Rediscovering Buddhism for Everyday Life
Rediscovering Buddhism for Everyday Life
An Unfinished Investigation into the Language of Buddhism
Making Buddhist teachings easier to approach in modern everyday life, one misunderstood word at a time.
How This Investigation Began
For many years, I read Buddhist teachings without recognizing how much my understanding was being shaped by the ordinary meanings of familiar words.
I encountered emptiness and thought of nothingness. With my mathematical background, the empty set immediately came to mind.
I encountered no-self and wondered whether the Buddha was telling me that I did not exist.
I encountered aimlessness and wondered how anyone could practice Buddhism without the goal of enlightenment.
I encountered right view, right speech, and right action and wondered who had decided what was right and wrong. If these judgments were already established, what was left for me to investigate?
The difficulty was not necessarily with the teachings. Often, I had brought assumptions into the texts without realizing it.
I was reading familiar words while unknowingly attaching unfamiliar teachings to meanings I already knew.
Gradually, through reading, questioning, meditation, and direct observation, some of these misunderstandings began to become clearer.
I want to document that journey, one word at a time.
Not because I have mastered these teachings, but because I know how difficult the journey of understanding them can be.
If any of these questions have troubled you, perhaps something here will help you begin your own investigation.
The Invisible Barrier I Carried Into Buddhism
Another difficulty in my journey came from something I had not initially recognized: the philosophical assumptions I already carried before I began seriously investigating Buddhism.
Growing up within the Indian intellectual and cultural environment, I encountered the enormous influence of Hindu philosophy, particularly Advaita Vedānta.
Spiritual figures such as Swami Vivekananda are deeply respected, especially in Bengali society. Their words often carry extraordinary authority.
Vivekananda himself admired the Buddha. Yet he also presented Buddhism as the natural continuation and fulfillment of Hindu spiritual thought.
In his 1893 speech Buddhism, the Fulfilment of Hinduism, he declared:
"Shâkya Muni came to preach nothing new."
That is a remarkable statement.
As I gradually examined the Buddha's teachings more carefully, I began recognizing fundamental philosophical differences that such an interpretation did not adequately preserve.
The Buddhist teaching of no-self was not simply another expression of Ātman or Brahman.
Buddhist emptiness could not simply be equated with the Advaita interpretation of māyā.
Dependent origination presented a way of investigating conditionality, experience, and suffering that deserved to be understood on its own terms.
The traditions shared a rich Indian philosophical environment, common questions, and sometimes similar terminology. But sharing questions does not mean arriving at identical conclusions.
Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to understanding an unfamiliar teaching is believing that we already understand it.
I do not wish to diminish the contributions of Vivekananda or any other respected spiritual teacher. Nor am I claiming that Hindu philosophy lacks depth or value.
But intellectual respect should not prevent us from examining a philosophical claim.
A great teacher may offer profound insights into one tradition while interpreting another through the framework of his own.
This is not a reason for hostility. It is a reason for careful investigation.
When I encountered explanations from Buddhist teachers such as Thích Nhất Hạnh and the Dalai Lama, and investigated the relevant Buddhist texts more carefully, many distinctions began to become clearer.
I came to recognize two different obstacles in my understanding.
First, linguistic confusion. Familiar English words sometimes suggest meanings quite different from those intended in particular Buddhist teachings.
Second, inherited philosophical assumptions. We may unknowingly interpret Buddhist teachings through the frameworks of philosophies we already know.
Both obstacles affected my understanding.
And both deserve investigation.
Why I Feel the Need to Write This
I believe Buddhist teachings have enormous practical relevance to ordinary modern life.
Not just to monks, scholars, philosophers, or people living in meditation retreats, but to those of us living with families, working in demanding professions, maintaining relationships, and navigating the uncertainties of everyday existence.
Yet my own journey toward understanding Buddhism was extraordinarily difficult.
I have spent much of my life reading across mathematics, science, physics, neuroscience, philosophy, biographies, and spirituality.
I enjoy investigating complicated ideas.
Nevertheless, I struggled for years to understand some of the most fundamental Buddhist concepts.
Sometimes the greatest obstacle was the language I thought I already understood.
Gradually, through continued reading, meditation, questioning, and observation, something surprising happened.
Teachings that had once appeared abstract, mysterious, or even contradictory began to reveal their relevance to the simplest activities of everyday life.
Breathing. Thinking. Speaking. Working. Experiencing anger. Facing uncertainty. Maintaining relationships. Recognizing attachment.
I did not need to abandon ordinary life to begin investigating these things.
Ordinary life itself became the field of investigation.
And that realization raised another question:
Why should someone else who encounters the same confusion have to spend years overcoming it?
Surely, we can try to explain these concepts in language that a modern reader can approach without first mastering an enormous philosophical vocabulary.
This does not mean simplifying Buddhism until its depth is lost. Nor does it mean claiming that my interpretations are necessarily correct.
It means making the entrance easier while preserving the depth of what is being investigated.
My purpose is not to eliminate the journey of investigation, but to help remove unnecessary obstacles at its entrance.
My Growing List of Questions — and What Is Becoming Clearer
The following are 23 concepts that I misunderstood, struggled with, or want to investigate more deeply.
For each, I have included the initial confusion and a possible direction toward clearer understanding.
Some have already become meaningful through my reading and meditation. Others remain open questions. These are working understandings, not final definitions or declarations of realization.
01 — Emptiness (Suññatā)
My initial misunderstanding: Emptiness means nothing exists, or that something contains absolutely nothing, like the mathematical empty set.
What helped clarify it: An empty cup is not empty of everything. It may be empty of water but full of air and other constituents. The important question is: Empty of what? In SN 35.85, the Buddha explains emptiness in relation to self and what belongs to self. Later Madhyamaka philosophy develops the absence of intrinsic existence.
My practical investigation: Instead of asking whether something exists at all, I can examine whether it exists independently of causes and conditions.
02 — No-self (Anattā)
My initial misunderstanding: If there is no self, perhaps I do not exist. Maybe everything is an illusion, as I had understood the Hindu concept of māyā.
What helped clarify it: The five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness—continue functioning. What becomes questionable is the assumption that behind these processes exists an independent, permanent owner or controller.
A person exists conventionally, but that does not establish an unchanging essence. The early discourses even use imagery of illusion, though this should not automatically be equated with Advaita metaphysics.
My practical investigation: Thoughts arise, feelings change, and the body functions. Can I identify an independent controller of these processes, or am I observing conditioned activities?
03 — Nothingness
My initial misunderstanding: Nothing means absolute nonexistence. There is no thing at all.
What is becoming clearer: The absence of independent existence does not mean the complete absence of phenomena. Dependent things can function without existing as self-sufficient entities.
But Buddhist texts also use nothingness in other technical contexts, including a particular formless meditative attainment. I must not assume that every use of the word has the same meaning.
My investigation: Whenever I encounter "nothing," I want to ask: Nothing of what, and in what context? Otherwise, one misleading definition simply replaces another.
04 — Impermanence (Anicca)
My initial misunderstanding: If everything changes, perhaps nothing is reliable or meaningful.
What helped clarify it: Change is not only loss. Change also makes growth, learning, healing, and transformation possible.
But suffering develops when I expect changing circumstances to remain permanently favorable.
My practical investigation: My job, relationships, body, possessions, and circumstances will change. Can I appreciate them without demanding that they remain unchanged?
Reciting impermanence is easy. Accepting it when life becomes unfavorable is the real investigation.
05 — Suffering (Dukkha)
My initial misunderstanding: Buddhism seems to claim that life is nothing but misery.
What is becoming clearer: Dukkha includes obvious pain but also the unsatisfactory and unreliable nature of experiences we cannot keep exactly as we wish.
Pleasure, love, success, and happiness are not being denied. The question is what happens when we depend on changing conditions for permanent satisfaction.
My practical investigation: When I feel disturbed because someone criticizes me, disagrees with me, or behaves unfairly, I can investigate how much suffering comes from the event and how much comes from my resistance, expectations, and clinging.
06 — Aimlessness (Apraṇihita)
My initial misunderstanding: If aimlessness is a door to liberation, must I abandon goals, ambitions, plans, and purposeful activity?
What helped clarify it: Thích Nhất Hạnh's explanation changed my understanding. Aimlessness need not mean doing nothing. It means that peace and freedom are not possessions waiting at the end of a future achievement.
I can finish a book this month, prepare for a chess tournament, work on a project, or help someone without believing that my existence is incomplete until the goal is achieved.
My practical investigation: Can I act purposefully while being fully present, without postponing the value of living until some future result?
07 — Signlessness (Animitta)
My initial misunderstanding: Does signlessness mean things have no recognizable characteristics? Must I stop distinguishing forms and appearances?
A direction for investigation: In Thích Nhất Hạnh's explanation, a sign is an appearance through which we recognize something. But an appearance need not reveal the whole nature of what we perceive.
A cloud becomes rain. Its familiar appearance disappears, but this does not by itself establish that every constituent has vanished into absolute nothingness.
My practical investigation: How often do I confuse an appearance, label, or identity with the entirety of something? This is a question I want to explore more deeply.
08 — Nonattachment
My initial misunderstanding: Does nonattachment require me to stop loving my family, enjoying relationships, or caring deeply about others?
What is becoming clearer: Attachment and love need not be identical. Love can express care, generosity, and respect, while clinging tries to possess, control, or guarantee what cannot be controlled.
My practical investigation: Can I love someone while allowing that person the freedom to change, disagree, and live independently? Can care remain even when expectations are not fulfilled?
I want to investigate where love ends and possessiveness begins.
09 — Nirvāṇa (Nibbāna)
My initial misunderstanding: Is enlightenment an achievement, like obtaining an academic degree, acquiring a qualification, or reaching a final destination?
What is becoming clearer: In early Buddhism, Nibbāna is associated with the cessation of craving and liberation from clinging. It is not an object acquired for personal prestige.
Thích Nhất Hạnh's teaching on aimlessness further challenges the habit of searching for peace only in the future. Nevertheless, the early texts also prescribe a path leading to liberation.
My practical investigation: Can I meditate without turning enlightenment into another achievement that strengthens my identity as an achiever?
10 — Mindfulness (Sati)
My initial misunderstanding: Does mindfulness mean stopping thoughts, concentrating continuously, or maintaining an empty mind?
What helped clarify it: Mindfulness does not require every thought to disappear. It involves recognizing what is occurring and remembering to remain attentive to the relevant aspects of experience.
Concentration and mindfulness support each other, but they are not identical.
My practical investigation: When anger arises during an ordinary conversation, can I recognize it before acting? Can I notice an unpleasant thought without immediately identifying with it?
Even remembering that I have become distracted can be part of returning to practice.
11 — Dependent Origination (Paṭiccasamuppāda)
My initial misunderstanding: If everything depends on causes and conditions, perhaps my individual actions cannot make any difference.
What is becoming clearer: Conditionality does not imply helplessness. My actions, intentions, and decisions can themselves become conditions affecting what happens.
The early formulation of dependent origination specifically investigates the conditional arising and cessation of suffering. It should not be reduced to the vague statement that everything depends on everything else.
My practical investigation: I cannot control the whole process, but I can participate in it wisely. What conditions am I creating through my present thoughts, words, and actions?
12 — Liberation (Vimutti)
My initial misunderstanding: Must liberation require abandoning family, work, relationships, and ordinary responsibilities?
A direction for investigation: The early discourses give monastic renunciation a central place, but they also teach laypeople and recognize meaningful progress among householders.
This does not mean that lay and monastic paths have identical requirements or that all traditional questions about final liberation in household life are settled.
My practical investigation: Rather than wait for ideal retreat conditions, I can investigate attachment, anger, compassion, mindfulness, and ethical conduct during ordinary family and professional activities.
13 — Free Will and Conditioning
My initial misunderstanding: If all activities arise through conditions, perhaps there is no free will and nothing I decide genuinely matters.
What helped clarify it: There is a difference between complete control and meaningful influence.
I do not consciously manage every heartbeat, breath, or bodily function. But I can influence breathing, cultivate habits, and make decisions that affect future conditions.
Buddhist texts recognize intention and effort without requiring an entirely independent controller. The modern philosophical problem of free will remains more complex.
My practical investigation: I am neither the independent master of the entire process nor an irrelevant spectator. My actions are part of the unfolding conditions.
14 — Karma (Kamma)
My initial misunderstanding: Everything that happens to me must be the consequence of past karma. Perhaps my life is already predetermined.
What is becoming clearer: In AN 6.63, the Buddha identifies intention as central to karma. In AN 3.61, he challenges the view that all experience is explained exclusively by past actions.
Karma therefore should not be reduced to fatalism.
My practical investigation: Instead of treating every difficulty as punishment for some unknown past deed, I can examine the intentions behind what I do now.
What habits am I strengthening through repeated action?
15 — Equanimity (Upekkhā)
My initial misunderstanding: Does equanimity mean not caring about what happens to myself or others?
What is becoming clearer: Equanimity need not be emotional indifference. It can mean maintaining mental balance without being overwhelmed by attraction, aversion, praise, blame, success, or failure.
Compassion and equanimity are both cultivated in Buddhism.
My practical investigation: When someone acts unfairly, can I respond appropriately without allowing resentment to occupy my mind for the remainder of the day?
Can I care without becoming internally consumed?
16 — Acceptance
My initial misunderstanding: If I accept reality as it is, perhaps I should stop trying to change anything.
What helped clarify it: Acceptance of what has already happened is not the same as approval of what happened or surrendering responsibility for what happens next.
I can acknowledge disagreement, criticism, mistakes, and changing circumstances while still taking appropriate action.
My practical investigation: When another person refuses to agree with me despite my evidence and explanations, can I accept that disagreement as a present fact while continuing to act responsibly?
Can I stop fighting the reality that the disagreement exists?
17 — Right Effort (Sammā-vāyāma)
My initial misunderstanding: Does right effort mean controlling every thought, suppressing distractions, and forcing the mind to become peaceful?
What is becoming clearer: Right effort concerns preventing and abandoning unwholesome states and cultivating and maintaining wholesome ones. It is not simply maximum mental force.
Excessive striving can itself become another difficulty.
My practical investigation: When an unwanted thought repeatedly arises, can I recognize its conditions and respond wisely rather than entering an endless battle to suppress it?
Sometimes the skill lies in knowing how to direct effort, not merely increasing it.
18 — Bodhicitta
My initial misunderstanding: If I aspire to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings, how can that aspiration be compatible with aimlessness?
What is becoming clearer: In Mahāyāna Buddhism, bodhicitta is a deliberate aspiration toward awakening for the benefit of beings.
Aimlessness, especially as explained by Thích Nhất Hạnh, questions the grasping that turns future attainment into a condition for present fulfillment.
These teachings have different emphases, and their relationship deserves continued investigation.
My practical investigation: Can I help someone, write something useful, or relieve a little confusion without needing recognition or guaranteed success?
Perhaps compassionate intention can exist without attachment to a particular outcome.
19 — Wisdom (Paññā)
My initial misunderstanding: Is wisdom equivalent to acquiring knowledge, mastering philosophy, or reading more books?
What is becoming clearer: Intellectual knowledge is valuable, but Buddhist wisdom also involves understanding experience in ways that transform ignorance, clinging, and suffering.
Knowing that everything changes is different from accepting change when something precious is threatened.
My practical investigation: When I explain impermanence perfectly but become upset over an ordinary disagreement, what does that reveal about the gap between knowledge and understanding?
That gap itself deserves attention.
20 — The Middle Way (Majjhimā Paṭipadā)
My initial misunderstanding: Is the Middle Way simply compromise—always finding a position halfway between two extremes?
What is becoming clearer: In SN 56.11, the Buddha presents the Middle Way of practice as avoiding sensual indulgence and self-mortification, identifying it with the Noble Eightfold Path.
In SN 12.15, conditionality also provides a way beyond opposing metaphysical extremes concerning existence and nonexistence.
The Middle Way is therefore not merely selecting an average position.
My practical investigation: Am I trapped between two assumptions that may both be inadequate? Can I question the assumptions themselves rather than choosing one extreme?
21 — Letting Go
My initial misunderstanding: Does letting go mean abandoning relationships, responsibilities, possessions, memories, or aspirations?
What is becoming clearer: Letting go primarily concerns releasing clinging, not necessarily removing everything from life.
I can own a house without assuming it must remain permanently mine. I can care about a relationship without believing it can never change.
My practical investigation: When a difficult conversation ends, can I stop mentally repeating it, imagining new arguments, or trying to rewrite what already happened?
Perhaps the first thing to release is not the situation but my insistence that it should have been different.
22 — Nonduality
My initial misunderstanding: Does nonduality mean everything is literally one substance, one consciousness, or one universal Self?
A direction for investigation: Different traditions use nonduality differently. It would be a mistake to assume that Buddhist nondual teachings are automatically equivalent to Advaita's identification of Ātman with Brahman.
Some Buddhist discussions concern overcoming conceptual extremes, the separation of subject and object, or dualistic grasping.
My practical investigation: Before accepting any explanation of nonduality, I want to ask what particular duality the teaching addresses and what the relevant text actually establishes.
This remains an open area of investigation for me.
23 — Right (Sammā)
My initial misunderstanding: When I encountered right view, right speech, and right action, I assumed that someone had predetermined what was right and wrong.
If the answers were already fixed, what remained for me to investigate?
What helped clarify it: The Buddha taught definite ethical commitments, but also encouraged repeated reflection on intentions, actions, and their consequences.
In MN 61, he instructs Rāhula to examine actions before, during, and after performing them.
Yet complicated moral situations remain. What if protecting a hundred innocent people requires killing an attacker? Early Buddhist prohibitions and later Mahāyāna discussions of exceptional compassionate action do not always give identical answers.
My practical investigation: Can I examine intention, likely harm, truthfulness, benefit, and timing without treating ethics as merely a list of arbitrary commandments?
Can I recognize the difference between acting skillfully and simply defending an action because I believe my motives are good?
The question is not whether every moral rule can be discarded.
It is how wisdom develops alongside ethical commitment.
How I Intend to Continue This Investigation
These short explanations are not substitutes for the Buddhist teachings themselves.
They are starting points.
For each concept, I hope to examine the relevant discourses more deeply, distinguish earlier teachings from later developments, and investigate how the concept operates in ordinary experience.
Where I find disagreement among Buddhist traditions, I want to acknowledge it rather than conceal it.
Where a conclusion is supported by a text, I want to identify that evidence.
Where an explanation is my own interpretation, I want to make that clear.
And where I have not yet understood something, I want to leave the question open.
Some of these concepts have already become much clearer to me.
Others may require years of further investigation.
That is perfectly acceptable.
The purpose is not to finish a list of Buddhist concepts. The purpose is to understand them well enough that they become meaningful in the way I live.
A Small Spark, Not a Grand Mission
I have no ambition to become a Buddhist teacher, philosopher, or well-known writer through this project.
I am not trying to build a large audience or convince anyone to become Buddhist.
Perhaps very few people will ever read these pages.
But somewhere in the world, there may be someone who has encountered the same questions that troubled me for years.
If something written here helps such a person recognize a question more clearly, perhaps it will encourage them to investigate independently.
That possibility is enough motivation for me.
I have been reflecting on bodhicitta, the aspiration to cultivate awakening for the benefit of living beings.
I do not claim that writing a few essays constitutes the full realization of bodhicitta.
But I can recognize a simple compassionate intention in wanting to make something useful available to others.
And I can pursue that intention without making my life unnecessarily noisy.
There is no need to measure the value of this work by the number of readers, comments, or compliments it receives.
I can investigate carefully, write when something becomes clearer, make it available, and return to my ordinary life.
This also resonates with my developing understanding of aimlessness.
I can have an intention without requiring a particular outcome to justify the effort.
I cannot guarantee that my words will help anyone.
But I can make them available.
And perhaps that is enough.
An Invitation to Investigate
This blog is not an attempt to provide final answers to Buddhist philosophy.
Nor is it intended to criticize other religious traditions or the people who follow them.
It is an attempt to understand Buddhist teachings more carefully, especially where familiar language and inherited assumptions have made that understanding unnecessarily difficult for me.
I expect to make mistakes.
I expect some interpretations to change as I continue reading, meditating, and investigating.
When I discover that an earlier understanding was inaccurate, I hope to correct it openly.
Because the purpose is not to defend what I have written.
The purpose is to understand.
If you have never encountered these difficulties, there may be nothing here that you need.
But if you recognize some of these questions, perhaps this investigation will help you begin your own.
You need not accept my conclusions.
Read the relevant teachings. Examine the evidence. Observe your own experience. Question what does not make sense.
And remain free to reach a different understanding.
I am not here to give you the answers. I am here to share the questions that changed my understanding, the evidence I found, and the observations that helped me. If something here is useful, investigate it for yourself.
This is an unfinished investigation.
The list will grow as new questions arise.
And so will my understanding.