What is the goal of the Buddhist path?

by Venerable Thubten Chodron

It is to discover a state of lasting happiness for both ourselves and others by freeing ourselves from cyclic existence, the cycle of constantly recurring problems that we experience at present. Under the influence of ignorance, disturbing attitudes and actions, we are born and die, experiencing various problems during our lives. Although all of us want to be happy and we try hard to get the things that will make us happy, no one is totally satisfied with his or her life. And although we all want to be free from difficulties, problems come our way without us even trying. People may have many good things going for them in their lives, but when we talk with them for more than five minutes, they start telling us their problems. Those of us who are in this situation, who aren’t yet Buddhas, are called “sentient beings”.

The root cause of cyclic existence is ignorance: we don’t understand who we are, how we exist or how other phenomena exist. Unaware of our own ignorance, we project fantasised ways of existing onto ourselves and others, thinking that everyone and everything has some inherent nature and exists independently, in and of itself. This gives rise to attachment, an attitude that exaggerates the good qualities of people and things or superimposes good qualities that aren’t there and then clings to those people or things, thinking they will bring us real happiness. When things don’t work out as we expected or wished they would, or when something interferes with our happiness, we become angry. These three basic disturbing attitudes — ignorance, attachment and anger — gives rise to a host of other ones, such as jealousy, pride and resentment. These attitudes then motivate us to act, speak or think. Such actions (karma) leave imprints on our mind streams and these imprints then influence what we’ll experience in the future.

We are liberated from the cycle of rebirth by generating the wisdom of realising “emptiness” or “selflessness”. This wisdom is a profound understanding of the lack of fantasised ways of existing: the lack of a solid, independent self. It eliminates all ignorance, wrong conceptions and disturbing attitudes, thus putting a stop to all misinformed or contaminated actions. The state of being liberated is called Nirvana or liberation. All beings have the potential to attain liberation, a state of lasting happiness.

The Buddha summarised the process of going from confusion to enlightenment in the Four Noble Truths. First, we have unsatisfactory experiences in life; second, these experiences have causes; third, it is possible to remove these causes and their consequent difficulties, thus arriving at a state of lasting happiness; and fourth, there is a path or method to do this.