Transcription
The Realization of Awakening is absolutely central to the Buddha's Teaching, and yet it has come to have so many different meanings, or none at all. What is our relationship to the idea of Enlightenment or Awakening? How does that affect our life and practice? Can we explore the views, assumptions and emotions surrounding it? And is a radical Awakening possible for us?
In the late sixties into the seventies, a group of Westerners, Europeans, English people and Americans, went to Asia, to India and Thailand and other countries, and began practising Buddhist practices, Buddhadharma. Began practising quite intensely, and with a great deal of interest, and spent years in Asia. And then, in the mid-seventies, a group came back to the West, to America and to Europe, and began teaching. And out of that small group of people, the (loosely called) Insight Meditation tradition -- which Gaia House is kind of part of -- began to take root in the West, sort of mid-seventies, '76, etc., so a little over thirty years ago. And has been really flourishing since then. Since that time, I find it interesting to look back over that span, thirty-something years, and just notice how the teachings, the style of teaching, the emphasis in the teaching, has altered and shifted and changed and responded, etc., in quite a few significant ways.
One of them, it seems to me, is that in the initial years or decades, decade or so of teaching, there was actually quite a strong emphasis on enlightenment, nirvāṇa, nibbāna, awakening. And somehow, it seems to me, somehow in the twenty, etc., years since then, it seems to have tapered off quite a lot so that it's not that common for us as teachers to actually bring it up as a subject or as an aspiration or as an ideal in a very regular or real way. So much so that a couple of teachers who are colleagues went to teach a study course in America, at a sister centre in America, and part of it was about enlightenment, about nirvāṇa, and they were surprised that almost everyone on the study course, who were experienced meditators, had done lots of retreats, had never even heard a lot of that teaching and what the Buddha said was involved, etc. Quite surprised.
And I just wonder: is there some aspect of radicality that's been lost, or that is being lost, or that can, might be lost? And so teachings on enlightenment and awakening, nirvāṇa -- quite radical, quite kind of extreme, and to lose that is actually to lose something from the body of the teachings quite significant and quite radical. When I look at the suttas, the collection of discourses and talks that the Buddha gave, what strikes me is that he was very, very happy to talk to lay people about a whole range of subjects, an immense range, and to teach about all kinds of aspects of their life that were very mundane or whatever. So certainly a lot of talk about ethics, about the way generosity manifested, about how to invest your wealth, things like that, statements about economics and agriculture and the caste system and social structure and all that. And he was quite happy to engage on that level and teach on that level. He had no problem with that at all.
But interestingly, with monastics, monks and nuns, it was a bit more, "This is all that matters. Enlightenment is all that matters. That's what you're here for. That's what you're doing. And be clear about that. Nothing else matters." So this word 'monk,' I think, is related to [the] Greek for 'one,' mono. Monk, monastic, one-tracked mind -- nirvāṇa, enlightenment, awakening. Nowadays, 2008, we have a lay Saṅgha, you know, a lay community, a community of lay practitioners who are very interested in meditation as well as everything else. And of that large group of lay practitioners, some of us, some of you, are passionately interested in awakening, passionately interested in enlightenment, and some are really not and never will be really interested in it. There's quite a range and mix. Extending partly what we were talking about in the question and answer period today, it's all good. It's all good. All of practice is good, and it's for a person to decide what they want from practice. And as teachers, for us to actually teach a range, a real range -- so it's not just about this, but it also doesn't neglect parts.
But I think it's important not to confuse things, not to confuse kind of what's what, what leads where, so to speak. So it's interesting for me to kind of reflect for myself and to meet people and hear what people's motivations are for practice. I'm almost always touched by whatever someone says, and there's always something that's very meaningful to a person about why they practise and the way they articulate that, whatever it is, whatever their aspiration is. The kind of things I hear, or that are quite common: a person says, "I practise to free myself from unuseful habits and patterns, and to help others do the same." "I practise to know and to respect and accept myself, and to connect with myself deeply so that I can connect with other beings more deeply." "If I do not practise, I become contracted. Practice gives the space that makes life tick." Another person: "I practise to explore my inner world, nurture my soul, and develop qualities of kindness, patience, wisdom, etc., in order to be happy and complete." Another person: "To live life to the full, to really be alive. To feel the touch of life and open to it." Another person: "To be able to sit well." Another person: "To just be." Another one: "For no reason." [laughter] Another person: "To balance my internal energies, my organ energies, my qi."
And then the other day I was reading an article. It was on the internet, a science article: "Meditation Increases Brain Size and Improves Memory, Attention, and Clarity." I actually think there's something beautiful in all of that; something, like I said, something actually touching, what a person, what is meaningful for a person, what they bring and what makes them want to do this.
And so there's all of that on one hand. And as I was talking when we talked about death and the Buddha, right from the beginning of his practice, sort of the other end of the spectrum perhaps, taking a good look at life, at what he saw around him. He saw an ageing person, saw a sick person, saw a dead person. Took a good, clear look at life and death, and said, "Why should I, who am subject to ageing, sickness, and death, why should I seek refuge in that which is subject to ageing, sickness, and death?" Just, "It seems completely pointless. I want the Deathless. I want something that is deathless, something that won't die and disappear."
And you know, friends and family -- he was a prince, as probably most of you know. He was a prince, and very well off, and had everything going for him, and friends and family saying, "Are you crazy? This is a good deal you have here. You want to leave all this?" And people said, "There's no such thing as the Deathless. Don't waste your life going looking for that. Don't give this all up. There might not be that." And when he did leave, and found teachers and very deep meditative states and meditative attainments, still he said, "That's not quite it."
In a way, we can see different, or I see in people I come in contact with, different personalities, like I said, and also different groups of communities. So, for instance, comparing kind of what's more typical at Gaia House with what's more typical, say, in Westerners travelling in India, where liberation and enlightenment is a kind of buzzword and it's very present.
So sometimes at one extreme, we can have, a person can feel, "What's that got to do with me? What's enlightenment got to do with me and my life and my job?" And the other extreme, a person just interested in that, to the neglect of, say, sensitivity with how they are with others or their emotional life, etc.
I really want to reiterate that, that it's all good, and the Dharma actually offers a tremendous amount over a whole range. But just tonight, focusing on that end of it -- awakening. Which is actually the word the Buddha used. He didn't use the word 'enlightenment.' Awakening. Just focusing on that.
The Buddha said something very interesting. [pause] Backtrack! I think it's important, given that we all can choose, just to know what's on offer, to know what is on offer. So sometimes we don't even know what the Dharma can offer. And yes, we have, every human being has a right to choose exactly what, but sometimes we don't know what's on offer. And the Buddha said -- and it's quite a funny thing -- he said if you could make a deal that every day for a hundred years you were stabbed with a hundred spears in the morning, a hundred stab wounds with spears at noon, at about lunchtime [laughter], and a hundred in the evening -- so three hundred stab wounds a day for a hundred years, every day for a hundred years, if you could make a deal that you would go through that, with all the pain and all the rest of it, but with a guarantee that at the end of those hundred years you'd gain full awakening, he said that would be a deal worth taking. That would be a deal worth taking. And he added, "You wouldn't feel, at the end of those hundred years, that it had been gained with difficulty relative to what had been gained."[1] [laughter]
What he's pointing at is, don't underestimate what this means. It's important for us to know what's on offer. And within that, as I say, we have a right to choose. So he seems to hold both of these things together: this real willingness to talk across a whole range of subjects, and accept that some people are not interested in awakening, and that's totally fine, and to meet them where they are, and teach them, and encourage them where they are and what they're interested in. There's that, and then sometimes there's, or a lot of the time there's this other encouragement. And so, for instance, the word dharma was a word that was around in ancient India in the Vedic Brahmanical religion, and it meant your duty. So everyone in that social caste, everyone had their place and their duty within that social caste. And if you were a Brahmin, your duty was to keep three fires burning in your house. The belief was this actually kept the universe together and kept the sun coming up, etc. That was your duty, and everyone knew their duty and their place in society. And the Buddha came, and he used the same word, dharma, and he says, "You know what your duty is? Your duty is nibbāna. Your duty is liberation, is awakening. That's your duty. And actually, there are three fires that you don't need to tend -- you need to put them out: greed, hatred, delusion. Greed, aversion, delusion. You need to put those fires out."[2] He's using the same principles. So somehow he seems to hold all of that.
Now, partly in the talk tonight, I want to talk about what enlightenment is, what awakening is, from the Buddha's perspective, from the perspective of these teachings. And also to look at what our relationship is to it -- what it means for me and my life, and how I'm seeing that, and how I'm relating to it.
One possible way of relating -- and I've certainly come across this with people I know, and students, etc. -- is, hearing about it, "It's just not possible. How can a human being go beyond suffering? How can you be free of greed, and aversion, and delusion? How can you know a truth like that? It's just not possible." And so this attitude, too, was common at the time of the Buddha, relatively. And there was a Brahmin called Pokkharasati, and he said, "It's not possible for a human being to know an ultimate truth. It's not possible for them to go beyond the world, to know something superhuman." Someone else was saying what Pokkharasati said, and the Buddha asked this person, "How does he know? Is he psychic? Can he read the minds of people who are enlightened and see where they're at?" And the answer was no. And he said it's like a blind man, or a blind woman, who can't see colour, and they can't see form, and they can't see shape, and they can't see the sun, and they can't see the moon, and they say, "That's rubbish, you people talking about all that -- colour and form and sun and moon. That's rubbish. There is no that, and there is no one who can see that." Would that be true? No, it wouldn't be true. He could be actually quite denigrating, dismissive, and he was in this case of this man, Pokkharasati, and that kind of view.[3]
So again, it's holding both. It was okay for someone to say, "Great, but I'm not interested." But for someone to say, "Not possible. I just don't believe it," he would say, "Why are you saying that? Why are you coming with certain preconceptions? Why are you assuming that? Where is it coming from? And how much integrity is there in those kind of preconceptions?" This is very interesting, I think, just to notice where we land, when we perhaps hear a talk like this or read about this kind of thing. We can hear someone say, a teacher say, "There is no Deathless." How do we respond to that? And just noticing our, "Oh, great, what a relief. There is no Deathless." Or a teacher says there is a Deathless, and we feel, "Great!" Or vice versa. Just to notice what the sort of almost pre-conceptual leaning is.
We may ask, and people interested in this kind of thing do ask and do wonder, "Well, what's an enlightened person like? What are they like?" And again, this is just interesting, to see all the images and ideas and conceptions that one may have. Oftentimes you come across, well, we expect them to kind of glow, maybe to be very radiant. Maybe they glow in the dark or something. [laughter] Or that they have a fantastic smile, and super white teeth, or perfect, radiant health -- that's an interesting one. This is around, you know. Or that they don't age in the same way.
Some of you may have heard of the teacher Sri Aurobindo, and I'm sure it wasn't coming from him, but there's a picture of him circulating. I'm sure it wasn't him that circulated it, but it was a picture of him. He's looking very radiant and very, very ... nice. [laughter] It says "Sri Aurobindo, age 42," and he looks about 12. [laughter] And it's just like, what's going on? Someone's got the idea that looking like thirty years younger than you actually are is somehow a symbol of your enlightenment or something.
It gets quite interesting, some of these views. We may assume an enlightened person is not an intellectual person. They're very simple. They don't like a lot of ideas and complexity of ideas. Do we have any of these kind of views? Or they have to be Asian. That's quite interesting, and I've actually come across this. Some of these are not even explicit, maybe not even conscious, but it's almost like, "Well, I can't learn off someone who's not Asian once I've reached a certain level in my practice, once I've had a certain amount of years in my practice, because I just assume that to be really advanced you've got to be Asian." Or you've got to be able to do full lotus -- and still smile! [laughter] Or you have to be wearing a robe, you know -- it's only people in robes.
And some aspects are more sometimes maybe somewhat of a side-effect of liberation, like needing less sleep, or some kind of psychic ability, psychic powers, etc. Maybe, but very much not really what it's about. Or we're looking for kind of miracles, and a show of miracles. Sometimes we look, or a person is looking, how they feel in the presence of such a person. And so, you're in the presence of someone, and you feel fantastic, or people say, "I held so-and-so's hand, or someone held this person's hand or this teacher's hand, and felt a tingling. Felt tingling up the arm. And that's really saying something about this person." [laughter] We laugh, but this is all stuff I come across! [laughs] You know, tingling up the arm, again, going back to yesterday's talk, when you're falling in love and you're holding hands, that's ... Something in the heart affects what's happening in the arm. Something in my heart affects what happens in my arms. Not that much to do with the other person.
And similarly, as well -- this is interesting, too; I don't know how to put this -- until we begin to feel like our practice is really flowering and giving us a sense of, well, tingling, energy, opening, love, happiness, etc., before we start to have any of that, then, in a way, we look to another for something special. And when we begin to have that and begin to have confidence in our own practice through experience, then the relationship with guru or this or that person, it becomes quite different. Because we see it -- it's happening for me. And oftentimes, in some spiritual circles, the more fuss is kind of made about the teacher and the guru when there's less emphasis on individual practice. Do you see what I'm saying?
So what did the Buddha have to say about all this? When he talked about what awakening is, he talked about there being four stages. That's quite important: it's not a sort of on/off switch, all or nothing. It's four stages. And those four stages are defined in terms of what he called ten fetters, or ten chains that the mind sheds. The mind gradually goes through these stages and releases, the mind or the heart is released from these ten fetters gradually. And so they are: (1) first one, self-identity view, self-view. (2) Second one, grasping at precepts and practices. I'll go a little bit into what these mean. I'll just list them right now. (3) Third one, doubt. (4) Fourth one, passion or desire for sensual things, sense pleasure. (5) Fifth one, irritation. (6) Sixth one, passion for deep meditative absorption, desire for deep meditative absorption. (7) Seventh one is also a kind of extension of that, for even deeper meditative absorption [laughter], what's called 'formless states.' (8) And then conceit, (9) restlessness, (10) and finally delusion.
So there are these four stages, and they gave them a name, each one a name. (1) The first one is called stream-entry, or you could say one becomes a stream-enterer, or there is stream-entry, what's called. (2) And then second one, once-returner, (3) non-returner, (4) and arahant is a fully awakened being.
Just to speak about this, but particularly about this first one, this stream-entry, the first stage of awakening. And what does it mean? One has entered the stream to full awakening. Something has opened or shifted in the consciousness, in the heart, that it's almost like one has entered into a stream that irrevocably moves one towards full awakening. There's a momentum there that was irreversible. You cannot go back. Something is just set there, in a way, that's taking one.
There are several aspects to this. One of them is, the Buddha said, a stream-enterer can never again go to hell, to hell realms, can never again visit hell realms. What does that mean? Well, if we talk about past and future lives, etc., it means that very literally: that one doesn't get reborn in hell realms. But in this life, what might it mean? One has enough depth of inner resource, a sense of inner well-being and reservoir of that kind of resource that I've been talking about, that it's actually not possible for the mind to get mired or stuck in a place of depression or psychosis or despair or too much intensity of difficulty. It's actually impossible for the mind to go there and to stay there -- actually, to even go there, but certainly to stay there. So that's one aspect.
A stream-enterer sheds the first three of these fetters -- I'll talk about them in reverse order that I said -- doubt, grasping at precepts and practices, and self-identity views. There is an ending of doubt. There is just the end of doubt in relationship to the path and the practice and the goal. And the Buddha says one becomes independent of others with regard to the teacher's message -- in other words, in regard to the Buddha's message. Independent of others. So don't need someone to reassure one that it is right and this is the way and that's how to do it. One is sure, is sure about freedom. One has glimpsed a level of total freedom, has glimpsed that absolutely certainly, and doesn't need, doesn't waver from that certainty. And in a way, what that translates as is one's also seen the emptiness of all things. One has seen the emptiness of all things to the point where there's a conviction of that. One may not be -- in fact, at that point, one isn't seeing it all the time, but there's a conviction. One has seen that and one knows that is actually the truth of things. So, conviction. There is a real, heartfelt conviction that actually is unwavering. It cannot be budged, because it's been seen through experience.
And because this seeing of emptiness or this seeing of freedom, or we could say seeing of what is deathless, because that came through understanding, through discernment, through insight, because that glimpse came from that, one no longer then grasps at precepts and practices. So what does that mean, precepts and practices? It means that because it came from understanding, and you see that, you see it for yourself, this is where that breakthrough, if you want to call it, or that deepening, this is where that deepening came from -- it came from understanding. One can no longer believe, one no longer believes that awakening or liberation can, that it's possible that it could result from, for instance, ceremonies, that ceremonies in themselves can do that, that rituals can do that, that darshan can do that. This is this being in the presence of someone else, and just their presence can actually liberate you. You can no longer actually believe that that can be the result, that awakening can be the result of something like that. Or the result of just keeping certain precepts, like ethical precepts. Or -- and this is where it gets more interesting for many of us -- not also the result of transforming or changing the personality, on a personality level. One has seen: it's to do with understanding and wisdom, and it's not to do with rearranging or reworking my personality, transforming my personality.
One can also no longer believe, one does not any longer believe that liberation can be the result of releasing old karma, releasing your old stuff, and when I've just got rid of enough of my old stuff, that will be liberation. There's actually quite a lot in this one. Thinking about some of the superstitions that we might have about happiness, you know, and even the old ones about walking under a ladder and this and that. But sometimes when the being feels quite pressured or fearful, it's interesting to see what kind of superstitions come up for one about happiness. All that has gone; one understands where happiness comes from. It's clear. And it's clear, the path to happiness, and it's clear, the path to liberation.
One can also no longer really be narrowly attached to narrow meditation techniques. So you have to be with the breath at the nose, or you have to be at the abdomen -- it's just too narrow, too small. Even "you have to be with the breath at all" would be too narrow. So there is no longer this grasping at precepts and practices, but there is, I won't say "effortless," but it's very, very difficult to act unethically when one has reached this stage. It's very, very difficult to wilfully harm or kill, to wilfully steal, take what's not given, to engage in abusive sexual or harmful sexual behaviour, with one's speech, or to be interested in getting really insensitive and kind of 'out of it' through drugs and alcohol. It just is kind of to the point of not possible.
So there's the ethics, and as well, flowing through, there is the kindness and the compassion, and it reveals itself in part by kindness and compassion. But that's also an interesting one, because how do we think that's going to look? And someone might be quite strong, or intense in their energy, or even -- what's the word I'm looking for? -- stern. And the kindness and compassion, it will be there, but it might not look how we have a preconception it's going to look.
So it's also important to realize, with liberation, and stream-entry in particular, it's not one constant mind state. So we can come to meditation and we think, "Well, awakening, that'll be great. I'll just plug into this kind of continuous sort of zone of flow or happiness or whatever it is." It's not one continuous, constant mind state. It's an absence of certain really problematic mind states, definitely, but it's also a freedom with mind states. It's a freedom with, in relationship to mind states -- as well as a commitment to developing one's mind state and cultivating beautiful mind states.
Perhaps the big one, the big kind of aspect, the central aspect of stream-entry is this letting go of self-identity beliefs and self-identity views. We've touched a little bit on this in the question and answer periods. But can you just let yourself imagine, can you just imagine what this might mean, just at one level? The freedom, the spaciousness, the relief -- can you just let yourself imagine the relief of letting go of the habit, the compulsion, the obsession of defining yourself, this way and that way, binding oneself in self-definitions, making conclusions about oneself, measuring oneself, judging oneself, evaluating, figuring out who I am and how I am? Just letting go of all that once and for all. Once and for all, not really believing any longer that my story, my personal story, can really, really, properly be a believable statement or narrative about who or what or how I am. It's there, and it's something we can pick up and put down, but as something we totally believe in, it's just gone. The addiction, the compulsion is gone.
Now, sometimes with all of that and some of the more subtle aspects of that, we don't even realize that we're mired in all of that. It's just, that's the inner landscape that we move in. And not only that, when we talk to our friends, they're mirroring it right back to us, telling us what their inner landscape is in those terms and what they think about how we're like. So the whole self-worth thing, just gone, just gone. Self-esteem, just not really an issue any more. Really, "Am I okay in myself? Am I okay? Do I regard myself as okay? Am I okay in others' eyes?", just gone. Just not really something that comes up with any sense of substance or reality any more, what others think.
And out of that, just out of that, that letting go of all that, how much more open we are. How much more love can then flow. How much more available we can then be in life. So a stream-enterer, at stream-entry, one doesn't believe any more in self-view. One doesn't believe in this small sense of self that we have, and defining oneself in such a small way, in that tight way. One doesn't believe in that any more. One can't believe in it any more, really.
But interesting: one also doesn't believe in a big self any more. The cosmic self, or the Big Self with a capital B, capital S, and a self of oneness. It's not that the view has shifted to that. Or the infinite self, the universal self. These can be and are very lovely meditative experiences, experiences of when the heart opens and the perception opens, the mind opens, but in terms of believing them as being who we are or the nature of how it is, that's gone. That's gone, and it can't really go back there.
And similarly, other selves, that we become less believing about defining other people's self. And because we've seen through definitions and views about self and also about the world, and how the world is, then the sting of death has lost a lot of its sting, what I was talking about in the talk on death. It's because one doesn't really believe in the self and the world as real as they seem, as defined as they seem. It's still actually a bit more subtle than that as well. It's still a bit more subtle.
The Buddha talked about, when we define ourselves at an even more subtle level, beyond story and all that, and even more subtle levels, we tend to identify in different ways, with what's called the five aggregates. And those are the body; the vedanā that I was talking about this morning, this feeling-tone; perception; mental formations -- thoughts and mind states and intentions and moods and emotions; or consciousness. And that we have some belief that self is either one or all of those things, or somehow it's in one or all of those things, or those things belong to a self, or some kind of way of viewing self in relation to those things. There's a passage from the Buddha, and he's talking to a guy called Magandiya, I think. He says stream-enterers, they see enough, they've seen deeply enough to be convinced of the worthlessness of self-identity views. He says:
Magandiya, it is just as if there were a blind man who couldn't see black objects, white objects, blue, yellow, red objects, the sun or the moon. Now, suppose that a certain man were to take a grimy, oil-stained rag and fool him, saying, "Here, my good man, is a white cloth -- beautiful, spotless, and clean." The blind man would take it and wear it.
Then suppose his friends, companions, and relatives took him to a doctor, and the doctor treated him with medicine, purges from above and purges from below [yikes!], ointments and counter-ointments and treatments through the nose. [laughter] And thanks to the medicine his eyesight would appear and grow clear. Then together with the arising of his eyesight, he would abandon whatever passion and delight he felt for that grimy, oil-stained rag. And he would regard that man [who gave it to him] as an enemy and no friend at all, and think that he deserved to be killed. "My gosh, how long have I been fooled, cheated, and deceived by that man and his grimy, oil-stained rag. 'Here, my good man, is a white cloth, beautiful, spotless and clean.'"
In the same way, Magandiya, if I were to teach you the Dharma [the truth], this freedom from dis-ease, this unbinding, and you on your part were to understand that freedom from dis-ease and see that unbinding, then together with the arising of your eyesight, you would abandon whatever passion and delight you felt with regard for the five aggregates for sustenance. And it would occur to you, "My gosh, how long have I been fooled, cheated, and deceived by this mind, for in clinging it was just form, it was just body that I was clinging to. It was just feeling, just perception, just mental processes, mental formations, just consciousness that I was clinging to. With my clinging as condition, there is becoming, birth, and then ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pains, distresses and despairs, all come into play, and thus is the origination of this entire mass of stress."[4]
So one realizes that any way of conceiving the self in terms of these five aggregates -- body, feelings, perceptions, mental processes and formations, and consciousness, also including awareness -- any way of conceiving that the self is that or owns that or is in that, or they are in the self, it just can't hold. And yet, one doesn't conceive of the self as anything other or separate from those aggregates. So it's quite subtle, and in a way comprehensive. It's quite a profound realization. There's another quote from the Buddha, and he's talking about stream-entry, and again, he said:
Sole dominion over the earth, going to heaven, lordship over all worlds: the fruit of stream-entry excels them.[5]
So imagine, sole dominion over the world, you can have whatever you want, you can do whatever you want, you own everything, you are the number one el supremo boss, and he's saying the fruit of stream-entry excels it.
Again, this question: how do we know when someone else is enlightened or a stream-enterer or whatever it is? There was an instance when the Buddha, I think he was with his attendant Ānanda and a king, one of the kings he used to hang out with from time to time. And a group of ascetics walked by. A group of I think five or six ascetics walked by, and they looked extremely radiant and extremely present, and very, just, you know. [laughs] Well, they looked really enlightened, I guess! And so the king and I think Ānanda said to the Buddha, "They're arahants, aren't they? They're fully enlightened. Or are they?" And the Buddha said, "Hold on. You need to spend a long time with a person. You need to see how they are through a lot of different life situations, through a lot of ups and downs, particularly a lot of downs, a lot of trying stuff, with physical health, mortality, etc., and really see how they are with that, over time. And" -- two conditions. The second condition: "That you talk to this person many times, repeatedly, about deep things, to get a sense of their understanding. And even then, you'll only be able to tell if you have a certain level of discernment yourself."[6] So to go on the way they look, he's saying it's really not the way to go. It's more that one needs to see a person, see how they are in their life and with death, and with struggles, and with challenge, and to talk with them repeatedly about deep things.
So there's that, and alongside that, I remember one of my teachers, Narayan, in the States, and I can't remember the context, but one day she was talking about this kind of thing. She was talking about seeing some people. I can't remember who it was. She didn't say who it was. They were supposed to be enlightened, and she just said, "If that's enlightenment, you can keep it." [laughter] She obviously wasn't impressed by the way this person was. And that's fair enough too. On the other hand, nice guy, nice person, doesn't equal awakened.
This word, 'awakening,' which is more commonly the Buddha's words, it doesn't mean, it can seem to mean being wakeful. You say 'awakening,' and what am I waking up to? And sometimes people feel it means to be really wakeful in one's life, really bright and really alive and really present, and really living in the moment. But actually that's not what it means. And so, if we put it too much in terms of life, like I said the other day, life ends. If we make our ideal of what liberation is just in terms of being in touch with life, well, life is ending. Do we know something deathless?
We also said the other day: life, experience, experiences are fabricated. And being fabricated and being built and put together, they're not really real. You could say awakening is more, it's a sense of awakening from a dream. In a dream, we believe certain things to be actualities and real, and it's awakening from that.
So what do what the Buddha called 'Noble Ones,' ariyas, people in one of these four categories that he gave, what do they know? They know something. (I hope it's okay -- I think I'm also just going to take my time tonight, and I trust you'll be patient.) One of the views I come across sometimes quite often is the kind of view that an infant, a newly born infant, is totally open and actually in a state of awakening and enlightenment. That there is no self, no other, completely innocent, open, loving, pure, etc. And somehow that gets knocked out of them through education, culture, family, etc. And the Buddha, actually, again, was quite disparaging with that. He said, "No, an enlightened person knows something. They know something. They understand something." And what is it that is known? What is it that's known, that an awakened person knows? They know what is deathless. They know, they've touched and glimpsed something deathless.
And this word nirvāṇa, one translation is 'unbinding.' They've seen the unbinding of the self and the world and the whole of experience. It's just dissolved and unbound. They know that. And through that, they then know the emptiness of all things, that all things are empty, all things are fabricated, nothing is real in the way it seems to be. All things -- so including such basic things like awareness or, as we were talking earlier today, space or time. Such totally taken for granted aspects of our, what we take for reality -- one has seen the emptiness of all that, knows the emptiness of all that.
Now, if I say that, or if someone says that, we can say, "Well, that's your view, and I can have a different view of what it means." Quite common nowadays is the kind of sentiment that, "All views are okay, and it's okay for you to have yours, and it's okay for you to have yours, and it's nice, and we'll all be together just sharing our views. Nice, no problem. And there isn't such a thing as Truth with a capital T." And again, this is quite common, and this is quite curious. I wonder sometimes why that's such a popular notion nowadays. Maybe it's to do with a post-religious culture, you know, that we don't have a church dogma any more telling us, like there was in the Middle Ages. Maybe it's a sort of spillover from postmodernist thought. I don't know. Maybe a person has early religious upbringing and they feel very constrained by that. I don't know.
But the thing to see is that we have views all the time, all the time. The view of self, the view of things, the view of time. We're moving in, assuming views all the time, and we don't question them, let alone views of social convention -- you know, views of how things should be, how we should act, and how we should dress, etc. And so, you know, a person could have a view that there are aliens beaming them cosmic messages into their tooth fillings or whatever. That's a view, and a person can say, "Oh, I respect that." But the question with views is, the view that we have, does it lead to less suffering? Does it lead to less suffering? That's the marker.
Some of the views, some of what we're talking about, they're quite subtle. So one of the views that's quite common is that awareness is the ultimate truth, and this kind of vast awareness is the Truth with a capital T. And in the view that I'm presenting, the Buddha said to go beyond that, to go beyond that view. To see that awareness, too, is also empty. But it would be very difficult to tell at that point -- it's such a subtle change in view, it would be very difficult to tell the difference in freedom between two people who held those two views. It's not actually visible from the outside, probably.
So, on our path, you know, going back to what I said at the beginning, the path is something not only really deep, but really wide. It's really wide. There's a real breadth to what's available and on offer to us as practitioners, as human beings. And we might be, in our life and in our path, we might be, feel, or at a place where we are, or we might be working towards being really connected to the earth, really connected to that. Really open to nature and caring about nature. Really open in our sexuality or moving towards that. Really open in our emotional life and available for emotional intimacy, etc., or working towards it, as I said. We might be looking at our past, and the patterning and the conditions, and letting go of our stuff, of our difficult stuff. We might be kind in our relationships, and exhibiting kindness in our close friendships. We might be open to and working towards experiencing healing energies in the body. We might be in touch with our feeling life. We might be expressing that well, expressing ourselves creatively in life, opening creatively. And all of that is actually important, really important. Beautiful to explore. Really precious for a human being to explore all that. Lovely and available.
But from the Buddha's point of view, if you don't know, if one doesn't know that which is not of this world -- it's not of this world; it's not of time, even; it's not of space; it's not of the self -- if one doesn't know that, and also if one isn't really interested in that, then one is not what he would call a Noble One, an ariya. And one also isn't moving towards it, if one isn't really interested in that. So all that other stuff might be there, but it's what I said at the beginning: it's important not to be confused. And all of that stuff is important and is extremely beautiful, but a little bit to know what's what.
So if we hear this notion of something totally beyond, totally beyond the world, totally beyond phenomena, totally beyond time and space, and some people hear that and the heart sings at it. It just feels such a drawing, such a yearning. Such beauty in that. And a lot of people will hear it and be horrified by it. It sounds so bleak, so scary and horrific. If the only sense of pleasure and well-being and nourishment I have is through the senses, then something totally beyond that might very well sound very threatening and very bleak. If my only point of reference is the self and the world, that's all that I'm familiar with and that's the only place that I have to stand in, then, again, it's going to sound very threatening and bleak.
How do we move towards this emptiness or this understanding? We need to actually (this came up in the question and answer period) look in certain ways that bring that understanding. You actually need to turn the looking, and turn the practice in a certain direction, to begin to see how things are being built up, how we build things up, all things. It's a magnificent journey. It's incredibly fascinating and subtle and beautiful to see. And one sees it just deeper and deeper and deeper, looking into what the Buddha called dependent origination, deeper and deeper. And seeing this process of building up, and seeing how everything is fabricated, concocted. Not quite real in the way it seems to be real. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And what we see is that we put things into experience that build experience. And we can get skilful at putting less in. We put less in, and eventually we learn to put zero in, and then nothing comes up at all. Nothing comes up at all. One has gone beyond experience. One is not fabricating any experience at all, even an experience of the present moment. And what's left, so to speak, there, or what one opens to is the Unconditioned, or the Deathless, or nirvāṇa, or whatever other names, Unborn, etc.
And out of that, partly out of that, comes the freedom of the wisdom, the understanding of knowing the emptiness of things. So the Buddha says, what has an arahant, what has a fully awakened person, what have they achieved? And it's quite a striking passage. He says what an arahant has achieved -- well, put it this way: the arising of the world is understood and abandoned, and the cessation of the world, the cessation of experience, the world of experience, is understood and realized. At first, it's such an odd statement. The arising of the world, experiences, understood and abandoned, and the cessation of the world is understood and realized.[7]
It's quite particular what he's pointing to -- for the Buddha, what 'awakening' means. It's quite particular. And we can compare that, for instance, with -- I just found this at random, a teacher I'd never heard of from a different tradition. He said, his quote:
When we turn away from our primal perfection, our completeness, our unity with the world and God, we create the illusion that we need something exterior to ourselves for our completion. This dependency on what is exterior is what makes man's ego.[8]
Actually it's quite a different understanding. It's quite different. And so, to me, this is pointing towards a oneness, our unity with the world and God, etc., our completion in that. And to the Buddha, that would be one beautiful level to move through, but it's not the same as what he's calling 'unbinding.'
So it's the understanding that comes out. It's the understanding this built nature or this emptiness that's really important, more than the experience and a particular kind of experience. A friend was telling me they were practising in Thailand, at a monastery in Thailand, and there was a monk there, and had this notion of wanting to have this experience of going beyond all phenomena. So he would keep up all the retreatants really late at night, really pressing through their sleepiness to go for this experience of basically zoning out. So you'd be sitting in meditation, get very tired, through the night, and what you were supposed to do was have pre-made rolled up balls of toilet paper by where you were sitting, and every time you -- which I know some of you might relate to, this movement [head nodding in sleepiness] -- every time you did that, you took a ball of toilet paper and you threw it behind you. And at the end of the night you counted how many you had, and that was how many enlightenment experiences you had in the night. [laughter] It's a true story!
After his enlightenment, judging by the texts -- it's probably slightly mythological, but after his enlightenment, the Buddha says something that I find endlessly interesting. He was very reluctant to teach. He'd penetrated to the truth of things, and the truth of this dependent arising, very deep truth, and then he thought to himself, "This is really profound. This is really hard to see. This is really subtle. There's no point in me trying to explain this to others. There's no way they're going to understand it. If I tried to explain, they wouldn't understand." He said, direct quote, he said, "It would be wearisome and vexing for me."[9] The striking thing about it is, five minutes before, he was supposed to be completely released from all suffering! [laughter] Anyway.
I think the point is that it's something very difficult to understand. There's something very profound. So sometimes we might hear -- and you might hear this -- "A moment of mindfulness is a moment of enlightenment." That's way too easy. I'm sorry to say it, but it's just, it's not profound enough. Why would the Buddha be weary and vexed about saying that? I just said it! I felt okay saying it. [laughter] Or, you know, "Things are impermanent. Just relax and let go. Let things come, let things go. Be easy!" That's also not too hard. I'm still okay. [laughter] Or even something more subtle: "Awareness, awareness is here. It's always here. You don't need to go anywhere. Awareness is the Deathless. It's always present. Just rest in awareness." That's also pretty easy. It's not -- it's pointing to something; he really, really thought hard about whether to teach or not.
There's a passage where he's talking to a wandering ascetic called Vacchagotta -- I guess his nickname was Vaccha. And he had several discourses. It's quite interesting to follow these through the suttas. He had several kind of interactions with this guy, and he keeps sort of getting it and then not getting it, or arguing and this and that. And at one point he says, "I don't understand. I don't understand," and the Buddha says to him:
Deep, Vaccha, is this Dharma [deep is this truth], hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful and refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to be experienced by the wise. For those with other views, other practices, other satisfactions, other aims, other teachers, it is difficult to know.[10]
There's also, I find, a really beautiful passage. It's when the Buddha was literally about to die, so it was clear that in some hours he was going to die, and he'd actually already laid down on his deathbed. And that was where he was going to die, and he'd laid down, and he'd talked about dying, and people were gathering, and all the poignancy of that moment. And Ānanda, who was younger than the Buddha by some years, and was his cousin but also his attendant for many years, many years attending on the Buddha, great love for the Buddha -- I find this passage so moving. The Buddha's lying down and preparing to die, and they're talking about burial preparations and funeral pyre preparations and all that. And it says:
Then Venerable Ānanda, going into a nearby building, stood leaning against the door jamb, weeping: "Here I am, still in training, with work left to do, and the total unbinding of my teacher is about to occur -- the teacher who has had such sympathy for me!"
Then the Blessed One said to the monks, "Monks, where is Ānanda?"
"Lord, Venerable Ānanda, having gone into that building, stands leaning against the door jamb, weeping, 'Here I am, still in training, with work left to do, and the total unbinding of my teacher is about to occur -- the teacher who has had such sympathy for me!'"
Then the Blessed One told a certain monk, "Come, monk. In my name, call Ānanda, saying, 'The Teacher calls you, my friend.'"
"As you say, Lord," the monk answered. And having gone to Venerable Ānanda, on arrival, he said, "The Teacher calls you, my friend."
"As you say, my friend," Venerable Ānanda replied. Then he went to the Blessed One, and on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, the Blessed One said to him, "Enough, Ānanda. Don't grieve. Don't lament. Haven't I already told you the state of growing different with regard to all things dear and appealing, the state of becoming separate, the state of becoming otherwise? What else is there to expect? It's impossible that one could forbid anything born, existent, fabricated, and subject to disintegration from disintegrating."
This is the part that I want to point out, and it's also very moving to me:
"For a long time, Ānanda, you have waited on the Tathāgata [that's another name he gave himself, the Buddha] with physical acts of goodwill -- helpful, happy, wholehearted, without limit ... with verbal acts of goodwill, with mental acts of goodwill -- helpful, happy wholehearted, without limit. You are one who has made merit. Commit yourself to exertion, and soon you will be without mental fermentations [in other words, you'll realize awakening]."[11]
Interestingly, what he didn't say was, you know, "Cheer up, nowhere to go, nothing to do." He didn't go into the kind of non-dual mode, that kind of actually pop non-duality. When non-duality comes, coming back to our default views -- that I am here, and I'm sitting here, and you're there, and there is time, and there is awareness, and there is world, and they all have inherent existence -- when one goes back to that, it's actually not deep non-duality. He didn't say that. Very beautifully, he encourages him: keep going, just work for it, go for it. And one of those things about non-duality: how much, again, how much integrity are we bringing to this, and not preconception, but integrity of our heart into this question?
Sometimes I'm aware, in hearing about this or hearing a talk like this or reading a talk like this, the inner critic, and what I talked about briefly yesterday, the inner critic can come up, and it kind of, it turns, it just shuts off, the whole thing just shuts off. And you say, "I can't do that. That's not available for me," or we dismiss it. And how much clout are we going to give that inner critic, in a way? I mean, it's necessary to work with it, but is it deciding what we're going to go for, or not?
So, just finally, I think what I kind of want to strike a balance between, talking about awakening and stream-entry and all that business, is that it actually is something really extraordinary. Really extraordinary, and I think pretty rare. Really extraordinary and pretty rare, but at the same time, it's very possible, and that's what I mean about balance. It's very extraordinary, but very possible. And 'extraordinary' in the sense that something has broken open in the being. Something has broken open. Something has changed in stream-entry.
The Buddha talks about, you're no longer an ordinary, run-of-the mill person. Something has really changed on a very deep level. One sees life differently, one sees death differently. One is looking and coming from a different place at a quite fundamental level. It may be that one moves from that sense and vision. In fact, it is, at the level of stream-entry, that one does move from that vision, but it's almost like it has a centre of gravity, and it keeps coming back to seeing the emptiness, and keeps coming back to seeing that deep sense of freedom. It moves away, yes, but it keeps coming back. And at some fundamental level, the orientation to life has changed. It's different. Something has opened, broken open. And the intentionality in life is also different. I can't assume that a person, a stream-enterer, is operating with the same real kind of sense of what's important, what they're going for, and what they need or this or that. It's actually something different. What I really want to say is, yes, it's extraordinary, but yes, actually it's available. It's available.
Okay, so let's sit for a minute together.
