• Interbeing. There is no independent, inherently existent, eternal soul. We do not exist separately from our fellow life travellers or environment. Like waves in the ocean, beings and events arise and subside in dependent arising. We need a systems approach to understand reality.


• Suffering. When we hang on to labels or expectations, tell ourselves a false narrative about our experience or the world around us, and cling to the sense of a sepa- rate self, we suffer. Birth, old age, sickness, and death are facts of life, but they are not the ultimate sources of our suffering. Those can be attributed to our ignorance, greed, and hatred. We are sleepwalking, oblivious to the wondrous miracle of our shared life. This misunder- standing is at the root of our suffering.


His entire message was an elaboration on four basic


Truths: the reality of suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the eightfold path to achieve that liberation. Buddhism is not a religion of faith, ritual performance, or adherence to com- mandments. Nor is it about accumulating spiritual merit. Indeed, one might say Buddhist practice never saved anyone and one might not even need to identify as Buddhist while practicing Buddhism. On the contrary, it is a contemplative practice that focuses on waking ourselves up by cultivating calmness, reducing the distractions of our sick consumer society, being mindful of what is actually happening with each breath, and nurturing more positive mental states. Out


of this calm abiding and insight arises great compassion. The essential foundations of Buddhist practice are the


Five Precepts: • Don’t kill. • Don’t steal. • Don’t lie. • Don’t be sexually irresponsible. • Don’t take intoxicants.


With education and meditation, we can build on these


ethical foundations, living in a manner that is mature, har- monious, and non-harming to others. Our True Nature is luminous but hidden from us by our own misguided attempts to achieve happiness by accumulating more things, controlling more people, turning a blind eye, or lamenting what we think fate has dealt us. That’s pretty much it.


Dharma) Down through the centuries, as Buddhism spread across Asia and into the West, it has taken on a great variety of forms. As different lineages became institutionalized, a great flowering took place. The first two residential univer- sities in the world, Nalanda and Taxshila, were Buddhist monastic organizations created in the 5th century; they oper- ated for more than 750 years. Over generations during the 8th and 9th centuries, Buddhist communities created temple complexes of great architec- tural and engineering accomplishment, such as the Ajanta Caves in India, Borobudur in Indonesia, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and the Dunhuang Caves in China. In what is known as the first Turning of


The evolution of Buddhist teachings (the


the Wheel of Dharma, as Buddhism died out in India, it spread to Southeast Asia (Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Thai- land), with an emphasis on Buddha’s original teachings, community structures, and mind- fulness meditation. This tradition is known as the Theravada, the Way of the Elders. A great text in this lineage is The Dhammapada. In the second Turning of the Wheel, Bud-


dhism spread to China, Korea, and Japan. There it became infused with Daoist and Confucian principles and became known as the Mahayana, the Great Way. Mindfulness meditation became more intimately con- nected with being in nature. This was also the crucible for the development of Ch’an Buddhism, which later evolved in Japan into Zen. The emphasis in Zen is on direct expe- rience of reality, an iconoclastic rejection of scholasticism. Buddhist meditation became something for everyone, a much more inclu- sive perspective for laypeople than one where their sole role is to support their ordained brethren in the cloister or subservience to an authoritarian political system. A great text in this lineage is The Mountains and Rivers Sutra, by Dōgen in the 13th century.


Green Teacher 131 Page 17


Photo by Sahil Pandita


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