When the body is suffused with easeful breath energy, we experience pleasure. This is the skillful internal pleasure that we seek to cultivate in following the Buddha’s middle path. The quality of physical ease (piti) gives rise to the mental quality of pleasure (sukkha). The body conditions the mind. The easeful breath energy, flowing throughout the body, conditions the arising of pleasure. 

In practicing mindfulness of breathing, we learn to develop our skill in an effort to strengthen and deepen the qualities of inner ease and pleasure. 

As we practice developing pleasurable abiding in the body, as we attempt to keep the mind on the enlarged field of the body, we often notice that we begin to lose energy at some point during the process. In practicing spreading, we expend a certain amount of energy, and eventually our energy level begins to decrease. In turn, our ability to keep the mind on the body may begin to diminish. We may notice, as this occurs, that the mind begins to wander. We may notice that we’re chasing after thoughts. When our energy begins to lessen, it’s usually a good idea to move our focus back to the one point, the spot at which we were feeling the breath. We return, if you will, to our home base. 

Now, using directed thought, we keep the mind on the one point. 

We may notice, after returning to a one-pointed focus, that the breath is quite easeful, more easeful than before. At this juncture, after having spread the breath energy through the body, we may find that the breath is quite refined, fine, soft, quiet. It may be very pleasant. 

We may notice that the breath—the in-breath and the out-breath—is rather short. After spreading the breath throughout the body, we don’t need to take in so much air. 

As we’re mindful of the breath, we might have a background awareness of the body; we may notice that the body is pervaded with ease. The body, at this stage, may be exceptionally easeful; it may feel very light, soft. 

After keeping the mind on the breath at the one point for some time, we may then decide to once again enlarge our awareness, making the full body the object of our mindfulness. Now, as we maintain a full body awareness and allow the breath energy to spread, pervade the body—perhaps, at this stage, we’re practicing whole body breathing—we may experience an increased concentration. That is to say, the qualities of jhana may now be more developed. The breath energy, flowing through the body, may be very smooth, easeful. There may be an even stronger quality of pleasure. The mind, given the level of pleasure, may be rather content to remain right where it is, in the body. Our interest in thinking may be negligible. Our concern about the subjects of our lives, our relationships, jobs, etc., may be minimal, perhaps non-existent. 

The Buddha describes it like this: 

There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture & pleasure born from seclusion. And as he remains thus heedful, ardent, & resolute, any memories & resolves related to the household life are abandoned, and with their abandoning his mind gathers & settles inwardly, grows unified & centered. (MN 119) 

The process of breath meditation often develops in this manner. There are many variations on the theme, but the practice, using the nomenclature of the steps, often goes something like: 1, 2, 3, 1,2 3, etc. 

It’s sometimes said—admittedly it’s an inelegant analogy—that we make money at the breath, spend it in the body; then, after we’ve spent the money, we go back to the breath, make some more money, then we go back to the body and spend it, and so on. 

As we develop our skill, we learn to become more and more adept in working with the breath energy. An important aspect of the skill, in cultivating inner pleasure, is to learn to adjust the level of the energy. It’s altogether possible, as we practice developing pleasant abiding in the body, that the energy coursing through the body may become too strong. In fact, the breath energy can become very strong. Sometimes the energy may begin to move quite rapidly, with excessive force. The energy may become jagged, rough. When the energy becomes too strong, it may be unpleasant. 

In developing our skill, we learn to adjust the energy when it becomes too strong. We learn to soften the energy. Generally, this is accomplished, quite simply, by inclining the mind; we use internal fabrication, we tell ourselves to soften the energy. We adjust the energy, using intention, in the same way that we turn a dimmer switch to adjust the brightness of an electric light. 

What we often find, as we spread breath energy, is that the energy becomes just a bit too strong. In these instances, we make just a slight adjustment. We soften the energy a fraction. We turn the dimmer switch just slightly. 

Often what’s required is a small adjustment, in order to bring the energy to precisely the right level. 

In adjusting breath energy, we look to find the level of energy that’s most pleasurable. When the flow of the breath energy is “just right,” the experience of the body becomes extremely pleasant. Pleasure flourishes. 

As we learn to develop a pleasant abiding in the body, we may spend an amount of time, in any period of meditation, simply residing in this pleasant abiding. Residing there, we feed on the qualities of ease and pleasure. We allow ourselves to take in these pleasant qualities. We feast on pleasure. We notice the desire to get up from the table, to leave aside the good food of ease and pleasure, to move on to something else, but we put that desire to the side. We resist the temptation, so prevalent in our in-a-hurry culture, to move on to the next thing. We may perhaps notice, as we feed on pleasure, a voice in the mind telling us that this is something we shouldn’t be doing, that we’re doing something wrong, that it’s wrong to take in pleasure; but we recognize these voices, we realize they’re spouting misconceptions, we don’t give in to them. We remember the value in staying where we are, in cultivating internal pleasure. We remember that in feeding on this wholesome pleasure we’re acting in tune with the dharma, we’re following the path the Buddha laid out. 

Often, as the meditation goes on, we choose to be mindful of both the breath and the body at the same time. At this stage, our awareness comprises a foreground and background. One object, either the breath or body, is in the foreground; the other is in the background. We may have a clear sense of the breath fueling the body with breath energy. The breath energy, we may notice, is soft, light, like a gentle rain. The sensations may be very, very pleasant. 

Maintaining this pleasant abiding, we allow ourselves to absorb the pleasant sensations. We notice the quality of pleasure; we note it: “Pleasure.” We allow ourselves to enjoy the pleasure. 

As we put time and effort into our practice, as we cultivate the qualities of jhana, the qualities of ease and pleasure “accumulate” in the body. Little by slowly, we absorb these qualities; they become part of our ongoing experience of the body. In the same way that the food we eat at breakfast—the oatmeal and bananas—is assimilated by the body and becomes part of the body’s physical structure, the qualities of ease and pleasure that we cultivate in meditation remain, to some extent, in the body. 

The more we cultivate the jhana qualities, the more we experience the easeful, pleasurable sensations, the deeper the qualities of ease and pleasure absorb into us. And, accordingly, they become more and more available to us, in all postures, throughout our days and nights. As the Buddha notes, this is a mark of jhana: we’re able at all times to access the qualities of ease and pleasure. In cultivating skillful internal pleasure, this is an important goal: to be able to develop a pleasant abiding in the body that is available to us as we engage in the activities of our lives. 

As we become skilled in mindfulness of breathing, we learn to feed on the qualities of ease and pleasure so that, gradually, we embody these qualities. We keep at it, we develop our meditation, so that the quality of skillful internal pleasure will continue to nourish us, as we move through life. 

The quality of skillful internal pleasure, we learn, is “good food.” It is the food that will sustain us, support us, as we meet the vicissitudes of life. It is the good food that will strengthen us, in our efforts to end our suffering and find true happiness in this life. 

As the Buddha said: 

How very happily we live, we who have nothing. We will feed on rapture like the Radiant gods. (Dhp 200) 

♦

Excerpted from Skillful Pleasure: The Buddha’s Path for Developing Skillful Pleasure © 2020 by Peter Doobinin 

The post How to Experience Pleasure in Meditation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In the Abhaya Sutta (Fearless Sutta), the Buddha explains how we transcend the fear of death. When we fear death, we’re likely to suffer in this human life. On the other hand, when we’re able to move beyond the fear of death, we’re greatly served in our efforts to know happiness in life.

 At the sutta’s outset, the Buddha is visited by a brahman by the name of Janussoni. Janussoni tells the Buddha that it’s his opinion that everybody is afraid of death. The Buddha disagrees. Some people are, indeed, afraid of death, the Buddha says. Others, he says, are not.

The Buddha describes four types of people who will, invariably, be afflicted by the fear of death. First is the person “who has not abandoned passion, desire, fondness, thirst, fever, & craving for sensuality.” When the Buddha speaks about sensuality, he’s referring to the composite of actions, thinking, narratives, and self-identification that is involved in grasping after the pleasures of the world. When we spend our lives seeking sense pleasure—food, sex, entertainment, the instant gratification that technology offers—then we’re bound to grow fearful as we approach death, realizing that we’ll no longer be able to indulge in these worldly affairs.

Second, the person “who has not abandoned passion, desire, fondness, thirst, fever, & craving for the body” will fear death. The attachment to the body is something that most of us suffer to a rather large extent. We’re dependent on the body—how it feels, how it functions, what it looks like—for our happiness. We identify with the body; we believe that the body is “ours” to own or that it is who we are. So when death approaches, those of us who cling to the body are apt to experience the terror of losing it.
The third person who fears death “has not done what is good, has not done what is skillful, has not given protection to those in fear, and instead has done what is evil, savage, & cruel.” The Buddha calls actions unskillful when they cause harm to others and ourselves. Unskillful actions are imbued with desire and aversion and bring about suffering. So the person who hasn’t acted skillfully becomes fearful as he considers the unpleasant “destination” he’ll go to after he dies. We also may be stricken with remorse or fear that we haven’t made the most of our human life. We may become anxious about leaving behind an unfortunate legacy.

Lastly, the Buddha speaks about the person “in doubt & perplexity, who has not arrived at certainty with regard to the True Dhamma.” Having failed to practice the dharma and discern the truths of the Buddha’s path, this person is likely to experience the fear of death in the face of the unknown.

In the next part of the sutta, the Buddha describes the four kinds of people who do not fear death. First, there’s the person “who has abandoned passion, desire, fondness, thirst, fever, & craving for sensuality.” The dharma student learns to relinquish her “craving for sensuality” by seeing the drawbacks in her craving, seeing that looking for happiness in sense pleasure brings about suffering. She learns to see that all the pleasures of the world—the lovely sunsets, the ice cream, the images on the computer screen, the streaming movies—are decidedly impermanent. When we see their inconsequential and ephemeral nature, we lose interest in them. Having developed this wisdom, we’re no longer afraid of losing these pleasurable things.

Related: What Does It Look Like To Die Well? 

Likewise, the second type of fearless person learns to become disenchanted with the body. The dharma student investigates the body and comes to understand that it is impermanent, or inconstant. She realizes that she does not own the body and that it is, in large part, beyond her control. By conducting an ongoing study of the body, she cultivates this insight, lets go of her attachment to the body and is freed from her fear of losing it.

In laying out the third case, the Buddha suggests that person who has lived a skillful life is not afraid when death approaches. Having refrained from taking harmful actions, the dharma student isn’t afraid of ending up, after death, in an unfavorable “destination.” She doesn’t suffer the remorse and compunction of having lived in an unskillful manner informed by desire and aversion. She knows that, when it’s time to leave this earthly plane, she will have left behind beneficial gifts. Simply put, she has lived well, so when death comes her heart is filled with love, compassion, joy, and peace.

The last case is the person “who has no doubt or perplexity, who has arrived at certainty with regard to the True Dhamma.” When we understand the dharma and comprehend the truth, we’re able to transcend the fear of death. As dharma students develop virtue, concentration, and insight, we come to see that all conditioned experience is impermanent. It’s not-self. It’s not ours. The various sense pleasures, the body, thoughts, and emotions—including fear itself—are conditioned things and are subject to birth and death. Knowing this, truly, in the heart, we no longer attempt to hold on to these facets of human experience because we know they can’t be held onto. And we stop expecting to find true happiness in things that, by their nature, come and go.

Wisdom manifests, ultimately, in understanding that which is not impermanent, an ever-present truth (Thai, akaliko) that doesn’t die because it transcends time and space. This deathless quality is called nibbana (nirvana). The deathless isn’t only an object of faith; the dharma student is asked to know it as the third noble truth, the realization of cessation.

Related: How to Write a Living Will 

Mindfulness of death is one of the most important practices we can engage in to know the deathless. As the Buddha says, “Mindfulness of death—when developed & pursued—is of great fruit & great benefit. It gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its final end.” (AN 6.20) At first, we may glimpse moments of the deathless. As Insight teacher Joseph Goldstein says, “small moments, many times.” The Buddha rarely described this experience specifically, but it can be understood as a consciousness that doesn’t land on any objects, a “consciousness without feature.” (DN 11) And when we finally know this truth that transcends death, we can fully abandon our fear, because we know that there is a true unconditional happiness: nibbana—a happiness that doesn’t die.

The post Sutta Study: Fearless appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In The Hawk (Sakunagghi Sutta), the Buddha offers a compelling parable to illustrate the importance of practicing right mindfulness. The Buddha didn’t simply teach mindfulness. He taught right mindfulness. In practicing right mindfulness, the dharma student makes an effort to keep her mind on specific objects: the four foundations of mindfulness (or the four establishings of mindfulness, according to Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation). If we’re able to do so, we’ll move toward a true happiness in our lives. But if we don’t keep the mind in these places, the Buddha teaches, we’ll be bound to suffer.

The Buddha makes this point by telling the story of a quail who lives in a field with “clumps of dirt all turned up.” As long as she remains in this field, her “proper range,” she’s safe from predators, including the hawk. One day, however, the quail wanders outside the field, and, sure enough, the hawk swoops down and captures her. The quail laments her “bad luck,” remarking that if she’d stayed in the field of turned up dirt, the hawk “would have been no match for me in battle.” The hawk disagrees, and, to make his point, he deposits the quail back in the field. The hawk circles and swoops down. The quail, in turn, conceals herself behind a large clump of earth. And, sure enough, the hawk smashes into the dirt and dies.

The moral of the story is that we shouldn’t wander into what isn’t our “proper range.” The Buddha tells us: “In one who wanders into what is not his proper range and is the territory of others, Mara gains an opening, Mara gains a foothold.” Mara, in Buddhist lore, is the personification of unskillful qualities: desire, aversion, and delusion.

The Buddha goes on to say that the five strings of sensuality are “not your proper range.” Sensuality in this context refers to the grasping after sense pleasure. The sense experiences that the mind registers as “agreeable, pleasing, charming, endearing, enticing,” the Buddha indicates, are “linked to sensual desire.” In other words, it’s our tendency to crave these experiences, to chase after them, to want to hold on to them. 

The strings that hang from the five sense pleasures represent their “clingable” nature. It’s as if these pleasurable experiences have strings attached to them; and our tendency is to grasp after these strings. 

This is an important point. In the Buddha’s teachings, sensuality is not the pleasurable experience; it’s the grasping after the experience. Our problem is found in the way we relate to this experience, in our desire. The Buddha says:

The passion for his resolves is a man’s sensuality,
not the beautiful sensual pleasures
found in the world.
The passion for his resolves is a man’s sensuality.
The beauties remain as they are in the world,
while the wise, in this regard,
subdue their desire.
(AN 6.63)

Our happiness, the Buddha teaches, depends on what we do with our minds. 

It’s up to the dharma student to examine her relationship to sense pleasure. What is she doing with her mind? Does she let her mind wander off, outside its “proper range?” Does she put herself in a position in which she’s likely to grasp after the strings of sensuality? Does she let her mind become preoccupied with certain sense pleasures? What are the consequences? Is she going into dangerous territory? Is she putting herself at the mercy of the hawk? 

Nowadays, of course, the different technological forms provide much of the sense pleasure that we’re apt to indulge in: the television, computer, laptop, smartphone, and so on. The Internet offers a vast array of pleasurable experience, all manner of images, movies, music, words, delivered at a moment’s notice, wherever we are. These technologies provide all kinds of ways to wander outside our “proper range” and into the “territory of others.”

When we wander outside our proper range, “Mara gains an opening.” We suffer. We become caught up in desire and aversion—wanting the various sense pleasures, displeased and dissatisfied when we don’t have what we want. We don’t live in the present moment. And, accordingly, we’re liable to act in unskillful fashion. We find ourselves cut off from the heart. 

The dharma student’s proper range is the four establishings of mindfulness: the body, the feeling tone of the body, mind states, and various mental qualities. This is where the dharma student is asked to put her mind. It all begins with the body. First and foremost, in practicing right mindfulness, we learn to keep the mind on the body by putting our focus on the breath. 

The body is our proper range. During his 45 years of teaching the dharma, the Buddha was very clear about this. If we can learn to keep the mind on the body, he said, we’ll find freedom from suffering, we’ll be able to know true happiness. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says:

They awaken, always wide awake:
Gotama’s disciples
whose mindfulness, both day & night,
is constantly immersed
in the body.
(Dhp. 299)

The dharma student, following the Buddha’s instructions for right mindfulness, makes a wholehearted effort to keep her mind on her body. She doesn’t let her awareness go wherever it pleases. She’s proactive in her efforts to keep her mind on the breath and body. Her efforts are purposeful because she wants to avoid suffering and she wants true happiness. She’s aligned with her purpose—and motivated, as the sutta infers, by a sense of urgency—as she remains mindful of the breath and body. As the Buddha notes, the dharma student, practicing right mindfulness, is “ardent, alert, & mindful.” In maintaining alertness, the dharma student notices when she begins to wander outside of her proper range. She recognizes the movement in her mind suggesting that she should pick up the smartphone to check her emails, for example.The dharma student is ardent and makes a wholehearted effort to keep her mind in her “ancestral territory.” She stays with the body and the other establishings of mindfulness and doesn’t give in to her inclinations to grasp after sense pleasure, to succumb to Mara.

In offering the parable of the hawk and the quail, the Buddha is making an emphatic point. We should keep our mind in good places; we shouldn’t let it go wherever it would like to go. As the Buddha explains, there’s danger in wandering outside our proper range. The Thai ajahns [teachers] often talk about the danger involved in putting our mind in problematic places. We don’t typically hear Western dharma teachers use strong words like “danger” in describing the consequences of having an untrained mind. But to be certain, there is significant danger in not taking care of the mind, in craving, in grasping after sense pleasure. The danger, of course, is not physical, but mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. 

If we wander outside our proper range, we’ll suffer. On the other hand, if we remain in our proper range, if we practice right mindfulness, if we keep the mind on the body, we’ll come to know true happiness in this life.

The post Sutta Study: The Hawk  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In the Gilana Sutta, the Buddha gives a concise teaching about the impermanent nature of human experience. As the sutta begins, a monk comes to the Buddha and tells him that another monk is gravely ill. The ailing monk, it seems, has been recently ordained and is “not well known.” The Buddha immediately goes to see the monk. (It’s worth noting the Buddha’s compassion and his willingness to spend time with a newcomer. The Buddha wasn’t a teacher who put himself on a pedestal or reserved his attention for a select few.)

At the start of his visit, the Buddha tells the monk that he hopes he’s feeling better. But the monk responds that, no, unfortunately he is not; to the contrary, his “extreme pains are increasing.” The Buddha then says, “I hope you have no anxiety, monk. I hope you have no remorse.” Here, the Buddha is referring to one of the tenets of his teaching: if we don’t develop virtue—if we don’t make an effort to refrain from harmful actions—then, when we’re dying, we’ll be plagued by feelings of anxiety, remorse, and fear.

However, the monk replies that he does have these feelings—and “not a small amount” of them. So the Buddha follows up, “I hope you can’t fault yourself with regard to your virtue.” Yes, the monk reports that he has, in fact, been able to develop virtue.

If that’s so, the Buddha asks, “What are you anxious about? What is your remorse?” The monk answers that the Buddha did not teach that virtue is the goal of the path, but rather that followers of the dharma should seek the “fading of passion”—to which the Buddha replies, “Good, good, monk.”

This exchange is especially poignant because it demonstrates the attitude that the dharma student seeks to develop. The Buddha’s path requires ardency and enthusiasm; it requires that we have a goal in mind and an abiding wish to reach it. The monk is emblematic of that enthusiasm, for, even in his gravely ill state, he is concerned only that he may not reach that goal.

So the Buddha provides a teaching to help lead the monk toward his goal, the “fading of passion.” In this context, “passion” refers to a quality of wanting or craving. This wanting is painful. It evolves, in the Buddha’s schema, into suffering, and it manifests when we’re in conflict with the way things are. The Buddha often describes how we want things to be different when we’re “joined with what is displeasing” and “separated from what is pleasing.”

The Buddha begins by asking the monk to consider the experiences of his six sense bases: the eye, ear, nose, mouth, body, and intellect. The experience of the senses comprises our conditioned experience as human beings. The Buddha asks the monk to reflect, in a step-by-step manner, on each of the sense bases. He begins with the eye. He asks: “Is the eye constant or inconstant?” (Inconstant is Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation of the Pali word anicca, which is often translated as impermanent.) Human experience, the Buddha’s teachings suggest, is inconstant. It arises, changes, passes—always in an ongoing state of flux. Nothing lasts long. Nothing lasts, period.

Related: Death Awareness Practice

The monk acknowledges the inconstant nature of the eye, and then the Buddha asks, “Is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?” The monk realizes that inconstant experience is inherently stressful. It can’t be depended on, and if we do rely on the experience of the senses to be a certain way, then we’re bound to suffer. The lovely image of the sunset passes. The beautiful flowers rot and now smell terrible. The warm sensations in the body on a spring evening turn to an unpleasant chill when the sun goes down.  Because sense experiences are inconstant, they are unreliable, unpredictable, and unsatisfactory; they can’t bring a lasting happiness.

Next, the Buddha asks: “Is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: ‘This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am?’” This question points us toward the realization that  since sense experience is inconstant, it is “not-self” In other words, it is not ours; we don’t own it. The experiences of the senses—painful sensations in the body when we’re ill, emotions that arise throughout the day—come and go unbidden. They arise out of conditions. Each of the experiences of the eye, ear, nose, mouth, body, and intellect, is simply part of a play of phenomena, coming, changing, and going. In developing the insight into the fundamental Buddhist teaching of not-self [anatta], the Buddha said we should put aside the question of is there a self? Instead, we should ask the question posed here: Is there a self to be found in the experience of the eye, the ear, and so forth. In the sutta, the ill monk understands that each of the experiences of his senses is not-self, and likewise, so should we. None of it belongs to us. None of it is a fixed part of what we are.

The Buddha often gave the seminal teachings on inconstancy and not-self to people who were ill and/or dying. The teaching is especially powerful in these instances. When the body is afflicted we’re able to see with greater clarity into the truth of our human condition—that the body and mind are inconstant, stressful, and not-self. The evidence is right there. As dharma students, when confronted with illness, aging, and death, we can take the opportunity to look closely at this truth and to develop insight. But if we’re going to make this sort of exploration, we need to have a grounding in virtue and concentration.

As the Buddha explains, when we understand the inconstant, stressful, and not-self nature of the six sense bases, we become “disenchanted” with these components of body and mind. Disenchantment is the first expression of insight. As disenchantment develops, we put less emphasis on the various sense experiences—the sight of the first snowfall, the aching sensations in the body, the feelings of anxiety—and we begin to look for happiness elsewhere. We begin to look for a greater happiness that transcends birth and death—a true happiness. We might think the “fading of passion” will lead to a passive existence, a helpless abdication to the conditions of our life. But that’s a misconception. The fading of passion enables us to find a happiness that our wanting prevents us from knowing. In letting go of wanting conditioned things to be a certain way, the dharma student begins to look for an unconditioned happiness: the happiness of the heart.

Disenchantment leads to dispassion, when passion has faded completely. When we have no more interest in wanting the experiences of body and mind to accord with our desires, we are released from the suffering that comes from that craving—and we are free.

As the Buddha engaged the monk in this inquiry, the sutta tells us, “there arose for the monk the dustless, stainless Dhamma [dharma] eye.…” The arising of the dharma eye marks the attainment of “stream entry,” the first stage of awakening. When the dharma eye is established, we see clearly into the inconstant or impermanent nature of experience. We know, fully, that, “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.” We see everything through this lens.

As dharma students, our task is to develop this way of seeing, this dharma eye. Although we may not become stream-enterers, we can learn to perceive our experience of body and mind in this way. We can learn to ask the questions. We can look, see, and understand. As we practice this way of seeing, we come to know the “fading of passion.” We come to know a greater happiness, the happiness that lays beyond impermanent things.

♦

Peter Doobinin’s previous sutta studies take a look at the Thana Sutta, Yoga Sutta, Nava Sutta, Lokavipatti Sutta, Cunda Sutta, Samadhanga Sutta, and Nissaraniya Sutta.

The post Sutta Study: Ill appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This article is part of Trike Daily’s Sutta Study series, led by Insight meditation teacher Peter Doobinin. The suttas, found in the Pali Canon, comprise the discourses the historical Buddha gave during his 45 years of teaching. Rather than philosophical tracts, the suttas are a map for dharma practice. In this series, we’ll focus on the practical application of the teachings in our day-to-day lives.

In the Leading to Escape sutta (Nissaraniya Sutta), the Buddha describes five elements of training the mind, saying, “These five properties lead to escape.” When we become developed in these five aspects through mental training—which releases us from clinging to sensuality, ill will, harmfulness, forms, and self-identification—we can find freedom from suffering.

The first training entails finding an escape from sensuality, which we accomplish by cultivating a disenchantment with it. Here, sensuality refers to the pursuit of sense pleasure. It’s important to understand that the Buddha isn’t teaching us to find escape from sense pleasure in and of itself, but rather from the manner in which we chase after and crave it. We train the mind so that it “doesn’t leap up at sensuality” and sees the benefits of renunciation instead.

We cultivate disenchantment through the skill of heedfulness, which we practice by paying attention to our actions (see the Course of Action Sutta). We look closely at what we’re doing, what our experience is like, and what the consequences of our actions are when we engage in the pursuit of sense pleasure. We examine our actions when we’re craving delicious food. We investigate our experience when we’re watching television, Netflix, YouTube, and so on. We study the body and mind when we’re fixated on our smartphones.

While observing our actions, we look to see whether they are leading to suffering or to true happiness. Is it skillful to be planted in front of the computer screen, scrolling the Internet for hours on end? Is it useful? Is it in our best interests?

The Buddha describes what it’s like when we become “dis-joined” from sensuality. We’re released from the effluents (see the Ship sutta). That is to say, we don’t get carried away by currents of thinking pertaining to our sense pleasures. We don’t engage in narratives about how we’re going to procure them, what it’s going to be like when we do, or what it felt like when we indulged in them in the past. We’re released, the Buddha says, from the “torments” and “fevers” that accompany these desires.

It is interesting to note that the Buddha says the released dharma student “does not experience that feeling” of torment. Likewise, we are asked to understand our experience on a felt level. Insight—meaning the insight that will lead to an end to suffering—occurs when our understanding transcends intellectual understanding. In cultivating disenchantment with sensuality, we’re asked to know on a felt level what it is like when we’re grasping after sense pleasure, and, equally, we’re asked to discern the feeling that accompanies the letting go of sense pleasure.

The second facet of mental training involves the cultivation of disenchantment with ill will. Ill will encompasses a range of mind states, including aversion, anger, resentment, malice, and hatred. Practicing heedfulness, we look at our actions, speech, and thoughts that are informed by ill will. We pay attention to when speak harshly or angrily to our partners, children, parents, or friends. We remain heedful of our thoughts of resentment toward coworkers or derogatory thoughts about people we see on the train, on the street, or in the supermarket. We also examine our body and notice  the feeling of dis-ease that arises whenever we act with ill will. By paying attention in this way, we recognize the drawbacks of these actions.

As we cultivate disenchantment with ill will, we develop thoughts and actions informed by lovingkindness (Pali, metta). As dharma students, we seek to take actions driven by lovingkindness, actions in support of the wish for true happiness that we have for others and ourselves.

Attending to the third property that leads to escape, we train ourselves to develop a mind that doesn’t “leap up” at harmfulness. By harmfulness, we’re referring to the intention to act—and the actions that may follow—in a way that will cause harm to others and ourselves. Actions we take that cause harm may be blatant or subtle. This includes our speech. The Buddha urges us to make an ardent and resolute effort to pay attention to what we say. It’s a crucial part of mental training because, as the Thai meditation teacher Ajaan Fuang liked to say, “If you can’t have any control over your mouth, how can you expect to have any control over your mind?”

The training includes cultivating “harmlessness,” which comprises actions informed by compassion. In developing compassion, we seek to help others, and ourselves, find freedom from suffering.

In the fourth practice, we relinquish our enchantment with “forms.” Forms are  sense objects, including sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and bodily sensations as well as mental states like anger, sadness, and so on. As dharma students, we learn to see that when we cling to forms, we suffer. Clinging might entail trying to hold on to a certain form, like a pleasant sensation in the body or resentment toward an acquaintance. And it might entail trying to get rid of certain forms, like unpleasant sensations or painful emotions.

In cultivating disenchantment with forms, we discern the insubstantial nature of sense objects. We recognize that these objects are impermanent, inconstant, unreliable, and unsatisfactory.

Over time, the mind no longer “leaps up at forms.” We don’t give them so much weight or look for happiness in them. In turn, we learn to look beyond forms in an effort to know true happiness. The Buddha suggests that in seeking escape from forms, we put our emphasis on the “formless.” We might think of the formless as the state of awareness. In putting our emphasis on the formless, we’re simply aware of forms. Instead of becoming involved with them, chasing after pleasant forms and pushing away unpleasant ones, we “rest” in our awareness of these forms. Meditation enables us to separate out awareness and the forms we’re bringing awareness to. Ajaan Fuang said that meditators should learn to step back from forms and remain established in “awareness itself.”

The fifth element of mental training concerns “self-identification.” It’s critical to understand what the Buddha means by this. He’s not referring to the notion of having a self. The Buddha insisted that we should put aside the question of whether there is a self. Instead, in letting go of self-identification, we’re asked to let go of any identification with the experiences of body and mind. We accomplish this important task by looking at our experience, and, in the process, looking to see whether there’s a self to be found in it. Is there a self in the throbbing sensation in the knee? Is there a self in the feeling of anxiety arising in the chest? Do these experiences belong to us? Do we own them? Or are these experiences—the sensations, emotions, and so on—merely arising out of conditions and coming, changing, and going?

As we investigate the various experiences of body and mind, there is, as the Buddha explains, a “cessation of self-identification.” Which is to say, we move from “I am seeing” to just “seeing.” We move from “I am thinking” to “thinking.” We shift from “my thoughts” to, simply, “thoughts.”

When we’re “disjoined” from self-identification, we’re no longer afflicted by the “torments & fevers” that result when we identify with the experiences of body and mind. You might try, right now, to see what it’s like to abandon self-identification. Try saying to yourself, “I am reading this,” and see what it’s like. See what it feels like in the body. Then try saying, “reading,” and see what that’s like. Perhaps, in this little exercise, you’re able to see what it’s like when you let go of your identification with an experience.

Each of us has the ability to train the mind. It takes work, but if we put in the effort over the long haul into paying attention to our experiences of body and mind, we can make the kind of escape the Buddha talks about in this sutta. We can reach the place he describes in concluding the teaching, the place at which we’re no longer obsessed by the “delight” in sensuality, ill will, harmfulness, forms, and self-identification—where we are free from suffering.

♦

Peter Doobinin’s previous sutta studies take a look at the Thana Sutta, Yoga Sutta, Nava Sutta, Lokavipatti Sutta, Cunda Sutta, and Samadhanga Sutta.

The post Sutta Study: Leading to Escape appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This article is part of Trike Daily’s Sutta Study series, led by Insight meditation teacher Peter Doobinin. The suttas, found in the Pali Canon, comprise the discourses the historical Buddha gave during his 45 years of teaching. Rather than philosophical tracts, the suttas are a map for dharma practice. In this series, we’ll focus on the practical application of the teachings in our day-to-day lives.

In the Samadhanga Sutta (The Factors of Concentration), the Buddha offers a vivid explication of the relationship between concentration and discernment. As the sutta begins, the Buddha tells his disciples that he’s going to talk about “five-factored noble right concentration.” As he goes on to explain, the first four factors are concerned with jhana, the Buddha’s concentration. The fifth factor is discernment. The Buddha’s message is that if we develop jhana, we’ll be able to develop discernment.

The Buddha then describes each of the four jhanas, around which there has always been a great deal of misunderstanding. There’s a tendency to think about “jhana practice” as a standalone exercise in which we seek to attain four discrete states of concentration: first jhana, second jhana, and so on. But generally that’s not a useful way to think about it. Indeed, the Thai forest monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains in his essay “Jhana Not by the Numbers” that his teacher in Thailand, Ajaan Fuang, didn’t teach in this fashion. Instead, Ajaan Fuang “rarely mentioned the word jhana in his conversations, and never indicated to any of his students that they had reached a particular level of jhana in their practice.” We’re better served to think of jhana in terms of qualities of concentration that we cultivate through breath meditation practice.

In the first jhana, we cultivate the qualities of rapture and pleasure. Rapture is a quality of physical ease, an energy that flows through the body. When this quality of ease is developed, the mind registers pleasure. But even though pleasure is a mental quality, we feel it largely in the body. Rapture and pleasure, when fully developed, “pervade” the body. The Buddha likens this pervading to a ball of bath powder—which was used for soap in the Buddha’s day—being massaged, kneaded, and sprinkled with water, so that the bath powder is “saturated, moisture-laden, permeated within and without.”

The dharma student cultivates rapture and pleasure by using “directed thought & evaluation.” She guides herself through the process by applying what the teachings call “internal verbal fabrication”—essentially, internal dialogue. She purposefully brings her attention to her breath by using directed thought, and then she evaluates that breath. In practicing evaluation, the dharma student scrutinizes every inhale and exhale, discerning where there is ease or dis-ease. Gradually, she focuses her attention on the easeful part, cultivates that quality, and lets herself breathe in the most pleasurable way. Then she allows the easeful breath to pervade the whole body, all the while expanding her awareness of the body along with it.

The term jhana is related to jhayati, a word used to describe a small steady flame, like the flame from a lamp that can clearly illuminate an entire room. Developing jhana, we begin by focusing on and cultivating an easeful, pleasurable breath—a small steady flame. As we keep our mind on the breath, the light of the flame gradually spreads to the entire body, which fills with that pleasant quality.

Related: Entering the Jhanas: Focus Comes First

As the qualities of rapture and pleasure develop, the mind becomes more inclined to stay with the breath and body. Happy to reside there, the mind doesn’t stray after its usual preoccupations, thoughts, sense experiences, and so on. Eventually, the practitioner doesn’t have to do anything to keep her mind on the body—it just stays. Now the dharma student has developed the quality of jhana that the sutta refers to as “unification of awareness,” in which  awareness is concentrated entirely on the body.

The effort required to fabricate directed thought and evaluation creates a degree of dissonance in the mind, but now the practitioner can let these tools go. And “with the stilling of directed thoughts & evaluations,” concentration deepens even further.

Describing this level of concentration, the Buddha uses the metaphor of cool spring-water filling a lake so that there is “no part of the lake unpervaded by the cool waters.” Imagine the breath fueling the body with “breath energy,” the easeful, pleasurable energy suffusing the body.

The third development of the five-factored noble right concentration, the Buddha tells us, occurs when the practitioner abandons the quality of rapture, the energy pervading the body. Now, in the body, there’s simply pleasure. Again, it’s a more refined state of concentration. Rapture has its sharp edges, it causes some dissonance; when we let it go, the quality of pleasure increases. The dharma student has, as the Buddha puts it, “a pleasant abiding.”

Here, the Buddha uses the metaphor of a lotus flowers immersed in a pond, “permeated and pervaded, suffused and filled with cool water from their roots to their tips.”

As the dharma student progresses to the next “development” of jhana, she lets go of pleasure as well. At this stage, her experience comprises a “purity of equanimity & mindfulness.” Equanimity is the fourth quality the dharma student learns to cultivate. Now there is an inner stillness and clarity, what the Buddha describes as “pure, bright awareness.” When equanimity is developed there may be a quality of exquisite contentment. When we experience it, the Buddha says, it’s as if we’re wrapped from head to foot with a white cloth.

As dharma students practicing breath meditation, we learn to develop these qualities: rapture, pleasure, unification of awareness, and equanimity. If we put in the effort and follow the Buddha’s instructions, there’s no question that we can do this. It’s important to understand that developing the factors of jhana is not limited to monk and nuns and people living in retreat settings—even as householders, living in the modern world, we are capable of it.

When these qualities are developed, we’re then able to practice discernment, the fifth factor.

Describing this fifth development, the Buddha says: “And further, the monk has his theme of reflection well in hand, well attended to, well-pondered, well-tuned [well-penetrated] by means of discernment.”

At this stage, we’re able to work with the four noble truths, the Buddha’s main practice for achieving discernment. We’re asked, first and foremost, to comprehend our suffering, and having developed the qualities of jhana, we’re now in a position to do this. We’re able to look clearly at our suffering, as it is, in the present moment, and see the way we cause ourselves suffering by clinging to various mental states—aversion, desire, and their myriad subsets.

When the qualities of jhana are developed, the dharma student is able to observe her experience with calm and objectivity. In the sutta, the Buddha gives an important description of what this observation is like. He says it’s like one person observing another person, or a standing person observing someone who is sitting, or a seated person observing someone who is lying down. It’s important to remember that, in order to develop insight, we need to be able to observe in this manner.

When we develop the qualities of jhana, the Buddha says, we’re able to develop insight quite easily. In the first of several striking analogies, he says it occurs with the ease with which a strong man tips over  a glass of water.

The Buddha then speaks about six “higher knowledges” that we realize when we cultivate jhana. For our purposes, we’ll discuss the last three. The fourth and fifth knowledges concern the law of karma. First the Buddha describes how he came to see into the truth of his “past lives.” As he explains, as human beings we go through a process of ongoing change, the process of birth and death. This could mean that we take birth into this life, we die, and we pass on to another life; or it could mean we go through a process of birth and death in this very life, from day to day, week to week, year to year, and so on.

Next, the Buddha explains that the kind of life into which we’re reborn depends upon our actions. If our actions—our deeds, our speech, our thinking—are unskillful, informed by desire and aversion, we’ll take an unfortunate rebirth—which  can occur in the next life, later on in the day, later on in the month, or in the year or decade. What it comes down to is that our actions determine what our lives will be like. Our actions determine our happiness.

When developed in the qualities of jhana, we’re able understand the law of karma. Not on an intellectual level, but on a deeper level, in the heart.

The sixth higher knowledge is the knowledge that leads to the end of suffering, or, as the Buddha puts it, the “ending of the effluents.” Established in jhana, we’re able to develop liberating insight. We’re able to understand the four noble truths. We’re able to bring an end to our suffering and know a greater happiness in our lives.

♦

Peter Doobinin’s previous sutta studies take a look at the Thana Sutta, Yoga Sutta, Nava Sutta, Lokavipatti Sutta, and Cunda Sutta.

The post Sutta Study: Factors of Concentration appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This article is part of Trike Daily’s Sutta Study series, led by Insight meditation teacher Peter Doobinin. The suttas, found in the Pali Canon, comprise the discourses the historical Buddha gave during his 45 years of teaching. Rather than philosophical tracts, the suttas are a map for dharma practice. In this series, we’ll focus on the practical application of the teachings in our day-to-day lives.

In the sutta “About Cunda,” the Buddha gives a profound teaching following the death of the beloved monk Sariputta. Ven. Sariputta and Ven. Moggallana were two of the Buddha’s dearest friends as well as the two chief disciples—the arahants, or fully awakened beings—whom the Buddha first asked to teach the dharma.

Not too long before the Buddha’s own death, both Sariputta and Moggallana passed away. In and of itself, the illness and death of Sariputta, as well Moggallana and the Buddha, offer a potent message: all human beings are subject to sickness, aging, and death.

As the sutta relates, Cunda, Sariputta’s attendant, went to Ven. Ananda to inform him of Sariputta’s death. Ananda was the Buddha’s attendant (and first cousin) and a key member of the community of monks who followed the Buddha during his 45 years teaching the dharma in northern India. This community of monks—the sangha—was a tightly knit group, dedicated to the Buddha, the dharma, and each other. This bond was an important component in the way of life followed by the Buddha and his students—the great blessing of friendship.

So upon learning of the death of his dear friend and comrade in the dharma, Ananda immediately went along with Cunda to see the Buddha and tell him the news.

Ananda related his grief to the Buddha, saying, “It was as if my body were drugged . . . I lost my bearings, things weren’t clear to me.” It is a poignant moment, in which Ananda displays his humanness. Ananda was no different from the rest of us. He felt the pain that we all feel when we experience a great loss.

The Buddha also expressed his pain—the inalienable pain elemental to human life—in the days after Sariputta and Moggallana died. Addressing a gathering of monks, he remarked, “This assembly, O bhikkhus, appears indeed empty to me, now that Sariputta and Moggallana have passed away” (SN 47.14).

In response to Ananda, the Buddha offers a teaching that all of us can take to heart. He begins by asking Ananda, “when he attained total Unbinding [death], did Sariputta take the aggregate of virtue along with him? Did he take the aggregate of concentration . . . discernment . . . release [from suffering] . . . the aggregate of knowledge & vision of release along with him?” No, Ananda responds, he didn’t take these qualities with him. The point the Buddha is making here is crucial. The good qualities that are innate to human beings are ever-present. They are, to use the Pali word, akaliko, part of the ever-present truth. These qualities are timeless; they transcend birth and death.

Our goodness, the Buddha tells Ananda, remains. As human beings our task is to develop our goodness, which is what Sariputta did. So it’s what he left behind. We also leave behind our goodness, to the extent that we develop it and let it shine in the world.

But even while acknowledging the Buddha’s teaching, Ananda continues to lament the loss of his dear friend. “It’s just that he was my instructor & counselor,” he says, “one who exhorted, urged, roused, & encouraged me. He was tireless in teaching the Dhamma [dharma], a help to his companions in the holy life. We miss the nourishment of his Dhamma, the wealth of his Dhamma, his help in the Dhamma.”

The Buddha responds by reminding Ananda of the great truths he has taught his disciples through the years: that each of us is subject to sickness, aging, and death, that each of us will eventually be separated from all that is dear to us. It is the way it is, the Buddha tells Ananda. “What else is there to expect?” the Buddha says. “It’s impossible that one could forbid anything born, existent, fabricated, & subject to disintegration from disintegrating.”

Then the Buddha gives one of his most well-known teachings. He tells Ananda that “you should remain with your self as an island.” Given that Sariputta is gone, given that he himself will soon be gone, given that all human beings are “subject to disintegration,” the Buddha, delivering a vital message to Ananda and his fellow monks, says: “each of you should remain with your self as an island, your self as your refuge, without anything else as a refuge. Remain with the Dhamma as an island, the Dhamma as your refuge, without anything else as a refuge.” Our task, the Buddha says, is to rely on what’s inside us. Our task is to develop our goodness—the qualities of virtue, concentration, discernment. Our task is to find our own release from suffering. The dharma, the teachings that the Buddha has passed on, provide the path by which we pursue these tasks.

The Buddha, however, doesn’t leave it at that. He doesn’t just say, “Be an island unto yourself.” The Buddha’s teachings are never meant to be showcases for rhetorical flourish and verbal brilliance. His teaching are, always, eminently practical. The Buddha, above all, teaches skills. Here, he notes the skills that we need to cultivate in order to be “an island.” The main skill, the Buddha indicates, is the skill of mindfulness. Specifically, right mindfulness. The Buddha culminates this teaching to Ananda by delineating the four foundations of mindfulness, the four primary ways of practicing mindfulness that the dharma student is asked to develop.

In practicing the first foundation of mindfulness, the practitioner “remains focused on the body in and of itself.” All the mindfulnesses that we practice begin by putting the mind on the body—the breath is the anchor point in the body, the place where, first and foremost, we learn to put the mind. In practicing mindfulness of the breath/body, the dharma student develops concentration, the capacity to remain in the present moment, in the body, with a quality of ease and well-being.

The second foundation of mindfulness, in which the dharma student puts his attention on “feelings,” entails being mindful of the sensations in the body—the way the body feels, whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—and the way we’re relating to these feelings.

Practicing the third foundation of mindfulness, the dharma student is mindful of the different states of mind—desire, aversion, delusion, and their myriad subsets—and how we relating to them.

In practicing mindfulness of feelings and states of mind we develop discernment and concentration.

The fourth foundation of mindfulness offers ways of being mindful in which we put our attention on certain mental qualities, such as the four noble truths, in the service of developing discernment.

It’s through cultivating these specific skills of mindfulness, the Buddha teaches, that the dharma student is able to “remain with his self as an island.”

In the end, it’s up to us to find happiness in this life. And, the Buddha tells us, we have an extraordinary capability; we have everything we need to do that. There is a goodness that is ever-present in life. There is a goodness in us. And, within, we have the ability to develop our goodness. If we do this, the Buddha teaches, we will come to know true happiness.

♦

Peter Doobinin’s previous sutta studies take a look at the Thana Sutta, Yoga Sutta, Nava Sutta, and Lokavipatti Sutta.

The post Sutta Study: About Cunda appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This article is part of Trike Daily’s Sutta Study series, led by Insight meditation teacher Peter Doobinin. The suttas, found in the Pali Canon, comprise the discourses the historical Buddha gave during his 45 years of teaching. Rather than philosophical tracts, the suttas are a map for dharma practice. In this series, we’ll focus on the practical application of the teachings in our day-to-day lives.

In the Nava Sutta (The Ship), the Buddha describes the goal of the path as the “ending of the effluents.” It’s a good way to think about what dharma practice is about. As human beings we’re subject to a variety of experiences: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily sensations, mental impressions (thoughts, emotions). None of these experiences—whether pleasant or unpleasant—is a problem; our “problems” manifest in the effluents, the ways we add on to experience, the ways we oppose and pursue experience, the ways we corrupt experience, the ways we take what is and turn it into something else.

The dictionary defines effluent as “something that flows out or forth; outflow.” The effluents are what flow out of the mind: our unskillful thinking and the unskillful actions that follow. Effluents can also mean sewage. Our tendency, we could say, is to take our basic human experience and pollute it, defile it, give rise to a discharge of sewage. Strong words perhaps, but when we look at what’s coming out of the mind, we’re hard-pressed to disagree.

The effluents are our painful thinking, our narratives, our unskillful ways of relating to our human experience. The Buddha was interested in learning how to relate skillfully to his position as a human being. What he learned is something that we can learn as well. But how? How can we make the most of our precious time in this human realm? How can we bring an end to the effluents?

As the sutta puts it, the ending of the effluents comes from knowing and seeing. In other words, from wisdom—not the wisdom acquired by reading books or listening to talks, but rather the wisdom that comes from our own clear seeing. Herein we come to an understanding that lies at the heart of sutta and the Buddha’s teachings: we reach our goals by attending to root causes. We don’t simply eliminate the effluents after the fact, any more than we’d eliminate pollution by simply draining the water in a stream. To effectively eliminate pollution we need to cut off its source, address its causes. In order to end the effluents, we aim to develop the causes that will bring about their ending.

Related: Sutta Study: Yokes

We end the effluents through knowing and seeing—specifically knowing and seeing our clinging. In the sutta, the Buddha delineates the five clinging-aggregates, form, feeling tone, perception, fabrications, and consciousness—the five ways we cling when we’re clinging to our experience of body and mind—and we learn to see the drawbacks of our clinging. It’s from this clinging that the effluents pour forth. When we take what is—a sensation, a mental movement—and we grasp onto it, we produce effluents. When we see clearly into our clinging, we become disenchanted with it, and, in turn, we become more inclined not to cling. When we stop clinging, the effluents cease to flow.

That clinging leads to suffering is not a lesson unique to the Nava Sutta. Rather, this sutta is notable for its emphasis on the way we let go—slowly and through great effort.

As we begin to learn that clinging is the linchpin, we begin to “wish” to end clinging and the effluents. But, as the sutta teaches, this wishing is not enough. Put another way, we can’t simply “let go.” It doesn’t work like that. It’s certainly not what the Buddha teaches. Letting go, the Buddha tells us, will come when we “develop” wisdom. In the sutta, he lists the practices that comprise “developing”: “The four frames of reference, the four right exertions, the four bases of power, the five faculties, the five strengths, the seven factors for Awakening, the noble eightfold path.” Letting go of clinging occurs when we develop these elements of the path, sometimes referred to as the “wings to awakening.”

We develop these wings to awakening, in large part, in the service of cultivating concentration. Specifically, the Buddha’s concentration, known as jhana. By developing this concentration through a meditation practice, we’re able to achieve the wisdom that will bring about the ending of the effluents. This schema represents, of course, an integral cause-and-effect relationship in the Buddha’s dharma: the development of concentration leads to the development of wisdom, which leads to release from suffering, the ending of the effluents.

We could say that the development of concentration through the practice of mindfulness of breathing is the “hard work” of dharma practice. It is where the lion’s share of the time and effort is applied.

Related: Sutta Study: Course of Action

In the Nava Sutta, the Buddha offers some wonderful metaphors to describe the “work” of concentration. First, he gives the example of the hen and her eggs. In order for her eggs to hatch, for her chicks to be born, the hen must sit on the eggs to incubate them. She must do the work, put in the time and effort. It’s the only way she’ll achieve the desired results. Simply wishing for the eggs to hatch won’t do it; she has to sit on them.

As far as hens and eggs go, this may seem quite obvious; but when it comes to dharma practice we may fail to appreciate the laws of cause and effect; we may want our effluents to cease, our suffering to diminish, and yet we’re not putting in the work, we’re not sitting on our eggs.

Simply wishing for things to happen won’t make them happen. Simply talking about the dharma or listening to dharma talks online won’t bring about an end to the effluents. It’s a path of action. Again and again, in his teachings, the Buddha’s emphasizes this. This is important to embrace in today’s modern technological culture. We’re not so accustomed to being proactive, to putting determined effort into developing causes. In our culture, we’ve come to expect quick results—without having to put in much hard work. We click an icon on the computer, and, voilà, we have results. We instantly receive all manner of sense experience, information, stimulation; with a few clicks, we’re able to purchase nearly anything, and it’ll be delivered the next day. We’re not used to making slow steady effort, the sort of effort the hen makes.

Determination, patience, and equanimity are some of the qualities we must develop if we’re going to bring about an end to the effluents. We need to learn to sit on our eggs, knowing that eventually our chicks will hatch.

In the second metaphor, the Buddha describes how, when a carpenter uses an adze (a tool similar to an axe), he can’t discern the wearing away of the wooden handle; however, he knows that the wood is very slowly wearing down. It’s the same with dharma practice. When we meditate, at first we may not be able to see results, but gradually we’ll realize that things have changed, that the wooden handle has worn down. After using his adze many times, the carpenter can detect the changes in it with his naked eye; after making determined effort to develop concentration, the dharma student begins to realize that the effluents have lessened. They’ve been lessening all along, but very gradually and almost imperceptibly. Now he’s able to detect results.

It’s difficult for students in their early years of dharma practice; they’re often not able to see the changes that are taking place, the way concentration and wisdom are developing, the way the effluents are losing their power. After we’ve practiced for a number of years we’re more able to see our progress. And we move forward, confidently, knowing that if we continue to put in the work, the effluents will subside.

Lastly the Buddha provides the metaphor of the ship—for which the sutta is named. After being at sea for six months, the ship is retired for the winter, and as it sits on the shore, its stays “wither & rot.” A ship’s stays are the ropes supporting its masts. Weathered by the long time at sea, moistened during the rainy winter, these ropes disintegrate. So it is with our clinging, our thinking informed by aversion and desire, our unskillful action; little by little, as we develop the causes, the ropes that bind us wither and rot.  And we are free.

The post Sutta Study: The Ship appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Each month in Sutta Study, a new series on Trike Daily led by Insight meditation teacher Peter Doobinin, we’ll explore one of the Buddha’s suttas. The suttas, found in the Pali Canon, comprise the discourses the historical Buddha gave during his 45 years of teaching. Rather than philosophical tracts, the suttas are a map for dharma practice. In this series, we’ll focus on the practical application of the teachings in our day-to-day lives.

The dharma, the Buddha’s path, is described as a path of freedom. But what are we seeking freedom from?

In the sutta Yokes, the Buddha explicates four forms of bondage that dharma students learn to find freedom from: the yoke of sensuality, the yoke of becoming, the yoke of views, and the yoke of ignorance.

In the Buddha’s time, a yoke was a wooden beam affixed to the necks of oxen, attached to a cart filled with a heavy load. The word yoke also denotes a form of enslavement. Synonyms include: burden, oppression, subjugation, subjection, servitude.

The yoke of sensuality refers to the burden we carry when we engage in the habitual pursuit of sense pleasure. Our burden is not sense pleasure in and of itself; it’s the chasing after and clinging to sense pleasure. So, for instance, the sense pleasure provided by a smartphone isn’t the problem; it’s the constant looking at the phone—compulsively picking it up, putting it down, then picking it up again. We become yoked to the phone. This is what is sensuality means in the Theravada monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation of the sutta: when we engage in an ongoing effort to acquire sense pleasure, we become “obsessed with sensual passion, sensual delight, sensual attraction, sensual infatuation, sensual thirst, sensual fever, sensual fascination, sensual craving,” it says.

The second yoke is the yoke of “becoming,” with which we burden ourselves when we proliferate thinking, stories, and narratives. We may, for example, find ourselves engaging in a long inner narrative about the difficulties we’re having in caring for an aging parent. We may find ourselves going into this story again and again, over the course of days, months, or even years. When we’re involved in a state of becoming, our reality “becomes” something else. Instead of living in the present moment, we live in thought worlds. Most of us, most of the time, live in states of becoming.

Our views are another yoke. Again, our difficulty isn’t found so much in views themselves—the simple movements of the mind—but rather in the way we hold on to them. Of course, views are highly susceptible to holding on; they’re “sticky,” like the tar traps used in ancient India to trap monkeys, which is the simile the Buddha used. Perhaps we’re in the habit of holding on to a negative, critical view about the performance of one of our co-workers. Yoked, we entertain this particular view on a regular basis, day after day, until we can’t see it any other way. Even if the co-worker did a great job, we would only see the flaws. Entangled in our views, we become “obsessed with view-passion, view-delight,” the sutta says.

The fourth yoke is ignorance. When we take up the yoke of ignorance, we exist in a state of “not-knowing”—and not the kind of open-mindedness some Buddhist traditions value. Rather, this not-knowing describes when, we don’t pay attention to our experience. We’re not mindful. We’re not mindful of the way our body feels, of the unpleasant sensations that we experience on a humid summer day. We’re not mindful of the anger that arises when a friend criticizes us. We’re not mindful of our anxiety. Yoked by ignorance, we’re not mindful of our sense experience: the experience of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, bodily sensations, and the sixth sense of the mental qualities, including thinking and emotions. We’re blind, unaware, asleep.

Attached up to these four yokes, like oxen pulling an overloaded cart, we’re “conjoined with evil, unskillful qualities.” We’re riddled with desire, aversion, and delusion, and in a state of “suffering and stress.”

But unlike the yokes used on oxen, we put the yokes of sensuality, becoming, views, and ignorance around our own necks. It’s essential to understand this, because when we realize that we’ve put ourselves in bondage, we can then see that we are able to free ourselves from that bondage.

How?

Freedom, the Buddha tells us, relies on wisdom, which enables us to “let go” of the four yokes.

In the sutta, the Buddha suggests five steps we can take in an effort to cultivate this wisdom, examining the following in regards to each yoke: origination, passing away, allure, drawbacks, and escape.

In seeing origination, we look closely at what occurs in the body and mind as we begin to become attached to the four yokes—we learn to pay attention, for instance, to our experience as we begin to engage in a form of sensuality. We may notice, say, that as we go on the Internet and begin to surf various websites, there’s a specific thought pattern that arises; maybe there’s a line of thinking that triggers a sense of urgency, that suggests that it’s critically important that open our laptops or pick up our phones.  Maybe there’s a corresponding quality of desire in the body, perhaps a jagged thrum in the chest or abdomen. We may notice that the breath shortens; maybe the in-breath is squeezed or constricted.

Similarly, we learn to be heedful of our experience as we enter into a state of becoming. As we begin to engage in a narrative about a difficult conversation with our son or daughter, we may notice that we’re triggered by fearful thoughts. We may notice a feeling of apprehension, a tightness in the chest. We may notice that the breath has become rough, out of alignment.
As we’re mindful of the qualities of body and mind that instigate our taking up of the yoke, we become more able to prevent ourselves from doing it. Once we’ve become obsessed with the yokes, it’s exceedingly difficult to let go of them; but if we are mindful of these four yokes before they become too oppressive, we have a better chance to free ourselves from them.

In being mindful of “passing away,” we pay attention to what it’s like as we unharness ourselves from the yokes. As we disengage from a sense experience like the Internet, we may notice a certain quality in the mind—perhaps a loss of interest or a weariness that comes after staring at a computer screen. Or we can consider what the mind is like as we put aside a view about another person or a political ideology. We may notice that the current of thinking begins to slow or turn in a different direction. We may notice that the emotion we have been feeling begins to dissipate. What’s the body like as we discard these views? What’s the breath like?

As we discern the origination and passing away of sensuality, becoming, views, and ignorance, we gain insight into the impermanent nature of these yokes. We understand that they are not fixed components of our human experience. We understand that their nature is to come and go, and that we’re not required to remain attached to these yokes. We don’t have to burden ourselves.

In seeing the “allure” of the yokes, we look to see what we find attractive about them. What pulls us to them? Each of these yokes holds an attraction for us, and we can learn to recognize this allure. As we begin to take up a sense pleasure like television, we acknowledge that there is a certain amount of pleasure that we derive from watching a particular show. We recognize what that pleasant feeling is like as we experience it in the body. As we propagate a negative view about a political figure, we’re heedful of the pleasure we get from condemning the person. As we enter into a state of ignorance, lacking mindfulness, we notice the enjoyment we receive from checking out. It’s important to recognize that we find a degree of satisfaction in taking up these four yokes. But when we’re aware of their allure, we’re less likely to give in to them.

In developing mindfulness of the four yokes, we recognize that while they are alluring, they also have drawbacks. In other words, we learn to see that if we take up these yokes, we suffer. As we pursue sense pleasures, as we reside in thought worlds, as we propagate our views, as we fade into the ether of not-knowing, we pay attention to the consequences. We pay attention to the body and mind; we recognize our suffering. We feel the pain, dis-ease, and stress.  

It’s important that we see both the short- and long-term drawbacks of the yokes. If I spend the next few hours surfing the Internet, we might ask, how is it going to affect me? If I allow myself to engender this narrative about how I don’t like my job, how is it going to affect me—my mind, my day, my life? How is it going to affect my ability to practice the dharma? How is it going to affect my ability to find true happiness? When we ask these questions and pay attention to the results, we become sensitive to the long-term effects of these yokes.  

Last, the dharma student learns to know the “escape” from the yokes of sensuality, becoming, views, and ignorance. The breath is the first escape that we learn. Chasing after sense pleasures, caught in whirlwinds of thinking, obsessing over our views, drifting in states of not-knowing, we find escape by putting the mind on the breath, and we take refuge in it.  

In finding escape in the breath, we separate from the yokes. We come to learn what it’s like when we put down these burdens. We realize that escape is possible. This is an important facet of discernment. There is a possibility of letting go. There is a possibility of freedom.  

Ultimately our ability to know escape will depend on the degree to which we’re able to cultivate dispassion for the yokes. In seeing origination, passing away, allure, drawbacks, and escape, we cultivate this dispassion, which is the final escape. When there’s dispassion for the yokes, we relinquish them. We don’t harness ourselves to them. We don’t take up the burdens. We are free.

The post Sutta Study: Yokes appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The Buddha’s path is a path of action. As dharma students, we learn that our happiness in this life depends on our actions. What we do is what matters. This is the central law upon which the Buddha’s teachings rely: the law of karma.

There’s a common tendency to evaluate our practice based on how much time we’ve spent on the cushion or how many retreats we’ve attended. Or we may gauge our progress on what we regard as the fruits of sitting practice: calmness, tranquility, less stress, and so on. But in the end, our attainment is reflected in our actions, whether we’re acting in a way that will lead to suffering or one that leads to the happiness of the heart. This includes not only the actions we’re taking toward others, but also the actions we take in an effort to fulfill our own deepest wish to be happy.

Thus the greatest challenge for dharma students is not to put time and effort into meditation but rather to take action in their lives. How can we develop a practice devoted to action, a practice intent on taking action that leads to true happiness? We can find the answer to this question in the way we practice mindfulness. We put ourselves on the path of action when we practice mindfulness in the way the Buddha taught.

When we look at the Buddha’s teachings as found in the Pali canon, we discover that the Buddha’s practice of mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness that has become prevalent in recent times are not quite the same. We might even say that there are two “mindfulnesses.” The version of mindfulness that has become so popular in recent years and has taken a variety of forms—everything from mindful eating to practicing mindfulness in sports and business—is something different from what the Buddha taught. The influence of mindfulness in contemporary culture is almost certainly a good thing. But it’s helpful to know that there is another sort of mindfulness.

In its recent, popular form, mindfulness generally means paying attention to our experience of body and mind in the present moment without judging it. Essentially, this refers to being aware of our experience: mindfulness is a quality of awareness. In practicing this form of mindfulness, the individual plays a passive role, simply being aware, receiving experience. The Buddha’s mindfulness, on the other hand, is highly proactive. It’s an active process of putting the mind on an object—a sound, sight, physical sensation, thought, emotion, and so on—and remembering to keep it there. Engaging in this process as dharma students, we are involved in a conscious intentional effort to put our mind on an aspect of our experience. We aren’t passively noticing experience. We are making a choice about where to put the mind and following through on that choice. We are doing something, with a sense of purpose.

The Buddha, of course, didn’t teach simply “mindfulness.” He taught a focused kind of mindfulness known as right mindfulness, one of the eight branches of the noble eightfold path. In practicing right mindfulness, the individual makes an effort to keep his attention on particular objects, the so-called four foundations of mindfulness. (The Thai forest monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu sometimes translates this as “four frames of reference.” It’s a fitting way to think about right mindfulness: these are the frames through which we look or direct our attention.) If we do this, the Buddha tells us, we’ll move away from suffering toward true happiness. In fact, the Buddha makes it clear that our happiness is dependent on remembering to keep our mind on these specific objects.

When I began to practice a more proactive form of mindfulness, I learned to take action not only in meditation, but also in all the areas of my life.

The first foundation of mindfulness is the body, and as dharma students we learn, first and foremost, to keep our mind on the body by using the breath as the anchor point. We make a conscious effort to keep our mind on the breath not only in formal sitting meditation but also in all postures and during all of our activities. We keep the breath in mind at all times.

By keeping the mind on the body, we’re able to maintain present-moment awareness. A good way to think about it is that we’re moving our attention from the head to the body. When we’re not present, when we’re “outside” the body, we’re indulging in thinking. The mind enmeshed in thinking, lost in thought, traveling incessantly down pathways of thought, is the mind removed from the present moment. It’s the mind in a dream state. It’s a mind that is invariably in a state of suffering, either blatant or subtle. So our first job as dharma students is to keep the mind in the body, which isn’t easy. In order to do this, we need to take forthright measures.

The Buddha’s mindfulness, then, is a proactive process of putting the mind on specific objects, beginning with the breath. What does this process entail? How do we put the mind on something? The question may mystify us, but the answer is quite simple: We put the mind on the breath, or any object of mindfulness, by telling ourselves to put the mind there. We use the thinking mind. The term the Buddha uses is “directed thought.” In the Buddha’s lexicon it falls under the heading of “internal verbal fabrication.” In order to keep the mind on the object, we need to keep telling ourselves, using internal verbal fabrication, to stay there. We need to keep reminding ourselves. We need to keep remembering.

When we understand how mindfulness works, we’re able to practice mindfulness with much greater effectiveness. Dharma students, using directed thought, are able to keep the mind where they want to keep it. As dharma students, following the Buddha’s instructions, we learn to keep our mind on the body, in the present moment. But not only that. We also learn to shape our experience of the present moment. In developing the steps for mindfulness of breathing, as practitioners we (1) put our mind on the breath; (2) are mindful of the quality of the breath, noticing what the breath is like, where in the breath there’s dis-ease, where there’s ease; and (3) put our mind on the easeful quality in the breath, focusing our mindfulness there, being mindful of how the easeful breath energy pervades the breath. Through our mindfulness, we cultivate an easeful breath. Then we expand our mindfulness: we’re mindful of our full body. Mindful of the full body, having what the texts call an “enlarged awareness,” we put our mind on the easeful, pleasurable qualities in the body, and we allow the easeful breath energy to spread, permeating the body.

As we practice mindfulness of breathing, we shape our experience. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu says, “Experience is purposeful.” This shaping of our experience of the breath and body is essential if we are going to maintain ourselves in the present moment. Our capacity to maintain present-moment awareness, in the final analysis, will depend on our ability to cultivate an easeful, pleasurable abiding in the body. Most of us would rather not remain present in the body, in large part because we perceive it as an unpleasant, perhaps painful place to be. What the Buddha came to realize is that we won’t be able to keep our mind on the present moment until we’re able to cultivate a pleasant experience of the moment, the body.

When we’re able to establish a center in the body, a pleasurable refuge, what the Thai master Ajaan Lee called “a home for the mind,” then we’re in a position to look at things that may be difficult to look at: the difficult emotions, the difficult circumstances of our lives, sickness, aging, and death.

Much of the emphasis of the contemporary form of mindfulness is put on being mindful of the various emotions. But if we haven’t established a quality of inner well-being, it will be exceedingly difficult to objectively and compassionately be mindful of the more painful expressions of the mind. In order to effectively observe our experience, particularly the more challenging aspects, we need to do this from a place of strength.

Mindfulness, according to what the Buddha taught, is a practice of conscious decision making. It’s a practice of making choices. It’s purposeful. Our decision making—beginning with the decision to put the mind on the breath—is based on the Buddha’s map that leads us to a true happiness. A passive mindfulness, the simple awareness of experience, is a practice that forsakes decision making. This, of course, is our tendency. We surrender our capacity to make decisions. We go with the flow. We conform. From day to day, we live in the same grooves. We live robotically. In practicing Buddha’s mindfulness, we learn to make decisions. We shape our lives. We make our lives.

At a certain point in my own dharma practice—by then I’d been meditating for more than ten years—I realized I’d hit a wall. I wasn’t making progress. I needed to change what I was doing, and it was then that I learned to practice mindfulness in the proactive fashion I’ve just described. Gradually, although more quickly than you might imagine, as I engaged in the practice of directly and purposefully putting my mind where I decided to put it, I began to develop much stronger concentration. In turn, I began to develop the ability to look at my suffering in a way that I hadn’t been able to before, with calmness, space, and equanimity.

We transcend the absurdity of life, the seeming meaningless of a life in which we’re bound for death, by taking action.

Then something interesting began to happen. As I practiced mindfulness in a more proactive manner, I began to live my life more proactively. I reclaimed my agency. For most of my life, I had lived a passive existence. I wasn’t inclined to take action. I was perhaps the classic example of the high school guidance counselor’s lament: I didn’t live up to my potential. There were things that I wanted to do that I didn’t do. I was hesitant to express myself, to put myself out there. Meditation, for someone like me, was an ideal pursuit. I didn’t have to engage; it was a way by which I might remove myself from life. Meditation, of course, isn’t meant to be a vehicle for removal. Just the opposite. If practiced properly, it’s a practice through which we learn to express our truth in the world, just like the Buddha who traveled through northern India and taught for all those years. (The Buddha, raised in a warrior family, wasn’t a passive sort.) As for me, when I began to practice a more proactive form of mindfulness, I learned to take action not only in meditation, but also in all the areas of my life.

If I might be so bold as to bring Nietzsche into the discussion, I’d like to suggest that perhaps what the much-misunderstood philosopher was referring to when he talked about the “will to power” isn’t dissimilar to what we’re talking about here: the purposeful process of putting the mind on an object, conscious decision making, the assertion of our human power in support of bringing meaning to our lives. It may be in the very exercise of our will to power where we find that meaning: in other words, in the “doing-in-itself.”

As the existentialists put it, we transcend the absurdity of life, the seeming meaningless of a life in which we’re bound for death, by taking action. Camus describes the process poignantly in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Life is akin to pushing a massive boulder up a hill again and again. But we find happiness in the pushing, in taking action. “The struggle itself toward the heights,” Camus tells us, “is enough to fill a man’s heart.”

In the dharma tradition, this sentiment is found in the principle of “doing what has to be done.” Dharma practice is hard. Life is hard. But we find joy in making the effort, in choosing to do something, in action. Here we find dharma joy, in this doing-in-itself.

The “happiness” that’s often mentioned by proponents of the contemporary mindfulness practice is the happiness found in the reception of pleasant sense experiences. So we might hear teachers describe how, being mindful, we’re able to fully experience the exquisiteness of a sunset or a piece of music or a cup of tea. The now-classic example of this happiness conferred by mindfulness is offered in the mindful eating of a single raisin. New students of mindfulness are often given this exercise—for many years, as a teacher, I gave it—as a way of showing how to be mindful, as a way of showing how mindfulness enables us to know sense experience more intimately, as a way of showing the benefit of practicing mindfulness. But as dharma students, following the Buddha’s example, we’re asked to understand the limitations of sense experience. What the tastes, sounds, and sights offer, at best, is a temporary happiness. The sunset is short-lived. The raisin, alas, is quickly consumed, chewed, swallowed, gone. The Buddha-to-be, as a young prince (and a consumer of the most pleasant sense experiences available to him) questioned the happiness that sense pleasure offered. After much struggle, he found a greater happiness, one that transcended the happiness that came from the reception and acquisition of external sense pleasure.

In the Buddha’s scheme of things, it’s through taking action that we come to know a greater happiness. In practicing right mindfulness, we’re asked to take action; we’re asked, specifically, to take action in support of the heart. As we walk down the street, engaging in a painful inner narrative, caught in an afflicted state, we can begin to recognize our suffering and in turn put our mind on our breath. We keep our mind there. In doing so, we’re taking an action informed by love and compassion, and training the mind to do so. Conversely, when we practice a passive mindfulness, we don’t develop our ability to make conscious decisions that are informed by love and compassion. We don’t train the mind. We don’t develop the heart. The “heart muscle” atrophies.

Our ability to love is determined by the decisions we make to act in a certain way. When we surrender our decision-making, we deny our greatest strength: our capacity for love. As the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing suggests, this is what Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov means when he says, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” When mindfulness is taught as open, nonjudgmental reception of all experience, “everything is permissible.” We relinquish our ability to choose to take action guided by the heart. We deny the heart. As a result, we find ourselves in an environment in which mindfulness is taught to support endeavors that in the end may have little to do with taking action informed by love and compassion. Mindfulness is taught to soldiers for the purpose of mindful killing. Mindfulness is taught to business leaders for the purpose of increasing profits. Mindfulness is taught to lawyers for the purpose of winning more cases. The examples are seemingly endless.

As we learn to take action informed by the heart, we begin to see what we previously may not have been able to see. A world of possible actions opens up for us. Before we learn to consciously choose our actions, we tend to go along with the course prescribed for us by the vicissitudes of history, our upbringing, the culture, and so on. We go with the flow. We remain, as Nietzsche would say, with the herd. As we learn to make decisions proactively, determined by what’s in the best interests of our heart, we often find that the actions we’re moved to take are patently countercultural. That is to say, when we decide to not simply go with the flow, with what the culture is dictating, we find that what constitutes an expression of self-love may be something quite different from what the culture is telling us. The American Catholic writer and monk Thomas Merton makes this point most exquisitely when he says, “What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as ‘play’ is perhaps what He Himself takes most seriously.” Indeed, action that we choose based on the dictates of the heart may very well be more akin to play. As children we knew what we had to do; we knew where happiness was found. We knew the happiness of the heart.

We may have lost our way. We may have lost our connection to the heart. We may have given up trying to know the way of the heart. We may have abandoned the effort to take conscious action informed by the heart. We may have surrendered our agency. But there is a way back to what’s most important about us. And it may, for us, as students of the dharma, begin in the simple practice of mindfulness, the proactive, purposeful mindfulness that the Buddha taught.

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