Spinning Class

How to go nowhere fast

The modern exercise of spinning is a perfect example of samsara. One sits on a stationary bicycle, pedals furiously, making huge effort to go nowhere .

“Samsara” means wandering together. Sentient beings wander about lost, constantly spinning through three realms, birth after birth, blind to where they have come from and blind to where they are going. All the ordinary sentient beings we praise and regard as virtuous, they will rise higher, only to fall in the end. All the sentient beings we presently loath and fear due to their evil actions will fall, eventually only to rise again, once their negative karma has been exhausted. Its all just a mass of suffering.

When we see things through the eye of Dharma we understand that we have all been wandering around, lost in samsara from beginningless time, like animals chasing a mirage. The Buddha taught us that all sentient beings have been our mothers and this is true. But it is equally true they have all been our mortal enemies, we have harmed them, they have harmed us—the difference is solely based on circumstances of birth.

According to Vasubandhu, one reason Buddha taught dependent origination was in order to eliminate the question of “what was my past life” and ‘where am I going.” Sentient beings are born of affliction-driven karma and because of karma , sentient beings undergo transmigration, continuing forever in suffering. That is, unless they meet the Dharma. The cycle is —>affliction—>karma—>suffering—>affliction—>ad nauseam. Sentient beings chase the mirage of happiness through the six realms.

Even positive actions will not allow sentient beings to escape this cycle because of our attachments and aversions. Why? Because all compounded phenomena are impermanent and all impure phenomena are suffering. The only compounded phenomena which are not suffering are the path phenomena, commonly referred to as the thirty-seven adjuncts of awakening.

Even though we imagine we can go to a Buddhist heaven such as Amitabha’s Pure Land, or the five pure abodes in the form realm, there is no escape, no other shore. The Soaring Garuda states:

Since there is no object to attain, there is nothing other than the three realms.

There is no blessing or grace that will save sentient beings from samsara’s suffering. Sentient beings create their own samsara through their own ignorance. While a teacher might show them the way out, it is up to sentient beings to heed the advice of a teacher. Ultimately, liberation rests in the palms of sentient beings. Buddhas are mere objects of veneration, serving as examples to aid sentient beings in reducing clinging. Buddhas can’t actually help anyone beyond being a lamp for the path. We need to stop thinking there is something or someone that will rescue us from samsara. Even the Buddha could not eliminate the world’s suffering. We need to liberate ourselves. No one else can do this for us.

It’s not all bad news. Suffering has a cause, and since it has a cause, it can cease. The cause is ignorance. When we see the world correctly, as Maitreyanātha wrote:

Here there is nothing to remove, nor the slightest thing to add.

See the real correctly. If seen correctly, liberation.