The world seemed newly vibrant and resonant. It is the fate of all conditioned things to change when conditions change. And conditions change all the time. And you would think that a meditative discipline devoted, in some sense, to tamping down the influence of feelings on perception, to fostering a view of sober clarity, would only abet that tendency. After that first retreat, I felt like I was living in a zone of enchantment, a place of wonder and preternatural beauty.
I was still reacting at least somewhat reflexively to the causes impinging on me. Still, one source of the enchantment, I think, was that I was spending less time reacting, less time having my buttons pushed, and more time observing — which, as a bonus, allowed for more thoughtful responses to things. I assume that living in the unconditioned would be great, but living in the less conditioned can be pretty great, too.
You could take many ideas that are fundamental to Buddhism and recast them in terms of the conditioned, the caused. Indeed, you could say that Buddhist philosophy consists largely of taking the idea of causality really, really seriously. In that discourse, the Buddha also emphasises the impermanence of the things we think of as parts of the self. And this too — the perennial arising and passing away of thoughts, emotions, attitudes — is a consequence of the ever-changing forces that act on us, forces that set off chain reactions inside us.
The things inside us are subject to causes, to conditions — and it is the fate of all conditioned things to change when conditions change. And conditions change pretty much all the time.
Y ou might say that the path of progress in a serious mindfulness-meditation regimen consists largely of becoming aware of the causes impinging on you, aware of the way that things manipulate you — and aware that a key link in that manipulation lies in the space where feelings can give rise to tanha , to a craving for pleasant feelings and an aversion to unpleasant feelings.
This is the space where mindfulness can critically intervene. Maybe I should have put an asterisk after the word aware in the previous paragraph. This kind of awareness, which critically includes an awareness of the feelings evoked by perceptions and by thoughts, and the feelings that guide trains of thought, can be heightened to surprising levels through meditation.
Buddhist enlightenment has something in common with Enlightenment in the Western scientific sense. That said, undergirding this experiential understanding, and often accompanying it, is the more abstract understanding that is part of Buddhist philosophy. Making real progress in mindfulness meditation almost inevitably means becoming more aware of the mechanics by which your feelings, if left to their own devices, shape your perceptions, thoughts and behaviour — and becoming more aware of the things in your environment that activate those feelings in the first place.
You could say that enlightenment in the Buddhist sense has something in common with Enlightenment in the Western scientific sense: it involves becoming more aware of what causes what.
All of this flies in the face of stereotype. Mindfulness meditation is often thought of as warm and fuzzy and, in a way, anti-rational. And, yes, it does involve those things.
It can let you experience your feelings — anger, love, sorrow, joy — with new sensitivity, seeing their texture, even feeling their texture, as never before. And the reason this is possible is that you are, in a sense, not making judgments — that is, you are not mindlessly labelling your feelings as bad or good, not fleeing from them or rushing to embrace them. So you can stay close to them yet not be lost in them; you can pay attention to what they actually feel like.
Still, you do this not in order to abandon your rational faculties but rather to engage them: you can now subject your feelings to a kind of reasoned analysis that will let you judiciously decide which ones are good guiding lights. And all of this means informing your responses to the world with the clearest possible view of the world. Underlying this whole endeavour is a highly mechanistic conception of how the mind works.
The idea is to finely sense the workings of the machine and use that understanding to rewire it, to subvert its programming, to radically alter its response to the causes, the conditions, impinging on it. But they still fly. This Essay was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to Aeon.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust.
Funders to Aeon Magazine are not involved in editorial decision-making, including commissioning or content-approval. Modern biomedicine sees the body as a closed mechanistic system. The word is Sanskrit for "to extinguish. The term is most closely associated with Buddhism, though it's applied to a similar concept in Hinduism as we'll see later on.
By achieving nirvana, you can escape samsara , the cycle of reincarnation that characterizes both Hinduism and Buddhism. In each life, a soul is punished or rewarded based on its past actions, or karma , from the current life as well as earlier lives which also include lives as animals. It's important to note that the law of karma isn't due to a god's judgment over a person's behavior; it's closer to Newtons law of motion -- every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
It happens automatically, of its own accord. When you achieve nirvana, you stop accumulating bad karma because you've transcended it. You spend the rest of your life and sometimes future lives "working off" the bad karma you've already accumulated.
Once you have fully escaped the karmic cycle, you achieve parinirvana -- final nirvana -- in the afterlife. As with Hindu nirvana, souls that have achieved parinirvana are free of the cycle of reincarnation. The Buddha never specified what parinirvana was like. In Buddhist thought, it is beyond normal human comprehension. In the next section, we'll find out what the Buddha prescribed for achieving nirvana on earth and parinirvana in the afterlife.
Hinduism and Buddhism are divided into many different sects with a wide variety of beliefs. Many theologians don't even recognize Hinduism as a single religion, but only as a collection of religious practices that join many different groups. Consequently, there are very few qualities or beliefs you can attribute to Hinduism or Buddhism as a whole.
But there are a number of ideas that broadly characterize the religions. When we talk about Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, we're referring to these general tenets that are common to most major sects. Thus kamma is not fate nor destiny nor blind determinism. Man has a certain amount of free will; he can modify his actions and affect his future.
Each act, whether mental or physical, tends to produce its like. If a man does a good deed or thinks a good thought, the effect upon him is to increase the tendencies to goodness in him. The understanding of kamma gives us power. The more we make the doctrine of kamma a part of our lives, the more power we gain, not only to direct our future, but also to help our fellow beings more effectively.
The practice of good kamma, when fully developed, will enable us to overcome evil and even to overcome kamma itself, thus bringing us to our goal, Nirvana. The principle of dependent origination and the law of kamma provide the background for understanding the nature of rebirth.
According to Buddhism, death is "the temporary end of a temporary phenomenon. Our physical forms are only the outward manifestations of the invisible kammic force. When the present form perishes, another form takes its place according to a good or bad volitional impulse—the kamma that was the most powerful—at the moment before death.
At death the kammic force remains entirely undisturbed by the disintegration of the physical body, and the passing away of the present consciousness creates the conditions for the coming into being of a fresh body in another birth.
The stream of consciousness flows on like a river which is built up by its tributaries and dispenses its water to the countryside through which it passes. The continuity of flux at death is unbroken in point of time; there is no breach in the stream of consciousness, and therefore there is no room whatever for an intermediate stage between this life and the next. Rebirth takes place immediately. The present being, present existence, is conditioned by the way one faced circumstances in the last and in all past existences.
One's present character and circumstances are the result of all that one has been up to the present, but what one will be in the future depends on what one does now in the present. The true Buddhist regards death as a momentary incident between one life and its successor and views its approach with calmness.
His only concern is that his future should be such that the condition of that life may provide him with better opportunities for perfecting himself. Buddhism teaches that with the practice of meditation and concentration the memory can be trained. By meditation and mind culture one can acquire the power to see one's rebirth as a link, or a succession of links, in a chain of births; one can also acquire the power of looking back into one's previous lives.
Not only this, but Buddhism also teaches that with the attainment of Nirvana in this life itself, through enlightenment and true wisdom, one can reach the end of this chain of rebirths.
Nirvana, the state to which all Buddhists aspire, is the cessation of desire and hence the end of suffering. Nirvana in Sanskrit means "the blowing out. Among Westerners Nirvana is often thought of as a negative state, a kind of "nothingness. Nirvana is freedom, but not freedom from circumstance; it is freedom from the bonds with which we have bound ourselves to circumstance.
That man is free who is strong enough to say, "Whatever comes I accept as best. Nirvana is the dying of the kammic force. The Buddhist ascends to Nirvana through many stages of the Middle Way, the path of wisdom, morality, and control. There is not space enough here even to mention these phases or the various aspects of the regimen recommended by the Buddha in his vast scriptures; but it may be taken for granted that the life of the conscientious Buddhist is full and rich.
Through the cycle of rebirths he ascends, he perfects himself, he conquers his cravings through wisdom and love. Slowly the kammic force ebbs away, the flame dies down. At the root of man's trouble is his primal state of ignorance.
From ignorance comes desire, which sets the kammic force in motion. Hence the way to Nirvana lies through knowledge, and we come again full circle to Dhamma, the Buddha's teachings. For in Dhamma, as truth, lies release from ignorance and desire and perpetual change, and the Buddha has shown us the way to truth.
What, then, is the meaning of Buddhism? Ultimately Buddhism, although not strictly speaking a religion, is a systematic exercise in spirituality, certainly one of the greatest ever conceived.
It offers the individual a means by which he may fulfill himself through understanding, reaching eventually the plane of the supraperson on which both the self and self-knowledge are no longer useful. Meister Eckhart, the great Christian mystic, said: "The kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead.
Nirvana in life, the peace which "passeth all understanding," is the conquest of life, the discovery of the permanent in its flux of psychophysical accidents and circumstances. The Buddhist believes that through meditation and good hard thought he can follow the Buddha through the successive stages of enlightenment and achieve at last the perfect wisdom which surmounts all need. But by no means all Buddhists are monks or adepts.
What does Buddhism mean for the ordinary person going about his work in the world? All through the Buddha's teaching, repeated stress is laid on self-reliance and resolution. Buddhism makes man stand on his own feet, it arouses his self-confidence and energy. The Buddha again and again reminded his followers that there is no one, either in heaven or on earth, who can help them or free them from the results of their past evil deeds.
The Buddhist knows that the powers of his own mind and spirit are enough to guide him in the present and shape his future and bring him eventually to the truth. He knows that he possesses a strength which is ultimately unsurpassable. Moreover, Buddhism points unequivocally to the moral aspect of everyday life.
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