Suffering and Ending Suffering

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

 June 8, 2008

The following story is told of the Buddha, this in a version by Sophia Lyon Fahs:

Kisa Gotami was a beautiful young woman with neither father nor mother to care for her. In the city market one day, a rich young man saw her as she stood in a booth selling flowers. He fell in love with her at first sight. Later he married her. Everyone thought: "What a happy life Kisa Gotami will now have!"

Some time after that a baby was born, a beautiful little boy, and Kisa Gotami was completely happy. The days slipped by very fast as she watched her little son grow and learn. Almost before she knew it, he could run about and talk. She loved him more than anyone else in all the world. She loved him when he was obedient and when he was stubborn. She loved him when he laughed and when he cried.

But one day the little boy suddenly became very sick. Even though his mother and father did everything they knew how to do for him, the little boy did not get well. In a few days he died.

Kisa Gotami could not believe her little boy was really dead. She thought his sickness had only put him to sleep. Some kind of medicine would surely wake him up. So she wrapped the little body in its baby sheet and lifted it up in her arms. She carried it to her neighbor's door.

"Please, my friend, "she begged, "give me some medicine that will cure my child." But when her neighbor lifted the sheet and saw the baby's face, she shook her head sadly. She knew there was no medicine that could cure him.

Kisa Gotami was not easily discouraged. She went from door to door. She begged each neighbor she saw: "Please give me some medicine to cure my little boy." But each neighbor in turn looked at the baby's face and shook her head sadly. The neighbors all felt very sorry for Kisa Gotami. When she was gone, they said:

"Poor Kisa Gotami! Has she lost her senses?" Finally she met a man on the street who said:

"My good woman, I cannot give you any medicine for your child, but I know a man who can help you."

"Oh, tell me, please, who is he and where may I find him?"

"Go to Buddha," said the man encouragingly. "He can always help people." So Kisa Gotami hurried to the home of Buddha. She stood before the great man and said:

"Good Buddha, I am told you are always able to help people in trouble. Please give me some medicine that will cure my child."

Buddha looked tenderly at the anxious mother. He knew the child was dead. He knew he could not bring the dead back to life again, but he knew also that he could help the mother to feel peaceful and comforted.

"My good woman, you must help me find the medicine," said Buddha kindly. "Go and bring me a handful of mustard seed."

"Surely I can easily find a handful of mustard seed," said Kisa Gotami eagerly.

"Do as I tell you," said Buddha, "but remember this: The mustard seed must be taken from a house where no one has ever died or it will be of no use."

Believing she could find the mustard seed in some house where no one had ever died, Kisa Gotami thanked Buddha and went back home. There she gently laid her child's lifeless body on its little bed. Then she went out alone to find the handful of mustard seed.

First she went hopefully to her next-door neighbor. "Have you a handful of mustard seed?" she asked. "Buddha says it will cure my child."

"Certainly I have a mustard seed. I will gladly give you a handful and more."

"Thank you so much, kind neighbor," said Kisa Gotami, "but before taking the seed I must ask you a question. Has anyone ever died in your house—a father or grandfather or grandmother or anyone else?"

"Oh, Kisa dear, have you forgotten?" said the neighbor in surprise. "Our dear grandfather died here scarcely more than a year ago."

"Then your mustard seed cannot cure my child," said Kisa Gotami sadly. "Buddha said that I must find the seed in a home where no one has ever died."

Hopefully Kisa Gotami went to another house. She went from door to door, to every house in the village, asking for a handful of mustard seed. When she asked the question: "Has anyone ever died in this house?" one said:

"Yes, our oldest son died here. It was ten years ago, but we still miss him." Another said:

"Both our grandparents died in this house." Another said:

"My husband died here many years ago." At every door it was the same. Someone would say:

"Good Woman, why remind us of our sorrow? How can you expect to find a house where no one has died? Don't you know that the living are few but the dead are many?

At last, tired and discouraged, Kisa Gotami went outside the village and sat down alone on a rock under a banyan tree. She knew now that even Buddha had not medicine for her child. Nothing could bring him back to life again. Tears blinded her eyes. Although it was broad daylight, it seemed as though the darkness of night had fallen over her.

As she sat quietly under the banyan tree, she slowly began to feel peaceful. After all, she was not all alone and deserted. Nor did she feel that her little boy was all alone. The really real little boy she loved was gone. That was true. She did not know where he had gone or why he had gone, but she did know now that his body was dead. It had died, just as thousands of other persons' bodies had died before. Just as her own body would sometime die. Just as everybody in all the world must sometime die. Kisa Gotami felt that all people were together in dying. No one was ever all alone.

But Kisa Gotami wanted to talk with Buddha again. She was beginning to understand why he had sent her to get the handful of mustard seed. But she wanted him to tell her. So she arose and went back to his home. Buddha greeted her in the same gentle way he had done before.

"Good woman, have you brought the mustard seed?" he asked.

"No, my lord. There is no house in all the village where someone has not at some time died."

"Sit down beside me," said Buddha. "Let us talk together a while." Kisa Gotami was glad to listen and be quiet.

"Our lives in this world are all short whether we live for one year or for a hundred years. Everyone who is born must sometime die—yes, everyone. There are no exceptions. We all have our times of happiness and also our times of pain and sorrow. Do not try to free yourself from suffering. Try rather to free yourself from hate and selfishness.

"Do not struggle, good woman," said Buddha. "Be at peace. Accept your life as a gift. Take the days as they come one by one. Fill them as full of kindness as you can."

Kisa Gotami went often to Buddha. The thoughts that he gave her to think about were the best kind of medicine for her loneliness. Now that she knew how much it hurt to be lonely, she began to learn how to comfort others who also were sad.

Kisa Gotami, now a rich man's wife, went often to the homes of the poor. She brought them food. She played with their children. In these ways she slowly learned how to comfort herself.[1]

I’m not a very good Buddhist.  I practiced with the meditation group – the sangha – which met at Arlington Street Church when I served there a few years ago, but I haven’t really had a regular Buddhist practice.  Last month our district ministers’ retreat was led by a Buddhist teacher in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen teacher.  I found the meditations we did there freeing and I was reminded of the value I have sometimes found in meditation.  One of the practices we tried was walking meditation, in which we walked mindfully through the woods behind the retreat center, breathing in rhythm to our steps, walking in rhythm to our breath, breathing in, breathing out, and I was reminded of the pleasure I took from our walking meditation at Arlington Street, where we walked through the Public Gardens just across the street from the church.  All of these experiences have something ineffable about them, something hard to describe if you didn’t have the direct experience yourself.

I know that a daily practice of meditation in some form is a good thing, and that when I do it, my day always goes better.  One part of my own practice is a simple form of breathing in, breathing out; not a full-blown Zen practice, and not especially long, just a way to center myself and to clear my mind.  My own experience and the example of others make it clear that the Buddhist tradition is well worth understanding and considering as at least part of a spiritual path.

Our reading described briefly the life of the Buddha from the privilege and insulation of the palace to an understanding of suffering outside the palace – outside the bubble of isolation from the real world – through extreme asceticism and finally to enlightenment and an understanding of how suffering may be ended.  Siddhartha Gautama’s path to becoming the Buddha was very rational, tested at every stage against his actual experiences.  Buddhism as practiced in some parts of the world involves magic and the worship of divinities, but the Buddha himself was very skeptical about theological issues that transcend this life – about God and heaven and life after death and a host of other intriguing but ultimately distracting metaphysical issues.  He spoke of demons, but those demons are in fact the embodiment of the temptations which keep us suffering – greed, hatred, ignorance.  He believed he was developing a science of enlightenment, of human psychology, and that only what really worked in practice should be respected.  Not even the Buddha’s words should be taken too seriously.  If a concept as taught by the Buddha gets in the way of achieving enlightenment, other ways should be found.  As one sage puts it, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”  Don’t worship the teacher, find the way yourself.  Nevertheless, someone who wants to follow this way is hardly starting from scratch.  The Buddha shared a great deal of wisdom with his followers, but here’s a brief summary of the foundations of the Buddha’s teachings, the Four Noble Truths.

The First Noble Truth is that all of life is dukha, usually translated as suffering, but suggesting also pain, unsatisfactoriness, angst, anguish as a way of characterizing the human condition.  This truth about our lives may be avoided for a time, as in the bubble of the palace, but it can neither be escaped nor ignored.

The Second Noble Truth is that the cause of dukha is our thirst, our clinging consciousness, our desires.  Because we try to cling to what is passing as though it were permanent, we are constantly disappointed and frustrated, most of all because our own lives will also end, and our most violent clinging is to our own lives.

The Third Noble Truth is the gospel, the good news that salvation is possible from this state of suffering if we recognize that our clinging self, our ego, is insubstantial and will one day end; that we are in fact an integral part of all that is, that we are completely interdependent, that we inter-are.

The Fourth Noble Truth lays out “the vehicle to enlightenment and its realization of suffering, its cause, and its cessation.”[2]  This vehicle of salvation is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Meditation.  These eight may be divided into three categories: morality, wisdom, and meditation.

This path sets forth a way of life with clear moral standards, many of which are familiar to us.  Where Jesus says, for example, “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you,” the Buddha says “Consider others as yourself.”  Where Jesus says, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,” the Buddha says, “If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick, or with a knife, you should abandon any desires and utter no evil words.”[3]  If we are completely interdependent, if we inter-are, if we affirm and promote, as our seventh Unitarian Universalist principle puts it, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” then clearly we must consider each of our actions in light of its impact on all those beings and things on which we interdepend – ranging from our best friends to our worst enemies, from the air we breathe and the water that courses through our bodies, even to the earth itself.

The heart of Buddhism, though, is practice, the experience of having a different relation with ourselves and the things around us, of actually abstracting ourselves for a time from suffering.  When we meditate, we are cultivating a different mode of experiencing our selves, we are developing the ability to witness our selves without being bound up with our egos.  The simplest form of meditation involves nothing more than breathing in and breathing out, 1 as we breathe in, 2 as we breathe out, 3, 4, up to 10, and then starting over at 1.  Very quickly the ego, the “monkey mind,” notices that we’re encroaching on his preserves.  1, breathing in, 2 breathing out – “You know, this is pretty boring.  There are lots of more productive things to do than breathing.”  Back to 1, breathing in, 2 breathing out, 3 breathing in, 4 – “This is really stupid.  Where did you learn about this stuff, anyway?”  Back to 1, breathing in, 2, 3, 4, 5 – “You’re not very good at this, are you?  You can’t even make it to 10!”  Back to 1, breathing in, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2 – “You know, it’s getting pretty late, here.  You’d better get to reading the paper if you’re going to….”  Back to 1, breathing in.

The monkey mind is a pain in mediation – but in fact he is always working, every second of our lives, distracting us from the here and now, pulling us away from what we have toward what we want, from where we are to where we’re going to be, from what we enjoy now to what we fear later.  The practice of meditation allows us to tame that wildness within us, to calm ourselves so that we can be present right now, enjoying, giving thanks for what is now without trying to make it last forever or rush on to the next thing.

The other day I was driving toward town and got delayed by the stoplight at High Street.  I was impatient to get where I was going but I took a breath or two and calmed myself and let myself just look around at where I was.  There’s a beautiful purple bush in bloom on the southwest corner of the intersection.  I admired it in the moment.  The light changed.  I got where I needed to go, but it seemed less of a chore to get there and more of an adventure.  Thich Nhat Hahn tells this story:

I remember a number of years ago, when [my friend] Jim and I were first traveling together in the United States, we sat under a tree and shared a tangerine. He began to talk about what we would be doing in the future. Whenever we thought about a project that seemed attractive or inspiring, Jim became so immersed in it that he literally forgot about what he was doing in the present. He popped a section of tangerine in his mouth and, before he had begun chewing it, had another slice ready to pop into his mouth again. He was hardly aware he was eating a tangerine. All I had to say was, "You ought to eat the tangerine section you've already taken." Jim was startled into realizing what he was doing.

It was as if he hadn't been eating the tangerine at all. If he had been eating anything, he was "eating" his future plans.

A tangerine has sections. If you can eat just one section, you can probably eat the entire tangerine. But if you can't eat a single section, you cannot eat the tangerine. Jim understood. He slowly put his hand down and focused on the presence of the slice already in his mouth. He chewed it thoughtfully before reaching down and taking another section.

Later, when Jim went to prison for activities against the war, I was worried about whether he could endure the four walls of prison and sent him a very short letter: "Do you remember the tangerine we shared when we were together? Your being there [in prison] is like the tangerine. Eat it and be one with it. Tomorrow it will be no more."[4]

So as we breathe mindfully in this way we practice cessation – no-thing.  And when we are not meditating, the practice gives us a new perspective to apply.  When we are angry or sad, lonely or depressed, we can recognize all of these as dukha, suffering, and we can recognize them as consequences of our own monkey minds’ response to the very real but passing events or provocations or disappointments which have brought about these states.  The whole question is not what happens to me, but how I respond.  If I respond to anger with anger, I will simply cause an escalation of the anger.  As the Buddha says, “Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time:  hatred ceases by love – this is an old rule.”[5]

I’m not a very good Buddhist.  I tend more to Christian and Jewish practices and traditions.  But whenever I enter into my own prayer practice, I always start with a simple exercise of breathing in, breathing out to clear my mind and move into the present moment, and then move into gratitude.  There is nothing alien to Christian practice in Buddhist meditation.  Indeed, the very strong focus on practice provides a very clear, compelling pattern which is easy to follow and easy to continue.  In that way I have often benefited by opportunities to meditate in the Buddhist manner and in the pieces I have managed to incorporate into my own practice.  Let me close with this poem:

“The Path of Practice” by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Meditating on the nature of interdependence
Can transform delusion into enlightenment.
Samsara and suchness are not two.
They are one and the same.
[Samsara – the fleeting or transient;
suchness – being in this present moment]

Even while blooming, the flower is already in the compost,
And the compost is already in the flower.
Flower and compost are not two.
Delusion and enlightenment inter-are.

Don't run away from birth and death.
Just look deeply into your mental formations.
When the true nature of interdependence is seen,
The truth of interbeing is realized.

Practice conscious breathing
To Water the seeds of Awakening.
Right view is a flower
Blooming in the field of mind consciousness.

When sunlight shines,
It helps all vegetation grow.
When mindfulness shines,
It transforms all mental formations

We recognize internal knots and latent tendencies
So we can transform them.
When our habit energies dissipate,
Transformation at the base is there.

The present moment
Contains past and future.
The secret of transformation
Is in the way we handle this very moment.

Transformation takes place
in our daily life.
To make the work of transformation easy,
Practice with a Sangha. [a group]

Nothing is born, nothing dies.
Nothing to hold onto, nothing to release.
Samsara is nirvana. [no-thing]
There is nothing to attain.

When we realize that afflictions are no other than enlightenment,
We can ride the waves of birth and death in peace,
Traveling in the boat of compassion on the ocean of delusion,
Smiling the smile of non-fear."[6]

Amen.

www.secondparish.org

---

[1] Sophia Lyon Fahs, From Long Ago and Many Lands:  Stories for Children Told Anew, illustrated by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge, Boston:  Beacon Press, 1948.

[2] James Ford, This Very Moment: A Brief Introduction to Buddhism and Zen for Unitarian Universalists, Boston:  Skinner House Books, 1996, p. 25, with paraphrases from pp. 23-25.

[3] Marcus Borg, Jesus and Buddha:  The Parallel Sayings, Berkeley, CA:  Ulysses Press, 1977, pp. 14-17.

[4] Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness:  A Manual on Meditation, Boston:  Beacon Press, 1975, 1976, pp. 5-6.

[5] Dhammapada, “The Twin Verses”

[6] Thich Nhat Hanh, Transformation at the Base, 2001