Although the tree of Buddhism has many branches, each of them is based on the same basic teachings and principles.
The religion is based on the Four Noble Truths: there is suffering; this suffering stems from desire; suffering ceases when desire ceases; and freedom from suffering can be achieved by following the Eightfold Path according to Buddhist teachings.
What keeps us bound in this cyclic existence of inherent death in life is karma from past lives, Jangchup Chophel, a monk from a touring Tibetan monastery, said.
“We’re just kind of mindlessly going through this, and it’s unnecessary,” he said. “One of the more modern day examples that they’ve shown is in ‘The Matrix’, and that’s a Buddhist movie, and they try to put themes into it. That this world we see is really a construct of our karmic imprints. That’s how we see the world.”
This karmic imprint, he said, explains why some are born into more fortunate situations than others.
Buddhism teaches different methods of achieving oneness with the universe, the final destination on the Eightfold Path. Following this path to enlightenment, people shed the ignorance of their focus on selfish desire.
These competing desires create the “unsatisfactoriness” that Chophel said better explains the suffering the Buddha referred to.
The level of “unsatisfactoriness” a person experiences in life is dependent on the karma they’ve accumulated from past lives.
“A lot of people don’t realize that we have hell — it’s just temporary,” he said. “You die and take a new form. … So it’s really unnecessary. You can have lasting happiness. You don’t ever need to die, and you don’t ever have to be subject to karma.”
The first step is in correcting ones perspective and intentions.
Chophel said that people tend to think of themselves as independent and separate individuals. Upon consideration of something such as how many people it takes to make a piece of bread, Chophel said it is clear that this is not the case.
“In getting the things that I want and avoiding the things I don’t want, I’m going to create all the delusions and karma that keep me trapped here,” he said. “For example, you’re my friend. Someone insults you. I get angry, I just created a delusion of anger. I create karma. I might do something mean.”
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Once individuals realize they are part of the universe and not so different from other beings, the next step is to incorporate the teachings of the Buddha into their life. This includes right speech, action and livelihood.
“Now we can slow down and concentrate and think about, contemplate,” he said. “Also, just taming our mind. Our minds run on automatic, and that’s that karma that drives us around all the time. We have busy lives, we don’t know where our keys are, we forgot what we were doing a minute ago, we’re not even present in the moment we’re in.”
Chophel said that a mindset that isn’t focused on selfish desire should then be cultivated. The seven conditions together create an environment conducive to personal growth, the penultimate step to achieving Enlightenment, he said.
“You start meditating on what is this really,” he said. “What is my body really? Am I my body? My mind? My thoughts? Who’s watching my thoughts? What am I? You start meditating on what we call emptiness, the empty nature of inherent existence. You start to learn to see things as they really are. And, if you’re able to really get a direct experience of what we call the non-dual nature of reality, we’re not so independent, see things directly, you are liberated.”
