Practice And Training
People often speak about life being divided into three compartments, the physical, the mental and the spiritual. A lot is said about how the modern world is obssessed with the physical and the mental aspects of living but casts no more than a cursory glance at the spiritual. By the term "spiritual" I do not mean religion per se, though many may use religion as a tool to fulfill this need.
What I mean by spirituality is wisdom or ignorance of things as they truly are. It is the knowledge of one's identity and place in the whole scheme of things. It encompasses our relations with others and allows us to proceed through life causing them the least amount of harm. In understanding the ways that we are connected with the outside world, we learn about the paramount importance of the mind and its views in the creation process of our daily lives.
The Buddha realised that people had these three modes of existence, the spiritual, mental and physical. He also realised that these three modes were fundamentally interconnected with each other. Our wisdom, which can also be thought of as the collection of our spiritual views or principles, is the forerunner of our mental thoughts. In turn our mental thoughts are the forerunners of our actions which will themselves eventually return back to us in the form of happiness or suffering.
The Buddhist practice essentially comprises a training programme to address each of these three areas. We seek to take out those things which hinder us on the path to peace, and to augment those things which remove the thorns of suffering from our sides. For the physical aspect of our lives, there is the training in moral conduct. For the mental side, there is the training in concentration. Finally, for the spiritual part of us, there is the training in wisdom. The aim of this whole training is to bring about the end of suffering and to allow the realisation of Nibbana.
Each part of the training is meant to be done in conjunction with the others. They are like the three legs of a stool. The stool can only be strong when each leg is firmly in place. The training allows us to see through the layers of conditioning which have been built for us throughout our lives. Conditioning from our environment, from other people, from ourselves and from our OCD. The goal of Buddhism is to train ourselves to remove the last vestiges of our conditioning and to enter into the "unconditioned state" which is another name for Nibbana.
Metta,
John
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience."
"Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think."
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.