Basic Buddhism

India, Long Ago: Gautama Siddhartha sat beneath the Bo tree, and stubbornly refused to rise until he’d reached enlightenment. (He’d tried many other things in that past.) One day, he reached enlightenment.

The enlightenment he attained permitted him to express the basic problem of living–which is how a person can gain freedom from suffering–and his realization is summarized in four points, which are called “The Four Noble Truths” …

1.  Our experience of living often consists of suffering. For example, we experience suffering from losses, illness, hunger, and death. The suffering comes from our insistent mental reaction against the “bad” thing. That is, we insistently desire to have a thing that was lost, and so we experience suffering. (As an example, you throw away a piece of paper and it is lost but you do not suffer. But you lose the deed to your home and you insistently desire that the situation be different, and you suffer. But if you give away the deed to your home to your child, then you do not suffer.)
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2.  The suffering comes from the “grasping desire” for the thing lost. It is demanding that “what is” be different, and then suffering because it is not different.
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3.  And the answer? To eliminate your suffering, eliminate the grasping desire.
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4.  To eliminate the grasping desire, follow eight important rules. In these rules (called the Eight-fold Path) are proscriptions against the things that often result in unhappiness (such as killing other folks), and prescriptions to engage in practices such as meditation, to learn to still the mind (and thus still grasping desire).

Want to Stop Suffering? Here’s How …

What this means in more modern language is that suffering comes from RESISTANCE to what is. For example, mentally *grasping* after something that you do not have right now. Or mentally *resisting* something that you don’t like. When you compulsively resist, you create–in your mind and in your experience of life–the thing we call suffering.

If you can relearn the mental habit of resisting what is, grasping after what you don’t have, and resisting things you dislike … the suffering in your life and mind fades away. Often immediately.

And remember, those troublesome mental habits are only habits, and habits can be changed. Presuming that (a) you *want* to change the habit, and (b) you’re willing to put in a little bit of practice.

Now, in truth, sometimes you can simply *decide* to let go and cease resistance.

But for most of us, years or decades of bad habits require us to put in a little effort, to *practice* the new way.

Even Shorter:

Want to stop suffering? If yes, then (a) adopt the basis (grasping causes suffering) as a working theory, (b) make an ongoing attempt to increase your skill at “letting go,” and (c) it helps if you learn how to allow your mind to go still, which helps a lot, and which we usually call “meditation.” The Buddhists describe your new understanding and your attempt at relearning as having “Right Mindfulness,” and it’s one item in the Eightfold Path mentioned above.

If you understand the cause and the cure (given here) … if you will attempt to change the grasping … then your suffering will fade away.

And it feels really, really good.

Get it? (Got it.) Good!