I, Buddhist

I feel like I have to come clean. I mean, in my very first post (my first real one, anyway) I trashed the idea of God, the afterlife, et al. I mean, yeah, I don't believe in that crap but this isn't to say that I'm completely devoid of any interest in things *ahem* spiritual (if I must use that term). I have my views on the big questions of life, death, the universe and everything, and if I'm going to trash other people's deeply held views, I suppose I ought to present my own. So in this vein, I'm gonna come clean and tell you what I think and what I do. In later posts I'll tell you about the things that people think I think and think I do which I neither think nor do.


Of course, if anyone actually read this blog and paid any attention to the sidebars, they might have already guessed that I'm a Buddhist. Yes, it is true, a Buddhist am I. I imagine most people know what that means but I also imagine that I'm the mostest* awesomest guy in the world and everyone likes me. Since that's manifestly untrue, a brief account of what I think.


The basic idea is this. There is a fundamental dis-ease to life. Most of the time we're trying to cover it up, but it's always there in the background, buzzing around your ears like a mosquito when you're trying to fall asleep at night. This dis-ease is called dukkha. Anyway, the reason it exists is because we're fundamentally confused about the way reality is. Basically, everything that we know, everything we love and hate is constantly coming together and falling apart. Impermanence is the name of the game, but we don't know that. Nope, we believe that things are permanent, stable, unchanging (including ourselves). Hence, we think that things (including our selves) will make us happy in a way that is permanent, stable, unchanging. This doesn't work. As a result of the disconnect between the way reality is and the way we believe it to be, deep down inside, dukkha comes to be. It's sort of like swimming upstream.


Therefore, the way to lead a truly happy life is to get rid of dukkha. This is done via the practise of meditation. Basically, we sit around for hours on end trying to directly perceive the utter transience of all phenomena as they arise, abide, and pass away, all in real-time. Simply thinking about it won't work, simply hearing the fact of impermanence doesn't end dukkha, or else you'd already have become enlightened reading this blog post! No, it's a deep belief, this belief in permanence. It's so deep and fundamental that we can't even recognize that we believe it. It's just how the world appears to us. So we practise meditation frequently, every day and try to perceive every sensation, every thought, every single thing arise and pass away.


And at some point, if we've been diligent and done the work, maybe we'll be one of those lucky enough to get it. We perceive the universe for what it really is and how it's really working and we just drop the dukkha like a hot coal. We just get that the universe is constantly changing and nothing's permanent and we stop fighting the way things are and live our lives without that added discomfort.


That's basically it. Everything else (like belief in rebirth, karma, psychic powers, etc.) has just been added on for one reason or another, maybe to appeal to some audience, maybe just because people couldn't be done with those superstitions. But they're really not necessary to practise and they're quite tangental to the truth of things and I don't ascribe much importance to them.


But I'll get to those items in other posts. Indeed, I plan on touching on all the crap that Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike like to believe they must believe about Buddhism (some of which is really funny). And I'll expound further on my views.


Until then.

* I call this grammatical structure a hyperlative. Yes, I have created a new application of the English language. Who's gonna stop me?