Meditation Class 7: Three in One, Some background information

Buddhism, the source of meditation wisdom and practice techniques, loves numbers, or rather enumerating everything. About the only number it doesn't much like is the most favored numeral in all the West and all its religions: one. One or number one, aka only, implies monopoly, exclusivity, inflexibility--none of which can easily be associated with Dharma (Buddhism). But here's the rest of the scale:

2)  The universe and we who are in it operate on two truths about reality. There is the relative truth, something we are dealing with everyday through the laws of cause and effect (see the past lessons) and the messages from our senses. But as we are beginning to learn (see past lessons), what's relative is unreliable because it's so flexible, so utterly dependent on circumstances. What we can count on anytime anywhere 24/7 is what's called the absolute truth. Understanding and experiencing this is the entire point of meditation. There is, as TS Eliot so poetically said, "the stillpoint of this churning world." There is something totally untouched by all our everything, something pure and pervasive, and it's the absolute truth of all existence. 

3) Yes, a trinity. Three is a popular number everywhere and Dharma is no exception. There are three guides to ferry us from the relative to the absolute truth. In Dharma they are called the three jewels or three treasures and you hear about them a lot. They are the Buddha, or the teacher from experience, the Dharma, or the truth that he experienced and teaches, and finally the sangha, or protector of this precious knowledge. The sangha includes the Buddha's original disciples and subsequent monks, lamas, nuns, gurus, yogis and  yoginis, arhats and acharayas.  It will also include you once you decide to pursue the study of Dharma along with meditation. (The Jewish version of this is God, the Torah and Israel.)

There is another trinity related to the three jewels and the absolute truth that shines in them. It is what we need to reach that absolute truth. It is what we are trying to develop in ourselves and it has sometimes been called the three-legged stool we rest upon in the end. The three, which are also mentioned copiously, are compassion (the Buddha), wisdom (the Dharma) and the skillful means to use them to liberate others from their suffering (the sangha).  It is said that having compassion and wisdom without the skillful means to deploy them to help other experience absolute truth is like being an airplane with two wings and no motor or a bird with two wings and no eyes to direct its flight. This is a huge topic we can explore or you can by reading the teachings. Skillful means seeing the situation so clearly for what it is--not what you think or want it to be, that you know exactly how to alleviate its obstacle or tangle without the slightest harm but to great effect. This requires the honed focus that comes from the meditation practice of not getting carried away by your thoughts.

4) Probably the most famous snippet of Dharma are the Buddha's four noble truths, his explanation for why we all suffer and how we can get a grip and stop it. The Buddha and all his followers hold these truths to be inviolate, and to be the stepping stones between our relative existence and our absoluteness or immortality.  One: The truth of suffering (all beings suffer from the inevitable changes of aging, sickness and death; from not getting what they want and getting what they don't want; from anxiety because nothing stays the same. Two: The truth of the origin of this suffering: not understanding the absolute truth of how things really are and instead wanting things to be the way we want them to be. Three: the truth of a cessation to this suffering. Four: the truth of how to make it go away. This is the path or stepping stones  the Buddha laid out to get us from the relative to the absolute truth about life. (see 8)

5) There are five types of beings, here codified as Five Buddha Families, each representing a major character trait that can be purified into wisdom, compassion and skillful means.  They are represented by the five basic colors: yellow, red, blue, green and white.

6) there are six paramitas or virtues we need to cultivate to the transcendent level in order to reach enlightenment. These are sometimes called the rafts that ferry us over the ocean of Samsara to the dry shore of enlightenment.  They are: generosity, patience, discipline, exertion, meditation skill or concentration and finally wisdom. 

7) This is the number of offering bowls put on an altar or shrine; It is also the minimum number of mantras one does in slo mo before going into the speed dial phase.

8) There are 8 Bodhisattvas including Manjushri (Wisdom), Vajrapani (power or skillful means), Chenrezig or Avalokiteshvara (compassion). There are also eight steps on the Buddha's path to the total cessation of suffering, the eight rights that cause no harm or wrong: right speech, right action, right livelihood, right intention or motivation (for the benefit of others), right view or understanding, right focus or concentration, right mindfulness or attention and right effort (discipline to achieve all this).

Let's stop here because you are the one (1) who has to absorb it all.  May all beings be freed of suffering and the causes of suffering.