Thirst and the Laws of Buddha

I read Life of Pi this summer. Loved it. Not loved as in top ten list, but loved as in really enjoyed -- great summer reading. One of the premises is that this good Buddhist Indian Boy, while following Lord Krishna is led to meet Jesus & Christitianity. And while following those TWO religions, is led to Islam.

And in the (wonderful) scene where the Priest, the Priest & the Imam discover what Pi is up to -- he is baffled. He just loves God and wants to love God in as many ways as possible.

Which, predictably, I loved.

So when I stumbled across a website this morning that suggested that the "laws of Buddha" were:


1) existence is suffering
2) the cause of suffering is desire


I was intrigued. Several years ago, I read much of the Bhagavad Gita and enjoyed it very much. Mostly I enjoyed the ways that it helped me understand God and spiritual quest more deeply (preferring to read for convergence instead of divergence the way I was taught).

Only this morning when I went to go review the "laws of Buddha" (which turned out to be rooted in the four noble truths), did I find a personal divergence that I hadn't recognized before.


The Four Noble Truths

"This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of Suffering: Birch is suffering; decay is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering. Presence of objects we hate, is suffering; Separation from objects wc love, is suffering; not to obtain what we desire, is suffering. Briefly,... clinging to existence is suffering.

"This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of the Cause of suffering Thirst, which leads to rebirth, accompanied by pleasure and lust, finding its delight here and there. This thirst is threefold, namely, thirst for pleasure, thirst for existence, thirst for prosperity.

"This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of the Cessation of suffering: it ceases with the complete cessation of this thirst, -- a cessation which consists in the absence of every passion with the abandoning of this thirst, with doing away with it, with the deliverance from it, with the destruction of desire.

"This, O Bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of the Path which leads to the cessation of suffering: that Holy Eightfold Path, that is to say, Right Belief, Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Endeavor, Right Memory, Right Meditation....


...so as I was remembering these teachings -- I became aware of how at-odds I feel with Noble Truth Number Three: the complete cessation of thirst. First of all, I was dying for my coffee this morning. Secondly, I along with Greg am one of the two founding members of the Sensualists Club.

And I love about mystical traditions in Christianity that they track the sensations of human experience as being the contours within which God reveals God's self.

And I'm unnerved by how Christian-fundamentalist (where I grew up) Noble Truths Three and Four seem.

And I suppose that this may be the rub between the ways that the myth of Christianity (at least its contemporary incarnations) features the individual on a personal journey to personal entelechy (of glorification / transformation / rapture) -- and how the Buddhist mythology features the subjection of selfhood into nirvana (diffusion / erasure / disappearance).

And this is all related to my core spiritual teaching of the year:

treasure what you have. if you long for something else you'll lose even what you have now.

Which I thought (until this morning) was very in keeping with the buddhist principle that Arjuna confronts in his chariot (in teh Bhagavad Gita), but now that I sense that this contentment / resignation is consummated in self-abnegation ... I'm wondering if I've misunderstood ... if I'm headed for the syncretitic crash that all of my fundamentalist & apologist friends have worried for so long that I'd have ...

Or maybe (!) I haven't spent enough time treasuring what I have and once I do -- I'll began to be able to pry my fingers loose and feel my thirst begin to wane...?

I do love the ways that the characters in Generation X fantasize about their own deaths -- in deserts, on beaches,

"sitting out here in the desert...There'll be no sound save for the hum of heat, and my body will cast no shadow, hunched over with a spade clinking against the stony soil...the angel will reach under my flimsy bones and take me into its arms and from there it is only a matter of time before I am carried, soundlessly and with absolute affection, directly into the sun."

of course, being a northern boy, my death fantasies include something more akin to a slow hazy sleep as I sink into deep icy waters...

but in both cases, we're craving:

peace~