“When human beings have human values in their hearts, material progress can bring happiness and well-being to all. When people lack human values – when they trample human values underfoot by going overboard in exercising their power and influence – material progress can destroy the peace and well-being of human beings throughout the world.” – Ajaan Lee (20th Century Thai Forest Buddhist Master)
When Buddha diagnosed and prescribed the cure for unnecessary human suffering in his great teaching, The Four Noble Truths, he gave eight “paths,” consisting of perspectives, values, and skills that are necessary for living an enlightened life. Each of what is known as the “Eightfold Path” begin with the adjective “right,” and Buddha advised that we first cultivate the “Right View” – seeing the world as it actually is – impermanent forms infinitely interconnected and co-arising out of unity. With this, we are called to a value and ethical system based in recognition that our well-being and happiness are connected to the well-being of all Life. He then goes on to address the need for “right” intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, capacity for concentration, and mindfulness as the prescription for an optimal human life. It all amounts to a “right” story of how to live a human life not experiencing or creating suffering. Buddha realized that human beings live inside of stories – it’s what the human mind does – and all the teachings of Buddhism are stories which can guide our mind, and thus our lives, in the direction of an increasingly harmonious life if we give “right intention” and “right effort” to the actualization of such right stories.
The quote from Ajaan Lee at the beginning of this column is just such an example of right story. It is a statement in the tradition of Buddhist Dharma, the collection of teachings which point us to how to live a life harmonious with others and all of Life, and thus, within ourselves. These insights are based in applied Right Concentration and Right Mindfulness, as was practiced by the Buddha and the entire lineage of teachers and students of the Dharma which followed. In the silence of concentrated mindfulness and meditation, the nature of existence and our own original nature prior to corruption by social/psychological conditioning reveals itself as the substrata of existence. Buddhism is a story of how to break free of the corruption caused by attaching identity to egoic mind with its delusion of separateness and consequent insecurity, telling stories that cause suffering.
Buddhism teaches that the original nature of humans is without story, but that we humans suffer and create suffering because our egoic mind compulsively generates stories about our experience of Life rather than living directly within and as an expression of Life as does every other life form. A necessary element of story is the duality of “me” telling the story to someone, even when the someone is “me” in my own mind. This means separateness, yet Dharma points to the Truth that the Universe is not separate parts; rather it is manifesting its parts within unity. As an analogy, consider your own body. It is a unity that manifests the head and arms and legs, heart, lungs, stomach, digestive enzymes, gut bacteria, etc. and within and through this unity there is the mysterious intelligent energy that harmonizes and balances all the functions of the body. None of the “parts” can function without connection within the whole. So too, this is the truth of Nature and the Universe – and humanity. This is Dharma.
This story expands to realizing that neither the body nor the mind are who we are. Buddhism understands the mind to be a correlative to the body in that as the body is a manifestation of a person, so too is the mind. We cannot be human beings without human bodies and human minds, but both are understood as manifestations of an even deeper reality to human existence, the mysterious energy of consciousness. While our mainstream science resists locating consciousness beyond the brain the ancients understood it as the force beneath the manifested world that is the core Truth of Existence. The Vedic tradition of India called it Brahman – That which brings forth the world.
As the body is the physical manifestation of a human, the mind is the mental manifestation of a human. Both body and mind arise within and out of the deeper energy of consciousness which gives life and energy to both body and mind. While body and mind are manifestations of the individual human, consciousness is not individual; it is Universal. It is the mysterious force that brings forth the manifest world and all life within the manifest world in a balance so delicate and perfect it is appropriate to describe it as miracle. This insight is what is most likely beneath the human intuition to the deity archetype – the thousand names and forms of God.
Human minds, when experienced as identified with human bodies, amidst other humans, amidst all the individual phenomena of Nature, along with all the inventions and constructions human minds can devise, create the story of a separate individual human struggling for survival, significance, comfort, and happiness among all the likewise struggling humans. Our duality arises because we compulsively are mentally telling ourselves stories of this struggle. We are divided even within ourselves. This is the story of dukkha, the existential, psychological suffering the Buddha addressed. It brings about competition amongst humans quite different from the natural competition for the basic necessities of life amongst other creatures. Humans compete compulsively beyond the basics of Life. We compete for psychological advantage over others – competitions that bring about politics and religions that people argue and kill over. This competition brings about suspicion, judgment, bigotry, greed, selfishness, and cruel speech and action. It brings about cheating, stealing, harming, and killing. It brings about war. It brings about stories of emotional suffering, mental illnesses and addictions. We compete for significance even with ourselves, experiencing never being enough, always needing more. We live in psychological time with time running out.
Stories of separateness and lack, concocted in human minds, bring about all these afflictions. Modern consciousness teacher, Eckhart Tolle, tells us, “Pain is not suffering, pain plus story is suffering.” Life certainly contains pain. Animals experience pain, but they do not emotionally suffer over the pain. It does not occur to them to create a story that they should not have to bear the pain. They bear the pain. Humans too often do not bear life’s pains without creating stories about being victims of the pain – physical, emotional, and mental pain. Humans even create stories that tell us that which is not inherently unpleasant or painful IS unpleasant and painful. These stories create suffering, not only in the present moment, but in memory and anticipation.
Yet – the story of humanity is also comprised of heroic and wise stories, of how to not turn life into suffering, how to meet pain and bear pain without complaint or suffering, along with stories reminding us of beauty, love, kindness, generosity, and heroism – what Ajaan Lee is calling “human values.” These are stories of people creating for themselves and others the experience of Life being good, even spiritual. These are stories to be inspired by, to create lives built on human values, such as The Eightfold Path, which bring with them peace, security, sense of connection, wonder, and fulfillment in being alive. These are stories to guide us in overcoming the human tendency toward creating suffering. These are what I call right stories.
Buddhism and other wisdom traditions eventually tell us, enlightenment is living without story, in the immediacy of the here-and-now – in the silence of Eternity unfolding. This too is a story, the story of Awakening, of realizing that who we ultimately are is not our human body, mind, and circumstance, but the mystery of silent consciousness that has a human body, mind, and circumstance playing its part in the Great Unfolding of the One Reality, The Universe, the energy that holds all Life together perfectly. Our path of Awakening is about the stories we need to let go of, that are the source of our suffering, and it is also about embracing stories of personal heroism and values which can lead us to well-being and peace. Right stories can liberate us from the pain and confusion we create for ourselves and others – and just as we are all unique, there is a unique right story for each person. Buddhism and other wisdom traditions tell us that our right stories await us in the silence of “Right Concentration” and “Right Mindfulness” whispering in the silence of consciousness beneath the egoic mind spinning its stories of struggle. These are stories of awakening and liberation, and we do well to pay attention to these stories. They point us beyond all stories. They point to silence. They point to stillness. They point to where we begin as the Universe manifesting a human being, the human being that is authentically, uniquely you. Enter the silence where there are no ego-stories so you can hear the whispered stories of your soul journeying through Eternity. This is where we find the truth of who we are and the truth of this existence as a human being – whispered in the inner silence.