So hey everybody,
It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 501.
And I thought it would be a good time to go back to the beginnings of mindfulness,
Of what the Buddha taught,
And talk for a few weeks about the Four Noble Truths.
So I've been studying and practicing for a while now and most of my study has been in the Theravadan tradition.
And in that tradition,
The story,
Or the legend,
Is that Siddhartha Gautama,
Gautama was the family name,
Siddhartha,
Which means chosen one,
Was the given name,
Decided to set out on his own,
Leave the palace,
Learn how to overcome the difficulties of life and to awaken.
And in his time,
There were many holy people and great thinkers in India.
And this was also true in other parts of the world.
So history places the Buddha's life during the Axial Age,
When humans in India,
But also in Greece,
In China,
In Persia,
In Israel-Palestine,
And maybe elsewhere as well,
I'm thinking of the Americas where the teachings are less well-known or maybe lost,
Began to think and write about morality and ethics and philosophy and the human condition.
And these teachings have come down to us in various forms.
In some cases,
They've come to us as philosophy.
In some cases,
They've come as religion.
In some cases,
They've come as law.
And then in some cases,
They've come as a combination of philosophy and religion and law.
I find it really helpful to conceptualize the centuries of the Axial Age,
Which were,
You know,
Depending on where you look and do your research,
Around 800 to 200 BC,
Or some people say 600 to 200 BCE,
As not only a time of great philosophical and moral insight,
But also a time not unlike our own time.
Because alongside the remarkable insights that were occurring,
The centuries were not peaceful ones.
You know,
In these places,
In China,
In Persia,
In Greece,
In India,
In the Fertile Crescent,
There was large-scale ongoing political upheaval,
Right?
There were conquerors who succeeded and failed.
There was a lot of war.
And so the philosophies of the Axial Age emerged not out of easeful conditions,
But out of conditions very much like our own times.
And I guess I would say,
I find it not only helpful to conceptualize the Axial Age that way,
But also comforting,
Right?
It's comforting in the sense that it reminds me that what we're dealing with politically and culturally in the US and in many other places right now is just a moment in time,
Right?
And possibly a time out of which could emerge great wisdom.
And I don't know that any of us or any of our children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren or nieces or nephews or greats there will see that age of wisdom,
But who knows?
And Norman Fisher at the Working Group on Monday night reminded us all that Siddhartha is known as the Shakyamuni Buddha,
The Buddha who has brought us these teachings of mindfulness.
And legend has it that the next Buddha,
Because there will be a next Buddha,
Is Maitreya Buddha,
The Buddha who will usher in a time of universal love.
So who knows?
Anyway,
That's a little history.
So to the Four Noble Truths,
Which is the beginning of mindfulness,
The actual teaching is called Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma.
And I love that title so much.
It just,
I don't know,
I hear it and something drops in for me.
And I did a little research and the reason the teaching is called this is because when he offered this first teaching,
Siddhartha,
Who was by then called the Buddha,
Set something in motion that's considered unstoppable,
Like a wheel is unstoppable and just keeps rolling on.
And supposedly the teaching was so profound that when the Buddha gave it the first time,
It caused the universe to shake and this great immeasurable light to pervade.
So initially,
The Buddha offered the teaching with reluctance.
In fact,
He wasn't going to teach it at all because he felt no one would understand.
And then he was convinced by a Brahman who appeared from another realm and said,
There are the people who will understand,
There are those with but little dust in their eyes.
So I had always understood that the Buddha's reluctance to teach was about his concern that no one would understand the Four Noble Truths,
Which is this setting the wheel in motion teaching.
But then Norman at the working group on Monday shared that he's currently offering a seminar on a sutra,
He calls it,
Called the Gandavyua Sutra.
So,
Of course,
Me,
You know,
Being the good student wrote back and said,
Could you please share a link to the sutra?
So he did.
And it turns out it's a 1000 page sutra.
And it is understood in Chinese Buddhism and some forms of Tibetan and Mahayana Buddhism to be the actual first teaching that the Buddha offered.
So I'd never heard this before.
So then I thought,
Well,
I'll listen to Norman's first talk on this Gandavyua Sutra.
He's got a bunch of talks so far,
The seminar started in August,
Thinking,
Okay,
Then I can share just a little bit about this with all of you.
And you know,
Norman is so clear.
He's the best at clearly explaining complicated and mystical things,
Right?
He just he does a good job of that.
But his talk was so big,
And so cosmic,
And so wild.
And I can totally understand how,
I mean,
I didn't understand a word he was saying.
And I said that in the working group.
And he just laughed.
And if that is the very first true teaching of the Buddha,
Then I could understand how the Buddha would like,
Try that and then go,
No one's gonna understand this.
And so apparently,
In these other traditions,
It's that he stepped back to the Four Noble Truths,
Which he felt like we can understand.
So I don't know if any of this is true,
But it sounded really interesting to me.
And so here are very briefly the Four Noble Truths,
Which all of us have heard probably many times.
And,
And then over the next few weeks,
We'll play around with unpacking them and mapping them on to this legal mind,
Right?
So the Buddha is this brilliant psychologist and understands how the mind works.
And so maybe we can play around with and then what about with the legal mind?
So First Noble Truth,
The truth of suffering or the truth of dissatisfaction,
That this being human is not easy.
Right?
It's just as simple as that,
That we get injured,
We get sick,
We die,
We lose things,
We lose people.
There are wars and dictators and other terrible people who affect our lives and the lives of others.
There's violence.
In our country,
Again,
Yesterday,
There's injustice.
Specific to being a lawyer,
There's stress and pressure and overwhelm and trauma and vicarious trauma and perfectionism and so much conflict.
You know,
It can be like working in a war zone.
It's,
You know,
I imagine it's like being a foreign correspondent in a war zone.
So this being human and this being a lawyer is not easy.
Just the truth of that.
First truth.
Second truth,
The truth of the cause of suffering is that when we encounter these difficulties,
We generally want them not to be happening.
Right?
And when things are great,
We generally want things to just stay exactly the way that they are.
Right?
And so it's not the difficulties or the fact that the great moments don't last forever that cause the suffering.
It's the wanting,
The craving,
The thirsting for things to be other than they are less difficult or to not change if they're good.
Right?
It's that internal relationship that we have to the external situation.
Third noble truth,
There's an end to suffering,
Which is to sound simple,
Not easy,
Which is to relax and let go of wanting things to be other than they are,
Which is not to let go of fighting injustice.
And it's actually perfectly consistent with continuing to do that,
But simply letting go of wanting things in the moment to be other than they are just in this moment.
Right?
And then the fourth noble truth is there's this whole path that the Buddha laid out for us called the Eightfold Path that will take us there,
That will help us get there,
That will take us to the end of suffering.
Okay,
So that's good for now.
And just to say most of you,
Again,
Have probably heard many teachings about the Four Noble Truths over the lifetime of practice and study.
And so hopefully something in the next few weeks will resonate or offer a small piece of the puzzle or be useful in some way.
Okay,
So let's sit in your posture for the next nine minutes.
And that posture wants to be whatever posture will just support you in coming to stillness.
And then as the body comes to stillness,
That opens the door,
The gateway for the mind to become still.
And it's always helpful to give the mind an anchor or a place of refuge where it can settle.
So that could be the breath,
Just the sensation of breath moving in and out of the body at the nostrils,
Or the rising and falling of the chest,
Or the belly.
Or that could be ambient sound and just noticing sound as it arises and passes away.
And then if the mind wanders,
Just turning towards yourself with a great deal of warmth,
Of love.
Oh,
This wandering mind.
And then come on back to your home base,
Refuge of the breath or of sound.
With a lot of love.
And maybe even a little gratitude towards yourself for giving yourself this time to just sit and be quiet and still.
Then if you've been bringing some love to yourself,
Some gratitude to yourself,
And yeah,
You've got those qualities going a little bit,
You can also just right now open the container and just send those qualities out.
Kind of radiate those qualities out into the room where you're sitting,
The building,
The town,
The community,
The state,
Province,
Country,
And yeah,
Just out into the whole world.
Thanks,
Everyone,
For being on the wake-up call.
It's nice to see you all.
See you soon.
