Like many contemporary people, I consider myself to be a spiritual seeker. My own impulse to seek religious, spiritual, and philosophical wisdom and guidance — and my conviction that these could actually be found — has been a part of my life for so long that I don’t remember when it began. Sure, there were stretches of my life — some of them fairly long ones — when I tired of the search or simply became preoccupied with the more pressing demands of everyday life. Still, the yearning for some way of understanding life and of knowing how to live more fully, more wisely, and more compassionately has never gone away.
While I’d been curious about other people’s religions as a teenager, I began to seriously look at the world’s major faith traditions when I was in college. It started with some classes in comparative religion and continued in conversations with other students seeking answers to spiritual questions, being skeptical of dogmas, and questioning spiritual assumptions.
Among the traditions that first attracted my attention at this time was Buddhism. Its focus on alleviating suffering and becoming more compassionate, combined with its indifference to questions about the nature of God, felt spiritually liberating. The particular Buddhist teaching that we should be “lamps unto ourselves” attracted my attention early on. Initially, being very much a “roll your own” sort of spiritual seeker, I took this teaching to mean that the Buddha was encouraging his followers to believe whatever they felt inclined to believe. On closer inspection though, I’ve come to understand that the Buddha was actually advocating something much harder and more complicated in this teaching.
While the Buddha often advocated the idea of examining one’s religious assumptions in the light of lived experience, the particular teaching “Be ye lamps unto yourselves” is actually one of the final, culminating guidelines offered by the Buddha during his long lifetime. Uttered on his deathbed, this teaching was offered to his disciples, men and women filled with anxiety about what to do after their great teacher’s passing. In particular, this teaching was offered to Ananda, one of the Buddha’s oldest and closest disciples, a man who had followed the Buddha for virtually all of the 42 years since the Buddha’s enlightenment.
According to this very poignant story, Ananda and other followers of the Buddha were crying when they saw that the Buddha was on his deathbed. The Buddha opened his eyes and said, “Stop crying and weeping! Have you not listened to me yet? Why are you crying?” In reply, the grieving Ananda said, “Because you are leaving us and with you our light is leaving. We see, we feel darkness descending upon us. I have not yet become enlightened and you are leaving. If I could not become enlightened while you were alive, what is the hope for me now when you will be gone? I am in great despair and my anguish is incalculable.”
“You are crying because you have not heard me yet,” said the Buddha. “I have been telling you again and again: ‘Do not believe in me.’ but you have not listened. Had you listened to me, had you created a light into your being rather than becoming knowledgeable through me, if you had experienced your own self there would have been no need to cry. You think I can make you enlightened – that’s why these forty-two years have gone by and you have not attained enlightenment. For these forty-two years there was a hope that I would do something. Nobody can do anything. Perhaps when I am gone, you will finally find enlightenment within a single day. ” Again the Buddha repeated the words “Be a lamp unto yourselves” and then he closed his eyes and disappeared into the cosmos.
As with many texts borrowed from other religious traditions, however, we often fail to take into account what the original context of a teaching might be. In this case, most of us simply interpret the phrase “the truth within yourselves” in a generic sort of way, whatever “truth” means to each of us. However, the “truth” that this teaching actually refers to is specifically connected to the Buddhist idea of “Dharma.”
On one level, the word Dharma — more correctly called “the Dharma” — refers to the collective teachings of the Buddha about the arising of suffering and the means to end that suffering. On another, more basic level, however, the Dharma refers the universal law that all things are constantly changing and impermanent, that all things are interconnected through an inescapable web of cause and effect, and that resisting these forces causes suffering. The Dharma also includes the awareness that we also have the capacity — developed through the practice of various kinds of meditation — to mindfully and compassionately accept life at it truly is and thereby diminish suffering.
Another important aspect of the teaching that we should “hold to the truth within ourselves as to the only lamp” can be seen in an earlier episode from the Buddha’s life. In this story, the Buddha is visiting a tribe of people called the Kalamas. While curious about and interested in what they’d heard about the Buddha’s teachings, the Kalamas were also skeptical of any teacher who claimed to know the truth.
Not surprisingly, the Buddha starts out by telling them that religions and their sacred texts should not to be followed simply because they are traditional. And that historical accounts of the spiritual experience of others should not be followed simply because their source seems reliable. And that even our own spiritual preferences should not be followed simply because they seem logical or resonate with our personal feelings.
Instead, the Buddha said that any view or belief must be tested by the results it yields when actually put into practice. He then proposes to Kalamas a teaching that would be immediately verifiable from their own experience. He tells them whether or not there is a life after death, that mindful moral restraint, awareness of the true nature of life, and the practice of love and compassion for all beings would bring intrinsic rewards here and now. That greed and its attachments, hatred and fear, and self-delusion — all sources of suffering — would naturally be replaced by the gifts of non-attachment, lovingkindness, and wisdom. But he also didn’t ask the Kalamas to assume this teaching was true merely because he told them. In the end, he said, only by experiencing the truth of the Dharma for themselves would they find salvation from suffering.
While the vast majority of people were passively depending on Hindu Brahmins to tell them what to do, the Buddha radically challenged each person he encountered to do his or her own religious seeking. He rejected the fatalism of his native Hinduism and advocated, instead, a determined self-reliance in spiritual matters. The Buddha understood that each of us needs to seek out spiritual truth on our own terms, a process that cannot be achieved by teaching alone. In the end, deep and abiding wisdom can only be arrived at through our own capacity for sustained inner reflection validated by personal experience.