Tuesday August 19th, 2025

The Manuals for Gaining Permanent Healing

It is said that Buddha was the greatest doctor. I believe that the work of doctors is to heal our ailments; and it must be that all our ailments always have a cause. I think one of the reasons that Buddha was called the greatest doctor is because he treated people from the root cause of suffering within their minds, and that his treatment was permanent. He saw that the cause of all suffering was in the minds of the people.

I think that “the mind” in this context means how we think—how we actually think day-to-day in relation to the world, others and also ourselves. Some people say that nobody knows how we should live our lives, and that everybody is just doing their best, or that there is no such thing as a right way to think. I have to admit that I also used to believe that. But, actually, it seems that if, sooner or later, most of us keep encountering moments or periods of suffering, then this might be a clue that this kind of thinking—that there are no concrete guidelines on how to conduct ourselves—may actually be one of the contributing factors to our suffering. What makes me say this is that, now, I’ve started to think that in fact there are manuals on how to live, and these manuals are the scriptures containing the teachings of great Beings, such as Buddha. But perhaps only a few have tried to apply the teachings contained in the scriptures long enough and with enough fervor to confirm that they are in fact valid and practical solutions to our everyday struggles—it reminds me of the words of Shri Mahayogi in The Universal Gospel of Yoga: “If you were to meticulously put each one of his teachings into practice, it would surely lead you to the true answer.”

“There is a state that is completely devoid of suffering”—it seems that this is a teaching that all the scriptures have in common, and it is the teaching that is tied to the permanent healing that Buddha was describing; and actually, this must be the ultimate state that human beings are constantly striving for. But only recently am I slowly starting to realize how powerful this statement is. And I think that if we carefully read it, and reflect on it, we can’t help but think about what that ultimate state might be like.

I’m also starting to recognize that there is an error in us—that is, we are looking for the ultimate state that Buddha has reached in all the wrong places, or at things that are outside of that ultimate state. We might ask, “How can we be sure that such a state exists?” Well, if we read carefully, we can recognize that the scriptures show that all the great Beings who have reached the state devoid of suffering, are describing the same thing. No matter the era these great Beings have lived in, or the place where they lived on this earth, or their age—they all describe the same ultimate state.

I think that another way that we can think about the state that is devoid of suffering, and perhaps we may even go further and try to get closer to it, is by reading and trying to understand the teachings of these great Beings. One of the scriptures that contains such teachings, which is helping me in trying to get closer to that ultimate state, is the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali.

The Yoga Sutra describes that the mind has three parts; the thought of “I,” the function of discerning using the intellect, and the wanting of when the mind goes out to search for or grasp things. And this combination in the mind of, “I see something, what is it?” and after deciding what it is, the mind then saying, “I want it,” happens all the time, every single day of our lives. But before all these things happen, the mind is somewhat at ease, or in a state of a comfortable dose of relaxation, however, when the senses pick up on some information, the above process happens almost instantly. Furthermore, the mind is not going to feel at ease again until the wanting is fulfilled, which is because the mind knows from previous experience that once the mind grasps what the mind wants, the mind will go back to the state of ease—it simply seeks to recreate the same experience as before. That means that even though the experience doesn’t last forever, the mind doesn’t understand that, or the mind doesn’t want to accept that, so the mind keeps going back again and again into the same cycle, the process of grasping the object in hopes of gaining permanent happiness through having what the mind wants.

This teaching in the Yoga Sutra also points to the fact that the state devoid of suffering—the state of Peace—that the Enlightened Beings have reached, is real. I believe, which the scriptures also state, that at one point we were also in the state devoid of suffering, but just like in the process above, our mind chose to ignore It. So that means, only when we return to the state devoid of suffering again, will we be in that state of Peace, which is the ultimate state. The fact that we are constantly longing to be happy is the proof in and of itself that the ultimate state of Peace exists.

And in the same way that there are various methods we use to get what we desire in order to go back to the state of mind that is at ease, in the teachings of Buddha and Yoga, or those of the Enlightened Beings, there are various methods that we can use to journey back to the state devoid of suffering that Buddha reached. But the difference is, unlike the state that is felt within the mind by grasping the objects in this world, the ultimate state of Peace that is devoid of suffering, which the Enlightened Beings have reached, is permanent. Therefore, I believe that Buddha’s treatment is indeed permanent and eternal.

Ekanta