According to the Buddha, then, life has no meaning, and people don’t need to create any meaning. They just need to realise that there is no meaning, and thus be liberated from the suffering caused by our attachments and our identification with empty phenomena. ‘What should I do?’ ask people, and the Buddha advises: ‘Do nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ The whole problem is that we constantly do something. Not necessarily on the physical level – we can sit immobile for hours with closed eyes – yet on the mental level we are extremely busy creating stories and identities, fighting battles and winning victories. To really do nothing means that the mind too does nothing and creates nothing.
Unfortunately, this too very easily turns into a heroic epic. Even as you sit with closed eyes and observe the breath coming in and out of the nostrils, you might well start constructing stories about it. ‘My breath is a bit forced, and if I breathe more calmly, I will become more healthy’ or ‘If I just keep observing my breath and do nothing, I will become enlightened, and be the wisest and happiest person in the world.’ Then the epic starts expanding, and people embark on a quest not just to liberate themselves from their own attachments, but also to convince others to do so. Having accepted that life has no meaning, I find meaning in explaining this truth to others, arguing with the unbelievers, giving lectures to the sceptics, donating money to build monasteries, and so on. ‘No story’ can all too easily become just another story.
The history of Buddhism provides a thousand examples of how people who believe in the transience and emptiness of all phenomena, and in the importance of having no attachments, can squabble and fight over the government of a country, the possession of a building, or even the meaning of a word. Fighting other people because you believe in the glory of an eternal God is unfortunate but understandable; fighting other people because you believe in the emptiness of all phenomena is truly bizarre – but so very human.
In the eighteenth century, the royal dynasties of both Burma and neighbouring Siam prided themselves on their devotion to the Buddha, and gained legitimacy by protecting the Buddhist faith. The kings endowed monasteries, built pagodas, and listened every week to learned monks who preached eloquent sermons on the five basic moral commitments of every human being: to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual abuse, deception and intoxication. The two kingdoms nevertheless fought each other relentlessly. On 7 April 1767 the army of the Burmese king Hsinbyushin stormed the capital of Siam, after a long siege. The victorious troops killed, looted, raped and probably also got intoxicated here and there. They then burned down much of the city, with its palaces, monasteries and pagodas, and carried home thousands of slaves and cartloads of gold and jewels.
Not that King Hsinbyushin took his Buddhism lightly. Seven years after his great victory, the king made a royal progression down the great Irrawaddy River, worshipping at the important pagodas on the way, and asking Buddha to bless his armies with more victories. When Hsinbyushin reached Rangoon, he rebuilt and expanded the most sacred structure in all Burma – the Shwedagon Pagoda. He then gilded the enlarged edifice with his own weight in gold, and erected a gold spire on top of the pagoda and studded it with precious gems (perhaps looted from Siam). He also used the occasion to execute the captive king of Pegu, his brother and his son.23
In 1930s Japan, people even found imaginative ways to combine Buddhist doctrines with nationalism, militarism and fascism. Radical Buddhist thinkers such as Nissho Inoue, Ikki Kita and Tanaka Chigaku argued that in order to dissolve one’s egoistic attachments, people should completely give themselves up to the emperor, cut away all personal thinking, and observe total loyalty to the nation. Various ultra-nationalist organisations were inspired by such ideas, including a fanatical military group that sought to overthrow Japan’s conservative political system by a campaign of assassination. They murdered the former finance minister, the director general of the Mitsui corporation, and eventually the prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. They thereby speeded up the transformation of Japan into a military dictatorship. When the military then embarked on war, Buddhist priests and Zen meditation masters preached selfless obedience to state authority and recommended self-sacrifice for the war effort. In contrast, Buddhist teachings on compassion and non-violence were somehow forgotten, and had no perceptible influence on the behaviour of Japanese troops in Nanjing, Manila or Seoul.24
Today, the human rights record of Buddhist Myanmar is among the worst in the world, and a Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, leads the anti-Muslim movement in the country. He claims that he only wants to protect Myanmar and Buddhism against Muslim jihadi conspiracies, but his sermons and articles are so inflammatory, that in February 2018 Facebook removed his page, citing its prohibition on hate speech. During a 2017 interview for the Guardian the monk preached compassion for a passing mosquito, but when confronted with allegations that Muslim women have been raped by the Myanmar military he laughed and said ‘Impossible. Their bodies are too disgusting.’25
There is very little chance that world peace and global harmony will come once 8 billion humans start meditating regularly. Observing the truth about yourself is just so difficult! Even if you somehow manage to get most humans to try it, many of us will quickly distort the truth we encounter into some story with heroes, villains and enemies, and find really good excuses to go to war.
The test of reality
Even though all these big stories are fictions generated by our own minds, there is no reason for despair. Reality is still there. You cannot play a part in any make-believe drama, but why would you want to do that in the first place? The big question facing humans isn’t ‘what is the meaning of life?’ but rather, ‘how do we get out of suffering?’ When you give up all the fictional stories, you can observe reality with far greater clarity than before, and if you really know the truth about yourself and about the world, nothing can make you miserable. But that is of course much easier said than done.
We humans have conquered the world thanks to our ability to create and believe fictional stories. We are therefore particularly bad at knowing the difference between fiction and reality. Overlooking this difference has been a matter of survival for us. If you nevertheless want to know the difference, the place to start is with suffering. Because the most real thing in the world is suffering.
When you are confronted by some great story, and you wish to know whether it is real or imaginary, one of the key questions to ask is whether the central hero of the story can suffer. For example, if somebody tells you the story of the Polish nation, take a moment to reflect whether Poland can suffer. Adam Mickiewicz, the great Romantic poet and the father of modern Polish nationalism, famously called Poland ‘the Christ of nations’. Writing in 1832, after Poland had been partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria, and shortly after the Polish uprising of 1830 was brutally crushed by the Russians, Mickiewicz explained that the horrendous suffering of Poland was a sacrifice on behalf of the whole of humanity, comparable to the sacrifice of Christ, and that just like Christ, Poland will rise from the dead.
In a famous passage Mickiewicz wrote that:
Poland said [to the people of Europe], ‘Whosoever will come to me shall be free and equal for I am FREEDOM.’ But the kings, when they heard it, were frightened in their hearts, and they crucified the Polish nation and laid it in its grave, crying out ‘We have slain and buried Freedom.’ But they cried out foolishly … For the Polish Nation did not die … On the Third Day, the Soul shall return to the Body; and the Nation shall arise and free all the peoples of Europe from Slavery.26
Can a nation really suffer? Has a nation eyes, hands, senses, affections and passions? If you prick it, can it bleed? Obviously not. If it is defeated in war, loses a province, or even forfeits its independence, still it cannot experience pain, sadness or any other kind of misery, for it has no body, no mind, and no feelings whatsoever. In truth, it is just a metaphor. Only in the imagination of certain humans is Poland a real entity capable of suffering. Poland endures because th
ese humans lend it their bodies – not just by serving as soldiers in the Polish army, but by incarnating the joys and sorrows of the nation. When in May 1831 news reached Warsaw of the Polish defeat at the battle of Ostrołęka, human stomachs twisted in distress, human chests heaved with pain, human eyes filled with tears.
All that does not justify the Russian invasion, of course, nor does it undermine the right of Poles to establish an independent country and decide their own laws and customs. Yet it does mean that ultimately, reality cannot be the story of the Polish nation, for the very existence of Poland depends on images in human minds.
In contrast, consider the fate of a Warsaw woman who was robbed and raped by the invading Russian troops. Unlike the metaphorical suffering of the Polish nation, the suffering of that woman was very real. It may well have been caused by human beliefs in various fictions, such as in Russian nationalism, in Orthodox Christianity, and in macho heroism, all of which inspired many of the Russian statesmen and soldiers. However, the resulting suffering was still 100 per cent real.
Whenever politicians start talking in mystical terms, beware. They might be trying to disguise and excuse real suffering by wrapping it up in big incomprehensible words. Be particularly careful about the following four words: sacrifice, eternity, purity, redemption. If you hear any of these, sound the alarm. And if you happen to live in a country whose leader routinely says things like ‘Their sacrifice will redeem the purity of our eternal nation’ – know that you are in deep trouble. To save your sanity, always try to translate such hogwash into real terms: a soldier crying in agony, a woman beaten and brutalised, a child shaking in fear.
So if you want to know the truth about the universe, about the meaning of life, and about your own identity, the best place to start is by observing suffering and exploring what it is.
The answer isn’t a story.
21
MEDITATION
Just observe
Having criticised so many stories, religions and ideologies, it is only fair that I put myself in the firing line too, and explain how somebody so sceptical can still manage to wake up cheerful in the morning. I hesitate to do so partly for fear of self-indulgence, and partly because I don’t want to give the wrong impression, as if what works for me will work for everybody. I am very aware that the quirks of my genes, neurons, personal history and dharma are not shared by everyone. But it is perhaps good that readers should at least know which hues colour the glasses through which I see the world, thereby distorting my vision and my writing.
When I was a teenager I was a troubled and restless person. The world made no sense to me, and I got no answers to the big questions I had about life. In particular, I didn’t understand why there was so much suffering in the world and in my own life, and what could be done about it. All I got from the people around me and from the books I read were elaborate fictions: religious myths about gods and heavens, nationalist myths about the motherland and its historical mission, romantic myths about love and adventure, or capitalist myths about economic growth and how buying and consuming stuff will make me happy. I had enough sense to realise that these were probably all fictions, but I had no idea how to find truth.
When I began studying at university, I thought it would be the ideal place to find answers. But I was disappointed. The academic world provided me with powerful tools to deconstruct all the myths humans ever create, but it didn’t offer satisfying answers to the big questions of life. On the contrary, it encouraged me to focus on narrower and narrower questions. I eventually found myself writing a doctorate at the University of Oxford about autobiographical texts of medieval soldiers. As a side hobby I kept reading a lot of philosophy books and having lots of philosophical debates, but though this provided endless intellectual entertainment, it hardly provided real insight. It was extremely frustrating.
Eventually my good friend Ron Merom suggested that I try putting aside all the books and intellectual discussions for a few days, and take a Vipassana meditation course. (‘Vipassana’ means ‘introspection’ in the Pali language of ancient India.) I thought it was some New Age mumbo-jumbo, and since I had no interest in hearing yet another mythology, I declined to go. But after a year of patient nudging, in April 2000 he got me to go to a ten-day Vipassana retreat.1
Previously I knew very little about meditation, and presumed it must involve all kinds of complicated mystical theories. I was therefore amazed by how practical the teaching turned out to be. The teacher at the course, S. N. Goenka, instructed the students to sit with crossed legs and closed eyes, and to focus all their attention on the breath coming in and out of their nostrils. ‘Don’t do anything,’ he kept saying. ‘Don’t try to control the breath or to breathe in any particular way. Just observe the reality of the present moment, whatever it may be. When the breath comes in, you are just aware – now the breath is coming in. When the breath goes out, you are just aware – now the breath is going out. And when you lose your focus and your mind starts wandering in memories and fantasies, you are just aware – now my mind has wandered away from the breath.’ It was the most important thing anybody ever told me.
When people ask the big questions of life, they usually have absolutely no interest in knowing when their breath is coming into their nostrils and when is it going out. Rather, they want to know things like what happens after you die. Yet the real enigma of life is not what happens after you die, but what happens before you die. If you want to understand death, you need to understand life.
People ask ‘When I die, will I just vanish completely? Will I go to heaven? Will I be reborn in a new body?’ These questions are based on the assumption that there is an ‘I’ that endures from birth to death, and the question is ‘What will happen to this I at death?’ But what is there that endures from birth to death? The body keeps changing every moment, the brain keeps changing every moment, the mind keeps changing every moment. The closer you observe yourself, the more obvious it becomes that nothing endures even from one moment to the next. So what holds together an entire life? If you don’t know the answer to that, you don’t understand life, and you certainly have no chance of understanding death. If and when you ever discover what holds life together, the answer to the big question of death will also become apparent.
People say ‘The soul endures from birth to death and thereby holds life together’ – but that is just a story. Have you ever observed a soul? You can explore this at any moment, not just at the moment of death. If you can understand what happens to you as one moment ends and another moment begins – you will also understand what will happen to you at the moment of death. If you can really observe yourself for the duration of a single breath – you will understand it all.
The first thing I learned by observing my breath was that notwithstanding all the books I had read and all the classes I had attended at university, I knew almost nothing about my mind, and I had very little control over it. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t observe the reality of my breath coming in and out of my nostrils for more than ten seconds before the mind wandered away. For years I lived under the impression that I was the master of my life, and the CEO of my own personal brand. But a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I hardly had any control of myself. I was not the CEO – I was barely the gatekeeper. I was asked to stand at the gateway of my body – the nostrils – and just observe whatever comes in or goes out. Yet after a few moments I lost my focus and abandoned my post. It was an eye-opening experience.
As the course progressed, students were taught to observe not just their breath, but sensations throughout their body. Not special sensations of bliss and ecstasy, but rather the most mundane and ordinary sensations: heat, pressure, pain and so on. The technique of Vipassana is based on the insight that the flow of mind is closely interlinked with body sensations. Between me and the world there are always body sensations. I never react to events in the outside world; I always react to the sensations in my own body. When the sensation is unp
leasant, I react with aversion. When the sensation is pleasant, I react with cravings for more. Even when we think we react to what another person has done, to President Trump’s latest tweet, or to a distant childhood memory, the truth is we always react to our immediate bodily sensations. If we are outraged that somebody insulted our nation or our god, what makes the insult unbearable is the burning sensations in the pit of our stomach and the band of pain that grips our heart. Our nation feels nothing, but our body really hurts.
You want to know what anger is? Well, just observe the sensations that arise and pass in your body while you are angry. I was twenty-four years old when I went to this retreat, and had experienced anger probably 10,000 times previously, yet I had never bothered to observe how anger actually feels. Whenever I had been angry, I focused on the object of my anger – something somebody did or said – rather than on the sensory reality of the anger.
I think I learned more about myself and about humans in general by observing my sensations for these ten days than I learned in my whole life up to that point. And to do so I didn’t have to accept any story, theory, or mythology. I just had to observe reality as it is. The most important thing I realised was that the deepest source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind. When I want something and it doesn’t happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Learning this is the first step towards ceasing to generate more suffering.
Since that first course in 2000, I began meditating for two hours every day, and each year I take a long meditation retreat of a month or two. It is not an escape from reality. It is getting in touch with reality. At least for two hours a day I actually observe reality as it is, while for the other twenty-two hours I get overwhelmed by emails and tweets and cute-puppy videos. Without the focus and clarity provided by this practice, I could not have written Sapiens or Homo Deus. At least for me, meditation never came into conflict with scientific research. Rather, it has been another valuable tool in the scientific toolkit, especially when trying to understand the human mind.