It has been a couple of weeks since I have addressed any of the Eightfold Path. I think it is important to recap why I am writing about this path. As I said in the introduction to this whole thing, our tendency is to overcomplicate things; all things, really, or so it seems to me, but especially this simple path that the Buddha outlined. He taught suffering and the end of suffering and nothing else, and detailed in the Four Noble Truths that the path to the end of suffering goes through the Eightfold Path.
I have already spoken of Wise Speech, Wise Action (parts one and two) and Wise Livelihood. (By the way, sometimes these are spoken of in a different order, but I am following the order in which they are presented by Sayadaw U Pandita in his seminal book, In This Very Life).
Wise Effort, the next step on the path, is defined as the development of wholesome states and the avoidance of unwholesome states. That's not really very helpful, though, is it? We all want what is wholesome and don't want what is unwholesome, or at least we think so. It's almost as if we reach this description of Wise Effort and feel we can check this one off. Not so fast.
Someone once said that we dislike samsara but are addicted to its causes. (Samsara, for those who might not be familiar with this terminology, is all of those things that keep us from Nirvana, or complete peace). When we look for something outside our deepest selves to give us happiness, we are creating suffering and looking for lasting satisfaction where it cannot be found. We are constantly creating worlds of illusion that we believe will bring us happiness, and when those fairy kingdoms fall apart, we build another and another. This is unwise effort.
Why do we keep this up, though? It's quite simple: we still believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that these actions will bring us lasting happiness, or what I prefer to call joy, but they don't and can't. This is no trivial matter. All the suffering of the world has its root cause in this delusion of what is good and right. Wars are fought, drugs are taken, food is overeaten. What we must recall is that all people everywhere are seeking the end of suffering. Just because we are very, very bad at figuring out what will bring about the end of suffering does not mean we are not entirely sincere in seeking it. What strikes me as most odd, both in myself and in others, is that we cannot seem to learn from our experience. We eat the ice cream, which brings us transient happiness, but adds pounds to our bodies, stress to our hearts, and fuel to our diabetes. Yet the next time we feel the need for an emotional boost, we turn right back to the ice cream (or the wine or the tobacco or the crack or the television or the exercise or the shopping) as if we had never realized that it could not bring us what we truly desired. Much has been made of what kind of food we eat and how this appears to have made us the most obese nation ever, yet it seems to me quite likely that this has more to do with this misguided sense of what will bring us happiness.
But it's not so surprising, really. We are not inherently beings who think in the long term. We are built for survival, which is a moment to moment phenomenon. It requires the Wise Effort of continuing to question our assumptions to break down the barriers we place between us and Nirvana. Always, always, we must question if the choices we are making are truly leading to lasting happiness or as likely to melt away as an ice cream cone in the sun.
The next step on the path is here.
I have already spoken of Wise Speech, Wise Action (parts one and two) and Wise Livelihood. (By the way, sometimes these are spoken of in a different order, but I am following the order in which they are presented by Sayadaw U Pandita in his seminal book, In This Very Life).
Wise Effort, the next step on the path, is defined as the development of wholesome states and the avoidance of unwholesome states. That's not really very helpful, though, is it? We all want what is wholesome and don't want what is unwholesome, or at least we think so. It's almost as if we reach this description of Wise Effort and feel we can check this one off. Not so fast.
Someone once said that we dislike samsara but are addicted to its causes. (Samsara, for those who might not be familiar with this terminology, is all of those things that keep us from Nirvana, or complete peace). When we look for something outside our deepest selves to give us happiness, we are creating suffering and looking for lasting satisfaction where it cannot be found. We are constantly creating worlds of illusion that we believe will bring us happiness, and when those fairy kingdoms fall apart, we build another and another. This is unwise effort.
Why do we keep this up, though? It's quite simple: we still believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that these actions will bring us lasting happiness, or what I prefer to call joy, but they don't and can't. This is no trivial matter. All the suffering of the world has its root cause in this delusion of what is good and right. Wars are fought, drugs are taken, food is overeaten. What we must recall is that all people everywhere are seeking the end of suffering. Just because we are very, very bad at figuring out what will bring about the end of suffering does not mean we are not entirely sincere in seeking it. What strikes me as most odd, both in myself and in others, is that we cannot seem to learn from our experience. We eat the ice cream, which brings us transient happiness, but adds pounds to our bodies, stress to our hearts, and fuel to our diabetes. Yet the next time we feel the need for an emotional boost, we turn right back to the ice cream (or the wine or the tobacco or the crack or the television or the exercise or the shopping) as if we had never realized that it could not bring us what we truly desired. Much has been made of what kind of food we eat and how this appears to have made us the most obese nation ever, yet it seems to me quite likely that this has more to do with this misguided sense of what will bring us happiness.
But it's not so surprising, really. We are not inherently beings who think in the long term. We are built for survival, which is a moment to moment phenomenon. It requires the Wise Effort of continuing to question our assumptions to break down the barriers we place between us and Nirvana. Always, always, we must question if the choices we are making are truly leading to lasting happiness or as likely to melt away as an ice cream cone in the sun.
The next step on the path is here.
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