When we align with our Buddha-nature, we can appreciate our life, just as it is. Our Buddha-nature, or true nature, is amazing beyond description. The word “Buddha-nature” is a pointer to the nondual realization that we are not separate from the universe.
When we lose touch with our Buddha-nature, we are driven by craving in ways that cause ourselves and others endless suffering. To realize our true nature is one way to weaken a cycle of consumerism and exploitation that causes terrible harm and that will otherwise likely be our demise.
There's a difference between needing to have our basic needs met, which our society can and should do for all, and craving -- which is driven by a persistent sense of inadequacy and longing. I just finished reading David Loy's Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis. He reminds us that a cause of this persistent craving is our underlying awareness that we are ever-changing, mortal beings. We long for stability and security, and what we find is impermanence.
Change and loss is to be expected, but we are surprised every time we face a problem and imagine that we should be able to attain a kind of homeostasis that includes no problems or losses. We fix our leaky roof and think, finally, the house is all set, and the next month, a pipe bursts. We want to feel healthy, but suddenly we get sick. We want our family and friends to be permanent fixtures in our lives, but then we get in an argument, or even more painfully, a loved one dies. Life is actually "problem" after "problem" and loss after loss. The end of our problems is death, which sometimes feels like the biggest problem of all.
One way we deal with this instability is that we try to turn our sense of self into an impenetrable fortress that will not have to suffer change. We may hope to attain some kind of greatness that will define us forever, like the nearly-immortal Achilles in the Iliad. As a young man, I threw myself into training in rowing. Along the way my teams won multiple national and international championships. Interestingly, even at the time, these victories felt hollow because some part of me knew that I am not those victories. I momentarily felt like a winner, but then I lost a race and felt like a loser.
What I actually loved was the rowing itself, but I never expected it to be a permanent state. Winner, loser... these are senses of self that arise and disappear, just like each moment in our lives. There is no permanent self to be attained, only one sense of self after another, ever evolving based on causes and conditions. Deep down we know this, yet we keep competing with one another for the ultimate victory, chasing after shadows.
This vacillating sense of self-satisfaction and dissatisfaction leads us to try to create a permanent sense of satisfaction in other ways. One of the most damaging is our desire to accrue wealth. We imagine that if we can stockpile enough resources, we can purchase the fairy tale ending, "they lived happily ever after." For this "American dream," we commit grave harms. Human beings have enslaved one another, displaced indigenous peoples, colonized nations, and stolen and pillaged land for its "resources." We exploit one another and the earth to attain our personal goals.
Within the United States today, those who are poor (often people of color) continue to suffer environmental injustices as they are forced to live in toxic environments, such as near coal plants that provide energy that is largely consumed by the privileged. This inequity is unfair, and it is incumbent upon those of us with privilege to rectify it.
But the human appetite for consumption appears insatiable. Every two years, human beings chop down enough trees to cover all of Spain, and an area totaling 22.5 million football fields is desertified every year due to unsustainable, but changeable, agricultural practices. We are connected by an umbilical cord to Mother Earth who sustains our lives, and if we destroy her, we destroy ourselves.
The scientific consensus is that we are reaching critical tipping points in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The arctic permafrost is beginning to melt, releasing methane into the atmosphere, which traps more heat and causes even greater temperature increases than CO2. If this happens on a grand scale (which is likely to happen within the next hundred years if we don't change course), the average global temperature could rise 6 degrees Celsius in as short a period as 15 years. The result would be devastating, including mass desertification, plagues, biodiversity collapse, and the end of human civilization. It could mean the end of all life on this little blue planet. We truly are in this together.
Unfortunately, we seem to be too driven by our craving for permanent states of satisfaction to pause long enough to really take in what we are doing to our planet and to one another. We keep feeding the hungry beast of consumerism in hopes of overcoming our "problems."
But the real problem is the hope to escape our problems through consumption. No matter how much wealth we accrue, this deep sense of inadequacy persists because all of us will still get sick, grow old, die, and lose everyone we love. So we spin the wheel of suffering faster and faster, trying to get ahead. We are actually just digging our own graves, and in the meantime, we forget to appreciate our lives.
Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Might it be time for us to try something different?
What we need if we hope to survive as a species is nothing less than a spiritual revolution. We have this remarkable human capacity to recognize the inherent beauty of our lives, instability and all. In Buddhism, we call this inherent beauty our Buddha-nature.
Ultimately, our Buddha-nature is nothing other than ourselves as we are in this very moment -- the very thing we so often think is inadequate. For me, it is the sensation of my legs resting on the cushion, laptop perched on my lap, breath entering and exiting my lungs, crickets singing in the trees, and cars whooshing along the street. But it is not the concept of these things as separate beings. It is the actual presence of all of these "activities" that make up "my" boundless nature.
Really this boundlessness is not mine. Buddha-nature belongs to the universe, and we are ephemeral manifestations.
Our Buddha-nature also includes our "problems," such as a broken heart when someone we love dies. If, rather than trying to avoid such sorrow, I hold it compassionately, like an ocean holding a wave, grief simply arises and falls, revealing its own beauty.
It turns out there was nothing to fear. "Impermanence" is just this ever-evolving moment. There is something reliable after all.
Our boundless Buddha-nature is nothing other than things as they are, moment after moment, and when we turn toward this, appreciation and gratitude arise as we feel the intimacy of all beings residing in our hearts.
We can realize our Buddha-nature by meditating. This realization is transformative. We find in this realization that we are not actually separate from the world. Like grief, separate senses of self may arise like waves in the ocean, but we are also the entire ocean. We are made of the earth and sky, and we will return to them when we die. During our lives, the earth lives in our bodies, the sky in our lungs. We are deeply interwoven with all of creation. In this realization, we find the very joy, connectedness, love, and gratitude we previously sought through egoistic and materialistic pursuits.
There is nothing we need to do to attain our Buddha-nature. It is already manifesting. But we may need to practice meditation with a group and teacher to realize it. Our true nature reveals itself to us when we are quiet, sit still, and pay attention. Bit by bit, we learn to appreciate this in activity as well. Then we no longer crave to possess more and more of the world; it offers itself to us each and every moment.
As we realize just how intimately interconnected we are with all beings, here we find the love that inspires us to care for all of creation. The air in the sky inhabits my lungs. May it be pure! The rain falling from the sky fills my glass. May it be clean! And I am part of this world, always contributing to its evolution. May I be of benefit! In this way, realization of our Buddha-nature inspires us to care for all beings.
No comments:
Post a Comment