Through countless births I wandered in samsara, seeking, but not finding the builder of the house.I have been taking birth in misery again and again. O builder of the house you are now seen! You cannot build this house again.All the rafters and the central pole are shattered. The mind is free from all the sankhara. The craving-free stage is achieved.
"Having experienced as they really are the arising of sensations, their passing away, the relishing of them, the danger in them, and the release from them, the Enlightened One, O monks, has become detached and liberated".
Wander forth, O monks, for the benefit of many, for happiness of many. Shower compassion on the world for the good, benefit, and happiness of gods and men. Let no two go in the same direction.
"Vaya dhamma sankhara, apamadena sampadetha."
Decay is inherent in all compounded things, work out your own salvation with diligence.
"Yat Pinde, Tat Brahmande"
Buddha taught the middle path. The seekers of the truth must avoid the two extremes- that the path of sensual pleasure, and that of extreme penance or austerity. This middle path he explained by means of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.
The Four Noble Truths:
1. There is suffering
2. Suffering has a cause:craving
3. If craving ceases, suffering ceases
4. There is a path leading to the cessation of suffering.
This path leading to cessation of suffering is the Eightfold Path. It is divided into three divisions of Sila -moral living, samadhi - control of mind, and Panna- total purification of the mind by wisdom and insight.
The Eightfold Path:
Wisdom (Panna);
1. Right view (samma-ditthi) 2. Right thought (samma-sankapo)
Moral conduct (Sila);
3. Right speech (samma-vaca) 4. Right action (samma-kammatho) 5. Right livelihood (samma-ajivo)
The Buddha explained the working of the Four Noble Truths by means of the Law of Dependent Origination.
"With ignorance and craving as our companions, we have been flowing in the stream of repeated existences from time immemorial. We come into existences and experience various types of miseries, die, and are reborn again and again without putting an end to this unbroken process of becoming." The Buddha said that this is samsara.
He further said: "Rightly understanding the perils of this process, realising fully 'craving ' as its cause, becoming free from the past accumulation, not creating the new ones in the future, one should mindfu.ly lead the life of detachment." One whose craving is uprooted finds his/her mind has become serene, and achieves a state where there is no becoming at all. This is the state of nibbana, freedom from suffering.
There are 12 interconnected links in the circular chain of becoming:(the wheel of suffering)
Dependent on ignorance (avijja), reactions (sankhara) arises,
Dependent on reactions, consciousness (vinnana) arises,
Dependent on consciousness, mind and body, the six sense doors (salayatana) arise,
Dependent on six sense doors, contact (phassa) arises,
Dependent on contact, sensation (vedana) arises,
Dependent sensation, craving (tanha) arises,
Dependent on craving, clinging (upadana) arises,
Dependent on clinging, becoming (bhava) arises,
Dependent on becoming, birth (jati) arises,
Dependent on birth, decay and death (jara, marana) arises.
Thus arises the entire mass of suffering.
This shows that depending on one, there is the origin of the other. The former serves as the cause, and the latter results as the effect. This chain is the process responsible for our misery.
The source of suffering lies within each of us. The Buddha examined the phenomenon of human being by examining his own nature. Laying aside all preconceptions, he explored reality within and realized that every being is a composite of five processes, four of them mental (mind) and one physical (matter).
Matter :
This is the most obvious, physical aspect of ourselves, readily perceived by all the senses. Superficially one can control the body: it moves and acts according to the conscious will.But on another level, all the internal organs function beyond our control, without our knowledge. At the subtler level, we know nothing, experietially, of the incessant biochemical reactions occurring within each cell of the body. But this is still not the ultimate reality of all material phenomenon. Ultimately the seemingly solid body is composed of subatomic particles and empty socae. What is more, even these subatomic particles have no real solidity.; the existence span of one of them is much less than a trillionth of a second. Particles continuously arise and vanish, passing into and out of existence, like a flow of vibrations. This is the ultimate reality of the body, of all matter, discovered by Buddha 2500 years ago.
He found that the entire material universe is composed of particles, called in Pali kalpas, or "indivisible units." This units exhibit in endless variation the basic qualities of matter.: mass(Pathavi dhatu), cohesion(Apo dhatu), temperature(Tejo dhatu) and movement(Vayo dhatu). They combine to form structures which seem to have some permanence. But actually these are all composed of miniscule kalpas which are in a state of continuously arising and passing away. This is the ultimate reality of matter: a constant stream of waves or particles. This is the body which we call " Myself".
Mind :
Along with a physical process there is a pychic process, the mind. Although it cannot be touched or seen, it seems even more intimately connected with ourselves than our bodies. We cannot imagine image of anything without our mind. Yet how little we know about the mind, and how little we are able to control it. Our control of the conscious mind is tenuous enough, but the unconscious seems totally beyond our power or understanding, filled with forces of which we may not approve or be aware.
As he examined the body, the Buddha also examined the mind and found that in broad, overall terms it consisted of four processes: consciousness (vinnana), perception (sanna), sensation ( vedana ), and reaction ( sankhara ).
The first process, consciousness, the receiving part of the mind, the act of undifferentiated awareness or cognition. It simply register the occurence of any phenomenon, the reception of any input, physical or mental. It notes the raw data of experience without assigning labels or making any value judgements.
The second mental process is perception, the act of recognition. This part of the mind identifies whatever has been noted by the consciousness. It distinguishes, labels, and categorizes the incoming raw data and makes evaluations, positive or negative.
The next part of mind is sensation. Actually as soon as any input is received, a signal that something is happening. So long as the input is not evaluated, the sensation remains neutral. But once a value is attached to the incoming data, the sensation becomes pleasant or unpleasant, depending on the evaluation given.
If the sensation is pleasant, a wish forms to prolong and intensify the experience. If it is an unpleasant sensation, the wish is to stop it, to push away. The mind reacts with liking and disliking.
The same steps occur whenever any of the other senses receives an input: consciousness, perception, sensation, reaction.These four mental functions are even more fleeting than the ephemeral particles composing the material reality. Each moment that the senses come into contact with any object, the four mental processes occur with lightening like rapidity and repeat themselves with each susequent moment of contact. So rapidly this occur, however, that one is unaware of what is happening. It is only when a particular reaction has been repeated over a longer period of time and has taken a pronounced, intensified form that awareness of it develops at the conscious level.
The most striking aspect of this description of a human being is not what it includes but what it omits. Whether we are western or Eastern, whether Christan, Jewish, Muslim Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, or anything else, each of us has a congenial assurance that there is an "I" somewhere within us, a continuing identity, We operate on the unthinking assumption that the person who existed ten years ago is essentially the same person who exists today, who will exist ten years from now, perhaps who will still exist in future life after death. No matter what philosophies or theories or beliefs we hold as true, actually we each live our lives with the deep- rooted conviction, "I was, I am, I shall be."
The Buddha challenged this instinctive assertion of identity. He said, " he has seen the reality of matter, sensation, perception, reaction and consciousness, and their arising and passing away. Despite appearances , he had found that each human being is in fact a series of seperate but related events. Each even is the result of the preceding one and follows it without any interval. The unbroken progression of closely connected events gives the appearance of continuity, of identity, but this is only an appearent reality, not ultimate truth.
We may give river a name but actually it is a flow of water never pausing in its course. Every moment something new arises as a product of the past, to be replaced by something new in the following moment. The succession of events is so rapid and continous that it is difficult to discern. At a particular point in the process one cannot say that what occurs now is the same as what prceeded it, nor can one say that it is not the same. Nevertheless the process occurs.
In the same way, a person is not a unchanging entity but a process flowing from moment to moment. There is no real "being " merely an ongoing flow , a continous process of becoming. External reality is a reality, but only a superficial one. At a deeper level the reality is that the entire universe, animate, and inanimate, is inanimate, is in a constant state of becoming - of arising and passing away. Each of us in fact a stream of constantly changing subatomic particles, along with which the processes of consciousness, perception m sensation, reaction change even more rapidly than the physical process.
This is the ultimate reality of the Myself with which each of us is so concerned. This is the course of events in which we are involved. If we can understand it properly by direct experience, we shall find the clue to lead us out of suffering.
The Way out of Suffering:
The process of the arising of the suffering can be reversed:
If ignorance is eradicated and completely ceases, reaction ceases;
if reaction ceases, consciousness ceases;
If consciousness ceases, mind-and-matter ceases;
If mind-and-matter ceases, the six senses ceases;
If contact ceases, craving and aversion ceases;
If craving and aversion ceases, attachment ceases;
If the process of becoming ceases, birth ceases;
If birth ceases, decay and death cease, together with sorrow, lamentation, physical and mental suffering and tribulations.
Thus this entire mass of suffering ceases.
If we put an end to ignorance, then there will be no blind reactions that bring in their wake all manner of suffering. And if there is no more suffering, then we shall experience real peace, real happiness. The wheel of suffering can change into a wheel of liberation.
This is what Siddhatta Gotama did in order to achieve enlightenment. This is what he taught others also.
From right understanding proceeds right thought.
from right thought proceeds right speech.
from right speech proceeds right action;
From right action proceeds right effort;
From right effort proceeds right awareness;
From right awareness proceeds right concentration;
from right concentration proceeds right wisdom;
from right wisdom proceeds right liberation.
Better a single day of life seeing the reality of arising and passing away than a hundred years of existence remaining blind to it. - S. N .Goenka ( VRI )