Noble Eightfold Blog

I listen to many Dharma talks. I am sure that over the years I have listened to thousands of them. And, of course, you hear the same topics covered repeatedly, and you also hear the same questions asked repeatedly.

One question that I hear a lot is from people who suffer from a psychological problem. It might be depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, PTSD, and so on. And these people want to know if the Buddhist path can help them to overcome these problems.

And over the years I have heard many (many, many, many…) responses to these questions, but I have never heard a response that I thought was wholly satisfactory until today. I was listening to a Dharma talk by Ajahn Brahmali at the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. You can watch the whole talk at https://youtu.be/WgLkn2c1C70. The talk itself is about generosity, so the question about anxiety is not in that context. But if you want to skip ahead to the question itself and Ajahn Brahmali’s response, skip ahead to the 1:40:33 mark. But if you just want to read his response. a transcript of his answer is here:

Question: I have anxiety disorder. I am not fully recovered as it’s a disorder. How should I proceed so I can get better? I also fear death due to anxiety.

Ajahn Brahmali: The Buddha does not talk about specific disorders of the mind. The [Buddha’s path] is like a general path towards well-being. It doesn’t talk about disorders. But of course, if you use that general path, that general path will work for everyone. But for many of these disorders, you have to actually use professional help. This is what you are probably doing already, which is good, and then you can add a bit of Buddhism on top of that. But the most important thing is probably professional help. But I can give you some ideas of what to do.

And one of the things is that a large part of these kinds of disorders is a disorder… it’s a cognitive distortion. It’s the way you think about the world which is the problem. It’s like depression. Depression comes very often because we think about the world in the wrong way. We think about things that are hopeless or bad or whatever, and we need to change that attitude to see the goodness in the world, the goodness in ourselves, and then optimism can return. And depression can be cured entirely in that way.

And you may have noticed that. Most people may have had some episodes of depression in their life. And [when] you compare that depressive episode with a happy one and you will see that the nature of how you think is really the critical thing there.

It is the same thing with anxiety disorder. It is about re-thinking the world, thinking about the world in a different way. Anxiety comes from usually worrying about the future. The kind of fear anxiety has. So looking at the future with fearful eyes. You think the future has something negative in store for you.

But this is not necessary. You don’t have to see the future as dangerous. It is kind of interesting. I notice how many people in the present world are very worried about climate change, about political instability, about Covid—even though Covid seems to be the least of our problems, yeah? There are many problems much worse than Covid. Still, people are worried about these things, and obviously for very good reasons. There are very good reasons to be worried about these things.

But from a Buddhist point of view, your future is not determined by Covid. Your future is not determined by climate change. Your future is not determined by political instability in the world. Your future is determined by the goodness of your heart. That is what determines where you are going to go in this life and also in future lives.

So to overcome this anxiety, become a better person. Do the right thing. Live in a good way. Remind yourself that you are a good person, that you are doing the right thing. Don’t be afraid of praising yourself when you deserve praise… not in a way of kind of getting at the ego, but just to feel good about yourself. And then when you live well, gradually it comes to you that I have a good future. It becomes obvious if you have a heart that is full of kindness and love for the world, all fear about the future disappears. Because when you are full of these positive emotions, it is impossible to fear and have anxiety at the same time.

So develop these good emotions. And then you start to lose your anxiety about what the future is about. Because it becomes impossible. It becomes incompatible. So think in this way. Practice the Buddha’s teaching in the right way, and gradually—it may take a long time—but gradually you will be able to overcome these things.

One of the marvelous things about Buddhism, where Buddhism is very different from almost all the rest of the world, is that we understand the conditioned nature of our minds, that there is nothing inherent that is the real you. And because there is nothing inherent that is the real you, it means nothing is solid. Nothing has to be there. Everything can be conditioned out of you. This is the great hope of the Buddhist path. And this hope is there for you. If someone tells you that this is an anxiety disorder that you always have to have, don’t believe them. It is not true.

There are times when I just love how the universe works. As I am fond of saying, those who do not believe in magic and miracles simply are not paying attention.

Here is a story in three parts.

Part one: Many years ago I became enamored of a Buddhist monk named Ajahn Amaro. As is typical of my Buddhist teachers, he is endearing, grounded, brilliant, and has a lovely sense of humor. When I first became familiar with him he was the co-abbot of the Abhayagiri Monastery in Redwood Valley, California. This is about 30 miles south of San Francisco.

I have listened to dozens and perhaps hundreds of his talks. And one year—this is when I still lived in Vermont—I learned that he was going to lead a retreat at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Barre, Massachusetts. I was very excited about this, and fortunately for me, I was able to get a spot at that retreat.

Not only was the retreat unforgettable, it turned out that Ajahn Amaro was on his way back to his native England to become the abbot of the Amaravati Monastery. This was his last retreat in the United States. There are moments in life where you just feel blessed and grateful and perhaps a little astonished, and this was one of those moments. It was a wonderful retreat, and I will never forget it.

This is the end of Part One.

Part two: A few weeks ago I was listening to a talk by Ajahn Brahm. As those of you who follow this blog know, he is one of my favorite teachers. The Buddhist Society of Western Australia—the BSWA—has an active online presence and its own YouTube Channel. They livestream many events. And especially during the pandemic the BSWA has been a way to stay connected to a vibrant Buddhist community.

In this talk Ajahn Brahm told a rather astonishing story. It was in response to a question from someone who asked, “How do you know if becoming a monk or a nun is the right choice for you?” This is what he said.

Many years ago—decades, in fact—a young man from England had just finished his college degree. Before he entered the workforce, he decided to do some traveling. He went to a number of places in Asia, and eventually he ended up in northeast Thailand. He went there to visit some friends who were working for an NPO. Now as you may know, northeast Thailand is some of the poorest and most remote country in the world, and there is not much for a young twenty-something to do. So he asked around, and he was told that there was a Buddhist monastery nearby and that he might want to visit it.

Now this young man knew nothing about Buddhism. Being from the West and having been in the same situation, I can relate to how he must have felt. I was nearly 40 years old before I knew even the slightest, tiniest amount about Buddhism.

So off this young man went, to spend—he thought—an afternoon in the strange, mysterious environs of a Buddhist monastery. He had a wonderful afternoon there. In fact, it was so wonderful that he asked the monks if he could stay for the night. Of course, they were happy to have him stay. It must have been marvelous for them to have this Westerner come to visit them out of the blue. And so he stayed for the night.

On the next morning, in what seems like an astonishing choice, he asked to be ordained as a Buddhist monk! And perhaps even more astonishingly, they agreed. He was ordained, and he never looked back. Imagine just for a moment making that same choice. Incredible.

And that is the end of Part Two of this story.

Part three: And now… you may have guessed the punchline. That young man was and is Ajahn Amaro. He has become one of the great Buddhist monks and one of the great Buddhist teachers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Those who do not believe in magic and miracles simply are not paying attention. And when I look at the arc of my life, I feel so incredibly blessed to have—in some small way—been a witness to one of those miracles.

As many of you may know, yesterday was Wesak (Vesak). This is the most important Buddhist holiday. Traditionally it is the day on which the Buddha was born, became enlightened, and died. I had planned to spend the day meditating, listening to Dharma talks, and so on, but as often happens, things did not quite go as planned.

I have a small, artificial pond in my backyard, and it has a waterfall feature attached to it. This comes with a pump and a filter, and the whole system requires regular attention. I had just finished my Wesak lunch when I noticed that the waterfall flow had slowed to a trickle. The pond system—which includes plants—has to be kept running, so I could not postpone attending to whatever the problem was.

I spent the next few hours working on the pond, waterfall, filter, and pump. It is messy work, and I literally smelled like pond scum (!). I finished up this morning, and everything seems to be in working order. And while that whole situation may sound like it was an annoyance, it was actually a very pleasant experience. I was in a very nice state of mind—probably because of my Wesak activities—so instead of mentally whining about it, I just did it. In a way it was the best Dharma lesson. Just stay in the moment. Do what life requires of you and do it with your full attention. Chop wood, carry water.

And… I have a story about that. Back in the 1980’s, the great Thai forest practitioner Ajahn Chah was becoming known in the West. This guy from Australia went to a lot of effort to go to Thailand and make his way to the remote jungles of northeastern Thailand where Ajahn Chah had his monastery. This is not a trivial trip. Northeast Thailand is some of the most remote jungle in the world. You have to work your way there on pony carts and the like. You don’t just catch a train.

Unfortunately, when he finally got there, he was a little dismayed to see that Ajahn Chah was surrounded by several hundred people. His chances of seeing Ajahn Chah seemed as remote as the jungle monastery. But rather than waste his entire time, he picked up a broom, and along with one of the monks he started sweeping the footpath. Sometime later he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Ajahn Chah. Ajahn had apparently seen him, and of course a Westerner would stand out in a crowd of Thais. Ajahn Chah said he had one piece of advice for the Australian. “Whatever you do in life,” he said, “Do it with all your heart.”

The Australian never forgot that. He said that his life instantly improved. His marriage got better. His relationships with his children got better. His job got better. And decades later he was still joyfully living his life with all of his heart.

The Dharma isn’t always about mind-blowing meditation experiences. Sometimes it’s just the simple stuff. Yesterday’s teacher was a clogged water filter. Instead of it “ruining my plans,” I simply had a new plan. It’s often not about what you do but how you do it.

This story compliments of Ajahn Brahm

There were five children who were playing the wishing game. In the wishing game the child who comes up with the best wish wins.

The first child said, “I wish for the latest, greatest computer game.”

The second child said, “I wish for a computer game store. Then I can have any computer game I want.”

The fourth child said, “If I had any computer game I wanted, my parents wouldn’t let me play it. They would just make me do my school work. So I wish for 10 billion dollars. Then I could buy my school. And I could also buy a high school and a university. Then I could get my diplomas and college degrees and I could play any computer game I want.”

The fourth child said, “I wish for three more wishes. Then I could buy a computer game store, get 10 billion dollars and buy my schools, and then wish for three more wishes. Then I would have endless wishes and I could always ask for anything I want.”

The fifth child sat quietly for a few moments. Then she said, “I wish for complete peace, contentment, and happiness. Then I wouldn’t need any wishes.”

A man falls into a manhole. Whenever he sees someone walk by, he calls for help. Finally someone stops, looks down into the hole, and jumps in. “What did you do that for?” the man asks. “Now we are both stuck down here!” “Yes,” said the other man, “But I have been down here, and I know the way out.”
– [from “The West Wing”]

The Buddha’s teachings on rebirth are fundamental to the path that he taught. They create a sense of urgency about the meaning of our lives and how we should be spending our time and energy. This is serious business.

There is a term in Buddhism that speaks to this. That term is saṃvega:

[saṃvega is] the oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as It’s normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle.
– [Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Noble Strategy, “Affirming the Truths of the Heart: The Buddhist Teachings on Samvega & Pasada”]

I heard a story some years ago about a young man from Thailand. In Thailand almost all young men go into a Buddhist monastery for some period of time. It is a rite of passage. So this young man went into a monastery and took temporary ordination as a monk for six months.

He left behind a young woman with whom he was very much in love, and she was very much in love with him. Everyone assumed that they would get married when he finished his time as a monk. But his time in the monastery changed him, and when he left the monastery he was very conflicted.

Finally he decided to ordain permanently as a monk and devote his life to practice and awakening. When he talked to his young woman she was, of course, very distraught. But he explained to her that he now understood that he had lived this life a million times before. He had fallen in love, gotten married, had children, died, and then done it over and over and over again.

Conjoined with rebirth is the Buddhist (and Hindu) notion of cyclical time. In cyclical time, the universe itself has a lifetime. There is a birth, an expansion, and a contraction. Then there is another big bang, and the process starts all over again. In Buddhism the term for a life of the universe is “kalpa.” (Note that Western scientists only started to believe in a cyclical model of the universe in the 1980’s.) And this cyclical model has enormous implications for how we think and act.

In the West, and I think throughout most of the world, people think of time as being linear. This leads to the idea of a Creator God. The Creator God is who started everything. And when you have a beginning, this also means that there is an end. (No one has ever been able to explain to me how if God created everything then who created God, but so be it.)

Thinking about time as being linear leads to apocalyptic thinking. This is when everything ends. It is judgment day. And whenever you talk about judgment day, it brings up incredible fear, fear that is often used to scare and manipulate people.
But Buddhists and Hindus don’t think like that. Everything is cyclical. Time is “beginningless.” The modern term is “infinite.” Time is not a straight line with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s a circle.

There is an entire section in the Saṃyutta Nikāya on this topic. It is saṃyutta number 15, the “Anamataggasaṃyutta,” the “Connected Discourses on Without Discoverable Beginning”:

At Sāvatthı̄.
“Bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. What do you think, bhikkhus, which is more: the mother’s milk that you have drunk as you roamed and wandered on through this long course — this or the water in the four great oceans?”
“As we understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, venerable sir, the mother’s milk that we have drunk as we roamed and wandered on through this long course — this alone is more than the water in the four great oceans.”
“Good, good, bhikkhus! It is good that you understand the Dhamma taught by me in such a way. The mother’s milk that you have drunk as you roamed and wandered through this long course — this alone is more than the water in the four great oceans. For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning…. It is enough to be liberated from them.”
– [SN 15.4]

This puts our dilemma into a much bigger context, indeed.

We have “wandered this long course” throughout infinite time and infinite kalpas. And during that time, we have been in every realm. We have been devas. We have been in the hell realms. We have been animals and hungry ghosts. We have lived in the Brahma realm. Obviously we have been human, whatever that means depending on a particular life of the universe.

We have also lived in every kind of condition. We have been men and women, rich and poor. We have been every race. We have been every species. And we have been related to each other in every way that you can imagine:

“At Sāvatthı̄. “Bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning…. It is not easy, bhikkhus, to find a being who in this long course has not previously been your mother … your father … your brother … your sister … your son … your daughter. For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning…. It is enough to be liberated from them.”
– [SN 15.14-19]

This has enormous implications for how we think about our lives.

Let’s take a couple of obvious examples. The first is someone who commits suicide. They think that they are going to end their suffering. But the fact is that they just carry it into their next life.

Now I want to be clear here. This does not necessarily mean that someone who commits suicide is headed for a bad rebirth. Many people who commit suicide are good people. Something went wrong, and they decided to take their own life. But they very well may have had lots of good karma. In fact, of the people who I have known who have either committed suicide or have struggled with it, all of them have been good people. So let’s not jump to any rash judgments. This is more about how we think about what we are doing and the implications of certain actions. The point is more that people who commit suicide think that there is an end. It’s a linear notion of time.

Also, to be clear, there was an arahant during the Buddha’s time who committed suicide. This was because he suffered physically from a medical condition. He was an arahant, so obviously he did not suffer from mental anguish. So in his case suicide was simply to end the unnecessary physical suffering. He was not going to be reborn anyway, and the Buddha said that his suicide was blameless.

This brings up a related issue, and that is the right to die. A Buddhist would not see any reason to prolong suffering. You have probably seen people who hang onto this physical life in heart-wrenching ways. They want to squeeze every last minute out of this life. But that, too, would not be the Buddhist way. We are going to die. We are probably going to be reborn. That is the way the system works. So unlike almost every other religion, Buddhism is on the side of the right to die. It is more compassionate, and it fits in with the idea of infinite, beginningless time. We’ve already lived an infinite number of times, so let’s not make this one any worse than it has to be.

And this also explains the decision of the young man from Thailand to ordain rather than marry his sweetheart. From a conventional standpoint, that decision does not make any sense. But from a Buddhist standpoint, it is the only rational decision.
This brings us back to that word saṃvega. The Buddha said that there are two reactions to the futility of mundane existence. The first one is dismay, shock, horror, a sense of hopelessness, and even depression.

The other reaction is determination to find a way out. Very fortunately for us the Buddha jumped down into the manhole with us. He has been here and he knows the way out.

I have not done a post in quite a while. I put most of my energy into my Jātaka book project these days. I am currently working on the final edits for volume 4.

When you do a project like this – at least if you have the kind of mind that I do – you are fully involved in whatever the current story is. But as soon as you move on, you tend to forget about what you last worked on. So when I do the final proof of a book, sometimes it is like I am reading it for the first time.

I just finished proofreading Jātaka 180, which is a lovely story about generosity. And I had forgotten that at the time that I was first working on it that I heard this lovely story from Ajahn Brahm about a kind act of generosity from his time in Thailand.

Ajahn Brahm was responding to a lay follower who asked how could he learn to feel the joy of giving more. Ajahn Brahm answered that one way to do that is to look at the inspiring stories of other people who give. He went on to tell several stories of giving that are very inspirational.

One of them is about a young teenage girl from Thailand. She was very poor and lived in a poor village there. She was also brain damaged from birth, and she could not speak. But the villagers looked after her, and she was very devoted to the temple and the monks.

One day Ajahn Brahm was sweeping the back of the temple, and he sensed that someone had snuck in. He thought maybe the temple was being robbed. So he very quietly peeked around the corner, and there he saw this young girl. She was looking around cautiously to see if anyone was watching. Then she went up to the alter, put something there, and then turned around and ran out the door.

Ajahn Brahm went up to the altar to see what she had put there. What he saw was a very crudely made origami lotus flower. She was probably embarrassed that anyone would know who had made it. But she had made this gift from the goodness of her heart. It was the best that she could do, and it was the most that she could give.

This is the joy that comes from a kind and generous heart. And of course Ajahn Brahm made sure that none of the other monks removed that lotus flower from the altar.