Question asked by Kams
If a part of Buddhism is accepting reality as it is, rather than how we want it to be, I find it contradictory because human nature is innately selfish and basically "survival of the fittest" and all that. Of course, Humans have evolved to be intelligent and aware. But doesn't that make living by a code of ethical conduct denying our animalistic nature? thus denying the reality of the selfish human nature? I am simply curious about this and would like an answer. Thanks!
Dear Kams,
Nice to see you here, you’ve asked a very interesting question. In Buddhism, when we talk about accepting reality as it is, this is in a very specific way, and usually not the way we think of when we read or hear the phrase ‘accepting reality.’
Accepting reality here means not thinking about things as inherently existing. When we think about existence in this manner, it is not correct, because nothing in existence is static, it is ever moving, ever changing. To use a very common Buddhist term, it is impermenant. From the Buddhist perspective the understanding and living by impermenance is very important. I’ll give a an example of this. In life, we go through ups and downs, times we are happy and times we are sad. And sometimes, this can be an emotion upheveal. When we experience happy times, we want them to last, we want to always feel that way, so when things go wrong, or not how we want them to be, we get upset. But if we live by impermanence during those happy times, we cherish them more, we live in the moment of being happy rather than wanting it to last. Similarly, when things go wrong, we know that eventually things will get better, because even sadness and all the negative experiences we have in life are impermanent. So ‘accepting reality’ is a very broad definition, but in Buddhism, it’s actually very specific to certain things.
But your question touches on a very important point, and that is what you call our ‘selish nature.’ In Buddhism, this selfishness comes from karma and delusions. It’s the way we naturally operate as humans. But as humans, or any type of being bound by the law of karma within samsara (existence) we create more negative karma and delusions. This only leads us to have this type of nature in future lives as humans, or leads us to suffer in lower rebirths such as the animal or hell realms, or leads us to have pleasures in the god realm. However, no matter what happens, we are still stuck because samsara is a cycle fueled by karma and delusions.
The goal of Buddhists is to transcend/escape this system altogether. We won’t be bound by such selfish natures any more and since we are not bound by that, we are free from all types of suffering that occur within existence. Suffering itself is a very big part of the Buddhist teachings. In fact it was the first thing that the Buddha ever taught. But this was not done to make us depressed. It was done to make wake up to our current state within existence and then do something about it.
Here are some video teachings by Tsem Rinpoche that may explain things better:
Karma’s Job is to Make You Suffer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycNTf-W1mLA
How Wrong Projections Bring Us Suffering (with subtitles)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vICsghJhjqU
The Cycle of Wrong Perception & Wrong Experience
https://youtu.be/EXyhGaXBtK8?si=KktuiuZLd7y4SST4
Karma & Impermanence
https://youtu.be/sL5qn54rPlM?si=0-DwTs-QzKDxA_BX
Hope all this helps to answer your question.