Class 3: Accepting The World

The Master: Buddha

Partly for this reason, Buddhism was able to spread rapidly into China, merging with the Taoist tradition to become Chan and then in Japan, Zen Buddhism.

With wealthy parents, Siddhartha grew up in a life of protected luxury, married according to his parents' dictates when he was 19, and became a father when he was 29.

But then he totally changed his life, leaving his family's palace and becoming a spiritual mendicant - wandering in poverty while seeking liberation from worldly attachments and suffering.

Up in a traditional Brahmin household, Siddhartha had been raised in the yogic tradition of Hindu teachings, dieties and meditative practice. Out exploring his own spiritual path, he attempted to push those meditative traditions to the extreme, in order to attain enlightenment.

Finally, after six long years of living in a distant forest disciplining his mind and body to provoke spiritual awakening (and failing to achieve his goal) he gave up traditional approaches to enlightenment - and struggled to see directly, the nature of who he really was at the depths of his own inner spiritual center.

• Rather than continuing with being in any way goal-oriented in his spiritual quest, he let go of all struggle and ego intent, and simply observed without judgment or attachment, the truth of what he saw and experienced.

While sitting under a tree at the age of 35 on a cold December morning, Siddhartha suddenly realized with a flash of enlightenment the primal spiritual truths of human existence - and thus became a Buddha (which means 'enlightened one').

Returning to his father's castle (his mother had died shortly after his birth) he was recognized even in his hometown as an enlightened teacher. During the next 45 years he walked from town to town, teaching his new path to enlightenment.

Even after two thousand years, Buddha's spiritual path is still a primary process learned throughout the world. What is the core realization that drives the Buddhist phenomenon?

Here in the words of the Buddha, is a short statement that for me encapsulates the Buddhist path:

• "How wonderful, how wonderful! All things are perfect, exactly as they are!"

Buddha taught that right now, without any need to change anything nor to do anything at all, we live in a perfect universe. There is no teaching or method or transformation required, in order to be perfect and enlightened.

All we need to do is realize in meditation that beyond all our judgments and worries, goals and expectations, there exists within us already right now in this eternal moment, the perfection of enlightenment and fulfillment.

From another Buddha quote: "With single-mindedness, the master quells his thoughts. He ends their wandering. Seated in the cave of the heart, he finds freedom."

This shattering of Buddha and countless other enlightened human beings over the ages insists that God's creation is indeed perfect in every way. Regardless of how we might judge it from our own personal point of view with all our prejudices and expectations, the present moment is utterly perfect.

• Not only Lao Tzu but Jesus aso said the same thing: "Be ye therefore perfect," Jesus told his followers.

We can read these words of the masters - but our constantly-judging minds tend to resist. Our thoughts and religious attitudes are so full of beliefs of how terrible the world is, and of all the situations that must be changed, that we refuse to accept reality as it is.

Constantly in judgment mode, our minds confuse and distort and reject and deny the simple reality of the present moment - because that reality doesn't match our ego's image of how the world should be.

Thus arises suffering, from our ignorance of the truth of life, and our refusal to accept that truth. Our own minds separate us from our own deeper nature, our Buddhahood.

With guidance from Buddha, how can we manage to move beyond the ignorance and prejudices, fears and denials of our attitudes and judgments, so that we see clearly the truth of the perfection of life, and enter into our own Buddha nature?

Not only a fully-awakened being spiritually, Buddha was perhaps the greatest psychologist of all time. He honestly and deeply observed the functioning of the human mind (his own especially ) and saw to the utter depths the way the mind functions in its usual conditioned and mostly unconscious mode.

• He then realized from his own shift in consciousness, how the mind's attention can be trained and guided toward an ultimate psychological and spiritual awakening - that reveals the mind's true nature to itself.

Buddha stated that there are four primal facts of life, called the Four Noble Truths:

First Noble Truth: As unawakened human beings, we regularly suffer through chronic hardships, pains, heartbreaks, hungers, desires, disillusionments and failings. In our unawakened state, we cannot avoid such suffering - because we are causing it ourselves. We live in a torture chamber of our own creation.

Second Noble Truth: We suffer so much not because of the present-moment experience we're having, but rather because of our response to the world - what we think about it, and all the mental activity we create surrounding our present situation. We generate emotional and psychic suffering through all our chronic thoughts, beliefs, expectancies, desires and denials concerning the reality of life. Living in denial of the present moment, we crave a different reality than the one we're in.. Buddhist teachings insist that suffering is an expression of the distance between our desires and beliefs, and reality itself.

Third Noble Truth: Offering hope, Buddha stated that there is an expanded state of mind we can enter into, so that we wake up to our greater nature beyond all the suffering generated by our own thoughts and cravings. By letting go of our programmed beliefs and cultural assumptions, we can experience our own Buddha nature in in the present moment, and live in total acceptance of reality

Fourth Noble Truth: Where Lao Tzu failed to offer a technique, Buddha taught a logical specific meditative path we can learn to walk, that frees us from the habitual dissatisfaction of conditioned existence, and liberates us from chronic fear and craving. We can act on our own, actively choose to let go of our ego identity and our fears of surrender, and thus realize our perfect nature, perceive reality directly and truthfully, and shift away from the prison of our own mental beliefs and cravings.

If this is possible - how can we do it?