The Heart of Buddhism: A Simple Introduction to Buddhist Practice

The final reason why Buddhism is exercising such appeal in the West is the failure of our own religions to deliver the kind of guidance that people are after. To many people, eager for help in clarifying their own cloudy misgivings about the selfish, narrow, materialistic life they have come to live by default, Christianity is a dead loss. It seems like a husk, a precious relic which is no longer useful for anything, and which instead is guarded and interpreted by an army of curators who are, in their own lives, as much at sea as the rest of us. Of course there are exceptions, Christians whose faith makes them glow with health, and priests who seem to have a better than average grasp of human nature and a love of people with all their faults and foibles. But when people look at the Church as a whole, many of them see something that resembles a trade union or a multinational corporation more than a source of spiritual inspiration and guidance, and they find it unprepossessing and dessicated. Even in the vastness of the Royal Albert Hall in London there are few people who do not feel the difference in quality between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dalai Lama. Instead of warmth and wisdom we seem to be offered instead a fairy-tale world of Holy Ghosts and angels, of water that turns to wine and wine that turns to blood, of incantations and rituals that may be good theatre but which do not help me with my drink problem, my furtive infidelities or my gnawing sense of emptiness inside.

The problem with Christianity especially is that its living message has become incarcerated within a prison of metaphor taken as fact, symbol mistaken for reality and ritual for its own sake, a prison with bars of coral, slowly built up from the skeletons of once-useful images that no longer point to anything beyond themselves. God the Heavenly Father (who used to be accompanied by God the Earthly Mother before she was edited out of the Gospels) was an originally helpful but ultimately expendable way of pointing at the reality of a world from which we all emerge, and on which we all depend. But the experience of kinship and at-home-ness that Jesus was trying to convey gets disregarded when we start thinking in terms of God as an entity – or perhaps a team of entities – real and separate from us, whose creatures we are and in whose charge we remain. God becomes a vaguely person-like projection: external, controlling, creating, and usually male. Having missed the point, we are left with a fuzzy surrogate in which all we can do is believe, and which all too often comes to symbolize not the potential for liberation but the necessity for obedience and the inevitability of guilt.

The story gets even more tangled when we are taught to accept that the instrument by which we are to increase our love for each other is Will – a gift from God which, however, like a cheap Christmas toy, is inherently faulty, and which is occasionally (when we are ‘good’) serviced by the manufacturer with a lubricating dollop of Grace. By the time people had done their literal-minded worst with analogies like ‘the Kingdom of God’ and ‘heaven’, and he had found himself involved in such ludicrous conversations as the famous ‘render unto Caesar’ one, Jesus must have had serious doubts about the wisdom of opening his mouth in the first place.

So for many people Christianity will not do. Its officers seem lost, its language archaic, and, because Jesus is presented as definitely a one-off, the best it can offer them is the possibility of falling just a little less short. They are looking for an alternative that is more inspiring, more comprehensive and more optimistic – and Buddhism is a good candidate.

The plan of the book

Despite the inherent appeal of Buddhism, it is sometimes presented in a technical way, which emphasises the difficulties of translation and obscures the heart. Or the differences between the different schools are stressed, so that one becomes either entranced or bemused by the distinctive styles – the deities and mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism, the complicated philosophizing of the Mahayana or the bizarre behaviour of Zen Masters. When these are put first it is easy to mistake the skin for the banana. Conversely, when the heart of the matter is understood, only then do the vast range of practices and doctrines make sense. This book is first of all an attempt to convey the spirit of Buddhism, in its most rational, practical and mundane form; and then, from time to time, to look at some of the ways in which the great Buddhist teachers, using language and examples where were intelligible within the context of their time and culture, have tried to communicate the essence of their own transformation to others.

First I want to explain the Buddhist point of view. In the course of this I shall explore what it has to say about several aspects of people’s lives, especially our thoughts and feelings, our relationships, and our attitudes to death, bereavement and loss generally, as well as its implications on the social, political and global levels. Then I shall say something about the Buddhist ‘cure’, and particularly about meditation – what it is and why it works. In the process I shall try to introduce, without losing the flow, some of the more traditional language, teachings and practices of the different Buddhist schools in order to illustrate the simplicity that underlies the welter of diversity.

2 A PEACE MISSING

Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakeable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.

Afraid, adj. Civilly willing that things should be other than they seem.

– Ambrose Bierce

The programme of research

EVERYBODY wants to be happy. Everybody wants to be loved and accepted as they are. Everybody wants to feel clear and strong and loving in their turn. Everybody wants to live in a happy and peaceful world. Everybody wants enough food. Everybody wants to be free from pain. Understanding what we all want is not difficult. It is how to get there that is the problem. What steps can we take, what ‘game plan’ should we follow, to be as happy as we can in a world that is indelibly marked with old age, disability, sickness, physical pain, accident, bereavement and finally death? This is the 64,000 dollar question, for all of us now, just as it was for Siddharta Guatama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But most of us do not go into it in quite as much depth as he did, and we therefore do not discover as profoundly satisfactory an answer. We sort of pick it up, and make it up, as we go along, and vaguely hope that we’ve got it about as right as we can. We equally vaguely assume that the anxiety and irritation and jealousy and guilt and restlessness we feel are all part of the package deal into which we were born, to be put up with, or avoided, or ignored as best we can.

Buddha’s shocking discovery is that our half-baked game plan, far from being a little wide of the mark, is just about as wrong as it could be. Not only does it fail to deal with the intrinsic pains and upsets that are bound to befall us all sooner or later, it actually generates an untold amount of extra suffering. Through our misguided efforts to generate happiness, peace and love, we are actually creating distress, anxiety and animosity. Now this is a hard idea to swallow. Can it really be that most of the population of the world, for most of history, has been so crass? That all our philosophers and saints and philanthropists, as well as the rest of us men, women and children in the street, have been earnestly and energetically barking up the wrong tree? That what millions of people experience as inevitable hardship is in fact optional and homegrown? We shall need some convincing. Apart from anything else it will be rather embarrassing, if Buddha does turn out, against all the odds, to be right, to admit to such monumental stupidity. The only recourse in that unlikely event would be to howl with laughter – which explains, perhaps, why for many people an experience of ‘enlightenment’ is indescribably funny.

In this chapter I want to turn the tables on ourselves, and to make Buddha’s proposal look less absurd and our own normal point of view more questionable. First let us make explicit what this ‘common sense’ is, so we can submit it to some scrutiny. Most of us have never articulated it clearly to ourselves, yet it underlies and controls what we do, and the choices we spontaneously make, just as the program in my word processor never appears on the screen itself, yet it determines absolutely the responses that my little machine makes to my key-strokes. We were not born with this so-called common sense, but picked it up intuitively from those around us. So easily and unwittingly did we do so that now, if we are aware of it at all, it seems to us as natural as the air we breathe. To follow the familiar game plan is second nature to us. Yet if this is second nature, we might pause to wonder about the first. Might there be an even deeper strategy for living that has been eclipsed by a ‘common sense’ which could turn out on inspection to be riddled with common nonsense? Might there not indeed be more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophies?

This is the Buddhist starting point and the Buddhist programme of research, this enquiry into the premises on which we have, by default, been basing our lives. First this structure of habits and assumptions must be floated to the surface of our minds, and then it must be picked over in the light of experience. What have we been up to? And has it been working?

The game plan

I am going to make a few educated guesses about what this second nature consists of, but as I do so, please remember that these are not Great Truths to be believed, but suggestions to be tested. Although Buddhism often seems to present us with ideas that are strange or outrageous to our normal way of thinking, all we are required to do is to suspend our initial reaction and try the ideas on for size. We are not supposed to take them on trust, but merely to stand inside them for a while, to adopt, without prejudice, a Buddha’s-eye-view of things, and to see if it doesn’t ring true in our own experience.

The first and most reasonable-looking assumption that we make is that the way to be as happy as possible is to reduce the unhappiness as much as possible. Happiness is the result of having what we find pleasant and congenial; unhappiness is the converse or the lack of these things. I am happy when I am warm, and loved, and safe, and relaxed, and successful. I am unhappy when I am cold and wet, waiting for the breakdown truck (that is going to cost me a fortune) on the motorway in the dark, furious with myself for forgetting to check the spare tyre, and anxious about what my family will be thinking. What could be more natural, more sensible, than to take precautions against such distressing events? Tomorrow I will buy a new spare and renew my membership to the AA. I might even get that carphone fitted so at least I can get hold of people to let them know, or to have a friendly voice to talk me out of my black mood while I am waiting for the stupid garage to turn up. The most basic element of the game plan is to do what one reasonably can to keep out of trouble, and to anticipate it so that one can minimize it when it happens. Zen Masters and Tibetan lamas do not deliberately drive on the wrong side of the road, pick fights in bars, or eat bad meat.

The question is: is this enough? And in adopting this strategy, must we necessarily give pain or inconvenience the status of an ‘enemy’, to be removed at all costs? Are we inevitably led to the attitude that it is wrong to suffer; that it is a disaster if things do not turn out to my liking; that my preferences are necessities and their non-fulfilment therefore threats? It is here that Buddhism begins to part company with common sense, for common sense often seems to be committed to the idea that happiness lies in the obliteration of our dislikes and the stabilizing of our likes. The ploy of avoiding what hurts is pushed beyond its limits, and we find ourselves trying to fix in place a world that obstinately refuses to be manipulated to our liking. Trains and stock markets crash. Children do not turn out as we hoped. Loved ones die or leave us. Promotions are missed. Manuscripts are rejected. Exams are failed. Bodies sag. Inoperable tumours are diagnosed. House prices fall. Lightning strikes – and sometimes twice. Secrets are discovered. Impossible decisions have to be made. We die. Yet despite this massive uncontrollability we persist in our opposition – regretting, fretting, getting angry, feeling guilty, trying to nail down and outwit. The game plan seems to rely too heavily on security. We decide what it is that we think we like or need, and then judge our happiness by our ability to get it and hold on to it.

Part and parcel of the game plan is the belief that happiness depends on circumstances. If we can only get the conditions of our lives right then everything will turn out well. What I need is a best-seller, or a beautiful lover, or another baby, or a bigger house … then it will be OK. We presume a close association between what’s going on and the way we feel – and that is indeed the way we experience it. When someone insults me, I get angry. When someone ignores me, I feel hurt. When someone threatens to leave me, I am jealous. Given this attitude, the only thing I can do is to try to control my circumstances, for it is they that hold the key.

Having made up my mind what it is I like and need, uncertainty and change become threats in and of themselves – because they make my precarious hold, such as it is, insecure. If I don’t know what to expect next, how can I plan for it or insure against it? So I tend to go for the familiar, for ritual and routine (even though I am bored to death by it), and become depressed or outraged when someone dares to take my parking space, or when my teenage son stops being intimidated by my stern lectures.

The problem with the game plan is obvious: beyond a certain point it stops bringing happiness and starts generating its opposite instead. The more closely I hitch my contentment to my conditions, the more at risk I am when the unexpected or the unwanted happens – as it must. The more tightly I define these conditions, the more surely I call into being the occasions of my disappointment. The more carefully I lay my contingency plans, the more hard work my life becomes. And so it goes. Beyond a certain point the effort to remove suffering becomes not only tiring but actually counterproductive. Alcoholics Anonymous use a famous prayer that catches something of the balance that we are in danger of losing if we ‘take up arms against a sea of troubles’ too often and too earnestly: ‘Lord, give me the courage to do those things which I can; the serenity to accept those things which I cannot; and the wisdom to tell the difference.’ For Buddhism serenity and wisdom are at least as important as courage.

The final consequence of the ‘common sense’ approach to life is that it makes a degree of self-centredness inevitable. If my happiness depends on conditions being to my liking, and they happen to conflict with what you want, then I’m afraid one of us is going to be unlucky – and I would rather it wasn’t me. Other people’s peace, happiness and kindliness can be abused or trampled on if necessary. I can be generous only when to be so doesn’t threaten my security. If I need an affair to combat my mounting depression and distance from my family, then so be it. If I’ve set my sights on that promotion, then I can almost convince myself that the stealthy efforts to denigrate my rival are quite legitimate. ‘All’s fair in love and war, old boy, didn’t you know?’ And the small trickle of unease that manages to escape can quickly be sponged off with a bit of bravado and another round of drinks.

The game plan thus comes to strangle the very qualities that we value most – ease, spontaneity, friendship, openness. We think we are unhappy because of the ‘problems’ and difficulties that come our way, and set off each time to lick reality into shape. Yet the equally obvious fact, that we experience things as problems when we are not on good form, and that they are less problematic from the vantage point of a better mood … the implications of this seem to go unnoticed. ‘We see things not as they are, but as we are’, said Koffka, a German psychologist. If that is so, then our game plan needs to pay attention to the state of mind of the looker, as well as to the objects at which he or she is looking with such longing or revulsion. If it is possible to be in a good mood independently of what is going on – even if this freedom is only partial – then we have opened up another important avenue for promoting our well-being. It is precisely this powerful possibility that Buddhism has exploited to the hilt: the possibility that one can learn to remain at peace, to keep one’s equanimity, not just on the surface but deep down, in the face of situations that are difficult or painful.

Buddha’s deep realizations were just how much of our suffering is self-inflicted, and just how much elbow room we have to dissociate our serenity from our situation – not by perfecting our defences, so that we become invulnerable, but by seeing for ourselves that defence is quite unnecessary. An Islamic proverb says, ‘Trust in God – but first tether your camel.’ If we will only learn to tether our camel, do our best in the exam, repaint the shed when it needs it – and then realize that we are not destroyed by the thief or the tricky question or the hurricane – then we can keep our balance between doing and accepting, intervening and sitting back. But we cannot leave well alone; we seem to have lost the ability, let alone the serenity, to abide with unavoidable adversity. Whatever it is, it feels like a problem that the right activity would solve, if only we could figure out what that was. So we are embarrassed, for example, when we can do no more than sit with a dying friend. We fidget and chat in order to fend off the experience of impotence, anxiously sneaking glances at the clock and further exhausting the weary friend into the bargain.

But worse than this, we are full of strange ideas about what needs defending, what needs running after and what must be avoided. As in a fairy story, we have dreamt up dragons to beware of, castles to defend and beautiful princesses or priceless treasures to go in search of. Nothing wrong with that, we might suppose – except that we then take these games for real, and spend our time complaining about how tired and busy we are, and how desperately we are looking forward to the end of term, or to Christmas. (‘Unfortunately though, we always spend Christmas with Sheila’s parents, and after 36 hours of her mother, well, to be honest I shall be looking forward to getting back to the office!’)

People need a certain amount of material – food and shelter for example – but the game of making money can become so serious that they ruin their health and make strangers of their families in pursuit of it, and jump off tall buildings when they lose it. People need friendship, or most do anyway, so they equip themselves with toupees and false breasts in the quaint belief that they will be better liked if they hide the effects of age. People value communication, but tremble with strangulated rage when someone jumps the queue rather than risk a ‘confrontation’. We all have our personal portfolio of such hostages to fortune, and are quick to chuckle at those which we do not own, or own up to, when we spot them in other people. I am ready to joke with you about people who grow long clumps of hair to paste from one ear to the other. But don’t start on my little pot belly, or I shall suddenly become rather waspish.

Some of these premises on which we live not only send us off on wild goose chases; they bamboozle us about ourselves as well. They set up rules and regulations about which bits of us are all right and which are not – which to be proud of and display to impress people (‘Cambridge, actually,’ I murmur modestly), and which to feel ashamed of (‘Well, if you must know, it was a third,’ I declare defiantly). Events in the past are sorted into ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘indifferent’, while whole categories of human experience are condemned or exalted. To cry is ‘weak’, so I must fend off your tenderness lest I ‘break down’. To assert myself is ‘unfeminine’, so I meekly go along with your stupid suggestion, and compensate for the ensuing self-disgust by secretly rejoicing when you get your comeuppance. To feel afraid is shameful, so I have learnt how to make myself physically sick before school on the days when I have French. To feel violently towards my howling child is too dreadful a thing to admit, so I wake exhausted and cannot tell you about my frightful dreams.

Buddhism knows all about these buried beliefs that keep us in a state of dissatisfaction. Much of what we cherish is dross, the Buddhists say, and in the protecting of it we run ourselves ragged. We become more or less skilful at putting on a phony front and at keeping our skeletons well locked away. The process of freeing ourselves from anxiety by dredging up these pernicious convictions and putting them to the test of adult reflection is part of the Buddhist programme.

It is for this reason that Buddhism has some strong relationships with psychotherapy, though they are by no means straightforward. But they are not really the heart of the matter. Students of Buddhism are after bigger fish, and though grappling with these standards of conduct and feeling offers invaluable practice in the art of hauling up and putting an end to particular sources of self-made distress, they are not the root cause of that distress. For that a longer line is needed, and greater courage still. We shall return to the hunt for Moby Dick in a little while.

Pain and death

So far we have begun to explore the Buddhist insight that much of what we are trying to fix up and escape from is in fact home-made. But surely, you will probably have been wanting to say for a while, not all of our distress is avoidable with a change of attitude? I can see what you mean about shame and jealousy, but what about the real pain in the world? What does Buddhism have to say about that?

Many people in the well-protected, affluent West, especially those like myself who are not old enough to have lived through the Second World War, have so far been spared the direct experience of pain and death. I remember my first encounter with a Zen Master, Asahina Sogen, who was at the time abbot of one of the most famous Zen temples in Japan, Engakuji in Kamakura. He asked me one or two polite questions, and then, out of the blue, enquired whether my parents were still alive. I told him they were, and he said how lucky I was, and went on to talk about how the death of his parents when he was just a boy, and the need to understand the grief he felt, had precipitated him onto the Buddhist path.

Because of our wealth, our technology and our habit of avoidance, it is perhaps easier for us than for any other society in history to minimize our first-hand experience of big suffering. We all know about the pain in the world, yet, until it touches us directly, are able to keep it at arm’s length. I do not like to contemplate how easily, with just one little twist of the kaleidoscope, it could be me who is starving in the Sudan, me who is imprisoned, tortured or shot for my beliefs in Turkey or Chile, me who is dispossessed and oppressed because of the colour of my skin in South Africa or Australia. I have never yet had to choose between my physical survival and my self-respect, between being a passive collaborator or an active resister, when I know that for my resistance I will very likely be killed.

Yet I can, if I am honest, sense in myself the potential to be the villain. I can see that it is the same obsession to be comfortable, to accumulate and hoard, that I have which makes multi-national companies turn vast stretches of Africa into farms that only produce cotton which the people cannot eat, and beef which they have to sell. It is the same urge for release and avoidance that I have which makes the subsistence farmer take this payment into town and blow it all on beer, while his wife and children grow hungrier. It is the same wish for power and control that I have which makes governments spend money on arms rather than on small, easily-serviced water pumps for the poor people in the countryside. It is the same short-sightedness that I have which makes people cut down trees for shelter or profit, which loosens the top-soil, which washes away in the next flood, which turns farmland into yet more man-made desert, which makes yet more famine. It is the same need to look good and impress that I have which makes presidents, prime ministers and first secretaries spend millions of dollars on inauguration or commemoration parties and lie and twist and bribe to protect their reputations. I cannot be sure that I would not have manned the gas chambers, nor that I would not have joined the others in hurling rocks at Jesus. What’s more I cannot even be sure that I would have felt reluctant as I behaved barbarically. If I am to follow the Buddhist path, I have to be prepared to seek out in myself just those attitudes that I condemn most vociferously in others.