At such times I’m content to sit and listen. And this is what I was doing last week when Ajahn Sudanto looked right at me and asked, “How’s your practice going, Paul? Do you have any questions?”

I replied that even though I may have questions that arise during the week, they never come to mind when I have an opportunity to ask.

Then he said, “I have a question for you. Why are you still suffering?”

Instantly the thought arose: Who let you in my head? But I realized it was question he could have asked of anyone in the room, so I didn’t take it personally. Yet he did ask the question. I did not dare speak the answer forming in my mind. Instead I rambled on about my practice, how last week it seemed as though I’d reached some new level of understanding, but this week I’d had a big setback. It seemed, I’d said, that I go through these cycles of progress and setbacks. Only in retrospect did I realize how evasive I’d been, trying to be philosophical rather than truthful. I’m good at that. Or so I think.

The simple answer to the question “Why are you still suffering?” is this: It’s because of all those other people out there! Those people who don’t understand me, who are inconsiderate, who are irresponsible, who think my ways of doing things are inferior to theirs, who don’t appreciate me, who expect more of me than I’m able to provide, who cannot see the obvious truth about things, who send text messages while driving, who think Sarah Palin is a great American, who think Barak Obama is a Muslim, who… stop. That’s enough. You wouldn’t understand, anyway.

Maybe this topic has been discussed, debated, and deconstructed more than any other in Buddhism – who knows? But I feel compelled to add my own thoughts.

The Hindu idea of reincarnation and the Buddhist idea of rebirth are different. What’s more, the various Buddhist schools seem to disagree on what it’s all about, which adds to the confusion.

Reincarnation, as I understand it, is the transmigration of a soul (Sanskrit: atman) from one lifetime to another as it inhabits a different body each time. Over and over and over – the same “person” ends up in a different body and life circumstance according to deeds performed in the prior lifetime. An analogy is where a person passes through an infinitely long series of dressing rooms, changing from one costume to another. Same person, different costume.

Rebirth, as I understand it (from the Theravada position, anyway), is that at the moment of death one’s actions (i.e., thoughts) propel a particular kind of consciousness forward in a continuum of cause and effect called samsara, and a new being comes into existence. This consciousness is not one’s soul – there is none, according to the doctrine of anatta (Sanskrit: anatman): no-self, not-self, no-soul. So there is this perennial question: If there is no soul, then what goes from one life to the next?

This is a good point to suggest a mind-game. I present here a scenario, but only to stimulate your own imagination. As you may see, the possibilities are endless.

You are in a hospital room. You’ve had surgery to correct a progressive illness. But something went wrong, and you and your family have been informed you have only a day or two to live. Your family has gathered around – spouse, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Your mind is flooded with thoughts and conflicted emotions. One of your older grandchildren comes to the bedside with a fat photo album. And there is your life before you. The birthdays, graduations, weddings, and dozens of other joyful events.

There is the picture of your first child at age three, playing in the backyard with the puppy. And your heart breaks again as you remember the day a year later when the dog returned but the child did not. The grief, the sorrow, the blame and self-recrimination, and arguments about who left the gate open.

Your wedding pictures show the two of you so obviously happy and in love, and now you can feel in your brittle bones that longing, that craving you had for one another. Especially the craving that seemed you couldn’t satisfy. Farther and farther back you turn the pages, viewing scenes from your own childhood. Your parents’ wedding picture. Isn’t it striking how much you look like them? You wonder about your father and why he left when you were seven. You wonder how your life would be different had he not slammed out of the house that night, leaving your mother crying in despair on the kitchen floor.

Your grandparents, too, are pictured in the album. You don’t remember much about them, but you know their lives were difficult. Again you are struck by how much you resemble them. And, as you look around the room, you see how much your children and grandchildren resemble them too.

It feels as though you can run your fingers over that coiled thread of DNA that links them with you and with your parents and grandparents and great grandparents – back and back. You see how that thread will go on and on into the future – without you. You understand how the specific actions of your forebears helped bring you to this very place. And you understand with frightening clarity how your own actions contributed to the lives of these people you love.

As you scan the faces around you can feel the quiet suffering. You know the lives of  your children are marked by one trial or another – divorce, debt, illness, trouble with the law, and of course your own imminent death. You wish there is something you can do to ease their pain. But you feel helpless.

And now something comes to mind and you realize you are not helpless. There is much you can do and there is plenty of time to do it. You open your heart to everyone gathered around you and tell them through quiet example that the secret to living well is knowing how to die well, without clinging, without remorse. And that’s just what you do.

Do I believe in rebirth? Do I believe in an afterlife? Does it matter? Try this statement on for size and see how it feels: “I don’t believe in DNA.” Of course you don’t have to believe in DNA for an aspect of your life to go on and on with infinite moments of joy and suffering. Belief in rebirth is not required either. That’s one of the interesting things about Buddhism. You don’t have to believe anything. There is no Creed and no judge to condemn you for not believing.

But there is the law of cause and effect, the law of kamma. Good actions bring good results, bad actions bring bad results. It’s inescapable. With a true understanding of the law of kamma and skillful action you can have a positive effect on the future – even if your not around to see it.

NOAA photo courtesy WikiCommons

On Saturday, just a couple of days ago now, I was in a bad mood. Not my occasionally cranky self, but the worst mood I’d been in for perhaps 15 years. It had been building all week, like a storm on the horizon.

In contrast I had spent the previous weekend – Thursday evening through Monday morning – at Abhayagiri Monastery. It was not a retreat, per se, but an annual gathering called Upasika Renewal. It’s where individuals can formally renew their commitment to the Three Refuges and the Five Precepts. It was a positive experience with lots of meditation time as well as time for some physical labor, relaxation, and discussion.

I dreaded leaving for Abhayagiri, though, because of my work load. I’d spent the week prior trying to get as much accomplished as possible, but I never felt satisfied that I was actually ready to go. I dreaded coming home, too, because what awaited me were three full days packed with immediate day-long activities and responsibilities. I had no time for reintegration or to catch up on what I was unable to accomplish during the five days away.

It wasn’t until Friday that I had a chance to sit back and sort through the paperwork, as it were, and to begin to get caught up on what was actually eight days of “missed work,” so to speak. But there were a few things from the various compartments of my life that had been vexing me since my return – something someone said, a look someone gave. Just a few small things, but you know how the mind likes to jumble things up and slap on layers and then tug and pull and churn.

On Saturday, the first if the month, I did what I usually do: bookkeeping. Reconciling checking accounts and deciding which bills I can pay and which I can put aside until later have never been activities that lead to calm. Then throw in a software problem…

Frustration gathered into clouds of despair and hopelessness. I’d thought I’d left these story emotions long behind in the distant past, but here they were, ready to unleash a deluge.

Fortunately, I had a couple of hours to myself Saturday evening. Fortunately, too, I decided to give meditation one more chance. I focused on the first noble truth of suffering. Yep, this is it, all right. This is dukkha. And the cause. Yes, there is a cause, that pesky second noble truth: clinging. It was my inability to let go of the attachment to that which bothered me. “Letting go.” Such a trite phrase. Easy for you to say. You don’t have my grip of steel.

Suddenly, my mind went back to Abhayagiri. We had been treated to two documentaries about Ajahn Chah. I’d heard the virtues of Ajahn Chah extolled many times, but only then at the monastery did I get an idea of why he was – and still is – revered by those who spent any time with him.

Ajahn Pasanno, co-abbot (and soon to be sole abbot) of Abhayagiri, was one of Ajahn Chah’s long-time students and attendants. In his introductory remarks to the 1977 documentary “The Mindful Way,” he said Ajahn Chah had lots of doubt. I’ve heard too he’d had lots of anger and other mental trials as well. But, Ajahn Pasanno said, he had determined that he would live each day of his life as though it would be his last and each day he would practice Dhamma with every ounce of effort. As I understand it, for Ajahn Chah practicing Dhamma meant “letting go.” There must be something to this. Ajahn Amaro, the other co-abbot of Abhayagiri (and soon to be abbot of Amaravati in England) said that what he saw in Ajahn Chah those long years ago in Thailand was “the happiest man in the world,” and he wanted to be like that too.

I got up from my cushion and searched for the documentary on YouTube, where I found it in three parts. After watching it again, I went back to the cushion for 30 more minutes. The slight parting of the clouds was palpable, and I sensed of the possibility of sunshine – not immediately, but soon. Sunday was a good day. And I’m also getting of sense of ease at getting back into my routine.

Buddhism has its own paradox of the heap. One of the renderings of the Pali word “khandha” (the Sanskrit is “skandha”) is “heap.” Another rendering is “aggregate.” The Buddha taught that a person is comprised of five heaps, or aggregates: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.

Form is the heap of things that make up the body. The other four come together in the shape of the mind.

Feelings describe a how we feel about something that has come into our sphere of awareness. That is, we have a pleasant feeling, an unpleasant feeling, or a neutral feeling. I hear a warbling sound that feels pleasant to my ear.

Perceptions are the labels we apply to things that come into our sphere of awareness. A warbling sound comes to my ear. I gives me a pleasant feeling. I immediately label it “birdsong,” or even “robin.”

Mental formations are those things we are constantly creating in that little workshop of the mind. They are the thoughts and emotions which become the seeds of action. I hear the pleasant sound of a robin and begin to think about spring, cutting the grass, cleaning up the lawnmower, getting gas for the mower, what about fertilizer for the lawn?… and on, and on.

Consciousness is the quality of awareness. Without consciousness we are not aware of the other four aggregates.

So where is the paradox? All these heaps together make a person. And each of us identifies with the five parts and the myriad parts of the parts: my eyes, my hair, my toenails, my mind, my thoughts, my opinions, my knowledge, my worries. This is who I am. This is what makes me me. Or is it?

These heaps of things are inconstant, insubstantial, always changing. Take the body, for example. And let’s leave aside the millions of subtle physiological changes the body goes through day to day and look at a drastic way the body can change. I worked once with a man named Bill. He was a happy-go-lucky average guy, good-looking and always whistling. One day he said, “I didn’t always look like this.” This surprised me, because there was no indication he’d ever looked different. No scars or anything I could see. He went on to tell me about the car crash he’d been in years before. It killed his wife and the two others in the car and left him hospitalized for a year. His face, he’d said, had been completely reconstructed. He had become, by appearances, a different person. But was he really?

And what of someone with Alzheimer’s disease, or memory loss? If I don’t remember who I am, am I not me?

It doesn’t take much effort to come up with dozens and dozens of examples of how people can change either physically or mentally: the beauty queen who has become old and flabby, the high-powered CEO who can no longer remember how to tie his shoes, the athlete bound for the rest of his life to a wheelchair. Imagine yourself suddenly different from who you were yesterday. Are you still you? Or not you?

Day to day we identify with the shape of our bodies and landscape of our minds. This identification is a significant source of tension and stress.

Much of Buddhist practice is toward dis-identifying with the five aggregates – piece by piece, grain by grain. That doesn’t mean striving to not exist or becoming a nobody. It means seeing your body for what it is: a conglomeration of things that are subject to instability and change and not something permanent and forever reliable. Same with the mind: unstable, inconstant, changing moment to moment. In some ways it seems rather silly to try to hold on to and defend and justify something so slippery. Yet we do hang on with vigorous determination.

There is the paradox.

Isn’t that why we have the Christian metaphor of the Good Shepherd? Someone who will tell us right from wrong, who will keep us safe from harm, who will tuck us snugly in the warm blankets of heaven on that last and most frightening darkest night of the soul?

Not all people are like sheep, though. There are a few who prefer – or stumble into – the role of shepherd. They are smarter and more intelligent than the flock they aspire to lead. Some of them aspire to the role of shepherd out of love and compassion for the poor sheep, who, by their nature, are truly helpless. Others aspire to the role of shepherd out of the delusion they know what’s best – at least for themselves – and will take the flock by whatever means they can.

All shepherds and hopeful shepherds have a message for the flock. But the sheep have difficulty discerning among those who would help them from those who would harm them. After all, they are just sheep.

Many people, like sheep, don’t have – or don’t utilize – the capacity to discern the truth and make skillful decisions about what’s in thier own long-term best interests and the best interests of those who share the pasture. Because, like sheep, they can only know what their immediate instincts tell them. And the instincts of sheep aren’t very good. Can a sheep tell when the butcher walks into the pen with a loaded rifle?

But we’re really not’t sheep. And it is possible to separate the good shepherds from the bad shepherds – if we’d really care to take a close look at them and listen carefully to their messages.

Is the message filled with compassion, hope, love, tolerance, and concern for the welfare of everyone in the flock? Or is the message filled with hatred of “the other,” fear that “the other” will take what’s “yours,” and intolerance of anyone who doesn’t accept the message? What’s the overall demeanor of those who would aspire to lead you? How do they live their lives – not just when they are in the spotlight, but when no one is looking? Are they kind, gentle and honest;  are they authoritarian, overbearing, and deceptive; are they generous, or greedy for money, fame, and power? Are they wise or deluded? Although it may take a long time and require some effort, it really isn’t so hard to discern the truth.

Providing truth is what you really want.

The photo collage is of some notable shepherds, some of whom are speaking to their flocks. Can you tell the good ones from the bad ones? In the picture are, in no particular order: the Buddha, Jerry Fallwell, Benazir Bhutto, Idi Amin, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Anwar Sadat, Jimmie Carter, Menachem Begin, Mother Teresa, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, Rush Limbaugh, Nelson Mandela, Joseph Stalin, Pat Roberson, Dick Cheney, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King, Mao Zedong, Mahatma Ghandi, Barack Obama, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Dorothy Day, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jesus, who is shone once as the Good Shepherd and again preaching the Sermon on the Mount.

*This post was inspired by this story, sent to me by someone suggesting that Barack Obama is leading the United States down the same path as did Adolf Hilter lead Germany.

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.

In a previous post I wrote about The Island: An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings on Nibbana, by Ajanhs Pasanno and Amaro. Nibbana/nirvana is a state of being that is often described as the deathless or the unconditioned. It is a state where there is no more suffering of any kind. It is the cessation of becoming.

As I understand it, the Buddha woke up to Nibbana, making a transition between one state to another just as a person transitions between sleep and wakefulness each day. The Buddha, however, remained in Nibbana until his death, and he was not born again into the cycle of life and death known as samsara. The Buddha’s awakening took six years of focused preparation (not to mention many lifetimes of perfecting the virtues necessary to making the transition from a bodhisatta to a buddha). The conventional expression of the Buddha’s experience is “enlightenment.”

There are two kinds of enlightenment: spiritual and intellectual. Spiritual enlightenment is what happened to the Buddha on the night of his awakening. Intellectual, or secular, enlightenment is what The Age of Enlightenment was all about. Ajahn Punnadhammo, abbot of Arrow River Hermitage, writes about the difference here.

Patrick Kearney, in his essay “Still Crazy after all these Years: Why Meditation Isn’t Psychotherapy,”* suggests that were it not for The Enlightenment, we would not be using “enlightenment” to describe the Buddha’s awakening.

“I have never been able to find any Pali or Sanskrit word which corresponds to the English word “enlightenment.” This word was selected some time late last [19th] century by English translators as a label for the goal of Buddhist practice because of its resonance with the 18th century ideal of the Enlightenment. The European Enlightenment was a movement which idealised progress, science and reason – the “light” in “Enlightenment” refers to the light of reason. In Victorian Britain, sympathetic English scholars wanted to present Buddhism in as favourable a light as possible, and they did so by portraying the Buddha as the perfect Victorian gentleman. He was presented as rejecting the priestly mumbo-jumbo of the brahmins (who for the Victorian English corresponded to the Roman Catholic clergy) in favour of a religion of reason and morality (Almond: 70-4**). The only thing that spoiled this picture was undeniable evidence in the Buddhist texts that the Buddha taught and practiced some kind of bizarre self-hypnosis or cultivation of trance states – what we today call meditation. The word “enlightenment” referred to a state of enlightened reason attained by the Buddha which, however, existed only in the imagination of Victorian scholars. Unfortunately the word has stuck, and with it the confusion.”

Assuming it’s true that the use of the word “enlightenment” grew from a desire to make Buddhism more palatable to the Western mind, it presents three problems. First, it shows how easily words can be used to manipulate public opinion. This is nothing new, of course. It happens every day in advertising, politics, and religion.

Second, it shows how words evolve and how, over time, they can come to mean something other than what they meant initially.

Third, it suggests that Buddhism is changeable, something that can be molded to fit the circumstances of its surroundings.

A teacher I know has said many times that Buddhism changes every culture it touches, and Buddhism is changed by every culture that touches it. This is undeniably true on the surface, but it’s not a justification for the manufacturing of a new kind of Buddhism, a “Western” Buddhism – which is what the teacher was endorsing.

Certainly there are cultural differences in the ways Buddhism is practiced in, say, Sri Lanka and Japan, because each of these forms developed in different cultures separated by space and time. So to assume there is just one kind of Buddhism is a mistake. To assume there is just one kind of Japanese Buddhism also is a mistake. “Zen” and “Buddhist” are not synonymous.

Even though people have found many different ways to practice Buddhism, there remain four inescapable truths regarding this human world we all are a part of. Without each one of these truths, Buddhism is meaningless. The fourth truth – a very precise path of practice – is not something that can be changed to fit our varied lifestyles and beliefs.

If it’s a mistake to assume there is only one kind of Buddhism, it’s also a mistake to assume there are many different means to realizing the goal.

As Ajahn Pasanno writes in The Island:

“There are many ways of practice but some of them may, in actuality, not accord with the teachings or the true Way. They may be popular or comfortable, but yet not be Dhamma [emphasis mine]. For practice to yield results, it must conform to truth or correct principle.” (p. 288)

The eightfold path – the Middle Way – is very specific. You either practice Dhamma or you don’t. The law of conditionality can’t be skirted. Living in a cloud of delusion has a major drawback: delusion. It’s not easy to discern what’s skillful, especially when people – teachers and students alike – tinker with meanings and practices to suit themselves.

“Enlightened” was used to (incompletely) describe the Buddha to Victorian England as one who behaved with reason, logic, and morality. But the Age of Enlightenment is no longer part of our social psyche. We – as a culture – are as far removed from reason, logic, and morality as social guides as those enlightened 18th century Europeans were from the Dark Ages of the 15th century. Instead, we use “enlightened” to refer to (among many other things) all manner of blissed-out states that incorporate – in the spirit of diversity – anything and everything spiritual.

And now, from the entertainment realm, we have the new sit-com, “Enlightened”. The situation evoking the comedy is where “a self-destructive woman…who has a spiritual awakening and resolves to live an enlightened life – which causes chaos at home and at work – after suffering a serious meltdown.” Entertaining, maybe, but hardly enlightening.

I avoid using “enlightenment” as the goal of spiritual practice (my spiritual practice, anyway) because it connotes gaining something magical and mystical (something so Zen) instead of achieving the simple end of suffering. This is my goal. I’ve had enough suffering. I am willing to work for it – I do work for it – but my effort is toward getting rid of rather than gaining something. Unless that “something” is understanding what’s really going on.

Coming to the understanding of reality, however, takes more than reason and logic, says Ajahn Pasanno. It “is direct and intuitive, rather than intellectual or rational, learned from books, memorized from others, or arrived at through speculative thinking.” (p. 296)

It’s not so simple as turning on a light.

*As its title suggests, this lengthy paper attempts to sever any imposed connection between Buddhism and psychotherapy. I don’t recommend it to anyone enamored with the idea of  a Western Buddhism. Kearney isn’t kind to a few high-profile teachers who seem to embody the idea.

**Almond, Philip. The British discovery of Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

But “there” is a bit misleading. Nibbana is not a place nor is it a thing to be acquired. The Buddha himself describes it this way:

There is an island, an island which you cannot go beyond. It is a place of nothingness, a place of non-possession and of non-attachment. It is the total end of death and decay, and this is why I call it Nibbana.

The Buddha lived and died in India during a specific time of history. India is more than a physical location, though. It is a culture as well that incorporates thousands of years of Hindu mythology and cosmology that influenced how the people of the day viewed their physical and spiritual worlds.

Nibbana, during the time of the Buddha, was a term that had less to do with a spiritual goal than to explain a common occurrence. It was a matter of fact in those days that fire was bound to its fuel. One of the constituents of wood, for example, was heat. As a piece of wood burned, the two – fire and fuel – were bound together in an agitated state. When the fire went out, both were liberated from the struggle. The extinguishing of fire, which allowed for cooling, was nibbana.

Relative to Buddhism, the fuel that is in a constant state of burning agitation are the five aggregates that make up a human being: the body, feelings, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. The intention of Buddhist practice is to extinguish the bonfire of the aggregates, thus liberating the individual from all the interent pain and suffering.

Another example of the Buddha’s use of analogy regards his teachings on Three Fires. The causes of all suffering are fires of greed, hatred, and delusion (clinging, aversion, and ignorance, or a number of other synonyms). Suffering is ended and liberation realized when the Three Fires are extinguished through the practice and perfection of generosity, kindness, and wisdom.

One of the Ten Fetters that binds a person to samsara – the ongoing cycle suffering – is adherence to rites and rituals as a means to spiritual achievement. As explained in The Island, the ancient Vedic texts dictated that the brahmin householder keep three ritualistic fires burning day and night. The brahmin’s maintenance of the three fires was one of those rites and rituals that prevented spiritual growth. “Put out the the three fires,” the iconoclastic Buddha said. “By keeping them burning, you bind yourselves to infinite lifetimes of suffering.”

To the modern, liberal-minded person the imperative to keep three fires burning to ensure salvation may seem quaint and easily put aside. But the ever-present suffering of life is not so easily dismissed. Snuffing the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion is no easy task.

As she was commenting I had a sudden and strong feeling,… no, not a feeling, but an experience of anatta. Anatta is one of the three characteristics of existence (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, no self). Anatta means “no self” or “not-self.” There is no self in the created or the uncreated, the teachings say.

I realized in that moment that what goes on in my mind is a fabrication, a mental construction of reality. What I think is not me, not who I am. The experience came and went quickly. But it was extraordinary.

Two questions have arisen. First, what does it mean? Second, how has it changed things for me?

Many thoughts have been swirling around the first question. My mind is a busy workshop where the raw materials of existence – thoughts – are assembled into what I think of as me. I am a creation of my own imagination. That doesn’t mean I don’t exist and the material world doesn’t exist. I do, it does. What’s not real is what I believe myself to be. A belief is just another mental fabrication, a thing manufactured by my imagination.

When my daughter was very young, we spent a lot of time together, some of which was watching televisions programs like “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Fred Rogers was a gentle man who seemed to understand just what it was like to be a child. He spoke to children as though they were not dumb little kids who need to be entertained, but little people with growing minds who had questions that needed answers. No baby-talk. No condescension. Part of his show involved what he called the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Children love to make-believe, to pretend they are in a world of kings and queens and talking animals.

Little people grow up to be big people, and at some point they move from the neighborhood of make-believe into the neighborhood of reality. We flatter ourselves that we know what’s what. We know the truth.

But we don’t. We live in a world where we make believe that we are special, unique, in charge. Or the opposite. Stupid, mediocre, oppressed.

The ego (what did my ego look like before Sigmund Freud was born?), the ego is so busy in its workshop, building, building, building. I strive to make something of myself, to discover myself, to assert myself on the world. This is who I am, pay attention to me. I’m important.

What I saw in my brief moment of understanding was my own little neighborhood of make-believe. I also saw the futility of of trying to maintain the facade. My little “man behind the curtain” has been exposed.

How has it changed things for me? Today, I don’t know. I will attempt to answer that question next time.

Constantine's Dream, Piero della Francesca

A recurring dream-theme of mine is of trying to get away from something but being unable to move faster than a crawl. I need to run, but my legs are so heavy I must drag myself along, digging my fingernails into the pavement. What I’m trying to escape from (which doesn’t reveal itself) never catches up with me. It’s nothing more than a vague threat, but I’m fearful and unable to get away fast enough. I don’t know what it means.

I don’t know what any of my dreams mean, and I’ve never put much effort into trying to find out. I don’t know what I’d do if I were able to figure out my dreams – assuming they mean anything in the first place. Analysis of dreams aside, dreams are not reality. Reality is what reveals itself when I awake.

Or is it?

While meditating under the Bodhi Tree 2,500 years ago the Buddha had his moment of awakening. It was not an awakening from the dreams of sleep, but from the dream of common, everyday existence into the reality of the way things really are, unclouded by delusion.”Bodhi” and “Buddha” come from the same root, which means to awaken, to understand.

“Life is but a dream,” sings the the nursery rhyme. The Diamond Sutra – which predates the rhyme by almost 1,000 years – backs up the relatively contemporary refrain:

“So I say to you –
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:

“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.

“So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”

Thus spoke the Buddha.

Diamond Sutra, Chapter 32

Contemplating the nature of delusion – my own included – I  see how delusion is the perfect condition for people to create such a mess of things. There is no better illustration of this than the national news – especially when it involves politics and religion.

Coming to awakening, enlightenment, nibbana, nirvana – whatever you want to call it -means transcending the dream of reality and the reality of truth. So I make my way slowly along the path, fearing only the effects of my own ignorance.