Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

Examine what the consequences of what you do and think might be for yourself and everyone, and then take responsibility for those consequences. It's a tall order and an important practice to engage in, but don't get too obsessive about it. Remember the simplicity of the first training, training in kindness, generosity, honesty and clarity, and gain balance and wisdom from the other two trainings as you go.

Sometimes looking into suffering and desire can be overwhelming.

Life can sometimes be extremely hard. In these moments, try looking into the heart side of the equation, compassion and kindness. Connect with the part of your heart that just wishes the suffering would end and feel that deeply, especially as it manifests in the body. Just this can be profound practice. There are also lots of other good techniques for cultivating a spaciousness of heart that can bear anything, such as formal loving-kindness practices (see Sharon Salzburg’s excellent Lovingkindness, The Revolutionary Art of Happiness). Finding them and practicing them can make the spiritual path much more bearable and pleasant, and this can make it more likely that we will be able to 64

The Four Noble Truths

persevere, gain deep insights, be able to integrate them into our lives, and use them to benefit others.

The take-home message is to take the desire to be happy and free of suffering and use its energy to do skillful things that can actually make this happen, rather than getting caught in old unexamined patterns of searching for happiness where you know you will not find it. The Three Trainings are skillful and can inform the whole of our life. By following them we may come to the end of many forms of suffering and be in a much better position to help others do the same.

TRUTH NUMBER THREE: THE END OF SUFFERING

This brings us nicely to the Third Noble Truth, the end of

suf ferin g. Now, as noted before, there are three types of suffering pertaining to the scope of each of the three trainings. Traditionally, the Buddha talked about the end of suffering as relating to mastering the third training and thus becoming highly enlightened. The first point is that it can be done and is done today by meditators like you from many spiritual traditions. Yes, there are enlightened people walking around, and not just a rare few that have spent 20 years in a cave in Tibet. This is really important to understand and have faith in. The other point is that with the end of fundamental desire, which we will render here as the end of compassion and reality being filtered through the odd logic of the process of ego, there is the end of fundamental suffering. That's it. Done is what has to be done. Gone, gone, gone beyond, and all of that. All beings can do it, and there is, to make bit of a mystical joke, no time like the present.

Now, it must be said that the Buddha also praised those who had mastered the other two trainings and thus eliminated what suffering could be eliminated by those methods. Even very enlightened beings can benefit from mastering the concentration states. However, there are some complex and difficult issues related to eliminating all of the ordinary suffering in the world and thus related to mastering the first training, which is an endless undertaking. It is because of this particular issue that such teachings as the Bodhisattva Vow arose, and I will deal with these complexities towards the end of this book.

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The Four Noble Truths

TRUTH NUMBER FOUR: THE PATH

The Fourth Noble Truth is the Noble Eightfold Path

t hat

leads to suffering'

s final end . Another list! Hopefully you have

come to like these little lists by now, and so one more will hopefully be seen as another manageable little guide on how to find the end of suffering. Luckily, we have already seen the whole of the Noble Eightfold Path in other parts of some of the other lists, and it is summarized in the Three Trainings of morality, concentration and wisdom.

The morality section is just broken down into three specifics: skillful action, skillful speech and skillful livelihood. Skillful means conducive to the end of suffering for us and for all other living beings. Be kind, honest, clear and compassionate in your whole life, in your actions, speech and work. Notice that nothing is excluded here. The more of our lives we integrate with the spiritual path, the better. Simple to remember and also a powerful guide.

The concentration section contains three things we saw in the Five Spiritual Faculties and the Seven Factors of Enlightenment: skillful energy, skillful concentration, and skillful mindfulness.

The wisdom section has the two last parts of the path: skillful thought or intention and skillful understanding or wisdom. These two are often rendered in different ways, but the meaning is the same: understand the truth of your experience and aspire to kindness and wisdom in your thoughts and deeds. Again, simple but powerful.

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9.PRACTICAL MEDITATION CONSIDERATIONS

WHEN, WHERE AND FOR HOW LONG?