Being Buddhist
In 1999 I read a small passage that would both dramatically and subtly forever alter my life’s path. In a small class at a local community college, I opened a textbook on World Religions and stared The Four Noble Truths in the face. They are, according to that text, as follows:
- All life is suffering
- The origin of suffering
- The possibility of cessation of suffering
- The eight-fold path - the “way out”
That is my translation as I remember it. I won’t expand on the meanings of those truths here because you didn’t come here for a lesson in my religion. You came here for a story. If you want to know more about the Four Noble Truths, I can point you in the direction of some very good books, or you can just use trusty old Google.
When I read the first Noble Truth, “all life is suffering”, I had what many would call an “enlightenment” experience. Reading those words, I felt all confusion instantly fall away and I was left with a clear “360 degree” mind. I felt like I could see the interrelatedness of everything past, present, and future. Yet to try to look at any one thing meant I would lose the clarity. It was so swift, so complete, and so…fleeting. For the first time in my life, I felt I had read something true. Truly true. Indisputable, clear, swift and complete. It was freeing, and joyful to read that “all life is suffering”.
“Strange,” you might think. How could such grim, damning words be translated into an experience of joy and freedom? At the moment I read the phrase, I couldn’t have possibly articulated why. Now I can try. It seems that questioning the meaning of our existence has been the curse of human consciousness, and what we seek in that meaning is comfort. We want to know that there is a reason for our being here; both the large “our” and the individual “our”. In short, we want to know that our suffering has some point. We also want to find comfort in thinking there is a reward for that suffering. The rewards we seek are the meaning we seek. The rewards we seek are joy, pleasure, and a final resting spot where there is no more suffering.
Thus, many of humanity’s great philosophies and religions gave us rules of what kind of suffering we ought to endure, and how, and then carefully laid out what our rewards would be in the here and now, and in the after life. I had struggled with all of these traditions, yet was never able to exactly pinpoint the illusions I couldn’t align to. To read that “all life is suffering” was freeing to me. It meant that I didn’t need to escape anything. I didn’t need to try anything. There was no judgement, no reason for judgement, and no “one” to judge. Life just simply was. Life was suffering, and the source of that suffering was that we were always trying to find a way out of that suffering.
It wasn’t grim to me. It was joyful. It seemed that I could suddenly see, and hear, and feel, and smell, and touch, and experience everything fully. I didn’t need a storyline. I didn’t need a reason. I didn’t need to interpret and determine whether my experience was something I wanted or didn’t want. It just was what it was. I had found the way out of suffering by just being.
That was then, this is now, and if you’re interested, I’ll tell you some more stories about my journey on the Buddhist path.
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That statement — all life is suffering — has always made so much sense to me. I’d love to hear more, of course.
Me too.
When I was fifteen years old, and suffering the usual teenage angst, I also ran breathlessly into the Four Noble Truths. All Life is Suffering. It was like thunder and lightning. My mind just stopped, and I felt released from everything. I was not personally responsible for the suffering: it just was. I could relax. At that moment, I became a Buddhist, so it is very similar to your story. My family, being Jewish, was not happy about that and figured that this was just one of those teenage phases. It is now 50 years later, and I am still a Buddhist, still a practitioner, and grateful for the words of the Buddha, spoken 2,500 years ago to his companions on the path, that i read back in 1958.
MPJ and WA7, I’ll be getting to more posts on this soon I hope.
Sravaka, in one little paragraph, you have absolutely captured what I took several to try and say. I was beyond being a teenager, but where I grew up there wasn’t much chance I was going to run across Buddhism.
Thank you for stopping by. Not sure how you found me!
Thanks for your kind words. That encounter with the First Noble Truth was a transformative moment for me in my life and affected everything that came after. And it was so…random. Odd, isn’t it? A chance encounter with page in a book left on a table and riffled through at an odd moment in a neighborhood branch library after school. One truly never knows where the next gift will be.
As to how I found you, your blog was listed in your sigline of an email in which you replied quickly to my lengthy screed about American society’s Dark Ages (so to speak) on Sangha-Talk. I like to write.
Sravaka, in that case I think we know each other, is that right? KCL?
Yes, KCL. I’m on staff there at the current time.
And a night owl I see. I was just up there last weekend. My daughter attended the teen retreat.
Glad to have you aboard the S.S. Velvet Verbosity. Hopefully we see some whales!
Oh, and if you like to write, I would love to have you join the 100 word challenge. (See previous posts) This week’s challenge/writing prompt was “Hidden”. Just write 100 words from whatever that prompt brings to mind. Entries technically close on Thursday, but since I don’t post them until Tuesday a.m., you have time. You can either email it to me, or post it in a comment.
That’s if you’re interested of course.