Discernment along the Middle Way

My last post asking “What is Enlightenment?” drew some good comments and questions, and I respond to them here, in a rambling sort of way, beginning with a story about soap. Many years ago Robin worked for Colgate-Palmolive. She worked in the quality-control department at a plant where they made, among other things, Fresh Start laundry detergent. She tells me that, when introduced, Fresh Start was made from premium ingredients that did a remarkable job at cleaning laundry. But the powerful enzymes were harsh on the machinery, which caused greater than usual maintenance problems. Slowly C-P backed off the enzymes and replaced other ingredients with those of lesser quality and expense.

This is standard practice, I’m told. First establish brand loyalty through the use of expensive, high-quality ingredients, then gradually pull back on the quality to reduce costs. Most users won’t notice. Some users may discern a difference and try something else, but to those loyal to the brand it’s still the same great product they’ve always used. Quite likely their children will use it too.

I’m not concerned here about deception in the soap-making business or brand loyalty, but about change, truth, and discernment. Discernment – also knows as wisdom – is one of the ten perfections.

If my recent post came across as parochial, it wasn’t my intention. Although I do have my preferences, I have no interest in promoting one form of Buddhism over another. There are many schools and sects and points of view of how the Buddha’s teachings should be interpreted and how Buddhism should be practiced. How else could it be? Buddhism spread slowly through many disparate lands and cultures. Commentaries and other new texts were composed, rulers made edicts, and cultural influences and traditions pushed here and pulled there. Throughout the Northern and Southern Transmissions, Buddhism evolved here independently of how it evolved there. And Buddhism continues to be the object of pressures from without (e.g, China’s affect on Tibetan Buddhism) and within (e.g., the recent bhikkhuni ordination in Perth and the Thai Sangha’s reaction to it).

In the beginning, though, there was the Buddha. He taught one thing: suffering and the end of suffering. He discovered the four noble truths and laid out the eightfold path, which he declared to be the Middle Way to the end of suffering. The eightfold path begins with right view. There is a way to see and understand the world. If there is one right view that is a factor of the path, there must also be wrong views that are not. And the Buddha doesn’t hold back on what those are. If a person doesn’t accept right view, then the rest of the eightfold path has no meaning. If a person does not accept the four noble truths, then why bother with Buddhism at all?

I came to Buddhism because I had lost faith the religion I grew up with. I was spiritually bereft, but I didn’t seek out Buddhism. I wasn’t seeking enlightenment or any secret teachings of the mysterious Orient. Rather, I stumbled onto it. I tried meditation with the hope that it could help me get control over depression. Ignorantly, I didn’t see back then the significant link between meditation and Buddhism. It was only later that I discovered, first, how Buddhist philosophy would affect my thinking and, second, how Buddhist practice would affect my life.

What’s important – to me anyway – is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching about suffering and the end of suffering. My goal is not to have some mystical experience, but to experience the end of suffering.

With Buddhism there is no judge to determine whether people have been good or bad during their lives, no benefactor to grant rewards, no warden to mete out punishment. Rather, the results of one’s actions simply follow along. Good actions bring good results. Bad actions bring bad results. It’s the law of cause and effect. This is true for anyone, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, whatever. Being a Buddhist and being a good person are not mutually exclusive. Anyone will reap the benefits of acting in accord with what is right and true. So it doesn’t matter what Buddhist school or sect one follows. It’s a personal choice and, fortunately, one that no being, supreme or otherwise, will judge as right or wrong. Whatever the school, the Dharma is common to each of them, and the law of cause and effect works as efficiently as the law of gravity.

Discerning what is right and true, now that’s a challenge. Every religion stakes its claim on truth. Yet not everyone can be right. What’s necessary, for me anyway, is to take a look at not only what I believe but how I have come to believe it. There are five ways in which people come to believe the things they do and take them for truth. I may believe something is true because I have faith that it is, because it’s agreeable to me, because of tradition (brand loyalty?), because reason and logic tell me it’s true, and by accepting something as true after reflecting on it. In each case, there are only two possibilities about my beliefs: I am right or I am wrong, because none of these five ways leading to belief is a guaranty of truth. (Majjhima Nikaya #95, the Canki Sutta. Read my comments on this sutta and how truth can be discerned here.)

I adopted Buddhism for all but one of these reasons. Not having grown up in a Buddhist culture, I was no more influenced by Buddhist traditions than than I was by Maori or Eskimo traditions. But I have come to accept certain things as true. I could be wrong about all of it. Yet I have faith I’m not wrong. It’s faith that the Buddha knew what he was talking about, faith in the practice, and the example of others who share that faith that keeps me striving on.

I need something to believe in. Don’t we all? But this practice I’ve adopted is not just some other means to fill the time, some other way to keep me engaged with others, some other trendy “path” that leads to the same mysterious yet desirable destination called enlightenment or salvation or whatever. In the course of it all I have to determine for myself what I believe and why. And along the way I must strive to discern what is in accord with the teachings and what is not. The law of cause and effect is the only determining factor.