Buddhism

I like to describe Buddhism as a form of self-applied psychotherapy (or psychospiritual therapy). There is a book by Lama Thubten Yeshe called Becoming Your Own Therapist that’s worth a read.

Buddhism is a methodology for cultivating the skills, wisdom and insight we need to avoid suffering, but not just any old suffering ~ and a lot of folk are turned away from Buddhism because they mistakenly think it’s all about suffering. It’s about ending suffering. We end suffering by learning how to not cling to pleasure and be averse to pain. Pain and suffering are not the same in Buddhism. That saying applies:

Pain is inevitable, suffering optional.

By learning to cultivate equanimity and clarity, we can start choosing to not suffer among the painful world of fleeting pleasures.

~

Buddhism is a way of becoming conscious, it is a form of activism, and a way of life, a way of being that yields genuine happiness (sukkha) as it transports us to The Other Shore, away from the cycle of suffering that characterises our unconscious meandering through the materialism and consumerism of samsara. Buddhism is not a religion, and let’s not call it a form of spirituality either, because those terms are equally loaded with untold connotations that just confuse things. It’s closer to a form of self-applied psychotherapy than either of those denominations.

One of Buddha’s first teachings was the Four Noble Truths, which contains the Eightfold Noble Path out of samsaric suffering. Some other core teachings in the Buddhist tradition are the Four Immeasurables, the Three Poisons (desire, aversion and ignorance, which are the root cause of all suffering) and the Three Refuges (buddha, dharma and sangha). And of course, the Precepts:

• refrain from killing or causing harm
• refrain from stealing or taking what is not given
• refrain from licentious behaviour and from misusing sexuality
• refrain from lying, from harsh or false speech
• refrain from abusing intoxicants

Another core teaching is the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

It sounds like there are lots of core teachings, and it might feel confusing to know where to start. When I first met a Buddhist in the workplace and asked him if there was a central text or something he could refer me to like the Christian bible, he said there wasn’t any such thing. The sutras might be a close equivalent, but they are hard to access unless we find a simple English translation. Meanwhile, arriving at the core teachings of Buddhism is the result of a long and meandering journey for anyone, especially us in the West who are often self-taught in these areas, without access to the large monastic universities in the past and the East.

It is also important to remember that the teachings are just “fingers pointing at the moon”, they are not the moon itself.