27 November 2001, 12:10am IST
Suresh Jindal.
Every living being wants to be enveloped in the selflessness and altruism of a mother’s love. but in order to attain that bliss we too must reciprocate in the same way. this can be achieved by generating the four immeasurable thoughts, which are karuna or compassion, maitri or loving-kindness, mudita or joy and upeksha or equanimity. the buddha demonstrated that acts of compassion and loving-kindness result in rejoicing, and acts of hatred and violence distil into the bitter brew of suffering. like pleasure, suffering too is impermanent and it is within the potentiality of every sentient being to attain liberation from it. only the defilements in our mental continuum obscure us from seeing this glorious truth. these impurities are the vasanas or imprints embossed on our consciousness by our karmic acts, due to the afflictive emotions of attachment and anger, which are in turn due to avidya or ignorance, of the nature of the ultimate reality. the first stage of the path begins when the seeker develops a strong renunciation for suffering and its causes. in the buddhist way, renunciation means that the body may still remain in samsara or the world, but the mind must abjure the true causes of suffering, which are afflictive views, attachment, aversion, pride, jealousy and doubt. buddhism is not a path of escape from samsara , for there is none; it is a path of liberation from the causes of suffering, which is not only the birthright, but also the ultimate and true nature of all beings. buddha demonstrates that our true nature is good, and evil is an aberration due to ignorance, avarice and aversion. all of us experience pain and suffering when a loved person passes away. usually our pain is heightened by the memories of the acts of loving-kindness and compassion that the dead person has selflessly shown towards us, and of which we were not appreciative enough when the person was alive. but when we follow a religion like buddhism that believes in reincarnation, we believe that the loved ones have been reborn. but, where they are reborn, we do not know. it follows that our loved ones could literally be any being born after their departure. therefore, if we sincerely want to repay our debt to the departed ones, then we must be kind and generous to every being, born after their demise. for we do not know which one of them is the departed one whose debt we want to repay. buddhism extrapolates that all sentient beings have been reincarnated numberless times in the cycle of samsara . it thus can be accepted that at some time or the other, some person has been our mother, or will be in the future. mothers are the ultimate embodiment of loving-kindness and compassion. mothers go through numerous physical and other hardships to bring up their children. bodhicitta or the wisdom-mind is the altruistic wish to liberate every sentient being from suffering, and to guide them to enlightenment. a bodhicitta leads to bodhisattva or the being of truth, who out of his compassion works for the liberation of all the sentient beings. the buddhist thought has always looked to the world as a temporary phenomenon which is entangled in the web of maya or illusion. buddhism says that as the mind is the perceiver of this maya , it is in the mind itself that the veils of this illusion should be broken. once a man is able to break this veil he can realise the true self within and attain liberation, and all suffering will end. the other method to end suffering is to practice the six perfections — generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditative stabilisation and wisdom and the abandonment of the 10 non-virtuous actions of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, harsh and abusive language, gossip, divisive and slanderous speech, lying, ignorance, attachment and aversion. ‘immeasurable kindness’ is the path for all sentient beings to attain happiness. compassion is a state that all human beings should be in as it will free them from suffering and its causes. joy is a mental attitude that leads to the experience of pleasure of higher rebirths and liberation and equanimity leads to freedom from attachment and it is a state where one feels neither close nor distant to others. the only solution to end all fear, violence, terror and hatred is practice of the four immeasurable thoughts.
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