Excitement and Confusion

There's always an initial period of excitement when starting out on a new path. On the Internet and in the few books I bought or borrowed, I found more than I could absorb about the various forms of Buddhism and their practices. I began to learn a new vocabulary - dukkha, dharma, samsara, karma - and tried to incorporate the concepts into my thinking.

Somewhere along the way, I had learned of various versions of Zen, and the closest thing I found to my live-and-learn way of exploring things was Soto Zen, the main practice of which is sitting and breathing mediation. The idea, as I understood it, was to quiet the busy, thinking mind so that peace and insight could enter.

Meditation became the simplest possible, something my third-grade teacher could have taught in three sentences to her rowdy students: Sit down. Shut up. Pay attention.

The Collapse

My world of book-knowledge began to collapse in on itself. What was the absolute minimum I needed to know? What's the minimum for any religion or philosophy?

For the Judeo-Christian tradition, we have the Ten Commandments. If people took them literally and followed them faithfully, little or none of the theology that flows from them would be necessary.

But wait, there's less. Jesus had just two commandments: Love God, love your neighbor. It seems that one could go deeply enough into just those commandments to lead a righteous life.

For Buddhism, the minimum seems to be the Noble Eightfold Path. There's the Four Noble Truths, of course, but they're incorporated into the Eightfold Path. And there are several other numbered lists of virtues and hindrances, but they seem to be less fundamental than the simplicity of the Eightfold Path.

I started reciting a short version of the Eightfold Path before beginning meditation. Now the problem was to make sense of the steps. What did they mean?

A partial answer came from, of all places, a business writing course I teach. The principal lecturer emphasized the clarity, brevity, and vigor needed in effective business communications but also mentioned three other tests: Is it kind? Is it the truth? Is it necessary? In my reiterations of these principles to my students, I changed "Is it the truth?" to "Is it honest?" My rationale was that the results of simply telling the truth could be unkind, unnecessary, or in many cases simply misleading. My concept of honesty was that it is focused more on results and not misleading people.

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