Wisdom

 

We often hear of Wisdom but the word is hard to define. In Buddhism, it simply refers to deep understanding of The Four Noble Truths.

Most books say that The First Noble Truth is that life is suffering but the Buddha never said that. He said life is out of whack like a wheel mounted on an eccentric axle.

If the axle of a wheel is concentrically mounted, that means it is mounted in the center of the wheel and any vehicle carried by such a wheel will proceed smoothly in a level plane.

Mount the axle away from the center and the vehicle will go up and down as it proceeds. The amplitude of the up and down motion increases as the distance from the center of the wheel to the axle increases.

No doubt the Buddha had seen ox-pulled carts in his day, 2500 years ago, where the axle was eccentrically mounted and the wagon rose and fell with each rotation of such a wheel. He saw that imperfection in his daily life.

After attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he searched for a way to communicate to others what he had realized and settled upon the Pali word “dukkha” when announcing The First Noble Truth that life is unacceptable, unsatisfactory, out of whack like an eccentrically-mounted wheel, a dukkha wheel. 

If we can penetrate The First Noble Truth, we know the other three.

Right Understanding, also known as Right View, is the first fold of the eightfold path. Right Understanding of what? Of the First Noble Truth. Right Understanding is the cure for ignorance. In Buddhism, an ignorant person is a person who doesn't know the First Noble Truth. Or someone who intellectually knows it, but does not really know it.

The Second Noble Truth is often stated as “The suffering of The First Noble Truth is caused by desire.”

Desire for what? Desire for a separate, independent self. From ignorance there arises a desire to withdraw, to separate, to know good and evil.

Here we are. We are ignorant. Out of ignorance, we wanted to experience an independent self. We wanted out of Indra's net.

The Biblical story of Satan being kicked out of heaven because he wanted to be a king just like God has the ring of truth.

Who is that nasty old Satan who wanted to have a separate self, who wanted a discriminating mind so that he (or it) could pick and choose between things it likes and things it doesn’t? 

Do you know anyone who judges, who picks and chooses, who thinks he or she has a self that is independent of everything else?

When we judge, when we weigh, when we choose, when we like, when we dislike…that is the satanic mind.

We practice Zen to awaken to our original Buddha nature, thereby transforming our satanic nature which is so inbred in us that we don’t even realize how far our axle is from its central position.

But no god did it to us. We kicked ourselves out of paradise with our desire.

How successful we have been in creating the powerful illusion of a separate self. No one told us to be careful of what we wished, or if they did we ignored the advice. Can we click our heels three times and go home? There is no positive action we can take to propel us back into the Nirvana from which we emerged.

We can only practice Zen, thereby creating the conditions that allow us to return to our natural state.

Deeply understanding The Second Noble Truth is just another way of deeply understanding The First Noble Truth. They really are the same Noble Truth.

The Third Noble Truth is that when the desire for a separate self evaporates, the separate self is extinguished. Nirvana means blown out like a candle, gone. The separate self is gone and our true nature is revealed.

The Buddha simply said the same Noble Truth in three different ways, trying to communicate something that is not easy to communicate to stupid human beings, burning with desire.

So to lay it out in a step-by-step program, because he knew people were too dense to penetrate the Noble Truth expressed in three different ways, the Buddha produced a Fourth Noble Truth and called it the middle way or The Eightfold Path.

People who follow the Buddha’s eight step program will eventually understand the First, Second and Third Noble Truths.

This is where Zen departs from classic (Theravada) Buddhism. The early Ch’an masters felt that the eight steps were quite wordy and that some people would be mis-led by the words. “The Indians think too much” is a common comment of Chinese thinkers. Zen wants to simplify, to cut through words, to get straight to the heart of the matter without thinking too much about following an eight-point plan. The early Zen masters felt that The Eightfold Path was somewhat discursive, too intellectual for their taste. So they stripped The Eightfold Path from classical Buddhism and said: Let’s just meditate like the Buddha did. Let’s not get bogged down in words.

You can listen to podcasts from Zen centers all over the U.S. and you may never hear a discourse on The Fourth Noble Truth. Or the first Three Noble Truths for that matter. Listen to Theravada podcasts and it's The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path all the time.

This is one way the divide between Mahayana and Theravada manifests itself.

There is value in studying and practicing The Eightfold Path, however. If we practice authentic Zen, we will be following all eight folds of the path automatically.

1. Right Understanding or Right View. This refers to understanding The Four Noble Truths.

2. Right Thought. This refers to not picking and choosing, not running towards things or people we like and away from things or people we don't like but instead taking the middle way of neither liking nor disliking.

Together, the first two folds of the path form the Wisdom group of The Eightfold Path.

3. Right Speech. Refers to not lying, but includes the concept of maintaining noble silence instead of chatting mindlessly. Buddhism is pragmatic on the subject of lying. It was perfectly OK, of course, for the family hiding Anne Frank to tell the Nazis they had seen no Jews in the neighborhood.

4. Right Action. Self-explanatory. Refrain from doing hurtful things.

5. Right Livelihood. Don't engage in occupations that hurt others. Don't sell cigarettes, drugs, or booze, for example. The Buddha himself admonished a man for being a commercial fisherman. He also spoke out against those who sold weapons.

As a child, I sat through countless Church of Christ sermons where the preacher would rant against the evils of smoking. I was surprised to learn years later that the preacher of the largest Church of Christ congregation in the world, in Nashville, Tennessee, was a tobacco farmer.

In my adult hometown, one of the most prominent Christians, who has now passed away, owned a beer franchise. I often wondered if he ever gave a second thought to all the deaths his product facilitated.

6. Right Effort. When a bad or mean-minded thought arises, nip it in the bud. If it has already taken over, and you're mad as hell about something (like when thinking about nicotine and booze-selling Christians who ooze self-righteousness), drop such thoughts. If the mind is blank, plant a thought of loving kindness. If kind thoughts have arisen spontaneously, nourish them. Note that there are four steps to Right Effort.

Together, steps 4, 5, and 6 make up what is known as the Ethical folds of The Eightfold Path. Step 5 is ignored in Christianity.

7. Right Mindfulness. This one has four basic parts as well: 1) Contemplation of the body; 2) Contemplation of feelings, whether repulsive, attractive, or neutral; 3) contemplation of the state of mind; and 4) contemplation of phenomena/mind objects.

8. Right Concentration, sometimes called Right Meditation. Self-explanatory.

Steps 6, 7, and 8 are called the Concentration or Meditation group.

The Ethical group forms the foundation because practicing the Meditation group requires an ethical foundation. An unethical lifestyle is a roadblock to meditation. And Wisdom and Right Thought cannot arise if the practices of the Meditation group are not followed.