Jonathan McHaffie
So you're curious about Buddhism? In the West, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the image of a person, and I'm guessing it's the Dalai Lama. Am I right? Or is it someone sitting with legs folded in what looks like an impossible position, a serene image on their face? In my case, it was probably some combination of the two. And there was this nagging question about Buddhism - what's it all about? I didn't know anybody who was a Buddhist, I grew up in a nominally Christian country so culturally I was a long way from Tibet, India, or any of south-east Asia. And I had a second curiosity - this meditation 'thing'. What was the point of it?
There was one other factor. A memory. I was maybe nine or ten, walking to school, and in a bend on the road, I wondered, did thoughts ever stop? You know, that voice in your head that's your constant companion? The brain seeping out into your conscious awareness, or however you think of it. To be truthful, it was a long time before I discovered that other people had this same thing. I was convinced it was something only I had to deal with. And you can see why Christian traditions have this idea of the devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other. That voice had a lot of opinions, and it liked to air them. Was meditation a way to deal with it, to silence it, to get a few moments of peace?
Not a very promising beginning, perhaps, but maybe enough curiosity to overcome a heap of ignorance?
I started with the meditation part. Just as Covid-19 was leading to in-person everything stopping. But there was a ray of hope - one last course (course is overstating it, it was a few evening discussion sessions) in Transcendental Meditation. About which I also knew next to nothing, but I figured I should get started somewhere, and it was available. It also comes from a different tradition from Buddhism, but I didn't know that either. Really, I knew nothing. For me, meditation was meditation was meditation. We'll get back to that another time. The principle of TM is simple - you are given a mantra (in this case, a short word with no 'meaning') which you repeat silently in your mind for twenty minutes, twice a day. And that's it. No sitting in particular positions, none of the paraphernalia of religion. Just you and your mind.
The mind is a scary place to look into. We have the phrase 'what comes to mind when...?' What comes to mind when you stop, really stop, and try to do nothing more than focus on that one little word can be overwhelming. Your to-do list, memories, plans, images, thought after thought after thought. Try it and see for yourself. Try five minutes. Pick one of the classical mantras like 'Om', repeat it silently in your head, and see what happens. Don't force it, don't try to concentrate, just try it now. Yes, really - try it now.
Did you manage it? Five minutes? How did it go?
Here's the thing - this isn't something you're going to understand by reading about it. So if you didn't do that short meditation, either (a) do it, (b) do one minute if five is too daunting, or (c) forget about it. We can read as much as we like about meditation, about its benefits, but you don't win an Olympic medal by reading about a sport, you get it by going out there and doing it, again and again and again. With people to guide you, to push you when you need it, pull you back when you need that, and probably with a community around you to support you. We see the person with the gold medal around their neck, but rarely all the other people who contributed to that outward success. So yes, it's trite, but it's also true - to understand meditation, we have to do it.
So, if you gave it a go, what happened? Did you
Have thoughts appear out of nowhere that you didn't expect (or possibly want?)
Find your mind wandering?
Think about something you're planning on doing?
Have a memory come to you, possible an unpleasant one?
Forget what you were meant to be doing?
Get bored?
Wonder how long you still had to go?
Find there were little moments when there was no mantra and no thoughts in your head?
Either way, any of them is totally normal. It's our baseline. It's what the mind does. It remembers, it plans, it does what it wants to. Unless we intervene - and are willing to spend time training it. Like the Dalai Lama has done for decades. But it's not about him. It's about each of us and our minds.
If you were thinking, this is some 'religious' thing, you might have noticed that, so far, I've not suggested anything you 'should' or 'must' believe. Maybe not your experience of religion. We'll come back to whether Buddhism is a religion, and whether it matters. But here's the thing. At no point in this journey are we required or expected to 'believe' in anything. We're invited to experience certain things for ourselves, and see what happens. I don't know about you, but I found that refreshing. The point of that is not to compare this practice with alternatives. It's not about 'my way is better than your way' or even 'I hope your way isn't better than my way'. Maybe we're used to, or at least familiar with, the long history of religions recruiting to their cause. And it's hard to argue with the premise that, if you have something you think is useful and could be helpful for others, you should just keep it to yourself. That's before we get to any specific injunctions to spread the word, the kind of rallying cry Jesus left his disciples with. That's not the way of Buddhism. Here's the Dalai Lama on this topic:
Human nature is such that sometimes, in order to justify our adoption of a new religion, we may criticise our previous religion, or our country's religious tradition, and claim it is inadequate. This should not happen. Firstly, although your previous religion may not be effective for you, that does not mean it will completely fail to be of value to millions of other people. It is clear that some people the Christian approach is more effective than the Buddhist one. If you were to ask me what the best religion is for me personally, my answer would be Buddhism, without any hesitation. But that does not mean that Buddhism is best for everyone - certainly not.
I would like to further emphasise that when I say that all religions have great potential, I am not just being polite or diplomatic. Whether we like it or not, the entire human race cannot be Buddhist, that is quite clear. Similarly the whole of humanity cannot be Christian, or Muslim, either. Even in India during the Buddha's time, the entire population did not turn to Buddhism. This is just a fact
Furthermore, I have not just read books about other religions but I have met genuine practitioners from other traditions. We have talked about deep, spiritual experiences, in particular the experience of loving kindness. I have noticed a genuine and very forceful loving kindness in their minds. My conclusion therefore is that these various religions have the potential to develop a good heart.
Whether or not we like the philosophy of other religions isn't really the point. The point is that through these different traditions, a very negative person can be transformed into a good person. That is the purpose of religion - and that is the actual result.
When I first read that (it's from his book The Four Noble Truths), it struck a chord. And it's the backdrop to everything that will follow here. It's not about saying that one way is better than another. That's a statement of such absolute certainty that I'm already running away from it, because I've found that kind of certainty, and sometimes it's religious certainty and sometimes it's political certainty, rarely leads anywhere I want to find myself, no matter the comfort such absolutism can sometimes bring with it. What we're doing here is exploring. Starting with one simple meditation and seeing where we are on this day, in this hour, this minute, this moment. If we did the same outward exercise an hour later, it would be a different internal experience, because we aren't the person we were an hour ago. Our thoughts aren't the same, our bodies aren't the same, so when we stop and observe what's going on, it's going to be different each time. I've found it worthwhile bearing that in mind. Some days meditation will 'feel' great. Other times it will feel difficult, even painful, because thoughts will come to mind that we'd rather didn't. If ever we believed we were in control of our minds, that experience alone should set us straight. Perhaps it's the slightly more sophisticated version of 'don't think of a red hammer' - the thought's there, despite our intention and our will, and trying to suppress thoughts - well, good luck with that.
The other backdrop is that last comment by the Dalai Lama (as an aside, that's a title, not his actual name, which is Tensin Gyatso, hence we refer to him as 'the' Dalai Lama) about the real purpose of this - well, you can insert a number of words here, all of which are a bit trite or cliched, but nonetheless point to something which can give a helpful perspective - journey, experiment, quest even. I'm going to go with 'search'. Whatever we call it, the point of this search is to transform us, and to do so not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others, whether directly or indirectly. And while we can find some guides and companions along the way, at the end of the day, it's our personal journey, our personal search. Will we find the same thing at the end? I don't know. Maybe there's 'an' answer to that question. I don't know that either. Because this is the search I've embarked on as well, and I'm figuring it out as I go along, just like everyone else. I find I go down some blind alleys, take an overly circuitous route, find myself back where I started, ask myself if I even have the faintest idea what I'm doing, and sometimes that comparing mind kicks in and says, look at those other people, they've got this figured out, the questions they're asking wouldn't even occur to me. But comparing's not helpful. Learning from the experience of others, however, that's helpful. Maybe it will point me towards some new insight, or maybe I'll simply see once again that another human being experiences something differently from me. Either way, it's a small step in the right direction, and even the smallest step gets us closer to where we're headed. If the tiny steps I've taken and try to outline here are helpful to anyone else, that's great. If not, there are plenty of other places to look that might be better (and yes, I'm going to do a bit of pointing of my own in the direction of resources I've found helpful along the way).
So let the search begin...