So what?

For me, this story [The Buddha’s Awakening] represents the awakening of a human mind to the limitations of sensory experience.

Personally I can relate to this from a time when I was at university. I questioned life a lot: “What is it all about? Where is this all going to?” I used to wonder about death and started thinking: “What is the point of getting this university degree? Even if I become a famous engineer, or if I become rich, I’m still going to die. If I become the best politician, or the best lawyer, or the best whatever…. Even if I were to become the most famous rock star that ever existed…. Big deal.” At that time, I think Jimi Hendrix had just taken too much heroin and died.

Nothing I thought of could answer the question of death. There was always: “So what? … So if I have a family? So if I am famous? So if I’m not famous? So if I have a lot of money? So if I don’t have a lot of money?” None of these things resolved this doubt: “What about death? What is it? Why am I here? Why seek any kind of experience if it all goes to death anyway?”

Questioning all the time like this made it impossible for me to study. So I started to travel. I managed to distract the mind for a time because travelling was interesting: Morocco, Turkey, India…. But I kept coming back to this same conclusion: “So what? So if I see another temple, if I see another mosque, if I eat yet another kind of food – so what?”

Sometimes this doubt arises for people when somebody they know dies, or if they become sick or old. It can also come from religious insight. Something in the mind clicks, and we are awakened to the fact that no matter what experiences we have, they all change, they come to an end, they die. Even if I’m the most famous, powerful, richest, most influential person in the world, all that is going to die. It’s going to cease.

So this question – “So what?” – is an awakening of the mind. If we were to do this ten-day retreat with the idea of getting “a meditation experience,” then “So what?” We still have to go back to work, still have to face the world, still have to go back to Melbourne, still have to go back to New Zealand…. So what?! What is the difference between “a meditation experience” and doing a cruise on The Queen Elizabeth II? A bit cheaper maybe!

The Buddhist teaching is not aimed at just getting another kind of experience. It is about understanding the nature of experience itself. It is aimed at actually observing what it means to be a human being. We are contemplating life, letting go of delusion, letting go of the source of human suffering and realizing truth, realizing Dhamma.

And that’s a different process altogether.

This reflection by Ajahn Viradhammo is from the book, The Stillness of Being, (pdf) pp. 6-8.