He said so himself. His students loved him because his teaching was simple and refreshing to the mind. He debunked the chaos of Hinduism’s confusing polytheistic religion by claiming enlightenment came from mindfulness of moment-to-moment experience, not by worship of impractical and theoretical gods.
Buddha’s Common Sense – Siddhartha Gotama continually resisted his students’ tendency to worship him. He kept reminding them that the word “Buddha” simply means an enlightened person, not some esoteric god. Hindu skeptics regularly asked him difficult questions in order to trip him up and put a dent in his reputation. They never succeeded, because his answers always talked directly about the simplicity of his use of vipassana mindfulness meditation to experience life on a moment-to-moment basis. In the Pali language he spoke, vipassana simply means, “to see things as they really are”, an unadorned common sense statement.
The Big Question – One day a skeptical Hindu scholar asked him, “What have you gained from meditation?”
“Nothing”, the Buddha replied. “However let me tell you what I have lost. I have lost anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, fear of old age and death.”
Brilliant answer! Anyone who practices vipassana meditation understands exactly what Gotama meant. Meditation can relieve anxiety and depression. This was welcome news, because people in his day more than two millennia ago suffered stresses and strains just like we do in the 21st century.
Loosening Ego’s Grip – Vipassana loosens the ego mind’s neurotic need to always be in control. It gradually diminishes our reactivity to moment-to-moment experience. As we sit still in meditation, we start to notice that no thought or feeling, no matter how intense, ever lasts more than a moment.
Our minds sail right off the edge of our delusions when we meditate, but the pre-meditating mind mistakes obsessive thoughts for concrete objective realities. For instance, we feel intensely angry at someone one day, and our ego mind tells us that feeling is not only justified, but is a permanent reality. But it isn’t. Sooner or later, even a non-meditator forgets all about his anger and gets preoccupied with some other thoughts and feelings. He forgets his anger entirely, which is proof that it was not a stone monolith in his consciousness.
Impermanence – What Gotama meant in his answer to the Hindu scholar was that he had gained the organic and life-changing realization that no thought or feeling has permanence. By being mindful and observant of each moment-to-moment experience. By not trying to figure them out or “fix” them, we start to understand life as a constant flow of cognition and emotion. We can ride the waves of thought and feeling, even enjoy looking down on them from above, without suffering.
About Michael Hoffman
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