If asked to summarize Mahayana Buddhism, I would tend to think of the Six Perfections as they describe what you've actually got to do. Effort is the most important as it's impossible to do the others without it but in general they're supposed to be used in harmony and balance. It's useful to concentrate on improving the areas at which you're weakest rather than developing areas you're already good at.
The way generosity works is to transfer our attention and effort from protecting our ego to doing something that will actually help. Often this takes the form
of giving materially to others and the often repeated suggestion is that you
should give away old posessions that you no longer need. But giving can take
many forms and could involve investing time and effort to help others or making
sure your creativity and interests are expressed in a way which benefits others.
Whether or not your efforts are successful this will benefit you because it will
help change your motivation. However to really benefit others most successfully
we need to develop some of the more initial and basic aspects of wisdom. This
simply means that we need to be aware of which action will benefit others the
most. Researching which action will be most effective in benefiting others is
an act of generosity in itself.
In Buddhism there is a list of ten unwholesome actions which it is recommended
that you avoid in order to avoid harming both others through the effects of your
actions and yourself through the negative emotions and motivations which these
actions involve. There is also of course the possibility of negative external
consequences for us as the effects of our actions come back to us. The actions
are:
Actions of mind:
The principle of non-reaction is an important factor in mind training. Most of
the events which seem to cause us to suffer, whether they are external events
or internal thoughts and feelings, do not actually directly cause us to suffer.
We only experience suffering because we react to them or resist them. When we
experience unpleasant thoughts we must realize that they are not inherently
unpleasant and it is the fact that we consider them to be unpleasant that makes
them seem unpleasant. The advice usually given for dealing with mental objects
and events is to neither pull them closer nor push them away, and this is often
good advice in external situations too. When we have a thought which we dislike
it is
important not to try to override it with another thought, as this just feeds the
energy of the thought process which created the unpleasantness in the first
place. Just leave it alone and the energy will dissipate by itself. Everything
changes and we can completely rely on the fact that nothing lasts forever.
This doesn't mean that when an injustice happens we don't do anything about it.
Our action should be whatever is of greatest benefit to all sentient beings.
This may involve doing something about something bad that is happening or
preventing it from happening again. But we must make sure that we are acting
from a calm centre and not out of anger. This means that if we feel
anger in response to an injustice we should let it die down before
deciding what to do.
The calm and joy that comes from patience is amazing, and in some respects
patience is the passive part of the same thing which concentration is the active
part of: the proper use of attention. Patience is the negative part, where we
withdraw attention from our reactivity, and concentration is the positive part,
where we deliberately focus on something helpful.
Many things can get in the way of the practical side of effort, which is
actually carrying out the actions as well as intending to. Not having enough
time is one of them. We can get our priorities wrong. Buddhism has a very
interesting and quite amusing definition of laziness: it means spending too
much time on activities which are not relevant to the path.
Generally the things we try to concentrate on in both meditation and mindfulness
are things in the physical world, the information we recieve from our physical
senses. Feel the wind on your face, the earth beneath your feet, the sound of
someone's voice. As attention is focused on these kinds of things it will
automatically and effortlessly remove itself from many things which seem
harmful. Thoughts and feelings will calm down by themselves. It is important to
focus on the sensual content itself and not its meaning: this is especially true
of words. You will not lose the ability to understand language because of this!
Formal meditation practice means focusing deliberately on one single object for
a set period of time, and the most common object is the sensation of breathing.
The breath meditation which I am familiar with involves focusing on the
sensation of the breath going through the nostrils. There are many
recommendations about the right environment and physical posture for meditation,
with the most significant probably being that you should sit reasonably upright
as this makes you more alert. Although a peaceful environment where you will
not be disturbed is recommended you can actually get away with a much worse
environment if you really have no choice. The important thing is that you keep
trying and don't give up. Usually it is recommended that you start with a short
period of maybe five or ten minutes and gradually build up to periods of up to
half an hour. To do this once a day is great but many meditators do this twice a
day.
One's attention will almost inevitably drift away from the object, although how
much this happens depends enormously on your state of mind. It is important to
let go of any idea of success or failure in meditation; the important thing is
to try. Just because your attention has drifted doesn't mean you are doing it
wrong. One of the most important effects of meditation is that you realize just
how much your mind wanders and you see the current state of your ability to
concentrate. As I said before, observing where your attention and concentration
currently are is a great help towards improving them. When you find your
attention has wandered, gently but firmly bring it back to the object.
Both mindfulness and meditation but particularly meditation will produce small
gaps in the stream of thought. We are so used to our constant stream of thoughts
that we think it is part of who we are. When we start to experience some small
gaps in the stream of thoughts we start to realize actually this is not who we
are. This has a profound effect at releasing us from many forms of thinking
which appear to hurt us. If we think we are our thoughts then we often
subconsciously feel the need to protect them, which is responsible for many of
our reactive drives. This explains why people often feel so hurt by criticism;
the physical self-protection instinct is being applied to something to which it
is utterly inappropriate.
There are stringent warnings in Buddhism about getting too attached to
meditative joy. Joy is not the purpose of meditation; the purpose is
transformation. Nevertheless there is nothing wrong with joy as long as you are
not attached to it.
A central and defining part of Buddhist teaching is the wisdom realizing
emptiness. What does that mean? Unfortunately most descriptions sound pretty
arcane and I don't think mine is going to be much better. The common phrase is
that we need to realize the "absence of inherent existence" but that isn't
going to mean much to the average person. The ideas involved particularly in the
latter stages of learning about emptiness are so far removed from most people's
everyday beliefs that one worries that if one's honest about them they will
just meet with outright rejection. However this distance from our normal beliefs
is precisely why the realization of emptiness has such a profound effect. Our
normal, everyday, seemingly innocent, seemingly rational belief system is what's
causing our suffering and the wisdom realizing emptiness utterly destroys it.
In my thinking it has four main aspects: the incoherence of fixed beliefs,
the way our mind inflicts concepts on our experience, the way the same things
seem different from different viewpoints, and the difference between
appearances and reality.
Sometimes it seems that things just "are the way they are", without the
possibility for change and without there needing to be a reason for it.
On closer
examination, however, life is much more complicated than this.
Trying to reason about why things are the way they are, recognizing that things
were different in the past and will be different in the future, seeing the
causes which made things the way they are, seeing the effects that the
present situation will have in the future; all these suggest otherwise.
This is one aspect of what's meant
by the idea of inherent existence: the idea that things are "inherently" the way they are. Most importantly these beliefs are often plain wrong.
Things may not even be the way we think they are at the moment. I've sometimes felt afraid of the word "inherent" wherever it turns up but it's
important to realize that the word "inherent" is not inherently bad or wrong,
it's just a word which, in this context, is being used to help describe a
common human mistake.
Because language is such a fundamental part of our mind we subconsciously
categorize everything in our experience according to the words which represent
them. This makes objects in our perception seem like separate, static,
unchanging entities and it makes different things represented by the same word
seem alike or even identical. Take for example a prejudice against a
particular type of person. How could you possibly believe that all people
represented by a particular word are the same? But this happens all the time.
This is what I call "inherent nature": the idea that an object is inherently
the way it is. Our idea of the inherent nature of something is closely related
to our idea of the meaning of the word which denotes it. Often we are
walking around in a world of words rather than anything remotely resembling
reality. And because of this it is so important that our words are true and
accurate, that we do not have any false prejudices, that we are prepared
to change beliefs when we are wrong.
The word "emptiness" means that things are "empty" of inherent nature or
inherent existence.
If one travels to different places one often finds that the different attitudes
of the people living in different places mean that they view the same actions or
events in completely different ways. It is obvious that when two people have
different opinions they often view the same act with completely different
judgements. Depending on people's past conditioning they often have completely
different views on the same subjects. Sometimes one is right and the other
wrong but often it's far more complex than that. Their opinions are the result
of causes and conditions that happened in the past, and ultimately right and
wrong are just concepts, sometimes useful, other times not (usually depending
on how much ignorance they are mixed up with).
The crucial point here is that if multiple people see different things when
looking at the same thing, none of them can possibly be right. Some viewpoints
are more helpful than others but that's all. The sensual apparatus of different
animals, for instance, is generally designed by nature specifically to be most
suitable to the animal's particular purpose, and animals with different
sensory apparatus have very different sensual perceptions of the same physical
situations.
So what's actually there?
Clearly our experience is actually happening. The fact that we are actually
experiencing what we experience proves that our experience itself is real.
However we believe that our experience indicates that something beyond our
experience is actually there. This is false.
Whenever we think we see something external to us in the world what we are
actually experiencing is some aspect of our own mind. The only reason we see
similar and comparable things to each other is because we have similar and
comparable minds. However, clearly, although our personal experiences may differ
vastly from one another, we are still together in the same world. The world
we are able to describe and communicate about is called conventional reality
(by me, at least). Conventions are created by minds and communicated through
language. However their ultimate nature is illusory. No matter how many people
agree on an illusion it is still an illusion.
All phenomena are in the nature of emptiness, that is, any ideas we have about
them are made up by our own mind and do not exist in the object itself. This
goes not just for ideas but for sense impressions too. What we see is created
by our eyes and mind. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Of course, to talk about objects or phenomena at all is to reify the
aforementioned issue of the division of the world into separate and distinct
objects. While this remains a useful ability in order to function in the world
in any way, it's useful to take a step back from it so we can see things as a
whole and stop trying to make sense out of everything. The desire to
categorise, control and predict is ultimately a defence against the
ever-changing and mysterious nature of reality. It is impossible for one person
to completely understand the world, and society doesn't usually do a much better
job. However there are still differing levels of accuracy within people's
perceptions and beliefs, and as mentioned earlier in the essay, this makes a
huge difference to people's long-term happiness.
So the phrase "the absence of inherent existence" means that things do not have
the power of existence by themselves. Their existence is not self-caused or
"inherent". Their existence is given to them by the mind, and also by the
complex web of causes and conditions within the world. The separation of the
world into distinct and different objects, as I said above, is also an
illusion which is inflicted upon our perception by our conceptual thinking.
It is all one.
An intellectual understanding of these issues is very helpful indeed, but it's
necessary to apply the ideas to things in our everyday lives to actually gain
the benefits.
Generosity
Generosity is a method to overcome selfishness. Selfishness if left unchecked is an enormous obstacle to the rest of the path. Selfishness leaves us unable to see others' viewpoints. Seeing others' viewpoints is absolutely critical to wisdom. Not just seeing them but acknowledging their worth and significance. That
doesn't mean agreeing with everything they say but we have to at least realize
that just because an opinion is ours doesn't mean it's right. Although learning
from others can help us the important thing here is just to really be aware that
other people can be experiencing different things to us in the same situation.Morality
Morality simply means recognizing that some actions bring good results and some actions bring bad results, and then making a firm commitment to deliberately performing the actions which bring good results and avoiding the actions which bring bad results. Generally actions which bring good results are characterized by
the fact that they benefit everyone and not just yourself. Actions that bring
bad results are those which either ignore others' interests or deliberately harm
them. Of course deliberate harm is much worse but harm done out of sheer
ignorance can still be very bad indeed.
Actions of speech:
Actions of body:
Patience
Patience is the antidote to anger. Anger is considered to be the most
destructive of the negative emotions in Buddhism. Although it may be rarer than
desire, when it happens it is much worse. When we feel the urge to act out a
negative emotion such as anger or desire, simply waiting a while rather than
acting on it immediately can give us enough space for the urges and emotion to
die down, and then we avoid an action which may have been very stupid indeed.
Effort
Effort is the motivation required to pursue the spiritual path. Without this
motivation we will not perform the necessary actions to develop and therefore
nothing will be achieved. There are two motivations described in Buddhism,
one from basic Buddhism and one from Mahayana. I think it is important to use
these two motivations together as they are less effective used by themselves.
The motivation from basic Buddhism is to eliminate one's own suffering. The
motivation from Mahayana is called bodhicitta and means the desire to
develop one's own capabilities to the fullest in order to be able to benefit
others most effectively. If one ignores the basic motivation one is missing out
on the very powerful effects of one's natural desire not to suffer.
Bodhicitta both harnesses our compassion to speed our progress and empowers our compassion to be of greater benefit.
Concentration
Concentration is the deliberate focusing of attention. The main aim is to
develop our ability to control where we put our attention, which has many
benefits. Broadly speaking the practice of concentration falls into two
categories: formal meditation practice and mindfulness in everyday life. An
important factor in concentration is being aware of what our mind is doing,
because only when we are aware of where our attention is can we control it. If
we are not aware then we're usually also unaware of our intention to practice
concentration: we have temporarily forgotten it. Being aware of where our
our attention is so that we can correct our mistakes is called vigilance.
Wisdom
The foundation of Buddhist wisdom is impermanence. Phenomena appear, persist for
a while and then dissipate. This may seem blindingly obvious but we can be very
resistant to change. Once we have formed an idea about how something is, it
becomes part of who we think we are and therefore we feel the need to
protect that idea. Then the situation changes and the idea becomes false.
The idea
continues to be defended despite the fact that it's now wrong and this causes
conflict. This is similar to J.K. Galbraith's idea of the
conventional wisdom.
This essay is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.