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“Mind is the forerunner of all phenomena.
Mind is their chief, and they are all mind-made.
If, with an impure mind, one speaks or acts,
the suffering follows one
Even as the cart wheel follows the hoof of the ox.”
“Mind is the forerunner of all phenomena.
Mind is their chief, and they are ind-made.
If, with a pure mind, one speaks or acts,
Then happiness follows one
Like a never-departing shadow.”
This is the central theme of the Buddha's teaching - the human mind. Herein is why Buddhism is one of the most misunderstood
religion in the Western world. Occidentals may even wonder if it is possible to call Buddhism a religion at all. With the
Western cultural heritage and its major concerns of immortality, god, punishment, redemption, revelation and so forth, men
have projected on to Buddhism their own concepts, values and expectations. However, erroneous notions regarding the Dharma
are not entirely the fault of Western man and our ethnocentricity. Before his parinibbana the Buddha predicted that within
a thousand years his doctrine would fall into the hands of men of lesser understanding and would thereby become distorted
and corrupted. Such has been the case throughout much, if not most, of Asia. It has been perpetuated in the West where ritual
has replaced self-discipline, faith has replaced insight, and prayer has replaced understanding. In another sutra he tells
us that 2500 years after his death the Dharma would reside in the hearts of but a handful of men and 2500 years after that
it would virtually dissappear. It has been 2500 years since the death of the Buddha.
If the basis of Christianity is God, the basis of Buddhism is mind. From the Buddha's viewpoint, mind or consciousness is
the core of our existence. Pleasure and pain, good and evil, time and space, life and death have no meaning for us apart from
our awareness of them or our thoughts about them. Whether god exists or does not exist, whether existence is primarily physical
or fundamentally spiritual, whether we live for a few decades or are immortal; all these matters are secondary to the one
empirical fact of which we do have certainty: the existence of conscious experience as it moves through the course of daily
experience. Buddhism focuses on the mind because happiness and sorrow, pain and pleasure are psychological experiences. There
is no thing, concept or ideal that has meaning except as the result of our attitudes and feelings. We filter all our experiences
through the mesh of conceptualization.
One cannot deny the reality of material existence. Buddha did not ignore the tremendous effects the material world has upon
us. He refuted the dichtomy of body and mind that is so much a part of Western and Hindu tradition. He said they were interdependent.
But the fundamental reality of human existence is the ever-changing sequence of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and perceptions
that comprise conscious experience. From the viewpoint of early Buddhism the primary concern of religion must be these very
experiences that make up our day-to-day lives. The most significant of these are love and hate, pride and shame, sorrow, fear
and passion. Such concepts as vicarious atonement, Cosmic Consciousness, Ultimate Reality, Buddha Nature, the redemption of
sins and the union with God are metaphysical and hypothetical matters of lesser importance irrelavent to the realities of
daily existence. Therefore, the most significant fact of life is the First Noble Truth of dukkha; a Pali word that embraces
all types of suffering and stress. It's origins are found in sensual lust, anger, torpor, agitation [worry] and doubt.
If the cause of suffering is primarily psychological, then it follows that the treatment and cure is also psychological. The
Buddha taught a series of meditations [mental excercises] designed to uncover and cure our mental aberrations. Buddhist meditaiton
is very often confused wth yogic meditation, autohypnosis, quests for occult power and the attempt to unite with God. These
are not the concerns or practrices of the Buddha's Eightfold Path. In Buddhism per se, there are no secret teachings, no mystical
formulas, no drugs or stimulants. It deals exclusively with the everyday phenomena of human consciousness. Daily life is its
working material. It has nothing to do with exotic cultic practices or rites and does not confer initiations or secret esoteric
knowledge in any way other than self-enlightenment.
It is primarily an oral tradition because reading about meditation and Buddhist practice is a little like reading about swimming.
One gets wet by stepping into the water. The Dharma must be lived and not simply thought about. Study and contemplation are
valuable tools but it is life that is the training ground. The Dhammapada tells us that the Buddha's only point the way. Each
one must work out his own salvation with diligence.
Rev. Mui Baltrunas, Assistant Abbot
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