More than any other learning, I think I am newly experiencing what it means to be human. This is not something I’ve been told or taught. There is no secret body of information, no doctrines, no sacred and ancient texts. I am simply experiencing what a human is capable of experiencing. And I really like it.
There has been a whole tradition of teachers who have shown the way, the direction, the path. But no one could deliver the secret teaching to me other than my own experience. Others have shown how they have done it, but my receiving the teaching has meant that I needed to experience something. There is nothing to believe, nothing to discover except what my experience has taught.
It is a relatively simple path, not paved with doctrines or revelations. I can invite companions to join me along my path, and I sometimes join them on theirs. But the learning only comes from our own individual experience.
The tradition of teachers who have shown me this path of learning sometimes speak of the Four Noble Truths that are signposts on the path. These are the core teachings handed down from the Buddha generation after generation, based on his own experience. It has seemed to me that everyone who has told me of the Four Noble Truths in writing or in talks have described them in a slightly different fashion.
This is probably consistent with the directions given by the Buddha not to believe what he has said, but to seek our own way. He has taught his way of freedom as the Four Noble Truths, but the teaching and the learning is actually in my own hands. The teaching and the learning rises from my own experience.
Leading a good, ethical life is a good beginning for following this path. For the most part, this is the path I have followed. Yet there is still something not quite right, things seem out of sorts, the pleasure of goodness is ephemeral and transitory. In spite of being ethical, I encounter a dissonance in my own life and see it all around me.
Recognizing this unsettling tremor in my life is an important teaching / learning experience on my path. For me, and for anyone following the path of the Buddha, choosing to be totally open to this experience of dissonance, being willing to be totally aware of it, is an important step down the path of freedom.
Wanting things to be different is a main cause of the suffering, a cause of the dissonance. Clinging to my notion of how things should be or being repelled from the unpleasantness of how things are causes my dissonance. I have slowly become aware that the source of the dissonance lies in me.
That is the ‘secret teaching’ that I can only learn from myself. The suffering is not mine nor the world’s. It arises from how I encounter the world. It arise in the relationship between the world and me. Here is the paradox for me: the more I yield to being aware of the suffering, the dissonance, the more I am not possessed by it. The more I embrace the suffering and dissonance, the more I am released.
I know this not in my head, but I feel it in the fullness of my body. I am aware of it not because of what some teacher has told me, but because of what I have myself experienced. The lesson goes much deeper than the admonition “fear not.” It comes from befriending my fear, and I am gradually being set free.
I know that my path is a winding path of liberation from dissonance and suffering. It seems full of surprises, and I seem to be taking baby steps along that path. I know that some people refer to this as the middle way of the Buddha, the Fourth Noble Truth.
Actually, I think it is my path, where teacher and learner walk as one. For me, it is a joy filled path that I sometimes get to walk hand in hand with friends. We share notes and support one another. We are discovering at the same time what it means for each of us to be fully human.