The way we struggle is self-perpetuating and it is difficult to change. Hence samsara, the Sanskrit word for cycle.

The aim of Buddhist practice is to break that cycle, to end that struggle. That is nirvana.

Nirvana is how we experience life when we know what we are. This knowing is not an ordinary knowing. It is not a conceptual knowing. It is a qualitatively different kind of knowing, a direct knowing not mediated by the conceptual mind. In that knowing, we are not presented with a sense of self that perceives a world out there. Instead, knowing and experience arise without separation. We are what arises in experience, all of it. In particular, in this knowing, there is no one thing that makes us what we are. And there is no “other.”

♦ 

Excerpted from Ken McLeod’s article “Reflections on a Changing World.”

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If the deer like to be in the countryside, and the birds like to be in the sky, then the practitioner likes to be in nirvana. We are in nirvana. The only problem is that we are not able to return to it.

In Plum Village, we use the simple example of the wave and the water. In our life as a wave, we struggle and we have fear, because we have to go up and down, to be born and die, to exist and not to exist. We can see clearly that to live the life of the wave is very difficult. But when the wave discovers it is water, then it begins to practice living as water. A wave is and is not, is up and down, is high and low, but water is utterly free. The question is: Does the wave have the ability to live its true nature as water, or must it just live as a wave? A wave can practice living its life as water.

♦

From Enjoying the Ultimate: Commentary on The Nirvana Chapter of the Chinese Dharmapada by Thich Nhat Hanh. Reprinted in arrangement with Parallax Press.

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Every so often, Tricycle features an article from Inquiring Mind, a Buddhist journal that was in print from 1984–2015 and now has a growing number of back issues archived at inquiringmind.com. To remember the noted translator and author Steven D. Goodman, who died earlier this month at the age of 75, we are reprinting an essay Goodman wrote about worldly attitudes in Buddhism. The article first appeared in the Fall 1997 “Liberation & the Sacred” issue as “Rejection, Sublimation, Recognition: Attitudes Toward Worldly Life.” Be sure to check out related articles in the archive, such as Goodman’s reflections on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, his musings on “crazy wisdom,” and his take on the Vajrayana path. If you feel so inclined, consider making a donation to help Inquiring Mind continue adding articles to its archive!

***

We are what we think,

having become what we thought.

            —Dhammapada 

Our Legacy of Received Opinions

What can one do about worldly suffering? Many Buddhist writings speak of disgust for that which is “worldly.” In much Buddhist parlance, things having to do with the world (Sanskrit: loka) are to be guarded against, avoided, turned away from and finally transcended, so that one can abide in a transworldly state (lokottara), at peace (shanti), in bliss (sukha), free from suffering (samsara), the painful flame of yearning (trishna) having been extinguished (nirvana). From this perspective, the world is a place of perpetually out-of-control beings who, driven by desires gone wild, try to endure the ups and downs as best they can. In fact, the Buddhist name for this world of ours is “realm of endurance” (sahaloka). In Mexico City Blues (211th Chorus), Jack Kerouac, that Western student of Buddhism, sings samsara’s sad song.

The wheel of the quivering meat

conception

Turns in the void expelling human beings,

Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits,

…

All the endless conception of living

beings,

Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness

…

Poor! I wish I was free

of that slaving meat wheel

and safe in heaven dead

It would seem that there is only one spiritual response to this mode of existence: to get out of worldly entanglements and to leave samsara.

But is this the whole story? Is this what Buddhism essentially teaches us about the world? Why has so much emphasis been put on repulsion toward worldly life? Why does Kerouac’s depiction seem to ring so true? I would suggest it is because we in the West carry, like a dormant attitudinal virus, the legacy of a medieval mindset, one accustomed to the Platonic denigration of the “lower appetites” and to the many Biblical passages that speak of our plight as “of a few days, and full of trouble” (Job 13:28, 14:1) and the world as a fleeting show of vanities (Ecclesiastes). Worldly life is seen as sinful and contemptible. This contemptus mundi is amply attested to in the writings of many a medieval cleric. Typical of the period is the lamentation of the monk Jean de Fécamp (d. 1078): “Miserable life, decrepit life, impure life sullied by humors, exhausted by grief, dried by heat, swollen by meats, mortified by fasts, dissolved by pranks, consumed by sadness, distressed by worries, blunted by security, bloated by riches, cast down by poverty….”

Our more recent humanist tradition, which sees the individual as the measure of all things, has not entirely eclipsed the view of life as a fearful enterprise laced with sin and guilt. The pervasive influence of this mindset as a dominant cultural legacy deserves more attention by Buddhist scholars and practitioners, for it is a bias we bring to both our study and our experience of the dharma. It is well documented in the work of the French social historian Jean Delumeau. (See his Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture 13th–18th Centuries.) When we orient ourselves to Buddhist traditions, we bring the legacy with us. And that, I think, is why talk of disgust for the world and the yearning to “get out” seems so spiritually correct. We are unmindfully viewing the wide variety of Buddhist spiritual traditions through the lens of a Christian, European heritage.

Repulsion, however, isn’t the whole story. In the vast treasury of Buddhist traditions, there are other legacies, other attitudes and ways of talking about worldly life and spiritual work. The Buddhist path involves finding a suitable approach, one that honors our temperament and our potential for change.

One presentation of this variety, popular in the Buddhist traditions that took root in the Himalayan regions, consists of three possible spiritual orientations. The world can be shunned, transformed, or experienced as perfect just as it is. Only the first approach regards worldly life and the drives that fuel it as lacking value. The attitude of renunciation attempts to avoid and reject all worldly tendencies. The second approach, the attitude of transformation, regards worldly drives as worthy of spiritual engagement. Here one is encouraged to transform the worldly realm, which is seen to be constituted of both intellectual attitudes and emotional habits.

Whether one rejects or attempts to transform the world and its appetites, both perspectives suggest that life entails struggle. In psychological terms, the spiritual struggle with the world involves what Freud and, before him, Nietzsche, termed the sublimation of habitual drives. Nietzsche spoke of different methods of struggle with “the violence of a drive… Thus: dodging the opportunities [for its satisfaction], implanting regularity in the drive, generating oversaturation and disgust with it, and bringing about its association with an agonizing thought—like that of disgrace, evil consequences, or insulted pride—then the dislocation of forces, and finally general [self-]weakening and exhaustion—those are the six methods.” (From Nietzsche’s The Dawn of Day.)

From the Buddhist perspective, renunciation and transformation are seen not as contradictory but as befitting different orientations and circumstances. As such, both are deemed noble (arya), because they lead one away from the extremes of nihilistic despair and cynicism on the one hand and self-centered absolutism on the other.

Renunciate Awareness

If one takes the approach that worldly life is a realm to be shunned, then the path of renunciation is appropriate. One trains oneself to guard the doors of perception, scanning for the arising of unwholesome tendencies so as to avoid them and thereby diminish their karmic residue. One practices calm and mindful avoidance in order to lessen upset and to let the subtle and luminous natural indwelling features of our being stabilize and, in time, become dominant. 

Transformative Awareness

Using those very same doors of perception, one can view the world and its ceaseless variety of circumstances as the fuel for transformation. On this path one trains to identify worldly entanglements and upsets so as to be able to select and apply a suitable “antidote” (pratipatti). Through a kind of spiritual homeopathy, constricted emotional entanglement is released. This is done by dissolving egoic fixations in the universally beneficent solvents of love, compassion, joy and equanimity. One finds ways to wake up to the sufferings of the world and embrace them, never rejecting any aspect of daily life as if it were outside the project of spirit. All of creation is seen as the sacred ground for spiritual effort. This path is fed by the energetic stream that flows from the source of one’s indwelling wakefulness, or buddhanature. The ever-widening stream of wakefulness overflows the limitations of ego—the holding patterns (atma-graha) that reify and hence alienate our intrinsically abiding spirit of going beyond (paramita) those limitations. Our capacity to meet and dissolve habits is awakened and sustained by applying active capacities to “go beyond”—generosity, ethical conduct, patient endurance, diligence, contemplative cultivation and discerning wisdom. Ultimately, every being and every problem is experienced as insubstantial—part of a magical display created by the mind and sustained by the power of karmic habits. As the Indian Buddhist philosopher Chandrakirti puts it: “The mind itself creates living beings, and the great variety of worlds where they live. It is also taught that all forms of life are produced from karma; but without the mind, there would be no karma.” (From his Madhyamakavatara.)

The world, then, is experienced as either an impure realm of entanglement dominated by habitual and limited mind patterns or as a pure realm of bliss sustained by unlimited wakefulness. But when reified confusion is released into clarity through the transformative power of the wakeful mind, nirvana and samsara are not experienced as separate states.

One who trains in going beyond all frustrating limits is sustained in the work by the blessings of our own discerning wisdom (prajna), which is seen as flawless (amala) and luminous (prabhasvara). The name reserved for one who has completely awakened such wisdom is Buddha. Buddha is a powerfully sustaining presence that is responsive to the needs of beings who suffer. Buddhas serve as sources of refuge and objects of prayerful supplication. They are said to abide in and support every pure realm. Those who cultivate an attitude of transformation may invite the spiritual presence of these Buddhas into their daily lives. Remembrance of the Buddha (Buddhanusmrti), is an antidote to spiritual despair; mindful faith in our spiritual capacity valorizes worldly micro hassles via acts of remembrance. Not unlike those who repeat the Jesus Prayer, Buddhists who enter the path of transformation find that they are sustained by subtle mindful mnemonics.

 Directly Liberating Awareness

The third noble attitude toward worldly life is radically different from those of rejection and transformation. It is one of direct liberation. Here the world and one’s place in it are directly recognized as free, unlimited and unconstrained just as they are. Every mode of experience, every situation is freeing. Whatever arises is recognized as it arises and in that recognition is freed. There is nothing to reject and nothing to accept. Things just happen—beyond every scheme for improvement, beyond yearning and hope for betterment. When experienced like this, all occasions are delightful, the cause of merriment and laughter. The Buddha Shakyamuni was known as “the one who laughs” and the fourteenth-century Buddhist savant Longchenpa reminded us, “When we see the world as it really is, then we will laugh out loud.” This is the naturally abiding manner of Buddhas: spiritual energy enjoying itself and communicating everywhere with laughter. It is the mystic mode, reserved for those rare gifted souls who live in the world free from all compulsion to transcend it, who have realized the truth of freedom in the ordinary. They are sustained by a continuum of spiritual awareness, for like the saints and mystics of every tradition, they exhibit unshakable confidence in the pure unbounded ecstasy and delight of living. This way of living dissolves every tendency to go astray into distorted modes of perception and response; it is beyond limitations based on clinging and aversion. Yet this is not a transcendent stance. It is the direct recognition of how things naturally abide as Buddha energy in—and as—this present moment, which is open, effulgent and continuous.

This brief survey of Buddhist attitudes toward the world and transworldly yearning is an attempt to convey a sense of the range of approaches reflected in the traditions. I would suggest that each of these approaches can be found within every living Buddhist tradition when dogma yields to direct experience. As such, no approach is higher or lower; each perfectly fits a certain temperament and capacity. Perhaps the greatest challenge is to discover as best as one can the noble approach for which one is best suited and to honor and accept the wide diversity of other approaches to the dilemma of human existence.

The post The Spiritual Work of a Worldly Life appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The word samsara is based on a verbal root with the sense “to flow” and means the “flowing-on” of the stream of consciousness from one moment to the next and from one lifetime to another. The Buddha is recorded as saying that the origin of this process is “beyond reckoning,” or fundamentally unknowable. He offered a series of metaphors to illustrate a vast scale, such as eons as many as the grains of sand in the Ganges river bed, only to say that the process goes back even farther than that.

In samsara, beings are viewed as wandering through various realms of existence, viewed as “stations” upon which consciousness is established and then falls away each time one dies. Some of these are heavenly, while others are hellish, and one moves through them according to the quality of one’s intentions and actions. From the modern perspective this may be viewed as a good thing, as we get to live on past this lifetime, but in ancient India “flowing on” again and again was seen more as an affliction, since we consequently experience suffering again and again. “The waters of the four great oceans are small compared to the ocean of tears you have wept for loved ones lost to illness, aging, and death” is just one of many poignant images offered in the texts.

The process of rebirth is driven by delusion and desire, with “beings roaming and wandering on, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.” If one dies encumbered by grasping or clinging, the process will continue; but if one is able to abandon all attachment in this lifetime, then the mechanism for rebirth will no longer function. The “on-flow” of samsara ends with the “cessation” known as nirvana, wherein the influxes (asava) upon the mind of greed, hatred, and delusion are finally stopped like streams that have “dried up” (khaya).

As Buddhist teachings evolved over the first several generations, the distinction between samsara and nirvana increased. Various Abhidharma schools identified a strong division between the “conditioned” phenomena of our changing experience and the “unconditioned” phenomena that are “beyond this world.”

The Madhyamika philosopher Nagarjuna deconstructed this dichotomy, arguing that when all phenomena are regarded as empty (having no intrinsic nature since they are interdependently conditioned), the polarity of the two words collapses. In fact, in expressing the view that would come to dominate later forms of Mahayana and tantric Buddhism, Nagarjuna declared that “there is no distinction whatsoever between samsara and nirvana.” With this insight, the meanings of samsara and nirvana are turned inward to refer not to outer worlds, fallen or perfect, but to inner perspectives, deluded or awakened, on the world as it actually is.

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The Pali word nibbana (nirvana in Sanskrit) was first used by the Buddha to describe the highest state of profound well-being a human is capable of attaining. The mind awakens from delusion, is liberated from bondage, is cleansed of all its defilements, becomes entirely at peace, experiences the complete cessation of suffering, and is no longer reborn.

Related: What’s in a Word? Emptiness

More specifically, the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion—toxic unconscious mental and emotional dispositions that cause people to harm themselves and one another and cause suffering— have been extinguished (nibbuta) in a person who attains nirvana. The popular account is that nirvana means the “blowing out” of the flames, but it is more likely that the word is based on the idea of removing fuel so that a fire goes out, or releasing the fire from clinging to its fuel. There are two senses of the word in the early tradition: nirvana as the radical psychological transformation experienced by Siddhartha Gautama under the Bodhi tree at age 36; and parinirvana (“complete” nirvana) as the more enigmatic transformation experienced when the Buddha died between two sal trees at the age of 80. He attained nirvana when the toxic fires were quenched, lived for 45 years teaching others how to achieve the same end, and then entered parinirvana with the final passing away of his body and mental aggregates (feeling, perception, dispositions, and consciousness).

Related: Nirvana: Three Takes

One of the great challenges of the word nirvana is that it is expressed in both negative and positive language. If too much emphasis is placed on the negative definition (such as absence of delusion), there is the danger of misconstruing it as nothingness, while too much on the positive side (such as the highest happiness) can lead to the tendency to think of it as an eternal reality. The Buddha discouraged both by suggesting there are no adequate conceptual means of expressing nirvana.

Each of the two major Mahayana schools took a different approach to the topic. The Madhyamaka accentuated the negative mode, reiterating the ineffability of the term and dismantling the idea of a sharp contrast between nirvana as an exalted state and samsara as a fallen world. The philosopher Nagarjuna argued that nirvana and samsara (literally the “flowing on” from one life to another) are identical—it is only one’s mistaken point of view that makes the distinction.

Yogacara thinkers such as Vasubandhu tended toward the positive nature of nirvana. Building upon the idea of a transpersonal “storehouse consciousness,” they developed affirmative terms such as bodhicitta, dharma-kaya, buddhanature, and suchness. Tibetan forms of Buddhism tended to follow this lead, speaking for example of the “great bliss” of nirvana becoming accessible through tantric practice.

As Buddhist teachings moved into East Asia, both outward and inward orientations were further developed. The Tiantai and Hwayan schools built grand integrated cosmological systems organized around nirvana as the central principle of the cosmos, while Chan and Zen practice emphasized seeing into one’s inner true nature. The experience of nirvana was embodied by a lineage of masters expressing their inexpressible realization by creative and spontaneous responses to ordinary situations.

The post What’s in a Word? Nirvana appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

For Buddhists, the universe has no beginning. Various world systems come into existence and eventually cease to be, but other worlds precede and follow them. The Buddha is said to have discouraged speculation about the origin of the universe; the question of whether the world has a beginning is one of fourteen questions that the Buddha refused to answer. He also remained silent when asked whether the universe will ever come to an end. Individual worlds are destroyed, incinerated by the fire of seven suns; but, no apocalypse, no final end time, is foretold. Individual beings put an end to their individual existence, one that also has no beginning, by traversing the path to nirvana. 

This does not mean that Buddhists do not have creation myths. One is offered in the Agganna Sutta, which describes how beings first came to populate a newly formed world system and how gender, sexuality, private property, labor, and government came into existence. The place that they inhabit—and which we inhabit, according to the Buddhists—is an island continent called Jambudvipa, “Rose Apple Island,” in a great sea. It is the southern continent, one of four continents in a flat world, situated in the four cardinal directions around a central mountain called Mount Meru. The mountain is in the shape of a great cube, each of its four faces composed of a different kind of precious stone. The southern face of the mountain is made of lapis lazuli and so when the light of the sun reflects off Meru’s south face, it turns the color of our sky blue. Gods live on the slopes of the mountain and on the summit. It was in the heaven on the summit on Mount Meru that the Buddha taught the Abhidharma to his mother.

The Buddha, like other teachers of his day, believed in rebirth—a process of birth and death called samsara, literally “wandering.” According to the Buddha, this process has no beginning and will not end unless one brings it to an end. Until then, each being is born in lifetime after lifetime into one of six, and only six, realms: as a god, demigod, human, animal, ghost, or denizen of hell. This is not a process of evolution but rather very much an aimless wandering from realm to realm, up and down, for aeons, a process that on the surface appears entirely random. The gods live above our world, some on the surface of the central mountain, some in the heavens above it. Their lives there are long but not eternal. For the gods who live on the summit of Mount Meru, the life span is a thousand years, and every day of those years is equal in length to one hundred human years. In the heavens arrayed above the summit of Mount Meru, the life spans are longer. These heavens as well as the realms of demigods, humans, animals, ghosts, and the denizens of hell, together constitute what is called the realm of desire, because the beings there desire the pleasures that derive from the five senses, constantly seeking beautiful things to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Above the desire realm are the heavens of the realm of form, where the gods have bodies made of a subtle matter invisible to humans; having no need for food or drink, these gods only have the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. The highest Buddhist heavens are located in what is called the formless realm. There the gods have no bodies but exist only as consciousness, and the names of its four heavens are derived from the object in which the minds of the gods of that heaven are absorbed: infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception nor nonperception. But these heavens remain within the cycle of birth and death, and when the karmic effect has run its course, each inhabitant is reborn elsewhere. 

In general, it is said that one is reborn as a god as a result of acts of generosity and charity in a former life; charity directed toward the community of Buddhist monks and nuns is considered particularly efficacious. However, one is reborn in these heavens of the formless realm by achieving their deep levels of concentration in meditation while a human. Yet even these profound states of bliss, states that last for millennia, are not eternal. Indeed, Buddhist texts sometimes consign the saints of other religions to these heavens, explaining that they have mistaken such states, which lie within samsara, as liberation from it. 

Below the gods in the hierarchy of beings are the demigods (excluded in some lists), a kind of catchall category of all manner of spirits and sprites, some malevolent and some benign; one of the words for “plant” or “tree,” which Buddhists monks are prohibited from uprooting or cutting down, literally means “abode of being.” The demigods are less potent than the gods but have powers that exceed those humans and can cause all manner of mischief if not properly propitiated. In the category of demigod, one finds the gandharvas, a class of celestial musicians who, according to their name, subsist on fragrances; a crude translation of that name would be “odor eaters.” One also finds a kind of half-human half-horse creature called the kimnara, literally, “is that a man?” 

The third realm is the world of humans, regarded as the ideal state for the practice of the Buddhist path. The realms of the gods above are too pleasurable; those of the animals, ghosts, and denizens of hell below are too painful. The world of humans is said to have sufficient suffering to cause one to wish to escape from it, but not so much as to cause paralysis and thereby block such an attempt. Among the sufferings of humans, the Buddha enumerated eight: birth, aging, sickness, death, losing friends, gaining enemies, not getting what you wish for, and getting what you do not wish for. As we consider, as we always must, the extent to which the doctrines of a religion reflect, on the one hand, the concerns of a distant time and place and, on the other hand, more general elements of the human condition, this list, set forth in ancient India more than two millennia ago, seems to fall on the universal side of the spectrum.

It is said that one is reborn as a human as a result of being an ethical person, generally understood as keeping vows. As mentioned above, for the Buddhist laity, there are five traditional vows: to abstain from killing humans, from stealing, from sexual misconduct, from lying, and from intoxicants. Laypeople could take any one, two, three, four, or all five of these vows, whether for life or for a more limited period. The vows kept by monks and nuns number in the hundreds. They govern all elements of monastic life, including possessions (especially robes), hygiene, and general comportment. The vows are categorized by the weight of the infraction they seek to prevent. Four transgressions result in permanent expulsion from the order: murder, sexual intercourse, theft (of anything above a specified value), and lying about spiritual attainments. Lesser infractions may require probation, confession, or simply a verbal acknowledgment.

Vows play a central role in Buddhist practice. They are not commandments from God, nor do they represent a covenant, but instead are a mechanism for making merit, the good karma that leads to happiness in this life and the next. It is sometimes said that one of the Buddhist innovations in Indian karma theory was to introduce the element of intention. A misdeed was no longer a ritual mistake, a sacrifice poorly performed, as it was in Vedic times, but an intentional action—whether physical, verbal, or mental—motivated by desire, hatred, or ignorance. A vow represented not a situational decision for good over evil but a lifetime commitment to refrain from a particular negative act. It was said that one accrued a greater good karma by taking a vow not to kill humans than by simply happening not to commit murder over the course of one’s life. Conversely, one accrued greater negative karma if one took and then broke a vow to avoid a particular misdeed than if one simply happened to commit that misdeed. The scholastic tradition would later explain why this was the case. In the act of taking a vow, a kind of “subtle matter” was created in one’s body. As long as the vow was kept, this subtle matter caused good karma to accrue in every moment throughout one’s life. For this reason, taking a vow was a much more efficient means to generate the seeds of future happiness than simply being occasionally ethical. 

The realms of gods and humans are considered the “good” or “fortunate” realms within the cycle of rebirth, because rebirth there is the result of virtuous actions and because the sufferings undergone by the beings in these realms are far less horrific than those of the beings reborn in the three lower realms. 

The realm of animals (which includes all birds, mammals, amphibians, fish, and insects, but not plants) is familiar enough, as are the various sufferings. Buddhist texts say that the particular suffering of animals is that they always must go in search of food while avoiding themselves becoming food; unlike humans, animals are killed not because of something that they did or said, but because of the taste of their flesh or the texture of their skin. One is said to be reborn as an animal as a result of past actions that were motivated by ignorance. 

The next realm is that of the ghosts—often called “hungry ghosts,” the translation of the Chinese term for the denizens of this realm. Their primary form of suffering is indeed hunger and thirst, and they are constantly seeking to fill their bellies. As they do so, they encounter all manner of obstacles. In Buddhist iconography, ghosts are depicted as baleful beings with huge distended bellies and emaciated limbs, not unlike the victims of famine. But beyond this affliction so familiar in human history, the other sufferings of ghosts are more fantastic. Some have knots in their throats, making it impossible for food or drink to pass. For others, who are able to swallow, the food they eat is transformed into sharp weapons and molten lead when it reaches their stomach. Still others find that when they finally come upon a stream of flowing water, it turns into blood and pus as they kneel down to drink. Ghosts live in a world located five hundred leagues beneath the surface of the earth, but they sometimes venture into the human world, where they can be seen by monks with supernormal powers. Indeed, the feeding of ghosts is a special responsibility of Buddhist monks. The Sanskrit term translated as “ghost” is preta, which means “departed” or “deceased,” suggesting that they are the spirits of the dead who have not received the proper ritual offerings from their families and thus are doomed to starvation. Buddhist monks and nuns, who also have left family life behind, have a special responsibility to feed the hungry ghosts, who appear often in Buddhist stories. It is said that one is reborn as a ghost as a result of actions motivated by greed in a former life. 

In the Buddhist cosmology, the most elaborate of the realms are the most desired—the heavens—and the most feared—the hells. There are eight hot hells and eight cold hells, four neighboring hells, and a number of trifling hells. They are stacked beneath the surface of the earth—the deeper below, the greater the intensity and duration of the suffering. The cold hells are desolate lands of ice where snow is always falling, without a sun or moon, or any source of light and heat. The beings there are naked, and the names of some of the hells describe the shape of the blisters that form on their bodies: for example, “Split Like a Blue Lotus.” The hot hells are lands of burning iron where beings undergo various forms of torture during lifetimes that last for millions of years, but not forever. Beings are reborn in hell as a result of actions motivated by hatred. There are said to be five deeds that result in immediate rebirth in the most torturous of the hot hells. The first of the four of these seems particularly heinous, the last less obviously so: killing one’s father, killing one’s mother, killing an arhat (someone who has achieved liberation and will enter nirvana at death), wounding the Buddha, and causing dissension in the community of monks and nuns.

Excerpted from The Norton Anthology of World Religions, edited by Jack Miles. Copyright © 2015 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Many think of Buddhism as a tolerant religion, one that recognizes the value of all religious traditions. In recent years, there have been growing numbers of Buddhist-Christian dialogues and Buddhist-Jewish dialogues. The Dalai Lama has even commented on the gospels. This might suggest that Buddhism holds that all religions are one, that all spiritual paths lead to the same mountaintop. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The idea of the unity of religions, at least in its popular form known today, has two important 19th-century sources, one from the West and one from the East. In America, the Theosophists, led by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott (both of whom were strong defenders of Buddhism against Christian missionaries), believed that a single mystical doctrine lay at the core of all religions. In India, the Bengali saint Ramakrishna practiced all of the major religions and claimed that they each led to the same mystical experience. Ramakrishna’s disciple, Swami Vivekananda, went on to proclaim that all religions are one. (A closer reading of his claim suggests that what he really meant is that all religions are Hinduism.)

Relate: How Religion Can Bring Peace to a Fearful World 

Buddhists have never proclaimed the unity of religions. Early Buddhist texts are filled with accounts of non-Buddhist masters claiming to have achieved enlightenment when in fact they have, at best, only achieved rebirth in the higher heavens of the immaterial realm (arupyadhatu); this was the fate of the Buddha’s first meditation teachers, Arada Kalama and Udraka Ramaputra. One of the Buddha’s closest disciples, Mahamaudgalyayana, liked to visit the hells, see which non-Buddhist teachers had been reborn there, and then return to earth to report their fates to their disciples, just to annoy them. Some of the disciples of these teachers eventually got so annoyed that they had him murdered.

In the 13th century, the celebrated Zen master Dogen, who famously proclaimed that mountains and rivers have buddhanature, was not so sure about Daoists and Confucians, writing, “Ignorant people state that Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are ultimately one, only the entrances are different. These misguided foolish people have a superficial view of the Buddhist Way because they lack sufficient understanding of the dharma and its origin.”

It is not particularly surprising that Buddhists would see themselves, and their path, as superior to competing religious groups, whether they were Hindus in India, Daoists in China, Confucians in Korea, or Bonpos in Tibet. What is more surprising, and more interesting, is that Buddhists would make similar claims of superiority against fellow Buddhists.

In one of his most famous essays, the renowned Japanese master Kukai laid out ten stages of religious development. Those of the lowest stage are the goat-like, who have no moral values whatsoever; the second lowest have some inclination toward self-restraint; and the third lowest level includes Hindus and Daoists. The next six levels are all various forms of Buddhism, none of which lead to buddhahood. As one might expect, this is possible only through Kukai’s own Shingon sect.

In Tibet, the famous 14th-century teacher Tsongkhapa argued that everyone who had ever achieved nirvana, even by the Hinayana path, had done so by understanding emptiness (shunyata) as set forth by what is called the Prasangika branch of Madhyamaka. Liberation from rebirth was impossible with any other Buddhist philosophical view. This raised the problem of how to understand the spiritual attainments of great Indian masters such as Asanga, who had taught different philosophical systems—in Asanga’s case, the Yogacara. Some Tibetans solve this by saying that while Asanga may have taught Yogacara, he was really a Madhyamaka at heart.

Related: Only the Occasional Brothel

Certain Indian and Tibetan Vajrayana systems contend that it is impossible to achieve buddhahood without practicing sexual yoga with a female consort, and that even Shakyamuni Buddha had done so. In some ways, this historical claim is not surprising, since all new claims in Buddhism must be traced to the Buddha himself; there can be no enlightenment (bodhi) higher than the complete perfect enlightenment (samyakasambodhi) that he achieved.

Historically, all Buddhists have held that liberation from rebirth is impossible via any religion other than Buddhism. Other religions can at best lead to a better rebirth, either as a human or as a god in one of the many heavens; only Buddhism leads to nirvana. Buddhists have agreed up to this point. Where they disagree is which form of Buddhism leads to nirvana, with each of the many schools across Asia claiming that theirs alone does, and often identifying other forms of Buddhism as only so many expedient stratagems (upaya) taught by the Buddha for those not yet ready for the true teaching.

[This story was first published in 2014]

The post One Way to Nirvana appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine myriad things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and essence are permanent. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self.

***

To study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.

***

If you attain unsurpassable, complete enlightenment, all sentient beings also attain it. The reason is that all sentient beings are aspects of enlightenment.

***

Great enlightenment right at this moment is not self, not other.

***

If you speak of “achieving enlightenment,” you may think that you don’t usually have enlightenment. If you say, “Enlightenment comes,” you may wonder where it comes from. If you say, “I have become enlightened,” you may suppose that enlightenment has a beginning.

***

Great enlightenment is the tea and rice of daily activity.

♦

From The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt © 2013. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications.

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The earth shook at dawn and the devas rejoiced on that morning long ago when the wanderer Gotama attained nirvana by “waking up” under the Bodhi tree to become the Buddha. The sky rained flowers out of season, and the devas lamented forty-five years later as the Buddha passed away, between twin Sal trees in Kusinara, in what has come to be called the parinirvana. These were two very different events that I believe require entirely different explanations. The first was a psychological event, focusing on extraordinary changes in the way experience gets constructed by the mind as it operates in the world; the second was a metaphysical event, having to do with issues of rebirth, postmortem consciousness, and the emerging theology of a growing religious movement. In most popular discussions of awakening, however, the distinction between them gets blurred, which naturally leads to some confusion.

In the years between these two events, as the Buddha walked from town to village along the Ganges valley, people would come to him wanting to know what had happened to him under that tree, and whether they too might be able to accomplish the same feat. He talked about it in terms of a radical psychological transformation. Before the moment of awakening, he constructed suffering in the same way the rest of us do, forged in the fires of craving, but in the moment afterward his mind and body were dramatically purified of all unwholesome or unskillful states. All the emotions rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion were cut off, uprooted, annihilated, dried up, extinguished, withdrawn, and otherwise abandoned once and for all, such that it was no longer possible for them to manifest themselves in his experience. The Buddha spoke of it as finding peace, becoming cool, reaching safety, putting down the burden, attaining liberation, and he used a wide range of similar imagery to express the final, irreversible cessation of suffering. He continued to live for the duration of his natural life as any other man might—eating, sleeping, talking, and meditating— though as one who experiences an unshakable sense of well-being in the face of any and all conditions.

After the final passing away, when his body had been respectfully cleaned, wrapped, and cremated, and the ashes distributed equitably, the question inevitably arose: How are we to understand what has just happened? What has become of our teacher? It was not appropriate to say the Buddha had gone to another realm, since he clearly said he had escaped this entire world system and would not be reborn in any of its various destinations. Neither was it fitting to say he died, since he also declared that he had defeated Mara, the lord of death, and had attained the Deathless. All other available options for explaining his passing, encompassing subtle variations on the theme of existence and nonexistence, perception and nonperception, seem also to have been considered and excluded, resulting in a profound and lasting paradox.

When asked earlier what happens to an awakened person after death, the teacher had famously remained silent. When pressed for an explanation, he responded by saying: It is a wrongly posed question; no one can understand the answer; the means of expressing what happens just do not exist; or the issue is entirely irrelevant. We have our hands full dealing with experience as it presents itself each moment; trying to understand conceptually what is clearly beyond common experience is not a worthwhile use of the precious time remaining to us. Just let go of speculative views on the subject, focus skillfully on what is arising and passing away in direct experience, and you may see for yourself someday.

Of course, human nature being what it is, very few are capable of finding this a satisfactory answer. Splendid and nuanced treatments of the subject are to be found in Sanskrit sutras, in Tibetan philosophical treatises, and in the rich visual imagery of East Asian art. However, since so many of the explanations of how to understand the parinirvana tend toward the cosmological, pointing quite beyond verifiable direct experience, I worry that the Buddha’s teaching about nirvana as an accessible psychological transformation in this life has become overshadowed and even undervalued. This is not about calling these resolutions of the paradox into question, but rather about excavating and recovering a more modest view of nirvana from that sliver of Buddhist tradition laid down during his lifetime.

What if the nirvana experienced by the Buddha in Bodhgaya turns out to be something considerably less magnificent than that of later mythic tradition, yet at the same time, by virtue of its being actually attainable by ordinary folk, something of unparalleled value? The Buddha spoke of learning how to be deeply happy right here and now, no matter what circumstances we are facing. Even the existential challenges of our own impending illness, aging, and death can be encompassed with the wisdom to acknowledge that all things change, to accept that there is no essence underlying it all, and nevertheless to be able to meet each moment without clinging to anything in the world.

The early texts tell us that the Buddha was able to lead many, many people—man and woman, brahmin and outcast, aristocrat and merchant, monastic and layperson—to a state of no longer struggling with the human condition. I really do not know what happens to such a person at death, any more than I know what became of the Buddha. Somehow that seems less relevant than the remarkable prospect of attaining profound well-being simply by understanding the causes of suffering in lived experience, and managing to unravel those causes each moment as life unfolds.

The Buddha’s own description of his midlife transformation is compelling in its simplicity and immediacy:

Indeed, the sage who’s fully quenched
Rests at ease in every way;
No sense desire adheres to him
Whose fires have cooled, deprived of fuel.
All attachments have been severed,
The heart’s been led away from pain;
Tranquil, he rests with utmost ease,
The mind has found its way to peace.

—Cullavagga 6.4.4

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Nirvana literally means “quenching” or “blowing out,” in the way that the flame of a candle is blown out. But what are we blowing out, here? Is it one’s soul, one’s ego, one’s identity? It cannot be the soul that is blown out, since Buddhism denies that any such thing exists. Nor is it the ego or one’s sense of identity that disappears, although nirvana certainly involves a radically transformed state of consciousness which is free of the obsession with “me and mine.”

What is extinguished, in fact, is the triple fire of greed, hatred, and delusion which leads to rebirth. Indeed, the simplest definition of nirvana-in-this-life is “the end of greed, hatred, and delusion”. It is clear that nirvana-in-this-life is a psychological and ethical reality. It’s a transformed state of personality characterized by peace, deep spiritual joy, compassion, and a refined and subtle awareness. Negative mental states and emotions such as doubt, worry, anxiety, and fear are absent from the enlightened mind.

Saints in many religious traditions exhibit some or all of these qualities, and ordinary people also possess them to some degree, although imperfectly developed. An enlightened person, however, such as a Buddha or an Arhat, possesses them all completely.

Afterlife?

What becomes of such a person at death? It is in connection with final nirvana that problems of understanding arise. When the flame of craving is extinguished, rebirth ceases, and an enlightened person is not reborn. So what has happened to him? There is no clear answer to this question in the early sources. The Buddha said that asking about the whereabouts of “an enlightened one” after death is like asking where a flame goes when blown out.

The flame, of course, has not “gone” anywhere. It is simply the process of combustion that has ceased. Removing craving and ignorance is like taking away the oxygen and fuel which a flame needs to burn. The image of the blowing out of the flame, however, does not suggest that final nirvana is annihilation. The sources make quite clear that this would be a mistake, as would the conclusion that nirvana is the eternal existence of a personal soul.

To question Nirvana

The Buddha discouraged speculation about the nature of nirvana and emphasized instead the need to strive for its attainment. Those who asked speculative questions about nirvana he compared to a man wounded by poisoned arrow who, rather than pulling the arrow out, persists in asking for irrelevant information about the man who fired it, such as his name and clan, how far away he was standing, and so forth.

In keeping with this reluctance on the part of the Buddha to elaborate on the question, the early sources describe nirvana in predominantly negative terms. These range from “the absence of desire” and “the extinction of thirst” to “blowing out” and “cessation.” A smaller number of positive epithets are also found, including “the auspicious,” the good,” “purity,” peace,” “truth,” and “the further shore.”

Certain passages suggest that nirvana is a transcendent reality which is unborn, unoriginated, uncreated and unformed. It’s difficult to know what interpretation to place upon such formulations. In the last analysis the nature of final nirvana remains an enigma other than to those who experience it. What we can be sure of, however, is that it means the end of suffering and rebirth.

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