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Sakya Choekhor Lhunpo - The Melbourne Sakya Centre Representing the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in Melbourne  |
Truth According To Buddhism
by Diana Cousens Talk given at Multi-Faith Values Circle For World Peace Buddhists use the word 'truth' to describe quite different structures and systems. The word 'truth' is a useful term, but to an outsider, it may be confusing to hear that we have both Two Truths and Four Noble Truths. However, these refer to quite different things. It is helpful to bear in mind that Buddhists are great systematisers. We like to summarise religious doctrine by enumeration. Thus we have Six Perfections, which are things like generosity, patience and meditation; Three Poisons, which are greed, hate and ignorance and so on. So don't be surprised that there are two sets of differently numbered truths. The Two Truths describe reality as it is and as it is experienced and I will explain that in a little more detail below. This description originates with the great Indian masters, such as Nagarjuna and Candrakirti, who came after the historical Buddha and established the Mahayana tradition. The Four Noble Truths, on the other hand, were taught by the historical Buddha himself who lived five hundred years before the time of Christ. These four truths are the basis of Buddhist doctrine and are concerned with understanding the world and how we can progress on the path to enlightenment. The Four Noble Truths The First Noble Truth is commonly translated as the Truth of Suffering. Buddhism is frequently characterised as having a pessimistic view of the world because it talks a lot about suffering. As a term, 'suffering' sounds like a blunt instrument in English. Generally we think about suffering as something really extreme, like illness or war. However, the Buddhist use of the term actually refers to something more subtle. A better term than suffering in English might be unsatisfactoriness. What the Buddha was trying to convey with the First Noble Truth was a sense that the phenomenal world will never be a perfect source of satisfaction. All of us know many people who deeply believe that if they had some thing or other it may be a car, a boat or a house or something else that they would be happy. This is a normal state of mind. However, the Buddhist point of view is that it does not matter what you have, as long as we remain unenlightened we will experience unsatisfactoriness and pain. This is a universal human condition. You might ask, what do Buddhists mean by unsatisfactoriness, well, yes, there are Three Kinds. The first is the obvious one, real pain such as experienced through illness and war. The second kind is of change. Things, like a new car, start out being very satisfying and end up becoming unsatisfactory. Things are not stable. The car breaks down you can't afford to repair it. The point about this is that there is no intrinsic pleasure in the car, if there was, the pleasure would be unchangeable. The third kind of unsatisfactoriness has a very complex name, 'pervasive compositional suffering'. It is the potentiality for unsatisfactoriness. These three kinds constitute the First Noble Truth. The Second Noble Truth is that suffering has causes. Here the Buddhist emphasis is on the Three Poisons a term which can also be translated as the Three Afflictive Emotions greed, hate and ignorance. It is a very important point that the source of suffering is something within our minds it comes from our way of relating to the world. Another source of suffering is our own accumulation of what we Buddhists call karma and I will explain this because it is a term that is often misunderstood. Karma is like the sticky tracks left by a snail moving across a rock. A more evocative term than karma might be 'energy imprints'. It is believed that every action creates a quality of energy that has some momentum. Every action leaves a trace. That momentum or that trace the tracks of the snail is called karma. The sources of karma that produce suffering are the afflictive emotions greed, hate and ignorance. If the question arises, 'Can we stop these afflictive emotions?', then we are talking about the Third Noble Truth, the Truth of Cessation. The cessation of suffering is what we call enlightenment. This is the experience the Buddha achieved sitting under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya. It is a state without greed, hate and ignorance. The Fourth Noble Truth is the Truth of the Path to the Cessation of Suffering, the various methods by which to achieve enlightenment. In Buddhism there is a special emphasis on methods of meditation, particularly building concentration and states of mind of compassion and love. But other methods include the Six Perfections. The Six Perfections refer to developing patience, wisdom, meditation, generosity, living ethically and having enthusiasm for the practice. The path is, however, always an individual one. Many methods are available, much advice can be given, but the way that individuals follow the path depends on their own abilities and personalities. For some people, a lot of meditation is very important, for other people there may be an emphasis on study or something else. Buddhism is two and a half thousand years old and each country has adapted it to its own culture and needs so the different styles and methods are countless. It is important to understand that if we talk about True Paths is does not mean that there is only one way. That is a very brief summary of the Four Noble Truths and much more detailed explanations can be given, but I think that's probably sufficient for this meeting. The Two Truths The second set of truths, the Two Truths, describe reality as it is according to Buddhism. As I mentioned earlier, these were fully expounded by the great Nagarjuna who is sometimes referred to as the Second Buddha. He lived in about the second century CE in Central India and established the books known as The Perfection of Wisdom. Buddhism developed two main streams over time, the Theravada and the Mahayana. The Mahayana were less reliant on Buddhist texts that could be dated to the time of the historical Buddha and developed new texts and systems that were compatible with the old, but which further developed the doctrines. A huge body of sacred literature was built up which includes commentaries. A famous commentator on Nagarjuna was Chandrakirti, another Indian philosopher, who lived in the seventh century, CE. The first truth is what we call conventional truth. The second is ultimate truth. Conventional truth is everything that we experience, our feelings and emotions, the world we live in, everything where there is an experience, an experiencer and an act of experiencing. There is an old Tibetan saying that, 'Whatever the cow herd says, I agree', regarding conventional truth. The sky is blue, the grass is green, we're not going to argue about that. Ultimate truth is very hard to explain. The basic idea is that it is not something you can find. You can't point to the essence of anything ourselves or phenomena and say this is the ultimate truth of myself, or the ultimate truth of the table. If you really look very hard you will find that things exist in dependence upon causes and conditions. The table depends on parts, legs, nails, varnish. It is a table to us but to a insect living within the wood it is a house. It was once part of a tree and it may become firewood in the future. Its nature is not stable. Similarly Buddhists do not believe that if you look very hard at yourself you will find a soul or a permanent spirit. You will find a body, consciousness, memories, imprints of previous actions, and a sense of self, but no absolute you. The you that you are exists in dependence upon all of these parts, and time - past, present and future - you are always changing. However, in general we believe very strongly that we are permanent, real, solid, independent of causes and conditions and so on. If we look very hard at the table, or very hard at ourselves, in a deeply contemplative way, and really profoundly search for that which is ourselves, or that which is really phenomena as we experience it, we will find that everything exists in dependence upon everything else. We will not find an essence. For Buddhists, this not finding of an essence is the ultimate truth. We call this 'not finding' emptiness. Emptiness is not a thing, it is the understanding of the interdependent nature of the way things exist. Some people think that Buddhists are saying that things don't exist by using words like 'emptiness' but this is a misinterpretation. What we are saying is that they exist in dependence upon everything else. Our normal perception is of things being solid and real but we are failing to see the connectedness of everything, the way things change over time, and the impact of our perception on what we perceive. Understanding emptiness is said to bring about a radical shift in the way we see the world. It is enlightenment. |
(Updated on Tuesday, 10 November, 2009 5:08 PM)
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