The Three Marks of Existence

Buddhism has been described as a very pragmatic religion. It does not indulge in metaphysical speculation about first causes; there is no theology, no worship of a deity or deification of the Buddha. Buddhism takes a very straightforward look at our human condition; nothing is based on wishful thinking, at all. Everything that the Buddha taught was based on his own observation of the way things are. Everything that he taught can be verified by our own observation of the way things are.

If we look at our life, very simply, in a straightforward way, we see that it is marked with frustration and pain. This is because we attempt to secure our relationship with the "world out there", by solidifying our experiences in some concrete way. For example, we might have dinner with someone we admire very much, everything goes just right, and when we get home later we begin to fantasise about all the things we can do with our new-found friend, places we can go etc. We are going through the process of trying to cement our relationship. Perhaps, the next time we see our friend, she/he has a headache and is curt with us; we feel snubbed, hurt, all our plans go out the window. The problem is that the "world out there" is constantly changing, everything is impermanent and it is impossible to make a permanent relationship with anything, at all.

If we examine the notion of impermanence closely and honestly, we see that it is all-pervading, everything is marked by impermanence. We might posit an eternal consciousness principle, or higher self, but if we examine our consciousness closely we see that it is made up of temporary mental processes and events. We see that our "higher self" is speculative at best and imaginary to begin with. We have invented the idea to secure ourselves, to cement our relationship, once again. Because of this we feel uneasy and anxious, even at the best of times. It is only when we completely abandon clinging that we feel any relief from our queasiness.

These three things are known as the three marks of existence.

1. pain

2. impermanence

3. egolessness

Skandha

The Sanskrit word skandha means "heap" or "aggregate." The Buddha taught that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence, called the Five Skandhas. These are:

1.Form
2.Sensation
3.Perception
4.Mental formations
5.Consciousness

Various schools of Buddhism do not interpret the skandhas in exactly the same way. Generally, the first skandha is our physical form. The second is made up of our feelings, emotional and physical, and our senses -- seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling.

The third skandha, perception, takes in most of what we call thinking -- conceptualization, cognition, reasoning. This also includes the recognition that occurs when an organ comes into contact with an object. Perception can be thought of as "that which identifies." The object perceived may be a physical object or a mental one, such as an idea.

The fourth skandha, mental formations, includes habits, prejudices and predispositions. Our volition, or willfulness, also is part of the fourth skandha, as are attention, faith, conscientiousness, pride, desire, vindictiveness, and many other mental states both virtuous and not virtuous. The causes and effects of karma are especially important to the fourth skandha.

The fifth skandha, consciousness, is awareness of or sensitivity to an object, but without conceptualization. Once there is awareness, the third skandha might recognize the object and assign a concept-value to it, and the fourth skandha might react with desire or revulsion or some other mental formation. The fifth skandha is explained in some schools as base that ties the experience of life together.

The Buddha taught that our egos, personalities and the sense that the "self" is something distinctive and permanent enclosed within our bodies, are just illusory effects of the skandhas.

A Very Buddhist Christmas

In all the Christmas rush and in what some perceive to be a "war against Christmas," America's growing Buddhist community seem to be missing in action. There are two reasons that many Buddhists typically do not have a problem wishing "Merry Christmas" or participating in other aspects of the holiday season.

A Buddhist holiday in December

First, there is a Buddhist holiday on December 8th, known as Bodhi Day, which can be absorbed into the Christmas/Hanukkah season. Unlike most Buddhist holidays, based on a lunar calendar like the Jewish festival of Hanukkah (more) or the Christian festival of Easter (more), Bodhi Day does not move around the solar calendar from year to year.

Bodhi Day commemorates the attainment of Enlightenment (Bodhi in the original languages) by Siddhartha Gautama, who thereafter would be called the Buddha, the Enlightened. A good review of the events in the life of the Buddha is A Young People's Life of the Buddha, available here.

A Buddhist Santa Claus

Second, there is Hotei. Traditions about the identity of this fat man in a monk's robes carrying a sack get confused, but does that sound familiar? A fat man with a sack, a Buddhist Santa Claus? Hotei is based on a historical figure, a Chinese monk. Although he is known in Western countries especially as the "laughing Buddha" or the "fat Buddha," he is not technically a Buddha, an enlightened one, but a bodhisattva, a Buddha-to-be (more).

He is identified with Maitreya, who, it is taught, is the next Buddha yet to be. Some traditions say that Hotei gave children sweets from his sack, while other traditions say that he simply carried all his worldly goods in that sack.

Those are easy, fairly superficial Buddhist connections to Christmas, reasons why Buddhists do not have a war against Christmas. But, the one recurring Buddhist objection to Christmas in several blogs and websites is one that many Christians would share, that Christmas has become too commercialized and hectic, that its spiritual values have been diminished, by those who celebrate it.

Happy Bodhi Day! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas!

Dependent Origination

The physical world as we know it, with all its imperfections and suffering, is the product of what the Buddha called dependent origination.

The Buddha taught that this was a 12-stage process - a circular chain, not a straight line. Each stage gives rise to the one directly after it.

1. Ignorance: inability to see the truth, depicted by a blind man.

2. Willed action: actions that shape our emerging consciousness, depicted by a potter moulding clay.

3. Conditioned consciousness: the development of habits, blindly responding to the impulses of karmic conditioning, represented by a monkey swinging about aimlessly.

4. Form and existence: a body comes into being to carry our karmic inheritance, represented by a boat carrying men.

5. The six sense-organs: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body (touch) and mind, the way sensory information passes into us, represented by the doors and windows of a house.

6. Sense-impressions: the combination of sense-organ and sensory information, represented by two lovers .

7. Sensation: the feelings we get from sense-impressions, which are so vivid that they blind us, represented by a man shot in the eye with an arrow.

8. Craving (tanhā): negative desires that can never be sated, represented by a man drinking.

9. Attachment: grasping at things we think will satisfy our craving, represented by someone reaching out for fruit from a tree.

10. Becoming: worldly existence, being trapped in the cycle of life, represented by a pregnant woman.

11. Birth: represented by a woman giving birth.

12. Old age and death: grief, suffering and despair, the direct consequences of birth, represented by an old man.

The Realms of the Universe

The Buddhist Universe

The great tragedy of existence, from a Buddhist point of view, is that it is both endless and subject to impermanence, suffering and uncertainty. These three are called the tilakhana or three signs of existence.

Existence is endless because individuals are reincarnated over and over again, experiencing suffering throughout many lives.

It is impermanent because no state, good or bad, lasts forever. Our mistaken belief that things can last is a chief cause of suffering.

It is uncertain because when we examine our experience, no knower can be defined and no enduring essence of experience can be located.

Only achieving liberation, or nirvana, can free a being from the cycle of life, death and rebirth.

The Realms

Buddhism has six realms into which a soul can be reborn. From most to least pleasant, these are:

1. Heaven, the home of the gods (devas): this is a realm of enjoyment inhabited by blissful, long- lived beings. It is subdivided by later sources into 26 levels of increasing happiness.

2. The realm of humanity: although humans suffer, this is considered the most fortunate state because humans have the greatest chance of enlightenment.

3. The realm of the Titans or angry gods (asuras): these are warlike beings who are at the mercy of angry impulses.

4. The realm of the hungry ghosts (pretas): these unhappy beings are bound to the fringes of human existence, unable to leave because of particularly strong attachments. They are unable to satisfy their craving, symbolised by their depiction with huge bellies and tiny mouths.

5. The animal realm: this is undesirable because animals are exploited by human beings, and do not have the necessary self-awareness to achieve liberation.

6. Hell realms: people here are horribly tortured in many creative ways, but not for ever - only until their bad karma is worked off.

(Early sources listed five realms, excluding the Titans.)

The first two levels are good places to be born. The inhabitants of the next three levels all have a particular defect (hatred, greed, ignorance), and hell is obviously the worst of the lot.

Interlinked

These are not all separate realms, but are interlinked in keeping with the Buddhist philosophy that mind and reality are linked.

Thus, although humans and animals live together in the same world, the implications of being born as a human and as an animal are very different, and they are represented as two separate realms.

And a human being can experience touches of heaven when happy, or the lower states when hateful, greedy, ignorant or in pain. Someone adept at meditation will experience progressively higher heaven realms.

What Is a Bodhisattva?

A Bodhisatvva is an ordinary person who takes up a course in his or her life that moves in the direction of buddha. You're a bodhisattva, I'm a bodhisattva; actually, anyone who directs their attention, their life, to practicing the way of life of a buddha is a bodhisattva.

We read about Kannon Bosatsu (Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva) or Monju Bosatsu (Manjushri Bodhisattva), and these are great bodhisattvas, but we, too, have to have confidence or faith that we are also bodhisattvas.

Most people live by their desires or karma. That's what the expression gossho no bompu means. Gossho are the obstructions to practicing the Way caused by our evil actions in the past.

Bompu simply means ordinary human being--that is, one who lives by karma. Our actions are dictated by our karma: We are born into this world with our desires and may live our lives just by reacting or responding to them. In contrast is gansho no bosatsu, or a bodhisattva who lives by vow.

The life that flows through each of us and through everything around us is actually all connected. To say that, of course, means that who I really am cannot be separated from all the things that surround me. Or, to put it another way, all sentient beings have their existence and live within my life. So needless to say, that includes even the fate of all mankind--that, too, lies within me. Therefore, just how mankind might truly live out its life becomes what I aim at as my direction. This aiming or living while moving in a certain direction is what is meant by vow. In other words, it is the motivation for living that is different for a bodhisattva. Ordinary people live thinking only about their own personal, narrow circumstances connected with their desires. In contrast to that, a bodhisattva, though undeniably still an ordinary human being like everyone else, lives by vow. Because of that, the significance of his or her life is not the same. For us as bodhisattvas, all aspects of life, including the fate of humanity itself, live within us. It is with this in mind that we work to discover and manifest the most vital and alive posture that we can take in living out our life.

It's not enough for a bodhisattva of the Mahayana to just uphold the precepts. There are times when you have to break them, too. It's just that when you do, you have to do so with the resolve of also being willing to accept whatever consequences might follow. That's what issai shujo to tomo ni ("together with all sentient beings" --regardless of what hell one might fall into) really means.

It's not enough just to know the definition of bodhisattva. What's much more important is to study the actions of a bodhisattva and then to behave like one yourself.

Regarding the question "What is a bodhisattva?" you could also define a bodhisattva as one who acts as a true adult. That is, most people in the world act like children. The word dainin means "true adult" or "bodhisattva." Today most people who are called adults are only pseudoadults. Physically they grow up and become adult but spiritually too many people never mature to adulthood. They don't behave as adults In their daily lives. A bodhisattva is one who sees the world through adult eyes and whose actions are the actions of a true adult.

That is really what a bodhisattva is.

The Illusion of Soul

The Buddha taught that there is no soul, no essential and permanent core to a living being. Instead, that which we call a "living being", human or other, can be seen to be but a temporary coming together of many activities and parts.

When complete it is called a "living being", but after the parts separate and the activities cease it is not called a 'living being' anymore.

Like an advanced computer assembled of many parts and activities, only when it is complete and performs coherent tasks is it called a "computer", but after the parts are disconnected and the activities cease it is no longer called a "computer". No essential permanent core can be found which we can truly call "the computer", just so, no essential permanent core can be found which we can call "the soul".

Yet Rebirth still occurs without a soul. Consider this simile: on a Buddhist shrine one candle, burnt low, is about to expire. A monk takes a new candle and lights it from the old. The old candle dies, the new candle burns bright. What went across from the old candle to the new? There was a causal link but no thing went across! In the same way, there was a causal link between your previous life and your present life, but no soul has gone across.

Indeed, the illusion of a soul is said by the Buddha to be the root cause of all human suffering. The illusion of 'soul' manifests as the "Ego". The natural unstoppable function of the Ego is to control. Big Egos want to control the world, average Egos try to control their immediate surroundings of home, family and workplace, and almost all Egos strive to control what they take to be their own body and mind. Such control manifests as desire and aversion, it results in a lack of both inner peace and outer harmony.

It is this Ego that seeks to acquire possessions, manipulate others and exploit the environment. Its aim is its own happiness but it invariably produces suffering.

It craves for satisfaction but it experiences discontent.

Such deep-rooted suffering cannot come to an end until one sees, through deep and powerful meditation, that the idea "me and mine" is no more than a mirage.