Security and Buddhism

The map that we call “Buddhism” takes us from "insecurity" to "security". It’s pretty simple, really. The whole of the Buddha’s teachings can be summarized into "the four Noble Truths” (BTW, I really don’t quite understand why there is a need to add any more to this).

The First Noble Truth is about the nature of samsara, about life, about our world of “insecurity”. The Second Noble Truth is about the reasons why we are so insecured. The sources of "insecurity" are due to our attachments, our silly egos and conceits and any kinds of delusion - or put simply, about the root cause, “ignorance” - clueless of what life is all about.

Ignorance about life? It’s the ignorance of our individual worlds we live in that we call samsara – the cycle of existence, of never-ending births and deaths.

The Third Noble Truth is the “security” that we seek. It’s where no suffering can be found. It’s not of samsara, and it is also not touched by samsara. Nor can it touch samsara. This is "security", non-self, independent by itself from anything (and that is why it is somtimes called the "unconditioned").

The Forth Noble Truth is simply the way to know the first three Noble Truths – “the eightfold path”. As we travel along this path, we initially take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha as the sources of security.

During our journey along the Buddhist path, we may stop to “do merits” for a while; get stuck to some experiences in meditation for a bit longer; or even mistake some stages of concentration to be the Third Noble Truth, nibbana. But eventually we should pull ourselves through.

And "security"? I believe what we do in Buddhism is simply to practice in order to know what life is all about - what the first three Noble Truths really are. And as we go on, our eyes should be clearer and eventually, if we walk in the right direction and don’t stop here or there too often, we should finally know all about life. We should know about the world of existence – samsara – and the other side of samsara – what we sometimes call the”unconditioned”, “deathless”, “unborn”, “nibbanna”, etc. This is "security".

The knowledge of both sides of life - samsara and non-samsara - frees us from attachments. It is liberalization from attachments, liberalization from cycle of births and deaths. There is no tiny bit of attachment left, no tiny egos or tiny conceits remained. As there is clearly nobody, not even a tiny pride, where can we find "insecurity"? That pure knowledge of the Four Noble Truth gives us “security”.

The Third Noble Truth is where “security” can be found.

To me, Buddhism isn't only about getting way from suffering, or even to find security, it is also the knowledge of what life is all about.