Am I a Buddhist?

Every since I declared agnosticism at the age of 18 I have not claimed allegiance to any religion. And yet I’ve been a seeker of God or truth or self realization all my  life. Being an agnostic makes you take responsibility for who you are and what you believe. One starts on the path of liberation from the ground of not knowing.

Now, having studied and found great wisdom and meaning in Christianity, especially the Christianity of mystics like Thomas Merton, studied and practice Yoga, and more recently with great intensity studied and practice the teachings of Buddha, I ask myself the question—because others ask me, I suppose—what am I? Do I belong to any one slice of God’s religious pie, or do I belong to the whole pie? While the slices go by different names and have different views, are they not all pieces of the same pie?

I was just ready an article by Tibetan Buddhist Dzongsar Khysentse about what constitutes being a Buddhist, and it made me come up with my own answer. But he states unequivocally that if one holds in one’s heart and practices the four seals of Buddhism, they you are a Buddhist.

The four seals or truth are: #1. All things are impermanent. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to observe that existence is like a river and that you can’t step in the same place twice. Modern quantum physics comes to the same conclusion as it describes existence as a field of pulsating energy. For me impermanence means that one has to let go of life in order to live life. Whatever you hold turns to ashes.

And this leads to the second truth #2 All suffering comes from clinging to life through seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. One begins to notice as we age that the external world of object, things and thought, cannot and will not satisfy our longing for something that lasts. We cannot find permanence in the content of the mind, our thoughts and concepts about the world, because the mind is impermanent like a flowing river. I can trace all my suffering, my discontent, all my negativity to this second truth. When I see myself clinging, like the monkey caught with his hand in the jar holding the banana, I let go of the banana.

And this leads to truth #3. All things have no inherent existence. I’m looking at this chair in my living room. Chair, chair, chair…I say the world, the concept, the name of a things over and over until it is just sound. I ask where does chair being and where does it end. Is the unfinished wood the chair? At what point do the parts, the wood, the screws, the varnish, the material become chair? And then, when does it stop being a chair? If I cut off its legs, is it still a chair? If I burn it, is it still a chair. In other words, chair is a convention created by our language for communication. If I want to tell you to sit down, I need to be able to say where. Other than that, chair doesn’t exist. There is no THING that is a chair. So from this view, nothing exists in itself. Everything is in flux, patterns of energy changing form, and our individual and collective mind, our culture, just names these patterns at certain stages of their flow, catching pieces of the wave, so we can communicate. Existence is empty.

And finally, we come to the fourth seal#4. Nirvana is beyond concepts. Nirvana is the much talked about goal of Buddhism, like the Kingdom of Heaven or the Promised Land, the Self of Yoga, or just plain enlightenment or self-realization. But this truth states that Nirvana is beyond concepts, beyond mind, and therefore beyond time. We can’t reach Nirvana because it doesn’t exist! Not as a concept anyway. If one can’t think about and seek the thought of Nirvana, then there is no goal, and without a goal, no purpose and nothing to gain.

Now this is a fine kettle of  fish, to quote Oliver Hardy. What’s the point of Buddhism, then? If you can’t get to Heaven, why bother? That’s just the beautiful point of Buddhism. The way of the Buddha is a practice, it’s a river, it’s a flow of energy…it’s a verb. The practice is the Dharma, the teaching, and the practice is enlightenment. The means are not separate from the end. One does Buddhism; one can’t become a Buddhist as one arrives at a place. There is no place called Buddhism.

Well, that answers it for me. Since I’m able to write from the heart about the four seals of Buddhism, then I guess I’m a practicing Buddhist, but I am not a Buddhist. I think I’ll just stick with my original first step from the ground of not-knowing. I like being open, not having any boundaries…not being anything. Remember the third seal? No thing exists.