religion | dhamma footsteps

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.
Continued from last week:
Isn’t it the case that much of life is the experience of trying to have an experience that we’re not having? Or trying to not have the experience that we are having? That underlying drive is outflow, its trigger is feeling and its drive is by craving. Therefore, any action – or decisive inaction – that goes against the craving, and any shift by which we see through the ignorance that obscures the failure of craving to give us fulfilment, must be crucial. That shift is away from regarding these outflows as the bases of our identity, and towards dispassionate inquiry. [53]

If there is dispassion, there’s the capacity to not blindly follow feeling. That allows the three characteristics to be verified. In terms of sense-contact, we can witness anicca not just with regard to transience, but also with how relative sense-contact is: how it just touches an aspect of awareness, and limits the ‘inner’ heart qualities. We can lose an essential part of ourselves in the senses. Furthermore, sense-contact is dukkha, in that it doesn’t satisfy and has to be reached out to.

Acknowledging these characteristics has an effect on intention; craving is checked and the outflow into the sense-fields gets arrested – not through becoming blind, deaf or brainless, but by softening or removing the mind’s automatic link to sense-contact. This brake on sensory attachment also arrests the current of ignorance: if we maintain awareness as the pull into sight, taste, thought and so on ceases, we can see through the current and notice that, where that outflow stops, it’s peaceful.

Therefore, through dispassionate seeing there’s an alternative to bonding to the caused and conditioned flux of sense-consciousness. Replacing that outflow with kindness, sharing and other aspects of goodwill is definitely more satisfying. So the shift to dispassion affects our source of well-being and of long-term motivation. It even changes who we seem to be.

The flood of becoming is more difficult. Our social lives run on it; this outflow carries the future, the past and our sense of identity. But when you look at experience directly, it’s obvious that all we are or have is arising in awareness right now; our memories happen now, the results of what we’ve been involved with happen now, and our projected future happens now. Yes, we have to plan and retain information; we have to acquire knowledge and adequate resources to keep going … but if one acknowledges that time brings with it uncertainty about the future (uncertainty being another feature of anicca), and the recognition that things are never complete (dukkha again), such an acknowledgement steadies and cools intention. As the future is always uncertain, we choose to pause, deepen and clear the blur of assumptions and expectations rather than keep running on autopilot. The mind then operates in an immediacy that allows its full resources to gather, and to be more discerning about specific action – or non-action.

Furthermore, this review of becoming means that the self-referencing that ripples on the tide of action can arise free of worry, expectations or compulsive duty. This gives the mind a way of lessening some of the tangles of identity, while getting a feel for the natural arising of good qualities. For example, faith and clarity arise ‘by themselves’: the less of the habitual ‘me’, the more the spaciousness and ease. In a world of unknowables, this is directly knowable – and positive.

Of course, in relationship to others, we orient around becoming a recognizable and reliable individual, even though heart and mind are ever-fluctuating. It’s good to have a responsible approach towards being with others. How then to handle that sense of becoming someone? How to distinguish between skilful motivation and craving? True enough, chanda and taṇhā do get mixed up – what starts as aspiration and motivation can easily slide into ‘I have to do … everyone depends on me … got to make it work!’ In the vortex of kamma, an understandable craving for a feel-good result has crept in – and ‘future’, ‘solid result’ and ‘self and other’ attempt to sail across an ocean that’s marked by anicca, dukkha, anattā. Stress and suffering are on their way.

This is because the wished-for results cannot be guaranteed. Maybe you don’t have the skills right now, or the scenario isn’t open to your input. Even the Buddha could only point the way – and his own cousin tried to kill him seven times. So he didn’t always get positive reviews. Therefore, be on the lookout for an intention that’s hungry for results, or expects people to understand and agree with you. That’s craving. Also, be attentive when circumstances change. Maybe there’s the loss of a partner or a job, maybe there’s illness or disability, maybe the great plan gets capsized, or the ability to make things happen is checked. Whatever … when the way forward gets blocked, it’s time to breathe in … and out … and attend to the citta. To the extent that there’s becoming, sorrow, anxiety or irritation wells up. But this can also be a learning moment: to what extent was I invested in the future? What condition was I relying on to be steady and “stable? Give deep attention to the citta: that’s the correct motivation; giving ungrounded attention to the feeling invites the taṇhā that will throw you into suffering. Seen in this way, the characteristic of dukkha is a pointer not to the cynicism of not-becoming, but to cultivating wisdom. Learn about dispassionate action. With that you act, but realize your actions occur in a field that’s not under your control.

Operating within a dynamic and sensitive context takes balance. But as you cultivate that balance, you get more sensitive to the things that go wrong, or the internal discord. The mind, or rather the force of becoming in the mind, tries to change all that, set things straight, tidy and right. So, it operates with the search tag: ‘What next? What should I do? What is right?’, as if there could be a knowable next, or an ultimately right way of doing things. Thus, it creates an anxious, agitated self – one who thinks that the unsatisfactori-ness of mind-states, actions, plans and people is going to get cured by their actions – ‘and then I can settle and be happy.’ This strategy never succeeds. The trajectory of becoming is always towards suffering, stress and a self who’s stuck in it.

The Unborn
‘There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks, there were not that unborn, unbecome, “unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.’
(Udāna 8:3; Bhikkhu Ānandajoti, trans.)

Motivation, however, can aim towards meeting the unknown and fallible with a dispassionate openness; and it can gather the skills and strengths to do so. Present-moment agility and quick-wittedness are the qualities of a citta that’s fit for work. Just as someone walking a tightrope can’t succeed if they think of how they should walk or whether they’re good enough, so one has to switch from the thirst for becoming to the desire for balance. That desire, that Dhamma-motivation, is to steer the mind out of becoming and not-becoming, into a balance where the fog of ignorance and craving can lift.

Any scenario will suggest a range of possible outcomes; if there is ignorance, if I’m coming from a self-view, my attempts to make the possible into the actual run down the track of ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Then I have a fixed idea of a desirable outcome, I get impatient, even forceful, and probably overlook a few details or even people … so the flow of becoming creates a forceful self who feels frustrated and offends others.

A better way to proceed is to put aside time and identity, steadily. Can you relax the time boundary and its pressure, and trust good qualities to do their work? Can you go easy on what you should, will, or will never be; or what you feel others want you to be? As a memo: whatever you do, you could have done it differently; whatever you do, some will like it and some won’t; whoever they are, there will be a degree of confusion, conflict and separation in relationship to them.

You can discharge any waves of uncertainty and the pressures they can bring up by extending mindful awareness over the bodily and emotional effects. Then you have a base from which to step back from compulsive programs. As you sense the steadying effect of that, you’ve done the first important thing. You’ve checked the tide; and as a more dispassionate awareness opens around the feeling, the spin of doubt, pressure and agitation calms down. Then the citta can open.

With that clearer view, you can notice that what has become – that is, the present mind-state or scenario – is just that. It has a good or bad quality, but it isn’t an identity. If it were an identity, you’d be in that state from birth to death. Can you witness that quality rather than become it? What you can recognize is that it’s not the changeable and stress-inducing characteristics of conditioned qualities that are the problem you can solve – it’s the belief that they should be otherwise. Because of this ignorance, there is becoming this or that – and no peace. Moreover, the problem isn’t that one hasn’t become an utterly effective and unwavering person, it’s the belief that body, feeling, perception, programs/formations and consciousness could assemble one. That’s another fantasy.

The Buddha called these beliefs (along with the belief that true beauty lies in the realm of sense-contact) ‘distortions’ (vipallāsā).[54] To get free from these distortions entails relating to what arises in line with the characteristics of anicca, dukkha, anattā – and to maintain that view as you act. This destroys craving – this is relinquishment (vossagga), this is letting go; it is the springboard to the Unconditioned.

Can you acknowledge at the end of a day that whatever becoming has occurred for you, it’s just that, and not a person, not a fixed state? That the praise, the blame, the elation and dejection are perceptions, felt meanings, patterns and programs? Meet them, know them, then settle the mind. Like this, you relinquish. Can you mentally share whatever good has arisen, and release wherever dukkha has got stuck? Like this, you relinquish. Can you begin the day with a dedication towards bringing skilful qualities into being, commit to that and learn to not ask for results? If you develop a practice like that, do it more often: whatever comes into being in the morning … in the afternoon … in the evening – you relinquish it, you let it go. Or around scenarios: whatever arises with this project … with this event … with this conversation … And so on. Even as you’re doing it, in every act, relinquish the actor. This check-in with relinquishment restrains ignorance, so one’s awareness can shift to being a presence through which qualities can stream in response to what arises. The liberated citta doesn’t impose, or require, a lot of conditions.

Continued next week, 12 June 2025

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto

… with the destruction of craving
comes the destruction of kamma;
with the destruction of kamma
comes the destruction of suffering.
S.46:26 – ‘The Destruction of Craving

Do you ever wonder whether your practice is getting anywhere? Do you sometimes just step back from the fine details and consider: ‘Am I doing the right thing? Am I more at peace with myself? Am I doing enough for other people, or the world in general?’

Good questions. Well, some results of Dhamma practice are immediate: we’re more conscious of what impulses are running through our systems; and we get a sense for what to act upon and what to put aside. We establish and firm up values – ones that can withstand the pressure of busy lives and the biases of the media. And we learn some meditation exercises with which to calm the mind and warm the heart.

But if you just assess how you’re doing in terms of the conditions that arise in the mind, the conclusions aren’t that reliable. Daily life may find you juggling future gains and losses against present variables, or not being in agreement with your colleagues and neighbours. But with practice, you get less fazed by this; you don’t have to internalize and accumulate the world. That internal action can lessen and stop. So, here’s one big test: can you be free from conditions, even whilst in the midst of them?[49] That release comes through insight-fully witnessing that however things are, they will change, and no plan can be utterly reliable; that conditions are always precarious, stress-inducing and unsatisfying; and through realizing that there is no unchanging self who could control, be found in, or get out of, this predicament. Sounds miserable? No, these three characteristics – changeability (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and not-self (anattā) – are keys to liberation. This acknowledgement is not a nihilistic move. It’s a pointer to signs that will motivate the citta to relinquish a basis in the unsatisfactory field of kamma. And that means that, not rooted in that field, the citta can operate within it like an obliging guest, with compassion. This release from the field of kamma is possible because the ‘true home’ of the citta is an ‘unconditioned, unbecome’ that the Buddha referred to as ‘the Deathless’.

Exit From Samsara: Turning Off the Outflows
The Path to that unconditioned begins with disengagement and dispassion.[50] But bear in mind that the disengagement is not disengagement from the heart, but from actions, or the basis of actions, that one sees as being unskilful or pointless. And the dispassion is towards feelings and their basis that would trigger passion in an untrained mind. You have to know the details for yourself, but the result of that skilful disengagement is greater ease, mental/emotional agility and freedom from burden.

It was from this mode of citta, steadied, settled and directed, that the Buddha reviewed the causal field and experienced three profound realizations. First, there was the witnessing of the field as being more than a matter of personal history; it was a veritable ocean that extended beyond the life-span that he was engaged with. The second realization was that the direction of the currents on that ocean was determined by an ethical undercurrent, or ‘kamma’. This pushed the heart towards bright or dark abiding places dependent on the quality of its intention. But what brought him liberation from all push-and-pull places was the third great realization.[51]

This realization is expressed in terms of terminating the driving currents of that tidal ocean. In so doing, the seeker became ‘Buddha’, the Awakened One. These ‘currents’ are the outflows (āsavā) – the psychological tides that roll out a flow of moods, aims and memories bound to a field of changing sensations, energies and social interactions. It all seems so personal. And in a way it is: at any given moment, that apparent ‘person’ is a snapshot of the outflow and involvement with sensuality (kāmāsava), the nagging search for, or resistance to, feeling based on sense-contact. That ‘person’ gets stressed as he or she acquires the further pressure of the ongoing attempt to get solid, and get established as a discrete identity – this is the outflow of ‘becoming’ (bhavāsava). And what keeps this outflow unexamined and unquestioned is the resultant lack of deep attention. That is, because we’re occupied with, in fact swept along in, the wrong search, the citta is running on automatic. This is summarised as the outflow of ignorance (avijjāsava).[*]

The Buddha had the meditative skills to calm those currents; and he recommended that others develop those skills. He described the bright, refined states that resulted from such development as ‘the best basis for clinging’, while adding that a more significant development is possible: ‘this is the Deathless, the liberation of the mind from all clinging.’[52]

The gist of this is that such states have a refined attention and intention, provide great firmness and offer relief from disagreeable feeling – but these form a basis for liberation, and not a final abiding. With such qualities, the mind can be gathered into imperturbability and see clearly – and it is through directing this clear seeing towards the destruction of the āsavā, rather than through delighting in refined ease, that complete liberation occurs.

Much of this may seem remote. However, as far as the perspective on kamma goes, the point is that aspects of the causal field, namely the identity and the stress that are bound up in it, are a result of outflows that can be switched off. This switching-off is the kamma that liberates: ‘the kamma that leads to the end of kamma is the Noble Eightfold Path.’ (A.6:63)

The Noble Eightfold Path presents that kamma as a Way that covers all aspects of our lives. A simple tip as to where to work on these outflows is to go wide and deep. What moves you along from this to that? Isn’t it the case that much of life is the experience of trying to have an experience that we’re not having? Or trying to not have the experience that we are having? That underlying drive is outflow, its trigger is feeling and its drive is by craving. Therefore, any action – or decisive inaction – that goes against the craving, and any shift by which we see through the ignorance that obscures the failure of craving to give us fulfilment, must be crucial. That shift is away from regarding these outflows as the bases of our identity, and towards dispassionate inquiry. [53]