Betting on the Buddha

When I was 12 years old I had what would prove to be the single most important experience in my quest for God. I took a book out of the library called: “Religions of the World”: I can still remember the cover like this all happened yesterday. I took it home and began to wade through it till I came across the chapter on Buddhism. The stories struck a nerve, and not a good one. Being a self-righteous Catholic, even at that early age, I found the stories hilarious. Surely they were joking?

When my father came home he found me giggling in my chair. “Have you heard about Buddhism?” I asked him. “Some fat guy sat under a tree for twenty years, invented a religion and a bunch of stupid people follow it!” *giggle, giggle.* “He just made it up!” *giggle, giggle.*

My father, being the interminably patient and compassionate man he was, patted me on the head and said: “Son, don’t judge what you don’t understand.”

Don’t judge what you don’t understand.

                Don’t judge what you don’t understand.

                                                                                    Don’t judge what you don’t understand.

These words still haunt me. I felt like an idiot. I felt like a self-righteous ass, and as my father continued his walk down the passage to visit “the reading room”, I stood in the passage, book in hand, speechless.

That day was a crucial turning point for me. I took the book, made a cup of tea, sat back down in my chair, and read the chapter again. I didn’t understand a word of it. Looking past the cosmetics of Buddhism and into what they actually believed and practiced was like reading about an alien civilization. But what would a 12 year old middle class white South African kid know about suffering? I wouldn’t be in a place to even begin understanding for another 7 years.

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I continued to be a good Catholic right up until my father died; and a good Catholic I was! I played in the band, taught Sunday School, lead the Youth Group, lit candles, went to confession (when I had to – but more on that later), met the Pope, and generally helped out wherever I could. As time passed however, I began to fell more and more like I was talking at the ceiling.

Our old house had those old fashioned pressed ceilings, and I spent many nights starting at them talking to a God who, increasingly, wasn’t talking back. I began to wonder if He ever had.

Then, in the June of my 19^th year, my father came home from work one Monday evening. I showed him my first report card from university. He looked it over, smiled, told me how proud he was, and fell over dead.

I reached for my faith, I said all the prayers, I made votive deals with God, and I beat on my father’s chest for 45 minutes until the ambulance arrived. An hour later, they wheeled his body out of the house. My faith hadn’t worked.

Somehow I knew it wasn’t supposed to: God’s plan and all that. Somehow I knew I couldn’t be angry with either Catholicism or God. It wasn’t either of their faults. No amount of faith could have saved him, no matter what mustard seed theory you may have. Years of chain smoking, steak lunches and heavy drinking overruled any votive wish on my part.  

I also knew that this whole Catholic thing didn’t work for me anymore. It didn’t make me understand any better, it didn’t make me feel any better, it didn’t make me better at comforting my mother, and it certainly didn't make me feel closer to God. It was in that moment that I finally started to understand that chapter in that book I had read all those years ago. It was in that moment that I finally became a Buddhist.

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The basic tenents of Buddhsim are encapsulated in two lists: the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path. The four Noble Truths are these:

1.       In life, you experience suffering

2.       Your suffering comes from your attachments

3.       There is a way out of your attachments

4.       The Buddha found a way

These made absolute perfect sense to me, not in the least because they require absolutely no leap of faith whatsoever; an absolute 180 degree turn in my practice of living.

“In life, you experience suffering”: well, this is true. We all do. No faith required here.

“Your suffering comes from your attachments”: well that makes sense. If I didn’t care about my father, or I wasn’t “attached” to him, I wouldn’t have suffered at all. No leap of faith here either.

“There is a way out of your attachments”: well: if there is a way in, there has to be a way out. Surely?

And as for the “Buddha found a way”, well this isn’t so much a leap of faith as it is a: “I’ll give it a try”. The Buddha also made this easy. One of my favourite quotes from him is this:

                “Use what I’ve taught you, and when you are done using it, throw it away”

He never claimed to have the only way, just A way. I could live with this.

Basically, what was presented to me at that moment of staring at the ceiling was a different way of understanding why we are here, what the point is, and where we are going. I grabbed it with both hands.

The way the Buddha described is known as the Eight Fold Path. This list, yes another list: Buddhism is nothing if not practical, is as follows:

1.       Right View

2.       Right Intention

3.       Right Speech

4.       Right Action

5.       Right Livelihood

6.       Right Effort

7.       Right Mindfulness

8.       Right Concentration

So, what I was understanding here, in it’s very basic form, is that by having the right, view, intentions, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration, I could completely alter my experience of the world. Worth a shot I thought.

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(You’ll notice there is no mention of God in these lists. That’s important. We’ll talk about that later.)