The existence of suffering
Moving onto the teaching. When the Buddha wandered out of the forest, fully awake, what did he say with the first ‘setting the wheel in motion’ talk? Well, it consisted of four truths, and the last truth is actually eight paths, or aspects of living life going forward that will cause awakening,
The first truth is the existence of suffering, and no one can really argue with that. In life, even things that make you happy are suffering. A happy marriage ends in death at best. Eating good food only satiates for a while until there is hunger again. Everything is impermanent. You look at a scene with a beautiful forest in it, and the forest is a mass of suffering, living things with fragile bodies that will all die, striving for food and fighting for resources.
The cause of suffering
In a way, it’s wanting things to be different, i.e. desire. You’re hungry and you don’t see food before you and so there’s a desire for it to be different. A grieving widow cannot perceive their spouse, and desires to. In a way, all feelings are on the inside of us rather than out in the world, and in another way, all suffering is based on not perceiving what we want to perceive. We want the world that our senses are reporting to be different, and when it isn’t, our emotions respond with suffering, so it’s linked to perception. It’s specifically linked to outer perception. You have an inner-perception, an imaginary world, but that perceives whatever it wants. There are no desires there as you can see whatever you want, but it isn’t satisfying to end suffering because it isn’t real.
The end of suffering
If suffering didn’t always exist, then it won’t always exist. The problem is ignorance. We want the things we perceive to be different, when actually WE ARE THE THINGS WE PERCEIVE. So you look into the world, and you have senses, and two eyes receive light on the retinas, and your body has nerves under the skin. The ear has a little hammer than vibrates in response to sound waves, and all this information is fed into the brain, which recreates a world with the illusion that it is ‘out there’ and you are directly perceiving something.
Yet the fact is that you don’t know for sure what is ‘out there’ beyond the senses. It could be a computer simulation or you could be a brain in a vat somewhere. You don’t know if you perceive what I do, what you and I call ‘red’ might not be the same and you might not be here at all. Perhaps you’re alone in black space recreating something in the mind that isn’t there. If you took a load of LSD you would recreate a completely different, surreal reality that would be just as real as what you are seeing now, because the world you are seeing now is wholly and completely recreated by the brain inside your head.
So you have an outer world you are perceiving and an inner world you are creating and perceiving — but both are completely created by the brain. Another way to put this is that: EVERYTHING IS IMAGINATION, and ultimately, it is ignorance of this which causes suffering.
The path that leads to the end of suffering
So the last truth is the path that leads to the end of suffering, which is actually eight principles to always live by.
The Eightfold Path
Right view
This means understanding the world correctly. This includes what I just explained, everything is imagination, which means you are not separate from what you perceive, nor your imagination, but also other truths, like the law of karma etc.
Right intention
Your intentions are what you will to imagine, how you will behave and what you will create in life. By taking Refuge, praying (asking) for awakening, you are creating an intention, which is a small thing, but when practiced is like nudging two parallel lines that exist into the edge of the universe. A tiny movement here becomes the span of billions of galaxies at the edge of space. You’re living through many lifetimes, thus time can be equated to the distances of space.
I think intention can also mean assumption, what you expect to happen. It means to keep a high mood, in positivity, expecting abundance and what you need in life, but also awakening.
Ethical living
The next three are right speech, action and livelihood. Right speech can be further broken down to: everything we say should be true, compassionate, timely and concordant, concordant means bringing people together rather than splitting them apart. Keeping these three in check can be a type of minimalism, i.e. keeping life simple. When you start to live unethically, then life can get complex. Gossips and backstabbers and liars and similar are always surrounded by various drama, and this complicates life, takes away your focus and now you are not practicing freedom and happiness and awakening but are dealing with all the sh** you created.
But I take this to also mean inner speech and action. We don’t just speak into the world. We have an inner voice and inner conversations constantly, and an inner-imagined us (mental picture of self) in all sorts of imagined scenarios and dramas and fantasies and daydreams — and all this inner-life also need to always be positive, ethical concordant… and is it?
Mental Discipline
The last three are right effort, mindfulness and concentration. Effort means inner-effort, the earlier action means will in the world. There is a desire to act in a certain way and you do so, whereas effort here means what you do with your mind. When you leave your mind alone it just runs amok and does whatever it wants, it has random thoughts, daydreams and emotions, but at any time you can choose to be aware, and to proactively choose each thought; what exists as a mental picture in your imagination and your feeling (which actually is a sensation in your body when you look at it). To choose the feeling/emotion, then it needs to be chosen directly within and disregarding what the senses are perceiving in the world. Without this step it wouldn’t be possible. You need to disavow the world. Not so easy as it seems so real… but remember, it isn’t — and you cannot directly control it, so definitely a bad idea to allow emotion to be a response to that rather than things you do have dominion over.
Concentration means to create circumstances in the mind, and hold them steady over a period of time. The thing about the awakened state is that it is within, and coiled, like a knot, and it unfolds and unties itself into space when those spacious conditions are provided.