Eight Steps to Freedom | Page 3

and other. It reduces all lesser considerations to ashes once it is kindles. Therefore, Buddha adamantly refused to answer questions that were purely theological or metaphysical as being inherently irrelevant.
His teaching had only one priority; the alleviation of human suffering. Even a simple person can recognize that there is no way that a human being can avoid these conditions which produce suffering on a physical level. As long as a man exists in a physical form, he has the consequences of that form. To have form one must have limit. For that which is without limit is by nature formless. To move in a world of limits is to experience limit in oneself, and the personal experience of limit is by nature an unsatisfactory experience to one who defines himself by his limits.
In the very beginning of life, physical pain and psychological frustration mark the infant's first confrontation with its limits. It experiences directly the unsatisfactory nature of its limits in its initial movements in the world. The bumped head, the toy just out of reach, reinforces a sense of powerlessness in the infants mind. This inability to have our own way, and the tension that it produces with the world, is what is meant in Buddhism as the first noble truth; that life is suffering.
The original word Buddha used was dukkha, a Pali term that, as I have said, implies more than the English word suffering. Dukkha refers to a type of underlying tension or dis-ease with existence. It describes the continuous confrontation of the individual with his limits. There is nothing particularly revolutionary about this insight, except for the subtleness of the definition. Buddha, however, then goes on to postulate another truth which begins to mark his radical departure from ordinary perception. Suffering is caused by desire, and this is the second noble truth.
Once again the actual Sanskrit word signifies more than the English word desire. Obviously there are many positive desires which are not productive of suffering, such as the desire to enlightenment, or to aid others, etc. What differentiates negative desires from positive desires is the clinging attachment associated with negativity. This energy is called Klesha or defilement in Pali, signifying an obsessive energy which bonds the individual to a concept of self or situation which will not allow one to confront limit with equanimity or acceptance.
Dukkha and klesha are like two ends of a magnet; dukkha is the energy that repels limit, while klesha energy is constantly drawing limit toward itself and bonding to it. Dukkha is unable to simply be, within the boundaries of personal existence, without pushing away continually from life situations, trying to manipulate its way into a position of power. It does this because the mind is constantly attracted to limit by the energy of klesha's magnetic pull. The clinging desire to be or abide in something of our own choosing, pulls one constantly forward toward various life situations. These are invariably unsatisfactory, in that they cannot appease the energy of desire, and thus we are repelled by them in the moment by the force of dukkha.
The attachments of desire attract us, and the unsatisfactoryness of the experience of our finiteness when we approach the object of desire repels us again. We are thus ceaselessly driven back and forth emotionally in a maelstrom of unhappiness. We can actually become so used to this situation that we learn to accept it, and not even recognize our own existential turmoil. A man who has been in pain since birth, believes he is quite happy until someone comes along and alleviates his pain. Then he recognizes for the first time what it is to be happy. The source of this klesha which causes suffering lies in a basic misunderstanding of the nature of self. This lack of understanding is what the Buddha called ignorance. The man that is ignorant sees himself as an absolute other, and carefully defines his limits, thus activating the energy of the kleshas and the resulting experience of suffering.
According to Buddhist teachings, the fundamental Reality of the Universe, the Buddha Mind, is none other than our own original nature. This nature is hidden from us due to the conditioning of desire and attachment to the process of becoming. This is the point where ignorance, in the form of attachment to self, keeps us from seeing our true nature. We literally are unable to see the forest for all of the trees, and yet there is no forest other than these trees.
The result of practicing the eight fold path is to begin to see each tree or component thing for what it is, a perfect expression of time and space. Every tree in the forest becomes a mirror to the process of becoming, reflecting the forest itself. All of life becomes