Monthly Archives: June 2024

dependent origination part two

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Christina Feldman

[Editorial Note: It was 1982, I was in South India for the first time, fresh off the plane from London. None of this would have been possible without the help of friends in the NGOs and charitable organizations there. In the days that followed, I was taken on the back of a motorbike over the rough rural roads, to a small NGO in a village of impoverished fishermen. Culture shock as well as jetlag, led to a a confusion of random mind stuff looking for a context, a framework, somewhere for it all to fit, and not finding anywhere.

It’s easy to sum it up like that now, with the benefit of hindsight. One good thing that happened was that somebody gave me a book; “What the Buddha Taught” by Walpole Rahula, an outline of paṭicca-samuppāda: dependent origination. This was my introduction to how the Eastern mind works. Difficult to grasp at first, but a strange familiarity, as if I knew the text from somewhere but I’d never come across it before… perhaps in a previous life? So, I can’t explain it except that this must be a partly obscured universality. It all made as much sense to me, the Western mind, as it does the Eastern mind and as it would to any way of thinking in any context.]

Over the years, I’ve gathered references and examples of the paṭicca-samuppāda mostly in the Thai Theravada branch of Buddhist thought, particularly Buddhadassa Bhikkhu, and there are some recent articles by Ajahn Amaro who describes how Ajahn Buddhadassa presents this teaching. The central question to us, is how can we be free of the Western addiction to becoming?

“The cycle of becoming bhavacakka is our drug of choice to which we are all habituated, whether it is ‘becoming’ based on sense-pleasure, or becoming born of noble aspirations or caring for our family. The objects of becoming can vary from those which are reasonably wholesome to those which are downright destructive, but the process works in exactly the same way irrespective of the object, and if we don’t understand how it works, we are inevitably trapped in that endless cycle of addiction. The Buddha’s teaching helps us to recognize that trap and to break free from it.”

To read the whole post, click on the link below, and from there you can make your way to other related material:

https://dhammafootsteps.com/2023/12/07/off-the-wheel-part-two/

Other links, you’ll find at the end of this article: Dependent Origination by Christina Feldman.

In the Buddha’s teachings, the second noble truth is is a process which is going on over and over again in our own lives—through all our days, and countless times every single day. This process in Pali is called paṭicca-samuppāda, sometimes translated as “dependent origination” or “co-dependent origination” or “causal interdependence.”

The process of dependent origination is sometimes said to be the heart or the essence of all Buddhist teaching. What is described in the process is the way in which suffering can arise in our lives, and the way in which it can end. That second part is actually quite important.

Paṭicca-samuppāda is said to be the heart of right view or right understanding. It is an understanding that is also the beginning of the eight-fold path, or an understanding that gives rise to a life of wisdom and freedom. The Buddha went on to say that when a noble disciple fully sees the arising and cessation of the world, he or she is said to be endowed with perfect view, with perfect vision—to have attained the true dharma, to possess the knowledge and skill, to have entered the stream of the dharma, to be a noble disciple replete with purifying understanding—one who is at the very door of the deathless. So, this is a challenge for us.

What the paṭicca-samuppāda actually describes is a vision of life or an un­derstanding in which we see the way everything is interconnected—that there is nothing separate, nothing standing alone. Everything affects everything else. We are part of this system. We are part of this process of dependent origination—causal relationships affected by everything that happens around us and, in turn, affecting the kind of world that we all live in inwardly and outwardly.

It is also important to understand that freedom is not found separate from this process. It is not a question of transcending this process to find some other dimension; freedom is found in this very process of which we are a part. And part of that process of understanding what it means to be free depends on understanding inter-connectedness, and using this very process, this very grist of our life, for awakening.

Doctrinally, there are two ways in which this process of paṭicca-samuppāda is approached. In one view it is held to be something taking place over three lifetimes, and this view goes into the issues of rebirth and karma. My own approach today is the second view, which I think is really very vital and alive, which looks at paṭicca-samuppāda as a way of understanding what happens in our own world, inwardly and outwardly, on a moment-to-moment level. It’s about what happens in our heart, what happens in our consciousness, and how the kind of world we experience and live in is actually created every moment.

To me, the significance of this whole description is that if we understand the way our world is created, we also then become a conscious participant in that creation. It describes a process that is occurring over and over again very rapidly within our consciousness: I like this; I don’t like this; the world is like this; this is how it happened; I feel this; I think that.

Right now, we could track down countless cycles of this process of paṭicca-samuppāda—when we’ve been elated, when we’ve been sad, when we’ve been self-conscious, fearful—we’ve been spinning the wheel. And, it is important to understand this as a wheel, as a process. It is not something static or fixed, not something that stays the same. You need to visualize this as something alive and moving, and we’ll get into how that happens.The basic principle of dependent origination is simplicity itself. The Buddha described it by saying:
When there is this, that is. 
With the arising of this, that arises. 
When this is not, neither is that. 
With the cessation of this, that ceases.

When all of these cycles of feeling, thought, bodily sensation, all of these cycles of mind and body, action, and movement, are taking place upon a foundation of ignorance—that’s called saṃsāra. That sense of wandering in confusion or blindly from one state of experience to another, one state of reaction to another, one state of contraction to another, without knowing what’s going on, is called saṃsāra.

It’s also helpful, I think, to see that this process of dependent origination happens not only within our individual consciousness, but also on a much big­ger scale and on more collective levels—social, political, cultural. Through shared opinions, shared views, shared perceptions or reactions, groups or communities of people can spin the same wheel over extended periods of time. Examples of collective wheel spinning are racism or sexism, or the hierarchy between humans and nature, political systems that conflict, wars—the whole thing where communities or groups of people share in the same delusions. So, understanding dependent origination can be transforming not only at an individual level, but it’s an understanding about inter-connectedness that can be truly transforming on a global or universal level. It helps to undo delusion, and it helps to undo the sense of contractedness and the sense of separateness.

In classical presentations, this process of dependent origination is comprised of twelve links. It is important to understand that this is not a linear, progressive, or sequential presentation. It’s a process always in motion and not static at all. It’s also not deterministic. I also don’t think that one link determines the arising of the next link. But rather that the presence of certain factors or certain of these links together provide the conditions in which the other links can manifest, and this is going to become clearer as we use some analogies to describe how this interaction works.

It’s a little bit like a snowstorm—the coming together of a certain temperature, a certain amount of precipitation, a certain amount of wind co-creating a snow storm. Or it’s like the writing of a book: one needs an idea, one needs pen, one needs paper, one needs the ability to write. It’s not necessarily true that first I must have this and then I must have this in a certain sequential order, but rather that the coming together of certain causes and conditions allows this particular phenomenon or this particular experience to be born.

It is also helpful to consider some of the effects of understanding paṭicca-samuppāda. One of the effects is that it helps us to understand that neither our inner world, nor our outer world is a series of aimless accidents. Things don’t just happen. There is a combination of causes and conditions that is necessary for things to happen. This is really important in terms of our inner experience. It is not unusual to have the experience of ending up somewhere, and not knowing how we got there. And feeling quite powerless because of the confusion present in that situation. Understanding how things come together, how they interact, actually removes that sense of powerlessness or that sense of being a victim of life or helplessness. Because if we understand how things come together, we can also begin to understand the way out, how to find another way of being, and realize that life is not random chaos.

Another effect of understanding causes and conditions means accepting the possibility of change. And with acceptance comes another understanding—that with wisdom, we have the capacity to create beneficial and wholesome conditions for beneficial and wholesome results. And that’s the path—an understanding that we have the capacity to make choices in our lives that lead toward happiness, that lead toward freedom and well-being, rather than feeling we’re just pushed by the power of confusion or by the power of our own misunderstanding. This understanding helps to ease a sense of separateness and isolation, and it reduces delusion.

A convenient place to start in order to gain some familiarity with the process of dependent origination is often with the first link of ignorance. This is not necessarily to say that ignorance is the first cause of everything but it’s a convenient starting place:

With ignorance as a causal condition, there are formations of volitional impulses. With the formations as a causal condition, there is the arising of consciousness. With consciousness as a condition, there is the arising of body and mind (nāma-rūpa). With body and mind as a condition, there is the arising of the six sense doors. (In Buddhist teaching, the mind is also one of the sense doors as well as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.) With the six sense doors as a condition, there is the arising of contact. With contact as a condition, there is the arising of feeling. With feeling as a condition, there is the arising of craving. With craving as a condition, there’s the arising of clinging. With clinging as a condition, there’s the arising of becoming. With becoming as a condition, there’s the arising of birth. And, with birth as a condition, there’s the arising of aging and death. That describes the links. To read the author’s commentary on the twelve steps of dependent origination see last week’s post,

This process, when reversed, is also described as a process of release or freedom. With the abandonment of ignorance, there is the cessation of karmic formations. With the cessation of karmic formations, there is the falling away of consciousness, and so on.

The second noble truth of dependent origination describes a process that happens every single moment of our lives. But clearly there is a distinction between a process and a path, and it is an absolutely critical distinction. One doesn’t actually want to continue in life just as a spectator, watching the same process happening over and over and over again—a spectator of our own disasters. Awareness is actually something a bit more than simply seeing a process take place. In choosing to be aware, we make a leap which is really about an application of a path in our lives, otherwise mere seeing of the process becomes circular and we continue to circle around. The path is what ac­tually takes us out into a different process.

Now, the third noble truth [the cessation of suffering] is not a value judgment in itself; it is simply a portrayal of the way in which it is possible to step off a sense of being bound to this wheel of saṃsāra or to the links of dependent origination. It is significant to remember that it doesn’t have to be any one link that we step off or that there is only one place where we can get out of this maze. In fact, we can step out of the maze and into something else at any of the links.

The well-known Thai meditation master Buddhādasa Bhikkhu describes the path out of suffering as “the radiant wheel.” It is also called the wheel of understanding or the wheel of awakening, in which the fuel of greed, anger, and delusion which give us the feeling of being bound to the wheel of saṃsāra, is replaced by the fuel of wise reflection, ethics, and faith.

One portrayal of the alternate wheel is that wise reflection, ethics, and faith lead to gladness of heart and mind, the absence of dwelling in contractedness and proliferation. The gladness is in itself a condition for rapture, a falling in love with awareness. The rapture is a condition for calmness and calmness is a condition for happiness. Happiness is a condition for concentration; concentration is a condition for insight; insight is a condition for disenchantment or letting go, and letting go is a condition for equanimity, the capacity to separate the sense of self from states of experience so that an experience can be just an experience rather than be flavored by an “I am”-ness of a self. And equanimity in itself is a condition for liberation and the end of suffering.

Link to the original document by Christina Feldman:

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/dependent-origination/

Link to a post about Dependent Origination by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, with some biographical details by the editor:

https://dhammafootsteps.com/2020/07/24/doerless-doing-part-6b-editors-notes/

Link to Ajahn Amaro’s post about further exit points from the cycle:

https://dhammafootsteps.com/2023/12/14/off-the-wheel-follow-up/

dependent origination part one

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Christina Feldman

Dependent Origination (paṭicca-samuppāda) is a way of understanding what happens in our world on a moment-to-moment level. It’s about what happens in our heart, what happens in our consciousness, and how the kind of world we experience and live in is actually created every instant. If we understand the way our world is created, we also then become a conscious participant in that creation. It describes a process that is occurring over and over again very rapidly within our consciousness. If we pause here and think for a moment, we have probably all gone throughout countless cycles of dependent origination since we first woke up. Perhaps it was a moment of despair about what you had for breakfast or what happened on the way to where you are right now, a mind-storm about something that happened yesterday, some sort of anticipation about what might happen today—countless moments that you have gone through where you have experienced an inner world arising: I like this; I don’t like this; the world is like this; this is how it happened; I feel this; I think that.

Ignorance (avijjā)

Ignorance is used in Buddhist teachings in a very different way than it is used in our culture. It’s not an insult, or an absence of knowledge—it doesn’t mean we’re dumb. Nonetheless ignorance can be deeply rooted in the consciousness. It may be very invisible to us, and yet it can be exerting its influence in all the ways we think, perceive, and respond. Ignorance is often described as a kind of blindness, of not being conscious in our lives of what is moving us on a moment-to-moment level. Sometimes it is described as perceiving the unsatisfactory to be satisfactory, or as believing the impermanent to be permanent—this is not an unusual experience. Ig­norance is sometimes taking that which is not beautiful to be beautiful, as a cause of attachment. Sometimes it is defined as believing in an idea of self to be an enduring and solid entity in our lives when there is no such thing to be found. Or as not seeing things as they actually are, but seeing life, seeing ourselves, seeing other people through a veil of beliefs, opinions, likes, dislikes, projections, clinging, attachments, et cetera, et cetera. Ignorance flavors what kind of speech, thoughts, or actions we actually engage in.

Formations (sankhāra)

Ignorance is the causal condition or climate which allows for the arising of certain kinds of sankhāras—volitional impulses or karmic formations. In a general sense we’re all formations; we’re all sankhāras. Everything that is born and created out of conditions is a formation. Dependent origination gets a little more specific: it talks about intentional actions as body formations, intentional speech as both body and mind formations, and thoughts or states of mind as mental formations. As such it is describing the organization or shaping of our thinking process in accordance with accumulated habits, preferences, opinions. Sankhāras lend a certain fuel to the spinning of the wheel. Within a given cycle, they interact and form more and more of themselves. There is also a constant interaction of the inner and outer, through which the whole cycle keeps getting perpetuated. Some of the formations arise spontaneously in the moment, and some are ways of seeing or ways of reacting that have been built up throughout our whole life. Due to their repetitive use, these sankhāras become somewhat locked or invested in our personality structures and stay close to the surface as more automatic or habitual ways of response. However, it is important to understand that each sankhāra is actually new in every moment. They arise through contact, through certain kinds of stimulation. We tend to think of them as habitual or ever-present because of how we grasp them as something solid. But in our encounter with them in the present moment they are not presented to us as history or as something that is there forever.

Consciousness (viññāṇa)

Formations condition the arising of consciousness. Consciousness is used in the sense of the awareness of all the sensations that enter through the sense doors. So, there is the consciousness of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking. At any given time, one or the other of these sense door consciousnesses dominates our experience. Consciousness also describes the basic climate of the mind at any particular moment—the way it is actually shaped or flavored. So, any particular moment might be aversive or dull or greedy, for example, though without interest or intention some of these flavorings of consciousness may not be noticed. Consciousness is also interactive: not only is it shaped by formations and by ignorance, it is also shaping everything going on around us—regardless of whether we pay attention to it or not.

Name and Form (nāma-rūpa)

Consciousness gives rise to nāma-rūpa, which is sometimes translated as mind and body, but that’s a little too simplistic. Rūpa, or body, describes not only our own body but all other bodies and all forms of materiality. Nāma, or mind, describes the feelings, the perceptions, the intentions, the contact, and the kind of attention we give to what appears in the field of our awareness. So nāma describes the whole movement of mind in all its components in relationship to materiality. This is how it works: there’s an arising of rūpa, and then nāma creates concepts or attitudes about it. The kind of relationship we have with any material form, including our own body, is shaped by what’s going on in the mind, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. So, the shape of the mind and our body, this nāma-rūpa, is always changing, always moving, never staying the same. Consciousness, body, and mind are always interdependent, with consciousness leading the body and the mind to function in a certain way. If a consciousness has arisen flavored by anger or by greed, by depression, by anxiety—or whatever—it provides the conditions for the body and mind to organize itself in a particular way.

All of the events that have taken place so far in these links of ignorance, karma formations, consciousness, and mind/body—these are actually the most important steps in the generation of karma. These volitional impulses—what is happening in the body and the mind—are actually the generation of karma.

Six-Senses (saḷ-āyatana)

We go on from body and mind to the six sense doors or the six sense spheres, for it is the psychophysical organism that provides us the capacity to see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think. One of the deeper understandings we can have, is to acknowledge that the mind is one of the sense-spheres. The thoughts, images and perceptions that arise and pass away in the mind are not so essentially different from the sounds or bodily sensations that come and go in the realm of the senses. We may sometimes have the impression that mind is constant or always “on duty,” but a little bit of a deeper exploration of what happens within the mind actually shatters that perception.

Contact (phassa)

When the sense doors are functioning, contact arises. Contact is this meeting between the sense door and the sense information—I ring the bell, hearing arises. You smell something cooking in the kitchen, the smell arises through the nose sense door. The arising always involves the coming together of the sense door, the sense object and consciousness—the three elements together constitute contact. The Buddha once said that with contact the world arises, and with the cessation of contact there is the cessation of the world. This statement acknowledges the extent to which we create our world of experience by selectively highlighting the data of the senses. Each moment of contact involves isolating an impression out of the vast stream of impressions that are present for us in every moment as we sit here. Contact is what happens when something jumps out of that background and becomes the foreground. When we pay attention to it, there’s a meeting of the sense object and consciousness and the sense door. That is contact.

Feeling (vedanā)

Contact is the foundation or the condition for the arising of feeling. In speaking about feeling here we are not speaking about the more complex emotions such as anger or jealousy or fear or anxiety, but the very fundamental level of feeling impact that is the basis not only of all emotions but of all mind states and responses. We are speaking about the pleasant feeling that arises in connection with what is coming through any of the sense doors; or the unpleasant feeling, or those feelings that are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. This doesn’t mean they are “neutral,” in the sense of a kind of nothingness. Some feelings are certainly there, but they don’t really make a strong enough impression to evoke a pleasant or painful feeling response in us. Actually, the impressions and sensations and experiences that are neither pleasant nor unpleasant are some of the more interesting data received by our system.

It is important to acknowledge that the links of contact, of sense doors and feeling that we have been talking about are neither wholesome nor unwholesome in and of themselves; but they become the catalyst of what happens next. The sense doors, the feelings and the contact are the forerunners of how we actually react or respond and how we begin to weave a personal story out of events or impressions that all of us experience at all times. Therefore contact, feeling and sense doors are pretty important places to pay attention.

Craving (taṇhā)

Where does craving come from? From our relationship to feeling; feeling is the condition for craving. This craving is sometimes translated as “unquenchable thirst,” or a kind of appetite that can never be satisfied. Craving begins to be that movement of desire to seek out and sustain the pleasurable contacts with sense objects and to avoid the unpleasant or to make them end. It’s the craving of having and getting, the craving to be or to become someone or some­thing, and the craving to get rid of or to make something end.

Pleasant feelings or impressions are hijacked by the underlying tendency for craving; and unpleasant feelings are hijacked by aversion. And when a feeling is felt as neither pleasant nor unpleasant, it is also hijacked, in this case by the deluded tendency to dismiss it from our consciousness and say it doesn’t matter. Our sense of self finds it very hard to have an identity with any impression or sensation which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

It is at the point where craving arises in response to pleasant or unpleasant feeling that our responses become very complex, and we run into a world of struggle. When we crave for something, we in a way delegate authority to an object or to an experience or to a person, and at the same time we are depriving ourselves of that authority. As a result, our sense of well-being, our sense of contentment or freedom, comes to be dependent upon what we get or don’t get. You all know that kind of restlessness of appetite—there’s never enough; just one more thing is needed; one more experience, one more mind state, one more object, one more emotion, and then I’ll be happy.

What we don’t always see through when we are in the midst of ignorance is that the way such promise is projected, externalized, or objectified is actually something which always leaves us with a sense of frustration. We are dealing here with a very basic hunger, and we allow our world to be organized according to this hunger by projecting the power to please or threaten onto other things. But the im­portant thing to remember is that craving is also a kind of moment-to-moment experience; it arises and it passes.

Clinging (upādāna)

Craving and clinging (also called grasping), are very close together. Craving has a certain momentum, a certain one-way direction, and when it becomes intense, it becomes clinging. Now, one way that craving becomes clinging is that very fixed positions are taken; things become good or bad; they become worthy or unworthy; they become valuable or valueless. And the world is organized into friends and enemies, into opponents and allies according to what we are attached to or what we grasp or get hold of. That sense of becoming fixed reinforces and solidifies the values we project onto experience or objects. But it also reinforces belief systems and opinions, and the faculty of grasping holds on to of images of self. “I am like this.” “I need this.” “I need to get rid of this,” and so on. And, often, many things in this world are evaluated according to their perceived potential to satisfy our desires. What all this does is actually make us very busy. Think about the situations when you really want something, how much activity starts to be generated in terms of thinking and plotting and planning and strategizing: you know, the fastest route to get there from here, the most direct route to make this happen.

Traditionally, clinging is often broken down into four different ways in which we can make ourselves suffer. There is the clinging to sensuality or sense objects. The other side of clinging to sense objects is clinging to views, theories, opinions, beliefs, philosophies—they become part of ourselves. Another form that grasping takes is clinging to certain rules—the belief that if I do this, I get this. Or one says, “This is my path. This is going to take me from here to there.” The last of the forms of clinging Buddha talked about was clinging to the notion of “I am”— the craving to be someone, and the craving not to be someone, dependent on clinging to an idea and an ideal of self. This notion of self is perhaps the most delusionary force in our lives.

Becoming (bhava)

Clinging is followed by becoming or arising—the entire process of fixing or positioning the sense of self in a particular state of experience. Any time we think in self-referential terms, “I am,” “I am angry,” “I am loving,” “I am greedy,” ” I know,” “I’m this kind of person” and so on, an entire complex of behavior is generated to serve craving and clinging. I see something over there that I’ve projected as “This is going to make me really happy if I get this,” and I organize my behavior, my actions, my attention in order to find union with that. This is the pro­cess of becoming—becoming someone or something other than what is.

Birth (jāti)

Birth, the next link in the chain of dependent origination, is the moment of arrival. We think “I think I got it!” “I found it (the union with this image or role or identity or sensation or object),” “I am now this”—the emergence of an identity, a sense of self that rests upon identifying with a state of experience or mode of conduct, the doer, the thinker, the seer, the knower, the experience, the sufferer—this is what birth is. And there is a resulting sense of that birth, of one who enjoys, one who suffers, one who occupies, one who has all the responsi­bility of that birth.

Aging and Death (jarā-maraṇa)

Birth is followed by death in which there is the sense of loss, change, the passing away of that state of experience. “I used to be happy.” “I used to be successful.” “I was content in the last moment.” And so on. The passing away of that state of experience, the feeling of being deprived or separated from the identity, “I used to be…” is the moment of death. In that moment of death, we sense a loss of good meditation experience, the good emotional experience. We say it’s gone. And as­sociated with that sense is the pain and the grief, the despair of our loss.

These different factors interact to create certain kinds of experiences in our lives. What is important to remember is that none of this is predetermined. Just like the climate for snow, the presence of certain of these links is going to allow other experiences to happen. Not that they must happen, or definitely will happen, but they allow for certain experiences to happen. This may sound like bad news in the beginning, but we get to the good news later.

Continued next week, 27 June 2024

About Christina Feldman

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/author/cfeldman/

‘whereness’ does not apply

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Excerpts from “The Island” by Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro, chapter titled “The Unconditioned and Non-locality.” This week I’d like to go back to a subject that’s been done before on Dhamma Footsteps, namely: ‘Unsupported consciousness,’ I wrote a number of posts on this subject, back in the day when I was able to write my own posts. Take a look at ‘Unblinking gaze.’ Just key in the title in the Search box here on the front page. On the subject of ‘Atammayatā,’ see the text by Ajahn Amaro from “Small Boat, Great Mountain”, dated January 18 2024 and titled: ‘The place of non-abiding.’ Also, the post, dated January 25 2024: ‘Overlooking this to get to that.’

Consciousness of Nibbāna, although real, is best described as being unlocated — here we begin to say good-bye to the world of geography. Interesting that only what we call physical existence is dependent upon three-dimensional space – all the factors of the mental realm (the nāma-khandhas) are ‘unlocated’; that is to say, the concepts of place and space do not in any true sense apply there. Our thoughts and perceptions are so geared to operate in terms of three-dimensional space as the basic reality, and that view of things seems so obvious to common sense, that it is hard for us to conceive of any other possibility. It is only through meditative insight that we can develop the uncommon sense required to see things differently. A couple of everyday examples might serve to lead us into the subject. Firstly, the word ‘cyber-space’ is used frequently these days; one talks of “visiting such and such a website” and “my e-mail address” but where are these? Abhayagiri Monastery has a web-site but it does not exist anywhere. It has no geographical location. The words ‘visit,’ ‘homepage,’ ‘address’ and suchlike are the easy jargon of Cyberia, and we can be very comfortable using such terms, but the fact is – that just like a thought and, indeed, the mind itself – although they exist, they cannot be said to truly be anywhere. Three-dimensional space does not apply in their context.

The second example comes from a (purportedly) true incident. An American tourist, in Oxford, England, approached a tweed-jacketed and bespectacled professorial type and said: “Excuse me, but I wonder if you could tell me where exactly is the University?”

 “Madam,” the professorial type responded, “‘the University’ is not, in reality, anywhere – the University possesses only metaphysical rather than actual existence.”

What he meant, of course, was that ‘the University’ – being comprised of separate, independent colleges and not having a campus – is just a concept agreed upon by a number of humans to have some validity. It might have financial dealings, it might set exams and issue degrees, but physically it does not exist. There are the different colleges that one may attend or visit, but ‘the University’– no. Like a website or a virtual garden in a computer program, or indeed like a mythical country such as Erewhon – all can be said to exist, but whereness does not apply; they are unlocated.

As we cross the border into the realm of the Unconditioned (if such a metaphor is valid), there needs to be a relinquishing of such habitual concepts as self and time and place. The apprehension of Ultimate Truth (paramattha sacca) necessarily involves a radical letting go of all these familiar structures. Here, as a present-day example and to illustrate the centrality of such relinquishment, is the insight which arose for Ajahn Mahā Boowa “in the period of intense practice immediately following Ajahn Mun’s final passing away. It was this thought, which he describes as having arisen on its own (and more that it was heard rather than thought) which led to Ajahn Mahā Boowa’s full enlightenment shortly thereafter.

9.1) “If there is a point or a center of the knower anywhere, that is the essence of a level of being.” ~ Ajahn Mahā Boowa, ‘Straight from the Heart,’ p 171

Secondly, we can take up the Buddha’s own words on the nature of Nibbāna or asaṅkhata-dhamma, the Unconditioned Reality.

9.2) “There is that sphere where there is no earth, no water, no fire nor wind; no sphere of infinity of space, of infinity of consciousness, of nothingness or even of neither-perception-nor-non-perception; there, there is neither this world nor the other world, neither moon nor sun; this sphere I call neither a coming nor a going nor a staying still, neither a dying nor a reappearance; it has no basis, no evolution and no support: this, just this, is the end of dukkha.” ~ Ud 8.1

9.3) “There is the Unborn, Uncreated, Unconditioned and Unformed. If there were not, there would be no escape discerned from that which is born, created, conditioned and formed. But, since there is this Unborn, Uncreated, Unconditioned and Unformed, escape is therefore discerned from that which is born, created, conditioned and formed.” ~ Ud 8.3, Iti 43

It is significant that, when the Buddha makes such statements as these, he uses a different Pali verb ‘to be’ than the usual one. The vast majority of uses of the verb employ the Pali ‘hoti’; this is the ordinary type of being, implying existence in time and space: I am happy; she is a fine horse; the house is small; the days are long. In these passages just quoted, when the Buddha makes his rare but emphatic metaphysical statements, he uses the verb ‘atthi’ instead. It still means ‘to be’ but some Buddhist scholars (notably Peter Harvey) insist that there is a different order of being implied: that it points to a reality which transcends the customary bounds of time, space, duality and individuality.

Some similar areas of Dhamma are examined in ‘The Questions of King Milinda, (100 BC. – 200 AD) It is significant, in the following exchange between the Buddhist monk, Nagasena, and the King, how the element of sīla (morality/integrity) and its role in the realization of Nibbāna, are brought firmly into prominence.

9.7) Nibbāna is neither past nor future nor present; It is neither produced nor not produced nor to be produced, Yet, it exists, and may be realized. ~ Miln 323, (E.W. Burlingame trans.)

9.8) Nibbāna Is Not a Place

“Reverend Nāgasena, is this region in the East, or in the South, or in the West, or in the North, or above or below or across – this region where Nibbāna is located?”

“Great king, the region does not exist, either in the East, or in the South, or in the West, or in the North, or above or below or across, where Nibbāna is located.” 

“If, Reverend Nāgasena, there is no place where Nibbāna is located, then there is no Nibbāna; and as for those who have realized Nibbāna, their realization also is vain…” (The King goes on to tell Nāgasena why he thinks this is so.)

Nāgasena replies: “Great king, there is no place where Nibbāna is located. Nevertheless, this Nibbāna really exists; and a man, by ordering his walk aright [practising wisely], by diligent mental effort, realizes Nibbāna… Just as there is such a thing as fire, but no place where it is located – the fact being that a man, by rubbing two sticks together, produces fire – so also, great king, there is such a thing as Nibbāna, but no place where it is located – the fact being that a man, by ordering his walk aright [practising wisely], by diligent mental effort, realizes Nibbāna…”

“But what, Reverend Sir, is the place where a man must stand to order his walk aright [practise wisely] and realize Nibbāna?” 

“Sīla, great king, is the place! Abiding steadfast in Sīla, putting forth diligent mental effort – whether … on a mountain-top or in the highest heaven – no matter where a man may stand, by ordering his walk aright [practising wisely], he realizes Nibbāna.”

“Good, Reverend Nāgasena! You have made it plain what Nibbāna is, you have made it plain what the realization of Nibbāna is, you have well-described the Power of Sīla, you have made it plain how a man orders his walk aright [practises wisely], you have demonstrated that Right Effort on the part of those who put forth diligent effort is not barren. It is just as you say most excellent of excellent teachers! I agree absolutely!” ~ Miln 326-328, (E.W. Burlingame trans)

To underscore the quality of placelessness, the non-locality of Dhamma, here we have Ajahn Chah’s final message to Ajahn Sumedho, which was sent by letter (a rare if not unique occurrence) in the summer of 1981. Shortly after this was received at Chithurst Forest Monastery in England, Ajahn Chah suffered the “stroke that left him paralysed and mute for the last ten years of his life.

9.9) “Whenever you have feelings of love or hate for anything whatsoever, these will be your aides and partners in building pāramitā. The Buddha-Dhamma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This, Sumedho, is your place of non-abiding.” ~ Ajahn Chah

This was by no means the first time that Ajahn Chah had used this expression – on neither moving forwards, backwards nor standing still (e.g. see ‘Food for the Heart – collected teachings of Ajahn Chah,’ p 339) – but it is perhaps significant that these were the words he chose to write as final instructions to one of his closest and most influential disciples.

Another analogy that might be useful when investigating these areas where habitual approaches and language no longer apply is in the nature of the subatomic realm. Scientists have found that “conventional notions of space and time cease to have much relevance below the Planck scale (i.e. distances less than 10-35 m). Such ultramicroscopic examinations of the world leave us, similarly, in a vastly different conceptual landscape, for they too describe an arena of the universe in which the conventional notions of left and right, back and forth, up and down, and even before and after, lose their meaning.

In sum, the mind cannot be said to be truly anywhere. Furthermore, material things, ultimately, cannot be said to be anywhere either. “There is no ‘there’ there,” as Gertrude Stein famously put it. The world of our perceptions is a realm of convenient fictions – there is nothing solid or separate to be found in either the domain of the subject or that of the object, whether it be an act of cognition, an emotion, the song of a bird or this book that you hold in your hands. However, even though all attributes of subject and object might be unlocated and thus ungraspable, with wisdom they can be truly known.

Link to the source of this post:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/media/books/The-Island-Web-2020%20ed..pdf

the way it is part 2

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Ajahn Sumedho
This is the second part of the article; Part 1 was posted on May 30. Look for the link at the end of this post for the source, and also the link to the original Dhamma talk from which the article was derived.
The three characteristics of anicca, dukkha and anattā give us this wonderful information that what all saṅkhāras share – from the best to the worst, from the biggest to the smallest – is that they are impermanent, unsatisfying and not personal, non-self. So contemplate that. Whatever you think you are, however you conceive yourself, that’s a saṅkhāra. Listen to what you think or believe you are. Whether it’s positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. It’s the Buddho, the awakened conscious moment where we’re aware that thoughts about me, what I think, my feelings, my body, my position, my age, my gender, my rights – all these are thoughts that arise and cease, rather than a concept to be grasped and proliferated on.
This is the genius of the Buddha, to give this teaching, which is very direct. It’s not abstruse or secretive. So, when we’re giving this teaching to monks, nuns or lay people, it’s not about a privileged teaching for very specially anointed people with high spiritual qualities. It’s available for everyone, and it’s been available for 2,560 years. But so much of culture and civilization isn’t based on wisdom. It’s based on ideals – how things should be. Ideals are what we consider how life should be, how Amaravati should be, how monastic life should be. We can all figure out how it should be. It should be completely fair. It should be equal, just, completely right. And if we join the ‘cult’ of Theravada Buddhism, then we believe we’re better than other forms of Buddhism and other religions, because we believe in concepts about the ‘best of the Buddha’s teachings’, the ‘pure teaching’, the ‘original teaching’. We can be critical of other forms of Buddhism because they teach in different ways. But all of that is conceptual proliferation. It’s using the thinking mind to make value judgments about yourself, the conditions you’re living under, the state of the political or social system.
All the wars and conflicts that we hear about in the mass media are about conceptual proliferation. Each side thinks they’re right, and the other, because they don’t agree, are wrong; we have a critical mind. Growing up in America, we were brought up to believe that democracy is the very best, and that America stands for ‘pure democracy’. That’s what I was told when I was young. Then you find out all the undemocratic things that go on, and think that it shouldn’t be like that; we shouldn’t be hypocritical but should live up to this idea of democracy. But democracy is an ideal. It’s a beautiful word and can be very inspiring, like socialism. But in America, if you say you’re a socialist, you’re considered a communist and a traitor to democracy. Socialism has a very pejorative connotation in the United States, at least it did when I lived there. But in other countries you can call your system socialism, democratic socialism, communism. They’re all words, but none of them live up to their ideal because they can’t – because life is like this. People are the way they are. We’re not all arahants or perfectly enlightened bodhisattvas. What we feel is like this, which isn’t always right or good but it is the way it is. This way of reflecting helps us to accept life as it flows through us, developing and using wisdom with conscious awareness.
I remember joining peace movements when I was in Berkeley, California, in the early 1960s. I idolized peace and there was a very active peace movement, with quite a number of different organizations in Berkeley at the time. The Atomic Energy Commission had an office in Berkeley, so we would go down and protest, carrying signs saying ‘Peace’ because we considered the Atomic Energy Commission un-peaceful, and we were demanding they become peaceful. But while carrying this sign saying ‘Peace’, I looked at myself and started considering, ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about. I really don’t know what peace is. I have an idea of peace, but I personally am not peaceful.’ Almost all of my mental states seemed un-peaceful.
I had joined two peace movements at that time, and I could see there were a lot of jealousies and conflicts within the groups; all idealistic and high-minded peace-niks, people who were demanding peace from governments, from political institutions, from religion, from their mates, from their partners, from their husbands or wives, all wanting peace. But what is peace? When we understand suffering, we begin to realize peace. Our true nature is basically peaceful. What you aren’t are the un-peaceful conditions that arise and cease. But underlying all these fraught conditions, no matter what they may be, is the true nature of consciousness: peacefulness, awareness, mindfulness. This you can trust. This is your refuge. You can’t take refuge in your personal positions or preferences, because they’ll change. Then there will be conflict because other people have different attachments to different ideas.
Trying to find a concept that we all agree on is impossible because we’re all different on that level of saṅkhāras. Can you really help the way you are? Can you really be somebody else, just make yourself into an enlightened arahant, a Buddha or a bodhisattva because that’s the ideal you hold? Is it possible for any of us to force ourselves to become perfect? It’s impossible because saṅkhāras are not perfect. Their very nature is imperfection, change. Ideals are ideal. You can carry thought to the superlative, the best, the highest possible way you can think, but that’s a thought, and a thought is a saṅkhāra, it’s anicca, dukkha, anattā. It changes; it arises and ceases. You can’t sustain perfect ideals. You can attach to them and then be caught in judgments towards yourself and others, because nobody can live up to the ideal that you may hold to.

We often become disillusioned with political systems, with religion, with meditation. How many of you think you’re not a good meditator because you can’t get samadhi, or you don’t have jhānas? You think you’re not a good meditator because when you sit in the Temple, where others look perfectly composed and in samādhi, your mind is going all over the place, and you think that’s your self. And then you think you’re not a meditator, or you can’t meditate, or you’re not really a Buddhist. You create all kinds of proliferating thoughts about it. The direct path isn’t about getting jhānas and perfect samādhi but in recognizing that the conditions you’re experiencing in the present are the way they are: they’re changing. And your relationship to them is witnessing their changingness and being patient, letting them be what they are – they arise and cease. According to action and speech, we do our best to conform to the vinaya, to the precepts. But there’s no vinaya around emotional habits or mental activity – around memories, thoughts or character tendencies – because these are all changing conditions of different qualities and quantities in all of us.
How many times have I talked like this? But there’s only one important teaching. You can talk about all kinds of things: about personal experiences, views and opinions you have about various other teachers, other religious forms. I can use inspiring words about Theravada Buddhism or the Thai Forest Tradition. I can inspire you with inspirational words, but they’re only words, saṅkhāras. And so this emphasis on the impermanent, unsatisfactoriness of words doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them, but they’re very limited. They are not what you really are. When you grasp or identify with the saṅkhāras that you believe you are, you’re going to be unhappy. Even at their best they’re going to disappoint you.
So where does peace lie anyway? Where is peace right now? Is it here in this temple at Amaravati? Many monks or nuns that I’ve known want peaceful external conditions – no noise, no conflicts – just to live in a state of bliss and peace. We get upset about the nearby Luton Airport when the planes fly overhead, or a dog barks, somebody’s mowing the lawn and it’s disturbing my mettā practice or my peacefulness. We think of peace as controlling everything so that nothing upsets us, nothing distracts us. Well, that’s not the way things are. Having eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body: these are all restless conditions. They’re not peaceful. Eyes are not peaceful. The nose – odours change. Hearing sounds – they’re unpleasant, pleasant, neutral. Sensory experience is not peaceful; its very nature is change, and that’s the way it is. To not want it to be that way is creating suffering around the way things are. Whereas if your true nature is peaceful, then you’re peaceful with the conditions you’re experiencing right now. The way it is right now, at this moment – whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re thinking – is like this. And in this sense of opening, I open my arms wide, embracing the moment rather than trying to control it into perfect thinking and perfect equanimity that I imagine or remember having. I open to it. If there’s conflict, it’s like this. If there’s chaos, it’s like this. If there’s noise, cacophonous sounds, bad odours, ugly things to look at – it’s like this. This you can do anywhere, whether you’re in the monastery, in the middle of London in a traffic jam or at a meeting with others. Meditation isn’t confined to just sitting in the Temple at certain designated times of the day. It’s integrated into the way we move and change in sitting, standing, walking, lying down, inhaling and exhaling. It’s in the movement and change of saṅkhāras – of saṁsāra – the changing conditions that we’re all experiencing through our senses.
What is immutable, unmovable or unchangeable is this awareness, and we begin to see that that’s what our refuge is. It’s not about grasping it. Real meditation is the ultimate letting go of absolutely everything, which is not annihilation. It is relaxing: not trying to get samādhi, not trying to get insight, not trying to get something that you don’t have, or get rid of what you have that you don’t want. As Luang Por Chah said, it’s a relaxed holiday of the heart. Years ago, I asked him if he could define what meditation is in Thai, and he said, Phakphon thang jit-jai, which I translate as ‘a holiday of the heart’. I thought to myself, ‘I’m certainly not on a holiday of the heart. I don’t know what that is. I keep all these rules of the vinaya and try to meditate and get samādhi and jhānas, and try to get enlightened – it’s hard work! It’s taking a lot of effort, and sometimes I just can’t do it.’ Luang Por Chah always had this sense of open relaxation, of being with the moment whatever was happening. His life wasn’t always just praise and flowers and adulation, accolades and so on. He had to put up with a lot of stress, disappointments and changing conditions that are a part of life. That’s the way things are in what we might consider the best monasteries, not to mention any others.
So this afternoon’s reflection is meant to encourage you to trust what you really are – your awareness – and not to try to become like somebody else or some ideal, some imagined nun or monk or enlightened human being. Enlightened masters are inspiring to us all, but you can’t become an enlightened master by grasping a concept. The master is awareness itself that you learn to totally trust and integrate into your life as it happens. 
Whether it’s praise or blame, success or failure, happiness or suffering, good or bad fortune – these are all worldly conditions. They’re listed in the scriptures as the ‘eight worldly dhammas’. We all want good fortune. We all want success. We all want praise. We all want happiness. But success, good fortune, happiness and praise are positive words that are desirable. We don’t want to be looked down on, despised. We don’t want to be failures or losers. We don’t want to be blamed for things. We don’t want to get sick, get old and die. There’s so many things that we don’t want, but these unwanted conditions are saṅkhāras. They are worldly dhammas because this moment can only be like this, the way it is.
So I offer this as a reflection. May you all benefit from this. Don’t grasp the teaching but apply it to your own experience of life as you live from moment to moment.


Link to the original article:

https://amaravati.org/the-way-it-is-by-ajahn-sumedho/


Link to the original Dhamma talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihmvg81An0E

[Note about the middle image, a satellite image of a large body of water; the Lambert glacier in Antarctica is the world’s largest glacier. The focal point of this image is an icefall that feeds into the glacier from the vast ice sheet covering the polar plateau. Ice flows like water, albeit much more slowly. Cracks can be seen in this icefall as it bends and twists on its slow-motion descent 1300 feet (400 meters) to the glacier below. USGS]