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I've always held the view that without sorrow in life, the good times (feelings, experiences) wouldn't seem as sweet. Is this wrong view?  It just seem logical. The Buddhist view on life-experiences sometimes seems to approach things with a different outlook, so as to deter craving and clinging to the "good times".

 

 

It is true that the contrast does allow us to see the differences more emphatically. Buddhism, though, doesn't just encourage us not to crave and cling to the "good times", it also encourages us not to crave and cling to existence at all. This may seem a little strange, as most of us are brought up with a World View that is based on progress and the possibility of worldly eradication of suffering. Most of our societies are based on the idea that life is perfectible if only we work together and put in enough effort and goodwill. It is true, of course, that we can make a positive contribution to our communities and reach achievable goals but, for the Buddhist, this must always be based firmly in reality.

 

The Buddhist view of reality is that life and everything within it shares three characteristics: anicca (impermanence or universal flux), dukkha (suffering or intrinsic unsatisfactoriness) and anatta (not-Self; that there can be no enduring 'I' to take ownership of things, feelings, itself). This is radically different from the teaching of any other major religion or philosophical tradition. It does not see "good" and "bad" times as flip sides of an equally weighted coin; rather it recognizes that even good and pleasant experiences must end. When we are parted from these experiences we are conditioned to grieve or regret their passing, and so crave similar experiences. Rather than seeing the joy that exists in a particular experience as being perfectly appropriate for that moment, we futilely try to hold on to it and feel cheated or disappointed that we can't. It is through not identifying the underlying nature of reality that we get trapped in a vicious cycle of repeated suffering. The Buddha's entire teaching is devoted to getting us to 'wise up' to our predicament so that we can begin to take effective measures to extricate ourselves from samsara - the rounds of rebirth.

 

Fortunately, we don't have to just jettison all our previous learning and change our cherished views overnight. The Buddha gives us a series of guidelines for practice that, if implemented in a serious manner, will reveal to us the way things are. It is of no use to simply throw one set of cherished beliefs out of the window simply because we are drawn to a particular teacher or set of scriptures. We need to work with the teachings and to test their efficacy. A certain amount of confidence that the teachings may be of merit is required, but full conviction will arise only if they prove themselves through our practice.

 

We don't need to set ourselves a whole list of strictures such as "I will not cling" as this is unlikely to be implementable, in any case, unless we have a reasonably clear view of reality that has arisen through our meditation practice. The Buddha's main recommendation for lay people is the Five Precepts, and the ever-deepening implementation of them is a strong spiritual practice and a necessary foundation for any meditative development. We are currently working with samatha forms of meditation that seek to establish tranquillity of mind and increase our powers of meditative concentration. Later in the course we will start to work with vipassana meditation. This tackles 'head on' the three characteristics that I wrote of earlier. Our practice will begin through an exploration of just one of those characteristics: anicca. Through knowing impermanence fully, one can subsequently come to understand the other two characteristics too. When this understanding moves from intellectual acceptance to a fully heartfelt 'knowing', craving will begin to subside.

 

With metta

 

Andrew

 

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