February 17, 2009

The Four Noble Truths - redux

Tomorrow night is our meeting on the Four Noble Truths. I thought it would be useful to copy forward the four-part presentation of His Holiness 14th. Dalai Lama on the subject, which was originally presented in London, in 2007, Or so. I find the YouTube format useful for study. It is really easy to get lost in thought while you are watching His Holiness groove out with audience members while his translators is speaking. But after many rewinds, I have a much better handle on how Tibetan Buddhism defines the Three Jewels of Buddhism.

As His Holiness explains, the Buddha includes the historical or Shakyamuni Buddha, and also includes the Buddhas past, present and future, who have developed a quality of spiritual attainment that eliminates all negativity and fully comprehends the implications of the principle of dependent origination, aka the interdependent nature of reality.

In attaining this realization, as I understand His Holiness, such an individual has become a Buddha, and presumably a member of the host of enlightened beings constituting the Buddha of the first jewel.

This effectively defines my path as a practicing Buddhist as first cogitating on the principle of dependent orgination. ok, I'm cogitating.

This usually takes me to two places, in quick succession. First, a mind drift through the laws of physics and how they function at levels both titanic and infitessimal. Galaxies orbit the black holes at their center. Planets orbit the suns at their center. Electrons orbit the cluster of particles at their center, the protons and the neutrons. The particles themselves, less particles, than the illuson of particles created by the vibrating strings of energy that confirm quite literally the deepest of Buddhist truth.

Second, it takes me to the human family. To the realization that while the deepest principle of Buddhism is an abstraction, lost to most of us in a cloud of incomprehensible mathmatical symbol, it's purest expression is anything but abstract.

It is the realization of human suffering, and devotion to the pathway leading out of suffering.

But I wonder if the gift of Buddhist practice is not in its' turn, based on a deeper truth; that the efforts of the Buddhas builds on the natural quality of human beings to recognize the suffering of others, and to respond with compassionate action.

Unfortunately, most of this post has been about my Buddhist mind riff, and not about the Four Noble Truths or the Three Jewels. But then, that's why we have the Dalai Lama.

Part 1

Part 2



Part 3

Part 4





DHL