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

rage, grandiosity, frustration, insecurity, fear and a host of other semi-deluded forces, we would hardly budge. We wouldn’t pick up dharma books, we wouldn’t go on retreats, we wouldn’t deal with our stuff, and we wouldn’t care at all. But we do care, and so we forge on. Thank the Metaphorical God for the power of our emotions and the pain the dark ones cause. They are the gasoline that drives us on the road to understanding.

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18.RIGHT THOUGHT AND THE AEGEAN STABLES

There is a lot of emphasis on “right thought” and suppressing the mental “defilements” in Buddhism, as well as training in morality, “right speech” and that sort of thing. As these are agendas for what happens in our ordinary reality, they are aspects of training in morality. This emphasis on controlling our thoughts can be helpful but it has it limits and often causes problems when misunderstood. When this becomes the predominant thrust of one’s practice and involves images of self-perfection that deny the basic realities of human existence and the inevitable dark sides of life, trouble is basically guaranteed.

The Buddha did go on and on about restraining thought,

transforming thought, and that sort of thing. He was making a very important point, but he didn’t stop there. He also advocated that people go on to cultivate concentration and then insight, so as to temporarily quiet and then overcome forever the fundamental delusions that drive our noisy minds. This same point would apply to psychotherapy: it can be useful, but to find the end of suffering we must go much deeper.

Sutra #20 in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (great book, by the way) is called “The Removal of Distracting Thoughts.” In it, Buddha admonished his followers to deal with unskillful, evil, unwholesome or useless thoughts in the following ways. First, if the student is paying attention to something that is causing these unskillful thoughts, then they should pay attention to something wholesome that does not produce unskillful thoughts. If this fails, then they should reflect on the danger in those thoughts and thus try to condition themselves to not think such thoughts in this way. If this fails, then they should try to forget those thoughts and not give any attention to them. If this fails, then they should give attention to quieting the mind and to stilling these thoughts. If this fails, then the student should bear down with their full will and “crush mind with mind,” forcing the thoughts to stop with unremitting and unrestrained effort. He also recommended the formal concentration practices of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (see Lovingkindness, The

Revolutionary Art of Happiness, by Sharon Salzberg, or Training the Mind, by Chogyam Trungpa).

Right Thought and the Aegean Stables

Those familiar with cognitive restructuring will notice great similarities between this 2,500-year-old approach and more modern techniques. These can help develop morality and also suppress the hindrances that cause distraction and poor concentration, as well as begin to create better mental and personal habits. However, this can have its problems if not understood in a realistic and clear way.

A subtle but incorrect modification of these techniques can create a large amount of internal conflict, as can failing to understand the limitations of such techniques. The subtle modification that is definitely not recommended but all too common is the following: the student substitutes feelings of self-judgment or self-loathing for the thoughts they feel are unskillful. This results from only seeing the ignorance side and not the compassion side of intentions and thoughts. It can produce some extremely detrimental results, as well as highly neurotic and repressed individuals who are in basic denial of their actual humanity and heart. It can produce students who are quite bitter, tight, judgmental, Puritanical, and generally unpleasant to be around. This is one extreme.

The other extreme tends to come when people only focus on the compassion side of their emotions and not the confusion and suffering that can be mixed in with them. Aspects of late 1960s come to mind.

This error can lead to extreme misunderstandings of Tantra, unhealthy Epicureanism, addictions, and general debauchery that are simply destructive. While this may seem fun and “liberating” for a while, the consequences tend to be as bad as would be expected. Thus, a sophisticated examination of our hearts, desires, aversions and confusions can help sort out what aspects of these are skillful and worth cultivating and what aspects are unhelpful and worth abandoning by the various methods available.