Four Noble Truths: A System?

The four noble truths are the Buddha’s foundational teachings on suffering and the end of suffering. But, decide for yourself whether this is a system or not. Is a framework for understanding how to cope with reality a system? It’s not clear to me yet.

The four noble truths (for those of you unfamiliar) are:

1. There exists suffering in our lives

2. Our identification with resistance to pain and clinging to pleasure is the cause

3. Letting of our clinging and grasping to pain and pleasure will bring about that suffering’s cessation

4. There is a way that leads to this letting go which involves cultivating a certain view, conduct, and mental posture centered mostly around non-judgmental awareness

Given that there are no specifics provided beyond that (at least for the sake of this presentation), it would be perfectly acceptable to discuss what lifestyle may be most conducive towards ending suffering. Of course, one might even have a problem accepting that life is about “ending suffering.” I would maintain that a lot of this ends up being a semantic argument more than anything. If a child is crying, there is a sense that you want that crying to stop, but if you approach it that way, it’ll probably just continue. Instead, if you go try and take care of the crying child, the crying may stop instantly. So ending suffering may be the result, but not necessarily the right way of having an intent. Again, the semantic circles you can get caught in are less important than the practical debates about peoples’ actual experience. If someone embraces suffering, and it makes them feel good, you could either say they embraced their suffering, or you could say they ended their suffering through embracing it.

So, here’s a rephrase of the four noble truth system from a more tantric approach

1. There is suffering in life

2. It’s there no matter what, so you might as well enjoy it

3. So stop fearing your suffering and embrace it

4. Through adopting that view, loosening up your rigid conduct, and putting your heart and soul into things, you will eventually not be afraid of life anymore, and you’ll be able to enjoy the entirety of your life, pain and all.

Really, it’s a linguistic trick, but it does have real implications for the way people try to traverse these paths. They are both effective “orientations,” (not systems!) depending on the temperament of the person.

There is, of course, the real beautiful Heart Sutra, which basically says…”Hey, there’s actually no suffering.” This is the extreme version of my second version above.

Meta Check-Out

If you are comment shy you may not have noticed that a great debate has been taking place under the “Partying and Taking Care” entry I posted last week or so.

This is not a system as much as an injunction: Read it!

Guides

If you can, avoid guides.

Guides are often designed for the unadventurous, and they are quickly and easily subject to change. It is better to cultivate the ability to guide yourself.

That being said, it is often important to have a guide, or unavoidable, and in this case, you should relate to your guide with reverance, trust, respect, and a grain of salt. Whether the guide is written, or a person, the guide can only take you as far as they have explored, and it is good to understand that no one is all knowing. A good guide will also teach you the skills you will eventually need to guide yourself. Catch a man a fish…

More to come.

Systems vs. Guides

I have posted elsewhere (http://systemsally.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/what-distinguishes-systems-and-solutions/) about the difference between systems and solutions, but here I would like to discuss the difference between systems and guides.

If I were to give you a list of the best restaurants in some city, this would be a guide and not a system.

Here are some reasons why. It is because the list of restaurants is:

1. City specific

2. Based on my personal opinion, and not necessarily thought out with goals of efficiency, etc.

3. Subject to change, again not because a more efficient system takes it place, but because restaurants just go out of business, or I may simply find a new place I like better.

4. The number of items in the list is arbitrary, which leads to inefficiency and directionlessness.

Guides are not bad, they just aren’t systems.

Next Post: A System for using guides.

Never give up

Really, just never give up.

Partying and Taking Care

System Sally is all for a nice time. That being said, do not do anything that is likely to cause unnecessary harm. There are many activities that can provide genuine fun where injury is common or at least unpreventable, so there is no reason whatsoever to add any potential for injury or harm.

Loud music is already harmful to your hearing, why make it intentionally louder?

Large gatherings of people can be uncontrollable so why add more things to the mix that make it more uncontrollable?

The body is a sensitive breakable organism, why introduce more chemicals, fits of violence (even the “loving” variety), or general disregard into the system?

It is important not to take what I am saying and think I am suggesting to lock one’s self up and never do anything. Quite the contrary, life should be explored, and the body should be pushed to its limits. It is the intention that matters, and it is important that life and fun is never lived as a mere result of not caring about the fate or future of body and mind.

‘Current’ Playlist

This is a great meta-system for thinking about various things. Many things that we use in the digital age offer organizational systems–I’m thinking here of the playlist feature in iTunes, Miro, etc–that can be applied to other digital programs as well as things in the analog world we have been using all along.

Two examples of this are books and recipes. We can have a library of books, or a library of recipes, but we can create ‘current’ playlists of the books currently in rotation, or the meals we are most likely to be preparing this season. Having a ‘current’ playlist for anything is a great way to stay organized, stay current, and yet keep the large library healthier by seeing it for what it is.

Another application of this is Facebook and friends. There have been some great articles about Facebook and how it is changing the way we have friends (like the fact that they can never really go away with Facebook, but in real life sometimes old acquaintances are supposed to go away). Instead of de-friended someone on Facebook, we can simply keep them in our “library” of old friends, but create a ‘current’ playlist of people that are really the ones at the center of our active social life. Facebook now has this feature, and I recommend, just for your own sanity creating a ‘current’ friend playlist. When posting to your wall, you can also set permissions, so that really only people on your current playlist will get your updates. It is not important for your high school classmates to know everything about you and your state of mind.

With books, it is helpful to have a current playlist. Rarely does anyone just read one book at a time. Keep a stack of ‘current’ reads separate from your library so you can more quickly pick up a book and read it. I have three ‘current’ lists though. ‘current’ stories, ‘current’ ideas, and ‘current’ injunctions. Stories are novels. Ideas are philosophy, history, cultural theory, anything that gives you information or helps you work with new ideas. Injunctions are how-tos, self-helps, way-of-life stuff that helps your life in a direct way. Regardless, keeping a list of current injunctions, ideas, and stories can help us clarify where we are in life, what we are looking to understand currently, etc.

You could also take the playlist idea further and create playlists with books already in your library, recipes in your recipe box, social contacts in your facebook file. Just like creating a “fun mix for cleaning the kitchen,” or “dance party ‘04″ in iTunes, we might have a ’struggling with foucault and early christian mystics’ playlist, or ‘obsessed with bhutanese food year’ recipes.

The short post: Playlists are a great idea that came about to serve our music listening needs, but the meta-idea is a great system for almost anything. Also, having a current playlist is a great meta-system for organizing and separating our libraries from our current likes.