Green Army: Persons of Interest
Let one walk alone
Committing no sin
With few wishes
Like elephants in the forest
— Based on a Buddhist poem.
Delusion is the child of ignorance. …
Dwelling on sense-objects gives birth to attachment, attachment gives birth to desire.
Desire (unfulfilled) brings into existence the life of anger.
From anger, delusions springs up, from delusion the confusion of memory.
In the confusion of memory, the reasoning wisdom is lost.
When wisdom is nowhere, destruction.
— Bhagavad Gita, 500 – 300 BCE.
For I am the arahant in the world,
I am the teacher supreme.
I alone am a Perfectly Enlightened One
— Ariyapariyesana Sutta
- With ignorance as condition, volitional formations [come to be;]
- with volitional formations as condition, consciousness;
- with consciousness as condition, name-and-form;
- with name-and-form as condition, the six sense bases;
- with the six sense bases as condition, contact;
- with contact as condition, feeling;
- with feeling as condition, craving;
- with craving as condition, clinging;
- with clinging as condition, existence;
- with existence as condition, birth;
- with birth as condition,
- aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair come to be. …
This … is called dependent origination.
— Samyutta Nikāya
In days gone by this mind of mine used to stray wherever selfish desire or lust or pleasure would lead it.
Today this mind does not stray and is under the harmony of control, even as a wild elephant is controlled by the trainer. …
Whether the world is eternal or transient, there is suffering, and I teach the way to understand it.
My teaching does not depend on whether I exist after death or not, because I am concerned with suffering [in the] here and now.
— Siddhartha Gotama (c563/480 – c483/400 BCE)
May you be happy
May you be free of suffering
Fear begets Anger
Anger begets Hatred
Hatred begets Cruelty
Cruelty begets Suffering
— peaceandlonglife
Poison | Antidote |
|---|
| Fear | Trust |
| Anger | Patience |
| Hatred | Compassion |
| Cruelty | Kindness |
| Mindlessness | Mindfulness |
| Attachment | Detachment |
| Agitation | Equanimity |
| Egoism | Altruism |
| Greed | Generosity |
| Envy | Joy |
| Pride | Humility |
| Self-pity | Gratitude |
| Despair | Hope |
| Contempt | Civility |
| Confusion | Clarity |
| Reaction | Response |
| Doing | Being |
The Eight Worldly Conditions |
|---|
| Gain | Loss |
| Fame | Notoriety |
| Praise | Blame |
| Happiness | Suffering |
Meditation |
|---|
| Single Pointed | Open Presence |
| Concentration | Anchor | Mental Awareness |
| Mindfulness | Distraction | Mental Contents |
Stephen Bachelor:
[By discarding] all elements of supernaturalism and magical thinking one returns to the mystery and tragedy of the everyday sublime.
Instead of nirvana being located in a transcendent real beyond the human condition, it [is] restored to its rightful place at the heart of what it means, each moment, to be fully human.
(In Search of a Voice, Secular Buddhism, Yale University Press, 2017, p 24)
Bhikkhu Bodhi | Jeffrey Block (1944):
The Buddha did not write down any of his teachings, nor were his teachings recorded in writing by his disciples. …
The [oral] records of his teachings [come] from monastic councils, [which began 3 months after his death,] for the purpose of preserving his teaching.
It is unlikely that [these teachings] reproduce the Buddha’s words verbatim. …
[Within 300 years of his death] there were at least 18 schools of Sectarian Buddhism.
(General Introduction, In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, Wisdom Publications, 2005, pp 6-7)
Lewis Carroll | Charles Dodgson (1832 – 98):
'I am real!' said Alice, and began to cry.
'You won't make yourself a bit realer by crying,' Tweedledee remarked: 'there's nothing to cry about.'
'If I wasn't real,' Alice said — half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous — 'I shouldn't be able to cry.'
'I hope you don't suppose those are real tears' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
(Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 4, 1871)
Siddhartha Gotama (c563/480 – c483/400 BCE):
A sentient being does [not] exist …
This bundle of elements is void of Self,
In it there is no sentient being,
Just as a set of wooden parts,
Receives the name of carriage,
So do we give to elements,
The name of fancied being.
(Cila Mara)
The mental and the material are really here,
But here there is no human being to be found.
For it is void and merely fashioned like a doll,
Just suffering piled up like grass and sticks.
(Visuddhi Magga)
I have shown that the self is not as people think of it …
But that does not mean that there is no self. …
If something
- is true,
- is real,
- is constant,
- is a foundation of a nature that is unchanging,
this can be called the self.
(Mahaparinirvana Sutra)
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.
Marcus Aurelius (121 – 80):
The whole universe is change, and life itself is but what you deem it.
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616):
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
(Hamlet, 1600)
John Milton (1608 – 74):
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make
- a heav'n of hell,
- a hell of heav'n.
(Paradise Lost, Book I, 1667)
Heraclitus (535 ~ 475 BCE):
No man ever steps in the same river twice.
For it is not the same river.
And he is not the same man.
Lucretius (99 – 55 BCE):
For Time changes the nature of all things in the world; each stage must be succeeded by another, nothing remains as it was; all things depart and Nature modifies all things and compels them to change.
(The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, 1580, M A Screech, Translator, Penguin, 1991, p 681)
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970):
To the Orphic, life in this world is pain and weariness.
We are bound to a wheel which turns through endless cycles of birth and death; our true life is the stars, but we are tied to earth.
Only by purification and renunciation, and an ascetic life, can we escape from the wheel and attain at last to the ecstasy of union with God.
(The Rise of Greek Civilisation, p 41)
Dikaiarchos says that Pythagoras taught …
- that the soul is an immortal thing, …
- that it is transformed into other kinds of living things …
- that whatever comes into existence is born again in the revolutions of a certain cycle, nothing being absolutely new; and
- that all things that are born with life in them ought to be treated as kindred.
(Pythagoras, A History of Western Philosophy, 2nd Edition, 1961, Allen & Unwin 1984, p 52)
Virgil (70 – 19 BCE):
Their minds' ideas are ever turning round; the emotions in their breasts are driven hither and thither like clouds before the wind.
(Georgics, I, 420-2, 29 BCE)
David Hume (1711 – 76):
[The ego] is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement …
[The mind is] a kind of theater, which several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.
(Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, pp 226-7)
Every virtue, every excellence, must be ascribed to the divinity, and no exaggeration will be deemed sufficient to reach those perfections with which he is endowed.
(The Natural History of Religion, Four Dissertations, 1747)
George Orwell (1903 – 50):
[The] main motive for 'nonattachment' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.
(Reflections on Gandhi, 1949)
Monima Chadha [Head of Philosophy, Monash University]:
The self does not seem like an illusion.
It is only when you get corrupted by Buddhist philosophy [that] you start thinking of the self is an illusion.
(Guilty or not guilty, The Philosopher's Zone, ABC Radio National, 24 June 2018)
Robert Wright (1957) [Professor of Science & Spirituality, Union Theological Seminary]:
One interpretation of the Buddha's discourse on not-self is that … he didn't mean it to be a metaphysical assertion that the self doesn't exist.
It's just a very pragmatic guide.
It's … him saying:
Look at these various feelings: …
Can you really control them?
No.
Do they sometimes make you suffer?
Yes.
Why don't you call them "not-self"?
Why don't you not identify with them?
(Why Buddhism is True, Philosophy Bites, May 2018)
Derek Parfit (1942 – 2017):
[There is a] possibility described by Locke and Kant … that I am might suddenly cease to exist and be replaced by another Ego.
This new Ego might ‘inherit’ all of my psychological characteristics, as in a relay race.
[While] you are reading this page of text, you might suddenly cease to exist, and your body be taken over by some new person who is merely exactly like you.
If this happened, no one would notice any difference.
There would never be any evidence, public or private, showing whether or not this happens, and, if so, how often.
We, therefore, cannot even claim that it is unlikely to happen.
(Reasons and Persons, Oxford University Press, 1984, p 228)
Antonio Damasio (1944) [David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy, University of Southern California]:
The continuity of background feelings befits the fact that the living organism and its structure are continuous as long as life is maintained.
Unlike our environment, whose constitution does change, and unlike the images we construct relative to that environment, which are fragmentary and conditioned by external circumstance, background feeling is mostly about body states.
Our individual identity is anchored on this island of illusory living sameness against which we can be aware of myriad other things that manifestly change around the organism.
(Emotions and Feelings, Descartes' Error, Chapter 7, Picador, 1994, p 155)
Cūḷakammavibhaṅga Sutta |
|---|
| Karmic Seed | Karmic Fruit |
| Does not seek guidance from ascetics or brahmins | Stupidity |
| Does not give to ascetics or brahmins | Poverty |
| Obstinate and arrogant character traits | Low birth |
| Envies, resents, and begrudges the gains of others | Reborn without influence |
| Angry and irritable character traits | Ugliness |
| Given to injuring beings | Sickliness |
| Kills living beings | Short life |
Diamond Sutra
One who gives rise to the awakened mind does not deny objects or say that they are nonexistent. …
As stars, a lamp, a fault of vision.
As dewdrops or a bubble.
A dream, a lightning flash, a cloud.
So one should see conditioned things.
(p 14)
[If] you are caught up in ideas, then you will he caught up in the self.
And even if you are caught up in ideas about nothingness, you will still be caught up in the self.
That's why we should not get attached to the belief that things either exist or do not exist.
(p 124)
Sutta Nipata
All the delightful things of the world — sweet sounds, lovely forms, all the pleasant tastes and touches and thoughts — these are all agreed to bring happiness
if they are not grasped and possessed.
But if you regard them merely as pleasures for your own use and satisfaction and do not see them as passing wonders, they will bring suffering.
(p 109, emphasis added)
Prajnaparamita
[People] live within complex sets of religious or worldly ideas and emotions that they believe to be final, established, and therefore real.
They project this [static] self-created world onto their ideas of past and future and the present moment.
They try to crystallize reality into permanent shapes and categories.
(p 100)
Majjhima Nikaya
[The] teaching is like a raft that carries you across the water to the farther shore but is then to be put down and not clung to.
(p 107)
Those who only have faith in me … will not find the final freedom.
But those who have faith in the … path, they will find awakening.
(p 120)
Apart from consciousness … no absolute truths exist.
(p 125)
When an eye and a shape are there, then the consciousness of seeing arises.
From this consciousness comes sensation; that which is sensed is thought over; that which is thought over is projected outward as the external world.
(p 169)
Visuddhi Magga
When a lute is played, there is no previous store of playing that it comes from.
When the music stops, it does not go anywhere else.
It came into existence by way of the structure of the lute and the playing of the performer.
When the playing ceases, the music goes out of existence.
In the same way all the components of being, both material and nonmaterial:
- come into existence,
- play their part, and
- pass away. …
(p 72)
There are actions but there is no actor.
The air moves but there is no wind.
The idea of a specific self is a mistake.
Existence is clarity and emptiness.
(p 73)
[The] words
living entity and
person are but ways of expressing the
relationship [between:] body, feeling, and consciousness …
[When] we come to examine the elements of being one by one, we find [that, in an absolute sense,] there is no entity there.
(p 119, emphasis added)
Dhammapada
There is freedom from desire and sorrow at the end of the way.
The awakened one is free from all fetters and goes beyond life and death.
Like a swan that rises from the lake, with his thoughts at peace he moves onward, never looking back.
The one who understands the [emptiness] of all things, and who has laid up no store — that one's track is unseen, as of birds in the air.
Like a bird in the air, he takes an invisible course:
- wanting nothing,
- storing nothing,
- knowing the emptiness of all things. …
(p 12)
To travel with fools makes the journey long and hard and is as painful as travelling with an enemy.
But the company of the wise is as pleasant as meeting with friends.
(p 98)
Empty your boat … and you will travel more swiftly.
Lighten the load of craving and opinions and you will reach nirvana sooner.
(p 123)
[We are what we think.]
All that we are [arises with] our thoughts …
With our thoughts we make the world.
(p 157)
Digha Nikaya
Secrecy is the mark of false doctrine.
(p 46)
… I detest and will not undertake the so-called miracles of magic power and divination.
I and my followers attract nonbelievers only by the miracle of truth.
(p 119)
Surangama Sutra
You should inquire deeply and directly into the distress of the mind and find out
- what has been created and
- who is the self that is suffering.
(p 111)
Itivuttaka Sutta
[Life is to be] lived for the sake of seeing into things and understanding them.
(p 124)
Bhaddekaralta Sutra
Do not go after the past.
Nor lose yourself in the future.
For the past no longer exists,
And the future is not yet here.
(p 140)
Anguttara Nikaya
All conditioned things are impermanent.
(p 133)
(Anne Bancroft, Editor,
The Pocket Buddha Reader, Shambhala, 2001)
The types of wives here called a slayer,
A thief, and the wife like a tyrant,
These kinds of wives, with the body’s breakup,
Will be reborn deep in hell. …
One without anger, afraid of punishment,
Who bears with her husband free of hate,
Who humbly submits to her husband’s will —
Such a wife is called a handmaid [female slave]. …
[The] wives like mother, sister, friend,
And the wife called a handmaid,
Steady in virtue, long restrained,
With the body’s breakup go to heaven.
(The Happiness Visible in This Present Life,
In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, Chapter 4,
Bhikkhu Bodhi, Editor, Wisdom Publications, 2005)
Matthieu Ricard (1946)
Meditating on the Nature of the Mind
Few of us would regret the years it takes to complete an education or master a crucial skill.
So why complain about the perseverance needed to become a well-balanced and truly passionate human being?
(p 136)
An ethic that is built exclusively on intellectual ideas and that is not buttressed at every point by virtue, genuine wisdom, and compassion has no solid foundation.
(p 250)
When the mind examines itself, what can it learn about its own nature?
The first thing it notices is the endless series of thoughts that pass through it.
These feed our sensations, our imagination, our memories and our projections about the future.
Do we also find a 'luminous' quality in the mind that illuminates our experience, no matter what its content?
This luminous quality is the fundamental cognitive faculty that underlies all thought.
It is that which, when we are angry, sees the anger without letting itself be drawn into it.
This simple, pure awareness can be called pure consciousness, because it can be perceived even in the absence of concepts and mental constructs.
(p 168)
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:
Just by sitting quietly and observing how rapidly, and in many ways illogically, my thoughts and emotions came and went, I began to recognize in a direct way that they weren't nearly as solid or real as they appeared to be.
And once I began to let go of my belief in the story they seemed to tell, I began to see the 'author' beyond them — the infinitely vast, infinitely open awareness that is the nature of mind itself.
Any attempt to capture the direct experience of the nature of mind in words is impossible.
The best that can be said is that the experience is immeasurably peaceful, and, once stabilized through repeated experience, virtually unshakable.
(
The Art of Meditation, 2010, pp 173-174)
[There] is no permanent existence, either in our being, or, in that of objects.
We ourselves, our faculty of judgement and all mortal things are flowing and rolling ceaselessly; nothing certain can be established about one from the other, since both judge and judging are ever shifting and changing. …
And if you should … try to grasp what Man's
being is, it would be exactly like trying to hold a fisful of water …
[Since] all things are subject to … change, Reason is baffled if it looks for a substantial existence in them, since it cannot apprehend a single thing which subsists permanently …
(p 680)
[In Nature,] all things are either born, being born, or dying.
(
An apology for Raymond Sebond, p 682)
No matter what falls within our knowledge, no matter what we enjoy, it fails to make us content and we go gaping after things outside our knowledge, future things, since present goods never leave us satisfied — not … because they are inadequate to satisfy us but because we clasp them in a sick and immoderate grip …
(On one of Caesar's sayings, p 347)
As Nature has furnished us with feet to walk with, so has she furnished us with wisdom to guide us in our lives. …
The more simply we entrust ourself to Nature the more wisely we do so. …
Were I a good pupil there is enough, I find, in my own experience to make me wise.
(p 1218)
If each man closely spied upon the effects and attributes of the passions which have rule over him as I do upon those which hold sway over me, he would see them coming and slow down a little the violence of their assault.
(p 1219)
When I dance, I dance.
When I sleep, I sleep; and when I am strolling alone through a beautiful orchard, although part of the time my thoughts are occupied by other things, for part of the time too I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the delight in being alone there, and to me.
… Nature has provided that such actions as she has imposed on us as necessities should also be pleasurable, urging us towards them not only by reason but by desire. …
If you have been able to examine and manage your own life you have achieved the greatest task of all.
(p 1258)
Nothing is so beautiful, so right, as acting as a man should: nor is any learning so arduous as knowing how to live this life naturally and well.
And the most uncouth of our afflictions is to despise our being.
(
On experience, p 1261)
(
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, 1580, M A Screech, Translator, Penguin, 1991)
Professor of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Law of Nature
{The first principle of monotheist religions is
God exists.
What does He want from me?
The first principle of Buddhism is
Suffering exists.
How do I escape it? …}
Gautama’s insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction.
When the mind experiences something distasteful it craves to be rid of the irritation. …
As long as the pain continues, we are dissatisfied and do all we can to [resist or] avoid it.
Yet even when we experience pleasant things we are never content.
We either fear that the pleasure might disappear, or we hope that it will intensify. …
Gautama found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle.
If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understands things as they are, then there is no suffering.
If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you do not suffer from it.
There can actually be richness in the sadness.
If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind.
But how do you get the mind to accept things as they are, without craving?
To accept sadness as sadness, joy as joy, pain as pain?
Gautama developed a set of meditation techniques that train the mind to experience reality as it is, without craving.
These practices train the mind to focus all its attention on the question,
What am I experiencing now?
rather than on
What would I rather be experiencing? …
Gautama grounded these meditation techniques in a set of ethical rules meant to make it easier for people to focus on actual experience and to avoid falling into cravings and fantasies.
He instructed his followers to avoid killing, promiscuous sex and theft, since such acts necessarily stoke the fire of craving (for power, for sensual pleasure, or for wealth).
When the flames are completely extinguished, craving is replaced by a state of perfect contentment and serenity, known as nirvana (the literal meaning of which is ‘extinguishing the fire’).
Those who have attained nirvana are fully liberated from all suffering.
They experience reality with the utmost clarity, free of fantasies and delusions.
While they will most likely still encounter unpleasantness and pain, such experiences cause them no misery.
A person who does not crave cannot suffer. …
He encapsulated his teachings in a single law:
- suffering arises from craving;
- the only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and
- the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.
Know Thyself
According to Buddhism, most people identify happiness with pleasant feelings, while identifying suffering with unpleasant feelings. …
The problem, according to Buddhism, is that our feelings are no more than fleeting vibrations, changing every moment, like the ocean waves. …
Why struggle so hard to achieve something that disappears almost as soon as it arises?
According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness.
Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction.
Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. …
People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them.
This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices.
In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them.
When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied.
All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing — joy, anger, boredom, lust — but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are.
You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been.
The resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it.
It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain ‘good’ waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back ‘bad’ waves to prevent them from getting near him.
Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise.
Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please.
How peaceful! …
Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions.
Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings.
Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer.
Buddha’s recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.
(
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, 2014)
