Abandon Hope and Fear

(First of eight sermons on the Eight-fold path)

I don’t know how many of you saw the profound Buddhist movie “The Matrix.” In it, Keanu Reeves plays a young computer hacker who wakes up to the reality of the Matrix, a vast virtual reality grid that feeds off human energy. Humans are kept asleep in embryonic eggs while a virtual life is played in their brain. The first message he gets from the deeper reality is: “Wake up Neo!” In the movie, once Neo woke up to the fact that the reality of the Matrix was an illusion; he grew capable of grasping that the bullets coming at him weren’t real, and he was able to move around among them. He was able to move around in the pseudo reality of the Matrix, aware of it as an illusion, more and more aware of the deeper reality.

This is the first of eight sermons, over the next few months, on the eightfold path of Buddhism. The first component of the path is “Right Understanding.” Getting it. That is the first and continuing job of the person on this path. You get “wake up, Neo” messages. You catch a glimpse of the human plight. You have a glimmer of the sense that people create their own suffering, that disquietude lurks at the corners of most lives, that grief, hope, love, fear, hunger for security or pleasure or acceptance drives most people to do what they do and that satisfaction is rare. A deeper reality crooks its finger at you and whispers – “wake up. There must be satisfaction somewhere, let’s go look for it.”

Buddhism asks you to start with your experience, and not to take anything on faith, but to try out what it recommends. What do you experience? Most people’s attention is caught by all the anxiety, all the worry, and the fear in their lives. What will happen to us? Am I doing this right? Will people have a good time at my party? Will I get well again? Moment after moment, for most people, is filled with hope that things will go well and fear that things won’t. Life is a rollercoaster. In the words of the poet John Prine “Some times you’re up, some times you’re down, it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re going to drown.” Buddhism says all of this rollercoaster emotion makes you suffer. There is a way to end the suffering. In your life, you will have pain, but you don’t have to suffer over the pain. The eightfold path, with its eight elements, is the way to train your-self morally, mentally and emotionally, to be free from suffering over pain. Here are the eight elements: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

Right understanding, “getting it, “ involves seeing how things are. You understand that you suffer because you have attachments to how things should go. You crave, you cling, you hope, you fear. You have hopes that an interview will go well. You are anxious about it. You worry afterward about whether they liked you. If you get the job, you worry about doing it well. If you don’t get the job, you wonder why they didn’t like you. You have ideas about how it should go. You have interpretations of how it went, ideas from your interpretations, and you suffer over those. Someone you love is doing badly. They have started drinking or using again. You worry about how bad it’s going to get. You feel the feelings from when it was at its worst. You interpret your friend’s using as their not loving you, because if they loved you they would want things to be good for you, and they aren’t good for you as long as that person is using. You have things you want, and you don’t want to lose them. You have ways you wish things were. You have fears about how things could be. All of these things, hopes and fears, cause you suffering. When you are anxious about these things you miss seeing your other friends, you can barely hear what people are saying to you, you don’t enjoy your food, sleep, sex, beauty, things seem garbled and dim. You are suffering. How could that stop? Buddhism offers a way to stop.

Get it. Wake up. Get that what happens happens. There are certain things you can do to make the interview go well, and you do them. Or not. Then it happens. You get the job. Or not. You can interpret it any way you want to. They didn’t like you? Maybe. Maybe they had someone else who was a better fit. Maybe this is not your job, maybe yours is coming. If the job had been a good fit for you, you would have been miserable in it. Is that what you wanted?

I tell some people they need to be unattached to outcomes. You need to do what you do and leave what happens then to the Spirit. So, you want me not to care? What do you say to that? If caring means you suffer and your suffering adds no good to the situation, do you want to keep doing that? Can you care in a way that holds the outcome lightly? Can you care in a way that understands that your loved ones have to find their own way, make their mistakes, feel your support but not your direction.

Buddhist practice is the foundation of this possibility. Meditation, spending time in quiet with your breathing allows you to see more clearly, gives you spaces between your moments in which to understand what part of this is pain that exists and what part is suffering you are bringing on yourself and can stop if you practice. Some spiritual paths attempt to give meaning to suffering – this one says it can be avoided, eventually, with practice and understanding. Wisdom will be cultivated and ignorance will be shed like dead skin.

In meditation, we have the chance of seeing the story we are telling ourselves about our life. The stories we tell ourselves about events shape our stance, our feelings, our behavior, and therefore can end up shaping the events themselves. If you tell yourself the story that it’s all bound to hit the fan eventually and a lot of it always gets on you, then that will be your experience. If you tell yourself that you try your best and things usually work out pretty well for you, that will be your experience. There are a hundred different stories, and seeing your story is part of getting it. Another part of Right Understanding, of waking up, is seeing the law of Karma. Its literal name is "right view of the ownership of action” The Buddhist teachers say: "Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they spring from their actions, are bound to their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, good or bad, of those they shall be heirs." [5] The Buddhist scriptures, like the Christian scriptures, talk about results of actions as “fruits.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If our lives are like a river, it’s as if we are all living downstream from our actions, and the dirty or clean water that runs because of those actions catches us later. Good actions are morally commendable, helpful to the growth of the spirit, and productive of benefits for yourself and others. Unwholesome actions, to use a more Buddhist word than “bad,” ripen into suffering.

Getting it means that you see that suffering occurs from craving, desire and attachment, that the way to end suffering is to end craving and attachment, that the way to end craving is to attend to the eightfold path of right wisdom and right behavior.

I have a friend who tells the story of her mother-in-law, Carolyn, at the drive-through window at the bank. The teller had sent out a pen for her to use in filling out her deposit slip. She had dropped the pen, which had fallen underneath the seat of the car. Carolyn could reach the pen, she could get her fingers around it, but she couldn’t pull her hand out with the pen in it. Finally they made a present to her of the pen so she would go on. We are caught like that with our grasping, unable to be free.

I am a person who would take the suffering that intense feeling produces, the roller coaster rather than a more even detachment. I like being passionately engaged, groaning when the ball bounces off the rim, whooping when it goes through. If it’s Carolina. I do detach more from some things than I used to. What someone thinks of me, the choices other people make in their lives. I think Buddhism does allow for a whoop when the ball swishes. I look forward to finding out more. I look forward to hearing from you about what you know.

by Meg Barnhouse

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