Psychology of Buddhism. Monograph

liberation and pleasure; health is pleasure; union with something pleasant is pleasure, separation with what is displeasing is pleasure; getting what one wants is pleasure.

Well, yes, of course, there is suffering, but there is pleasure. The concept of binarity is deep-rooted in the mind of average Europeans: there is good and evil, pleasure and suffering, joy and sorrow, wealth and poverty. Moreover, people have an unchanging idea of the relation between the two.

Europeans have an idea about a certain percentage of pain and pleasure. Taking them as facts of human existence, they strive for reducing the former and increasing the latter.

Their primary motivation in life is the “eternal bliss”, the “flow of happiness and harmony”, or the “ocean of pleasure”.

Pleasure is a global, dominating idea and the focus of attention of all normal human

beings.

It is the major, integrating factor of human activity.

It becomes clear, why it is so difficult for a normal person to understand and accept suffering as the only true fact of human existence.

The First Noble Truth seems to be unreal and causes strong personal resistance.

The European mind is able to gain understanding of the proposition “life is suffering” only when it finds itself at the bottom of depression and sorrow. An old man, feeling pessimistic and tired of life, or an old social community, whose members do not find joy in co-existence anymore, may arrive at such understanding. However, suffering is seen as temporary, there is always hope that it will go away, disappear like a bad dream. You just have to open your eyes, and joy of life and pleasure of existence will come. Anyway, small pleasures are always there...

But the deep understanding and acceptance of suffering as the fundamental truth, the universal law, the ultimate idea, is impossible.

In Buddhism, the basic universal law is the law of dependent origination: every event has a cause. However, according to that law, it is impossible to define the primary origin of any event or action, as it was caused by a whole chain of events. Therefore the world is factual, it is to be accepted as it is. According to the Buddhist doctrine, we cannot change the world.

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At the same time, Buddhism argues that certain elements (dharmas) are at the basis of all things and phenomena, both material and spiritual. Dharmas are passive by nature; they can be stimulated by a certain type of energy, the source of which is conscious voluntary actions, human thoughts and words. Stimulated dharmas become carriers of mental, physical, chemical, biological and other qualities; they are in constant movement and change. In the state of rest, dharma loses its specific qualities and disappears like a dying candle.

Buddhism teaches that objective reality is just an endless stream of ever-changing dharmas, therefore the world is a random game of stimulated dharmas; consequently, it is illusory, unstable and changeable. Nature, as well as man himself, is in the process of constant change. Stimulated dharmas make up five forms of existence, five skandhas: body, feelings, perceptions, impulses and acts of consciousness. These five forms create what is called a man. The character of skandhas depends on the nature of people’s actions. Their good or bad actions of the past determine the character of their birth (their body), social status, psychological features and consciousness.

People have six senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste and consciousness) which help them to come into contact with the objects of perception. It gives them new feelings and sensations, that cause desire, and desire leads to attachment. Attachment goes through their whole life and does not cease to exist after their death. They then begin a new life: they are reborn, they grow old, and they die, having partaken of grief, pain, anxiety and despair. They move in the circle of birth and death, and it lasts while they live in the bondage of ignorance.

Everything that is comprehended, understood or appreciated corresponds to one of the five skandhas, which form human individuality. And there is no one to blame for one’s sufferings: you are the only one who is guilty; so endure your torments and try to avoid them in the future. The five skandhas, in turn, lead to the five effects: activity, ignorance, passion, desire and karma (literally-recompense), which cause the five future effects after the death of the old physical body: new body, feelings, perception, impulses and consciousness.

The endless process of reincarnation is called the “Wheel of Life”, or samsara.

Revolving forever around the Wheel, human beings are doomed to physical and emotional suffering, caused by awareness of the impermanence of happiness and wealth, as well as by appearance and disappearance of dharmas, as transcendental, or illusory phases of existence.

The latter is not conscious, but still very important for understanding of the concept of

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suffering. The six senses allow people contact with their environment, which influences their five skandhas, stimulating them and attaching them to the “Wheel of Life”, increasing suffering. Thus, according to the Buddhist doctrine, suffering is not only experienced throughout life, it also lies at the basis of life.

Suffering is constantly “fed” by the three marks of existence: Anatta (or anatman - selflessness), Anicca (or anitya - impermanence), Dukkha (or duhkha - unsatisfactoriness).

They can be defined as the three basic mechanisms that reproduce pain. In other words, they are signs, or properties of suffering.

Anatman

People suffer because of the ontological mechanism of selflessness (“anatman”). All that we encounter lacks essence, or rather we are not able to find it.

There is nothing permanent; and if only the permanent deserves to be called “Self”, or Atman, than nothing is “Self”. Everything is “Annata” (“Non-Self”).

“All things are impermanent; body, sensation, perception, sanskaras and consciousness – all is sadness. All is Non-Self. Nothing of it is real. These are illusions, devoid of essence and reality. The thing we consider to be our “Self” is a sequence of empty illusions, too insignificant to be fought for. Arguments caused by them are always due to ignorance. Where do aging and death come from and what do they depend on? Where there is birth, there is aging and death, thus they depend on birth... When we become less ignorant, our ideas about the world become less conventional, when we stop being ignorant, we stop having ideas, when we stop having ideas, we stop being anxious”.

We can find neither self nor truth in anything we come into contact with.

We do not know the essence of men and women, mother and father, brother and sister, the person we share the same desk with, the friend we have known all our life.

We do not know the essence of animals.

Even the essence of a cat or a dog that has been with us for more than ten years. We do not know our own essence.

We do not know the essence and the meaning of life on earth.

Neither our own,

Nor the one of the country we live in.

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Nor the meaning of life of humanity as a whole.

We can repeat the same ideas for a thousand times, we can produce a hundred thousand theories, but we cannot answer the most important questions.

We cannot find the “Self”.

We even do not know what soul is.

We do not know what consciousness is.

We do not know what truth is.

We do not know what the universe is like.

We do not know what we do not know,

We do not know what we know.

We even do not know what we are living for.

We do not know what it is all for, what humankind is for and where evolution leads

to.

We do not know what the origin of life is.

We do not know what death is.

We even do not know whether we die or not.

Whether we are born or reincarnated.

We even do not know what people think of us when they give us a charming smile; we see the tongue of a snake and wonder whether it is a sign of delight and invitation, or rather seduction and death; or it is only an illusion, and the smile is just an infantile emotional automatism of a silly woman, or maybe of a wise one... .

We do not know.

We do not have the knowledge of selfness.

Human consciousness is selfless. It never gives us reliable knowledge.

Even when it seems that something has become clear, a few seconds later we realize that the new understanding is not reliable, that it does not have the quality of absolute clarity, therefore it is not an understanding at all.

Or it is not an absolute understanding and not an absolute knowledge.

Not because we are stupid, but because it is a fact that reality is selfless and the nature of consciousness is selfless as well.

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This ontological fact suggests that both reality and our personality, being a part of this reality, have the selfless Anatta nature.

Whether you make the most of your time or not, whether you meditate or not,

whether you work, study, get new experience...

The great insights you get turn out to be false.

You are disappointed by the selflessness and falsity of the world. This is what makes you suffer all the time.

In youth, we are full of enthusiasm for learning and we think that we will learn, but later we begin to suffer from lack of understanding and inability to see things absolutely clearly, which transforms into the intelligent bitterness of epistemological impotence, evil genius’ cynicism, clown’s laughter or trickster’s tricks.

Then we become aware of the great joke that nature plays on our consciousness in the old age, when ignorance performs its triumphant dance in the wandering eyes of senility.

Buddhist logic leads to the revelation of a strange phenomenon: honest people do not possess knowledge. Therefore, those who feel important because of their knowledge are completely ignorant and stupid. Those who wear academic dress are decorated for stupidity, and not for honesty. As honesty means to admit that consciousness and reality are selfless by nature.

Anitya

Anitya is the second feature, property and at the same time source of suffering. It reflects the idea of inconstancy, impermanence, instability, temporariness of existence. Relationships, ideas, perception and meanings are dynamic, all things are dynamic.

Everything is so temporary that you have nothing to rely on. It seems that you can rely on time, which is eternal. But we are so limited in time. You breathe in, breathe out, and it is already time to die. Hardly have you become filled with enthusiasm, when you realize that your teeth have fallen out. All this seems to be a strange joke.

It seems that just a few moments ago you walked around your university, longhaired,

well-built, wearing Levi’s, thinking that you would be a student forever...

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And here you are, grey-haired, with a belly that is difficult to hide behind a jacket, your parents and many of your friends have died and the gates of death are already open to you, and now it is your turn...

Who is joking?

Anitya, impermanence.

When you are young, health and enthusiasm are permanent. Three week ago, when my eldest daughter finished translating my book “Psychology of Creativity” and, filled with delight, I decided to lift her, I suddenly felt a shooting pain in my back... For three days I tried to comprehend that some of the outbursts of manly enthusiasm are no more acceptable. It turned out that you could not rely on your strength and health.

The point is not that thirty years ago you could drink two bottles of vodka, have fun all night long, and in the morning find yourself healthy, clean and fresh, and now you do not drink, eat well, go to bed on time, do not think of passions, and in the morning your look in the mirror and it seems to you that you have indulged yourself all night long, committing all possible sins.

Waking up in the morning, for more than half an hour you feel your body getting right, cracking, shooting, and when you get sick, you no longer think about health, you think about the threat of death.

How many permanent supports we had before! You had brilliant memory when you were at school, you could learn a few pages by heart. Now you look at something and cannot remember its name, you listen to the music you used to know perfectly well, every note of it, even better than your girlfriend’s name and cannot remember the artist’ name; it becomes completely absurd when you forget the names of your closest friends. You begin using “my dear”. Not as a form of address, but instead of names that you have forgotten.

All aspects of reality, physical, social, spiritual, inner and outer have temporary, impermanent nature. It was noted by the Buddha, Bodhidharma, Ekliziast, Heraclitus and Laozi.

The point is not that they noted it. The world is really temporal. And it is not that we are impermanent. It is our nature. It is the nature of our body. It is the nature of our feelings. It is the nature of our memory. It is the nature of our thinking. It is the nature of our

consciousness. Our nature is like that.

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Women and children are not light-headed, there is no adultery, no passions, and no polytheism, there is Anitya, impermanence. It is an ontological mechanism built into existence. This is the way things are.

This is what the universe is like.

It is plunged into an impermanent, changeable chaos.

It roams, drunk with the chaos of impermanence.

Suffering and impermanence is the same thing.

A man seeking permanence or something to rely on is doomed to suffering.

You can devise supports for yourself. But only to the blind the world seems dark all the time.

Dukkha

The third mechanism, the third source of suffering is dukkha, which has a dual nature: on the one hand it is the unsatisfactoriness of existence, on the other hand it is the unsatisfactoriness of people.

The idea that “the world is not perfect” seems to be very simple. In truth, it is perfect

– there is nothing to add and nothing to take away. However, it cannot satisfy consciousness and cannot satisfy personality.

Unfortunately, people rarely perceive the world in its integrity; their fragmentary thinking makes biased assessment of fractions of reality and stays within the limits of its deplorable taste.

One clear, penetrating, deep look is enough to feel that there is nothing in the world to strive for; wife, children, glory, honor, love, wealth are not worth the effort, as all things that exist turn out to be unsatisfactory and insufficient as soon as you get them.

We did an experiment at one of the retreats that I led not long ago: we tried to imagine an ideal man. He had ultimate qualities: he had the highest intellect possible, like that of Francis Galton ; he was as wise as Socrates, as strong as Hercules, as strong-willed as Alexander of Macedonia, as well-built as Achilles, as handsome as Adonis, as sexy as Jean Marais; he had the curls of Apollo, the eyes of Jesus. All in all, he was a perfection.

Then we asked the female participants – is there something unsatisfactory about this

man?

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I will not list all of the critical remarks, but pass on to the main conclusion: it turned out that the ideal man was imperfect, moreover, completely unsuitable for life.

We created the semantic construct of a perfect man, but it turned out that real women did not like it at all. You may say that women are always dissatisfied with everything. It is impossible to satisfy her: neither with money, nor with glory, beauty, intellect, obedience, obstinacy, will or lack of will. “Even the sun has its dark spots”.

But if we look deeper, we will see that all living things are dissatisfied with life. It is not that the man has a critical mind. The point is that the mechanism of unsatisfactoriness is in the nature of all living beings.

The mechanism of suffering is “working” all the time. There is no choice: all living things are doomed to suffering. “There is suffering”.

Buddhism says that there is no other experience as universal as suffering, as not all living beings are intelligent, not all of them can reach the level when they are able to comprehend their own nature and significance; however, all living beings suffer, as all of them are subject to aging, illness and death.

According to Buddhist logic, the Cartesian “I think therefore I exist” is anthropocentric, while “I suffer therefore I am” is the very essence of life, the fundamental truth.

Not thinking, but suffering unites all living beings on earth.

Suffering is a common matrix that unites man with man and man with the animal world. Suffering is the basis of universal unity and universal brotherhood.

Suffering has a universal character, therefore the suffering of another being has to be taken as your own. It is the basis of “Great Compassion”, Maha Karuna, the cornerstone and starting point of Buddhist ethics and philosophy.

Thus, without understanding and accepting the First Noble Truth about suffering, it is impossible to understand other components of Buddha’s teaching.

Buddhist doctrine has a detailed and clear analysis of suffering and its signs (dukkham arya-saccam).

These signs have already been listed above. They are presented in first sermon of Buddha at Benares:

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- Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

As we see, suffering is multidimensional.

On the one hand, suffering is associated with body: weakness, physical pain, loss of energy, unsatisfied physical needs (hunger, thirst, sex, deprivation of air) or their oversatisfaction (overeating, sexual exhaustion, overstrain due to hyperactivity). Birth, aging and death are signs of bodily suffering. Only the primitive forms of consciousness see suffering as a purely physical phenomenon and experience only this form of suffering.

On the other hand, we are also able to experience mental suffering: unfulfilled dreams, unrealized expectations, contrast between illusions and reality, pangs of remorse for

“all those wasted years”, being disappointed with life, lack of recognition, inability to satisfy

desires, longing for a more purposeful life, lacking support, being sick of over-satisfaction...

Every person, involved in social life, is subject to this kind of suffering.

There is also another kind of suffering, which is universal and inseparable from existence: when we are compassionate to others, and consequently, our individuality, limited in the time and actions it can perform, ceases to be our dominant value. We learn that attachment to our own individuality is an obstacle, a sign of narrow-mindedness and imperfection. This is a more sophisticated kind of suffering, it is inherent in deeply spiritual people, those who seek enlightenment.

These forms of suffering are not mutually exclusive, they can be characteristic of one and the same personality, however, they correspond to certain stages of human development. One form or another is dominant in a particular personality.

At the same time we have to understand that even the most sophisticated form of understanding of suffering is not sufficient. The true understanding has an ontological, universal and holotropic character, it goes beyond the conventional intellectual approach to life. In order to gain a deep understanding of the First Noble Truth, one has to enter upon the path of the inner, profound contemplation of the universal sequence of events.

Sacred texts describe, how a novice, following the Noble Eightfold Path, having

mastered the four states of meditative introspection (dhyana) “with his mind thus

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concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to knowledge of the recollection of past lives. He recollects his manifold past lives, i.e. one birth, two births, three births, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand, one hundred thousand; many aeons of cosmic contraction, many aeons of cosmic expansion...Thus he recollects his manifold past lives in their modes and details...With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he inclines his mind to knowledge of the passing away and re-appearance of beings. He sees – by means of the divine eye, purified and surpassing the human – beings passing away and re-appearing, and he discerns how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma... (Majjihima Nikaya, Maha-Assapura Sutta: The Greater Discourse at Assapura, MN 39, www.accesstoinsight.org).

Thus, relying on the infinitely deep inner experience-contemplation, one is able to open the eye of direct perception of the Truth about Suffering.

This perception-understanding-experience of suffering in millions of images of old age, illnesses and deaths changes your notion of suffering from something external that invades you to something that is inherent in yourself. At this moment, suffering ceases to be alien and accidental and becomes the core of your self-created existence.

2.5.2. The Truth of the Origin of Suffering: there is a cause of suffering

Five causes were there in the past,

Five fruits we find in present life,

Five causes do we now produce,

Five fruits we reap in future life.

Nanakatha, 4.

The Buddhist texts say: “This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, craving for nonbeing” (Samyutta Nikaya, LVI, 11).

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