DEEP ECUMENISM

An End To Suffering

by John R. Mabry

We crave: a two-word analysis of the human condition. In the United States it is a drive responsible for our criminal consumerism, for our need to "keep up with the Joneses" even if the Joneses are plummeting lemmings. We are not satisfied. Nor can we quite figure out exactly what it is we lack that produces this ache of dissatisfaction. The American way of life has degenerated into a crisis of addiction, with most of us trying to fill the void within us with whatever promises to take away the angst of existence, however temporarily. We crave something beyond our experience, and the pain of that longing haunts us in every lonely moment, every empty victory, every success or aquisition which disappoint us when the smoke of novelty clears and we find ourselves alone again with our dissatisfaction. The great Buddhist scripture, the Dhammapada, tells us that "from craving arises sorrow and from craving arises fear."

What can we do? It is not an easy problem to solve. When we try to numb our pain chemically, we become addicted to the chemical, which will eventually kill us. When we try to smother it in the security of others' love we smother the love of our friends. For many in our culture, the 12-step process has been their salvation in regard to their addictions, both physical and emotional. It liberates from slavery to chemicals and security, and mostly by means of a transformation of perception.

Ibis is not a new method, nor is it a new problem. In fact, it is the central issue addressed by the Buddha nearly 2,500 years ago in Northern India. He noticed that everyone who lived experienced pain. He also noted that nothing people tried removed the pain, but actually made the suffering more acute. He says "Birth is suffering, old age is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; grief, lamentation, pain, affliction and despair are suffering: to be united with what is unloved, to be separated from what is loved is suffering; not to obtain what is longed for is suffering." We can probably all attest to the truth of this, but the Buddha's great insight was to see the pain as a symptom of a greater underlying problem. The answer was not to numb the pain with chemicals or overwork, or to assuage it emotionally through others, sex, or compulsive religiosity, but to reach behind the symptom to the disease itself: a misperception of one's place in the universe.

The Buddha gave to us the promise of salvation in The Four Noble Truths: (1) There is suffering, (2) suffering has a cause, (3) suffering can cease, and (4) there is a way to make it cease.

We can all relate to the first truth, I am sure. But our revelation begins with the second. The cause of suffering is, according to the Buddhist tradition, a result of our "buying into" the illusion of consensus reality. Consensus reality tells us that we are separate creatures with no visible (and so, no actual) connection; we are millions of individual selves all looking out for #1. We are ultimately alone, and in our panic and insecurity, we clutch at what we think we need to maintain our status quo, and to improve it if we can.

The Buddha's great discovery is that consensus reality is inaccurate. He perceived that we are all a part of the great dance of the universe, all members of a great Self, and not millions of tiny, separate selves after all. As Buddhist scholar Hans Schumann writes of the Mahayana view, "Liberation is ... to be achieved by the removal of the ignorance and by the realisation of the Absolute." Once I perceive that the universe is Me, I am transformed. I am no longer small, nor alone. All of creation is a unified body which rises and falls like waves on the ocean. What I think is me is just the result of a swell on the sea that circumstance has engineered. This swell will break and rejoin the body of the water from which it has, indeed, never been separate from. Whatever happens to this body is of little consequence; it is not Me. The Universe in all its myriad forms that go on forever is the Eternal life of which I am a partaker. I am connected. I am One.

When we fully grasp this truth, we can move on to the third truth: suffering can cease. When we spend all our energy grasping after what we think our little self needs, we perpetuate the cycle of our suffering. But if we can understand that all we ever need is provided by the universe (since we are the universe), we have need of nothing. Lao Tzu says "when we let go of everything, we have everything we need." Jesus told us to look at the flowers of the field and the birds of the air, they are provided for. Indeed, if everyone would awaken to this truth, there would be no grasping, no hoarding, no robbery, no greed, for there would be no hunger, and no poverty. For there really is enough for all.

The twelve-steps in some way echo the Four Truths. The first step is merely to admit our suffering. The second is to recognize that we are not alone. To turn our will and trust over to a Higher Power is to have faith in something bigger than our own, miniscule selves. It is to admit that we have been under the illusion of our isolation, when in fact we are much, much more than we thought we were. The Mahayana Buddhist would call the Universal Self the Cosmic Buddha, much as Christians would call it the Cosmic Christ The "Us" that is bigger than us. The "Us" that is the real us.

If we can awaken to reality as it really is (the primary goal in Buddhist practice. "Buddha" means "awakened") we learn to trust the universe, eliminating desire and with it our neurotic compulsion to satisfy our cravings which lead us to the abyss of addiction. *