The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 - Melvin McLeod [79]
Most experts on the economy predict a slow period of at least a year, to be followed, inevitably, by a return to the upward-reaching growth economy we have come to feel is as reliable as a law of nature. But suppose they are not correct. Suppose we are reaching limits on a limited planet, and that we are in for a very long period of reduced circumstances. What if in the future we won’t have top-notch medical care, high-performance cars, automatic houses, and abundant energy? Such an eventuality might cause such a crisis of despair due to dashed expectations that it might usher in a terrible period of the sort of dystopian nightmares we’ve seen in movies or novels, with chaos and violence everywhere. Or it could bring the opposite—more happiness, more sharing, more wisdom, bigger hearts. More people growing gardens, cooking food, working on farms, taking care of others. A slower, more heartfelt and realistic style of living, and a move toward dying at home surrounded by friends and spiritual supporters rather than in high-tech hospitals hooked into alienating machines run by busy professionals.
This probably won’t be the case; the economists are probably right that things will return to what we have come to call normal after a while, maybe after only a year or two. But even so, it would be a healthy exercise to visualize and celebrate this simpler, sparer life—and maybe even to live it.
No Self, No Problem
Anam Thubten
Here’s a teaching that gets right to Buddhism’s core insight: that we suffer because we believe we have a self. Of course we do exist at the common sense level—that can’t be denied—but we do not exist as a permanent, ongoing, unified self. Trying to maintain that illusion is the source of great struggle, insecurity, and suffering, and letting go of it is liberation. The Tibetan teacher Anam Thubten describes this profound truth simply and beautifully, and shows how we can get there directly.
There are quite a few ideas about what it takes to realize enlightenment. Some people say it takes a long time to awaken and some people say it takes a very short time to awaken. Some people say there are ten miles between us and enlightenment and some people say there are a billion miles between us and enlightenment. Sometimes it is hard to decide which one is the correct perspective.
What is liberation? What is awakening? Actually, if we are searching for awakening as a moral reward or as an idealized utopian realm, then enlightenment is like chasing after a rainbow. We can chase a rainbow but we can never catch it. Perhaps one of the main hindrances keeping us from having a direct experience of enlightenment is our preconceived notion of what enlightenment is. So we have to give up every idea we have of what enlightenment is. Sometimes that can be a little bit uncomfortable, especially if we have very high hopes about enlightenment. When we are asked to give up every idea we have about enlightenment, we sometimes feel that we are losing everything, even our beloved illusion, enlightenment. How merciless and coldhearted. But the ultimate truth, or emptiness, is the destruction of all illusions and that includes the illusion of enlightenment.
When we meditate, when we sit and simply pay attention to our breath, we begin to see that there is an “I,” a self, who is searching for enlightenment and liberation from suffering. But if we keep paying attention to our breath and body sensations, then eventually all of those ideas, concepts, and illusions begin to dissipate one after another and truth reveals itself. It’s like watching a mountain that is covered