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Do basic needs have to be fulfilled before enlightenment?
I like a lot of the things that Buddhism teaches, but at the same time I feel like certain basic needs must be met before one can reach a state of inner peace. For instance, Maslow's hiearchy of needs suggests that a person needs decent health, safety/security, and love/belonging in order to experience their full potential. Do you think a Buddhist state of peace is truly attainable for someone who is starving or in a war zone?
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I dont think so. Enlightenment is always there, we just have to realise it. Though if your starving and concerned with the thought of your next meal or worrying about getting shot, your not generally gonna be so focused on what is. But saying that, a lack of love or in general, an experience of suffering can be a huge spiritual catalyst.
Buddhism's pretty lenient about not requiring us to partake in rituals or other material traditions. But at its base, being able to focus on truths of existence has always been fundamental, methinks. On the bright side, Buddhism can be very helpful with recovering from that kind of suffering-filled life, for the same reason.
Turning the mind toward the dharma does not bring security or confirmation. Turning your mind toward the dharma does not bring any ground to stand on. In fact, when your mind turns toward the dharma, you fearlessly acknowledge impermanence and change and begin to get the knack of hopelessness.
In Tibetan there's an interesting word ye tang che. The ye part means "totally, completely," and the rest of it means "exhausted." Altogether, ye tang che means totally tired out. We might say "totally fed up." It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of completely giving up hope. This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hope-- that there's somewhere better to be, that there's someone better to be--we will never relax with where we are or who we are.
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To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for lasting security is futile. To undo our very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires that we begin to turn around some of our most basic assumptions. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone "out there" is to blame for our pain -- one has to get totally fed up with these ways of thinking. One has to give up hope that this way of thinking will bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there is anywhere to hide.
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One of the classic buddhist teachings on hope and fear concerns what are known as the eight worldly dharmas. These are four pairs of opposites-- four things that we like and become attached to and four things that we don't like and try to avoid. The basic message is that when we are caught up in the eight worldly dharmas, we suffer.
First, we like pleasure, we are attached to it. Conversely, we don't like pain. Second, we like and are attached to praise. We try to avoid criticism and blame. Third, we like and are attached to fame. We dislike and try to avoid disgrace. Finally, we are attached to gain, to getting what we want. We don't like losing what we have
According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites-- pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and disgrace, and praise and blame-- is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara.
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The irony is that we make up the eight worldly dharmas. We make them up in reaction to what happens to us in this world. They are nothing concrete in themselves. Even more strange is that we are not all that solid either. We have a concept of ourselves that we reconstruct moment by moment and reflexively try to protect. But this concept that we are protecting is questionable. It's all "much ado about nothing"-- like pushing and pulling a vanishing illusion.
We might feel that somehow we should try to eradicate these feelings of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. A more practical approach would be to get to know them, see how they hook us, see how they color our perception of reality, see how they aren't all that solid. Then the eight worldy dharmas become the means for growing wiser as well as kinder and more content.
Yes.
How about the Tibetan Buddhist Monk, whom, having spent two decades imprisoned by the Chinese and undergoing unspeakably, unimaginably horrific torture and maltreatment on a daily and constant basis, declared that the one thing he had feared most, during his entire time in their hands, was to lose his Compassion for the Chinese?
you can fulfil your basic needs on the way to enlightenment, because you will realise, on the way, that all is transitory, impermanent and neither essential nor pertinent to your practice.