Category: towards Right View

 

the dearth of direct experience

In Advaita and pseudo-Buddhist circles much is made of something called Direct Experience, and its related activity of Direct Pointing.  This latter term bears an apparent relationship to the Zen notion of Direct Pointing to the Nature of Mind, but lacks Zen’s fey and ironic relationship with language and concepts.  It is presented quite humourlessly as the most direct path to Insight (more direct than vipassana meditation, even).  Direct Experience is so worthy of being ‘pointed out’ because it is undeniable and always available ‘in the moment’ – if you ‘see’ it or ‘have’ it, Insight is unavoidable, and therefore it is much to be prized.  But positing Direct Experience is rather like introducing The Unconscious – they are both symbolic terms which are taken as more ‘real’ than what can actually be experienced, and which disempower our current experience, rendering it weak or irrelevant somehow.

Within the Pali tradition we have the experience of the six sense-bases, and the notions of mindfulness and unmindfulness with regard to them.  More specifically within mindfulness, the lakśana of impermanence is the meditative gateway to the vimokkha of signlessness.  This can be summarily expressed as the meditative appreciation of the difference between tathatā and the constructed meanings that make up experiencing.  In the Perfection of Wisdom tradition, this is expanded into the sphere of activity of the bodhisattva, who has assimilated signlessness, and is (for example) directed to give gifts unsupported by any sort of sign or meaning.  Meanings are known to be purely notional and relative, and so nothing is thereby granted the actual or absolute existence which could disturb equanimity.  This is the highest mindfulness – alternatively, to be lost in our constructions and meanings (especially unintentionally) is to be unmindful.

Living beyond signs and meanings is a functional assimilation of the sphere of signlessness through a deep appreciation of the nature of experience.  Anything we call ‘experience’ is constructed within the dualistic delusion of ‘us’ ‘having’ an experience of ‘something’.  So Direct Experience is just another construct, involving in its wake a mass of views.  Even the present moment, that touchstone for ‘direct experience’ devotees, is not to be found (ask Nagarjuna) – it too is a construct.  If we insist that only present-moment experience is a correct basis for behaviour, we would become solipsistic and antinomian quite quickly.  We would give up our complex imputations of the existence of other people, as we do not directly experience them, and could simply do whatever felt ‘alright’.

In their most extreme form present-moment and direct-experience-based approaches maintain a belief that certain rare sequences or kinds of mental events are absolutely correlated with transitions between the four stages of the Insight path beloved of the Theravadin tradition (or with the snapping of the Fetters of delusion, if you are a member of the Church of the Ten Fetters).  This view owes much to the analysis of mental events that arose in the Abhidhamma, well after the Buddha’s passing.  However, it is interesting to see that even such a hard-nosed proponent of this approach as Daniel Ingram finds grounds to doubt its validity, even within the broader context of insisting upon it.  In his discussion of the difficulty of establishing fourth-path Insight (MCTB pp. 315-6 – ‘That there are arahats who have opened the wisdom-eye but had it fade and those who have opened it and had it stay open is rarely mentioned but worth knowing.’), and in his discussion of the phenomenon of Twelfth Path (MCTB pp. 289-90), Ingram acknowledges experiences which do not fit this model.  He (and the associated tradition) also neglects to explain why the completion of one’s second Cycle of Insight invariably mean that second Path is achieved, whereas nothing like this occurs later on the Path.  If we take Ingram’s experience seriously (and I suggest we do), these concerns suggest that the relevant sequences of mental events do not always have the significance (and effect) that they are believed to have.

 

ditching the light-switch fallacy

Indeed there are quite sound Dharmic reasons not to take any particular conditioned mental events (nor any phenomena, actually) as a correlate of the unconditioned.  When you put it this baldly, it rather speaks for itself.  However could one believe such a thing, unless it was smuggled in as an unquestioned assumption?  It is self-contradictory to regard the unconditioned as conditioned by the conditioned (or by anything else, for that matter!)  It is also worth saying that the opposite view, that there is no relationship between the two, is also suspect (and more complicated to refute, too, so I won’t!).  Perhaps there is a level beyond which one is blabbering on meaninglessly about the mysterious relationship between Samsara and Nibbāna, and the attempt becomes counter-productive.  Having done one’s necessarily limited best with the ordinary mind in terms of Right View, it becomes necessary to meditate in order to really see the Truth…. the ordinary dualities of language and conceptualisation cannot hold it.

The implication which Ingram does not draw, and which I will here, is that progress in vipassana is not correlated in any lock-step fashion with sequences of mental events, or with the rather looser formulation of any particular sort of experience, direct or otherwise.  If this link falls, then also the notion that irreversibility on the Insight path can be solely indicated by any particular conditioned phenomena also falls.  I will hereafter call this suspect lock-step view the light-switch approach to spiritual progress.  I would define it as the view that particular sequences of conditioned mental events are sufficient and necessary indicators of transitions between stages of the Insight path.  Holding to the light-switch fallacy is not the same as believing that certain kinds of practice and certain associated mental events might be relevant, or in the right territory.  I am not being absolute the other way (that would be a harder position to support than the one I am criticising!).

One can see how seductive (and even to a limited point useful) the light-switch model is.  One really wants to get one’s head straight, to know what to look for, and to be sure about when the realm of safety has been obtained…  The alternative is less easy to comprehend, and might initially seem to add to one’s confusions about the nature of existence.  But nevertheless, I will sketch out a different approach, which seems to me less subject to the flaws of the light-switch model, and which does better justice to the observable patterns of vipassana experience.

 

A progressive model of vipassana

In the famous simile of the Dharma as like unto the Ocean (in Udana 5.5) the Buddha points out that the Dharma offers a gradual progression to final gnosis, in the same way that the ocean gradually deepens from the shore.  At the shoreline, the pattern of the ocean’s movement is also very like the gradual progress of our being in Insight.  If we bring to mind the to-ing and fro-ing of the waves as the tide gradually encroaches on a sandy shore, we have a metaphor for progressive overall development within vipassana arising out of an ongoing and cyclic process.  More than this, we can distinguish an experiential difference in our practice in the two phases of flowing and retreating.  There is the passage through to the acceptance of a truth initially, which finally comes to full and unshakeable establishment; and then a process of assimilation which washes back and thoroughly soaks all the nooks and crannies of the territory that the wave was too urgent for initially, and had hurried past.  To change midstream to a gardening metaphor – it is like the difference between hacking one’s way through the undergrowth to the open vista on the other side, and then taking breath before turning back to clear the rest of the garden, now that you have the full measure of it.  This ebb-and-flow model seems to me much more true-to-life than the light-switch model; and as well it constantly requires you to question and deepen your experience through meditation, and is therefore much less susceptible to the various problems of false claims.  It does not require you to treat any conditioned phenomena as a sign of the irreversible absolute, and is in harmony with the Buddha’s teaching on the progressive nature of the Dharma.

I use a simile of ebb-and-flow, through and return, because these two aspects of vipassana practice are so salient and pervasive in practitioners’ experience.  Ingram’s Cycle of Insight (not his really!) can of course be assimilated to this model without any difficulty, though claims about the status of various cycle-completions can be set aside without harming the value of this harmonisation.  The first of these two phases, the through-phase, is obviously the deepening phase, with one’s faith changing from what is deeply intuited to what is incontrovertible within the (meditative) depths of one’s being.  Though one can mistake one’s horizon, there comes a point (usually meditative initially) of full arrival at an appreciation of a dharma-truth.  There is a sense of completion, after which begins the return-phase.

The latter phase usually involves the exploration of those aspects of one’s psyche which were left behind, feel unresolved, or were not obviously relevant until this new perspective arose.  One’s new viewpoint and trust lead to a questioning – if such-and-such is now the case, do I need to keep suffering with this, or still feel I need to hang on to that, or maintain a dependant allegiance to the other?  The predominant tone of the return phases though is that even when it is turbulent one’s fundamental faith cannot be questioned, simply because it is no longer controvertible (despite your best efforts!).  One can eat worms without doubt, perhaps even quite joyfully.  Indeed, one can meet very difficult previously unbearable aspects of one’s being without the old identification during the return-phase, and so now release them fully.  Being doubt-free in this regard, the work being done seems to have a kind of inevitability about it.  There is also no particular deepening of the Insight from the previous through-phase during such an assimilation process (though one may see more of the implications of that insight, and be able to express it more effectively to others).  Hence, the predominant tone of the through-phase is the establishment of Wisdom, whereas that of the return-phase is the activity of Compassion.

As an example of this process of through and return, take the appreciation that we are whole and entire in ourselves, and do not need another human being to complete us.  This latter is a plank of the Romantic myth that is so corrosive for practitioners, and the contrary appreciation of our wholeness is an aspect of the Dharmakaya.  It can be allied with the Vajrasattva Sadhana, though need not explicitly take that particular expression.  The process of moving towards our wholeness may require quite a lot of us, and have many phases before it is fundamentally established.  However, once it is incontrovertible, we will be less insecure and doubtful, and no longer be able to believe related insecurities as they arise thereafter.  Indeed, in not believing them, we will be much more inclined to go into the heart of our existential loneliness, as a compassionate non-believer in its absolute reality now.  The thoroughgoing lack of identification means we can fully experience and release this unhelpful old neediness, which in fact we had run from before.  Previously we had borne with it, largely acted it out, with perhaps some psychological insights into its aetiology and the consequences for our lives.  Wisdom enables us to move from adaptation and coping with what seems ineluctable, to the actual (compassionate) destruction of an asava.  These outflows do indeed poison the waters of our being if we do not purify them at source.

the purposes of saints

In the Theragatha (in Sariputta’s Chapter of the Thirties) it is said that the enlightened practitioner wishes neither to live nor to die.  This suggests a profound orientation to the Middle Way, in that the arahat is declared subject neither to bhāva-tanhā nor vibhāva-tanhā.  Our most immediate response on reading this though might not be to make such an observation, but rather to be shocked or at least disturbed.  How on earth would it be not to even wish to live or die?  What sort of meaning would our lives have, or what could our purposes be if we didn’t mind what happened?  Is not our sense of purpose bound up with living and dying?

This neutrality an arahat has about their continued existence thus not only challenges our ordinary wish to exist or continue, but also brings into question conclusions we may have come to previously about the purpose and meaning of our own existence, as these are often based in finding some value in staying alive.  Indeed we tend to struggle with meaning in situations in which our life is under threat, and both sets of concerns are operative together.  When we are living ‘under conditions that seem unpropitious’, such as chronic illness or a terminal diagnosis, we are either struggling with difficult circumstances (‘how can I be positive about wanting to remain alive, when it is so difficult?’), or are faced with meaninglessness upon our imminent demise (‘what is the significance of my individual existence, now that I am about to lose it?’).

This all motivates reflection upon the broader question of the purpose of our lives considered ideally (the topic indeed of spiritual practitioners and philosophers everywhere), when we are not taking into account particular difficulties such as serious illness: what is the meaning of our lives when we are not beset by trials and tribulations? What is the purpose of our lives that illness or death ‘goes against’?  What is it indeed that we are living for, that can be meaningful even in our time of dying?

As we come into adulthood, we established our identity and sense of meaning with some difficulty, if we managed it at all.  As we become established on the Path, these bases can be revealed by practice as all too fragile, and will begin to fall away within mindfulness.  It is important therefore to discuss a subsequent and new sense of meaning and purpose that does justice to our growing dependence on the Dharma, in order that we don’t fall between two stools as we quite appropriately lose faith in our old reliances.  Hopefully this can be more realistic than those old meanings which are uncomfortably dissolving, and cope better with the realities of old age, disease and death.  As an aid to shedding better light on these new purposes, and to help us to appreciate the arahat’s perspective that we began with more fully, I shall take some time to disavow some Mahayana platitudes which are often offered as fluffy answers to these perfectly serious concerns.

 

the purposes of ordinary beings

Ordinarily human beings want to feel connected, seen, loved, appreciated; part of a family or group which motivates them to function.  This is normally a somewhat small scale concern, even rather ‘us and them’, and doesn’t really acknowledge issues of mortality or the wider questions about our existence.  Even so, it is ridiculously strong in most people, and only an idiot would try to dismiss it prematurely, or ‘in one go’, so to speak.  People are often primarily concerned about the promotion of kindness in this family or local or social sphere, and even nominal Buddhists can see the bodhisattva as someone who simply universalises this behaviour as it is experienced in the everyday.  Without the addition of some real wisdom though, this is very unlikely to happen – kindness as such cannot save you, in the nibbānic sense.  Indeed, one can think one is in the way of becoming a bodhisattva through this mere extension of ordinary kindness (which is of course so valuable in human terms), but not essentially be going anywhere different from one’s pre-Buddhist days.  One can essentially still be that which is subject to death pursuing that which is subject to death, as it is so baldly put in the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, while falsely believing that one is pursuing the deathless.  If such kindness is the sum of one’s concerns, one might as well save one’s-self some trouble and become a humanist.

The Karaniya Metta Sutta (SN 1:8) might seem at first glance to be about just this easy extension of kindness; but a closer look at the text shows that the mother of an only child is an example of single-minded and continuous protective intention, rather than of ideal love.  We need to cultivate a boundless mind with the same energy we normally put into family pursuits in order to obtain nibbāna – it needs to matter that much to us.  True enough – and an appealing example of the double-take that the Buddha often used as a teaching method.

            As a mother would risk her life

            to protect her child, her only child,

            even so should one cultivate a limitless heart

            with regard to all beings.

 

 

Applying common-sense to kindness

This idolising of kindness is apparent in the old pseudo-Mahayana debate about the nature of the Pratyeka Buddha.  Pacé the Mahayanists, a bodhisattva is by definition less spiritually mature than any sort of Buddha, even the lowly pratyeka buddha.  Still believing rather too much in beings on their own terms, still perhaps conflating the activities of kindness with the specific offering of nibbāna which is the Buddha’s special purview.  The myth of the shattering of Avilokiteshvara is endlessly relevant.  One often has the impression of a subtext – that the bodhisattva is worthier of worship because they are so kind.  The pratyeka buddha is downgraded as ‘selfish’ – they must somehow be lesser than the bodhisattva, even if this isn’t stated formally or explicitly.

If however we make the common-sense assumption that anyone established in śunyatā would want to find ways of offering the path of freedom to others, we can dismiss as some kind of crude misconstruction the notion that a pratyeka buddha is unwilling to teach in any shape or form – and is therefore ‘selfish’.  Looking more deeply suggests to me that pratyeka buddhas are in this respect made by circumstance; a buddha that is prevented by their culture or circumstance from teaching.  It is indeed quite possible that this situation might occur within what is nominally a buddhist Order.  Confusion with regard to Right View can combine with the reactionary forces of the group; if nothing current occurs to you, then think of Hui Neng.  Not a selfish buddha taking himself off, but an enlightened being forced into exile and silence temporarily, even within a culture you might think would be appreciative.

The same circumstance which could render an insightful being mute would also be relevant to a consideration of the other traditional characteristic of a pratyeka buddha – that they are enlightened without the help of a buddha.  I would imagine that this, in such a simple form, is quite rare.  It seems much more likely that this is really about the cultivation of Insight without clear guidance or the support of a personal teacher.  Traditionally personal guidance is central to one’s spiritual development – this is so important, and yet so easily glossed over if it is not part of one’s experience.  An information-based culture such as we have now in the West has made this mistake with the Dharma as it has come across to us from the East.  If the necessary apprentice-based approach is diluted or lost, even within a nominally buddhist culture, one can be effectively going it alone – trying to find one’s way through the morass of personal experience with whatever one can make of the traditional teaching. [thanks to Aparimana for pointing out the importance of the apprentice-based approach in an article of his]  This is naturally far more difficult, and less likely to be effective, and even if successful likely to be a mixed blessing when it came to actually passing on the fruits of practice.

This mixed blessing is partly because, although one has the vivid proof of one’s practice, one is by definition working with an ineffective tradition.  One would not wish to pass on a tradition that is clearly ineffective, and so has to do one’s best within or around that.  This may be difficult if one’s interest or skill in teaching is lacking, or if you struggle for other reasons to articulate your profound experience effectively.  It may be difficult to be taken seriously if you are even implicitly criticising the tradition you are at least nominally a member of.  You may also not be perfectly patient.

 

everyday bodhicitta

If the motive of kindness has become rather mixed up in the discussions of both pratyeka buddhas and bodhisattvas in these ways, it is worth considering what a more correct understanding of the motives of Enlightened beings would be, as well as of those who are yet to complete the Path.

It is only common sense that one can only genuinely offer what one actually knows for one’s-self.  A bodhisattva simply cannot offer nibbāna, as they do not appreciate it or its fruits yet – something in them is as yet unready and unwilling.  The notion of continually teaching beyond one’s practice is not really a sustainable position, except imaginatively or ‘magically’ – it is not honest or straightforward.  Of course, one may ‘teach’ the Path in a more intellectual or suppositional way (which is what we would normally mean by teaching, in a non-Buddhist culture), but this will not do for the personal guidance which would actually count here.  This all being the case, the everyday bodhisattva needs therefore be motivated to move toward nibbāna for themselves and so others, and in that order.  If they tell us that it does not matter whether they themselves become free from suffering, and that they only wish to consider the suffering of others, why would it even matter whether others were freed from that same suffering?  And this is setting aside their as yet imperfect grasp of the end of suffering that they are nominally offering…  It can all sound quite sweet – but on closer investigation looks rather shallow, or even a bit pathological.

Part of the delusive mind-set that can be found in the motivations of poetic followers of the bodhisattva path is the ‘inspiring’ notion that one should and could convert all beings to the Dharma.  It is going to be difficult to do this when one’s appreciation of the Dharma is still limited, even assuming a massive range of skills and an unthinkable amount of control over conditionality; but more, there is an unwise misapplication of energies in the assumption that the Dharma is in any realistic sense for everybody.  Many are far from the Dharma, even if they of course have the equipment for it in principle; many are not willing to undergo the path and the difficulties that are involved, or have even the faintest belief that it would be of relevance to their concerns.  Have you ever met my family ;-(?  How about a militant fundamentalist?  For some indeed, enforced pursuit of the Path might lead to some kind of breakdown, or unmanageable suffering, such that they are better off pursuing their previous way of life for now, which keeps things manageable for the time being.  It is arrogant to insist upon these ideas, and suggests a kind of groupish insecurity.  One can reasonably undertake to do the best one can in whatever circumstances present, and this becomes increasingly possible as one’s kleśas are purified – indeed, if everyone was to do just this, we’d all be fine – but one doesn’t need to make such a song-and-dance about ‘saving all beings’, as the shadow of Samsara still looms large even so.

So, the common-sense of the bodhisattva on the Path will motivate them to protect their life in order to follow through to nibbāna, so they can be a guide to it for others.  There is inevitably something of bhāva-tanhā in that motivation.  With Enlightenment though, the purposes are no longer the same, and that motivation is gone.  There is after this point perhaps some deepening of non-communicable wisdom, some further assimilation – but the bonds of Samsara are broken, and the fruits of this victory are constantly available.  What is left as a motivation for life, is that one is required to offer the path to nibbāna – those that can genuinely do this are few indeed.  This is the only thing left that has sufficient meaning, as one is no longer fundamentally motivated to live for one’s-self.  No longer living for one’s-self is perhaps a difficult enough adjustment for such a practitioner to make, even if it arises gradually, but it will be particularly so in a culture in which they cannot easily express their vision, or find a way of being adequately useful.

Perhaps we can hope in future for a genuine tradition and Order as at the time of the Buddha.  Younger practitioners would not be ordained without the effective personal support they needed in order to negotiate the difficulties of Samsara, and thus progress more speedily and less painfully.  The grasp of the true nature of the Dharma amongst the senior-most would be thorough enough, that new expressions by less established practitioners would be neither confusing nor threatening to them.  Enlightened practitioners would take their place as exemplars and teachers quite naturally, each finding the particular aspect of the Dharma that their skills qualify them to offer most effectively.  This would be a Sangha proper, a real jewel.