Teachings of Buddha

Buddha was born in 543 BC and died in just over eighty years of age.At the age of 29, He was shocked to see the realities of sick, aged and suffering. So he left his palace to search for answers. In Buddhism the teaching is the important thing- not the teacher. The Buddha’s final injunction was that out of respect for him believe nothing he said but investigate, investigate for yourself. Try to avoid  any desire or bad conduct as  much as possible.  Buddhism is based on spiritual philosophy and generally lacks an absolute creator God.

The Four Noble truths

1. The Truth of Suffering: Life – this existence of all sentient beings is Dukha (suffering).
2. The Truth of Origin of the Suffering: The cause of Dukha is desire.
3. The Truth of Cessation: There is a way out of all this Dukha.
4. The Truth of the Path: The way out of Dukha is to live by the Eightfold Path.

The Eightfold path

1. Right views or understanding, free from superstition
2. Right aims, high and worthy of the intelligent, earnest person.
3. Right speech, kindly, open and truthful
4. Right conduct in all aspects of life
5. Right livelihood, doing no harm to sentient beings
6. Right perseverance in all steps of the Eightfold path.
7. Right mindfulness: the ever-watchful, attentive mind
8. Right contemplation (meditation); earnest thought on the deep mysteries of life

The Five Precepts: Basic guiding principles for practicing lay Buddhists

1. No killing
2. No stealing
3. No harsh words
4. No unlawful sexual activity
5. No intoxication by drugs and alcohol

Within above there is profound teaching of Impermanence and Dependent-arising.Impermanence means constant change. Everything is in a state of flux and nothing remains the same even for an instant. Dependent-arising is the concept that all things are connected; nothing emerges without relationship to other things.

Two last but not the least teachings : Anicca (no-self) and Anatta (no soul).

Anicca is to recognize what we call the self.  All the parts we think of as making up our “self” is in state of flux and there is nothing we can grasp at or hold onto. Anatta means that there is no such thing as soul which is considered as eternal and unchanging.

Reference: The Naked Buddha speaks …. by venerable Adrienne Howley

The Four Noble Truths      …. by Dalai Lama

Millionaires or lucky fools in chaotic world

In this chaotic world, Wealth or life is more random than we thought. It is the future result which is random, determines our past decisions. It is true that chance favors the prepared. But every intelligent, hard working, persevering becomes successful does not mean that every successful man is intelligent, hard working, persevering. Economic risk takers are rather the victims of delusions. One should not take quality of their knowledge too seriously.

Let us see major events in our life. The biggest difference is created by birth. Some people are billionaires and some are beggars by birth.  In childhood, some of us get undue advantage or disadvantage of our parent success or failures. Marriage can be a boon or bane for a person in life. Two sisters fortune can be turned around after marriage. Also future success or failures sometimes in spouse hand. While growing up, it also matters what kind of friends you have. It may be a chance, what profession you have chosen. In India in 90’s, most of software professionals are somehow successful today. Even in a job, one can get a right conditions or right boss. Some are millionaires because their stock options has done really well whereas their contribution may not be great. Sometimes the nature of work is also highly probabilistic. A regular job earns a steady income whereas investments are highly uncertain or speculative. Most Investments like stocks, real estate, bonds are invested in future.

Why life or wealth is so uncertain? Competition is one of the reasons in chaotic environment. As the competition is growing, the chance of success gets more unpredictable. Take an example of game. If some of the teams are equally competitive, environment (which is chaotic) will determine the result which is uncertain. So it becomes difficult to predict a win. As in case of rolling a dice, if all sides are equal (means competitive), the outcome is unpredictable. If dice is loaded (one team is highly skilled), then there is high probability of winning that side. Three variables are enough to create chaos. In economics, if there is high demand and low supply, the chances of getting a particular item is unpredictable. High price makes it predictable. If supply is high, more and more people will get it and becomes predictable for more people.

Still some people boast that they are self made. They started with nothing and accumulated wealth on their own. This is not possible as we depend on conditions and others for success. Take two examples (source : fooled by randomness). In the first, put 10 managers in a room. Randomly fire one manager monthly without any bias. If you ask the last manager after ninth month, how he survived the competition. He will tell different strategies and ways for his success. But you know in your mind that it has nothing to do with the skill of any manager. Humans are always looking for patterns even if there is none. In another example, send 1000 emails to different people predicting bull market next month to 500 and bear market to remaining 500. After a month, among the successful 500 candidates (based on whether the market ended bullish or bearish) again send 250 emails predicting bear market and 250 emails for bull market next month. Keep on repeating by dividing into half i.e., repeating again for 125, 62, 31, 15 and 7. For these last 7 people you are correctly predicting the market for last 8 months. To increase the number of months, you can increase the initial emails to 10,000 or 100,000. The beauty of this experiment is that we are ignoring the unsuccessful predictions and only concentrating on successful ones. This actually happens in real life. Successful people boast their risk taking capacity (or some other skill), but nobody knows how many people are failing by taking same risks. In India, lots of Gurus or Mahatmas claim that they have cured lots of people by magical powers. They are smart enough to wander from one place to another and keep claiming. If they are so certain, they should settle down at one place and make whole town healthy.

So take your time and check your life events. You might have got enough success in life but may be living in more richer neighborhood or chasing more successful people.  It is possible that successful may be a lucky fool and unsuccessful may be unlucky genius in a world full of chaos.

Intentions with controlled emotion

In recent studies, it is found that controlled emotion is one of the major reason which make humans different from animals. So a journey from animal to human and then to spiritual being is actually a journey of uncontrolled emotion to controlled emotions and then to emotionally free. In human societies, it also looks like that intention may not matter but the followed path is important. As a human, Controlled emotions are important to follow a better path.

In one of the example, let’s assume a person arrived in a town of rich people without any money. He is amazed to see the wealth in that town and wanted to settle there. To get wealth from other people, he has two options. One of the methods is to use force e.g., burglary or stealing and the second to start a business. In force method, he is not going to go far as there are legal and other consequences. He chooses second option which has greater acceptance. He started a business by delivering some kind of services. Now slowly he is able to successfully run that business and earned huge profits. He gets lot of fame as people appreciate his success as they know he had nothing when he arrived in that town. In both cases his intentions is to get some part of money from as many people as possible. Even in running business he might be using lots of menial ways to earn profits. In first method, he is forcing people against their wishes to give him money but in later he is creating situations or luring people for money. In second method he is controlling emotion which is equivalent to non violence, patience, acceptance, and doing things smartly.

Let’s take another example. Another person desires a woman in a town. Now he has one option that either he can use a force or rape a woman. Here also there are legal consequences. (Sometime I wonder what goes in the mind of rapist who is serving 10 to 15 years of imprisonment on a rape charges for a few minutes or hours of joy). He can take a different approach which looks menial but has better acceptance. He can either create conditions, seduce her so that woman fell into the trap and the person can enjoy on a longer basis as compared to the earlier one. In this case, woman is willingly agreed to a person and accepted him compared to force method.

In both of the above scenarios, intentions are same which does not look right. But second method is quite acceptable in today’s society. Major difference in both the method is uncontrolled and controlled emotions which can translate to animalistic and human behaviour.  So stop using first method and at least move to second one as a human. After that, if possible to become enlightened and spiritual person, be emotionally free and feel content with the money or women you already have.