Guy Claxton - The Heart of Buddhism - A Simple Introduction to Buddhist Practice

But worse than this, we are full of strange ideas about what needs defending, what needs running after and what must be avoided. As in a fairy story, we have dreamt up dragons to beware of, castles to defend and beautiful princesses or priceless treasures to go in search of. Nothing wrong with that, we might suppose – except that we then take these games for real, and spend our time complaining about how tired and busy we are, and how desperately we are looking forward to the end of term, or to Christmas. (‘Unfortunately though, we always spend Christmas with Sheila’s parents, and after 36 hours of her mother, well, to be honest I shall be looking forward to getting back to the office!’)

People need a certain amount of material – food and shelter for example – but the game of making money can become so serious that they ruin their health and make strangers of their families in pursuit of it, and jump off tall buildings when they lose it. People need friendship, or most do anyway, so they equip themselves with toupees and false breasts in the quaint belief that they will be better liked if they hide the effects of age. People value communication, but tremble with strangulated rage when someone jumps the queue rather than risk a ‘confrontation’. We all have our personal portfolio of such hostages to fortune, and are quick to chuckle at those which we do not own, or own up to, when we spot them in other people. I am ready to joke with you about people who grow long clumps of hair to paste from one ear to the other. But don’t start on my little pot belly, or I shall suddenly become rather waspish.

Some of these premises on which we live not only send us off on wild goose chases; they bamboozle us about ourselves as well. They set up rules and regulations about which bits of us are all right and which are not – which to be proud of and display to impress people (‘Cambridge, actually,’ I murmur modestly), and which to feel ashamed of (‘Well, if you must know, it was a third,’ I declare defiantly). Events in the past are sorted into ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘indifferent’, while whole categories of human experience are condemned or exalted. To cry is ‘weak’, so I must fend off your tenderness lest I ‘break down’. To assert myself is ‘unfeminine’, so I meekly go along with your stupid suggestion, and compensate for the ensuing self-disgust by secretly rejoicing when you get your comeuppance. To feel afraid is shameful, so I have learnt how to make myself physically sick before school on the days when I have French. To feel violently towards my howling child is too dreadful a thing to admit, so I wake exhausted and cannot tell you about my frightful dreams.

Buddhism knows all about these buried beliefs that keep us in a state of dissatisfaction. Much of what we cherish is dross, the Buddhists say, and in the protecting of it we run ourselves ragged. We become more or less skilful at putting on a phony front and at keeping our skeletons well locked away. The process of freeing ourselves from anxiety by dredging up these pernicious convictions and putting them to the test of adult reflection is part of the Buddhist programme.

It is for this reason that Buddhism has some strong relationships with psychotherapy, though they are by no means straightforward. But they are not really the heart of the matter. Students of Buddhism are after bigger fish, and though grappling with these standards of conduct and feeling offers invaluable practice in the art of hauling up and putting an end to particular sources of self-made distress, they are not the root cause of that distress. For that a longer line is needed, and greater courage still. We shall return to the hunt for Moby Dick in a little while.

So far we have begun to explore the Buddhist insight that much of what we are trying to fix up and escape from is in fact home-made. But surely, you will probably have been wanting to say for a while, not all of our distress is avoidable with a change of attitude? I can see what you mean about shame and jealousy, but what about the real pain in the world? What does Buddhism have to say about that?

Many people in the well-protected, affluent West, especially those like myself who are not old enough to have lived through the Second World War, have so far been spared the direct experience of pain and death. I remember my first encounter with a Zen Master, Asahina Sogen, who was at the time abbot of one of the most famous Zen temples in Japan, Engakuji in Kamakura. He asked me one or two polite questions, and then, out of the blue, enquired whether my parents were still alive. I told him they were, and he said how lucky I was, and went on to talk about how the death of his parents when he was just a boy, and the need to understand the grief he felt, had precipitated him onto the Buddhist path.

Because of our wealth, our technology and our habit of avoidance, it is perhaps easier for us than for any other society in history to minimize our first-hand experience of big suffering. We all know about the pain in the world, yet, until it touches us directly, are able to keep it at arm’s length. I do not like to contemplate how easily, with just one little twist of the kaleidoscope, it could be me who is starving in the Sudan, me who is imprisoned, tortured or shot for my beliefs in Turkey or Chile, me who is dispossessed and oppressed because of the colour of my skin in South Africa or Australia. I have never yet had to choose between my physical survival and my self-respect, between being a passive collaborator or an active resister, when I know that for my resistance I will very likely be killed.

Yet I can, if I am honest, sense in myself the potential to be the villain. I can see that it is the same obsession to be comfortable, to accumulate and hoard, that I have which makes multi-national companies turn vast stretches of Africa into farms that only produce cotton which the people cannot eat, and beef which they have to sell. It is the same urge for release and avoidance that I have which makes the subsistence farmer take this payment into town and blow it all on beer, while his wife and children grow hungrier. It is the same wish for power and control that I have which makes governments spend money on arms rather than on small, easily-serviced water pumps for the poor people in the countryside. It is the same short-sightedness that I have which makes people cut down trees for shelter or profit, which loosens the top-soil, which washes away in the next flood, which turns farmland into yet more man-made desert, which makes yet more famine. It is the same need to look good and impress that I have which makes presidents, prime ministers and first secretaries spend millions of dollars on inauguration or commemoration parties and lie and twist and bribe to protect their reputations. I cannot be sure that I would not have manned the gas chambers, nor that I would not have joined the others in hurling rocks at Jesus. What’s more I cannot even be sure that I would have felt reluctant as I behaved barbarically. If I am to follow the Buddhist path, I have to be prepared to seek out in myself just those attitudes that I condemn most vociferously in others.

But whether or not pain is caused by other people, whether or not I can understand it if it is, real pain exists. Even in an enlightened world there must be the pain of childbirth, the pain of cancer, the pain of accidental injury or food poisoning. Can Buddhism get rid of this? No, it can’t. As Michael Carrithers says in The Buddha:

It is not claimed that liberation puts an end to physical pain this side of the grave, for painfulness is admitted to be the nature of the body ... It is rather mental suffering, the extra and unnecessary anguish of existence, that is progressively dispelled by the Buddhist training.