"We Don’t Believe. We Fear.”

ฐานิสสโร ภิกขุ

"We Don’t Believe. We Fear.”

An anthropologist once questioned a native Alaskan shaman about his tribe’s belief system. After putting up with the anthropologist’s questions for a while, the shaman finally told him: “Look. We don’t believe. We fear.”

In a similar way, Buddhism starts, not with a belief, but with a fear of very present dangers. As the Buddha himself reported, his initial impetus for leaving home and seeking awakening was his comprehension of the great dangers that inevitably follow on birth: aging, illness, death, and separation. The awakening he sought was one that would lead him to a happiness not subject to these things.

After finding that happiness, and in attempting to show others how to find it for themselves, he frequently referred to the themes of aging, illness, death, and separation as useful objects for contemplation. Because of this, his teaching has often been called pessimistic, but this emphasis is actually like that of a doctor focusing on the symptoms and causes of disease as part of an effort to bring about a cure.

The Buddha is not afraid to dwell on these topics because the awakening he teaches brings about a total release from them.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the Study Guides book, Beyond Coping—A Study Guide on Aging, Illness, Death, & Separation, “Introduction.”

Ariyavamsa

อาจารย์ เลี่ยม

Ariyavamsa

Question: We’d like to know about your experiences living together with Luang Pu Chah. Answer: Generally, Luang Pu Chah taught us to conduct ourselves practicing contentment and being of few wishes. Contentment and fewness of wishes, these are words that describe a lifestyle where one isn’t prone to obstructions. It is also called ariyavamsa, to live without ties and fetters. Contentment and fewne…

Santi Emerged from Santati

อาจารย์ ชา

Santi Emerged from Santati

One night, there was a festival in the village. Sometime after eleven o’clock, while I was practising walking meditation, I began to feel a bit strange. In fact, this feeling – an unusual kind of calmness and ease – had first appeared during the day. When I became weary from walking, I went into the small grass-roofed hut to sit and was taken by surprise. Suddenly, my mind desired tranquillity so…

Going for Refuge

อาจารย์ สุเมโธ

Going for Refuge

When people ask: ‘What do you have to do to become a Buddhist?’, we say that we take refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. Long ago, I remember superstitious people coming to my teacher, Ajahn Chah, wanting charmed medallions or little talismans to protect them from bullets and knives, ghosts and so on, and he would say: ‘Why do you want things like that? The only real protection is taking refuge in t…

Adopted as Received Knowledge

อาจารย์ อมโร

Adopted as Received Knowledge

Over the centuries the Southern and Northern lineages have developed critiques of each other’s way of practice which have been passed on and adopted as received knowledge. When we can only base our own ideas on information from books or the established outlook portrayed by particular lineages, these critiques seem to be reasonable. Some of the most common Southern points of view argue that the Mah…

An Elephant in the Living-Room

อาจารย์ อมโร

An Elephant in the Living-Room

‘Don’t be an arahant; don’t be a bodhisattva; don’t be anything at all – if you are anything at all you will suffer’ [Ajahn Chah]. A student of Buddhism asked, ‘Which do you think is the best path: that of the arahant or that of the bodhisattva?’ Ajahn Sumedho replied, ‘That kind of question is asked by people who understand absolutely nothing about Buddhism!’ One of the larger and more significan…

Finding a Different Happiness

อาจารย์ สุนทรา

Finding a Different Happiness

The whole teaching of the Buddha is about finding a happiness that is different from conventional happiness. Conventional happiness keeps on breeding misery and unsatisfactory experiences. We tend to be experts in this kind of conditioned happiness: not a stable, fundamental happiness but a very conditioned one, dependent on many things. Some of those things are healthy and helpful; other things a…

Instructions for How to Explore

ฐานิสสโร ภิกขุ

Instructions for How to Explore

We often believe that our emotions are a given, that they’re purely visceral, that they come prior to our thoughts; but that’s not necessarily so. A lot of unspoken or poorly articulated attitudes have gotten buried in our minds — a lot of unskillful habits of dealing with pain, say, that come from way back when. Those are the things that fuel our emotions around pain. They also fuel our emotions…

Training in Amity and Affection

อาจารย์ วีรธัมโม

Training in Amity and Affection

The monastic training that we receive in caring for our elders is another example of how we can train the mind in these small but ultimately transformative ways. One of the things I used to reflect on when I was looking after my mother was the way in which Ajahn Chah was cared for after he had his stroke. Ajahn Chah was paralyzed for the last ten years of his life, but he was beautifully ministere…

The Friendship of Communion

อาจารย์ สุจิตโต

The Friendship of Communion

As for the fundamental nature of our need for help: life is difficult, and we realize sooner or later that we’re all vulnerable, subject to illness, subject to pain, and that we need other people’s involvement to keep going. We wouldn’t have got born or lived past the age of five without an enormous amount of help, and we wouldn’t have survived psychologically without about twenty years of encoura…