See kama.
Content/Sidebar/Sidebar
sīla
Gotama’s treatment of sīla (moral practice) confirms the practical nature of his ethical stance. Ethical behavior is a training that prepares the mind by removing distractions to concentration & insight. It works closely with renunciation (nekkhamma), which is a practice for seeing how we are ruled by our primitive, semi-conscious reactions to pleasant & unpleasant sensations, both physical & mental. This way we can free ourselves from distractions created by sense pleasures & fixed ideas—attempts by evolution to steer our behavior. Sīla is the beginning of learning not to be controlled by these low-level reactions, which prepares us to learn how virtually all of our downstream mental activity, including stories made of thoughts, begins at these semi-conscious sources. In the untrained mind, this flow of mental activity becomes dukkha, stress & suffering. Gotama’s approach varies from both moral absolutes (actions called wrong by an authority) & a completely relative approach (actions judged relative to the situation). Certain actions (killing living beings, e.g.) always distract from concentration, insight, & freedom, because humans naturally regret them, even if we tell ourselves we don’t. Ethical guidelines provide a way of acting that shows us what experience feels like when we see clearly the true nature of our experience. Later we can see which actions are wholesome or unwholesome for ourselves, through wisdom.
dukkha • ethics • evolution • habits • renunciation
study
Study in Gotama’s teachings is the complement to practice. Study & practice together form a mutually reinforcing wholesome spiral toward liberation from dukkha—stress & suffering. We learn about Gotama’s understanding of what it really is to be a human being, & how to deal with it, by the mental act of studying. It is training advice, & a map of what we find in our experience as we practice meditation. We need a little of this understanding to start practicing, because in large part his teachings consist of instructions for practice: meditation, & the wholesome conduct that makes meditation more fruitful (sīla). The concentration & mindfulness that develop from this initial practice allow for an increasingly clearer seeing, a better understanding of the matrix of ideas that make up Gotama’s Dhamma. These two energies, study & practice, chase each other in a virtuous cycle: Deeper practice yields deeper insight, which in turn makes intellectual understanding of Dhamma richer, & so on. Each person tends to dwell more on either study or practice, but progress always moves back & forth between them, regardless of how formally one pursues either. For some, study helps resolve skeptical doubt about the truth of Gotama’s teachings (vicikicchā), one of the hindrances (nīvarana) to practice.
suffering & its end
A good touchstone for testing one’s understanding of Gotama’s teaching is a phrase that occurs in the earliest Pāli texts:
“All I teach & all I’ve ever taught is
suffering & the end of suffering.”1
pubbe cāhaṃ bhikkhave etarahi ca
dukkhañceva paññāpemi dukkhassa ca nirodhaṃ
By asking how our understanding of any teaching relates to the nature & ending of dukkha—suffering & stress—we can measure the depth of our success in study & practice. This depth combines both a felt sense & a confidence in describing it in words, especially as it relates to a specific situation. We can also measure our modesty about our success; Gotama advises us to avoid comparing ourselves to others, & to avoid the tendency to either think too much or too little.
terror management
Terror management is a branch of psychology & sociology: fear of death as the primary subconscious motivation.1 We want some meaning that continues after death of the body. We identify with groups who share our beliefs; the bigger the group the stronger its ability to tamp down fear of death. Cultural beliefs (tribes, races, nationalities, religions) are designed to transcend death; we build personal identities on them. Research shows these beliefs are triggered by thoughts, ideas, or events related to death; often we are not consciously aware of this. One part of almost all cultures is some form of the sacred: ideas & feelings that seem certain, overcoming doubt. Beliefs in the power of technology (sci-tech-mat) are the new terror management:2 biological immortality, young-blood therapy, uploading “consciousness” to “the cloud.” Gotama warns against using common terror management ideas, such as metaphysical beliefs, rigid views, & other mental constructions, along with belief in a permanent self, because this leads to clinging to them, which leads to suffering.
anatta • anicca • dukkha • evolution • impermanence • not self
- See Ernest Becker, Denial of Death, & Escape from Evil, for the origins of this line of psychological & sociological thinking. For the role of meaning & self-esteem, see his earlier The Birth & Death of Meaning. For a contemporary, popular summary, see The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life by Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski. ↩
- See John Gray, Straw Dogs, for an eloquent statement of these ideas. ↩
texts
The earliest known texts of Gotama’s teachings are the Pāli Nikāyas, preserved mainly through the Theravāda Buddhist tradition, the only one still actively practiced today (in Sri Lanka, Thailand, & Myanmar, mostly). We have these monastic traditions to thank for knowledge of these texts. Some parallels in Chinese & Sanskrit exist, as Bhikkhu Anālayo & others have explored; these do not seriously contradict the Pāli. Pāli is believed to be close to, if not matching, the languages that Gotama used; it combines several common languages spoken at that time. As the game of telephone (passing a whispered phrase around a circle) illustrates, earlier texts are most likely closest to the teachings Gotama actually gave. They are not pure, in any sense, but they are the best we have. That being said, there are many helpful teachings given by others following in Gotama’s footsteps, for example Nāgārjuna (2nd century C.E. in South India), sometimes known as “the second Buddha,” & Dōgen (13th century C.E. Japan) in the Zen tradition. However, rigid views & other dogma began to masquerade as Gotama’s teachings even in his own day. A fifth-century text, the Visuddhimagga, attributed to Buddhaghosa, for example, is a tricky mixture of helpful synthesis, unhelpful reification, cultural baggage, & nonsense. The earliest texts provide the best tool—along with meditation practice—for separating cultures, later ideas, & misunderstandings that have become mixed with Gotama’s teachings over time.