Buddhism: Plain & Simple

Buddhism: Plain & Simple

Steve Hagen 1997

Synopsis by M. Horvich

Buddha-Dharma: The teachings of Buddha

First Truth: Human life is characterized by profound and on going dissatisfaction.We all sense that something is amiss with our lives. We feel pain and loss and suffer. We long for peace. We long to alleviate this suffering.

Second Truth: The dissatisfaction is within. All the pain we bring to ourselves and others — the hatred, the warring, the groveling, the manipulation — is our own doing. It comes out of our own hearts, our minds, our confusion. It arises out of our own ignorance. Our longing, our craving, our thirsting for something other than Reality what dissatisfies us. 

Third Truth: We can realize the origins of this dissatisfaction. If we don’t see what the problem is, we perpetuate it. Teach it to our children and on and on. We must look at ourselves closely to discover the truth of our feelings.aa

Fourth Truth: We can free ourselves from this dissatisfaction. The means to stop the suffering lies within oneself. This is not to say that we should expect to be free of problems, or that if only we behave things will go as we wish. No person’s life is, was, or will be free of difficulty. 

If we examine the nature of our problems, what they are and where they come from, we can begin to act on them. How do we do this? We must realize that life is fleeting. We must understand that we are already complete, worthy, whole. Finally we must see that we are our own refuge, our own sanctuary, our own salvation.

Everything in our experience — our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, our wants and needs, our relationships — is fleeting. Changing. Subject to death. We die each moment and are born again each moment. It goes on endlessly, moment by moment. Our lives are nothing but change. This impermanence, this vary birth and death, is what makes our lives vital, vibrant, wonderful and alive.

The problem comes because we want to keep things from changing. This desire to hold on and attempt to hold on is the greatest source of woe and arrow and trouble in our lives. This we have learned and will continue to learn from DIRECT EXPERIENCE! Reality is not out there somewhere but rather inside one. We are already enlightened all we need to do is stop blocking and attend to the here and now, to what’s going on inside and around us.