Updating Noble Truths
The entity we now call Buddha really nailed it in his very first teaching gig there at Deer Park. Sure it was a small cohort of visiting senior citizens and he wasn’t even adjunct faculty but he laid out Dukkha and where it comes from and how to get rid of it with an eight-step program.
Except when Dukkha got translated as Suffering and the whole lesson became Noble Truths, I think it gave Buddhism some heavy baggage it’s still carrying.
People have been discussing these terms ever since but I don’t really care what the original Pali language words meant or didn’t mean. Buddha’s small audience was 100% Monk and they already had some understanding of Dukkha and Ariyasaccāni (Noble). He knew who he was speaking with.
Now everyone is listening in.
Suffering has high standards for a worldwide lay audience but they’re also vague enough that most people do not acknowledge suffering in themselves most of the time. That’s a tough fit for a concept that is meant to be present all the time for everyone.
Noble doesn’t work so well either. It smacks of privilege and higher-than-thou status. No Bull isn’t a bad alternative, but it’s a little too cute for me and it’s been done.
Truth, hmmm, I think that has to go too. It’s provocative. It invites attack of the counter-truths. I am uncomfortable with Universal Truth Claims unless they’re only valid within a certain perspective.
To me, the safest title for 21st Century Noble Truths is one that admits relativity, like: The Way I See Things (TWIST). Since Suffering is also out and Attachment is kind of meh, the Four Noble Truths would now go something like this:
The Way I See Things
Life is fucking annoying.
It hardly ever goes the way it’s supposed to.
Trying really hard to just, ‘suck it up and deal with what is,’ helps a little
But there are things anyone can do that gradually change how annoying things look in the first place.
The Noble Eight-Fold Path comes next and it has a lot going for it. The NEFP is a framework for thinking about what to do and how to do it every day so over time you de-condition yourself and get freer.
Breaking it all down to eight is great, very contemporary. People appreciate listicles. Path sounds good too. Lots of people can get into being on a path. Again, there’s the Noble problem, but we’ll just drop that.
The real issue is the eight bullet points themselves. They are way too intimidating.
First of all, saying ‘Right’ anything sounds authoritarian, Orwellian. Right for you, Right for the collective whole, or Right for Big Brother? Not sure it can be all three. Right is out.
Then there’s the actual items. Thoughts, Speech, Action … holy shit, it sounds like a cult. Which it kind of was — Buddha was starting his team, right there with that first class in the park. Team Buddha. A new kind of team for its time with a very insightful set of ideas about purpose and governance .
The eight bullet points work at two levels. They help individuals find life less annoying and they help groups get along. There is not complete agreement even among Buddhists on what to call them, but some of them look like they’re telling you how to talk and act and what kind of job you can have.
Actually, none of them sat anything about what to do and instead present a few counterexamples of what not to do.
So-Called Right Speech is really about Wrong Speech, like lies and rudeness and malicious gossip that is socially divisive. Same with Right Action — don’t kill or steal, stuff like that. It gets deeper too. Stealing isn’t stealing like we think of it — it’s acquiring anything that is not freely given to us. It means not asking for things, which gradually becomes easier when you want them less and less.
Right Livelihood sounds like a control trip, but actually just singles out a few gigs, like trade in people or weapons, as Wrong Livelihood. Selling meat or selling intoxicants are other examples of Wrong Livelihood in Buddhist commentaries.
I thought there would be some suggestions about Rightness. Is Right just a lack of identifiable Wrongs? Maybe it’s best not to say what’s Right but just to give people a few guardrails about where not to go.
All of the remaining Noble whatever are confusing to me as stated. Is Right Effort just an admonition to always do your best or is it about the development of a specific mental practice, or both?
I think the next three Bullet Points, the Mental Discipline group, describe a sequence of personal growth through practice that can help Right Speech, Right Conduct and Right Livelihood occur naturally. Right Concentration isn’t just another item on a list — it is the culmination of bringing the Right Effort and the Right Mindfulness to a meditative activity and then, by extension, to the rest of life.
Right Thought and Right Understanding are about gaining Wisdom and they are not very useful as general advice beyond the level of a fortune cookie. Talking about being one-pointed is just crazy talk, or aspirational talk at best, for someone with a raging monkey mind like mine. Wisdom is something harvested from a long process of cultivation, so what does that have to do with me?
I’m afraid we need to lose a deep and insufficiently considered metaphor, the great Path we are on, an image that structures thinking for many people and not just Buddhists.
Path is misleading. It suggests Wisdom and even Liberation is the reward for shit-tons of hard work and it isn’t. There is no Eight Fold Path with a beginning and an end, but we condition ourselves to think that way by talking that way. Path is not Right Speech but it is also not Wrong Speech.
It is partly right speech, with no caps.
With small caps, wisdom is available to anyone at any time, with at least a momentary falling away of distractions and a concentration that is not forced. Sometimes that state of mind is called ‘flow.’
Nothing is promised, no rewards. There is no Path, just our own individual paths which are made-up stories we tell ourselves and each other. The path that we see now is not the same path we will see at another time, or in another mood.
Meditation helps the path we make up look less annoying.
Eight isn’t bad for a listicle, but the advice generally known as the Noble Eight Fold Path isn’t really a listicle. The sequence is meaningful. There is a flow. It’s a narrative, or the skeleton of a narrative.
What connects Speech and Action and Work that is conducive to personal development and social well-being is appreciation, seeing the true value of things as they are. Speech that is appreciative supports others and part of its true value is the way it gradually transforms the speaker.
Work and Action provide the same virtuous circle. They’re all one principle. Having a practice and gaining wisdom are two more, resulting in this Full Truth and Path Update:
The Way I See Things
Life is frustrating and annoying.
It hardly ever goes the way it’s supposed to.
Trying really hard to just, ‘suck it up and deal with what is,’ helps a little
But there are things anyone can do that gradually change how annoying things look in the first place, guided by three basic principles:
1. Taking people and situations the way they are and not wishing they were something different makes it easier to be helpful to others, which is the best way to help yourself.
2. Any intentional meditative practice can extend anyone’s ability for taking things as they are
3. Wisdom or flow states are available at any time by fully appreciating what is present and as a result, not wanting anything that isn’t.
