Is Buddhism a religion? Or is it a way of life? Many people ask this question when they meet a Buddhist for the first time. But in truth, it doesn’t really matter what you call it. When the Buddha became enlightened, 2,500 years ago in India and began teaching people, he wasn’t trying to create a religion—nor a philosophy for that matter. He was only trying to show people the way out of suffering.

So where Buddhism really starts, is there: suffering. This has led many people to think that it’s a very pessimistic teaching. “Buddhists think life is just suffering.” But that’s not really accurate. The Buddha wasn’t saying that everything in life is suffering, but rather he was trying to point out that everybody encounters some degree of suffering throughout their lives, and that this is something everybody wants to be free from. What the Buddha saw is that nobody wants to suffer, and yet, people seem to be constantly making choices that lead them to suffer—precisely what they are trying to avoid! This is why the Buddha said people tend to be confused about how things are. Because they don't clearly recognize which things are valuable and which are detrimental to their true, long-term well-being, they are unable to find the way out of their problems, and instead sink into a vicious cycle of reacting blindly to the world, sowing the very seeds for that which they want to be free from.

What the Buddha found is that there is a path of practice that can lead people to be less confused over time, leading to less suffering, and that, eventually, suffering can be completely brought to an end, a state that is called Nirvāna: the end to suffering–unconditional well-being. Furthermore, the Buddha also said that practicing to free ourselves from our habitual patterns is not only of benefit to ourselves, but it also brings benefit to all around us. As we become more relaxed and we stop projecting and clinging to our own stories over the situations we encounter, we become more able to react to the world from a place of wisdom and unconditional kindness. Someone who determines to follow the path to end their own suffering and also the suffering of everybody else is called a Bodhisattva: a being who has cultivated themselves to a sufficiently high degree that they can be of true service to others, someone who determines to fully dedicate themselves to helping others reach their highest potential.

That’s quite advanced! But it’s also good to have a sense of the whole picture, because ultimately, all Buddhist practices and teachings can be brought back to this single point: to lessen one’s own suffering and that of others. Doesn’t seem too pessimistic, does it? In truth, it is a highly pragmatic teaching, and the best teachers are those that show how all of the principles that one studies can, and should be applied to making everyday life better.

So what is the path that the Buddha taught to become free from suffering? It is usually divided into three key components: ethical behavior, concentration and wisdom. 

Ethical Behavior

Ethical behavior is perhaps the one that people like to hear about the least. People often come to Buddhism wanting to find out all about peaceful meditation experiences, and profound insights about the nature of reality, and they feel like ethical behavior is secondary, or even bad taste to talk about for a modern, educated audience. They don’t want to be preached at. But this is a sad state of affairs, because the Buddha was quite clear that without a solid ethical foundation, it is completely impossible to make progress in the path. And in fact, learning how to behave properly in everyday life may be the single most dramatic change that we can make right now in terms of our well-being. A lot of people’s suffering comes from not being careful with what they do and say throughout the day. 

This is not a matter of having a moral standard that has been set by some higher authority, which is then going to judge and punish us if we misbehave—that's quite a childish idea from the Buddhist point of view. Rather, it's about being wise about things, and noticing that harsh words and harmful actions inevitably leave a bad aftertaste of remorse and restlessness within us, whereas kindness, generosity and honesty make us feel clean and good with ourselves. Without a "clear conscience" it's very hard to live a peaceful life, and whatever advantages we think we are getting from dishonest or harmful behaviors, it will inevitably rebound back as suffering in the future. So the first step in Buddhist cultivation is to set our affairs in order, and commit ourselves to act and speak in ways that are beneficial and skillful —or at the very least, not actively harmful. 

According to the Buddha, the minimum principles for living as a human being are the Five Precepts, or five ethical commitments: to refrain from killing other living beings, from stealing, from harmful sexual behaviors, from telling lies and from becoming intoxicated with drugs or alcohol. Many Buddhists make a formal commitment to uphold these principles throughout their lives, and this serves as a foundation for living a good life and avoiding a good chunk of potential suffering. Whatever we do, we know that we are not going to cross certain lines, we are not going to sink below certain basic standards, so we have a relative amount of confidence and safety assured in our lives. We can set our minds at ease that we will not have to undergo the consequences that come from committing any of these actions, and we are also making a gift to other beings in the world, because they can trust that we are not going to harm or cheat them. Can you imagine if every public official on earth was committed to never telling lies, stealing or killing? What a wonderful world it would be! Just that seemingly small change would make a tremendous difference. So although we cannot eliminate corruption and wars at a global scale, we can do our part in our own small sphere of influence, knowing that we are not contributing to the problem.

Concentration

The second factor in the path is concentration, or samādhi. This is where meditation and mindfulness come in, which are what people usually associate with Buddhist practice. Notice, however, that the three factors of the path are not separate, sequential steps, but in reality they build off of and support one another: the more we can pay attention through concentration and mindfulness, the easier it will be to notice our patterns of behavior and change them, and in turn, the more skilfully we act in daily life, the deeper our meditation will be. 

At the beginning, meditation is practiced as a formal exercise. We set apart a time during the day, when we commit to take some time to slow down and watch the mind. There are many different meditation techniques, some involving chanting or mantras, and some practiced in silent contemplation. There are many options to choose from, adapted to different preferences and personalities. The point is that the practice we choose should help settle the mind. There are many advantages to having a mind that is more settled. A settled mind is more able to watch closely the thoughts, emotions and intentions that pass through it, so it can discern more clearly which ones it's useful to follow and which ones it's better to let go of. This allows for us to slowly regain control of our lives—to gain true freedom. The more we notice things, the less we run on auto-pilot. 

Furthermore, when we are able to calm down the mind, we discover that just being here and now is quite a pleasant experience in itself. A tranquil mind is quite content. We discover a kind of happiness that does not depend on outside conditions. When we don't find contentment in our own minds, we start looking for happiness outside, but that's not very stable because the outside world is always changing. Whereas if we have some level of contentment in ourselves, we can bring it to the world. We stop asking the world to make us happy, and we become able to contribute to it in a positive way. We don't project our own stories on others, and we can see more clearly what's going on, and how we can engage with things skilfully.

At the beginning, meditation can be a difficult exercise. It can even seem like we are getting worse after we start meditating! The reason for this is that the mind is full of all kinds of thoughts, stories and emotions going around it all the time without interruption, and we are starting to notice what the mind is really like—perhaps for the first time in our lives. So it's not that we are getting worse, it's just that we are finally becoming aware of the extent of the problem. But with patience and perseverance, it is possible to learn how to relax the mind and bring it to the present moment. The key is not to seek for peace or any special states, but to learn to be okay with things as they are and let go.

Wisdom

The final component in the path is wisdom, or prajñā. Wisdom means seeing things as they are. According to the Buddha, at the very root of all of our suffering is ignorance: We misinterpret the way things are and how the world works, and that's why we make choices that lead to suffering. If we knew better, we would only ever do what leads to true happiness and avoid that which leads to suffering. This applies to the coarsest level of our delusion (for example, when we overeat and then get a stomachache, or when we enter a toxic relationship thinking it will make us happy), down to very subtlest layers of the way our minds are functioning: The fact that at some nearly unconscious level, we believe that there is a 'self,' a 'me' that truly exists, and we also believe that lasting satisfaction can be found in the world of conditioned phenomena. 

It's important not to make wisdom into some mystical superknowledge. In Buddhism, wisdom is primarily about seeing clearly and acting in a reasonable way. Master Hua taught: "When one's humanity is perfected, Buddhahood is accomplished of its own accord." This is to say, in Buddhism we are not trying to become superhumans, nor are we trying to become special people—we are just trying to come back to our human nature; to fully realize what we already are. That is why a lot of Buddhist meditation focuses on very mundane stuff. For example, the Buddha noted that a lot of our suffering comes from thinking that the body we have is pure, a source of happiness and the locus of our identity. However, when we take a sober, realistic look, we can see that the body is composed of skin, bones, muscles, fluids, hairs, nails, and so on, none of which are particularly attractive. The point is not to hate the body; the point is merely to see clearly, to not take our thoughts and feelings about the body at face value, but to investigate things according to reality. Another example: in everyday life we can operate in quite a self-centered way. At the root of this is the unacknowledged belief that we are somehow more important than those around us; that our feelings and opinions are somehow more valid or more real. However, if we do an honest appraisal, we can see that in truth everybody else takes themselves very seriously, and everyone is trying to be happy and not to be unhappy. If we acknowledge this simple reality, the natural attitude is then to be considerate of others, and to wish others to be happy—unconditional love. Other people are exactly the same as we, after all. It is only our deluded thinking that makes it seem otherwise.

Wisdom can only be developed through direct experience. Reading and reasoning are very useful to get us started on the path, but they are not enough to change the deeply habitual delusions we are bringing to our experience every moment. That is why Buddhism is mainly a path of practice. We can only truly reap its fruits when we experience it directly in our everyday lives. But although it is possible to achieve a thoroughgoing understanding of the truth of 'non-self' and emptiness, we don't need to wait until we reach such abstruse heights to begin to see benefits. Famously, the Buddha said that the path he teaches is "beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle, and beautiful in the end." Thus, even at the early stages of our practice, if we are sincere and persevering, we can begin to remove the dust of afflictions that we have been accumulating for our entire life (or… lives? ;) ). For every bit of delusion we remove, we will gain a corresponding increase in our well-being and our ability to function more clearly in the world. And this is something that nobody can really explain to us. We need to try it out and experience it ourselves, and then we will know what it's really like.