..续本文上一页rience a huge burden of extraneous interpretations associations, fantasies, emotions, painful memories, and persions. Instead of seeing each moment as it is, we react to each moment from our past pain and frustration; then we react to the pain and frustration; then we react to that reaction; and so on and on. In this way a special form of mental torment is created that consists of seemingly endless layers of pain, negative emotion, self-doubt and self-justification--known in Buddhism as "samsara." It is what, in honest moments, many people might call "normality."
If we could be released from craving, we would be released from suffering.
This I understand to be the central belief of Buddhism: When we fully face, accept, and lighten the self-amplified sufferings of our lives; when we begin to experience life beyond our delusions and confusions, beyond self, beyond culture, beyond knowledge--what we find is not a meaningless universe of alien forces, but our true home. Life is real. Reality is good. Goodness, gratitude, love and joy are the natural state of the awakened mind.
When people begin to feel released from their self-sustained sufferings, they experience life more fully, they become more cheerful and compassionate. The ultimate release into reality manifests as a cosmic experience known as "nirvana," or in glimpses of it that in Zen are called "satori."
The way out of suffering is through the Eightfold path.
Buddha taught a method to lead away from self-sustained suffering toward a more enlightened and compassionate life--through the pursuit of morality, meditation, and wisdom, described under eight headings: right speech, right action, right livelihood, right concentration, right mindfulness, right effort, right understanding and right thought. Because it avoids the extremes of asceticism and indulgence in favor of a life of moderation, nonviolence and compassion, this approach is known as the "Middle Way."
Buddhist Meditation
Though Buddhist meditation probably cannot be learned in any depth without direct instruction from a teacher, the external practice is simple and easy to begin. In meditation, Buddhists do not remove themselves from the world as some other schools of meditation do; rather, Buddhists practice a kind of awareness that enables them to be more fully present in the world.
Original Buddhist practices (known as "vipassana2 or "insight meditation") are somewhat austere. They require years of daily sitting in silent meditation. In several cultures, such as Tibet, Buddhism developed into a multifaceted religion ("Mahayana") which adds singing, movement, temples, ceremony, priests, scriptures, art, and other "religious" activities, so that it appeals to a greater variety of people. Still, vipassana meditation remains the underlying mental technology upon which Buddhism rests.
The Buddhist view of the world
A few Buddhists concepts seem strange to the modern mind. Buddha inherited the Indian belief in reincarnation: Each person has lived before, and past lives influence how you experience this one.
More strange, Buddha said that, although people reincarnate, they have no souls. In part, this seems to be a reaction to the ancient Hindu belief in an immutable, eternal soul (atman) that migrates through many lifetimes. In part, though, Buddha arrived at this conclusion by his radical method of awareness. Buddhism invites you to look unwaveringly at every experience and ask, "Is it solid, unchanging, whole
" The answer, Buddhists say, is always, "No"--even when asked of the soul. Everything changes. Everything is impermanent.
The Buddhist view of the universe resembles the view developed by 20th-century physics. Except for the mental categories we impose upon experience, we find nothing in experience that is immutable. There is no constant but our own misconceptions. Every "thing" is actually a process--it arises, develops, flourishes, declines, and dissipates. All nouns are still-photos from the movie of life--which is made up of verbs. All that we see around and inside us is the result of trillions of simultaneous processes, arising and declining in different overlapping stages at once. All that appears solid in this cosmos is in reality a shimmering dance of energy in flux.
But where physics leaves us adrift like meaningless specks in an incomprehensible void, Buddhism envisions a reality beyond meaning and meaninglessness, beyond knowing, beyond self, beyond duality, beyond suffering--a dance of all things, in which we can become enlightened, interconnected, and compassionate dancers.
According to Buddhism as I understand it (and I am not a Buddhist, only an interested onlooker) this dance is what is ultimately real; and we are born with the potential for knowing it directly--and most directly in the most ordinary moments of our daily lives.
《Draft of a Very Brief Introduction to Buddhism》全文阅读结束。