A Non-Dual Perspective on Buddha's Four Noble Truths

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A Non-Dual Perspective on Buddha's Four Noble Truths

by Peter Russell

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4.8

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talks

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Meditation

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Everyone

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65

The conventional interpretation of Buddha's Four Noble Truths, and the 8-Fold Way, is of practices that will eventually lead to liberation. NonDualism says that liberation is available here and now when we let go of ego-ic thinking and recognize the true nature of the Self. From this perspective, the "way" is not the path so much as the way liberation unfolds as a result. I have found this approach, albeit unconventional, very helpful in my own journey.

Buddhism Liberation Ego Self Mindfulness Concentration Mind Meditation Four Noble Truths Non Duality Eightfold Path Ego Awareness Authentic Self

Meet your Teacher

Sebastopol, CA, USA

Meet your Teacher

Sebastopol, CA, USA

Transcript

What I want you to do this session, Something I've been exploring around Buddha's Four Noble Truths, What he meant by that. And just, I've been looking at sort of a different, A different understanding, Which I think of as a more sort of more in line with, I think, Where, You know, Non-duality is taking us today in our thinking. The traditional idea of Buddha's teaching, This is the very, Not traditional, This is the very conventional superficial idea. I, Some of the, I read saying this, I was on a site somewhere recently, You know, Buddha said, Life is suffering, We have to put up with it. And it's all our own creation. And, You know, That's a very superficial, Somewhat sort of new agey view that, You know, We create reality, If you're sick, It's your fault. You know, If you've lost your job, It's your fault. If you're injured, It's your fault. You know, It's like, I don't go along with that at all. That's the very sort of, That's the most superficial thing. But it's, You know, It's a common idea that's out there by people who haven't really looked at Buddhism at all. Buddha, Just to briefly recap his story and how he came to his Four Noble Truths, Because I think it's, You know, Probably quite a few of you know it, But for those who don't, He was born a rich prince, Had everything he needed, Great food, Service, Opportunity. You know, He had a wonderful, Wonderful life, But he just realized he was still not happy. And he was probably still suffering, Still not happy. And so he left home, He left everything, Went out on the road, Became the first wandering hippie, Well, Not the first hippie, But left everything, Just went out on the road, Left his home, Family, In search for, You know, The way to end suffering. And he spent six years traveling around, Studied with probably some of the best teachers around, Which at that stage were few and far between. And India at that stage was really, The spiritual teachings were all about ritual, Obeying the gods, That sort of stuff. The idea of the self and the Upanishads was only just beginning to creep in, And they were called the forest teachings. So he was out there looking for the forest teachings and studied with these people. It ended up with the idea that you've got to give up everything. He'd already given up home and everything, But it got to the stage where he was giving up eating. It's hardly eating anything at all. I mean, It is said, Who knows, He had one grain of rice a day, I can't believe that. But anyway, He gave up everything, Emaciated, Nearly dying. And then came this realization, And that basically a healthy mind and a healthy body. And so he started eating again and sat in meditation under this tree and had his awakening, Which was really, It's not about giving up things in the world, Renunciation of things, But it's, As he put it, Giving up clinging to ideas and beliefs, Really about what will make us happy. But it was about giving up, Giving up clinging was his realization. It's a mental thing, We need to give up a mental thing. And he was excited by this. And I think, You know, Most people who wake up are excited by their discovery, Ah, You know, This is what it's about. And he rushed off to find six of his fellow travelers who'd been traveling around together, Visiting the various teachers, And they were sitting in a park. And the story goes, At first, They were sort of really annoyed with him because he'd clearly been eating and not doing what they were meant to be doing. But then he told them, And this is what the four noble truths are said to be, Is the truth he told them upon meeting them upon his awakening. And noble is an interesting word here because we think of noble, You know, In our culture, You know, Either it's the old idea of a nobleman, An aristocratic person, But also, You know, We think of noble as somebody who, You know, Does something good, Or you would say, Oh, That was very noble of you. That was very, You know, Very noble of you. We use it in that sense as well. What the word actually means, The Pali word, Pali was the language he spoke, Which is actually very close to Sanskrit. But the word noble there meant somebody who'd awakened, Somebody who was awake or had tasted awakening, But basically it meant a wise person. A noble person was a wise person. And so, And he was somebody who, You know, Awakened. And so the four noble truths were basically the truths as seen by a wise person. And I think that's an important context for all this. And the first noble truth was the truth of suffering. And the word that was used there was dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A, We don't want to wipe out spannings, Dukkha, Which actually is a negation. It's a negative of the word sukha. And sukha means to be at ease, To be content. So dukkha means not feeling at ease, Not feeling content. So that's what he was meaning by suffering, Not sort of abject pain, You know, What we think of as real suffering. He just meant discontent, Discontent, Not feeling happy, Not feeling at ease. And he was saying, We all feel that. And I think that's something we can all relate to. I think most of us probably spend a lot of our time feeling discontent at one thing or another. And his realization was that a lot of that discontent is actually self-created. And there's actually a deeper meaning to dukkha, Which is the word sukha from which it's derived, The word sukha means literally good whole. And it referred to the whole in a wheel, The axle hole in a wheel. Because when you think about it, The wheel was the great technology of the time. It changed everything with transport and everything. So a wheel needed to have a good hole in order to run smoothly, There'd be no resistance. So dukkha means a bad, A wheel with a bad hole, Which means it's not running smoothly, There's resistance. And that's what he saw, The resistance was, That's led to the clinging of really not accepting what is. There's a phrase, I mean, I think many of us heard today, These days is pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional. And what that refers to is, Yes, We get pain, We're gonna have pain, It's inevitable. The suffering is more the resistance to the pain, It's not accepting the pain. And the way the Buddha illustrated this was, He was saying, We get stabbed by, I think he said an arrowhead or something. We stab ourselves in an arrowhead that causes pain, And then we give ourselves a second stab and that's the suffering. So it was like the suffering is added discontent over the pain that's there. And then his second noble truth was, What is the cause of this discontent that we all experience? And this is where clinging came in, The second noble truth is that we cling, We cling to ideas of, Basically we cling to ideas of what we think will make us happy. And this is something we talked about in the previous sessions. Basically, The fundamental motivation, The bottom line of everything we do is that we, We want to be happy, We want to be content, We want to be at peace. Whatever we do, It may be convoluted, But the back of it is we think in some way or another, We'll feel better for this. And this feeling better is what I call the natural state of mind. Feeling good is our natural state of mind. And if everything is okay in the world, There's no problems, There's no threats, There's nothing we need to take care of, We feel good inside. When there's something that needs taking care of, Then we naturally feel discontent, We want to do something about it. So the natural state of mind is one of contentment. And that's what we're looking for, Is a way to return to the natural state of mind in everything we do, We want to return to that state of ease, That state of contentment. And what we get caught in, In our society, And I think probably most societies, I mean, I just know our society, Western society, But I think probably all societies through history, We get caught in this idea that if we're not happy, We have to do something about it, We have to change something, We have to act. And that sort of runs through our culture. At times it's very important, There's things we do need to do in the world, But a lot of the time, That's just coming from some imagined need. We imagine, We start thinking about, What's gonna happen tomorrow, Do I need to do this? We start creating discontent, And then we try to resolve that discontent by doing something, Or we're feeling low, So we go and whatever it is, Go to the movies, Have some more coffee, Eat some more food. But that's the basic sort of belief system really, That runs our culture, And that is what creates a lot of discontent. And the irony of all this is, We're looking for happiness, We're looking to feel content, Whatever word you want to give it, I sometimes just use the word okay, We're looking to feel okay. And so much of our thinking about how we are gonna be okay, What's gonna make us feel okay, Stops us feeling okay, It creates discontent. So in a strange way, The way we're looking to end suffering, We wanna be happy, We're looking to end suffering, And we get caught in all these ways that actually create suffering. And I sort of think this is sort of almost a sad joke about human beings, Because we want to be at peace, We want to end suffering, And yet we, In our attempts to do that, We're just creating more and more suffering, And tension. Then the third noble truth was the truth of the end of suffering. And the word there is interesting, It's in his language, It's nirodha. This I find fascinating, Because this word is key to Patanjali's yoga sutras as well. And it's often translated as ceasing, And it's a fairly good interpretation, The word is ceasing. In the yoga sutras, And it's almost like this is so parallel to what Buddha's teaching, The yoga sutras start saying, Yoga is the ceasing of the whirling of mind stuff. And I translate yoga not as getting unified with something, But the end of separation, The end of our separation, The internal separation of inside us, The division, The duality, The end of that duality, That is yoga, Comes from the ceasing of the whirling of mind stuff. The whirling of mind stuff is all our, Is our thoughts whirling around, What if, What if, Oh, That's good, That's exciting, I shouldn't have done that, Whatever. That's the whirling of mind stuff. And the way that was traditionally interpreted, You've got to stop it. Ceasing means you have got to stop it, You've got to control it. And that's gradually giving away these days to a realization, No, It's about allowing it to cease. In fact, The word nirodha literally means not sprouting, It's to cease sprouting. And so that's why in my approach to meditation, Which is similar to some others, It's about not trying to stop thoughts, Not trying to stop the whirling of mind stuff, But when you realize you're caught in a thought, Just not following it, Not following that particular thought that comes up. So by not following it, We're basically returning, We're coming back, We're returning to ourselves, Returning to being or returning closer to that. And I think that is in a way, The real renunciation is not renouncing things in the world, It's renouncing, It's more saying, I'm not gonna follow that thought. When the thought comes up, It's choosing to say, I'm not gonna follow that, Because that's just gonna lead to more discomfort, More discontent, I'm not gonna follow that thought. And that I think is probably one of the most fundamental choices we have is the choice not to follow a given thought, Given idea. And that's really, That's what I call the ego mind. I call it the ego mind. I don't like to talk about ego, Because that gives the idea of the some thing, The some entity inside of something, Something called ego. But there's no thing there, There's just a mindset. There's a way of looking at the world that we get caught in. And so I think Buddha's realization was when we let go of the clinging, When we cease the clinging, When we cease to follow those thoughts we get stuck in, When we cease to follow those thoughts, Then we're stepping out of the ego mind, We're coming back to whatever you wanna call it, Our authentic self, Our being, Our true essence. And what I like about seeing it this way is it makes liberation, Which is really, You know, The goal of all Buddha's teachings was liberation, Freedom, But liberation. It's not some far off goal. And so often I hear this in teachings, You're like, If you do this, Do that, Do this, Then basically at the end of all this, You'll get liberated. I see it not as some far off goal, But it's something we can touch into, We can taste, Any time really, We can have a taste of it, Anytime we just choose to let go of our thinking, Come back, As we've been doing in the meditations, Just coming back to that sense of, Ah, Here I am. That's that liberation from being caught in the whirling of mind stuff. So that, I think is what, You know, That's what the Buddha was experiencing clearly is that letting go of thinking how that was. And then the fourth noble truth is what's often called the Eightfold Path, Which again is traditionally interpreted as, You know, These are the steps you have to take in order to get liberated. I found a quote here I found the other day, Which I think is, Where is it? So perfect, Yes, The Eightfold Path to Nirvana, In which an aspirant must become practiced in right views, Right intention, Right speech, Right action, Right livelihood, Right effort, Right mindfulness, And right concentration. Do all that and you will be liberated. That's the sort of background idea that's going on here. What I've been doing is exploring a very different interpretation of this. And it's not to say that all the classic interpretations of Buddhism are wrong, There's so much value in that. I don't want to in any way, Yes, Be saying they're wrong, But it's just another view that I've been playing with, Which I find useful in my own life. So the Eightfold Path, Path, The word is marga, Which means way, In a way in the same sense as the Tao Te Ching is the way, We talk about the way. And the classic interpretation is it's the way, It's the way to liberation. But I've been looking at it more, Is it's the way of liberation, It's what happens as you awaken, It's an unfolding of the awakening, It's a description of the awakening. And again, It's called the Noble Eightfold Path. This is noble, It's how the wise ones see it. And the first element is right view. And again, The conventional approach is that you have to adopt the right perception, You have to see that, You know, Accepting that life is impermanent, That all life is sacred, And in some traditions, You know, Death is not the end, And you might have to take karma as consequence, It's a whole sort of set of view of the world. But to me, You know, The view of the wise ones, The noble ones, The views of the wise ones, That the liberated ones who've already stepped out of the ego mind is they're already, They're spontaneously, Automatically in the right view, The liberated person sees things as they are, Because their mind is no longer clouded by all the machinations of our egoic thinking. They've let go of that perspective, That sort of egoic perspective, What I'm gonna do, Worry about this, Worry about that. They've let go of that. So they just, They're naturally seeing things as they are, They're naturally in right view. And so it's again, It's like, It's not that the right view leads to liberation, But the right view comes from liberation. This is what I've been exploring in all these bits of the Eightfold Path, Is, You know, Do we sometimes put the cart before the horse? You know, The horse is the awakening and the cart is what it brings with it. But so often I think we get, We see the cart, We see what the awakening is and we think, Oh, I've got to do that, I've got to give up this. If awakened people aren't so attached to things, I've got to be not be attached to things. I think in some ways we get it back to front. And this is the second path, Second way is right thought or sometimes said right intention. But again, I think this can follow, If someone's already awake, Then their thinking is not clouded by the views of the ego mind. They're already free from that. I mean, A classic view that said, You know, Part of the right thinking is, You know, Not to do any harm, Intent to do no harm. But if you turn it around the other way, It may not be so much there's intent to do no harm so much as there is no intent to do harm. I mean, It's subtle, But to me, It's a very profound thinking, Shift in thinking. And I just think, You know, With, As I said before, With, You know, More and more with exploring non-dual teachings, I think this sort of, This approach to it, I think for me is much more meaningful, Much more realistic in my own life. I don't want to spend 20 years doing all these other things in the hope I might get liberated. It's more the practice is coming back to that, Finding that in oneself day by day, Tasting that. And the same as we go on through the others, Right speech, You know, Right speech is speech that causes no harm. And again, It's the ego mind that gets, That starts causing harm to others. It's the ego mind that judges other people. It's the ego mind that maybe wants to attack someone verbally or criticize them verbally, Or the ego mind that wants to say, Look at me, I know I'm right. So again, I think if, You know, Someone who's already ceased that clinging, The third step, I think is naturally going to be more, More attuned to just speaking without harm, Speaking right. In fact, It was one of Buddha's definitions was, Of right speech was, Or one of the ways he put it was, If you can't say something without the other person feeling hurt, Then it's better to retain noble silence. And then, You know, Then there's other things about right speech, Which I'm sure a lot of us know is like that. The question we can have when we're saying anything is, I think there's four ingredients or four criteria, Which people often comment on or say, Which is one, Is it true? Is it useful? Is it timely? And is it kind as things to bear in mind? Then as we go on, We see, I see the same thing with the other elements. I don't see them as steps or stages or practices. I see them as the elements of awakening. The next one is, You know, Right, What we say wise action, The action of wise people. And the same, I think, If we're free from that ego motivation to start with, Then our actions are naturally gonna be, Be wiser, Be more true, Like be more right, Be more correct. And with right, The fifth one is right livelihood, How we live our lives. I think the same sort of thing applies. And then the last three get particularly interesting for me, Right effort or wise effort. Remember, This is the view of the wise person. I keep coming back to, This is how the wise person sees it, The wise person who's awake, Who's awoken. In fact, That's what the word Buddha means, Literally, It's just the one who has awoken. So the way the wise people see it is, It's not about putting a lot of effort, Put a lot of trying, Trying to control things. In meditation, Particularly, As you know, In my approach, I encourage no effort whatsoever. It's really allowing the mind to relax and any effort we put into it is actually doing the opposite is creating more tension in the mind. But I think it's also about how we act in the world, How we flow in the world. Again, This is, You know, Sukha is about flowing in the world without resistance. So I like to think of it more as right effort is relaxed, Relaxed intention. We have intention, But instead of going at it and forcibly trying to change things, We just be just more relaxed about it, Allowing things to flow. And I always find in my life, The more I allow things to flow, The better it is. I mean, I had something earlier this week, There was, I was thinking I should call somebody to sort something out and didn't quite know what to do about it. And this voice just said, Leave it, Leave it. And half an hour later, I got a message from somebody and everything had totally changed, The situation had totally changed. I didn't need to do anything. But it's that, That's what I mean, It's not about we got to keep doing and controlling the world, But it's about stepping back and taking a more relaxed approach to things. And then the seventh one is right meditation, Right mindfulness is often translated as, Which as I mentioned before, For me is about not following the thoughts, Catching the sprouting as it occurs. And coming back to being, Coming back to that authentic self, With returning, As I put it last week, Or last week, Two months ago now, Returning to natural mind, Returning to that natural great peace. It's about removing the veils to it. We don't create peaceful states of mind. We remove the veils to the peaceful state of mind. And that again is the shift. And the word sati, That's often translated as mindfulness, Literally in Sanskrit and in Pali, It means actually to remember. So I see mindfulness is remembering, Remembering our true nature. It's not remembering as an idea, Who we are with some understanding, Some idea, But just coming back, Reconnecting with our own essence, Reconnecting with our own being. And the final one is right, Literally right samadhi, Which is translated as right concentration. But again, That gets so easily misinterpreted, I think as you've got to concentrate the mind, You've got to really control the mind, Keep it one, Keep it focused. I mean, You can do that, But it's very, Very hard. The way it's actually defined samadhi, It's the mind that has come together, It's collected together, It's defined as the still mind. It's the mind that's just resting in being. So it's not actually an instruction to concentrate the mind in that deliberate way, It's more, As I said, The mind or the attention becoming concentrated in being. It's like, I think of it as concentrated orange juice. It's like, It's the essence of it. Concentrated orange juice is the essence of orange juice. It's the concentrated mind, It's the mind that is just, It's become concentrated in its essence, Concentrated in its true nature. And that is the mind that is settled, It's clear, It is what comes again from letting go of clinging. And some Buddhists describe it as the state of the great perfection. Perfection means nothing more can be added. It's not like there's no blemishes, It's like nothing more can be added. And that to me is why it's called Nirvana. Nirvana literally means blowing out the flame of desire. In that state, There's nothing, I'm sure some of you've known this in meditation, When you're deep in meditation, Deep in that quiet state, It's like, Why would I want anything else? There's nothing to be added to this. And there's that sense of freedom, This is the liberation that Buddha was talking about, The inner liberation, The freedom. And every time we let go a little, We have a little taste of that freedom, Whether it's just a sense of relief or greater ease or greater quietness, Whatever it is, We are tasting, We are tasting that liberation he was talking about. You know, We don't every time we cause our thinking, We don't drop into complete enlightenment, No, But we are tasting, Tasting that awakening. And the more we taste it, The more there's that motivation to continue that way. So I just give that sort of the way I've been exploring and playing with it. I know it's very unconventional and devout Buddhist teachers may say, I'm totally wrong, I don't get it. And I know, You know, If you look at Buddhist texts, It's clear, Very, Very clear that part of what Buddha was teaching was about, You need to see things the right way, Think the right way, You need to speak the right way, Et cetera. That's clearly there. But there's the other view as well. And in fact, I know some Buddhist teachers who see it both ways. They see it both as this is what you need to do as the path to awakening, But also the other way around, That this is a description of how awakening unfolds. This is the way of awakening, The way it unfolds. And as I just find it a very, I just find it more pertinent for me, More relevant to my life. So I'm not, As I say, I'm not dissing the traditional view. I'm just saying, Here's an interpretation which I really like and it's valuable for me. And I think, I may have mentioned this before, I think what happens with any, Not any waking person, But most people when they, Quote, Wake up, Is they find life is so much more delightful, Enjoyable, They're at ease, That they want to share it with other people. And that's what the Buddha happened to the Buddha. He woke up and it's like, Wow, Hey, This is the way. And so he goes off excitedly to his friends and he sort of tells them, Hey, Of course we're all discontent, But what happens, It comes from clinging, We have to let go of clinging. And then what I've discovered is, When that happens, This is how you see things, Et cetera, Et cetera, Et cetera. I think he was clearly, We accept he was a fully awakened person. He talked about, There is no self. He'd seen there is no self, In the sense of no individual, Separate, Personal self. And so he'd have been talking from that perspective of seeing there is no self. And so I think he would have been expressing the view that I've been talking about here as well. This is how it is. This is how it is when you wake up. But what happens with, I think, Every spiritual teaching that comes up like this is the people who are listening are not awakened. So they're listening from the unawakened state, Wanting to be awakened, But misinterpreting it from the, Or not misinterpreting, But interpreting it from the unawakened point of view. And like, This is what we've got to do, Et cetera, Et cetera, Et cetera. And the awakened perspective, Which is just about coming back, Touching into, Reconnecting with our being, Is what Rupert Spira calls the direct path, Gets forgotten, Gets ignored because the existing culture doesn't have the sort of, The way to see it that way, Wants to see things in a dualistic way. And so I think that interpretation of teachings gets lost, Gets forgotten. And so that's really what I've been playing with myself, Just how do we come back to that, That more non-dual approach. Anyway, I've been spouting on for a good time now. So the way we take questions here, Oh, No, No, Let's do a meditation, I forgot. I always like to do a meditation on this. So let's just do a short meditation. What I've been doing in the meditations in the previous sessions, In the first one, It's mindfulness of being, We're looking at the aspect of being, Which is the I am, The I amness, The self. And the second one, We're looking at the joy, The enjoyment of the natural great peace. So this one, I just want to look more at the freedom side. So what I always like to do in this, I'll turn my video off just because it allows me to be more internal leading a meditation. And everybody wants to turn their video off just while we do this, Just feel free. And I'll just take us through a short meditation on this. So if you would just like to, Just close your eyes if you want. You don't have to, But I find it's easier for most of us. Close our eyes. And always start by just taking a few deeper breaths. Just breathing out is just a sign, Just a sign to the body, Really, The sign to our being that everything's okay. There's nothing to worry about. We can begin to relax. Everything's okay. And just feel that relaxation in the body. And just as we do that, Just noticing our experience in the moment as we come back to actual experience in the moment. What's happening now? What are we, Sounds around us, Sensations in the body, Background feelings that may be there, Little thoughts coming in, Little thoughts coming in. Really just allowing the mind to relax as well. And for me, Allowing the mind to relax is allowing the attention to relax, Allowing the attention to soften. Normally we're focused in on something. Our attention is focused on whatever it is of interest or what we need to be doing. So we're zoomed in. As I've said before, I like to think of this as zooming out, Just a more open, Relaxed awareness. And just noticing how that feels in us. And in this, Just noticing any sense of that sort of greater sense of freedom or liberation that we're just tasting it, Just a taste of that as we just let the attention relax, Just tasting that sense of freedom inside. And as always, The mind, The attention is going to wander off on some thought that it thinks is interesting. That happens to everybody. We're not trying to stop thought, But we're like stopping the sprouting or not letting it continue to sprout. So whenever you notice a thought sprouting, Just choosing not to follow it anymore for now, Making that choice not to follow the thought and just letting the attention coming back to being in this moment. There's nowhere we're trying to get to. We're already here. So nothing we need to do. Any doing is just going to take us away from just simply being here now. And just noticing, Noticing how that is, Whatever it is for you. But for most people, There's usually some sense of greater ease, Relief, Release, Lightness of being, Sense of spaciousness, Whatever, Different things for different people, However it is for you. And just noticing, Noticing that taste of freedom that is there, Just that taste of freedom. That taste of liberation that comes when we cease clinging to a particular thought or idea. So let's just sit for another moment, Minute or so just enjoying this sense of freedom, Of being free. Enjoying this sense of ease and freedom that comes from not getting caught up in our thoughts. And when we do get caught up in another one, Just choosing not to follow it for the moment.