In a recent workshop, I started to branch out from the usual “mindful running” talk and get a little deeper into the spirituality that lies behind the mindfulness we hear about so much these days. Of course, many proponents of mindfulness know that its foundation lies in Buddhist thought, but not many talk about it as simply part of the whole foundation. And because my intention with Dharma Running is to provide runners with the tools to become better participants in an interconnected world (and not just better runners), I thought I’d dig a little deeper into the teachings.
All of Buddhist tradition really stands on three legs, one of which is mindfulness. The “three trainings”, as they’re known, also include wisdom, or a worldview that is based on an understanding of the transience and interconnectedness of all things, and ethics, or what I like to call “compassionate action” – actually living one’s life as if everything is transient and interconnected, or at least giving it the old college try.
Often, the three trainings are presented as progressive, beginning with ethics as preparation for mindfulness, which then cultivates wisdom. But I don’t find that presentation very helpful for Westerners, many of whom come from, and sometimes even resent, a religious background wherein ethics were taught from a dogmatic, top-down point of view. With so much buzz about mindfulness nowadays, I find that a better place to start, making it the fertile ground from which wisdom and compassionate action can bloom.
While mindfulness and compassion are fairly easily understood, the Buddhist worldview is a little bit more evasive. It can be easy to look to teachers like the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hahn for how to act in the world, and we even have apps teaching us how to practice meditation, but the framework the Buddha set up for understanding how the world works is often boiled down to “It is what is is”, “Be one with the universe”, or “Dance like nobody’s watching”, none of which were expressions in the northern India of 500BCE, as far as I can tell.
It can be very appealing to try to sum up the Buddha’s most basic teachings in oversimplified language that doesn’t quite get to the point. After all, much of what the Buddha taught has come down to us through cultures that are very foreign, and includes strange mythology, deities, and the usual trappings of religion. It’s up to those of us who try to pass on what little we understand in language and stories and symbolism that means something to anyone who has the time and desire to listen. That’s the place I was in when, before my last workshop, it occurred to me that I should try to explain the Buddha’s most basic teaching in terms that Philadelphia natives can understand best.
After the Buddha attained enlightenment, supposedly becoming aware of all of his previous incarnations and understanding the way the universe works and how to break free from the cycle of rebirth (bear with me here), he wandered around for 49 days, unsure about how to tell people what he now understood. During this time, he made his way back to a group of ascetics he’d spent time and whom he had abandoned on his quest for a “Middle Way” between harsh austerity and princely living. After what I imagine to be a lot of back and forth: “Dudes, listen to this, I’m like totally awake now…” “Siddhartha, bro, you trippin’” “No, really, just listen.” “Fine. [Eye roll]. Come on guys, let’s hear what the dude has to say…” Siddhartha offered his first teaching, the foundation of all Buddhism, often known as the Four Noble Truths, but translated here as…
THE FOUR LIT JAWNS
The basis for the Buddhist worldview, on which every different branch of Buddhism is based, lies within this teaching. Everything else grew out of it over the next couple of millennia, in the development of the Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia, the colorful and crazy wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism, and the naturalistic, simple way of Zen Buddhism.
Let’s start with the First Lit Jawn:
Often translated as “Life is suffering,” it’s this jawn that often turns people away from Buddhism at the very start. What do you mean, “Life is suffering?” It’s clearly not true from a Philly point of view. Sure, maybe the Eagles only win a Superbowl once in a lifetime, and I-76 is clearly the “Hell realm” of Tibetan Buddhism at any time of day, but is it all really suffering when there’s a Rita’s on every corner, a Wawa even more frequently, and a huge variety of cheesesteaks (including vegan ones) when you’re hungry?
No, clearly life is not “suffering”. But even as we disavow this nihilistic viewpoint, we know that there’s an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction that’s almost always with us. This feeling comes from not getting what we want, or from getting what we want, only to feel it slip from our grasp. Deep down, we know that it’s all transient, all impermanent, all going away at some point like the Vince Lombardi trophy. Sometimes, life even makes us so frustrated that we want to pelt Santa Claus with snowballs. So maybe life isn’t suffering, but something about living this human existence rubs us the wrong way. Imagine a beautifully made bell with a huge crack in it that you never get to hear ring. In other words:
LIFE IS GRITTY
The Second Lit Jawn gives us the reason behind this grittiness, some of which I’ve already explained. Because of the limits of our perception as human beings, and because of the way we’ve evolved, the way we’re wired, we live with the illusion of our selves as permanent entities. We are blind to the fact that what we think of as a “self”, how we identify, is in constant flux, along with everything else in the world. Both we as “individuals” and everything around us, is only itself in relation to everything else. And it’s this illusion of permanence that keeps us constantly grasping, constantly striving for a lasting happiness that will never come from non-lasting things. Bringing us to the Second Lit Jawn:
THAT GRITTINESS COMES FROM THE ILLUSION OF PERMANENCE
So far you can understand why the Buddha’s friends treated him like Milton Street in another run for Mayor, right? What a buzzkill this guy must have seemed like, after sitting under a damn tree for so many nights he “wakes up” and gives us this awful news? Well, luckily our man Siddhartha had FOUR jawns to offer up, not just two. So it’s time to pivot and get to the good news:
WE CAN WAKE UP FROM THAT ILLUSION
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from. With the right tools, you can learn to leave behind the ignorance that makes us believe that an impermanent self can find permanent joy through impermanent things. One day you may be down and out, working for a loan shark in South Philly, and the next, with the right training and mindset, you can be running 50k through the streets of Philadelphia with a gaggle of kids behind you, right to the top of the Art Museum steps. You might not even be real, but you can become Philly’s favorite native son or daughter just like that.
Which brings us to the Fourth Lit Jawn:
THE PATH TO AWAKENING IS FOUND IN MEDITATION, WISDOM, AND COMPASSIONATE ACTION
Bringing it full circle, and providing himself the opportunity to give his followers another list (The Noble Eightfold Path, maybe revealed in a future blog post, but you can just Google it!), the Buddha laid out the way for anyone to awaken themselves out of illusion and into the light of living with grittiness. Nothing changes with enlightenment – the universe is still just as it was before the Buddha got woke, but he sees it in a different light, content in spite of the grit. It’s about changing the way you look at the world, understanding the filter of your experience, and basing your actions on that understanding. When we see that we are all Gritty, we’re all living an illusory existence, grasping for permanence in a transient universe, we begin to soften. We open to experience instead of shutting it out, we treat each other with more kindness. It’s the best way to be in the City of Brotherly Love (and Sisterly Compassion)!