Unveiling the Path to Inner Harmony: 9 Buddhist Sutras for a Fulfilling Life
In modern life, where stress and lack of happiness are part of what dominates people’s daily life, finding meaning and living a happier life are essential. Many different philosophies and ideologies claim they can lead people to living in a more meaningful and happier way of life. The Buddhist teachings on living a more authentic and happier life are not modern or a fad. The Buddha taught in India more than 2,500 years ago, but his wisdom remains the most attractive teachings on how to live a more meaningful and happier life. The Buddha’s main message is found in 9 core Buddhist sutras or teachings. Let us see if the path to a more meaningful and happier life has a different value today or in the future than it did when the Buddha first pointed it out.
1. The Four Noble Truths: Embracing Reality
At the centre of Buddhist philosophy is the ideal of the Four Noble Truths: an expression of the human predicament – that we suffer, we can comprehend why and how we suffer, and therefore we can put an end to all suffering. Suffering (dukkha) is not avoidable, it is natural and happens to us all, but it can be seen as an illness, and with diagnosis and treatment we can eliminate and prevent all suffering. The Noble Truths describe how understanding and acting in accordance with the Truth will deliver us from suffering, and lead us to everlasting happiness.
2. The Eightfold Path: Walking the Path of Virtue
These eight steps comprise the Path to liberation from suffering – the Eightfold Path. They include Right Understanding, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. It is through the practice of these eight virtues that one might have greater direction and awareness in living a moral, disciplined and wise life.
3. The Five Precepts: Cultivating Ethical Conduct
Key to Buddhist ethics is an encouragement to follow five words, or acts: refraining from taking life, stealing, committing sexual misconduct, telling lies, and taking drugs and alcohol. If you follow these ‘five precepts’ when you go out from your Buddhist household into the world, you will lead a good life. It’s simple to mouth platitudes about caring for the less fortunate and not taking life.
4. The Three Jewels: Taking Refuge in Wisdom
The Three Jewels – the Buddha (the enlightened teacher), the Dharma (the truth, the teachings of the Buddha) and the Sangha (the community of people following the Buddha’s path) – are the objects of refuge taken by those who adopt Buddhist faith and practice. The faith delivered by the enlightened teacher will be received, the enduring transcendent reality that can be fled and yet cannot be carved be known, and the community of practitioners will be met by the refuge-seeker.
5. The Law of Karma: Understanding Cause and Effect
At the core of Buddhist cosmology is the Law of Karma, which states that all actions have consequences. If we can grasp the principle of dependent origination, then that will allow us to take responsibility for our lives and actions. We can create beneficial karmic patterns, accumulating stores of good karma through words and deeds, through the cultivation of virtuous conduct, wholesome intentions and a refined, purified mind. Doing so infuses life with abundance, possibility, joy and fulfilment.
6. The Middle Way: Finding Balance and Equanimity
The Middle Way, as the Buddha would teach us, entails leading our lives in way that steers clear of extremes – of indulgence on one extreme, and of asceticism on the other. Instead, averting and adjusting to both dangers, we keep ourselves up off the floor on the high wire, edging closer to the centre of balance, while walking the elusive eight-footed path, keeping our optimistic eye on the horizon. In this sense, we steer our way between the opposing extremes of desire and renunciation, between pleasure and pain, in order to find the centre of balance where we could attain inner peace.
7. Compassion: Cultivating Boundless Love and Kindness
The cultivation of compassion (metta), the development of a heart filled with loving and kind thoughts to all beings, is the centrepiece of Buddhist practice. It is said that if one’s mind fills with metta, one will transcend the realm of ego and touch the inherent purity of one’s own nature and those around them. Through the practice of loving-kindness meditation and cultivating compassion and empathy, practitioners in turn create a world filled with greater compassion and harmony.
8. Equanimity: Embracing Acceptance and Serenity
When one can observe the boiling tides of one’s consciousness with equanimity (upekkha), one is said to be cultivating its qualitative aspect. Through letting all the fluctuating states come and go with a mood of equanimity, a sense of generosity, grace and openness arises that makes it possible to be at peace and to remain undisturbed by the ever changing nature of one’s own mind.
9. Mindfulness: Cultivating Present-Moment Awareness
Mindfulness (sati) refers to the cultivation of present-moment awareness and non-judgmental, nondiscursive attention to the arising and passing away of thoughts and feelings, as well as the sensations in the body related to breathing and other physiological phenomena. When practised with regularity in meditation and also outside of formal sitting meditation as lessons learnt are carried over into daily life, mindfulness yields sharper powers of observation, insight and inner wisdom. When one lives in the now, one escapes the tyranny of the past and the fear of the future. One is free and liberated.
To sum up, the nine most fundamental sutras of Buddhism exemplify the beginner of mind and give a precise and resplendent practical frame-work for living a happier, more content life in the here and now. As a vehicle for receiving the authentic Dharma from the Buddha, each sutra can transform the listener, reader, or reciter of them through their ability to bring forth the power of inner peace, insight and loving kindness, and allow us to access long-standing effortless wisdom and pure Awareness that has self-arisen through one’s own authentic nature. May they inspire you towards the true discovery of who you really are and the realisation of supreme, outright blissful Buddhahood.
