My experience with Buddhism during the last several years can most simply be characterized using the words “mind mirror.” No other religion that I’ve come across asks one to persistently look at how the mind works with tools to help one clear away the fog and see more clearly. Even psychology as a discipline (except perhaps for Jungian psychology) is strongly tainted with cultural values that are so deeply embedded they are unstated.

It’s not been a pleasant process. It’s been demanding in the sense of being willing to see honestly, without the affective overlay that usually colors and shapes things to our liking. In my case that “liking” includes my pet ideas about how things “should be”, even when some of my “should be” springs from noble aspirations.

The key things that seem to have sunk in include the following:

• The “mass of suffering”
• How the mind really seems to work
• The absence of both a self and a “Clockwork Orange.”
• Identity without a self

The “mass of suffering” Buddhist scripture describes is truly there, both in human history and current events. The causes are not simple, but rather a strongly entangled hierarchy of competing wants, desires, fears, hopes, aspirations, and animal instincts in the form of a human body. Love and hate, in contrast to their intellectual separation as opposite terms, co-mingle constantly as they both are the impetus and result of small actions that are so ubiquitous that they are mostly unobserved. Human beings suffer endlessly at the hands of other human beings. And when there aren’t human beings around, there are animals, acts of God, and other things that go bump in the night to disturb any serenity one has managed to glom onto.

To see this mass of suffering without despair and with compassion has been difficult. One is so tempted to look away, to not notice, to focus only on one’s own interest, or to seek shelter from what ones sees by joining with others to insist the picture isn’t there.

To see this picture honestly also means not blocking out the joy, happiness, and sparkle of life that is inseparably part of the tapestry. It’s really there too. And I’ve had to learn to enjoy it fully, even while knowing that it’s ultimately as evanescent and transient as the rainbow shimmering on a puddle in sunlight. It’s taken time to accept joy wholeheartedly without any illusions about it lasting. The pleasantness of the moment is somewhat tempered by being aware it is not any final arrival at happiness. The thrill of success is dimmed a bit by realizing nothing has been finally gained; at least some of the assumptions about the future based on it will turn out to be false.

Seeing the world clearly can be a bit lonely at times. There are few who will see it this way. Most will choose a more comfortable way, and many will defend to their death this comfortable picture, even when presented the most incontrovertible evidence of its falsity. Others will wallow in despair. Others will devote their entire life to reforms of one variety or another, confident in their imagination that if “this” is fixed “that” way, irreversible progress will have been achieved.

I need to stop here to keep this article to a reasonable length. Other parts will follow.