BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #15 (Spring 1990)
                                           
                                           
                        THE SEARCH FOR SECURITY
                                           
                            by Bhikkhu Bodhi
                                           
                                           
   
   
   It may be a truism of psychology that the desire for happiness is 
   the most fundamental human drive, but it is important to note that 
   this desire generally operates within the bounds set by another 
   drive just as deep and pervasive. This other drive is the need for 
   security. However insistent the raw itch for pleasure and gain may 
   be, it is usually held in check by a cautious concern for our 
   personal safety. We only feel at ease when we are sealed off from 
   manifest danger, comfortably at home with ourselves and with our 
   world, snugly tucked into familiar territory where everything seems 
   friendly and dependable.
   
   When we come across the Buddha's teaching and begin to take that 
   teaching seriously, we often find that it provokes in us disturbing 
   waves of disquietude. This feeling arises from a clash -- a sensed 
   incompatibility -- between the picture of the world that we hold to 
   as the essential basis for our normal sense of security and the new 
   perspectives on existence opened up to us by the Dhamma. We may try 
   to shun the vistas that trouble us, we may pick and choose from the 
   Dhamma what we like; but to the extent that we are prepared to take 
   the teaching in earnest -- on its own terms rather than on ours -- 
   we may discover that the insights which the Buddha wants to impart 
   to us can be quite unsettling in their impact.
   
   The first noble truth was never intended to be a comfortable truth; 
   indeed, it is the discomforting quality of this truth that makes it 
   noble. It tells us frankly that the routinely placid and predictable 
   surface of our everyday lives is extremely fragile -- a shared 
   delusion with which we lull ourselves and each other into a false 
   sense of security. Just beneath the surface, hidden from view, 
   turbulent currents are stirring which at any time can break the 
   surface calm. From the moment we are born we are sliding towards old 
   age and death, susceptible to various diseases and accidents that 
   may hasten our arrival at the appointed end. Driven by our desires 
   we wander from life to life across the sand dunes of samsara, elated 
   by our rises, shaken by our falls. The very stuff of our lives 
   consists of nothing more than a conglomeration of five "heaps" of 
   psychophysical processes, without any permanence or substance. 
   Perhaps the Buddha's most poignant statement on the human condition 
   is his image of a man being swept along by a mountain torrent: he 
   grasps for safety at the grasses along the banks only to find that 
   they break off just as he takes hold of them.
   
   However, though the Buddha begins by drawing our attention to the 
   uncertainty that encompasses us even in the midst of comfort and 
   enjoyment, he by no means ends there. The discourse on suffering is 
   expounded, not to lead us to despair, but to awaken us from our 
   complacent slumbers and to set us moving in the direction where our 
   ultimate welfare can be found. Far from undercutting our need to 
   feel secure, the Buddha's teaching unfolds from that very same need, 
   turning it into a sustained inquiry into what genuine security 
   actually means.
   
   Ordinarily, our benighted attempts to achieve security are governed 
   by a myopic but imperious self-interest oriented around the 
   standpoint of self. We assume that we possess a solid core of 
   individual being, an inherently existent ego, and thus our varied 
   plans and projects take shape as so many maneuvers to ward off 
   threats to the self and promote its dominance in the overall scheme 
   of things. The Buddha turns this whole point of view on its head by 
   pointing out that anxiety is the dark twin of ego. He declares that 
   all attempts to secure the interests of the ego necessarily arise 
   out of clinging, and that the very act of clinging paves the way for 
   our downfall when the object to which we hold perishes, as it must 
   by its very nature.
   
   The Buddha maintains that the way to true security lies precisely in 
   the abolition of clinging. When all clinging has been uprooted, when 
   all notions of "I" and "mine" have lost their obsessive sting, we 
   will have no more fear, no more worry, no more anxious concern. 
   Touched by the fluctuations of worldly events the mind remains 
   stable, "sorrowless, stainless and secure" (Sn. 268).
   
   While ultimate security lies only in the unconditioned, in Nibbana 
   "the supreme security from bondage" (//anuttara yogakkhema//), as we 
   wend our way through the rough terrain of our mundane lives we have 
   available a provisional source of security that will help us deal 
   effectively with the dangers and difficulties that beset us. This 
   provisional security lies in firmly committing ourselves to the 
   Dhamma as our source of solace and guidance, as our incomparable 
   refuge. The word "dhamma" itself means that which upholds and 
   supports. The Buddha's teaching is called the Dhamma because it 
   upholds those who live by it: it wards off the dangers to which we 
   would be exposed if we were to flout it, it sustains us in our 
   endeavor for the final good if we revere it and make it the 
   foundation of our lives.
   
   The Dhamma provides protection, not by any mystical blessing or 
   downpour of saving grace, but by indicating the sure and certain 
   guidelines that enable us to protect ourselves. Beneath the apparent 
   randomness of visible events there runs an invisible but indomitable 
   law which ensures that all goodness finds its due recompense. To act 
   counter to this law is to invite disaster. To act in harmony with it 
   is to tap its reserves of energy, to yoke them to one's spiritual 
   growth, and to make oneself a channel of help for others who 
   likewise roam in search of a refuge.
   
   The essential counsel that the Buddha gives us to secure our 
   self-protection is to shun all evil, to practice the good, and to 
   purify our minds. By the pursuit of non-violence, honesty, 
   righteousness and truth we weave around ourselves an impenetrable 
   net of virtue that ensures our well being even in the midst of 
   violence and commotion. By cultivating the good we sow the seeds of 
   wholesome qualities that will come to maturity as we continue on our 
   path throughout the samsaric journey. And by purifying our minds of 
   greed, hatred and delusion by mindfulness and diligent effort we 
   will find for ourselves an island that no flood can overwhelm -- the 
   island of the Deathless.

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