Using Buddhism in Todays Modern World - Essay Example

Using Buddhism in Today’s Modern World Many people associate Buddhism with all sorts of things, i.e. incense, bald monks, temples, the figure of Buddha sitting with a benign smile on his face, chanting, vegetarianism, etc. I know this to be the case because these are words and images I get whenever I ask people to free-associate on the word Buddhism. One person even associated Buddhism with liquor because he had just gone the night before to a place called Buddha bar! What all these shows are instances of an average person on the street having all sorts of preconceptions about Buddhism. Even those who have read little about it have all sorts of misconceptions about it, thinking that Buddhism is pessimistic for emphasizing on suffering, or that Buddhism is a religion that regards the Buddha as a god. What I want to do in this paper is to go beyond the rituals and external trappings of Buddhism in order to touch the deeper core of the teachings. This will help me understand how Buddhism could help us cope with life’s struggles in today’s modern world. At the heart of Buddhism is The Four Noble Truths (Hanh 9). This is the very foundation of Buddhist teachings, which differentiate it from other religions. These teachings say that (1) human existence is characterized by suffering, (2) that there is a cause for suffering, (3) that there is a way out of suffering through the elimination of its cause, and (4) that there is a path leading to the cessation of suffering (Hanh 9-11). In most Buddhist texts, it is said that the cause of suffering is trishna or craving (Bercholz and Kohn 64). We suffer because we have too many wants and needs. We own a cell phone but soon grow dissatisfied with it as soon as a new model comes along; we own a car but soon get dissatisfied with it because we desire a better, faster or more luxurious model; we have a perfectly good relationship with someone but then look for someone else because we want something new and more exciting. All these desires inevitably lead to suffering because we cannot possibly fulfill them all. In the end, we get utterly frustrated. Actually, if we think about it hard enough, there are many causes of suffering, since there are many types of suffering. The suffering that results from viral infection that makes you sick is not due to desire but to the presence of a virus that has infected you. Some other forms of suffering that do not have desire as their root cause would be a headache, a toothache, a broken limb, and various other physical pains. These forms of suffering, which are all physical, are to be distinguished from other forms of suffering which are mental. Examples of mental suffering would be depression, worry, jealousy, regret, anxiety, etc. Between the two general forms of suffering, it is the mental type of suffering that the Buddhism tries to address because they believe that this is the more serious type of suffering. When you are sick with a fever, you can make yourself feel better by changing your attitude about your sickness to a rather positive light. However, if you are suffering from some sort of mental anguish, it does not quite help if you work on the body. In fact, people do not commit suicide because of a toothache, but there are those who would commit suicide because of a heartache. The Role of The Mind What we need to understand at this point is that the mind plays a very big role in human suffering. We need to understand this very clearly if we want to get a glimpse of the heart of Buddhist teachings. Here, we emphasize on the importance of one’s attitude or state of mind with regards to the experience of happiness and suffering (Smith 245). If we think about it close enough, we should also come to the conclusion that our state of mind also affects other people’s happiness or suffering. Here is an example to illustrate this point. Suppose you have just received word that the backpack which you lost in school was finally found with everything intact. Feeling relieved, you decide to walk leisurely to school, humming one of your favorite tunes. You pick up the papers along the way and look at the winning number for the most recent lotto draw and realize that you have won a sweet ten million dollars! You reach for your cellphone to call your best friend about the good news only to find out that you have an unread message from your crush in school, asking you out on a date! Now, feeling really high, someone accidentally steps on your foot and spills some soda on your pants. How would you react? You probably wouldn’t be bothered and brush it off as an accident. Now imagine that you just found out that you failed two major subjects, your lover has dumped you for your best friend, and you have lost your backpack with important papers inside. To top it all off, your computer just crashed, so you cannot retrieve the files where you saved your term papers and the deadline is at 5pm today. As you walk to school, someone steps on your toes and spills soda on your pants. How would you react this time? You probably would say something really nasty about that person, and you might even punch that person – all because of the state of mind you were in while the incident happened. If you really think about it, you might conclude that happy persons do not need to be told to be good because they will be naturally forgiving, kind, and helpful. It is easier to be kind, firgiving and helpful if youre happy, and more difficult to be kind helpful and forgiving if you are miserable. For this reason, Buddhists emphasize the need to develop states of mind which contribute to the feeling of happiness. A happy person needs no commandments. The Buddhist Solution to the Problem of Suffering We live in a very complex world with problems left and right. But that doesn’t mean that we should suffer alongside with it. The solution is simple: in order to live a better life, in order to be happier and minimize suffering, what we need is mental discipline (Smith 121). This is very important in Buddhism. This is what I want to stress in this paper: that in order to touch the core of the Buddhist teachings, we must understand that Buddhism is really about training the mind. So from now on, I hope that when people hear the word Buddhism, they associate it with mental training. But what is mental training and how is this approached by the Buddhists? How can this help us cope with problems in today’s modern world? The answer is simple: first we must examine the mind and its contents. The Buddhists tell us that if we look closely at the human mind, we will discover that it is like a vast field with many seeds. Given the right conditions, some seeds will grow and bear fruit. These seeds are the thoughts and emotions we are each capable of. If we nurture seeds of worry and anger, then these seeds will grow and bear fruit. If we nurture seeds of tranquility and compassion, then these are the seeds which will grow. We all know that we have seeds of anger because when someone triggers it, by insulting us, the anger comes out. We also have, apart from seeds of anger, the seeds of hatred, fear, revenge, spite, jealousy, greed, and a host of others which make us suffer. However, we also have seeds of kindness, caring, forgiveness, joy, serenity and many others which contribute in helping us cope with life’s struggles. We just have to cultivate the positive seeds and get rid of the ones that cause suffering. Here, Buddhism offers us a mental law to invoke when needed: “if you have two thoughts going in opposite directions, you cannot experience them at the same time (Harrington and Zajonc 74). Conclusion: The Way Towards Zen Buddhism’s most important feature is therefore its emphasis on the training of the mind. This means that one must take the time to cultivate positive states of mind because these are what ultimately lead to the end of suffering, both for oneself and for others. There is a branch of Buddhism that I believe is worth mentioning, i.e. Zen. Zen is to point and see directly beyond descriptions or without the aid of words, for words put a screen between us and the experience itself. Hence, there is no attempt to explain by means of analysis or rational thinking. Zen Buddhism nullifies logic and its rules. It embraces contradictions, which logic’s rules reject. Here, it is possible to grasp both contradictions but not on the intellectual level but rather, on the level of pure experience or meditation, which requires a different mode of seeing, a different approach, a major shift in paradigm. For, “to keep both perspectives alive in a single consciousness, is to understand the true depths of the conscious self… We too are but temporary perchings in the cosmic flight, the cosmic flow of life” (Carter 13). Thus, our world of daily affairs, is a world available for us to experience, not just to think about or analyze. For the process is never final. Realizations are never complete. Yet regardless of this, the challenge to see a full picture of reality, with all its forms and manifestations, while simultaneously seeing that at the base of it all is nothing, remains. Our world must therefore be viewed in all its contradictions. But “seeing” cannot be accomplished through reason because of its limited nature. This is where meditation becomes necessary. For despite all the struggles in life, in meditation, one experiences and sees things as they are, and not think that things are. For the latter, the power of projected thoughts remain. The problem here is, people wait for contradictions and struggles to be resolved, which is a never-ending process. For Zen Buddhism, “the unresolved contradiction remains a fact” (Carter 70). Works Cited Bercholz, Samuel and Sherab Chodzin Kohn. Entering the Stream: An Introduction to the Buddha and His Teachings. London: Random House, 1994. Print. Carter, Robert Edgar. The Nothingness beyond God. New York: Paragon House, 1997. Print. Harrington, Anne and Arthur Zajonc. The Dalai Lama at MIT. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Print. Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Print. Kohn, Sherab Chozdin. “The life of the Buddha.” In Entering the stream: An introduction to the Buddha and his teachings. London: Random House, 1994. Print. Smith, Jean. Radiant mind: Essential Buddhist Teachings and Texts. New York: Riverhead Books, 1999. Print. Read More