In the time of the Buddha there were many different ideas about life. A wide variety of cosmological ideas about the world and existence. Ideas which, regardless of modern thinking, are still found today.
 
One of these ideas, or opinions, was that things happen by chance. By chance we mean "independent of conditions"; that things simply happen, that there are no demonstrable reasons for them. For some people this means that we can not trace things back to the distant past. "Without cause" means that things are independent of past lives, that everything that someone has done in their past lives simply ceases to exist. Things happen "just like that". This opinion of "by chance" was not so prevalent in the time of the Buddha.
 
The following two opinions, which are still heavily defended today, were prevalent in the time of the Buddha: belief in eternity and belief in annihilation. Belief in eternity means that there is an idea that we will continue to exist for ever. This conviction arises out of the idea of permanence. As if man is an entity which bounces through samsara like a ping pong ball; at one moment we are this, and then that. This leads to a problem for those people who believe that this entity evolves. As this evolutionary train of thought means that a being can only make progress, so that man eventually ends up on "top" of something.
 
The opposing opinion is that there is only one life after which everything ceases to exist. We call this annihilation. It is a sort of nihilism or a sort of fatalism, that says: if I die, everything stops. These two opinions, the idea that something always continues to exist and the idea that at the end of life everything ends, are two extremes. In someways it's not so very important. The Buddha spoke about the here-and-now, over this one life and not over a past or future life. Only when it was necessary to explain something did the Buddha make reference to a past life. The Buddha spoke to many different people and he wanted to keep things as practical as possible, instead of talking about different philosophical ideas which they couldn't do very much with. Those who already had confidence in the Buddha, wanted to know more: where do all of these different ideas come from?
 
Knowledge about these things is very important, because we come into contact with people who have different ideas . If we understand why they developed such an idea, it is much easier for us to deal with them.
 
One of the reason for having opinions is that people believe something because they have often heard it and haven't tested it any further. If we don't understand something, we have the tendency to attribute it to something we can't see. Imagine that an ant is walking along a path and we suddenly block his way. An ant, of course, doesn't understand what has happened, and maybe he thinks that it is something magical. He doesn't know that another being exerting influencing. In much the same way there are many things which we don't understand, things which come from inside us and which are so difficult to understand, that we attribute them to something else. Preferably to something outside of ourselves. That is why this aspect of eternity plays such an strong role. The most important thing about all of these opinions is that they are unfounded. There are only thoughts. The most dangerous opinion there is, is the idea that people have a "self" (sakkaya-ditthi). This is the idea that there are number of things which working together form a whole and contain a permanent essence.
 
The Buddha was very revolutionary. There is no other system of thought which has the same starting point as the Teachings of the Buddha. What is so special about Buddhism? The two essentials of religious thought, which are can be found more strongly in one movement than the other, cannot be found in Buddhism. We even consider them to be a wrong view. These are: belief in a god and belief in self. There is not a single philosophical system of thinking which denies both of these. There are some systems which either don't recognise a god, or, which don't recognise a permanent self, but in the Teachings of the Buddha neither of these can be found. There is no power outside of us which has something omnipotent. Equally there is nothing inside of us which is permanent, which continues as a lasting core springing from one life to the next. The consequences of this are literally freeing. In the first instance it means that we are independent of someone else for attaining freedom, and in the second instance it means that what we thought we are has no essence. Therefore it is possible to correct everything.
 
In the time of the Buddha there was a disciple who had been a monk for some time. At a particular moment he went to the Buddha and said: "Master Gotama, I am going to give up this life." The Buddha asked him why he wanted to give up. The monk answered: "Because you have not given me the answer to questions such as is the world everlasting or not; does the Tathagatha live after death or not, or both?' These sorts of questions." The Buddha said: "When you became a monk did I say that I would answer these questions?" He had to admit that it was not so. In this way the monks confusion was broken through, he stayed and continued his practice. Some time later he obtained Enlightenment.
 
What the monk was asking for was a sort of knowledge. But the Buddha said that we should not take an opinion as our starting point. People experience different factors which play a role together, for example perception and connotation. We identify ourselves with that. "I am this," we say, but that idea is a reflection, an interpretation of perception and experience. The Buddha said: I do not recognise this conclusion. The Buddha, even before he became Enlightened, took as his starting point that which we can experience. We have to understand the experience, and not put things together and make a milkshake from them. That will not bring about a solution to suffering. These sorts of opinions do not have any reality they are just ideas.
 
If I try to describe something I don't understand then I'm not trying to understand the experience itself but I am busy with conditions outside of myself. With all of the consequences that brings with it. The moment that I take on one of the two beliefs (the belief either in a power outside of myself or in a permanent essence) and do something with them then that has serious consequences for my life. Let us look at the aspect of non-self. If we think that there is a self, that we have an unsolvable problem. We can't be free, because we make that self dependent, as we base it upon factors which themselves cause suffering.
 
It is important to realise that the Buddha, even before he became a Buddha, did not have the mentality to simply accept all sorts of ideas and opinions. The Buddha wanted to know. As long as I do not understand, then all of the ideas that I have about things are just ideas. If I do not understand reality, then I have an opinion.
 
The practice of meditation taught to us by the Buddha, is one of constant elimination, rejection and putting aside of opinions. When there is a rising of the abdomen, we note "rising" and when there is a falling of the abdomen we note "falling". When there is hearing we note "hearing", when there is smelling we note "smelling"; we stick with the experience. Why? Because I shouldn't think about things, but I should see.
 
That is where the word ditthi meaning "vision" comes in. If I can't see, then I can have lovely ideas, but they don't work. Philosophising does not have any effect, at most it can give us a pleasant mental feeling. "If I do this and that, then I feel really good": this is philosophising and that does not offer a solution. The Buddha said: the solution lies in the here-and-now. Not in philosophising, but in the here-and-now, it doesn't matter where and when. That is where we have to learn to understand things.
 
Thus the Buddha brings everything back to the essence of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling with the body and thinking. That's all. What ever we do, we try to do it with an alertness to try to understand what is happening. What is the reality of it? If I think that I understand it, then I can use that to deepen the practice, but it only becomes truly useful if I understand every moment. That is the characteristic of wisdom. Wisdom does not need time, wisdom understands immediately. Knowledge needs time. There is an experience, there is ignorance of a while and then there is understanding. Wisdom experiences and knows immediately. Wisdom is timeless. The Dhamma-in-practice is therefore also called: akalika-dhamma, the timeless Dhamma. Within the framework of direct experience, the concepts with which we have all grown up prove to be useless and hindering thought patterns. The only thing I should do is to understand this, whatever this' is in the here-and-now.
 
There is a reason for all of the opinions that can be found in the world. Which is not the same as saying that all of those reasons are plausible. Some things are not easy to explain, or within the complexity of cause and effect aren't even possible to explain. You are walking along the street and a flower pot falls from an upstairs windowsill. Is that the result of your earlier actions (kamma vipaka)? Did you throw flower pots at someone in a former life? This is what some people seem to think. But in the Teachings of the Buddha there is also a role' for the fact that we are dependent upon conditions. The fact that we perceive, the fact that we live, means that we are also subject to the laws of the world. We can be somewhere at the wrong time, or we can be in the wrong place. These can be a reason why something happens in our life.
 
Years ago, at their request, I went to visit someone to discuss something. When I went in the man was sitting at the table with his son who was about sixteen years old. The son looked like a dog which had been beaten: his shoulders were hanging and he was staring gloomily. His father said: "We are trying to understand what he needs to learn." The boy had spent the night at a friends house and had left his bicycle at the train station overnight. The next morning the bicycle had been stolen. Now the father was talking to the boy about what God was trying to make clear to him and what he should learn from this! I was surprised. The father continued to talk to the boy who seemed to become smaller and smaller. You saw him shrink into himself more and more, as if he was a grape which was slowly turning into a raisin. His father continued: "What is he' trying to make clear to you?" I saw the boy thinking: "What on earth is my dear father talking about?" Suddenly I said to him: "I think that you know what you should learn from this. That in the future you shouldn't leave your bicycle at the station!" His father was quiet. The boy asked if he could leave and was outside within two minutes. What would have been much more useful, and which unfortunately at that time I didn't have the opportunity for, was to teach the child a feeling of responsibility for himself, and not to place that responsibility outside of himself.
 
I am often asked: "What is the purpose of life?" There isn't any. The only purpose of life is to live./.

-oOo-