Buddhism notes

Five hindrances:

The five hindrances are negative states of mind that are impediments to Buddhist practice. They are often most clearly seen and arise as obstacles in meditation. We are all quite familiar with them and may experience them every day.

The five hindrances are sensual desire, ill will, sloth, restlessness, and doubt.

Sensual desire means the appetite of the body for food, sex, possessions, and experiences. All these wants can cloud the mind and make practice difficult, if not impossible. The Buddha, in one of his many metaphors for the hindrances, refers to the sense desire as a dye that discolors a clear pool of water. The clear water that truly reflects the observer’s face represents the mind at ease.

Ill will refers to all the aversive and rejecting states of mind—anger, hostility, resentment, and bitterness. The Buddha described the mind captured by ill will as water that is frothing, bubbling, and boiling.

Sloth, or indolence, characterizes the mind that is slow and drowsy. A dull and sleepy mind cannot see things as they are. The Buddha likens it to a pool of water overgrown with moss and algae. 

Restlessness captures many feelings common to life today: worry, fear, and anxiety. The restless mind is disturbed and preoccupied, not ready to learn or grow. The Buddha compares the restless mind to a pool stirred by the wind into ripples and waves.

Doubt means the mind is crowded with questions and uncertainty: Am I doing the right thing? Am I wasting my time? The Buddha describes the doubt-filled mind as a pool of water that is murky, cloudy, or shadowed.

The five hindrances are traditionally viewed as obstacles or fetters that prevent us from seeing things as they are and from practicing with a clear mind. But we also must learn to live with them. They may not be the best roommates, but in this light, we can view negative thoughts and feelings as incentives to practice.

The seven factors of enlightenment:

Qualities of mind that the Buddha said were conducive to good practice and essential to master on the path to nirvana, or awakening; they are primarily taught in the Theravada tradition. The seven factors are: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity.

Mindfulness is the first factor of enlightenment. Mindfulness is complex, but in its basic form, it refers to staying aware of body and mind in the present moment. (Right mindfulness is also the seventh area of practice on the eightfold path.)

Once mindfulness is established, the practitioner can engage in investigation and clearly see the details of the present moment.

Energy means applying oneself to the task at hand while being attentive to the details one has investigated.

Joy comes from the application of mindful energy. Finding joy in the practice is essential for maintaining a steady practice—who wants to persist in a joyless endeavor? Joy is also one of the four immeasurables, another list of virtues essential to awakening.

Tranquility comes with the confidence gained from the work put into earlier efforts.

Concentration is the ability to fully focus on the task at hand, blocking out distractions and overcoming fatigue.

Equanimity, the pinnacle or conclusion of the seven factors, is not the same as tranquility. Instead, it refers to a balanced mind, one that is not swayed this way and that by desire and aversion, one that can weigh feelings with reason and exercise sound judgment. A mind in this state is ready to practice more advanced meditation or face the many challenges that arise in life. (Equanimity is also one of the four immeasurables.)

Using the analogy of a roof, the Buddha said that just as all rafters slope toward the peak, so the seven factors of enlightenment lead toward awakening. The seven factors are progressive, constituting steps along the way to culmination in enlightenment. Practicing mindfulness, for example, leads to investigation and so on.

The doctrine of two truths—the absolute and the relative

It holds that there are two ways of viewing the world: as things appear to be, and as they are. In other words, existence is both relative (or conventional) and absolute. The relative or conventional explanation of reality is what we know and experience, while the ultimate or absolute truth is inexpressible,  empty (sunya), and lies outside of conventional experience and language. The conventional truth about something is its dependence on conditions. The ultimate truth is its emptiness. This doctrine has its roots in the words of the historical Buddha, who acknowledged that some experiences, in particular nirvana, lie beyond the ability of language to describe.

The famous Buddhist monk and philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 2nd–3rd centuries CE) held that the Buddha’s teachings must be viewed in light of the two truths if they are to be properly understood. But it is not as simple as relative truth being incomplete and absolute truth being perfect and complete. Nagarjuna walks the middle path between them. Both are true, he said, and there is value in both because the conventional depends on the absolute and vice versa.

Early classical Indian Buddhism, including the Theravada school, which still exists today, taught that samsara was the world of suffering and nirvana the escape from it. Nagarjuna argued that this was only relatively true. The absolute truth, he said, is that there is no difference between samsara and nirvana because both are mental constructs empty of a fixed essence. Viewed relatively, this world of suffering may be samsara, but viewed in the light of absolute truth, this world is nirvana. 

Sansara is nirvana, and nirvana is samsara.

There are many ways of interpreting this claim, but it appears to turn the Buddhist path on its head: What is the point of practice if there is no goal? We practice not to become a Buddha, but because the two truths doctrine teaches, we already are buddhas, we just don’t realize it yet.

Emptiness:

The English term “emptiness,” a translation of the Sanskrit word sunyata (sunnata in Pali), is one of the most misunderstood—and even off-putting—words used in Buddhism. It’s misunderstood because it’s not easy to grasp intellectually, and different schools of Buddhism interpret it differently. And it’s off-putting because it sounds so negative. 

But “emptiness” doesn’t refer to a grim void or a kind of nihilism. In the Pali canon, which comprises some of the earliest Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha uses the term to describe how emptiness pertains to our conception of the self. In one famous story, the Buddha pointed to a chariot and asked, “Where is the essence of the chariot? Is it in the wheels? The seat? The axle? The cart?” Of course, none of the constituent parts contains the essence of the chariot, and each part broken down into smaller parts is devoid of that singular essence. Like the chariot, this “self” we cherish so devotedly is nothing more than a temporary coming together of various aggregates—empty.

Later Buddhist philosophical schools, perhaps most famously in a Mahayana scripture known as the Heart Sutra, expanded the concept of emptiness to include all phenomena in the world. Because everything depends on something else, nothing exists in any autonomous, enduring manner. Some schools go even further: everything we perceive depends on the mind that perceives it to “exist,” and is therefore empty of self-essence. Nothing—not even the tiniest particles imaginable nor the mind itself—has any substantial reality. It’s all relative, all “empty.”

Excerps: Tricycle

The chains of pratitya-samutpada dependent co-arising:

1.   Ignorance 
2.   Mental formations 
3.   Consciousness 
4.   Name and form 
5.   The senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and mind 
6.   Contact 
7.   Feeling 
8.   Craving 
9.   Clinging 
10.   Becoming 
11.   Birth
12.   Aging and death.

https://luckythanka.com/blogs/blogpost/wheel-of-life

“three poisons,”

Buddha identified “three poisons,” or three fires, or three negative qualities of the mind that cause most of our problems—and most of the problems in the world. The three poisons are: greed (raga, also translated as lust), hatred (dvesha, or anger), and delusion (moha, or ignorance). 

“In the centre of the wheel [of samsara], a pig, a rooster, and a snake chased each other in a circle. They represented ignorance, desire, and hatred, the three causes of suffering that bind all beings to the endless cycle of existence” 

Anicca:

“Even if one gets what one loves, the delight doesn’t last. All pleasure fades, leaving thirst for renewed pleasure in its wake. In short, everything — from the simplest gratifications to the greatest ecstasies — is subject to the universal law of impermanence (Pali: Anicca)”