We wouldn't need/have faith if we harboured no doubts. Faith and doubt come into being together. For Buddhists, we see that suffering and craving arise together. Craving is the cause of suffering in much the same way as faith is caused by doubt. In modern, urban, Western society, which is tolerant almost to the point of deification of cravings and desires, this is a truly subversive notion; but it's also a true beginning to slowing and reversing the wasteful, heedless harm that unfettered craving does to our planet, our society and our selves.
The compelling collective example is the growing awareness of our planet. It is crucial to conserve our precious resources like water and air: greed has degraded the very environmental symmetries needed to support human life. We must behave accordingly and stop wasting stuff; we have to do all that but, you know, we won't do it unless we feel a little more kindness and generosity. The cultivation of meditation skills like kindness, stillness, receptivity etc. is the key to reversing our wasteful, heedless ways, not creating and acting from anxiety and fear no matter how urgent and accurate our environmental concerns might be.
Among the more useful ideas that Zen Buddhist meditation has to offer us is the insight that personal and collective suffering is not a result of anything fundamentally wrong or broken but is caused through succumbing/surrendering to craving (Skt. tanha=thirst). To entertain seriously in an adult way, that craving itself is the root cause to disquiet in life; that there is some intimate connection there that has been obscured from cultural view, is such a powerful realignment that even if only a few people take it up and let it influence their everyday conduct in speech and body, it can have a significant impact. To that end meditation brings into being a state of almost zero craving and thus an experience of almost zero suffering. In the absence of suffering, the nature of our suffering is made evident.
Buddhist monks seek to eliminate craving completely. In everyday life we do not have this option or even that desire. We want to have a place; to find and take our place with appropriate contribution within our community. If we understand how our deep desires manifest in harm to self and others, we can make the adjustments and cultivate the skills that actually address suffering and stop wasting our time trying to fix something that is not actually broken.
It is not that hard to spot these desires because our life unfolds in patterns and humans are very good at spotting patterns. When we slow things down a little bit and pay gentle and receptive attention; bring into being this meditating awareness, we find problematic repetitive patterns become evident. Once known, the harm from deep desire can be mitigated. It is probably not surprising that if we were to take the time to sit still each day and just let be what is already, we would begin to notice many things that make us uneasy in various ways; that's what the Buddhists call suffering (Skt: duhkkha=pain, suffering); a sense of incompleteness in some pervasive, ontological way.
Wayne Codling is a former Zen monastic and a lineage holder in the Soto Zen tradition. He teaches Zen style meditation in various venues around Victoria. Wayne’s talks and some writings can be found on his blog (http://sotozenvictoria.wordpress.com
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* This article was first published in the print edition of the Times Colonist, on the Faith Forum page July 6 2013 http://www.timescolonist.com/life/religion/faith-forum-voracious-appetites-lead-to-suffering-1.357941
