‘world’

Ajahn Sucitto

[Excerpts from “Kamma and the End of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto, Chapter 5: “Regarding the World.” Note: The book is available as a free Dhamma publication. Look for the link at the end of this post.]

Regarding the World
Having directly known all the world –
all in the world just as it is –
he is detached from all the world,
disengaged from all the world.
He is the vanquisher of all,
the wise one who has untied all knots.
He has reached the supreme peace,
nibbāna, inaccessible to fear.
A.4:23 – ‘The World’

When I visited a monastery in China recently, I met an old monk who presented me with a treasured piece of his own calligraphy, a piece that summed up the view of Dhamma as he understood it. It comprised two ideograms on a scroll: one meaning ‘still’ and the other meaning ‘bright reflection’. The translator interpreted the overall sense to mean something like: ‘the quiet, reflective mind that regards the world.’ ‘Regards the world’: there’s attention there, but non-involvement – dispassion. Yet that mind keeps regarding the world, not ignoring it: that implies compassion.

Interdependence

What is this world anyway? Socially, psychologically and environmentally, it’s a web in which different forces, energies and beings support and condition each other’s existence. It’s both caused and causative. In ecological terms, this interdependence calls for balance. The Buddha’s understanding was that our psychological balance and ethical integrity are essential for a climate that sustains life.

Hence his deep commitment to harmlessness and frugality. However, in referring to ‘the world’, the Buddha was generally focusing on the personal ‘internal’ world: the web of causes and conditions which arises dependent on the consciousness that participates in bodily life. This world is experienced as a series of shifting forms (rūpa) that arise dependent on seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching – moment-by-moment data which are tacked together by our minds to form a solid three-dimensional realm. To the casual observer, this reality persists through time.

But when it’s more deeply and directly known, this world is not experienced as a fixed and stable entity, but as arising a moment at a time.

Furthermore, it is dependently arisen. That is, form becomes present for us dependent on consciousness; and consciousness arises dependent on some form to be conscious of. In detail: mind-consciousness arises as the interpreter and organizer of sense-data and heart-impressions. Without that input, mind-consciousness does not arise. It makes contact, thus generating perceptions that evoke feeling. Feeling and perception arise with contact, and with contact comes more heart-impressions and patterns – as well as programs involved with interpreting, organizing and responding to the impressions that mind has placed in the heart. And so, our world rolls on.

All this interpreting and organizing and feeling is summarized as ‘name’ (nāma), although ‘interpretation’ might give you a better handle on it.

It is through the linking of ‘name’ to ‘form’ that an apparently ‘outer world’ and an ‘inner world’ co-dependently arise in the dynamic experience of consciousness, name and form.

To illustrate this: in the act of seeing, a visual object is first detected, then lingered over as the mind recognizes it, and designates it with an impression, perception or felt sense, such as ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’. Dependent on that and the current mood or intent, a response arises. One can then linger further and develop possibilities and plans. Regarding all this, we may feel uplifted, overwhelmed or bored by all the saṇkhārā – the energies and emotions that come up. Accordingly, ‘the world’ may seem exciting, dreadful or hum-drum. But it is conditioned, created and creative. And like the ever-changing design of the Mandelbrot set, it can keep going on and on: as the Buddha observed, you don’t get to the end of the personal upheavals until you have got to the end of your world.

Moreover, this doesn’t happen through moving around the world, running away from it or creating another world, but through contemplating the causal field, and penetrating the basis on which your world arises.[35]

Regarding the world this way leaves open the possibility that each of us, through purifying our ‘naming’ processes, can affect how the world seems and how we respond to it. Some responses feel balanced; others more compulsive. How are my attitudes colouring what arises? Is some fixed mind-set creating my world and myself as someone embedded in it? We train to acknowledge this so that we can see what needs to be cleared in order to get free. Therefore the Buddha taught where the world arises and where it stops, and the way to that.

To this end, many of the Buddha’s teachings are based on generating bright kamma in daily life. He taught the Eightfold Path to establish purity of intent. If you work with this with regard to people, duties and events, you can live with self-respect, gladness and equanimity. You don’t get caught up in the judgements of success/failure, praise/blame; instead, you establish your Path, linger in and savour the good, and work with what arises.

As long as one hasn’t developed such skill, the success/failure assessment gets internalized and craving keeps the mind driving on: ‘How long is it going to take me to achieve my goals?’ That’s the world arising, right there; it’s a race that can never be won, because the thirst to achieve creates the goal and the self who hasn’t achieved it. You climb one mountain, then you need to climb a higher or more risky one. What’s driving you? This process will always create stress. Stress can end, however, in accordance with the degree with which one can relinquish that thirst, that goal-orientation, that self. This is what is meant by purifying the intent. It means letting go of the search for fulfilment in terms of ‘world’.

Kamma should be known. The cause of kamma should be known. The diversity in kamma should be known. The result of kamma should be known. The cessation of kamma should be known. The path of practice for the cessation of kamma should be known.’ Thus, it has been said. In reference to what was it said?

‘Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, and intellect.’

‘And what is the cause of kamma? Contact is the cause of kamma.’

‘And what is the diversity in kamma? There is kamma to be experienced in hell, kamma to be experienced in the realm of common animals, kamma to be experienced in the realm of the hungry shades, kamma to be experienced in the human world, kamma to be experienced in the world of the devas. This is called the diversity in kamma.’

‘And what is the result of kamma? The result of kamma is of three sorts, I tell you: that which arises right here & now, that which arises later [in this lifetime], and that which arises following that. This is called the result of kamma.’

‘And what is the cessation of kamma? From the cessation of contact is the cessation of kamma; and just this noble eightfold path – right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration – is the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma.’

“A.6:63 (Thanissaro, trans.)