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02 9th, 2010| 
Practical Buddhism: [1] What is Buddhism ?
What is Buddhism ?
In a word, Buddhism is a quest. It’s the search for ultimate metaphysical knowledge and insight. It is not a religion, or a philosophy, or a way of life, or a faith: it is an investigative quest. A true Buddhist begins at the beginning – at square one -and tries, slowly, and patiently, and persistently, using the best resources to hand, to gain some insight into the human condition. This necessarily takes time, and considerable effort. The human condition does not easily give up its metaphysical secrets, because if it did, there would be no need for a quest in the first place.
The Story of the Buddha:
We can reinforce the idea of Buddhism as a quest by recounting the story of the Buddha himself. The key points of the narrative are very simple, and they illustrate the essence of the Buddhist teaching . It does not much matter whether or not there was an exact historical match for the central character – Gautama – as the story is essentially an instructive device, and no less valuable for having a mythical quality to it.
Gautama – the future Buddha - was born into a royal family in ancient India, some two-and-a-half thousand years ago. His status as a prince meant that he had a privileged upbringing, as well as an excellent education. He would have had a rich intellectual life, and would have been intensely curious and responsive to the world around him.
As it turned out, his sensitivity was his undoing. When he came across instances of suffering and death and decay in the ordinary world beyond the palace, Gautama was shocked by what he saw. He was provoked into a deep inner questioning. And over time, he became increasingly tormented by issues as to the meaning and purpose of life. He went through what these days would be termed an existential crisis. His torment reached the point where he took a drastic decision. He decided to abandon his privileged lifestyle, leave his family, and devote himself to the search for the truth. He became a wandering ascetic, dead to the world, but focussed on trying to answer the big questions of life and existence.
He began by studying all that tradition had to offer. He learned all the yogas, and practiced all the religious austerities. He absorbed all the philosophies, and all the devotional creeds. He threw himself into all the religious teachings with a single-minded fanaticism. But all to no avail. Nothing seemed to work, and he felt as if nothing essential had changed. He had plenty of new experiences, but they did not offer the answers he sought. He felt that the problem with which he had begun – that of the human condition – had still not in any way been resolved.
So he discarded all religious teachings, and turned his back on all traditional methods. He determined either to find a way out on his own, or die in the attempt. Eventually he sat himself down under a tree, and began turning the problem over and over in his mind, for one final assault. After a massive mental struggle, the result of years and years of searching, something clicked, and he received a flash of insight, and the problem that had tormented him for so long had vanished. He was granted inner knowledge as to the essential nature of the universe, and in so doing he was transformed from an ordinary human being into a Buddha. He became enlightened.
The key to the entire story, and the key to all of Buddhism, is the fact that, to make any metaphysical progress, Gautama had to clear his mind of all the different ideas he had been told, and focus instead only on that which he could verify with his own inner sight. He could not be a believer, or a follower, or a disciple; he had to face metaphysical darkness on his own, unencumbered by ideas, and philosophies, and mind games. He was not looking for new experiences, or altered states of consciousness, or union with the divine; he was looking for insight. Searching for insight is of a different order to searching for experience, and requires an altogether different level of understanding and maturity. Experience never resolves anything, it only leads to further experience, even if the new experience seems to be more subtle, and more profound, and more intimate than the last. This is the essential difference between Buddhism and yoga: Buddhism is centred on insight, whereas yoga is centred on experience. A true Buddhist may have only a few tiny insights to show for twenty years of hard mental struggle; whereas in the same period a yogi may have clocked up thousands of hours of psychedelic wonderment. But there is no comparison between the two, because the Buddhist is at least knocking on the right door, whereas the yogi is lost in the labyrinth of self-absorption. When you have reached a certain very ordinary, everyday level of mental and emotional maturity, you would not trade insight for euphoria.
[to be continued]