Chapter 4 (Three Principles)

Three principles that guide the spiritual journey:

1) See the world the way it is

2) Give up all attachments

3) Return to the Source.

The spiritual journey is about understanding the individual’s relationship to that greater reality beyond the senses and initiating a program that connects the individual to that higher state. The three principles described here, which can be found in many of the world’s religious and philosophical traditions sum up what is to be followed on the spiritual journey. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the goal is to achieve liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth. However, they can also be found in traditions that do not believe in reincarnation. In these traditions, they can be seen as a method to unite with the divine. This chapter will address the what and why. Later chapters will address the how.

Ignorance

Ignorance is seen to be at the core of human suffering in many traditions. It is found clearly in Buddhism and the thinking of Hindu philosophers such as Shankara. What is it then that we are ignorant of? We are ignorant of certain fundamental characteristics of the world the way it is. I am going to break these down into the impermanence of the material world, the fabricated illusory nature of the world that we create in our minds and the impermanent and illusory self.

The world is impermanent and is constantly changing.

At one level, this seems so obvious it is silly to even mention it. Of course, things are changing. Nothing is permanent and we are all going to grow old and die. Even young people understand this at some conceptual level. However, for the young this is an abstract concept that only happens to usually much older people and while it will be applicable to them someday, it is not for now. However, although this applies to all of us, we avoid thinking about it. As was mentioned in Chapter 2, in the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, when Yudhishthira is asked what is the greatest wonder in the world, he replies that it is that every day people see death all around them but live as if they will live forever.

Underlying this impermanence is the fact that the physical world we live in is in constant flux. It is in constant motion around us. If we look closely nothing stands still. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “you can’t step into the same river twice”. This is noticeable if we pay attention to the constant flow of traffic, people, events in our daily lives. Although less directly appreciated it is also true in the constant physiological activities in our body such as the beating of the heart and flow of blood, the electrical activity of the brain, and at the biochemical level, the constant metabolism occurring in all tissues. In fact, when you go back to step into that now different river, you are a different person.

As modern physics understands it, the world of subatomic particles becomes even wilder. These particles are in constant high-speed motion, colliding with other particles transforming into different types of particles and states. Some of these effects are easy to appreciate if we pay attention to them while others like the actions of subatomic particles can’t be appreciate with our regular senses. But that’s the nature of the world that we live in and we can’t make it stop.

Buddhism stress this especially. The Buddha noted three marks of existence: dukkha, anicca and anatta. These are can be translated as suffering (dukkha), impermanence (anicca) and no self (anatta). Impermanence can be seen as leading to the ultimately unsatisfactory nature of the world that we live in (dukka). Impermanence is also one aspect of no self (anatta) as discussed below. We don’t accept the depth and importance of impermanence. However, once deeply appreciated, it changes our outlook entirely.

The world as an illusion, a fabrication.

Many traditions talk about the world as an illusion. I should say, here I am not talking about the notion found in western philosophical idealism that objects don’t exist unless there is a mind present to perceive them. George Berkeley is the philosopher most often associated with this idea in the west. To the famous question, if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? I would say yes. At least it generates the sound waves in air that would be appreciated by an ear if one was there to hear it. A moving train has wheels even if none of the passengers are looking at them. The material world that we perceive with our senses exists.

The illusion I am referring to is in the labels that we put on material objects and the stories about their relationships that we fabricate. In life, we encounter objects, people, other forms of sensory stimuli, and the effects of natural forces. To make sense of these sensations/observations we put labels on them and create narratives about them. We construct relationships between them. Some things are mine, other things are not. These labels are convenient to help us make sense of the world. However, the relationships are not in the objects themselves, they are created by us in our minds. In other words, we fabricate them.

The impermanent and illusory self

But we don’t stop with the external objects. We fabricate an illusory self which lives in the world. My name is such and such. I am a this or that. My being a this is that is important and makes me who I am. It gives me an identity. We use this concept of self to divide people in the world up. I belong to this group. These people are part of my family or my larger group. Those people over there are not. Then we react to these objects and relationships with emotions including anger, love, envy, and jealousy. However, the emotions are not in the objects themselves, they exist only in our minds. We make it all up. Everyone else does the same thing. Thus, reinforcing our fabrications and creating an intricate network of collective illusions. In other words, there is no self, us or them.

Why are these fabrications? Why aren’t they true? They aren’t true because the only permanent elements are our spiritual consciousness and the Source. However, the spiritual consciousness when it not entangled with the material world is identical to the Source in the substance that it is made of and will naturally return to the Source if it can escape those entanglements. The self identity, the emotions, the this is mine are impermanent fabrications that we make up in our minds.

This brings us to the third element in the Buddhist tradition, anatta, which is typically translated as "no self". What the Buddha meant by anatta is argued among Buddhists. Was the Buddha denying the existence of the Hindu atman or was he making the more qualified statement that there is no permanent self? My guess is that it is more likely the later than the former. I doubt that he was denying the existence of the Hindu atman. My sense is he was probably more emphasizing the impermanent self although I think one can also see in anatta elements of the fabrication of the self, I describe here.

Give up all attachments

The word “attachment” can have various English meanings. For example, an added part of a legal document or that food processor comes with a blender attachment but those are not the type of attachments of concern here. In psychology, an attachment is an emotional bond that for example, a child forms with a parent. That is part of the kind of attachment we talking about here. However, beyond attachments to other people we have attachments to our personal possessions, money, ideas and a certain self-image. These attachments are a natural outgrowth that comes from the fabrications we generate in our minds in the process of creating our illusory world. I like these things and they are mine so I become attached to them. These people are part of my group, so I become attached to them. Those people over there are not part of my group, so I’m not attached to them and my obligations to them are different.

Why are attachments bad? Attachments are bad because unless we see them for what they are, they reinforce that illusory view of the world that we have created in our minds. These attachments, also lead to second type of attachment in that we become attached to the outcome of our actions when they affect this illusory world. Here, it is perhaps worth talking about the Bhagavad Gita.

Bhagavad Gita

I think many people would tell you that if you were only going to read one primary work from the Hindu literature it would be the Bhagavad Gita. The title means song of the lord. The Bhagavad Gita or the Gita as it is often referred to is a section of the Mahabharata which is a long Indian epic that basically involves a rivalry for power between two sides of a family. At the point that the Bhagavad Gita takes place within the Mahabharata negotiations and attempts to resolve differences peacefully have failed and it seems that differences can only be resolved by one epic battle that will decide it all.

The central figure of the Bhagavad Gita is Arjuna. He is a member of one side of the warring families and a member of the kshatriyas caste, i.e. a warrior. Specifically, he is an archer. The Bhagavad Gita takes place the night before this epic battle. Arjuna is riding along his side of the battle line and he is thinking about the slaughter that will take place in the morning. He will be killing members of his extended family, even his former teachers who taught him to be an archer. He thinks about all the negative karma that he will accumulate for these actions and is asking himself is this really worth it? The Gita then becomes an extended conversation between Arjuna and his chariot driver Krishna who just happens to be a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. The conversation is mostly Krishna talking and Arjuna listening but Arjuna intermittently interjects himself into the conversation with questions or sometimes exclamations of disbelief.

Krishna makes a series of arguments as to why Arjuna should, in fact must fight. He notes, that firstly the atman (soul) is immortal and cannot die. At the death of the body, the atman transmigrates into to new body. So, no one ever really dies they just reincarnate into a new life. He further argues that as a member of the warrior caste, it is Arjuna’s duty to fight for a just cause, which this is, or else he will incur bad karma for not having fulfilled his caste duty. Krishna further argues that inaction is in fact impossible. If Arjuna fights, he will influence the outcome of the battle. If he doesn’t fight, he will also influence the outcome. The Gita then goes onto argue that the source of evil is passion and desire, not actions themselves. If one acts without attachment to the outcome of an action, that action will generate no karma. In other words, do what you need to do and what happens, happens. Act without emotion and attachment to the outcome of any action. As Mohandas Gandhi put it you are entitled to your actions but not the fruits of your actions.

The Buddha lived in the 5th century B.C.E. The Gita was written later probably in the 3’d century B.C.E. The Gita in many ways can be seen as a Hindu response to the challenges posed by Buddhism. Early Buddhism espoused a view that if one wanted to have a serious chance of making progress in this lifetime, complete renunciation from attachments to family and society was essential. You needed to separate yourself from society by going into the forest or a monastery and give up money, personal possessions, and family ties, anything that would bind one to this world. Many Hindu ascetics before the Buddha had a similar view. As a lay person, you could make relative progress but it would be difficult and if you remained a lay person, occupation was very important. Being in a profession that involved killing sentient creatures such as a butcher or a soldier, you had very little chance to make progress as a Buddhist. The Gita offers a contrasting view of how one can lead an active engaged life maintaining societal connections while still pursuing the spiritual journeyeven as a soldier whose job is to kill people . This however can only be done successfully by as in Buddhism, by eliminating the attachments that bind us to the objects and outcomes of actions in this world.

What is karma?

So, what then is karma? In most eastern thinking, every action, deed or even thought creates a karmic trace or seed. Good actions or thoughts generate good karma. Bad actions or thoughts bad karma. These seeds do not cause effects immediately, but will eventually return to the one who generated them as good or bad fortune perhaps in another life. Seen in this way, bad luck or good luck is not really luck at all, it is simply previous good or bad seeds ripening and returning the one who originated them. This would seem to imply that there is some bank or bag of karmic seeds for every individual which is stored somewhere and some process for releasing these seeds. This process might be governed by stochastic or random principles or there might be an organized plan behind it.

I doubt that there is a bank account of karmic seeds stored somewhere for each of us such that every action and thought is meticulously recorded. I also don’t think all aspects of our lives are controlled by karmic seeds ripening. For example, if you get up in the morning planning to go to the park but it’s raining, I doubt that these are karmic seeds ripening. It just happened to rain that day.

Also, if one considers the generation of good or bad karma, this implies some universal standard of what is good and what is bad. But is it really possible to have such a standard that can apply to all human beings at all times and in all places? People come from different backgrounds may stress quite different notions of what is good and bad. People also have different life experiences which shape their sense of what is right and wrong.

If we accept animals as being on the karmic wheel how does this apply to them? A predator like a lion kills other animals for its own survival and that of its offspring. But a lion’s actions are driven by its own inherited instincts. A lion knows killing other animals as the way it obtains food. A lion doesn’t see this action from any moral perspective. If killing other sentient creatures is universally bad, it would seem that a lion’s only chance of moving to a higher realm would be to first be reborn in a lower realm such as a hungry ghost or a hell being. By suffering in that realm, it could burn off enough bad karmic seeds such that at death it would have a chance to be reborn in a higher realm.

The other option would be that there is no universal standard but rather a set of relative standards that can be applied in different circumstances. That seems rather complicated to apply although as we have already discussed, the Bhagavad Gita argues that different human strata exist with the obligations of individuals varying depending on which strata one is born into.

I’m not sure about this. I have come to think of karma at least in the human realm more in psychological terms namely that our attachments to actions generates psychological predispositions or tendencies that influence how we are likely to react in future situations. As we take actions, good or bad, this reinforces habits in the mind and makes it more likely that we will react similarly in the future. If these tendencies promote involvement with the world, then it becomes more difficult to separate the spiritual consciousness from its bonds to the mind and body. If we act without attachment, the process of liberating the spiritual consciousness from it bonds to the material world become easier.

I must admit this view doesn’t account for good vs. bad luck. Some people are fortunate having good health and are born into good circumstances. I’ve also had experiences on more than one occasion where I’ve looked back and said this can’t be happening by accident.

Return to the Source

Based on this analysis if the desire is for a permanent, unchanging, forever situation then returning to the Source is the only answer. The body is physical, subject to decay and death. We can’t stay here. The mind is a transient state that only exists when a living physical brain exists. Spiritual consciousness is eternal but it needs a home. Its interaction with the body in the mind is impermanent. As long as the spiritual consciousness is here, it is tied to the cycles of death and rebirth and entanglement with an impermanent  and unpredictable body. Returning the spiritual consciousness to the Source is the only permanent answer if one wants to get off the wheel of samsara and be liberated from the cycles of death and rebirth.

Why return to the Source? We accept that as humans in our current condition, we came from somewhere. The Source is that somewhere. Spiritual consciousness in its pure state when it is free of mind and not tainted by the passions, desires and incorrect views of the world is made of the same substance as the Source. Once consciousness returns to the Source, it is identical to the Source. In Hinduism, this notion is known as atman (the soul) equals Brahman (the ultimate reality). Plato considered human birth as a fall from that light outside the cave. In western mystical religions a return to the Source is identified as a desire to unite and be one with God. This sense is present in the Christian mystics as well as in Sufism’s desire to be united with the Beloved. Returning to the Source is the ultimate goal of the spiritual journey.