Modern life can easily become one long series of New Year's Resolutions.
In the words of Radiohead: "Fitter, happier, more productive, comfortable (not drinking too much), regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week), getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries..."
We set our sights on the next project, the next thing - a promotion, a marriage, a house, a drink with friends, sex, a Michelin-starred meal - in the belief that it will make us happy.
But it never does, does it? Or perhaps it does temporarily, but then the craving returns.
In Buddhism, the First Noble Truth is that life consists of this permanent dissatisfaction (dukkha). This is not a pessimistic thought, but a realistic one. The First Noble Truth strips away the pretence of the New Year's Resolution approach to life. It stares dissatisfaction full in the face and acknowledges it. We are not going to resolve our dissatisfaction simply by trying yet another new thing.
The Second Noble Truth is that this dissatisfaction is caused by craving. Oscar Wilde famously said: "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." Buddhism explains that there is a third tragedy: the act of wanting in the first place. Wanting will always lead to dissatisfaction, whether or not we get what we want.
In the busyness of our lives, how often do we pause and contemplate this underlying dissatisfaction? The answer may be: possibly never. For understandable reasons, we tend to shy away from our suffering, our sadness, our pain. We cover it over with our next project... you know, the one that will finally bring us happiness.
Buddhism says that, if we do that, we are doomed to make the same mistake again and again. We are born, we run around after things that cannot satisfy, we die; we are reborn, we run around after things that cannot satisfy, we die; we are reborn, and so on and so on, in an endless cycle called samsara.
But the Third Noble Truth says that there is an escape route. We need to distance ourselves from our craving, and learn to live each day on its own terms, not dwelling in the past or an imagined future. If we remove craving, we can find freedom from the consequences of craving, from dukkha. We can find nirvana.
And the Fourth Noble Truth says that nirvana is achieved through the 8-fold path, a path based on wisdom, moral virtues/ethics and meditation.
In the West, we have cherry-picked meditation from this 8-fold path and have repackaged it as mindfulness. This is often presented as a standalone activity, a means to relax and to be self-aware. The danger of this, of course, is that it just becomes another New Year's Resolution, one thing to add to the list of 'Things That Make Me Feel Better', along with exfoliation, kale smoothies and pilates.
Within Buddhism, though, meditation is not just another target. It has a purpose. Within the 8-fold path, its aim is to overcome dukkha, the dissatisfaction that robs us of peace. It is more than a task, more than 10 minutes at the start of each day. It is a practice that flows from a belief system. It is a way of life.
Whilst we're here, B is also for Benedictine.
The Benedictines are a Christian order of monks and there is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a huge overlap between the beliefs and practices of Benedictine monks and those of Buddhist monks. In particular, both focus on the necessity of living in the 'now'.
As Henri Nouwen once put it: "Wherever I am, at home, in a hotel, in a train, plane or airport, I would not feel irritated, restless, and desirous of being somewhere else or doing something else. I would know that here and now is what counts and is important because it is God himself who wants me here at this time in this place."
Just like the Buddha, Nouwen too diagnosed his problem as restlessness or dissatisfaction and, also like the Buddha, he found an answer in discovering the importance of resting in the 'now'.
Next: C is for Confucianism…
Written by Pete Mansfield
