Eleventh of Series of talks on the Pali Canon based on the book “In the Buddha’s Words” by Bhikkhu Bodhi

Transcribed, abridged, and edited by Barbara Byrum and Murray
McGillivray

 

In chapter 9 we’re concerned with the wisdom teachings,
which are understood to be what we come to after we develop morality, take
precepts, and develop meditation and focus the mind. First practice morality to
calm and smooth the mind and bring it into tune and harmony. Then you practice
meditation to deepen and strengthen the mind so that it has the capacity to
cognize wisdom. So with the mind developed in that way, smoothed out, clear,
focused, we can now study the wisdom teachings and make them our own in our
lives.

What do we mean by wisdom in Buddhism? The word panna or prajna basically means to know, to cognize. But the word has a
sense of knowing with an active leading edge to it. There are two metaphors
that are used for Prajna. One is,
“Prajna is like a knife,” and the other one is “Prajna is like light.” These
are two almost opposite metaphors, and they bring out two almost opposite sides
of prajna. Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom, so he’s got a sword that
cuts through delusion. Delusion is to be tangled up in objects of desire. It’s
not that there’s something wrong with desire or an object of desire. The
problem comes when we get tied up in knots around it.

So wisdom cuts through those knots. But also “cutting” means
to discriminate, to see the difference between this thing and that thing. To know, to be able to see differences,
is to distinguish. That’s also a mode of wisdom, to see the difference between
what’s wholesome and not wholesome; to see the difference between wisdom and
ignorance.

The light metaphor is almost the opposite of this, because
light shines evenly and equally on everything and doesn’t distinguish between
one thing and another. It illuminates everything without any discrimination,
without exceptions. Everything is illuminated, and everything is equally
acceptable to and equally inspirational to the light that shines on it.

This is what Buddhist wisdom claims to be. It claims to be a
seeing, an accurate seeing of things the way they really are, a shining of
light of wisdom onto things. The light of wisdom will be strong enough to break
through the darkness, this very thick cloud-cover which is the delusion that we
have covered over things. The light of wisdom shines through, breaks through
that darkness, which is just a covering. Implied here is the faith, the
understanding, that once that happens, once wisdom shines in our life, we will
have reached the goal,the goal of nirvana. When we develop wisdom completely, and
there’s light shining through the darkness, that is nirvana, that is peace,
that is happiness, that is the ending of suffering, and ease.

The Buddha then gives the way to develop wisdom through the
experience of the five skandhas and
the twelve-fold chain of causation.

The five skandhas
are form, feelings, perceptions, impulses or formations, and
consciousness. This list has the
purpose of focusing on our subjectivity; analyzing our personal experience of
being embodied; our experience of perceiving, our experience of feeling, and our
experience of desiring. Through studying the five skandhas, we see that things
are happening, arising and passing away, and we see this without distorting
what’s happening with our personal needs and identities, through which we organize
the whole world around our perception and consciousness. When we see that we do
that, we are free to stop blaming everybody, including ourselves. (That’s
mostly who we blame.) Instead of blaming everybody, we can be responsible.

The twelve-fold chain is a discussion of the patterns of
force that put the world together—how our attitudes and actions shape our
experiences and the world around us. It is the mechanism through which fluid
reality is constantly evolving and changing all the time. There’s an evolution
going on in consciousness, and there is a mechanism by which it occurs. It’s
conceived of as a circular chain of causation. The first link in the chain is
ignorance, misperception, that causes some kind of urge. Not perceiving that
things are at peace, there’s an urge toward completion. Karmic formations is
the second link. The third link is consciousness. Consciousness gives rise to
the six senses. The six senses give rise to the fifth link, name and form,
meaning mind and matter. When mind and matter coalesce, there’s contact. When
there’s contact, there’s feeling. When there’s feeling, there’s craving. When
there’s craving, there’s grasping. This twelve-fold chain is sometimes
conceived of as the shape of every moment, and sometimes conceived of as what
carries us from one lifetime to another – the process of rebirth. So rebirth is
both a linear concept, and also a simultaneous concept happening in every
moment.

So wisdom means seeing all these things and knowing for
ourselves the truth of these lists and what they imply. The important thing is
that there is the effort that we so naturally and reflexively make to grab
ahold of something that is essentially ungraspable – to want something that we
can never have. That’s really the point of all these lists, to show us exactly
how that happens, how that works, and how that leads to a lot of misery and
confusion and harm and hurtfulness. So to see that point we study these lists,
and we know for sure that we have to let go, and it’s the letting go that
brings happiness and peace.

So as I said, the chapter is divided by these lists. And
remember, the point of each list is to see the wisdom: to turn the eye of
wisdom on the five aggregates (five skandhas) and the twelvefold chain of causation.
So this is on the aggregates, “A
Catechism on the Aggregates”:

And a certain monk rose from his
seat, arranged his upper robe over one shoulder, raised his joined hands in
reverential salutation toward the Blessed One and said to him, “Venerable sir!
I would ask the Blessed One about a certain point if the Blessed One would
grant me the favor of answering my question.” (That’s an extremely polite way
of asking!) “The five aggregates subject to clinging, venerable sir, that is,
the form aggregate subject to clinging, the feeling aggregate subject to
clinging, the perception aggregate subject to clinging, the volitional
formations aggregate subject to clinging, the consciousness aggregate subject to clinging. Are they
in their nature, these five skandhas, these five kinds of experiences, subject
to clinging?” The Buddha said, “Yes, they are.” And so the monk said, “But,
venerable sir, in what are these five aggregates subject to clinging rooted?”
The Buddha replied, “The five aggregates subject to clinging, monk, are rooted
in desire.” The monk said, “Venerable sir, is that clinging the same as these
five aggregates subject to clinging, or is the clinging something apart from
the five aggregates subject to clinging?”

Now this is a very important question, because if the five
aggregates are by their nature clinging, we’re doomed. We understand that the
clinging runs very deep. There’s no doubt about that; it’s not easily overcome.
But if the nature of our experience is clinging, if that’s the way it is, and
many people would say that’s the case, then there is no possibility of any kind
of meaningful, thoroughgoing spiritual transformation. So that’s what is really
involved with the monk’s question. And the Buddha’s answer is this:

Monk, that clinging is neither the
same as the five aggregates subject to clinging, nor is the clinging something
apart from the five aggregates subject to clinging, but rather, the desire and
lust for them, that is the clinging there.

So we are not doomed to clinging. Our clinging can’t ever be
separate from the five aggregates. There’s no abstract clinging, separate from
form, feelings, perceptions, volitional formations, and consciousness. But
form, feeling, perceptions, volitional formations, and consciousness don’t have
to be clinging form, clinging feeling, clinging perceptions, clinging
volitional formations and clinging consciousness—freedom is possible! And the
monk says, “Good!”

On page 339 toward the bottom the monk has a further
question:

 

What is the cause and condition,
venerable sir, for the manifestation of the various aggregates as they arise?

Each one has a different cause and condition. The cause of
the form aggregate is the four great elements, earth, water, fire and air (solidity,
fluidity, movement and heat.) Those are the conditions for the arising of the
form aggregate. Contact is the cause and condition for the manifestation of the
feeling aggregate, the perception aggregate, and the volitional formations
aggregate. That’s why the analysis of perception and the senses is so
important, because it’s in the sensual experience – where there’s contact
between a sensual organ and an object, or the mind and a thought – that
experience occurs. Right in the middle of that experience the feeling,
perception, and volitional aggregates arise. That’s the place to work. That’s
the place to be clear. Name and form is the cause and condition for the
manifestation of the consciousness aggregate.

 

But then, venerable sir, how does
identity view not come to be?

So form is there, but there’s no reason then to interpret
form and define it as self.

Why not just say (taps chest) it’s form, it’s the body. Why
say “It’s me!”? But people do that.
That’s where identity comes in. We identify the five skandhas – form,
feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness –as the self.
Either we say that they’re the self, or we say that the self possesses them, or
the self is in them. That’s how identity comes to be; we make a conceptual jump
on top of our experience.

The person who’s wise sees the arising of things that are
actually there, but doesn’t make the conceptual leap and call them and regard
them as a self. We say, “I hate
life. It’s terrible.” So you actually have that thought, “I believe that,
because I’m thinking that.” Right? But suppose you said, “Wow, that thought is
there.” The thought would still be there, but you see what a world of
difference that makes? The difference between, “Wow, that’s an amazing thing,
the thought just arises in the mind,” and saying, “Life is terrible. I hate
this.” If you actually experience this, it’s the simplest thing in the world,
and the manifestation of this is so liberating.

So you can have all kinds of experiences, terrible
experiences and painful experiences, but when you just view them as
experiences, first of all you see them a lot better and you see more about
them, and secondly, they don’t hurt you in the same way. So this is very good
advice for the work on the cushion. You’re sitting on the cushion, and all
these things are coming into your mind. If you realize they’re just thoughts
coming into your mind, it’s a very different experience than taking all your
thoughts so seriously.

What, venerable sir, is the
gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of the five aggregates?

This is another formula that’s often applied to the
gratification, the danger, and the escape. In the case of form – and you can run through the same
formula for all the other ones – there is pleasure in form, but there’s also danger in form, because
form is impermanent and is subject to change. So the beautiful sunset turns into “The sun went
down. I’m freezing! It’s so cold! I’m so uncomfortable!” A minute ago it was
the most beautiful sunset in the world, but that can’t stay there.

And what is the escape? The removal
and abandonment of desire and lust for form: this is the escape.

I always have to say this: It sounds like you’re not
supposed to enjoy anything, but it doesn’t mean that at all. It’s
acknowledging, “Let’s just see the whole picture! Let’s see the gratification,
let’s see the danger, and let’s approach everything from the point of view of
the whole picture, enjoying what comes, knowing that it changes.” The problem
is, we hate it when it changes. We like it when it’s nice, we hate it when it
isn’t nice, and we’re very resentful when it changes. So that’s the escape, and that’s essentially seeing things
as they are.

 

Tenth of Series of talks on the Pali Canon based on the book “In the Buddha’s Words” by Bhikkhu Bodhi

Transcribed
and edited by Murray McGillivray and Barbara Byrum

Chapter 8 is called “Mastering the
Mind,” and it’s about meditation and mindfulness.

You could ask, to begin with, “What
is an emotion?” It’s a good question: what is an emotion? It’s
a lot of things at the same time. For one thing, I think, it’s our
deeply conditioned, physically based emotional setup. We all have an
emotional shape, so to speak, that was formed in us in childhood.
Then that shape is activated by something that happens in the
present. There are different things that go on in the body when we’re
experiencing emotions. So the body is activated in different ways if
we’re angry, if we’re joyful, if we’re in despair. The body
feels different in those emotional states. Then there are thoughts
that are completely connected to the body states, which are connected
to the event that arises in the present, and which are connected to
our emotional setup. So what we mean by emotions, I think, is all of
that together.

So an emotion is a complicated thing.
It involves the body; it involves the neocortical brain; it involves
the mind; it involves the limbic brain. The Mindfulness Sutra that I
want to talk about tonight really bears all this out.

The Satipatthana Sutta is the
Mindfulness Sutra. Sati is mindfulness and means “memory.”
So mindfulness is a kind of memory. Memory means holding something in
mind. Usually we think of memory as holding the past in mind, but
when you think about it, the present is always falling into the past,
so it requires a kind of memory to come back to the present. We have
to remember to be present. Otherwise, if we don’t remember to be
present, we will be distracted. The assumption that the sutra makes
and speaks about is that it is possible to be more present, to be
more powerfully and deeply present; furthermore, if we can be more
powerfully and more deeply present, and train ourselves to be
present, then that presence will have a healing quality to it. If we
don’t intentionally remember to be present, we will be as we
usually are: more or less present, partly present, or partly
distracted. We may not even know that we’re partly distracted.
That’s the usual human condition.

So we could say that mindfulness is the
capacity to be completely, powerfully, brightly here. Present with
what’s going on, whether it is thinking, feeling, sensation in the
body, memory, fantasy. Whatever it is. To be present with what’s
going on.

The sutra then goes on to propose a
very thoroughgoing and painstaking training in how to be more
powerfully and more brightly present. It says on the very first page
of the sutra that developing mindfulness, developing this kind of
presence, is the only way that you can overcome sorrow and pain, and
achieve a lasting peace.

The course in mindfulness has four main
steps, the “four foundations.” Or you could look at it as four
subjects on which mindfulness is to be established. It seems as if
the four subjects are progressive; one depends on the other. Each one
is more complicated. The four subjects or foundations of mindfulness
are mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of
the mind or the heart—we might say mindfulness of emotions—and
mindfulness of dharmas. So it’s a progression that takes you from
the simple awareness of the physical body in the present moment, to
what’s going on with fundamental reality at any moment. What’s
real at any moment, starting with the body. There are subdivisions
for each one of them, resulting in twenty-one meditation subjects.
The practice of mindfulness of the body is the most detailed part of
the course, which tells you that establishing mindfulness of the body
is really, really important and is the basis for all the other
foundations.

There are twenty-one meditation
subjects in the sutra. First is mindfulness of the body, and this has
fourteen subjects. It starts with mindfulness of breathing, and then
mindfulness of the four postures: sitting, standing, walking, and
lying down. So when you’re sitting, you’re mindful of sitting;
when you’re standing you’re mindful of standing, and so on. Clear
comprehension of activities—so when you’re doing something,
you’re aware of what you’re doing.

So we think of the body as its outer
appearance, but of course the outer appearance is the least of it.
It’s thanks to the heart, the lungs, the liver, the blood vessels
and everything else that things work, so why aren’t we aware of
those things?And those things are not the things that we are
attracted to in the body. If we were all transparent and looked
inside of each other then we would not be so excited about one
another. So it’s being aware of the body in all of its states, but
also the nature of the body, what it’s made of and its impermanent
nature.

The second foundation of awareness and
the fifteenth meditation object is the meditation on feelings.
Feeling is differentiated into three primary types: pleasant,
painful, and neither-pleasant-nor-painful. So clearly by “feelings”
here is not meant what we colloquially mean when we say “feelings.”
This is the emotional set that I was talking about a minute ago, the
kind of deep-seated set that we have whenever we see a certain kind
of thing or experience a certain kind of stimulus. We are always
either attracted to it, repelled by it, or confused, or neutral. It’s
a deeply conditioned response that we’re not aware of. It’s the
foundation of emotions, but we don’t experience it as emotion until
it gives rise to thoughts and bodily sensations that are noticeable.

The sixteenth subject is contemplation
of mind or heart. And this is basically the state of mind or emotion
that the feeling has given rise to in a particular moment: happy,
sad, angry, and so on. I think it stands for a whole range of
emotional life.

The last one is contemplation of
phenomena or dharmas. The sutra lists five different categories of
dharmas that are brought into view in the fourth foundation, and they
are the five hindrances (laziness, worry, doubt, and so on), the five
aggregates, which means the five skandas (form, feeling, sensations,
and so forth), and the six external and internal sense bases (meaning
the eye and the ear and sounds and so on), and the seven factors of
enlightenment (rapture, joy, concentration, mindfulness,
investigation . . . ).

So I’m going to say a little bit
about these different foundations. Mindfulness of the body seems
simple enough. We just return awareness to the body and the processes
of the body, so that we can begin to have an experience of what the
body really is, rather than doing what we usually do, which is to
assume that the body is us, and then, without necessarily noticing at
all what the body actually is, projecting onto it a huge set of
conditioned emotions and responses and self-concepts that we’ve
developed over the course of a lifetime. When you get into detailed
awareness of the body, you begin to see that the body has its own
mind, so to speak. It’s not just working for me! It’s a
phenomenon in and of itself. In our practice we all know this,
because not only is zazen basic awareness of the body, but all of the
forms of the practice are about fostering mindfulness in standing, in
walking, in eating, in bowing, in movement, in work, and so on.

So I think we’re pretty familiar with
mindfulness of the body from our own practice, and usually what
people call meditation is – from the point of view of the
mindfulness sutra – just an intense application of mindfulness,
beginning carefully and explicitly with the body.

What the feelings are is a little bit
less obvious to us. We’re all struggling to bring the feelings, or
vedana, into view. You could say that our arising in the
present moment results from our emotional set. Each one of us has our
own particular way of manifesting . In a way, we’re all exactly the
same, but then we’re all different. It’s deep conditioning that
causes the whole chain of reactivity that comes into our conscious
lives. It can arise into consciousness, but only through mindfulness
of the body. Through an intense practice of mindfulness of the body,
eventually we can feel the vedana. And even if we have a lot of
sophistication about why we are the way we are, that’s not the same
as actually feeling the root vedana, which has no cognitive dimension
at all. It’s like a gut reaction, and you feel it through the
practice of mindfulness of the body.

The sutra is very repetitive, and each
time something to be mindful of is given, a formula is repeated. This
passage happens to be in the part that has to do with mindfulness of
the body, but the same thing is repeated with mindfulness of
feelings, and emotions, and so on. It says:

In this way, the
practitioner dwells contemplating the body in the body internally, or
the practitioner dwells contemplating the body in the body
externally, or dwells contemplating the body in the body both
internally and externally; or else, the practitioner dwells
contemplating in the body its nature of arising, or dwells
contemplating in the body its nature of vanishing, or dwells
contemplating in the body the nature of both arising and vanishing;
or else, mindfulness that “there is a body” is simply established
in him to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and repeated
mindfulness. And the practitioner dwells independent, not clinging to
anything in the world. This is how a monastic dwells contemplating
the body in the body.

The same formula is repeated over and
over again. So it’s interesting, because first of all “the body
in the body” means the actual body, not the conceptions that we
have of the body. And you do that internally and externally. This is
important, because you would think that mindfulness is only internal,
but it’s not. You’re aware of the body within oneself, and you’re
aware of the bodies of others. You’re aware of other people’s
postures and breathing.

The course in awareness implies and
very directly indicates that this is about looking within oneself
deeply enough to realize that you are a human being like other human
beings. Otherwise, if you just completely are going within, and not
constantly recognizing the existence of other people, it’s very
counterproductive, because then you’re reinforcing your separation.
But this is the opposite of that.

So it’s really interesting that it
says mindfulness is both internal and external. The sutra says, “Or
else, contemplates the body in its nature of arising and vanishing.”
In other words, you’re aware of the impermanence of the body at all
points. You’re aware that every experience of the body is quickly
changing into another experience, and you try to notice the arising
and vanishing of the succession of experiences.

“Or else,
mindfulness that there is a body is simply established to the extent
necessary” [there’s just the bare attention to the body.] “Independent, not clinging to anything in the world.” [doing this
without goals, without needs, just doing it fully for its own sake.]

Once you are aware of the body, you
become aware of the vedana – the gut reactions and emotions – and
then you begin to see patterns. You begin to notice a set of emotions
that are basically hindrances that are holding you back in your
living. And once you bring that into view and you understand that,
then you begin to notice how the body-mind perception works – the
five skandhas, the perceptual apparatus. When you clarify that and
you have some measure of freedom within that, the factors of
enlightenment arise. You’re interested in your experience, and you
have the capacity to be happy and study it and clarify it even
further. You understand how reality unfolds and how suffering is
constellated. And then you’re free.

I’ve presented it as a progressive
course: first you do this and then that happens, and then you do
that. That’s the way the sutra is written. But throughout the
history of Buddhism, in different traditions and teachers, the sutra
has been approached in many, many different ways. Almost never, I
think, is it presented in actual practice, just the way it’s
written in the text. The text gives you a big field, and then
teachers and traditions have different approaches to how to present
that field. I think a typical Vipassana retreat in North America will
go through the four foundations of mindfulness one after the other,
as if you were going to progress in that way. “Ok, it’s the
fourth day of the retreat, you should be experiencing this and
feeling that.” In Zen practice it’s not that systematic or
programmatic, and it’s not step by step.

So it’s not as if you completely get
one step, and then you go on to the next one. It’s like you’re
constantly looking on that level, I think, through your whole life.
What I’m saying is that the foundations of mindfulness flash in and
out. The basic Zen practice is to emphasize mindfulness of the body,
mindfulness of the breath, and to make a very strong effort in that.

A very strong focus in Zen is on
mindfulness of the body with intensity and focus, and then with an
open consciousness mindful to whatever else is arising. In other
words, not mindfulness of the body for the purpose of eliminating
everything else, but mindfulness of the body for the purpose of being
awake and alert to whatever else is coming up. So whether it’s
vedana, or whether it’s emotion, or whether it’s insight into the
Noble Truths, there’s a trust that always coming back to
mindfulness of the body will cause many other phenomena to arise.

Ninth of Series of talks on the Pali Canon based on the book “In the Buddha’s Words” by Bhikkhu Bodhi

Transcribed and edited by Murray
McGillivray and Barbara Byrum

[recording begins with talk already in progress]

We were talking about how in Western philosophy, starting
with the Greeks, there’s a distinction made between heart and mind. You trust
the mind, and you don’t trust the heart. This is a basic point of view in
Western thought, that the mind is rational, constant, and comes up with
conclusions about the nature of reality. The emotions, on the other hand, are
unreliable, inaccurate, and messy. So, therefore, it is advisable to ignore
emotion, and to base your living on mind – on solid, rational thought. The root
of Western thinking is: “I think, therefore I am,” not “I feel, therefore I am.” Forget about feeling. So whether it’s in
Western science or religion, there’s a mistrust of feeling, a kind of
repression of feeling or emotion, in favor of reasoning.

Buddhist psychology doesn’t make a fundamental distinction
between the mind and the heart. And
as we all know, in Pali, in Sanskrit, in Chinese, in Japanese language, the
words that are used in Buddhism to mean mind also mean heart. In other words,
“mind-heart” is the actual way to translate those words, because there is no
distinction between them. It’s not a hyphenated word; it’s one word.

So the way that it’s understood in Buddhism is that in any
moment of consciousness, there are various factors arising in the mind. Every
moment there’s some thinking, some feeling, some perceiving, and so on, and these
things are all of equal importance and all in the same category. Some of it we
might call emotional, some of it we might call intellectual, but they’re always
mixed in together, so there’s no such thing as an emotion that would arise
without some thinking associated with it. And there’s no such thing as thinking
that would arise without some feeling associated with it, without some
emotional content. So Western psychology and philosophy, I would say, is more
theoretical and more reason-driven and idealistic than Buddhist psychology.

Some of this comes up in the text that I want to talk about
tonight, in Chapter Seven, “The Path to Liberation.” The first text in Chapter Seven
is “Why Does One Enter the Path: The Arrow of Birth, Aging and Death.” This is
a really famous simile about the person who’s shot with an arrow.

Thus have I heard. On one occasion,
the Blessed One was living at Savatthi in Jeta’s Grove, Anathapindika’s Park.
And while he was there, Malunkyaputta was sitting in meditation. [And he asked
the Buddha] “These speculative views have been left undeclared, not clarified,
by the Blessed One. They have been set aside and rejected by him, namely, ‘The
world is eternal,’ or, ‘The world is not eternal,’ ‘The world is finite,’ or ‘The
world is infinite,’ ‘The soul is the same as the body,’ or ‘The soul is one
thing and the body is another thing,’ and ‘After death, a tathagata, a Buddha
exists,’ or ‘After death the Tathagata does not exist,’ or ‘Both does exist and
does not exist,’ or ‘Neither exists nor not exists.'”

Malunkyaputta was thinking, “When I was sitting in
meditation these questions really started bothering me, and you haven’t cleared
them up. I need you to say which of these possibilities are right. And if you
do clear it up for me, then I will continue to be a monk with you, and if you
do not, I will give this whole thing up because if you can’t answer these
questions, what good is all this?” The Buddha replied:

How then, Malunkyaputta, did I ever
say to you, “Come, Malunkyaputta, lead the spiritual life under me and I will
declare to you the world is eternal or . . .” [etc.]

In other words, “Did I say to you that you’re going to come
and practice, and I’m going to answer these questions? Did I ever promise that
I would do that?” And then Malunkyaputta said, “No, venerable sir, you did not
promise that.” The Buddha says [and this is kind of beautiful, I think], “That
being so, misguided man, who are you and what are you abandoning?”[He said he
would abandon the path, abandon his practice with Buddha.]

So this sutra
relates to what I was saying a moment ago, that in order to really take up
spiritual practice you need to put theoretical concerns aside and take a look
at what is actually going on in your life, and take a look at who you are and
what you think you’re doing. That’s the question, not questions whether the
Buddha exists after death or not, or is the world eternal or not, is the soul
separate from the body or not. These are speculative, theoretical questions.
What you need to ask is who you are and what are you doing.

So then the Buddha, to illustrate what he’s trying to tell Malunkyaputta,
gives the simile of the arrow.

Suppose, Malunkyaputta, a person
were shot by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and
companions, and clansmen and relatives brought a surgeon to treat him. And the
person would say, “I will not let the surgeon pull out this arrow until I know
whether the man who wounded me was a khattiya, a brahmin, a merchant or a
worker (so, first go and determine that and then
pull the arrow out).” And then he would further say, “I will not let the
surgeon pull out this arrow until I know the name and clan of the man who
wounded me, until I know whether the man who wounded me was tall, short, or of
middle height, until I know whether the man who wounded me was dark, brown, or
golden skinned, until I know whether the man who wounded me lives in such a
village, town, or city, until I know whether the bow that wounded me was a
longbow or a crossbow, until I know whether the bow-string that wounded me was
fiber, reed, sinew, hemp, or bark, until I know whether the shaft that wounded
me was wild or cultivated, until I know with what kind of feathers the shaft
that wounded me was fitted, whether those of a vulture, a heron, a hawk, a
peacock or a stork, until I know with what kind of sinew the shaft that wounded
me was bound, whether that of an ox, a buffalo, a deer, or a monkey, until I
know what kind of arrow-head it was that wounded me, whether spiked, or
razor-tipped, or curved, or barbed, or calf-toothed, or lancet-shaped. Until
all these questions are answered, you cannot pull out the arrow. You must leave
it in there until all of these questions are determined.

All this would still not be known
to the person who was shot, and meanwhile he would die, before all these
questions were answered, because he didn’t pull the arrow out. So too, Malunkyaputta,
if anyone should say thus, “I will not lead the spiritual life under the
Blessed One until the Blessed One declares to me, the world is eternal or not
eternal” that person would still never find out the answer to those questions
and meantime would die. [So don’t waste your time. Take up the important
questions now.]

Malunkyaputta, if there is the
view, “the world is eternal,” the spiritual life cannot be lived.

Now he’s saying something a little bit different. “If there
is such a view, if you had the view, if you did have the answer—you can’t get
the answer, you’ll die first, but let’s say you did have the answer—the
spiritual life cannot be lived. If any of these views exist, if you do have the
answer, the spiritual life cannot be lived.”

So in this passage the Buddha’s going a little bit further. Earlier
he said that it’s mere idleness and a waste of time to speculate on these questions.
But now he’s saying it’s not only a waste of time, but if you did successfully
speculate your way to an answer to these questions, it would prevent you from
living the spiritual life. And this is because all these views contain hidden
assumptions: the assumption that there is something that can be defined,
something or someone that is separate, that is substantial and capable of
understanding an independent substantial truth about the world.

In other words, there’s something dogmatic and binding in these
views. And within these very views, there are lurking the assumptions that lead
to our suffering. These assumptions are simply incorrect, and so the questions
that come from those assumptions are just not the right questions to ask. When
we ask them, and when we answer them, we will no longer have the sensitivity
and the openness of mind that the spiritual life requires, because the answers
will reify our sense of who we are, and that will make spiritual practice
impossible. Then we’ll have dogma and we’ll have certainty, but we will not
have the possibility of really opening our lives.

In the last part of the sutra, paragraphs seven through ten,
the Buddha finally hammers the point home and says what he has declared:

I have declared, this is suffering.
And I have declared, this is the origin of suffering. And I have declared, this
is the cessation of suffering. And I have declared, this is the way leading to
the cessation of suffering. And why did I declare those things? Because this is
beneficial. This belongs to the fundamentals of the spiritual life. This leads
to disenchantment (no longer being mesmerized by the world). This leads to
dispassion (no longer being a slave of passion), to cessation, to peace, to
direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to nirvana. And that’s why I have declared
those things. And that’s why I have declared what I have declared, and that’s
why I’ve left undeclared what I’ve left undeclared, because the undeclared
things are not beneficial, and the declared things are.

Malunkyaputta was satisfied and
delighted at the Blessed One’s words. He was convinced.

So, these, of course, are the Four Truths, the simplest,
most basic statement of the Buddha’s teaching. And what he’s saying here is
they’re not articles of belief; they’re not theories; they are experiences. And
the way it works is, in the very beginning you already understand the first
Noble Truth. We all understand that the nature of conditioned existence is unsatisfactoriness
or suffering. This is part of our human experience. Every human being knows
this. Now, we can deny it, and we can try to get around it, but one doesn’t
have to have faith or a smart, speculative mind to understand that there are
major problems in human life – things like death and so on. These are insurmountable
difficulties. So you know that already. And knowing that, the rest is for you
to find out, not matters of speculation, but matters of experiential knowledge.
You find out that suffering has a cause and what the cause is, and you find out
that suffering can be ended. You test out the practice and the path, and you
find out that it actually matters in your life. So these are not theoretical
truths, these are experiential facts of life.

So one more piece and then we’re off into something else. What
I think is the most lovely passage here, and also a very, very famous saying of
the Buddha, is on page 240: “Good Friendship.”

Thus have I heard. On one occasion,
the Blessed One was dwelling among the Sakyans where there was a town of the
Sakyans named Nagaraka. Then the venerable Ananda approached the Blessed One
and paid homage to him, sat down to one side and said, “Venerable Sir, this is
half of the spiritual life, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good
comradeship…”

And then the Buddha famously says,

Not so, Ananda, not so, Ananda.
This is the entire spiritual life, Ananda, that is, good friendship, good
companionship, good comradeship. When a monk has a good friend, a good
companion, a good comrade, it is to be expected that he will develop and
cultivate the noble eightfold path.

Good friendship is fundamentally the important point in the
spiritual path. This is something that I am always talking about, and I think
is so very important. It is
something that I have come to feel we want to stress as part of our practice at
Everyday Zen – the crucial importance of dharma relationships. It is impossible
to undergo this personal transformation by ourselves. This is not because we
need help, not because we’re somehow incapable of doing this, and we need
wiser, cooler heads to show us how. It’s because an absolutely crucial part of
the process is our meeting one another, our interacting with one another, our
experiencing—maybe we can use the word—”inter-subjectivity.” We can’t actually
realize the path without a deep experience of inter-subjectivity, which is the
only thing that will enable us to see that our inwardness and our painful felt
sense of isolation and separation simply isn’t so.

Spiritual friendship with teachers as well as with sangha
friends is a requirement, so that we can gradually understand and feel that we
are not, and that we’ve never been, and can’t ever be, alone. It’s impossible.
And this is the most profound and fundamental basis of the path. That’s why the
Buddha says that spiritual friendship is the whole of the path and the
foundation of the path.

 

 

Eighth of Series of talks on the Pali Canon based on the book “In the Buddha’s Words” by Bhikkhu Bodhi

 

Transcribed
and edited by Murray McGillivray and Barbara Byrum

Tonight I’m going to speak a little
bit about Chapter 6. The title of the chapter is “Deepening One’s
Perspective on the World.” I’m going to emphasize the part about
sensual pleasures, the sensual world.

First I would like to bring up the
teaching in this section on what Bhikkhu Bodhi calls the “three
moments of our understanding of experience.” He translates the
three traditional words “gratification,” “danger,” and
“escape.” So those are the three moments of our experiencing
something: gratification, danger, and escape. Gratification is that
moment of experience in which we are seeking, and maybe finding,
satisfaction in things: in sensual pleasures, in accomplishment, in
accumulation, in romance, in adventure, and so on.

The second moment is called danger. And
that’s the moment when we come to understand the limitation and the
unsatisfactoriness within the gratification that we have been
seeking.

The third moment is called escape. It
doesn’t mean, as Bhikkhu Bodhi points out, escapism, as in “Let’s
think about something else!” The way I would interpret it is not
from the Theravada standpoint, but from the standpoint of our
practice. I would see escape as the full integration of the previous
two, going beyond the seeming contradiction that it looks like in
gratification and danger.

In the Theravada texts, these Pali
canon texts, when the Buddha’s talking about ordinary life, “the
dusty life of the world,” as he puts it so many times, what stands
out is the Buddha’s depiction of this ordinary sensual world as
being not only basically unsatisfactory, but also dangerous,
disgusting, and horrible. For example, you read this chapter, and it
sounds like the Buddha’s comparing the ordinary world to holding a
sheaf of grasses in flames in the face of a wind. Reading these texts
can be a little discouraging. “This is pretty negative! The Buddha
really hated the world or something! Life-denying! Exaggerated!” So
it’s important to note that the Buddha is not saying that the
ordinary world is disgusting and dangerous. He’s saying that if we
don’t appreciate the disgusting, dangerous, and horrible aspects of
the world, which coexist along with other aspects of the world, our
view is going to be very, very limited, and we are going to suffer.

The reason that he emphasizes the
difficult and negative side is that that’s where we all are so
deficient. We’re all deeply enamored of the world, of the body, of
the things of the senses, of position, power, fame, etc. etc. We’re
literally enchanted by the world. The ordinary material world has got
us totally in its thrall, and so that’s why the Buddha is rubbing
our nose in the other side. Now take, for example, some of the
extensive discussions about the human body in the Canon. There’s a
whole meditation on how disgusting the body is. It’s full of puss
and phlegm and feces and urine and scum. It’s subject to constant
decay, to mutilation, to aging. There are nine stages of corpse
meditation, and so forth. And yet we worship the body. We are
literally mesmerized by our own body; we lust after other bodies; and
we’re constantly preening and looking in the mirror. And yet we’re
constantly dissatisfied with the body. The most beautiful person is
constantly dissatisfied.

So the Buddha’s not telling us that
the body is not beautiful and is not a cause for celebration and joy,
because the body is very beautiful and is a cause for celebration and
joy. But when we’re focused on gratification only, we’re only
thinking about the shapely limbs and beautiful hair and lips and the
shiny white teeth, and we’re pining away for these things. Escape
is to appreciate the whole body as it really is, in its true
magnificence. Most of the time, when the Buddha gives, as he does in
some of the texts here, his most drastic depictions of the danger in
sensuality, it’s because he’s talking to somebody who he knows is
so attached to the body or the sensual world that this person needs a
kind of shock therapy to get them out of it. That’s why there are
all these drastic depictions. Not because the Buddha’s saying “This
is how it is,” it’s the Buddha saying, “For you, I’d better
say this, because you need to hear this—maybe it will wake you up.”
So to be caught in a bleak and negative underestimation of the
world’s worth is just as bad as, or actually I think worse than, to
be caught in an overestimation. In both cases, we’re suffering.

The third section is “Properly
Appraising Objects of Attachment”—in other words, having a
balanced and objective view of objects of attachment. This text
begins with the monks encountering ascetics of other sects, and the
ascetics from the other sects say to the disciples of the Buddha:

The Buddha
describes the full understanding of sensual pleasures, and we do,
too. And the Buddha describes the full understanding of form (meaning
the body), and we do, too. And the Buddha describes the full
understanding of feeling, and we do, too.

So, in other words, “Just like you,
the disciples of Buddha, we also have been thinking about these
things for a long time and doing our spiritual cultivation. We have a
view of sensual pleasure and of the body and of the feelings—so
what’s the difference? In other words, we’re in the same
business, and you obviously do it differently than we do it. How do
you do it? What’s your view?”

There’s a footnote here which
explains that these other ascetics have developed very skillful
meditation practice. They have entered the jhanic states, states of
deep meditation, in which they purified the world, taking things that
have two sides and purifying them from their more negative coarse
sides. So the physical world in meditation states becomes wholly
pleasurable and refined, and you eliminate the gross dimensions of
it.

So these monastics, the non-followers
of the Buddha, have purified and refined their world, eliminating the
defilements, and they want to know, what’s the difference between
that and what the Buddha is teaching. Now from the point of view of
the Buddha, to purify the world and make it perfect and beautiful is
not a true escape—in other words to create a meditation Shangri La
of perfect peace and bliss is not really an escape, because you can’t
really and truly eliminate the negative and coarse aspects of life.
It’s only temporary. To eliminate them in meditation or create
special circumstances of perfection is no real escape. There is no
escape from seeing both the positive and negative sides of our life.
So the true escape is to be able to take in the good and the bad,
completely embracing both, and finding our comfort there, rather than
depending on a refined condition or refined circumstances, which
seems to eliminate the difficulties.

Then the Buddha teaches them what
gratification, danger, and escape are in the three areas of sensual
pleasure, the body, and feelings. In the case of sensual pleasure, he
says the gratification of sensual pleasure is the gratification of
the five “cords” of sensual pleasure, which are the five senses.

Now when pleasure
and joy arise dependent on these five cords of sensual pleasure,
that’s the gratification in the case of sensual pleasure. What’s
the danger, monks? Here, monks, on account of the craft by which a
clansman makes a living, whether checking, accounting, calculating,
farming, trading, husbandry, archery, the royal service or whatever
craft it may be, he has to face cold and heat; he is injured by
contact with gadflies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, creeping things. He
risks death by hunger and thirst.

This is the danger of sensual
pleasures, the other side of pleasure, that we’re just as capable
of feeling pain and discomfort. What else is the danger in sensual
pleasures in the material world?

If no property
comes to the clansman while he works and strives and makes an effort
thus, he sorrows, grieves, and laments. He weeps, beating his breast
and becoming distraught, crying, “My work is in vain! My effort is
fruitless!” [I’m working hard but I didn’t get anything, I
didn’t get enough money, so I’m miserable.]

So that’s also a problem with the
material world. You can get something, you can make a lot of money,
but you can also fail to make a lot of money, so then you’re really
upset. And suppose you are successful in making a lot of money or
gaining reputation or whatever it is you were after. Well, when you
gain it, you could lose it, and you become anxious, and you become
obsessed with protecting what you have.

If property does
come, he experiences pain and grief in protecting it. “How shall
neither kings nor thieves make off with my property, nor fire burn
it, nor water sweep it away, nor unloved heirs make off with it?”

“Unloved heirs” appears frequently
in these texts, so that must have been a real problem in ancient
India. I think it must have been commonplace in ancient India that
unloved heirs come after you are dead and fight with their siblings
to get something out of the estate. So in other words, if you are
successful, think of all the potential misery and anxiety. And even
if you’re not anxious, you could be creating enormous problems for
your heirs, the loved ones and the unloved ones.

Then you have the potential for many
problems: legal battles, suits and countersuits, fistfights, wars.
Then there is much detail about all the different body parts that can
be cut off with sharp swords over material desire and wealth and so
on. And we see this in our world as well. People are killing one
another, creating unbelievable carnage and mayhem that begins to have
its own energy and perpetuates itself beyond the initial intention,
due to people wanting to protect their property and their well-being.
So this is all the danger in worldly or sensual pleasures.

Another thing in seeking these sensual
pleasures or wealth is that you might become dishonest; you might
break precepts; you might become a sneaky, lying person. Then you
become dishonest to yourself, and you become divorced from your
heart, all because of the danger inherent in sensual pleasure and
success.

And what, monks, is
the escape in the case of sensual pleasures? It is the removal of
desire and lust, the abandonment of desire and lust for sensual
pleasures. This is the escape in the case of sensual pleasures.

When you read that, you think it might
be saying, “Oh no. So we’re supposed to completely give up
everything and have soy sauce for dinner every night. Never go to the
movies.” I don’t think it means that. The Buddha is not
advocating that we hate and despise the sensual world, the ordinary
world. He’s saying to give up the grasping, the lusting, the
obsession, the madly reaching and thirsting and grabbing. That’s
what we have to give up if we want to escape the dangers of the
ordinary world. Why don’t we just learn how to be more richly
present, so that we can receive what happens to come with some real
enjoyment, seeing it as it actually is, not just seeing merely our
own obsession, but seeing what’s actually there, thereby escaping
from all the afflictive emotions that are going to be arising, like
anxiety, guilt, violence, lust, greed, hatred. So it’s not running
away from the world, or having aversion to the world. It’s simply
stopping our obsession, stopping our greed and our grasping.

In the next section he talks about the
body. Noticing that the body, on the one hand, is beautiful and
gratifying, and on the other hand, has many difficult aspects to it,
including aging and death . And what’s the escape?

It is the removal
of desire and lust, the abandonment of desire and lust for form, for
the body. This is the escape in the case of form.

 

Then he talks about feelings. And what
is the gratification of feelings? When we purify the feelings through
meditation practice, we can have the arising of beautiful feelings
free from affliction.

And what’s the danger? Feelings are
impermanent. Feelings carry with them suffering because they’re
subject to change. So this is interesting. He doesn’t talk about
afflictive feelings; he’s talking about just the simple fact that
feelings change so easily. This is one of the great advantages to
practice on the cushion, that you sit there and see just how
constantly feelings are changing. So how do you remain, constant in
living when it dawns on you how unbelievably unreliable and
constantly shifting the feelings are? You know, we love in one
minute; we hate in the next; the next minute we’re totally
indifferent, even with people that we say we love. With regard to
practice, one minute we think it’s the greatest thing in the world
and we’re very enthusiastic, and the next minute we’re bored, and
the next minute we’re wondering why in the world did we ever get
mixed up with this!

How do you go forward? How do you get
through the day when you notice that the feelings are constantly
changing? The mood is like sunlight on the waters – the constant
rippling effect, never anything the same for two minutes in a row.
When you realize that you can’t base a life on your feelings
because they’re very unreliable, you have to base your life on your
intentions and your vows and your commitments. There is a certain
quality and strength of mind that we do begin to cultivate in
practice that gives us some inner strength. In other words, when
we’re confident in our intentions and our vows, we have the freedom
to pay attention to our feelings.

If we were staking our life on our
feelings, what would that do to us? That would make us afraid to look
at our feelings, because we might think, “Oh my god, what if I
don’t really feel what I think I feel? What if I don’t really
feel the way I’m depending on feeling? Better not go there. Better
not look and see.” So I’m unwilling to see, for example that I
really don’t like this career that I’m in. I don’t want to see
that, because what are the implications of that if I feel that way?
But if you actually look, you see that you do like it and you don’t
like it; and you don’t like it and you do like it both. It changes
every minute.

Since feelings are changing all the
time, even if you have talked yourself into the fact that you’re
miserable in a situation, the truth is sometimes you are, sometimes
you’re not, sometimes you totally forget about it, and you look up
and you see the sunset. We don’t need to be ruled by our feelings.
We need to be aware of them and honest about them, but we don’t
need to be afraid of them, because we know that we don’t have to be
at the mercy of them. And our feelings are so various. It’s much
worse not to face our feelings, not to know our feelings, than it is
to face them. Because when we don’t know our feelings, they become
more toxic and secret and unexamined. They become much more
entrenched, and we actually become afraid of them. Whereas, if we
allow ourselves the honesty and the mindfulness of looking, we see
that our feelings really don’t hurt us. That’s a whole point of
view that we develop over time with practice.