THE REMEDY

Why are we unhappy? It is because we are filled with wanting, with desire, to the point that eventually the desire becomes a thirst that cannot be satisfied, even when we achieve what we desire. So how can we be happy? By ceasing to desire. Just as a fire dies down when no fuel is added, so our unhappiness will end when the fuel of desire is removed. We must not strive, grasp, cling, clutch, wanting to do this or to be that, for even when we attain what we want, it is not enough. The more we have the more we want. Attaining what we want is suffering just as much as not attaining it is, with “suffering” defined as chronic frustration. What is gained by striving but wealth, power, and prestige, what society has taught us are the desirable things to have in this life. But Krishnamurti said, “Think it through. Do you really want what you think you want?” Beware of what you want, you might get it. Hell is getting what you want. The reality of wealth, power, and prestige is that they are transient and therefore will end soon enough in suffering. The aim of Buddhism is to eliminate suffering. The old adage “less is more” is correct. Have nothing and want nothing, and in this way one takes the greatest pleasure in the smallest things and is happy. “He who knows he has enough is rich,” Lao Tsu said.

THIS NOT THAT

In contrast to the Atman of Vedanta, there is the Buddhist Anatman. The former refers to a spiritual self or soul that, in essence, is the same as the Brahman, or Godhead. Buddhism disputes the Atman by asserting that there is no self or soul that exists apart from everything else in the world, and that certainly there is nothing that transmigrates or is reborn into a new life after death.

Indeed, the Vedantic and Buddhist views of rebirth illustrate fully the difference between Atman and Anatman. The Atman is the same stuff as the Brahman, pure Being, and as such does not die when the individual dies. It carries over into a new existence, sometimes lingering in a way station in other realms before returning. Unlike Western religions, it does not remain in a permanent, eternal heaven or hell. Buddhism says that there is no such entity (an-atman, no-self) that moves on, stating at the same time, however, that rebirth does take place. What is reborn, though, is a character structure consisting of impressions, ideas, and feelings that pass along to the new life. The process is likened to the flame of a candle that is transferred to another candle. The flame is the same yet different.

The real purpose of the doctrine of Anatman in Buddhism is to keep a person from clinging to, from becoming attached to, from being distracted by the notion that something else exists in him or her that lives on. To become so sidetracked is to place one's suffering in the here and now, and the cause of it, in a secondary position, to where it becomes an excuse for inaction. The strategy in Buddhism is for us to jettison all attachments, including all concepts, preconceived notions, and theories, so that we may focus on alleviating our suffering, what our highest priority should be.

THE "I" THAT KNOWS "ME"

"There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know." Alan Watts.

Buddhism states that all the individual is is a temporary collection of momentary events that are constantly in flux in their causal relationship to each other, with a consciousness that expires when the individual expires. But what of this consciousness while we have it?

Vedanta offers perhaps the best explanation of consciousness by separating it into four domains. The first is waking consciousness (jagaritasthana) where the individual makes a distinction between subject and object. It is here that self-awareness occurs because he sees a difference between himself and other people. The second domain is that of dream consciousness (svapna-sthana) which, by way of symbolic images and actions, reorganizes and resets the mind. Fears and anxieties are purged. The third domain is deep, dreamless sleep (susupti) which is a sinking back into a type of nonconsciousness in which subject and object, self and other, are no longer distinguished. Psychic phenomena such as extrasensory perception may be experienced here. The final domain is transcendental or superconsciousness (turiya) also referred to as the trans-cognitive state (anubhava). The Mandukya Upanishad, which analyzes all the states of consciousness, describes turiya both negatively and positively. On the one hand it is neither subjective nor objective experience, neither consciousness nor unconsciousness, not sensual knowledge, not relative knowledge, not inferential knowledge. Rather, on the other hand, it is pure unitary intuitional consciousness, ineffable peace, in short, the Atman itself. It is here where union with the Brahman occurs.

The Atman, or watcher, is the "I" that knows "me." Yet there are other I's that know me. There is the I that is my physical body, which grows my hair, beats my heart, and colors my eyes. The I that is my social self also knows me. It maintains an appearance, has a personality, displays a demeanor, and speaks in ways that others will recognize it. Other I's that know me are my psychological I, my emotional I, and my intellectual I.

The transcendental I, though, the Atman, is the most intriguing because, in the end, it is beyond definition. More recent interpretations have it as spirit or soul, but the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, the oldest of the Upanishads, states that "Atman is not this, not that." Still, it is with us always. When we experience Brahman, the divine, it is through the eyes of the Atman that we see it. Yet the Atman does not see itself, just as we do not see our own eyes. The Atman is the "I" that knows "me" that cannot be known itself.

WHO ARE YOU?

"Who are you?" the caterpillar asked Alice in ALICE IN WONDERLAND, to which she replied, "I hardly know, sir, just at present. I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then."

Memory of the past, anticipation of the future, and consciousness in the present create the illusion of a self. Also there is the socially-conditioned ego that we see as a self. Indeed Krishnamurti asks, “Could it be that you identify yourself with a merely abstract ego based on nothing but memories?” Eckart Tolle speaks of the ego as an "illusory sense of self" based on one's memories and thoughts.

"You don't exist," Alan Watts adds flatly. "When I say YOU, it is as you conceive yourself to be, that is your ego, your image of yourself. It isn't there. It doesn't exist. It's an abstraction. It's like Three. Do you ever see Three, just plain ordinary Three? No. Nobody ever saw it. It's a concept, a vikalpa, in Buddhism. So in the same way is one's self. There is the physical happening, the "suchness," yeah sure, you bet. But it is not pushing you around, because there is no you to be pushed around."

Hormones contribute to the illusion of the self. For males, it is not until testosterone recedes in our fifties that we see the extent to which we have viewed the world through a veil. Meantime, we are taught to view the world and ourselves in a certain light, which may be false. We learn symbolic thinking (e.g. thinking about thinking and the problems that thinking creates), and language (e.g. words about words and problems that words create). We don’t know what it is that we are looking at half the time, not fully, and then we go on to communicate about it using symbols which are mere approximations of what we mean. Alfred Korzybski notes, “Whatever you say something is, it isn’t,” with Alan Watts concluding, “nothing is really describable.”

We identify ourselves with our thoughts. We think we are our thoughts. This holds true for feeling states as well. We are conditioned emotionally to react to the world and ourselves in certain ways, which may be false. When we are lonely we miss our family and friends, for example. Loneliness, though, like all other feelings, comes from thoughts, Krishnamurti tells us, and thoughts are impermanent, transient, and unreliable. Feelings likewise then are impermanent, transient, and unreliable. Yet we identify ourselves with our feelings. We feel we are our feelings. We feel we are our moods. Our lives are just such smoke and mirrors, called “maya” in Buddhism, meaning to be enchanted, spellbound.

We know that we have a body and we know that we have consciousness. At the very least then, we are a conscious body, which answers not who we are but what we are, the better question.

WHERE IS IT?

Something is missing. We have this feeling everyday. Perhaps it is in our past, we think. We remember, then, all the events gone by, all the good times especially, such as that picnic with our family out at the lake when we were six years old, that baseball game when our team won against all odds, that first "serious" date in high school. The trouble is, there IS no past. Bring out the past and show it to me, the Buddha said. All there is is memory. Memory, though, is selective, hence unreliable. It is not in the end what is missing in our lives.

Well, then, perhaps what we are looking for is in our future. Eckhart Tolle, the contemporary spiritual teacher, explains that we are forever looking for the next thing, reaching for something out there in the next instant. The next moment holds the secret. Alan Watts tells us that we are programmed for the future, that what we are seeking lies in our first day at school, in our high school graduation, in our college graduation, in our first job, in our marriage, in our kids, in our grandkids, in our retirement. It is always just out of reach. Yet, bring out the future and show it to me, the Buddha says. Once again the problem is that there IS no future. All there is is anticipation, planning, expectation, which like the past is unreliable. This is to say, how can we know what our circumstances, much less we ourselves, will be like at a given point in the future, will be like even one hour from now. We may be dead by then.

No, what is missing is the present. What is missing for us is "now." Only the present exists, one breath, one heart beat at a time. “All we have is now,” Marcus Aurelius reminds us, as does Eckhart Tolle when he speaks of now as “Isness,” what actually "is.” Alan Watts says, “There’s no place to be but here and now. There’s no way to be anywhere else. Remembering the past and planning for the future are done now, in the present," he says. "Interestingly, time is moving, yet there is only now.”

And in the present, in the "now," we find what finally we have been missing. It is happiness. We are naturally happy but rarely know it because typically we are every place other than now. Mahayana Buddhism states that nirvana is samsara. Happiness is everyday reality, which is to say, it is here, now.