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..:: Challenges ::..
By
Alan Schneider
Whatever else may be the case,
this life is filled with challenges, great and small, as its
consistent condition. Some of these are more relatively welcome and
workable – others are daunting in the extreme, and may even initially
appear to be curses to our human consciousness. Everything in this life
depends upon our perspective – our observational vantage point – and
this, in turn, is a function of our social conditioning, more
often than not. Is the proverbial glass half full, or half empty, and
with what? The nature of challenges is the subject of this
essay.
The nature of existence on
the Physical Plane of Expression is that of turbulence –
frequently sudden, perhaps violent, change – that tends to occur with
little, or without any, forewarning. Our consciousness in and of
the physical vessel – the body – is more or less continually tossed
about on “The Eternal Boiling Sea” (from the Biblical New Testament,
Book of Revelations) of existence. The fact that we have
evolved to function under this circumstance accounts for our
proliferation as a species, but this only generates an additional set of
complications – among them the struggle for resources and social
advantage in the world.
What are the healthiest
responses – emotionally, physically, and spiritually – to the
problematic state of affairs outlined above? What manner of living will
tend to produce the greatest coefficient of peace, happiness, and well
being for humanity? Sages and scholars have debated this matter for
millennia, and at least some productive results have been the outcome,
particularly in the fields of perceptual and motivational psychology.
Approximately two thousand
years ago, the Prince, and heir apparent, of a certain province in India
was abruptly exposed to the harsh reality of suffering on the Physical
Plane, and subsequently dedicated his life to solving the riddle of such
“negative challenges”, or adversities, ever after. His name was
Siddhartha, and after he did eventually attain the solution he was
seeking through an epiphany of Enlightenment, he became renamed as
Gautama Buddha – the Enlightened One, and became the founder of the
Buddhist spiritual and philosophical tradition. In my opinion, this
approach remains the single most accurate, effective study and analysis
of the human condition and human perception in history to date.
The Buddha’s discovery as the
result of a prolonged interval of deep meditation was that all
suffering, and, in fact, most perception of events on the Physical
Plane, occurred as the result of desire. When asked what the
essence of human behavior amounted to, a junior college photography
instructor I once had replied “We scan and fixate on items of interest –
scan and fixate”, and this is substantially correct, but the underlying
question that the Buddha answered was why? It is our
permanently unfinished, and only temporarily satisfied,
nature as organisms that drives this behavior, and we experience that as
a more or less constant state of desire. Hence, the famous Buddhist
observation that suffering can only be extinguished by extinguishing
desire – the two are inseparable from each other. Unfortunately, as my
instructor observed, nothing is more natural to human experience
than desire, and this remains true even in the relatively fortunate case
where a given individual is capable of successfully satisfying the many
desires of the Physical Plane.
The fundamental tenet of
Buddhism is that all life is a mosaic of suffering. In the situation
noted above, the repeated successful gratification of desire produces a
conditioned response to expect such outcomes, and this is bound
to produce abundant suffering when age or infirmity remove the physical
capability to obtain gratification, as they always do eventually. The
best that can be hoped for is a series of temporary escapes from the
aggravating truth of existence, and we must always confront that truth
at some stage of life – that it is a temporary, ultimately insoluble,
riddle as long as desire remains the focus of our consciousness. We are
doomed to face ourselves for what we are – the only way out is
through, and even this involves suffering.
So, the first (and
fundamental) challenge of existence is the control, and eventual
negation, of desire as a factor operating in our consciousness. In this
regard, at least as physical organisms, we are our own worst enemies in
every sense and circumstance of the term. Who has no desires? The
Buddha himself foretold that there would be a succession of subsequent
Buddhas to follow him in his tradition, but this has not been the case –
no one else has ever mastered his level of Enlightenment again, not even
the well known Dali Lama of our modern period of history, although such
a consciousness as the Lama’s certainly comes close to Guatama’s
attainment of absolute detachment and spiritual freedom, and serves as a
model for human achievement.
A large part of the desire
“problem” resides in the propensity of the physical organism to
continually thrust new desires into consciousness. As I said earlier,
the manifestation of desire is an inevitable consequence of human
nature. What must first change is our entire attitude toward the very
presence of desired conditions in our consciousness. Since they are the
invariable harbingers of disappointment and suffering, they are not
to be accepted or trusted at face value. Buddhism has produced volumes
of discourse on extensive methodologies for eliminating desire and the
subsequent desire-actions intended to obtain gratification, but
the initial caveat is still to hold desire in suspicion when it occurs.
It can next be argued that,
without desire, we would not eat, nor sleep, nor reproduce, nor
experience motivation to act, per se, at all, and this brings us
to the discussion of the moral ramifications of physical life as we know
it. These ramifications are nowhere as clearly delineated as they are in
the concept of Karma. As has been noted elsewhere in these
essays, the literal Sanskrit translation of the term Karma is Action
– referring to all mental and physical “movements” experienced in life
on any Plane of Expression anywhere. Even ideas are mental movements,
ones that frequently result in a cascade of subsequent mental and
(eventually) physical movements, and this does not include the vast
array of physical movements that occur every minute of every day as the
result of essentially mindless, thoughtless habit formation. Spiritual
movements are less subject to this classification schema, because they
at least demonstrate the possibility of Mindful, aware action devoted to
the attainment of Enlightenment and Truth (although there is a range
of spiritual activity on the lower Planes that is capable of generating
more Karma through relative ignorance). In essence, any movement that
takes place as the result of anything other than Enlightenment and God
Realization is going to generate more Karma – unfinished
psychospiritual business – that persists thereafter in life until it
is confronted and released through Dharma – spiritually Mindful
devotion to the Truth of Enlightenment. Under this consideration, the
less that one does in ignorance of the Truth, the better, and all
thoughts and actions should be considered first and foremost in view of
their moral and spiritual consequences.
Buddhism holds meditation as
being among the spiritually highest human activities, because it
simultaneously avoids ignorant actions that produce more Karma, and
creates Enlightened consciousness that accomplishes Dharma through the
contemplation of the Divine Principle. In general, that which creates
the least degree of external turbulence on the Physical Plane is
deemed appropriate in Buddhist doctrine as essentially augmenting inner
and outer peace and harmony, and prolonged meditation certainly fulfills
this condition. Meditation is synonymous with peace.
Now, a point that remains to
be explored in this discussion of Challenges regards the
manifestation of material abundance that is such a popular theme in this
time of constricted material abundance and involuntary
austerity confronting humanity everywhere in the world. Clearly, the
Earth’s human population currently has financial renewal, and the
attendant material prosperity, as top priorities. What is the Buddhist
impression of this world mindset?
I mentioned in a previous
paragraph that desire accounts not only for the personal perception of
suffering, but of most perception of any kind in life.
This is due in large part to the action of the ego in consciousness.
Although the ego does not, per se, create desire (which originates in
the physical processes of the body), it does always interpret
desire and classify and prioritize the many desires that we experience
according to their relative importance, attainability, and persistence.
The ego essentially exists to gratify our desires as a meta-survival
mechanism. Under this circumstance, it is quite natural for the ego to
respond with interest and enthusiasm to any prosperity themes that it
encounters in life, whether these are the least bit viable or attainable
or not. The world is currently filled with people practicing every
manner of prosperity “generation” technique, including every kind of
visualization imaginable, social networking ad nausium,
compulsive working of enormous amounts of under paid overtime, attempted
associative “magical” manifestation of every conceivable variety,
frantic prayer, directive “prosperity” meditation, and a truly
astounding field of social-economic manipulations, great and small. The
statistically predictable minority of successes in any or all of these
areas of course fuels the fire for the rest of the prosperity
devotees, who then pursue their obsessions with renewed enthusiasm.
The bitter truth of
prosperity is that it results in most cases from a lifetime of hard work
and moderately good fortune (i.e. luck), consistently applied
through the individual’s social system. Instant prosperity windfalls
resulting from ego motivated perceptual self-manipulation do
occasionally occur, but they are far more rare than their many advocates
will admit. And, under the heading of “good fortune” noted above, we
encounter our old nemesis, Karma. I say to you right now that,
until we have processed through our negative life Karma by confronting
the things that we generally wish very strongly to avoid, our fortunes
will not and can not change for the better, because it is
we ourselves who are preventing the change through our obstinate denial
of our own self-defeating attitudes! Does God create Karma? Well, yes He
does, and we also co-create our Karma over the entire
course of our lives through the decisions we make. There is no
“prosperity manifestation” easy, quick fix for poverty and
misfortune as the modern day hucksters and snake oil salesmen claim. As
painful as it may be, we must admit to our role in our fate, take stock
of our lives, and then press on by realistically working in measured
increments of improvement. The pace of progress is two steps forward
and (hopefully) only one step backward, but the net result is that
patient persistence gradually advances our fortunes in life.
In the light of the
contentions made above, what are the roles of intuition and
positivitiy in our human condition? Intuitive sensing amounts to the
ability and inclination to “follow your Heart” as the preferred guidance
mechanism in life, as opposed to following ones head, i.e.
ego-based logical thought processing. The intuitive faculty directly
connects us to the highest means of realization – from the level
of the Heart Chakra and beyond – while the ego can go no further than
Manipura, the Social Power Chakra, and customarily resides in
Muladhara, the Root, and lowest, Chakra. The Path of the Heart leads to
joy and fulfillment in all of life’s activities, while the Path of the
Ego literally leads to a dead end. At least there is hope
in the Heart, and intuitive living. This then brings us to the matter of
positivity as another practice augmenting spiritually healthy
living. As completely “unrealistic” as it often appears to be, the
maintenance of a consistently positive outlook on life is absolutely
necessary for the achievement of a successful, happy existence. As we
pursue the real pace of progress noted in previous paragraphs,
the entertainment of a condition of positive detachment from the
consequences of our thoughts and actions will do much to insulate us
from the psychological corrosion – i.e. depression and discouragement –
of the many “backward steps” that we will experience along the way.
This is why Buddhism stresses the attainment of detachment as the most
desirable condition in life – come what may, we will inevitably pass
from incarnation to incarnation as the work of material Karma continues,
and to become attached to the fruits of our actions in life is to lose
sight of the spiritual goal of living itself – the attainment of
lasting Peace and Happiness. This state of Being is the source of
all positivity and benevolence, both within and without.
When the two horns of the desire dilemma (the ego and the organism) are
brought under control by the correct sequence of spiritual actions, we find ourselves in an entirely different mode of
consciousness, one that is internally focused on peace and harmony, and
substantially less concerned with external abundance and prosperity.
Can we attain external abundance? Yes, we certainly can, but only by
confronting our adversities with honesty, detached positivity, and
patience. Is this external abundance important? Only in the general
terms of adequately providing for our physical existences. Of far
greater importance is the attainment of Enlightenment as did the Buddha
– through meditation, compassion, and the austere grace of simple living
– “chop wood, carry water”.
- With Love, Alan -
(CR2008, Alan Schneider)
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