Thich Nhat Hanh - Beyond the Self: Teachings on the Middle Way

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Table of Contents

Introduction

The morning of the Buddhas enlightenment at the foot of the bodhi tree, he was so surprised. He had been meditating for the whole night. In the early morning, at the moment when he saw the morning star, he declared, How strange! Everyone has the capacity to be awake, to understand, and to love. Yet they continue to drift and sink on the ocean of suffering, life after life.

Before he became the Buddha, the awakened one, Prince Siddhartha had a strong will to succeed. He tried to use his mind to suppress his mind and body, putting himself through a period of practicing self-mortification and extreme austerity in which he almost died. Eventually, he accepted that forcing his body and mind in the practice wouldnt help him, so he adopted the Middle Way, a path between austerity and indulgence in sensual pleasure.

Soon after Siddhartha woke up and became the Buddha, he wanted to share what he had learned. His first Dharma talk was offered to the five co-practitioners who had practiced asceticism with him.

He said, My brothers, there are two extremes that a person on the path should avoid. One is to indulge in sensual pleasures, and the other is to practice austerities that deprive the body of its needs. Both of these extremes lead to failure. The path I have discovered is the Middle Way, which avoids both extremes and has the capacity to lead one to understanding, liberation, and peace. It is the Noble Eightfold Path of Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. I have followed this Noble Eightfold Path and have realized understanding, liberation, and peace. Brothers, why do I call this path the right path? I call it the right path because it does not avoid or deny suffering, but allows for a direct confrontation with suffering as the means to overcome it. The Noble Eightfold Path is the path of living in awareness.

From his very first Dharma talk, the Buddha spoke about the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path. He continued to teach on these subjects throughout his life.

When the Buddha appeared in the world, he was a great revolutionary. He taught that everything is impermanent and subject to change and that what we call self or self-nature doesnt exist. The Buddhas teaching of no-self was in direct contradiction to the philosophy and religion prevalent in India at the time, and it generated a strong reaction. Hinduism believes that each of us has a divine self (atman) that is eternal and is part of the great divine self (brahman).

When the Buddha was still alive, his teachings were clear and powerful. After the Buddhas death, the Buddhas disciples had to develop their own teachings to respond to the continued opposition from Hinduism. Sometimes they brought up new theories that were far from the original teachings of the Buddha. There was much back and forth as Hindu scholars and scholars from the various schools of Buddhism contradicted and challenged each other. In the second century, the Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna wrote the Madhyamaka Shastra, a commentary of the Buddhas teachings on the Middle Way, in an effort to return to and clarify the Buddhas original meaning.

The Sutra on the Middle Way contains the key Buddhist concepts of Right View: keeping an open mind and avoiding extreme perspectives and dualities, and Dependent Co-arising: the interdependent, mutually-created nature of all things.

The sutra uses the term Right View to mean a view that transcends dualistic thinking and is not caught in worldly views. Worldly views, views based on the surface appearance of things, are fetters.

In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha talks about four notions that affect all our views and perceptions. These four notions need to be thrown away.

The first notion we need to throw away is the notion of self. There is the idea that I am this body, this body is me or, this body is mine and it belongs to me. We say these things based on the notion that I am. But a better statement would be, I inter-am. Its closer to the truth in the light of interconnectedness; we see there is no separate self that can exist by itself. You cannot exist without your parents, your ancestors, food, water, air, earth, and everything else in the cosmos. By looking deeply into the nature of reality, we can throw away the notion I am.

The second notion the Diamond Sutra advises us to throw away is the notion of person or human being. When we look into the human being, we see animal ancestors, we see plant and mineral ancestors. A human is made of non-human elements. If we take away the non-human elements, the human being would no longer be there. This is the oldest teaching on deep ecology. In order to protect the human being, you have to protect what is not human. Discriminating between human and nature is a wrong view.

The third wrong notion is that of living beings. We distinguish living beings from non-living beings. We distinguish humans and animals from plants and minerals. But looking deeply into living beings, we see elements that we call non-living beings: plants and minerals. You can see that plants and minerals are also alive. After meditation we see theres no real frontier separating living beings and so-called non-living beings.

The fourth notion to be thrown away is the notion of life span. We believe that were born at one point in time, that we shall die at another point in time, and that in between is our life span. Most of us believe well spend seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred years on this planet and then well be gone. But when we look deeply, we see this is a wrong perception. In our mind, to be born means that from nothing we become something, to die means that from something we become nothing; and from someone we become no one. But a cloud cant be born; it has come from the water in the rivers and oceans, and dust and the heat of the sun have helped create it. A cloud can never die; it can only become rain or snow. A piece of paper cant be born; its made of trees, the sun, the cloud, the logger, and the worker in the paper factory. When we burn a piece of paper, the paper is transformed into heat, ash, and smoke; it cannot be reduced to nothingness. Birth and death are notions that cannot be applied to reality.

These four notions are at the foundation of our fear, discrimination, and suffering. When we are able to see them as wrong views, ignorance and suffering will no longer touch us. Well no longer suffer because of our wrong views.

When we are caught in ideas of self, human being, living being, or life span, its because we havent been able to see Dependent Co-arising. When we are caught in the idea of a life span, we think, my life will only last a certain amount of time, and we start asking questions like, Did I exist in the past? What was I in the past? When I die, will I still be there, and if I am, what will I be? These questions only arise when we are caught in the ideas of self, human being, living being, and life span.

The Sanskrit phrase pratitya samutpada means in dependence, things rise up. Pratitya samutpada is sometimes called the teaching of cause and effect. But that can be misleading, because we usually think of cause and effect as separate entities, with cause always preceding effect, and one cause leading to one effect. According to the teaching of Dependent Co-arising, cause and effect arise together (samutpada) and everything is a result of multiple causes and conditions.

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