Vegetarian Continued: Food Mindfulness

Well my reading friends, I have given up on being a vegetarian. I know that this is something I could do if I had a real motivating reason; however, I am not ready to give up meat. I enjoy meat; I appreciate the variety that meats and fishies bring to my diet; and I have so many other important goals to focus on that this one does not seem to be all that pressing. What I AM focused on is eating healthier in general. I do eat more veggies and fiber than anything else. I am also more aware now of when I am actually hungry and when I just have an appetite for something (ie: the ravenous chocolate craving that I get every evening). I am still working on self control when it comes to my trigger foods and appetite, yet I recognize a big change in my eating habits and food mindfulness (Yay! I’m applying Buddhism to everyday life, go me!).

Buddhism: An Existential Worldview

For my first post, I am going to dive deep into the Buddha-mind. This is a paper I just wrote for a class, but I like it; it helps dispel some misconceptions about Buddhism. I hope you all enjoy!

Now that the popularity of Asian religious traditions, such as Buddhism, has begun to grow in the West, there has been an increase in the propagation of knowledge about these traditions; though, not all of this information may be correct. For Buddhism, this is especially the case. There are so many misconceptions about this deceptively simple religion, namely the incorrect view of Buddhism as a pessimistic or nihilist worldview.

The Buddha’s teachings center on suffering (dukkha). Buddha says that suffering is a fact of life. Because everything is in a constant state of flux or change, including one’s own body and mind, everything will die, everything will come and go, and everything is subject to samsara (the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth). This statement by Greek philosopher Heraclitus reflects this idea in an appropriate metaphor, “You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.” So logically, a person cannot depend on anything. A person cannot hold tight to anything. A person cannot base his happiness on anything, because when that thing held dear changes or dies, the person’s happiness will be extinguished with the object of its affection.

This fact is made clear with the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth (Dukkha) is that there is suffering. The Second Noble Truth (Samudaya) proclaims how suffering arises, which I just explained. The Third Noble Truth (Nirodha) says that there is a way out of suffering. The final and Fourth Noble Truth (Magga) gives the way out of suffering by following the “Path” which includes the Eightfold Path, meditation, and other activities that lead to Nirvana, extinction, or freedom from the cycle.

A religion which is centered around the idea of suffering seems very pessimistic and even nihilistic; in other words, one should not care about life, because it just does not matter in the end anyway. This is not at all what Buddhists believe. Buddhism is perhaps one of the most existential of the religious worldviews; that is, a Buddhist believes that life DOES matter, even if everything about life involves suffering.

The heart of this existential understanding comes from a deep understanding of the Buddhist doctrine. Since all life is flux, one never knows what will happen from instant to instant. A body could be alive one second, and dead the next… one can never know for certain what the future holds. Buddhism thus offers a release from the future. Likewise, one cannot look nostalgically to the past and also avoid suffering. The past is gone. All things in the past have become extinguished. Buddhism is a release from the past as well.

So what is a person left with after the future and past are taken away? The present moment is all that remains. The present is all that a person has. This is the existential perspective in a Buddhist’s mind. People are free to live in the now. People are free of the future, free of the past, and free of all attachments. A person can live in the now and do things now. If a person does not live in the past or in the future, he can be present (as Buddhists call living in the now) and not worry about anything. Why worry about future situations that one cannot completely predict in this chaotic universe? Freedom from worry and suffering is where true joy comes from.

So, one may think that this is a nihilist worldview, “I do not care about the future, so why should I care about now?” Yet there is a second part to this deepest of Buddhist philosophies. The Zen Buddhists call it the Buddha-Mind. The Mahayana Buddhists and Theravada Buddhists call it Anatta. The name of the doctrine is insignificant; the meaning and implications, though, are very deep.

To a Buddhist, a person does not have an everlasting soul. This is called Anatta (or Anatman) which means “No self.” One does not have an everlasting soul in part, because the self changes from moment to moment. A person is not the same person now that he was ten minutes ago. This is true both physically and mentally. The mental consciousness, or ego, is in a constant state of flux. It is not the same. It will never be the same. As thoughts arise and die, so too the mind, the ego arises and dies each instant. How can Buddhists believe in reincarnation and such if there is no lasting soul?

The hidden meaning behind Anatta is non-inherent existence. Buddhists know that no thing in the universe (including the universe itself) can survive or arise on its own. A flower cannot survive without the rain, the wind, the sun, the Earth. Likewise, the sun cannot survive without that flower. A galaxy is held together by the combination of all the matter within the galaxy. This mass creates the gravity which holds the galaxy together. Without even the smallest flower, the galaxy could not exist, so the sun could not continue to exist. In the study of mathematical chaos theory, a simulation of this would show that removing even small pieces of mass from a galaxy will drastically affect it over time. So, without the existence of that little dandelion in the grass, humans do not exist either. This is Anatta. Nothing inherently exists, or exists on its own.

This fact makes EVERYTHING important. There is a connection between every thing which Zen Buddhists call the Buddha-Mind. The things that appear in the universe (including the universe) are really just manifestations of one thing. Everything grows out of and dies into this Entity… Nirvana. Escaping the cycle, means escaping one’s manifested form, including the ego, and returning to Nirvana or the Buddha-Mind. In Zen Buddhist philosopher Wei Wu Wei’s book, Why Lazarus Laughed, he emphasizes these points over and over:

“The Buddha-mind is whole mind. It is not split. It is that which we are. It is that aspect of the Absolute which is accessible to cognition. But it can only be apprehended subjectively, never as an object. To apprehend subjectively means to know that we are it… By a state of pure awareness we may know by direct cognition that the Buddha-mind is us.”

Wei Wu Wei further explains what the Buddha-mind is… much better than this author can describe:

“Where is this Impersonal Consciousness? No, it is not up there! Nor in my head, nor even in my heart or solar-plexus. Regarded spatially and personally, it is distributed in every cell of my anatomy. Regarded psychically it might appear as a radionic aura. Regarded impersonally it is immanent throughout space. Regarded non-spatially it is infinity. Regarded intemporally it is the eternal present. Regarded temporally it is that which sees, hears, feels, tastes and smells. But ‘it’ is never that which interprets perceptions. My psyche-soma is the means whereby ‘it’ manifests, and its manifestation is the justification of my psychesoma. I am it, and it is I.”

The entire idea behind this is similar to the African term Ubuntu, which means, “I am, because we are.” I exist, because you all exist. This is the most positive worldview one can have. The recognition that one needs others in order to survive and thrive (and the deeper realization that everything, including the self are all manifestations of one thing), gives rise to acts of charity, protests for freedom and rights, neighbors helping neighbors, strong communities, and brotherly love. Ubuntu or Buddha-Mind, in the author’s opinion, is the deepest form of love and the deepest source of happiness that exist.
Buddhism says that there is something to live for, there is a purpose! It is for the sake of others that people exist, as scientist Albert Einstein aptly put it, “Strange is our situation on the earth. However, there is one thing that we know, we are here for the sake of others. Above all, for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends. And, also, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy.” This is Buddha-mind.

In conclusion, Buddhism gives people the freedom to live in the present moment and not dwell in the past or the future, because one does not know anything beyond the present, nor can one go back to the past. Enlightenment is living this freedom and cultivating right view (part of the Eightfold Path) which leads to understanding the true reality of the universe: that everyone and everything are really a part of the whole, the Buddha-mind. This positive outlook is at the heart of a Buddhist’s worldview.