The simplicity I discovered in Buddhism

In Sri Lanka, as a Buddhist, I was trained from childhood to recite paali gatha as the teachings of Buddha. I was reciting them robotically without knowing the true meaning, but hoping that it would lead me to the ultimate objective of attaining nirwana. Yet, until 4 years ago, I couldn't explain to a non-Buddhist what Buddhism meant or how to describe "nirwana", because I myself did not have a clear picture of it. As a child, I was lead to believe that one can attain nirwana only when one dies as we see "නිවන් සුව ලැබේවා" (English translation: May you attain nirwana) at every funeral house we see. I now understand that it was due to my meager understanding and knowledge of the Buddhism. However, I'm sure I'm not alone to have misunderstood this wonderful philosophy of Buddhism in this world. 

I was taught that we cannot attain Nirwana in this life. It has to be trillions of lives after but the teachers always insisted that we needed to start now. So I was just like the rest of the Buddhists here thinking "ahh who needs to think of trillion of lives after.. so better have fun and enjoy this life. I'll start to practice from next life or life after as I have so much of lives to live". It used to be a carefree happy thought in childhood. But as I grew up and started feeling the frustrations and dissatisfaction in life ('suffering' as Buddha termed), I realized that what I knew was wrong.

In Sri Lankan Buddhism, most of the essence of the teaching is focused on the pre-life of Siddhartha Gauthama or the 550 jathaka stories. In those stories, it is meticulously described how the Bodhisathwa worked so hard, making unbelievable sacrifices to achieve the ultimate goal of being a Buddha. We were taught of Bodhisathwa's extreme sacrifices ranging from donating his own flesh by jumping into a devil's mouth to donating his children to an old-nasty man (Ref: Vessanthara Jathakaya). So such stories of extreme sacrifices which were reported as "required" to become a Buddha discouraged me a lot, to be honest. I thought to myself, "I can never do those things".

However, the most important factor I missed was that I wasn't looking to become a Buddha. What I wanted and therefore rightly I should be doing is to 'follow' his path. He has already laid a path for us and has made the journey easy. He already underwent all the difficulties to learn from those and found a right path and right way to attain nirwana. So we simply needed to follow it. But unfortunately, in today's world, we are focusing too much on whether what Buddha did or taught was right or whether it is in accordance of what we believe is true or whether it is 'scientifically proven' or not etc. Today, with so much development and mass communication, we have too many information, but yet too little understanding of what we know. If we consciously take a look at the things we've learned and still reading daily, 99% of it are useless. Only 1% or less is contributing to our well being or ultimate happiness. 

In 2011, I was directed to the right path by a very simple man who had traveled along the path that Buddha laid down for all of us. So he made me understand the simple and practical truth in Buddhism. He told me that Buddha was very practical teacher and therefore he would not mandate rules and regulations upon us if those were difficult to attain. Below are the few most important lessons in my life which he taught me:

1. Only humans can realize nirwana because only humans can 'feel suffering'. If we don't feel suffering then we don't have a reason to 'end-the-suffering'. I was very happy to learn that it is a good thing that the life is not a bed of roses.

2. Every human being can 'realize' nirwana in this life. I never knew that I kept a heavy burden of void and guilt in my heart because of the reasons I've explained above in para 2. Many Buddhists I know believe that we can't realize nirwana in this birth. This notion of practicing and waiting (පාරමිතා පුරන්න) for trillions of years/lives to attain nirwana, had created a void in my heart with a feeling of unfulfillment or incompleteness. So when my teacher/guide told me that what I believed was untrue and that we all CAN realize nirwana in this life, I was jubilant. Knowing that we all can try and feel the blissful nirwana in this very own life is such a great feeling. So I underwent a series of unlearning of what I used to believe or learnt and then gracefully re-learned what I now believe is true.

3. Nirwana is not about becoming nothing, it is about feeling nothing. 

I had misunderstood all these years about the famous discussion rotating around the question 'where does one go when he attain nirwana or parinirwana'? And the answer which was taught to us was "just like a flame of a blown-out candle disappears, the arahath one disappears. He becomes one with the whole". As I said, it was my misunderstanding of this candle and flame example. Since I couldn't understand the answer, I couldn't explain nirwana or parinirwana to a Catholic friend of mine and when I tried to explain this notion of candle flame, she told me, "I can't believe that God created everything if at the end we have to go to nothing". So I stopped trying to preach my religion which I didn't know well and decided to learn more about it.

When my guide told me that nirwana is not something you attain when you die and it is certainly not about becoming nothing, rather it is about feeling nothing, I thought "well that makes sense". According to my guide, realizing nirwana is seeing the true suffering in this world and learning to let go everyone and everything. So once you let go of everything including all bonding to other people, then you don't live in fear of losing the things you love or desire. Living without fear is what he called as nirwana. From the birth until we die, we live in fear every moment: we are scared of taking risks, of future, how to earn a living, how to get medicine, what if the child fall sick, what if my spouse leaves me, if I die who will take care of my children etc. Every feeling we feel today has an element of 'fear' in it. Most of the civilized society live in 'fear of what other people in the society may think of me'. So whatever we do is based on the factors to mitigate that fear - to please others not ourselves. All of us want to be slim, beautiful, fair skin, age-less superhuman beauty kings and queens. Why? It is because we are scared to be sidelined or looked down by others as old, wrinkled, having grey hair or fat with a big belly. It's fear consciousness cultivated by the materialistic world. So to let go of all that fear and many other feelings/emotions and senses is indeed nirwana. To let go and be happy of the moment, realizing that there's no past or future, there's only the present moment and to connect to that universal consciousness which breathes in that present moment is a blissful feeling indeed.  

4. The true essence of Buddhism is taught in one gatha:

සබ්බ පාපස්ස අකරණන් - Avoid all evil 

කුසලස්ස උපසම්පදා - cultivate the good and the true

සචිත්ත පරියෝ දපනං - purify your heart and mind like a mirror

එතං බුද්ධ සාසනං - this is the teaching of the Buddha

If you don't do any evil deed from your 6 senses (eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin and mind) and only do good from all those senses, your heart and mind would be purified like a clean mirror which would reflect only the good. This would allow you to be fearless of life and death and that is what Buddhism is. 

Simple as that. 

Intellectuality without Righteousness is suicidal

Humans are the only living being who could attain "intellectuality" and this alone makes humans superior than any other living or non-living being. Even Chimpanzees, Elephants, Dolphins have limited intellectuality but only humans have far more greater capability to learn and become an intellectual. This is clearly proved by Buddha because he was born as a "human" during his last birth in order to realize Nirwana. He descended from the absolute pleasurable Heaven to the human realm to realize Nirwana. WHY? It is because humans are the only capable living being who can advance his/her intellectual capacity to see beyond the "myths" in the world and finally realize the ultimate truth.

Unfortunately, today the World is on a rat-race for information, to be educated and to be called as an "intellectual" or a "professor". Parents force their children to study harder comparing them to other children. They send the children to school plus numerous additional classes called "tuition" under various teachers. Children have lost their childhood, their time to play and exert the energy they accumulate inside their bodies. They see no world other than this endless race to earn marks and more "prefixes" (Dr, Prof. Eng. etc) and "suffixes" (BA, Msc, PhD). Their ultimate goal is to learn/earn better than "the other person".

The moral ethics we learned from our parents and teachers have been disregarded now as "not important to find a good job". That label appears in every step child takes in his/her life. When the child wants to do some sports, the parents shouts "Who can find a job by doing sports unless you do Cricket and get selected to the national team?". Children today are like herd of robots made of only education but no righteousness or morality. They are trained to be selfish and encouraged to be selfish by parents as well as teachers. Even poor parents are forced to pay bribe in the disguised from of "gifts" to teachers under duress that their children being down-graded or maltreated otherwise by the teachers. This is the unfortunate black-hole of unethical practice which is eating the "free education" system enjoyed by the poor Sri Lankans for past 5 decades.

This is undesirable because intellectuality without righteousness is the ultimate suicidal of human-kind. An intelligent mind which does not recognize right from wrong will cause harm to oneself as well as to others. Simple example of atomic energy used as a nuclear bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Or the invention of gun-powder being used to develop numerous destructive weapons even today.

Buddha explained if the society only progress from its intellectual capacity but disdains its spiritual and moral ascent, then that society will deteriorate from within like a cancer. The selfishness cultured by us will only encourage the destruction of 'the other' in order to benefit from their resources. The circular process of this destruction will one day result in the total destruction of the humanity and thereby the only opportunity to realize the truth, the Nirwana, the utmost emptiness...!!

Everything is black as well as white

As humans we see the world in our own pre-judged angle. Somethings we categorize as "bad" and some we categorize as "good". What is good for me could be bad for another person. This universal reality is unfortunately not universally accepted by us. This is one of the main reasons for violence, conflicts and disagreements.

We believe that the religion/idea we follow is the "true religion/idea" and all others are false. Thus begin the crusades* and other wars in the name of the religion. We believe "what we believe is right" and all others are not right. We believe that we feel pain, but we never stop to believe that others may also feel pain equally and similarly the exact manner we feel the pain.

It is the universal truth that a good thing for someone could be bad for another. It is true that a book, music or drama which I dislike could be the favorites of another person. It is also true that something poisonous/allergic to me could be a medicine for another. Thus, everything has the atoms of good and bad energy, i.e. "Everything is black as well as white".

Therefore, we must not criticize what we loathe as "black" and try to impose our beliefs on another person. It is unjustifiable. It is also unjustifiable to impose our "likings" on others and force them to accept as true what we believe as true.

Human mind is unique, vivid, vivacious and capricious. Therefore, each person see things differently, feel things differently, interprets a scenario differently. It is worthy for all human-race to accept these differences of each human and thus not to impose oneself on another.

~ Based on a small booklet called "Sithuwili Siyaya" (Hundred Thoughts) by Bambalapitiye Vajiraramawasi Piyadassi Thero
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* Crusade as meaning " any vigorous, aggressive movement for the defense or advancement of an idea, cause etc: e.g. a crusade against child abuse" (www.dictionary.com)

The Buddha that I know - Preface

Buddhism is a philosophy. An inherent feature in philosophy as I see is that one theory can have many interpretations. It necessarily doesn't mean that one thinker/interpreter is solely right and the others are wrong. That's the beauty of interpretation. One can interpret a philosophy based on his/her findings/thoughts and feelings. Many can disagree to such interpretations and the world's wisdom is made of such interpretations and arguments.

Having said that, I would like to add a preface to my blog here as I am going to write about "my interpretation" of one of the world's religions. Some may say that I am sailing on dangerous seas, because if you look at our world's history, most of the great wars were fought in the name of a religion (in vain!!!).

These are my interpretations of the philosophy taught by Siddhartha Gautama 2600 years ago. The teachings are still valid and can be followed with equal value as they were two and half millenia ago. My blogs are based on my discussions with a person who has practically followed the path foretold by Buddha and realized the truth in his preaching. We both would like to share that knowledge with anyone interested and that is the reason of starting this blog.

Please do feel free to keep your comments. We respect everyone's fair judgment and interpretation. We expect an equal respect to our interpretations and views and so we could finally attain our desire to be free, the desire to end the pain and suffering, together. We have started our journey as humans and many other living creatures. For many years, we have been born and reborn and endured countless sufferings. Now that we have been born in this age of the world, where wisdom is easily accessible through multiple advanced communication mechanisms, the time has come to "act". Time has come to see through the myth, the illusion we live on as "me, myself and my things" and start acting to end this illusion. It is the only path to end suffering and to achieve the 'non-existence'.

I would like to end this preface with a quote from Buddha "I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act." (retrieved from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/buddha.html)