The Buddha is the Coolest Rebel

There is a saying in Buddhism “if you see the Buddha walking, kill him.” This is a powerful message that drives at the core of Buddhism’s message. The message is unlike any that is found in other religions. Buddha’s central tenet is that there is no self. The self that you call by your name or defined by your job is a misconception. You don’t exist, and your sufferings are more in imagination than reality.
Despite Buddhism’s origins in ancient times, the explanation for the no-self concept is rather convincing and scientific. When Buddha attained enlightenment, after years of meditation and solitude, fighting the carnal desires invoked by the metaphorical Maya, one of his first teachings is to deny the existence of self. All the egoistic strivings for fame, status, power, wealth and praise emanate from our ignorance of the nature of reality.
The basis for this seemingly outlandish claim is backed by science. Every atom in our body undergoes self-destruction and regenerates after three months. After one year, no old cells survive and we become a mass of newfangled cells. Psychologically, our thoughts and worldview change every moment. You are not the same person that you were yesterday. Our birth is accidental and we didn’t choose our parents, the country where we live and the race we belong to. But still, we persist in clinging to our notion of a fixed identity. (Mirroring the Buddhist idea of amorphous identity, futurist Ray Kurtzweil, author of The Singularity: The Future is Near, claims that humans will be able to live infinitely by uploading consciousness as data in the cloud. ChatGPT is eerily appearing more sentient. This is a topic for another article.)
The Buddha said this ignorance (Moha) is the primary reason why we live in suffering. We add more to our suffering when we indulge in desire (Raga), delusions (Moha) and hatred (Dvesha). These three human flaws are known as the Three Poisons.
If you think about it, Buddhism is not even a religion; it’s a mindset. The adherents do not worship a God and there is no room for a theistic Supreme Being as in other organized religions. Life is suffering and one attains liberation from this perpetual cycle of suffering (samsara) through appreciation of the Three Poisons and the Noble Four Truths of Buddhism. The four truths are, in non-pali words, suffering, the cause of suffering, the prognosis of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering (enlightenment and nirvana), as in a doctor examining the roots of a diseased man. Suffering is inherent in us from the moment we come to exist; it’s inescapable. The cause of the suffering is our attachments to socially constructed priorities, desires and cravings. But these attachments can be eliminated by training our minds and acknowledging the nature of reality. Reality is neutral in space and time and it has no biases or roles in creating a pecking order in the worldly things, of our wants and desires for them. There is no essence in anything, human or otherwise, but we give meanings and confer value to these entities. Thus gold became more valuable because we somehow hanker after it and not because of its intrinsic worth. If gold were not a prized possession, it would be lying on the roads as stones.
The good news, according to the Buddha, is there is a cure to these needless sufferings. First, recognise all of the above flaws in our thinking and follow the Middle Path in all our struggles in seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering. That is to give up illusions of control and see the truth of impermanence. Everything dies, disintegrates and becomes one with the universe in one form or the other. This philosophy differs from the Hindu’s concept of reincarnation in that Buddha’s life transformations are more naturalistic and non-mystical. The Noble Eightfold Path prescribes the nitty gritty of living in compliance with Buddhist philosophy. These are developing right view to understand the true nature of reality, right intention to cultivate selflessness and compassion, right speech to communicate truthfully and kindly, right action to behave ethically and avoid harming others, right livelihood to engage in work that aligns with moral principles, right effort to cultivate positive mental states and overcome negativity, right mindfulness to maintain awareness of thoughts, feelings, and actions, and right concentration to develop deep focus through meditation for insight and wisdom.
But if you want a memorable takeaway from Buddhism, my favourite is a quotation known as the ‘Eight Hooks’ attributed to the Buddha in the Lokavipatti Sutta of the Anguttara Nikaya canon:
“Monks, these eight worldly hooks spin after the world, and the world spins after these eight worldly hooks. What eight? Gain and loss, status and disgrace, censure and praise, pleasure and pain. The wise, ever mindful, understand these things and contemplate them as always shifting and changing. They are neither elated by gain nor depressed by loss, neither uplifted by praise nor cast down by blame. They remain steady and unmoved by the eight worldly winds.”
It doesn’t surprise us that there is no Crusade or Jihad against Buddhism. The Buddha is still No.1 New Age Guru in his rebel robes and relevant as ever. In my view, the Buddha is the Marcus Aurelius of Stoicism of the West.