are you a beginner at Buddhism and want
to know more we'll discuss Buddhism for
beginners coming right up so I'm Doug
Smith I'm study director at the secular
Buddhist Association that secular
Buddhism org if you're new to the
channel and interested in living a wiser
and a kinder and a less stress filled
life consider subscribing so Buddhism
should be seen or thought of as a way of
life as a practice as well as being a
religion and but I mean by that is that
in the West we often think of of
religions has involved with a certain
kind of belief system I'll sort of a
credo as it said in in Christianity that
a certain group of things a certain
group of propositions we have to believe
in and that sort of is central to what
religion is and Buddhism doesn't really
have that approach it's more of a way of
life it's more of a practice and central
to that practice is ethics the ethical
system is central an ethics of kindness
of compassion of non harming and we do
these things not because there's some
kind of divine command there's no God
that's gonna tell us what to do or what
not to do it's not that the Buddha was
some kind of divine being who is
bringing down Revelation or anything
it's rather that we're trying to find
the best way to live now we're trying to
find the way the way to live that
creates the least harm that creates the
least suffering and so the idea is that
our ethical system of kindness and
compassion and non-harming is the
central attention to the sort of center
of that of that kind of ethical approach
to a practice and to that end many of us
will have heard of the word Karma of
course karma occurs a lot in the West
it's sort of a part of our normal
discourse in the West as well and so in
general what we should take the word
karma to mean in Buddhism is that
actions have consequences
that basically there's a difference
between a wholesome action and an
unwholesome action there's a difference
between an intention behind an action
that is wholesome or unwholesome so
for example we may have an intention as
I mentioned towards kindness or towards
compassion we may also have an intention
towards Greene towards owning things
when we have an intention of hatred that
leads us to do certain kinds of actions
and the idea behind karma is that
there's this distinction that there's a
very plain natural distinction between
certain actions that are wholesome or
help be helpful or healthy and those
that are not and the wholesome more
skillful ones are ones that are that are
better that will that will tend to make
people happier and the unwholesome or
unskillful ones are not so good because
they will tend to make great greater
suffering in the world now traditional
Buddhists will also believe in rebirth
due to this Karma that is to say that
when our life ends the karmic baggage
that we have accumulated during this
life and during a beginningless number
of lives before us will result in the in
the next life in other words if we have
done a lot of bad things then we'll have
a worse next life and if we've done a
lot of good things now more good things
than bad we will have a better life
that's the traditional view it's a view
of what we might call perfect justice
that all things are paid for in the end
right so no matter what it is we do in
this in this life or whatever where
whenever we do it we'll get pay back and
if we don't get pay back in this life
we'll get payback eventually in a future
life more secular practitioners like
myself we tend to leave that aside we
don't necessarily think there is such a
thing as perfect justice what we're
interested in is more of this life
practice and it may be that we're reborn
in a future life it may be that we're
not but what matters for now is simply
that we do we act as skillfully as we
can and we and we try to purify our
intentions to make them as pure as we
can as skillful as we can trying to keep
them towards kindness and compassion so
that we avoid doing harm more harm than
is absolutely necessary and the way but
I see the world is that the only real
constant in the world around us when we
look around is change that all things
change that all things pass away
that nothing lasts forever there are
however certain kinds of regularities
within this change that we can use to
our benefit and these revolve around the
notions of pleasure and pain that is to
say that the human mind on all sentient
minds tend to make their their thought
and their behavior their action around
pleasure and pain and these can be both
sense pleasures and mental pleasures
that is to say we may have pleasures
that you know a nice meal that tastes
good a nice drink that tastes good we
might have a a nice a bed that feels
good good music that sounds good
beautiful landscape or artwork that that
looks good to us and we may also have
pleasures of the mind certain things
certain ideas that that make us happy
let's say justice or or just other
people doing well or whatever it might
be certain things make us happy other
things of course bring us pain other
other thoughts in our mind bring us pain
so these are the sort of sources of pain
and pleasure there they come through the
senses and through the mind and what we
tend to do is we tend to gravitate
towards the pleasant ones we tend to
crave the pleasant ones we want them to
remain we want them to stay with us and
we tend to push away or are aversive to
the painful ones we want them to go away
if they're here and if they're not here
we we worry about them coming back and
these kinds of regularities that we find
in the mind now the Buddha then put
together in something called the chain
of Tibetan dependent origination which
is a quite large and complex I have a
video on that if you're interested but
for this purpose for the purposes of
this video simply it's important to know
the important the the critical place the
pleasure in pain play in the human life
and basically diverting us in making us
want certain things to be other than
they are in making us want things to
remain a fairy if they're pleasant to us
and wanting them to go away if they're
not and so in this way pleasures and
pains tend to push us off of what we
might call normal equanimity so there's
a kind of equanimous state or a state of
happiness with the way things are no
matter
they are that either is difficult to
achieve where that goes away when we
tend to grasp toward certain things and
be aversive towards others and basically
what happens is that we we get ourselves
into these states of wanting certain
things or being aversive to certain
things and this causes suffering this
causes us let's say mental rumination or
mental proliferation we tend to obsess
around things not being the way we
really want them to be if there's
something let's say a vacation that's
coming to an end of the last day while
we're in our hotel room looking out on
the beach
we may be ruminating over the fact that
you know the next tomorrow we're going
to be back to work if if we are in bed
with some kind of painful illness we may
also be ruminating or proliferating
mentally around that around that illness
around that pain and in these ways this
mental proliferation this mental
rumination this mental lack of
equanimity is itself a source of
suffering it's a second source of
suffering over and above the pain itself
or over and above the lack of pleasure
that the end of pleasure itself so that
in a nutshell is the way Buddhism sees
the world and sees the way that the
world is and then on top of that
Buddhism suggests a group of practices
that we can use to sort of overcome some
of these some of the worst examples of
parts of the world that we can have an
effect on in particular that we can have
an effect on with ourselves because we
can only work on ourselves directly and
so the first practice is one of what we
might call calming meditation so for
example we follow the breath we we sit
quietly in a chair on a cushion or we
lie down and we simply follow the breath
as it comes in and goes out and by
following the breath we will find
naturally that the that the body and the
mind calm down and that calming itself
can
on its own helped to relieve some some
of our suffering by quieting down the
mental chatter by quieting down this
kind of rumination this kind of mental
proliferation that happens when we're
stuck in either craving certain things
or are being aversive towards others it
also by calming the mind helps to
clarify the mind because the mind in a
certain sense is there described as like
a pool and we know when a pool is very
agitated the water is agitated we can't
see to the bottom that's sort of a
metaphor for the mind that is active and
and proliferating it and ruminating but
when the mind calms down the water gets
clear and limpid then we can see through
to the bottom and the same way when the
mind is calm and quiet relatively so
anyway we can see clear more clearly
well how how the mind acts and reacts
towards things in the world towards
problems that towards things that are
pleasant towards things that are painful
and we can see directly rather than
intellectually cognitively but directly
in our own minds how we tend to to crave
and cling or be aversive and this
general process is known as mindfulness
meditation so as we do this kind of
mindfulness meditation we gain insight
into the way that the mind works we gain
insight into the way that the mind
craves and clings and is aversive and we
gain insight we begin to realize how
these kinds of activities of the mind
lead to our own suffering and lead to
making our own experience in the world
worse for us and worse for everybody as
we let's say we have a pain we begin to
see how that pain leads to anger in
ourselves and leads maybe to hatred and
maybe leads to an outburst that we that
we get angry at our husband or our wife
we get angry at somebody on the street
and that makes things worse and as we
see these in ourselves
we'll find overtime it's a long slow
practice but over time we begin to see
that the mind
starts to relax around these things we
find that the craving and the clinging
and the aversion may come out but they
don't come up with as much intensity or
as frequently as the mind begins to see
the way that suffering arises due to
these things so we begin to see our way
out begin to see our way towards getting
better towards a veteran of our own
internal mental chatter let's say and
towards a better
external ethical behavior in the world
and in that way over time we begin to
see our way towards equanimity towards a
more economists mind towards a more
economist interaction with the world
we're where we are ready for things that
are both pleasant and unpleasant we're
more able to deal with them more able to
deal with them without getting ourselves
into trouble so that is both a view of
the beliefs that Buddhism has the way
that the Buddhists see the world and the
way that the Buddhist make or Buddhism
makes a kind of practice out of that in
a way of approaching the world an
ethical practice to to guarantee to gain
the best sort of life we can for
ourselves and for the rest of sentient
life in the rest of the world if this
kind of activity interests you check out
some of the other videos on my web page
or my YouTube page there's a lot of
material there which obviously I can't
get into in a short video like this this
is really an introduction if you're
interested also in and checking out more
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I do love reading them and I'll try to
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well and meanwhile well I should say I
hope to see you on other of these videos
and meanwhile whether I see you or not
please be well