The Criterion for Studying Buddhism: Cause and Effect

Why Do We Study Buddhism?

As I begin the third season, I intend to study Buddhist scriptures. Before reading their sentences, however, we must first ask a question: why do we study Buddhism? People enter by different paths. Some, like me, encounter Buddhism when they are suffering intensely. Others happen to hear a phrase that stays with them and become curious about where it came from. Some want wisdom for living, while others turn to Buddhism because they ask, “Who am I? Where did I come from and where am I going? What is this world?” Life brings moments of emptiness, and at such times a phrase such as impermanence, or another Buddhist expression heard long ago, may suddenly approach us.

Whatever the path, everyone seeks something. Yet what we seek in Buddhism has an important criterion that distinguishes it from other religions: we seek something in present reality that we can see and understand for ourselves. It is not a promise of salvation after death or a heaven in the future. It is the work of understanding what causes suffering in our current life and changing it here and now. Of course, contemporary Buddhism contains beliefs in rebirth and heavenly worlds, prayer for blessings, consolation, and reliance on authority. I set that religious layer aside in order to discuss Buddhism’s distinctive color: understanding.

What Buddhism seeks is not a promise to be verified after death, but a problem in reality that I can see, understand, and change for myself here and now.

Understanding, Not Belief, Is the Criterion

Understanding and belief stand on opposite sides. If I have one apple and someone gives me another, I have two apples. A person who understands why one plus one equals two does not need to be told to believe it. By contrast, people are asked to believe when they cannot know or verify the content. Insofar as belief makes us accept what we cannot tell to be true or false, it can become another name for superstition.

The Buddhist method is not, “The Buddha said it, so believe it.” It is to look together at why one plus one equals two and confirm for oneself, “Yes, that is so.” Scriptures are numerous, but we do not need to memorize every sentence. Just as understanding a simple principle makes countless calculations possible, understanding the central principle running through Buddhist scriptures allows us to apply it to many problems in life. What matters is not how much we memorize, but how deeply we understand and apply it to the life before us.

Condensed into one expression, that principle is “Break free.” We fall into mistaken thoughts, see the world incorrectly, judge badly, and increase our own distress. We therefore need to see which thoughts are mistaken and break free from them. Suffering has causes; when we understand and change those causes, the results change. This is not a promise to be carried out someday in the future. It is an understanding of cause and effect that operates immediately, here and now.

The criterion for studying scripture is not believing and memorizing sentences. It is directly observing the causes of distress, understanding mistaken thoughts, and breaking free from them.

Birth, Aging, Illness, and Death Are the Way Things Are

Because many people begin Buddhism through suffering, let us start with birth, aging, illness, and death. A person is born, ages without stopping for even an instant, becomes ill according to many conditions, and eventually dies. We may catch a cold or develop cancer, lose part of the body in an accident, or be born with a disability. This reality is visible to everyone. Yet even while seeing it, we think, “I wish I would not age. I wish I would not hurt. I wish I would not die.” When I was six or seven, I too liked the present so much that I wished my mother and I would never grow older. We grew older, of course.

Here we arrive at a statement that is extremely simple yet hard to accept: birth, aging, illness, and death are the way things are. Can we stop aging for even one second merely because we do not want it? When a virus enters and the immune system cannot defend against it, illness follows. When causes and conditions come together, a result arises. Though we know this, we wish it were otherwise and refuse to release that wish. Then another layer of distress begins on top of the actual pain of birth, aging, illness, and death.

This does not mean that we should not treat illness or grieve death. With developing technology, we can treat many diseases and extend life. Yet what is actually possible depends on causes and conditions. If we cling to the thought, “This must never happen,” without seeing those conditions, we fail to find causes that can be changed and amplify distress in proportion to the gap between reality and thought.

We must distinguish the pain of birth, aging, illness, and death from the distress created by the thought, “I must never age, become ill, or die.”

Meeting Presupposes Parting

Meeting someone we love makes us happy. Yet jobs may separate us, relationships may change, and death may make it impossible to meet again. We speak of growing old together and even dying together, but in reality it is rare for two people to end their lives so close together that neither experiences parting. Whether long or short, a meeting presupposes separation. Just as whoever is born dies, whoever meets eventually parts.

It is natural to hurt when someone we love leaves. The death of a parent, spouse, or child is not easily forgotten. The pain of wanting to see someone who remains in memory but can no longer be seen is real. But if we cannot acknowledge death because of the thought, “Our meeting must not contain separation,” grief doubles and triples. The pain of actual separation and the endless distress produced by the thought that separation must not happen are not the same.

The story of the woman who came to the Buddha carrying her dead child shows this difference. She begged him to revive the child. The Buddha told her to find a household in which no one had died, promising to revive the child if she did. She went from house to house. One family had lost a young child, another an elderly person, and another a family member to an accident or infection. In an age without antibiotics, even a small wound and infection could lead to death. In the end, she could not find a household untouched by death.

Would she have accepted it if the Buddha had immediately said, “Everyone dies, so compose yourself”? His method was not to inject information but to let her see. By encountering the deaths and grief of other families, she observed for herself that her child could not be the sole exception. She might accept it or reject it to the end. That is why Buddhism is both easy and difficult. If I refuse to see, no one can understand in my place.

Seeing things as they are is not a command not to grieve. It means not tormenting oneself endlessly by adding the thought, “Death must not happen to me,” on top of grief.

Human Beings Know and Still Fail to Accept

The sight of an ape carrying the corpse of its infant shows that this problem is not uniquely human. The animal knows the infant is no longer alive; otherwise it would not drag the body like a corpse. Yet it cannot let go even while knowing. Human beings are not completely different from dogs, pigs, apes, and dolphins. We gained somewhat more complex cognitive capacities, and with their advantages came a stronger possibility of becoming trapped in empty thoughts.

We live in imagination and conjecture more than in facts themselves. Knowing a fact intellectually differs from accepting it as the reality of one’s own life. Everyone knows the sentence, “Whoever is born will die.” Yet before the death of my child, my parent, or myself, the response may be, “I know, but I cannot accept it.” Buddhism makes us see that gap. It does not merely add another piece of knowledge about death from scripture. It makes me observe what I already know and nevertheless evade.

We do not suffer only because we do not know. We also increase distress because we refuse to accept a reality we already know, imagining that it cannot apply to us.

The Distress of Meeting Someone We Dislike Again

We part from those we love though we do not want to, and meet those we dislike though we do not want to. Sometimes we can avoid a supervisor, relative, or friend whose character and values conflict with ours; under other conditions, we must continue to face them. The actual time spent in conflict can certainly be painful. The problem is that thought extends the time of pain to before the meeting and after the separation.

Suppose I expect to meet a disliked supervisor on Monday. I become depressed on Sunday night and feel bad throughout Monday morning and the commute. I endure actual conflict for a few hours, then replay it through that night and the following day. I am already distressed before the meeting occurs and remain distressed after it ends. The thought, “I must not have to meet that person again,” has created far more prolonged distress than the actual contact.

Even tomorrow’s meeting is not yet certain. Something may happen to the other person, or I may be placed under different conditions. Meetings arise through causes and conditions. If they can be avoided, avoid them; if a cause can be resolved, resolve it. But if I refuse to accept an unavoidable meeting and keep holding the thought that I do not want it, I drag both past and future into the present and torment myself.

The actual pain of meeting someone disliked may last a few hours, while the thought that the meeting must not happen can extend distress from the day before to the day after.

We May Seek and Still Fail to Obtain

My son once wanted a transforming toy identical to one he already had except that the new product was painted gold. Advertising presented a change of color as something special, and the child insisted that we buy it. The parents may lack money, may need to use it elsewhere, or may decide that buying the same toy twice is foolish even if money is available. The child’s desire and the reality that the parents cannot buy it can exist at the same time.

If he accepts, “I want it, but they cannot buy it,” disappointment remains but ends there. If he repeats, “I want it, so why will they not buy it?” he continues suffering until he obtains it, or perhaps forever if he never does. Some desires, like seeking food when hungry, are linked to actual bodily pain. But if I see expensive food on television or a famous restaurant far away and begin asking, “Why can I not enjoy that?” blaming my circumstances, parents, and failures, thought expands distress without limit.

To obtain something, we must create causes. If money is needed, we work to earn it; if conditions can be changed, we try to change them. Some things remain impossible despite effort. Seeing reality as reality is not passive resignation. It is the attitude of identifying possible causes accurately and acknowledging what is impossible, rather than wasting strength on irrelevant resentment.

Making causes in order to obtain what one wants differs from tormenting oneself with the thought that one absolutely must obtain it.

An Examination Result Also Comes from Causes and Conditions

In an examination with a ten-to-one competition rate, only one of ten applicants succeeds. Out of one hundred, ten pass and ninety fail. Ability and preparation change the probability, but taking the examination itself includes the possibility of failure. Just as fervently wishing for a particular number on a ten-sided die does not guarantee it, intensely wanting to pass does not guarantee the result.

Failure is naturally disappointing and may hurt for a while. We can analyze the result, correct our weaknesses, and study again. But when trapped in the thought, “I absolutely must pass,” our whole daily life turns into distress before the examination even arrives. We blame ourselves when a family funeral or illness makes study impossible, and even when we rest or play briefly. After the result, we endlessly replay one question and a small difference in points, resenting people and conditions that supposedly interfered.

Passing depends on ability, preparation, physical condition that day, the questions, and many relationships. Study is a necessary cause for passing, but the thought that one absolutely must pass does not automatically increase the chance. It adds mental distress unrelated to study. Understanding cause and effect does not mean refusing effort; it means seeing the many conditions between effort and result.

To pass an examination, one must create the cause of studying; but “I absolutely must pass” can become not a cause but a distress that burns the person holding it.

Release Mistaken Thoughts as You Would Drop a Burning Pot

A mistaken thought is like a boiling pot. If the hand burns but we do not know why, we keep holding it. If someone says, “The burning pot you are holding is causing the pain,” and we directly confirm that it is indeed hot, we release it. Buddhism seeks to do the same: it makes me notice which thought I am holding and how that thought produces distress.

This sounds extremely easy in words, but it is difficult to notice in life. Before encountering Buddhism, I too spent much of my life holding thoughts without knowing how they tormented me. A difficult task in reality can itself impose physical and mental burdens. Yet we need to distinguish the moment when “It absolutely must be this way; it must never be that way” is added to actual pain and magnifies it.

The world changes as things affect one another through causes and results. The gap between that reality and my thought that it must be otherwise pulls both past and future into the present and enlarges mental distress. The moment we see the cause correctly and understand the mistaken thought, the distress produced by it can disappear here and now. Releasing one thought does not end every problem. People have many habits and delusions. Yet when we directly understand and release even one, we take a first step into the stream of awakening.

Liberation is not travel to a mysterious world. It is noticing the cause of a thought that bound and tormented me, and breaking free here and now as one releases a burning pot.

Make Liberation and Nirvana the Criteria for Studying Scripture

Liberation means loosening what binds us and breaking free. When trapped in confused thoughts, the mind is noisy, shaken, and distressed. When those thoughts are released, it grows quiet. This can be called nirvana. When strong wind blows, the surface of a lake ripples; when the wind subsides, the water reflects what is present. Like the expression “a clear mirror and still water,” freedom from the clamor of thought lets us see observed reality somewhat more clearly.

We must not lose this criterion when reading scripture. What mistaken thought does a sentence reveal? Why does it tell us to break free? What causes and effects does it help us observe? What the Buddha can offer is not an answer that must be believed, but an object and example for observation. He asks, “The world appears this way; how does it look to you?” I must reflect it against my own life and verify it directly.

Whoever is born dies. We part from those we love, meet those we dislike again, fail to obtain what we seek, and may fail despite effort. We must distinguish seeing this reality, making causes to change what can be changed, and tormenting ourselves with the thought that reality must never be that way. Only when we understand for ourselves do we release our grip and break free. This is the criterion for reading Buddhist scriptures through cause and effect, and it is the beginning and end of Buddhism.

Scripture is not an authority to believe but an example that helps observation. Buddhist study begins when we verify cause and effect ourselves and actually break free from mistaken thoughts.