human beings are born into the world of duality. Is/isn’t, up/down, left/right, before/after. Also, agreeable/disagreeable. And so on.

Because of that, the events that arise in our lives get to be treated in the same dualistic way. Meaning, each event gets evaluated according to some set of criteria. Thus, this event may be perceived as being desirable, that event as being undesirable, and so on. This process of evaluation never ends.

Buddhists and Events

If a person engages in the Buddhist practice, and if he perseveres, there comes a time when the events in that person’s life begin to gain certain uniformity. It is quite difficult to explain what this uniformity is about, or how does it feel like, but the thing is that the ups and downs from the non-Buddhist life now tend to smooth out a bit.

There comes a point where you realize that all events are created equal. If you then persevere and keep going, you will get to the point where you can almost plainly see that it’s how everything is. No event is better or more precious than any other event. And vice versa — no event is to be avoided, to be shoved under the rug.

Events, the way we perceive them, are what reality is. It is our life. Buddhist practitioners are peculiar because they have given up coping with life. They realize that they are the life, and that it would be therefore impossible to cope with something that you already are.

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” -John Cage

Fear is the first cousin of ignorance. In Buddhism, ignorance (avidya) is the Primus Movens of all human suffering. To abandon suffering one must abandon ignorance. And to abandon ignorance, one must go through its first cousin — fear — and figure out how to deal with it (i.e. fear).

But the question is: fear of what? The knee-jerk common wisdom answer is: fear of the unknown. People seem to be afraid of the unknown.

Now, if we stop and think about it, is that really how things are? Are we really afraid of the unknown? I mean, the unknown is just that — unknown. Not being known, or knowable, what is there to be afraid of?

On the other hand, there are countless known things that we have pretty solid reasons to be afraid of. Such as the known possibility of getting very sick, getting injured, and of course, the fear of a very well known thing — death and dying.

That’s why John Cage said that he is afraid of the old ideas. He is afraid of the things that are already known. And he is afraid of them because he knows how horrible those known things are.

Something new and still unknown could actually be good. No need to be afraid of it yet, until we see what’s it actually shaping up to be.

So realizing this, Buddhist practitioners work on dealing with the known fears. One of the known fears is that you may lose a much loved someone, or something. How are you going to cope with that fear?

It would be ludicrous to expect any person to voluntarily sign his or her own death warrant. And yet, that’s what true Buddhist practice expects from us.

Of course, no one is ever going to do such a thing, and consequently we have this Buddhist practice that is put in place in order to slowly ‘cook us’ and prepare us for signing the much dreaded death warrant. In that respect, the Buddhist practice must be a bit sneaky, so that it can slowly and imperceptibly creep up on us and deliver the final blow when we least expect it.

Cycles

According to the Buddhist way of thinking, everything is subject to cycles. When it comes to issues concerning the human predicament, these cycles appear to be determined by the particular quality of mind each individual brings into the game. For example, one observes people who are subjected to extremely short cycles. Such people can typically be found among acute addicts, such as gamblers or drug and alcohol addicts, violence addicts, etc.

Upon observing the behavior of such short-cycle bound people, one cannot help but be forced to conclude that such people are extremely selfish. For example, a serious gambler, when finding himself in a pickle, would think nothing of selling his own family’s future just to have another go at it. In his mind, life is absolutely not worth living unless his selfish desire to go for a ride (meaning, to bet his money on a particular horse, for example) gets to be instantly fulfilled.

Similar observations and conclusions can be made about the drug addicts, for example. A typical crack-head or a heroin addict sees nothing, knows nothing when it comes to getting the next fix. The cycles that govern his existence are extremely short, and the selfishness resulting from such short cycles is extremely pronounced. It would be difficult to find more selfish people than among those who are ensnared by the extremely short and tight cycles.

Moving away from such extreme cases, we find regular, everyday folk who appear free from being enslaved from such short cycles. Instead of being governed by the cycles that keep rearing their ugly head every 20 minutes or so, common workaday folk are more enslaved by the longer cycles that could usually be described as ‘from paycheck to paycheck’. It should not come as a big surprise to learn that most people today live their lives from paycheck to paycheck, consequently finding themselves ensnared by the weekly or biweekly cycles. Most of these people do not and cannot see anything beyond this one or two weeks horizon. And consequently, their mindset is also quite narrow.

Not nearly as narrow as the mindset of a serious gambler or a crack-head, of course, but nevertheless quite narrow. A person who cannot see beyond the two week milestone cannot possibly be expected to be very broad-minded.

Broadening our horizons, we may find another group of people, the business people or proprietors, whose cycles tend to stretch beyond the two week horizon. Typically, business people view their world in terms of quarters (which coincide with the quarterly financial reports). Such businesses live and die based on their performance tied to a particular quarter.

If we then leave the narrow-minded world of addicts, paycheck winners and business people, we may encounter people whose cycles get to be longer thanks to tying their horizons to the cycles found in nature. This mostly pertains to the natural seasons. These seasons govern the lives of farmers, fishermen, hunters, gatherers, etc. These people have somewhat less selfish outlook on life, thanks to their somewhat broader view on life’s cycles.

Finally, it is possible to get in touch with people who have managed to leave even the world of seasonal cycles, and to arrive at the outlook which encompasses their entire lifetime. These are the people who have withdrawn from everyday affairs to devote their lives to serving some supernatural force, such as god etc. They typically belong to some community of priesthood or something similar, and are serving a very specific role in the overall structure of the society.

These religious devotees gaze at a much longer, wider cycle than most of their fellow humans. The cycle they are focused on encompasses their entire lifetime. Thus, their mindset is much broader than the mindset of an average person, and their level of selfishness is usually much lesser than that of an average person. They view their entire life as a journey which will culminate with their death, at which point their actions and deeds will get evaluated by some higher, supernatural being, and they will get rewarded/punished accordingly. This faith influences the outlook these people may have on the cycles of existence.

All of the above examples deal with cycles of existence that vary in length. The length of these cycles depend on the horizon any given person is engaged in. The narrower the horizon, the shorter the cycle, and consequently the harsher the selfishness.

However, regardless of the respective length of the cycle one is engaged in, there is a limit to that cycle. And that limit is determined by the longevity of that person’s identity. At the minimum, it is driven by the immediate selfish impulse, which the person engaged in the cycle cannot perceive in any other way but only as something of utmost urgency and importance. At the maximum, it cannot exceed that person’s physical existence.

A notable exception to this worldview is the Buddhist view, which helps stretch those cycles even beyond the boundaries of the individual lifespan.

The Maker and the Making

According to the Buddhist teaching, it is not possible to have an action without an agent who would execute such an action. And conversely, it would not be possible to have an actor, or an agent, who doesn’t do anything. Action and actor performing it define each other and cannot appear independently, in a similar way that we cannot have ‘left’ without having ‘right’ at the same time, nor can we have ‘up’ without having ‘down’ at the same time.

Furthermore, in the Buddhist world there are no coincidences. Unlike the scientific picture of the world, which treats pretty much every occurrence as a mere coincidence until it can be demonstrated that such occurrence complies with some elegant underlying theory, in the Buddhist world every occurrence happens for a very good reason. There are no capricious, whimsical events, nor are there any events that would be a handiwork of some supernatural being (such as god).

How do things happen according to the Buddhist teaching, then? Simply put, things are governed by the Law of Causality. Anything that happens must bear fruit. There is no possibility of an ‘orphaned’ event, that is to say, in the Buddhist world every event results from some other event. And furthermore, every event will result in some other event. So, the Buddhist Law of Causality portrays the world as being one enormous Matrix.

But where is the Primary Mover, then? Where is the event that put all this matrix in motion? In the Buddhist teaching, there isn’t such a thing as a beginning. In other words, the world is beginningless.

The most important outcome of this teaching is its ethical, or moral component. Since nothing happens without a cause, it is impossible to wiggle out of this chain of cause-and-effect. Any deed, performed by an actor (or, a doer), must, according to this teaching, bear fruit. But the crucial teaching is that this fruit cannot be tasted by anyone else by the original doer. Thus, there simply is nowhere to hide in the Buddhist world. According to the Buddha’s teaching, it would be impossible to cheat the system and to duck the responsibility.

Another important aspect of this teaching is the fact that it is impossible for someone else to taste or experience the fruits of our actions. This then guarantees the absolute fairness of such Buddhist universe, where everyone reaps whatever they sow.

The Buddhist Cycles

Buddhist practitioners live in the Buddhist universe, as described earlier. They know that anything that happens in their lives is caused by something they did previously. They also know that everything they do right now is going to bear fruit, and that fruit is going to be experienced by them, and no one else.

Knowing this, they realize that, once they die, they inevitably leave behind the legacy of their own deeds. This legacy lives on, as the Buddha taught that there cannot be an ‘orphaned’ event, the one that will not bear fruit.

The only problem, then, is — who is going to taste the fruit of such acts, once the original doer disappears (that is, dies)?

And the only meaningful answer to this question is that the original doer will continue to kick around, and will be brought by the Law of Causality to taste the fruits of his or her previous actions.

This being so, it becomes evident that the Buddhist cycles have the capacity to stretch beyond the limits of an individual lifetime. As such, these cycles bring with them an unprecedented broadening of the horizons. The trifle selfishness and the small-mindedness of the everyday person, who can barely see beyond his/her paycheck, let alone beyond his lifetime, now gets slowly replaced by the open-mindedness of the typical Buddhist practitioner. The broadened horizons help appease the innate fears that make most people completely incapacitated.

My friend Neil asked me the following question:

Hi Alex,

I’ve had a number of conversations with my roommate recently about desire vs. acceptance. Desire is what leads people to create things in life, but also leads to un-wholesome choices and actions rooted in attachment to self. Acceptance is sort of the flip side of this, where instead of choosing based on interpretations of good and bad, we accept. My understanding of the dharma is that desires are to be extinguished and we should strive to accept. But if that were the case, and we obeyed none of our desires, nothing would get created in the world. Bodhisattvas would not seek to free others, we would never take the time to learn the dharma, no one would paint beautiful portraits, create a more efficient medical system etc.

Do we distinguish between good and bad desires in Buddhism and if so what is the rationale?

OK, that’s a very fundamental question, and I think it deserves careful examination.

Like you’ve already mentioned above, “Desire is what leads people to create things in life, but also leads to un-wholesome choices and actions rooted in attachment to self”. It is this erroneous conviction — that there is such a thing as myself that is somehow separate from everything else — that leads us to attach to it and to consequently generate all kinds of desires aimed at protecting and furthering the hallucinatory ’self’.

So it should be fairly easy to see that in Buddhism we can clearly identify bad desires. Any desires that spring from the erroneous concepts, such as the concept of a separate self, cannot be deemed good. The rationale behind this distinction lies in the fact that erroneous concepts inevitably lead to suffering.

As you already know, Buddhism is only concerned with human condition. According to the Buddha’s teaching, the prevalent factor underlying human condition is suffering. It is impossible to conceive of any arrangement whatsoever that could possibly eliminate this condition. One can place all one’s hope in concepts such as heaven, nothingness, etc., but upon closer inspection all these concepts turn out to be unsatisfactory.

Nevertheless, Buddhist teaching insists that having a desire to extinguish suffering is not a bad desire. As a matter of fact, being a Buddhist practitioner myself, I would argue that all those things you’ve enumerated above (painting beautiful portraits, building more efficient medical systems, learning the Dharma etc.) are the direct manifestation of the desire to extinguish suffering.

But therein lies the rub — suffering is a direct outcome of attachment which leads to desires. Yet here we have a strong desire to abolish suffering. Isn’t that also an attachment that will inevitably lead to suffering? The situation seems paradoxical: in order to dissolve suffering, we need to have a desire to do so, which implies further suffering!

How to find a way out of this conundrum? Buddhist teaching and practice is all about exactly this problem. The Buddha showed us the way out of this sticky predicament 2,500 years ago.

I’d like you to think about the Buddhist way out of this for a while. Let me know your findings, and then we can look into it a bit deeper.

Be well,

Alex

Amazingly, almost no one ever stops to think about why does anything happen. Actually, that’s not strictly true — some of us do occasionally stop and think about it. But usually it is only about some specific thing. It is extremely rare to find anyone who is concerned with finding out why do things, all things, happen.

What Do You Think?

So what do you say? Why do things happen? Why is is that anything happens in the first place?

As we go through life, we cannot help but notice that things happen all the time. Things change, and each change is an event that makes us realize that there are things happening all the time.

But why is the world organized that way? When I ask my students about it, they usually tend to split into two extreme camps:

1. Divine intervention — things happen according to the God’s will
2. Random occurrence — pure chance (or, chaotic changes)

The first camp (i.e. the divine intervention) relies on the existence of a divine, omnipotent being who created the world, and is willing everything that takes place in the world. This theory implies that the world has a beginning, and consequently, will have an end.

The second camp (i.e. the chaos theory) holds that everything is pure chance, a capricious or whimsical outcome of the laws of probability. Some events exhibit higher degrees of the probability pattern, and hence impress upon us the idea of a more or less organized regularity. But most events lack this regularity, and are merely viewed as a random rolling of dice.

Maybe you see yourself siding with one of the two camps we’ve mentioned above. But if I asked you to abstain from joining either of the two camps and yet taking a stance, what would you say?

What Do We Think?

As dedicated practitioners of the Buddhist Middle Way, we tend to avoid extremes, such as divine intervention, or pure chance. As Middle Way practitioners, we live in a godless world, but at the same time we hold that random, chancey world would not only be utterly meaningless, it would be utterly impossible.

While not relying on divine intervention and yet avoiding the blind chance of a chaotic world, we firmly stand the ground of recognizing that the world is fully ordered. Put slightly differently, we know that nothing ever happens without a very good reason.

Regardless of how many universes may exist in the world, none of them is regulated by a god-like figure, nor is any of them governed by the pure chance. All the possible universes are subject to the strict laws governing the occurrence of any and all events.