Expert: Judy - 12/11/2009

Question
Dear Judy,

Buddhism's view on dukkha, anneca and annata (DAA) is, while realistic, often perceived to be pessimistic for people who have no in depth understanding and experience in its underlying principle.  

It requires almost a total paradigm shift in life's practice and belief when it comes to comprehending the concept of annata.

Recently I have a friend who had had a terrible and mentally crippling accident and another who lost her life partner. Both have in the past introduced me to Buddhism and I believe they are more learned than me in this area. I feel helpless as I think telling them about DAA and karma will undoubtedly do more harm than good (probably causing more depression).

How can we effectively leverage on Buddhist belief to help people to overcome life's crisis?

Thank you very much.


Answer
Hi, G,

Thank you for the question.

The lord Buddha used DIFFERENT ways or approaches to guide people based on what their various degrees of understanding on phenomena and conditions.  He never used the same example to explain the same concept to individuals, for he knew that the degree of acceptance and comprehension for even a single concept varies.  There is no word or term can explain any concept exactly through different languages, cultures, or customs.  Especially, a language is invented based on its culture.  If you speak or know various languages, you would notice that there are many expressions and words in one language not existing in others.

There is discrepancy on every concept.  That’s why in Buddhism especially, we don’t want to cling on words or terms.  Words themselves are relative but not absolute.  That’s also why the lord Buddha sometimes said “it could not be said,” because once we explain a concept or phenomenon, the concept or the phenomenon is distorted by either the interpretation or the listener.

Nevertheless, although it is very good to study the concepts, we often over do it, and we find ourselves stuck.  This is what the lord Buddha was trying to tell us.  Concepts are things to help us understand related matters and phenomena, but they are by no means the absoluteness or the rules for all conditions.  Personally, I have found that many Buddhists dedicate themselves in concept and theory studies that they lose the essential part in Buddhist teachings.  I don’t know the exact term for it, but we sort of call it “the hindrance caused by the knowledge.”  People hold down to the concept so tightly that they forget how to live or come to the reality.  This is certainly not what the lord Buddha was teaching use to do.

However, according to my own experiences, I cannot agree more with Buddha’s teachings.  All these concepts of suffering, impermanence, and no-self can be no doubt the vehicles to transform someone and further liberate him/her.  Although the concepts are great, we cannot throw them to anyone at any time, or in any condition, even to well-studied Buddhists.  Please remember that all phenomena and conditions are caused by all the necessary elements that are present at the same timing.  Things don’t happen on a single element.  Various things have to come together in order to cause something to happen.  When we use our PARTIAL knowledge to inform others, we tend to miss other partial information.  Thus, we are not really helping others but rather confusing them more.  That’s why we need WISDOM to KNOW WHAT and WHEN to SAY or ACT something at the proper timing to the proper person under the proper condition.

Wisdom is growing automatically by understanding the concepts, yet not attaching them, WITH LIFE EXPERIENCES.  Knowledge itself is NOT wisdom.  Knowledge can be learned and comes from others, whereas wisdom is coming within by experiences.  Wisdom cannot be acquired by listening to an enlightened person’s lectures.  Day-to-day practices are necessary in order to train ourselves to be more mindful.

For example, when your friend was experiencing the loss of the partner, we as Buddhists, do NOT need to emphasize the impermanence of the fact that all lives are not going to live forever.  A person who lost his/her loved one does not need to hear the fact again, while he/she has enough disturbances in him/her already.  Our emotions affect how we act and think.  Even a dedicate Buddhist may not even notice or accept this kind of impermanence of losing the loved one.  Thus, emphasizing any Buddhist concepts at this point is not helping.  As we learn, under normal conditions, we study these concepts.  On the other hand, we don’t need to REMIND others on everything in their lives that they need to accept these concepts, or they would be miserable.  Unless the person who lost someone brings these concepts up him/herself and likes to talk about it with friends, there is no need to bring theory, concept, or knowledge out.  Things can be talked differently according to conditions.  Sometimes we need to catch up the timing, while other times we need to wait.

Nevertheless, we as friends,  we can offer helps by companying, doing chores, running errands, or letting the person know that we would all miss the person who passed away, but this person’s spirit by no means is gone forever.  We are part of the universe; we never lose one another.  We would change our bodies and looks, yet we are always there.  Not seeing a physical part does not mean that someone is totally gone from the world.

Life and death is the two sides of a coin.  They are a circle; there is never end.  When we grieve about someone’s death, another new life is forming.  One single event or fact does NOT indicate anything absolute to its literal meaning.  When something happens, what we need to do is to take care what’s coming afterwards, but not cling to what we left.  By the same token, your friend’s accident does not indicate that the life stops there.  Once something happened, we can never turn back the time.  What we can do though is to see WHAT we can do to live our lives.  Accepting “life is suffering” is not going to help, isn’t it?  I am not sure where this “life is suffering” coming from, but the lord Buddha never said that.  What he said is that life/existence itself is beautiful, yet life with ignorance, greed, and aggravation is suffering.  I am not sure why people just take things out of context and call it a concept.  Buddha never denied existence or life, but he taught us how to liberate ourselves.  However, we the followers often take things with our own interpretations, without fully understand what it really means.

That’s why people think Buddhism is very pessimistic, because we emphasize suffering concept a lot.  Yes, we suffer a lot, because we are ignorant.  We are ignorant to just know partial information and see everything all the same way.  Every concept has to work another.  Things work together.  We cannot explain one thing without explaining others, because it is not going to be a whole.  We are our own life savior to make our lives as beautiful and wonderful as we want, yet we can make them as miserable as we continuously live with ignorance and mindlessness.  Our lives are on our hands, and we have the power and abilities to go through anything.  We can see an accident as a warning fact to teach us or to learn something and make life all the better with it, or we can just let our emotions lead us to no-end zone by keeping telling ourselves that life is suffering anyway...   People just got all sort of weird concepts to make themselves more miserable, which has a long disconnection to what Buddha taught.

In order to liberate ourselves, we need to PRACTICE in our lives through each event, incident, accident, and etc... Knowledge itself gets us nowhere but clinging to it more.  Of course knowledge is important in order to know how to practice.  Knowledge and practice have to be side by side.

Following the natural way and the mid way is the key.  Having a kind intention is good enough to help your friends.  Your heart will lead you.  Your heart can never let you do anything harmful.  Don’t listen to your mind but heart.  Live mindfully (English words are funny... this time with mindfulness, it means very different from listening to your mind) with all awareness.  Then, you would KNOW when and what to say or do.  Once you LIVE with mindfulness every day, you would find that every day is bliss for you, even if something unpleasant occurs.   Because we transform ourselves, any unpleasant things would not be unpleasant any more to us.  

Hope this answer help you a little and further help your friends.