James asked me to do a quick ‘Intro to Buddhism’ thing for the triumphant return of Unite Fanzine, so here it goes. When I run into old friends who I haven’t seen in umpteenth years, and they ask me “what have you been up to man”? I usually have to think hard about my answer. Will I give them a pat response about my meandering directionless job history? Will I tell them that I’ve been working out a lot and doing yoga? Will I tell them about how I’m going back to school? Rarely do I tell them what I’ve really been doing for the last 13 years or so: trying to wake up from the dream Buddhists call “Samsara”. 

So, what the hell is Buddhism anyway? Buddhism is a lot of things. It’s a religion, while at the same time it’s the antithesis of religion (more on that later). It’s a philosophy, but a philosophy that encourages you to move beyond just thinking about what is taught and actually experience and do it. More than anything else, Buddhism is a collection of techniques designed to snap you out of a dream you have been having for a very, very long time, long before you were born this time around even, that’s the Samsara thing I brought up earlier. So maybe it would be best to start with where we’re at, that’s how the Buddha started when he talked to his first students. Like anything else in life, the best thing to do is figure out where you’re at and be real about it, and then you have a chance of knowing where you’re going. So let’s look closer at this Samsara thing.

    Samsara is a cycle that is the result of ignorance. According to the Buddha, we have all been in it infinitely. There is no beginning to it. The details about how there’s no beginning is beyond the scope of this quick write up, so trust me for now will ya? Anyway, Samsara is a kind of infinite loop where the illusion of time, distance, self, other, good, bad, right, wrong, and all the infinite variations dualism gives us occurs. In reality, all of this movement is the result of a skewed perception, a cognitive error if you will. There are different schools of Buddhism with different takes on what constitutes this illusion but that’s beyond the scope of this article. So, we’re ignorant, even if we’re brilliant. Intellect, while valuable and useful as a tool according to Buddhism, is not a sufficient tool for digging us out of Samsara. The nature of Samsara is suffering. Now there’s a trick to this: according to Buddhism, if you’re ignorant of your true nature then you know all that good stuff in your life? The stuff that you want to hold on to and that you consider the opposite of the shitty, irritating, frightening, boring, aspects of your life? Well, the nature of those things is suffering also. When you’re ignorant, you become attached to these pleasant things, which are by nature both unreal and impermanent. So we all want to be happy permanently, but we have no idea how to go about that. We pull off some semblance of contentment and happiness sometimes; sometimes we feel we have it locked down. We got the girl or boy, the job, we look good, live in a great town, big circle of friends, and we’re fucking fabulous on all levels. But all of these things depend on conditions that are by nature impermanent and those very things will become the source of our suffering later because of our attachment, and because while we’re distracted by all these things, we accumulate something Buddhists call Karma.

    Now, there’s a way out of all this, that’s the bright side. The way out of it is difficult but doable. But you’re going to have to check out the next installment of Unite to find out about it.               

                                                                                                                                                BK