Chapter five

The structure of life

I have tried to make the reader understand what was involved in the Buddha’s enlightenment. If the reader still has doubts about the enlightenment of the Buddha and does not believe that he indeed has found ultimate truth, it will be very difficult to understand the following message. As for those who have no doubt in the Buddha’s wisdom, we’ll see what the structure of life should be. Scholars and intellectuals are very keen to talk and analyse the structure of this and that but no one seems to talk about the structure of our life as a whole.

Without the enlightenment of the Buddha, we would not have known what our structure of life is. The structure of life has to begin at the point of knowing the ultimate reality or the ultimate goal of life. For the reader’s better comprehension, I will gather all the words and terms relating to the ultimate goal so that we know that they all mean the same thing.

The ultimate goal of life is the same as seeing ultimate truth or ultimate reality which allows us to know what is what. This is the same as entering Nirvana and becoming Phra Arahant permanently, which is also the end of all suffering. This is also the state of returning to the great simplicity or becoming what it is (Ta-tha-ta).

Without the enlightenment of the Buddha, we cannot possibly weave our life’s net because we wouldn’t have known what we are supposed to connect to. To make it easy for the reader to see the picture and for me to explain, I will depict the structure of life as a triangle.

Seeing ultimate truth, entering Nirvana, the end of suffering, becoming Phra Arahant

Moral principles wisdom meditation, bhavana

The pinnacle of the triangle is the third Noble Truth - the ultimate goal of life and all the different terms, which refer to the same thing. The base of the triangle is the method or the means of how to reach the goal, which is the fourth Noble Truth or the Noble Eightfold Path. Alternatively, we can regroup the fourth Noble Truth into three main groups, which are morality, wisdom and meditation. I place wisdom in the centre whilst morality is on the left and meditation on the right.

Finally, we have a triangle, which can clearly explain what the structure of life should be. The middle arrow pointing from wisdom to the Zenith tells us that we need to know the ultimate goal of life which allows us to know what is what. The term “to know what is what” has a profound meaning and covers the widest meaning of life. It means one knows exactly where his standing point is within this gigantic universe. Once we know the goal, next we have to know how to achieve that goal. Alternatively, we should know how we can become Phra Arahants and enter Nirvana permanently. As far as the means is concerned, there are two main principles, which are observing the moral precepts and engaging in meditation practice or bhavana in Pali. So wisdom is about knowing “what”, whilst morality and meditation are about knowing how to get to that “what.”

Among the two principles of knowing how, most people may wonder what is more important, morality or meditation. Some school stress more on morality whilst some emphasise more on meditation. To find the answer, we have to check the zenith again. It will be easier if we understand what the mind of a Phra Arahant is like. To enter Arahantship means that the mind has ceased to swing either up or down. A completely still mind is the mind of a Phra Arahant who has reached the end of all suffering. If this is the goal we want to achieve, we will understand clearer the relationship between morality and meditation. Human’s mind is far from being still. To help the mind to be still, we need to observe moral precepts. The mind can settle by half if we can follow the moral principles because we do not have to worry about being caught out due to our wrong doing. People who cross the moral threshold have to look over their shoulders all the time and cause their minds to be restless. If this compared to a piece of work, this work is half way done in simply observing the moral precepts.

However, the unsettled mind does not relate only to whether we are good or bad persons. We can do our best and try to be whiter than white but it doesn’t stop us from having fear e.g. fear of darkness, fear of being aged, fear of being laughed at, fear of being poor, fear of having cancer, fear of losing our loved ones and the ultimate fear of death. Besides having fear, no matter how good we are, we still have jealousy, envy, resentment, hatred and anger whether we show them of not is another matter. When that happens, our minds swing up and down and cause us lots of grief and unhappiness. We also have desire no matter how good we are. We all want the best for our children. Although we never want to expect anything from others, we still want something at times. We want to be noticed when we do something good and noble. We all want to be special. We won’t be human if we don’t have those feelings. The trouble is when we cannot have what we want, we feel unsettle and restless. Life is not as easy as we would like it to be, is it?

The other fifty percent of our mental unsettlement can be sorted out by different meditation techniques. There are two main meditation techniques, which are samatha-bhavana and vipassana-bhavana. If we focus only on the samatha-bhavana, we can easily be attached to calmness and that won’t resolve the problem of mind-swinging. We may be quite calm and peaceful while we are in meditation but when we come out of it, we may find it rather difficult to live in the real world. To really solve the problem, we must engage in vipassana-bhavana until we reach the third or the fourth foundations of awareness. Vipassana practice will bring us much closer to the point of stopping the mind from swinging up and down. To make the mind completely still is the ultimate goal of life.

We can see that this structure of life is the direct result of the enlightenment of the Buddha, which is simple and straightforward. There are only two significant questions – knowing what and knowing how. If our wisdom towards the ultimate goal of life is not clear enough, we can easily lose track of the reason why we observe moral precepts and engage in meditation practice. Good and moral people can easily think that they are better than others and cause the ultimate white sin. We cannot be whiter than white, can we? Those who are good in meditation practice can be hooked on the state of calmness and pursue other spiritual purposes rather than the simple state of Ta-tha-ta (just being). We must understand that moral precepts and samatha-bhavana existed even before the enlightenment of the Buddha, they were not new. However, they are the compliment factors for people to enter Nirvana. The brand new practice resulting from the enlightenment of the Buddha is indeed vipassana-bhavana or the four foundations of awareness.

Fortunate people who have heard about this piece of good news should quickly follow the path to fit in with the Thai saying that it is extremely lucky to be born as a human and meet Buddhism.