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<\/a><\/p>\nThe Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are thus\u00a0his verifiable\u00a0method (Dhamma)\u00a0for reaching Enlightenment and thereafter, Nirvana (Nibbana in Pali). How\u00a0do we go about this process? Meditation.<\/p>\n
Remember my lesson from the monks? Meditation is covered\u00a0in many sutras (discourses by the Buddha), however it really comes down to one thing: mindful awareness. In this way, the Buddha calls us to be clearly aware of the world for what it is. Joe, my parakeet, for example, is a parakeet. But it doesn’t stop there.<\/p>\n
The meditation–the path toward Awakening\/Enlightenment–is that I reduce Joe to his essence. Joe must become not<\/em>\u00a0Joe. First, I must recognize that Joe is not Joe, because I assigned the name Joe to him. A name is a mental fabrication and therefore transient. It will not last. Joe is not Joe. Now, Joe is a bird. Not only is he a bird, he is also blue. But if we relinquish our need to categorize things (which are transient), then we know that blue is simply a perception of certain wavelengths of light. What I see is really clear light. In fact, all we “see” is light. Reality is perception, and perception is what? Transient.\u00a0This practice carries on until I’ve reduced Joe to nothing other than everything. There is no difference between Joe and myself. We simply are<\/em>.<\/p>\n Cool. Now that Joe is covered, what’s next? Yeah, my head hurts too, but what this comes down to is releasing our fixation on things. This is where attachment comes in. We are to reduce our thoughts to non<\/em>thought, that is, our realities are not conditioned by the automatic compartments our minds associate things with. Because the idea is that we all\u00a0contain Buddha nature–that quality by which we are Awakened to the real nature of reality.<\/p>\n Now, the real trick is to simply forget what I said and just practice.\u00a0Why are you staring at me like that? Oh right, because I haven’t shown you how. Easy.\u00a0The simplest way\u00a0(and the\u00a0way the Buddha spoke most about) is\u00a0focusing on one’s breath. No really, that’s meditation. Okay, okay here’s an example. Yes, it will be harder than it sounds.<\/p>\n When your entire existence\u00a0proceeds\u00a0this way, you are an Awakened being, because you experience reality exactly\u00a0as it is and your interactions\/emotions\/responses with said reality are detached from them. If your kids are screaming, you are calm, because you have the Right Understanding (one of the rungs on the Eightfold Path) that their fit is both caused by ignorance (which is transient) and that the fit itself is temporary. Why attach to temporary phenomena? Why get wrapped up in their struggle with ignorance?<\/p>\n I’ve bugged my wife since this month began to practice sitting meditation (notice the distinction, because every action is a meditation, sitting is just another form) with me in the evening. She insists that she cannot meditate because her mind races too much. That’s like saying you can’t take cold medicine because you have a runny nose. I tried to explain to her that meditation isn’t the pure elimination of spontaneous, subconscious thought, but\u00a0detachment from said thought.<\/p>\n Picture rush hour on a busy highway. The long line of cars and noise of car horns represents your thoughts. The Buddha gives us two choices: we can be\u00a0within the traffic jam of our mind, or we can detach and rise above the mess. Above the traffic jam we become a third-party, free and able to analyze our own mind and see things for what they really are. Our urge to escape is the Problem or our scientific method. Next is our theory of how to escape (the hypothesis\u00a0proposed by the Buddha).\u00a0The action of detachment\u00a0and the analysis of fabricated perception is meditation (the experiment\/data gathering\u00a0of our scientific method). Realization of the world as it really is, in that very moment, is the Awakening (conclusion).<\/p>\n This sounds like a lot, and that’s because it is. Truth is, the first step to Enlightenment is to stop reading about it. Buddha himself experienced his Awakening through direct testing and experimentation. He never took anything for granted. There was too much at stake (suffering). So what does all of this mean for us on a practical level? We can certainly use a degree of detachment from our surroundings and feelings to better function in our lives.<\/p>\n<\/a>\n
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