Meditative Man – A Shah Charity Endeavour

Fourth Noble Truth

We have been discussing the four noble truths for the last couple of weeks. The four noble truths are:

You should know suffering
You should abandon origins
You should attain cessation
You should practice the path

The first noble truth—we should know suffering, we discussed where the suffering comes from and we realized that all of our suffering comes from within us. We let outside problem disturb out inner peace. In the second noble truth, we realized that all suffering origin from our delusions—our anger, attachment, hatred and so forth. And that root of all of our delusions is self grasping ignorance. This strong sense of “me”, this excessive self concern about our own well being. In the third noble truth, we talked about we should strive to attain cessation from our suffering. In the longer term it means cessation from this cycle of samsara—liberation. In our day to day life, it means cessation from cravings and practicing contentment.

Today, we will get into the last part of this—the fourth noble truth. It says we should practice the path. By practicing spirituality, living ethically, and developing wisdom, we can attain enlightenment. Buddha taught the eight fold path so that we can liberate ourselves from suffering and achieve enlightenment. The eight fold path contains:

Right Understanding
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

Let’s get into it.

Right Understanding: This means that we understand the four noble truths. Understanding that as long as we are in Samsara, we are suffering. We may be temporarily detached from suffering every now and then but due to our karmic activity, eventually we end up suffering. And that all of our suffering originates due to our delusions. We all have seeds of delusions. And when they ripen, it leads to suffering. Root of all of our delusions is self grasping ignorance. And we must work towards eliminating our self grasping ignorance. We should understand that we need to strive to attain liberation that is the only way we can be permanently free from suffering. And lastly, that there is a way forward. If we follow the spiritual path, we will be able to attain liberation and even enlightenment.

Right Intention: Once we contemplate that we have this enormous opportunity with our human life and that death can be upon us at any time, and that nothing lasts forever, and that our suffering is a result of our own karma; we can make resolve to renounce harmful actions, to develop goodwill and compassion toward all beings, and to cultivate non-attachment or non-harming.

Right Speech: We discussed this during our karma class. Lying, Harmful speech, divisive speech, and idle chatter are the four types of speech negative karma. Lying includes omission of truth as well. You all know the famous story of Ashwathama the elephant vs the guru that we hear in the epic Mahabharat. Harmful speech is any speech action that hurts someone else. That is why before we say anything, we should ask, is it true, is it kind, is it necessary; and not speak if answer to any of these questions is no. Divisive speech is when our action create divisions and quarrels amongst a group of people. There is a lot of that going around in our society nowadays. Idle chatter is when we talk non sense all day instead of practicing spirituality.

Right Action: This is similar to the Right Speech but for our physical actions. Meaning we avoid the three bodily negative karma. Killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct. Most people think I have not killed a human being so I am fine but that is not exactly true. If we kill a mosquito with a vengeance that has as much or higher negative karma attached as killing a human being. So we should be mindful of our actions. Stealing means anything that is not freely given to us. So if we stole intellectual property from our workplace, that is stealing. Fudging our taxes is also stealing. Sexual misconduct is having a sexual relationship with anyone other than our partner if we are attached. If we are not attached, having a relationship with someone who is attached is sexual misconduct. In general, any sexual conduct without consent is also sexual misconduct.

Right Livelihood: If you are monk, the right livelihood means living from donations from others and never taking more than one needs. For the rest of us, it means to have ethical livelihood. According to Laxmi Tantra, we should avoid livelihood by the means of:

Living off other people (begging, for example)
Loan sharking
Bribery
Living by a profession or industry that directly or indirectly causes suffering to other beings, such as the meat and leather industries, munitions industries, or brewing and selling alcohol or drugs.
Superintending mines and factories is also forbidden because it can lead to corruption, harshness, and exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. It also leads to the depredation of the environment through deforestation and pollution, which the Shastras consider sinful activities.

Right Effort: Right Effort means we consistently try to develop good qualities, practice virtuous karma, avoid negative krama, maintain positive states of mind and avoid negative states of mind. Because all the suffering comes from our negative actions and all happiness comes from our positive karma. So it is very important to make an effort to practice virtuous karma.

Right Mindfulness: As you all know, mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment. We observe our body, our feelings, our thoughts, our emotions, with non judgmental awareness. We abandon attachment and aversion. All it means is that we are aware of what we are doing. No auto pilot. No instinctive reaction. We respond instead of reacting. To practice this, we ask ourselves, may be every hour, what am I doing at this moment? What is the world around me look like at this moment?

Right Concentration: We try to develop this every week. We try and single pointedly focus on the object of our meditation. With enough practice we can develop a stable mind by avoiding harmful thoughts and actions. When our mind is focused, we can develop tranquil abiding that can lead to liberation.

Third Noble Truth

We have been discussing the four noble truths for the last couple of weeks. The four noble truths are:

You should know suffering
You should abandon origins
You should attain cessation
You should practice the path

So today, let’s get into the third noble truth; we should attain cessation. What does that mean? Well, last week, during our Q&A session, a question came up about the meaning of our life. And I mentioned that the meaning of the life is to attain liberation, be free from this endless cycle of birth, life, and death. When Buddha says we should attain cessation, that is exactly what he means. We should attain cessation from the cycle of samsara.

The only way to attain permanent cessation from suffering is to attain the cessation from samsara. The cessation also refers to elimination of emotions that lead to suffering. If you think about it, elimination of craving is what we need to eliminate our day to day suffering.

We see something and we find is attractive. A person or money or something. We start thinking about it. Start paying inappropriate attention towards it’s good or bad qualities. And boom, we have to have it. That’s the craving. We will do whatever it takes to get that object. We will make a plan. Buy her flowers, woo her, steal money, whatever. Let’s take an example. We are taking a stroll on a beautiful afternoon, and we see someone eating a donut. And we go, ahhh donut!! It appears very attractive. And that’s like an object of attachment. The jelly donut. And it’s a yeah, it seems desirable. But if we don’t pay any attention. Then it’s not an object of delusion. If, on the other hand, we hone in on it. And just fantasize about it. It quickly becomes an object of attachment such that I have to have that donut right now. Or I won’t be happy. I need it. So donuts. And every other object of attachment requires honing in on what seems to be good about it and agreeable on thinking just about them. So the delusion does not occur until we really develop this wish to have it. You know, like a need or a grasping like I got to have this in order to be happy. It’s because we’ve honed in on it with an appropriate attention. So we’ve got the seed of the delusion. The object is the nice looking donut. But the inappropriate attention is when we actually develop the delusion.

Antidote to craving is contentment. It comes down to How Much Is Enough doesn’t it? Most of us are doing better than we thought we would. And yet, we want a bit more. More money, more fame, more travel, more pizza, and whatnot. We must realize, it is a moving target. I have talked about this before, about my experience in grad school. I came from India for grad school and I was paying the tuition from my pocket (well, my Dad’s pocket)! As a foreign student, the fees are very high so every foreign grad student wants to get a research assistantship so that the University will waive your tuition and give you a small stipend. After a couple of months, I got the position. They waived my tuition and gave me a $900 per month stipend. I was on top of my world! I was driving a new car, living the life if you will—all in $900. Today, I cannot live in $900 a month. What happened? As my income grew, my needs kept growing with it. This is what we need to realize: there is never enough unless you are content with yourself. The way to get to this realization is to acknowledge, “I have everything that I need at this moment.”

Let me tell you another story. There was this wall street hot shot. He went on a vacation to a small Mexican fishing village. He notices that fishermen go out every morning and return with fish by early afternoon. They cook the fish and then have beer and dance the night away. This is their daily routine. The Wall Street executive sits down with the chief fisherman and says, “You know I can make you big.”

“How so?”

“We can get you a loan to get a couple of boats. Then you can catch more fish and sell it to the town next door.”

“What next?”

“Well then we buy some more boats and sell the fish to the city.”

“Then what?”

“Then we buy a fleet of 100+ boats and make you the biggest fishing operation in Mexico.”

“Then what?”

“Then we do an IPO and you cash out and retire. You will easily be a multi-millionaire.”

“What’s next?”

“Then you can retire in a small town and wake up when you want, go to sea, catch some fish, have a beer, and party the night away.”

“I am already doing it!”

You see, sometimes what we are chasing is right in front of us. With just a little bit of contentment for what we already have, we can get what we want without chasing it.

Second Noble Truth – What we should abandon

Last week we started to talk about the four noble truths. We discussed the first noble truth. We should know suffering. We discussed how by focusing on our inner peace, we can get rid of our suffering. Today, we will talk about the second noble truth. What we should abandon. We should abandon origins. What does that mean. It means we should abandon where suffering originates. If we want to abandon suffering, it is natural that we need to abandon its origin. All suffering origin from delusions.

Right now, we have a strong attachment to the fulfillment of our own wishes. We really like things to go our way. Attachment is a fundamentally selfish mind. It’s about what I can get, me, my wishes, my desires, my wants, my needs, me, me, me. Every delusion is about me and how important I am and my needs and wishes. Me is front and center of every delusion, pervades every delusion, the sense of self.

Root of all delusions is self-grasping ignorance. It pervades all other delusions. Our attachment, our hatred, our jealousy, our anger, and all other delusions arise from our self grasping ignorance.

Now within that attachment is that state of mind that wants to be happy, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. We always want to be happy, even Buddhas want to be happy. We want happiness to come from outside of ourselves, that’s another element of, thinking that happiness comes from outside. Not understanding that happiness comes from peaceful minds, virtuous minds, positive minds, not understanding that happiness comes from love or compassion or wisdom, but thinking that happiness comes from donuts or relationships or mountains or whatever it is, thinking that happiness comes from outside and working hard to try and get it. And also think that happiness comes from the fulfillment of our wishes, everything going our way, everything we want to happen, happens. Whereas happiness, actual happiness is a pleasant feeling, a mental feeling, it’s part of our mind. And the causes are also within our mind, real causes of happiness, or within our mind, not outside our mind. So if our mind is peaceful, then we’re happy regardless of what’s going on outside us.

So self-grasping, and the reason we have all our delusions is because we have a strong sense of self at the moment. We think, me, me, me, I, I, I, self, and we think there’s kind of like a self within our body and mind controlling everything.

I’m making everything happen.
I’m the one who has all the desires.
I’m the one who gets annoyed.
I’m the one who gets happy.
I’m the one who does this.
I’m the one who goes there.
Me, me, me.

I want you to go back and look at your life. Do this experiment in your spare time when you have half an hour this week. Look at all of your suffering (most of us remember when we had mental suffering in our lives at least the major ones). And see the real cause of that suffering. Now, here we cannot be superficial. We have to dig really deep. Once you dig deep, you will realize that all of that suffering came from a strong sense of I. A desire to make ourselves happy often times above all cost and at anyone else’s expense. You will also notice that the stronger the sense of I, the stronger the suffering.

Our self grasping is like a monster that lives within us and we must eliminate it, we must destroy it because that is the source of all of our suffering.

Let me tell you an interesting story. A few years ago, when I was getting a massage, my massage therapist asked me how my day was going. I casually mentioned I was dealing with some not-so-competent insurance people. Out of nowhere she said, “Do you think you are smarter than everyone else?” I said, “Most days I have this Smartest Person in The Room Syndrome.” What she said next was very profound. She said, “The universe gives you what you want. You want to be the smartest person, so it sends you people who are not as up to speed!” I thought it was a unique way to look at the world. But in essence, it was supremacy that was bringing my frustration. In the book How to Transform Your Life, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (2017) put it wonderfully: “The moment we let go of our obsessive concern for our own welfare, our mind naturally relaxes and becomes lighter.” As you can see, it is the importance we put on ourselves that is the root of most mental disturbance.

Self-grasping ignorance also causes us to experience delusions. It is just a fancy way of saying we grasp at the self and its inherent existence. Self-grasping ignorance is also known as separation. We have created this boundary around us separating ourselves from other living beings. This is similar to thinking, my cold is worse than yours because it is happening to me! If we erase the boundaries around us, the world will be a much better place. How so? Let’s look at it. We strongly identify with the self and grasp it so tightly, believing that nothing is more important. If my boundary only includes myself then I focus on my own happiness over all else. If my boundary includes my family, then all of a sudden I am willing to make little sacrifices for the greater good of my family. Most people stop there, but if we all begin to erase boundaries between ourselves and our communities, we will all try our best to make sure everyone in our community is better off.

In other words, if we begin to identify a little less with the self and start erasing boundaries around us to include more living beings, we will begin to notice that our delusions decrease. Similarly, if we reduce our self-cherishing, then we will reduce our delusions.

During a live meditation session someone asked, “If we don’t focus on our self-cherishing, will there be any fun left in life?” The answer is that you can enjoy what life has to offer without chasing things. For example, there is joy in helping others. There are people suffering from hunger, illness, and poverty. If you choose your cause and begin to make a difference, you will not only enjoy it, but also make your life more meaningful.

First Noble Truth: We Should Know Suffering

Let’s talk about something I am sure you have heard before, the four noble truths. In one of his first teachings Buddha talked about four noble truths. Essentially, he talked about how we can understand the true nature of suffering and how to abandon its causes. So here are the four truths:

You should know suffering
You should abandon origins
You should attain cessations
You should practice the path

We are suffering due to different reasons in our daily life. We have talked about this before. How many of us can say that we are free from our delusions all day long? No anger, no attachment, no jealousy, no hatred, and so forth. Not very many. And when we are under the influence of our delusions, it disturbs our inner peace. That is suffering. There is a way to eliminate our suffering. In order to eliminate our suffering, we must first understand where it comes from. Through training our mind, we can learn how to fully eliminate all of our suffering and its causes, and discover lasting inner peace and happiness.

Following Dharma is the supreme protection from suffering. It is the actual method to solve our human problems. Let’s take our own example. Every week, we meet and meditate. In our meditation, hopefully, you find some peace. A small refuge from your daily problems. Your mind does not wander about your problems. It is just peaceful. I hope you all are finding that no matter how small period of time that may be. That shows that it is possible to get rid of our delusions. Find the inner peace and happiness. It is possible to let go of our delusions. That tells us that our delusions are not intrinsic part of our mind. They are transitory. They are like the mud that dirties the water but doesn’t affect its pure nature. We have talked about this before. Our mind is like this golden nugget and our delusions are the dirt around that nugget. Our mind is not a dirty rock. Just like we can wash away the dirt and see the purity of the golden nugget, we can remove our delusions and see the pure nature of our mind. So that gives us two insights. One we can let go of our delusions. And two, our mind is naturally peaceful. That means we are naturally a peaceful person. We can handle all of our difficulties and remove all of our delusions. And it is equally important to note that everyone has a pure potential. When they get upset at us, it is not them, it is their delusions. If we keep that in mind, we will not retaliate. We will not focus on their delusions. We can wish them the peace because we know it is possible based on our own experience.

So coming back to why do we suffer. We suffer needlessly because we identify so strongly with our delusions and we don’t realize we have this extraordinary potential for joy and freedom and we don’t cultivate it. We don’t grom because we don’t even know its there. So that is a tragedy to go through life suffering based on not knowing what we are capable of.

We have talked about this before. Where do our problems come from. They are outside of our mind. Let’s say we are going to temple to find peace. Someone takes the parking spot we have our eye on. All of a sudden we are upset. The whole point of the trip is to find peace and we are upset because of a parking spot. Let’s say our car breaks down. We say I have a problem. In reality it is the car’s problem. You do what needs to be done to get it fixed but why are we letting it disturb our inner peace. It is an outside problem, that we are making it our own problem. If we develop understanding of difference between inner and outer problems, then it helps us how we can apply these Dharma to oppose the painful feelings and suffering that surface in our mind. We can overcome our suffering just by understanding that most of our problems are outer problems and have no reason to disturb our inner peace.

So coming back to the first noble truth, we should know suffering. Especially, the suffering of future lives. Those of us who believe in life after death, we should know that what life form we take in our next life depends upon karma that ripens at the time of our death. If negative karma ripens at the time of our death, we will end up taking a lower rebirth. A lower rebirth is a birth less than a human being. That meant, we can end up in the animal realm, or the hell realm, and so forth. Now, if we think about kind of suffering that will come to us in a lower realm, it is unimaginable. An animal is always in a state of anxiety for example. There are seven kinds of sufferings. Birth, aging, sickness, and death are the four main types. Then there is suffering from separating from things we like. We experience this suffering routinely in our life. We lost money, or car had an accident and so forth. Then there is suffering from getting things we don’t like. Getting sick for example, or getting a property tax bill 25% higher than the last year! The last type of suffering is suffering from not being able to satisfy our desire. Everyone of us suffers from this last one.

I would like you to do an experiment. For the next week, spend 10 minutes every day on these last three types of suffering and see what you encounter. Suffering from separation from things we like, getting what we don’t want and not getting our desire fulfilled. You will surprised how many of your mental disturbances arise due to these three sufferings.

Impediment to Meditation Practice

Every week we meet and meditate. Some days are better than others. Some of us are able to concentrate more than others but we all need to improve our meditative concentration. Today, I thought we discuss what gets in the way of our concentration.

There are five things that usually get in the way of perfect concentration. The first impediment is laziness. This doesn’t mean we don’t want to meditate but more like we are not fully committed. Often because we are not sure we are any good at it or we will be able to do it. Sometimes we are able to concentrate but only for a short period of time. After a while, we just give up or call it good if you will. When this happens, two things are important, faith and effort. We have to have faith in our practice and confidence that we will be able to concentrate. Without faith if we are not sure if it will work, we tend not to put all of our effort into it. So they kind of go hand in hand. And during meditation, if we lose concentration, we need to apply effort to bring our concentration back.

The second impediment is Mental Excitement. This is a fancy word for distraction. We often get distracted during our meditation. We start thinking about something benign, it starts out small in a corner of our mind. But then we give it a fuel and dwell on it and next thing we know we are in a totally different world. If a thought arises, we simply acknowledge it and don’t chase it, don’t give it any time of day, and it dies down just like waves die down in the ocean. Usually distracting thoughts arise because we are holding the object of meditation too tight so we need to ask ourselves am I holding the object of meditation too tight? What does it mean to say we are holding it too tight? It means we are focused such that our head hurts😊 I want to concentrate, I must concentrate, and pretty soon we are concentrating about a football game! The way to avoid this is by mindfulness. We need to be mindful during our meditation of any distracting thoughts and then come back to our object of meditation.

Mental sinking is the third impediment to our meditation. It is when we are not holding the object of concentration tight enough. We are meditating but not with concentration. That brings dullness to our mind. Dullness brings sleepiness or grogginess. Essentially, it is diminished mental energy. When we don’t have mental energy, we will not be able to focus on the object of meditation. Way to counter this is by alertness. If we stay alert, we will not become dull. This way, we can make sure that we have energy to stay focused on our object of meditation.

The next impediment to our meditation is too much application. What does that mean? Well, say we are trying to meditate on the clear sky nature of our mind. But if we keep applying the logic all the time that mind is clear and the thoughts are clouds in the mind. If we keep repeating this, we will never be able to concentrate on the empty sky nature of the mind. If this happens, we need to stop applying the logic and concentrate on the object of our meditation.

And the final impediment is not enough application. This is when we skip the analytical meditation and jump right into the placement meditation. For a novice meditator, this could be difficult because they have not brought themselves to the logical place where the object of placement makes sense. So when they try to concentrate it will not last more than a few seconds. In this case, we need to make sure that we complete the analytical meditation before going into the placement meditation.

Also real quick, I am not sure we covered this before or not. But an analytical meditation is when we logically get to conclusion of object of placement. For example, my very subtle mind is like the deep ocean away from waviness. My thoughts are like waves on the ocean. Just like waves die down, thoughts come and they go away. My very subtle mind is still like deep ocean. We contemplate this for a few cycles until we have a generic image of stillness of our root mind. We then hold that stillness single pointedly. That is our placement meditation.