The Way to End Suffering (Videos)

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
 The  second  is to  look  things in  the  face,
and know  them for what  they really  are.”
Marcus Aurelius

 The Looking Glass

We get defensive and this is what is called resistance. But when we see ourselves as we really are, we run from the truth and seek to avoid confronting what we fear most, ourselves. Instead we seek to Razzle Dazzle those around us with our personality that experience has shown may ease us through the transitory experience of social interaction with others. But in self inquiry we face the real, we face ourselves and in so doing we face our fears.

There are three things that can happen when we look into the personal mirror of our interior realization of what we really are. We can look in that mirror and convince ourselves that it’s really not that bad, and then surround ourselves with those who will act as our advocate and attempt to Razzle Dazzel those around us with a wink and a smile.

Looking as modest as we can, we SAY NOTHING and hide the truth within us. We bury it like so many bones in a closet.

But the shadow self assures you that everything,

“the whole world is just a three ring circus and all that’s needed is to Razzle Dazzle em!”

“How can they see with sequins in their eyes!”

“What does it matter if you are in fact just disgusting inside, just razzle dazzle em’ and they’ll never catch wise.”

So when you’re in trouble, just go into your dance of personality that acts as our advocate to ease the pain of dealing with others. Wow, that’s a scary thought!

“What if I don’t fool them, what if they see right through me?”

 Ever meet these people, always laughing and smiling taking the offensive in the engagement of others to obscufiate and hide the fears inside as they come across as about authentic as a $3 bill?

Of course the other way of dealing with ourselves when engaged in social situations or relationships is to disengage and hide from ourselves and the world. We can choose to become invisible, the wallflower in the dance of life who is afraid to confront not only themselves, but others. Fear grabs hold and they know that they’ll never fool anyone with a made up personality, to put on the mask of the hypocrite and walk through life in a lie. It’s easier for them to just keep to themselves and live with in fear and loneliness. They in effect become the Cellophane to the world.

Of course the third and hardest way to deal with our true nature is to confront our fears head on and become the warrior of our own personal journey and deal with our Shadow World as a bushido warrior would and follow our bliss.

This idea of shadow self and fighting off your demons is what got Bruce Lee to train with his master Sifu Yip Man to be able to engage and conquer the demons that his father could not fight. It was his father who realized he had lost his own battle and was committed to having his son equipped mind, body and soul to take on those demons that had become generational from father to son. You can watch this battle of his demon throughout his life in the move of his life called, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

 Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

Here you can watch and see that it was when he realized he was about to pass these demons on to his own son, that he fought his inner demon and won through the power of his spirit.

 Bruce Lee Fighting his Demon

“As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great
creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than
faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence,
greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all
these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with
this dominating force which I hold in my hand.”
Bruce Lee

 Luke Skywalker learning to confront his
fears with Yoda on the planet Dagobah

We see this as a main theme in the movie Star Wars when Luke Skywalker goes to the planet Dagobah and complete his training under Yoda. Once there he is told to go into the cave and face his fears, which of course was Darth Vadar, the man in black, only to find that it was himself he was fighting.

To truly liberate yourself from your SELF one can Engage in smrti (sati) or mindfulness. Sati is developing a full consciousness of all about you and within you. This is the kind of meditation that Buddha himself engaged in under the bodhi tree, and is referred to in the seventh step of the eightfold path.

THE ACT OF
BECOMING
IS  A
HUMAN
ENDEAVOUR
 IF ONE
EARNESTLY
DESIRES
to
SEEK
INSIGHT
of
THEM’SELVES’

 The essence of the Buddha's teaching can be summed up in two principles: the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The first is concerned with doctrine, the essence of which is right understanding, the second is concerned with discipline, or what that which entails practice and not mere theoretical conceptualizations.

It is these two principles that form the structure of an indivisible unity called the dhamma-vinaya, the doctrine-and-discipline, or the doctrine and the path which is the Dhamma. Though the two are an integral part of the whole, it is the path that translates the Dhamma from a “collection of abstract formulas into a continually unfolding disclosure of truth.”

"There is nothing merely theoretical here."

The Noble Eightfold Path is not a matter of conceptualizations or intellectual knowledge but of practice in everyday experience. Yet to apply the path it must first be understood as a guide to the ‘right view,’ or what might be better said as “perfect Vision”. The intellectualization or comprehension is the first step as you cannot walk a path if you don’t know where to go, thus making it essential to ‘grasp’ the understanding of the way before one can walk the way.  In Proverbs we read, “Where there is no vision, the people perish. In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo of the oracle,

 "I can only show you the door."

Morpheus : I told you, I can only show you the door. You're the one
who has to walk through it.

In other words, like the eightfold path, you must first be shown the door (Doctrine), but in the end you must walk (Practice) through it to apply the path correctly as it has to be properly understood.

The path is a difficult one, one of prudent choices and mindfulness to what is right and what we know intuitively to be wrong.

When I had the full realization of what this means a few years back I was asked by my father, is there no way to do this without pain and suffering?

And my answer was NO! It’s just not possible for to instantly evolve and achieve enlightenment without resistance.    First, there is the recognition of our own defilements, which when encounter we resist until we can fight through this and free ourselves. A key here is to understand that resistance is not repression. When we pass through daily life we pick up and keep those negative experiences and  push them aside to deal with them later. Sometimes never at all. Like a man wading through a river, we take these negative experiences and sling them over our backs like stones on a tether. With each  addition that is undelt with we find that we no longer flow with the stream of life but begin to sink and become stuck, yearning to breath above the weight of our accumulation of negative experiences. We must make the decision in the NOW to deal with them as they come to unburden ourselves of the Karma.

Experience will tell you if it hasn’t already, that fear keeps us from expressing and transcending ourselves to allow for the emergence of the light within.

So what is Right Understanding? It is explained as having the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. In other words, it is the understanding of things as they really are.

The search for a spiritual path is born out of suffering. It does not start with lights and ecstasy, but with the hard tacks of pain, disappointment, and confusion. However, for suffering to give birth to a genuine spiritual search, it must amount to more than something passively received from without. It has to trigger an inner realization, a perception which pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot. When this insight dawns, even if only momentarily, it can precipitate a profound personal crisis. It overturns accustomed goals and values, mocks our routine preoccupations, leaves old enjoyments stubbornly unsatisfying.

 
The Noble Eightfold Path

 
The fourth of Buddha's Four Noble Truths, prescribing the way to enlightenment. The Path involves right understanding, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right means of livelihood, right endeavour, right mindfulness, and right contemplation.

The Noble Eightfold Path describes the way to the end of suffering, as it was laid out by Siddhartha Gautama. It is a practical guideline to ethical and mental development with the goal of freeing the individual from attachments and delusions; and it finally leads to understanding the truth about all things. Together with the Four Noble Truths it constitutes the gist of Buddhism. Great emphasis is put on the practical aspect, because it is only through practice that one can attain a higher level of existence and finally reach Nirvana. The eight aspects of the path are not to be understood as a sequence of single steps, instead they are highly interdependent principles that have to be seen in relationship with each other.

1. Right View or Right Vision

 
Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

2. Right Intention

 
While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right Speech

 
Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

4. Right Action

 
The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

5. Right Livelihood

 
Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.

6. Right Effort

 
Right effort can be seen as a prerequisite for the other principles of the path. Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved, whereas misguided effort distracts the mind from its task, and confusion will be the consequence. Mental energy is the force behind right effort; it can occur in either wholesome or unwholesome states. The same type of energy that fuels desire, envy, aggression, and violence can on the other side fuel self-discipline, honesty, benevolence, and kindness. Right effort is detailed in four types of endeavours that rank in ascending order of perfection: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

7. Right Mindfulness

Right mindfulness is the controlled and perfected faculty of cognition. It is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness. Usually, the cognitive process begins with an impression induced by perception, or by a thought, but then it does not stay with the mere impression. Instead, we almost always conceptualise sense impressions and thoughts immediately. We interpret them and set them in relation to other thoughts and experiences, which naturally go beyond the facticity of the original impression. The mind then posits concepts, joins concepts into constructs, and weaves those constructs into complex interpretative schemes. All this happens only half consciously, and as a result we often see things obscured. Right mindfulness is anchored in clear perception and it penetrates impressions without getting carried away. Right mindfulness enables us to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go. Buddha accounted for this as the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration

The eighth principle of the path, right concentration, refers to the development of a mental force that occurs in natural consciousness, although at a relatively low level of intensity, namely concentration. Concentration in this context is described as one-pointedness of mind, meaning a state where all mental faculties are unified and directed onto one particular object. Right concentration for the purpose of the eightfold path means wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions. The Buddhist method of choice to develop right concentration is through the practice of meditation. The meditating mind focuses on a selected object. It first directs itself onto it, then sustains concentration, and finally intensifies concentration step by step. Through this practice it becomes natural to apply elevated levels concentration also in everyday situations.

Floating in Bliss

When we exercise these truths we no longer have to run from our demons but can take the leap and jump into our bliss. It is then that we can realize for the first time what it’s like to flow in the waters of time, lean against the wind and pretend that you’re weightless…

 And in this moment say
I am happy, happy
And I wish you were here!

Incubus - I Wish You were Here

 
DEO