In this four-part series, a Christian seminary professor and scholar of Buddhism explains how the Buddha’s teaching has made him a keener observer of the human condition, particularly the aging process. The four posts of this blog series move through (1) the author’s academic study of Buddhism and love of basketball, (2) the story of Prince Siddhartha becoming the Buddha, (3) the Buddha’s teaching, and (4) what the author has learned from the Buddha about the human condition.
Post #3: The Buddha’s Teaching
The Buddha’s first sermon after enlightenment laid out the main objectives of his spiritual curriculum, as captured in the title of the text, “Setting the Wheel of Dhamma [Teaching] in Motion,” the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. (transl. Thanissaro Bhikkhu) The Buddha would teach a Middle Path between the two extremes he had found unconducive to liberation, his self-indulgent lifestyle as a prince and his self-afflicting asceticism. His teaching was founded on the Four Noble Truths.
Buddha Preaching the First Sermon at Sarnath, 11th century, Bihar, India, Rogers Fund, 1920, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue. Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/38123.
First, life is dukkha. This term is usually translated as “suffering,” but I follow Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s view that “‘stress’—in its basic sense as a strain on body or mind—seems to be as close as English can get.” At its core, the human condition is beset with existential stress, dissatisfaction, a gnawing sense of discomfort and dis-ease. The Buddha offers a laundry list of dukkha: “Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful.” He concludes by saying, “In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.” (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, transl. Thanissaro Bhikkhu) The Buddhist notion of the five aggregates is complex, but the take-home point here is that clinging, grasping, attachment to things is dukkha. For instance, as long as Prince Siddhartha clung to the intoxicating delusions that he would never grow old, fall ill, or die, he was stressed about aging, illness, and death. But as the Buddha, he discovered that old age, disease, and dying are not the problem; rather, it is our attitude toward them that causes the existential stress. Thus, for instance, as Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes, “It’s because of clinging that physical pain becomes mental pain. It’s because of clinging that aging, illness, and death cause mental distress.”
Second, the cause of this existential stress is taṇhā, a “thirst” that is never quenched, an inexorable “craving” that is never satisfied, an approach to life plagued by “desire” that can never be fulfilled. Taṇhā manifests most obviously in our yearning for sensual pleasures, but it also tethers us to the round of birth, death, and rebirth (saṃsāra). “As long as there is this ‘thirst’ to be and to become,” wrote Walpola Rahula, “the cycle of continuity (saṃsāra) goes on.”
Third, the existential stress, dissatisfaction, dis-ease (dukkha) of the human condition will cease when thirst/craving (taṇhā) is eliminated. As we have seen, this cessation (nirodha) is enlightenment or Nirvana, which Buddhists believe can be realized by all.
Fourth, the Middle Path is also an Eightfold Path to attaining Nirvana, comprising “right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.” (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, transl. Thanissaro Bhikkhu) As Walpola Rahula explained, these are not successive stages but attitudes and practices “to be developed more or less simultaneously, as far as possible according to the capacity of each individual. They are all linked together and each helps the cultivation of the others.”
The Buddha spent the rest of his long life establishing and guiding his new religious movement. The traditional designation for the movement was the “fourfold assembly” (cattāro parisā): monks, nuns, male lay devotees, and female lay devotees.
The story is told of the Venerable Malunkyaputta, a monk who was upset that the Buddha hadn’t answered certain metaphysical questions that weighed heavily on his mind: Was the universe eternal or not? Was it infinite or finite? What about the soul? What happens to an enlightened person after death? Malunkyaputta threatened to leave the movement if the Buddha didn’t answer such questions.
Well, the Buddha didn’t answer them. In fact, he told Malunkyaputta in no uncertain terms that he never promised anyone answers to such questions, and that whoever wished answers from him would die before getting them. The Buddha had explained only the Path to Nirvana to his followers. Walpola Rahula remarked, “Practically the whole teaching of the Buddha, to which he devoted himself during 45 years, deals in some way or other with this Path.” Here are the Buddha’s words to Malunkyaputta, rehearsing the Four Noble Truths:
And what is declared by me? “This is stress [dukkha],” is declared by me. “This is the origination of stress,” is declared by me. “This is the cessation of stress,” is declared by me. “This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress,” is declared by me. And why are they declared by me? Because they are connected with the goal, are fundamental to the holy life. They lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, Unbinding [Nirvana]. That’s why they are declared by me. (Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta, transl. Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
As Rahula put it, Malunkyaputta had been lost in what the Buddha called a “wilderness of opinions,” namely, “unnecessary metaphysical questions which are purely speculative and which create imaginary problems.” I sometimes wonder if there is a lesson here for graduate theological study. That aside, the texts record that Malunkyaputta found his way out of the metaphysical wilderness, becoming enlightened after a subsequent tutoring session with the Buddha.
In my next and last blog post, I will reflect on how the Buddha’s teaching has made me a keener observer of the human condition.
Contributed by Paul David Numrich. Numrich is Professor in the Snowden Chair for the Study of Religion and Interreligious Relations, Methodist Theological School in Ohio. His publications include Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples (University of Tennessee Press, 1996), Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America: A Short History (co-author, Oxford University Press, 2008), and North American Buddhists in Social Context (editor and contributor, Brill and the Association for the Sociology of Religion, 2008).