Nourishing the Roots ![[go to toc]](../../images/scrollup.gif)
The course of spiritual training taught by the Buddha is a double
process
of self-transformation and self-transcendence issuing in
complete emancipation from suffering. The process of
self-transformation involves the elimination of unwholesome mental
dispositions and their replacement by pure dispositions conducing to
the benefit of oneself and others; the process of self-transcendence
focuses on the abandoning of egocentric notions by seeing with direct
insight the essenceless nature of the bodily and mental processes we
normally take to be "I" and "mine." When this
double process is brought to its culmination, suffering is
extinguished, for with the awakening of wisdom the basic root of
suffering — craving backed by blinding ignorance — falls away
never to rise again.
Because the unwholesome tendencies and selfish clinging spring from
seeds buried deep in the bottom-most strata of the mind, to eradicate
these sources of affliction and nurture the growth of the liberating
vision of reality the Buddha presents his teaching in the form of a
gradual training. Buddhist discipline involves gradual practice and
gradual attainment. It does not burst into completeness at a stroke,
but like a tree or any other living organism, it unfolds organically,
as a sequence of stages in which each stage rests upon its predecessor
as its indispensable foundation and gives rise to its successor as its
natural consequent. The principal stages of this gradual training are
three: the training in sila or virtue, the training in samadhi
or concentration, and the training in pañña or wisdom. If we
follow through the comparison of the Buddhist discipline to a tree,
faith (saddha) would be the seed, for it is faith that provides
the initial impulse through which the training is taken up, and faith
again that nourishes the training through every phase of its
development. Virtue would be the roots, for it is virtue that gives
grounding to our spiritual endeavors just as the roots give grounding
to a tree. Concentration would be the trunk, the symbol of strength,
non-vacillation, and stability. And wisdom would be the branches,
which yield the flowers of enlightenment and the fruits of
deliverance.
The vigour of the spiritual life, like the vigour of a tree,
depends upon healthy roots. Just as a tree with weak and shallow roots
cannot flourish but will grow up stunted, withered and barren, so a
spiritual life devoid of strong roots will also have a stunted growth
incapable of bearing fruit. To attempt to scale the higher stages of
the path it is essential at the outset to nourish the proper roots of
the path; otherwise the result will be frustration, disillusionment,
and perhaps even danger. The roots of the path are the constituents of
sila, the factors of moral virtue. These are the basis for
meditation, the ground for all wisdom and higher achievement.
To say that sila is the precondition for success, however,
does not mean, as is too often believed in conservative Buddhist
circles, that one cannot begin to meditate until one's sila is
perfect. Such a stipulation would make it almost impossible to start
meditation, since it is the mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom of
the meditative process that bring about the gradual purification of
virtue. But to say that virtue is the basis of practice does mean that
the capacity for achievement in meditation hinges upon the purity of
our sila. If our roots of virtue are weak, our meditation will
likewise be weak. If our actions repeatedly clash with the basic
principles of right conduct, our attempts to control the mind in the
discipline of meditation will turn into a self-defeating enterprise,
since the springs of our conduct will be the same defiled states of
mind the meditation is intended to eliminate.
Only when we secure our cultivation upon the foundation of
blameless principles of right action can the inward endeavor of
meditation prosper and issue in success. With true principles of
conduct as the base, the roots of virtue will give birth to the trunk
of concentration, the concentrated mind shoot forth the branches of
wisdom, and the branches of wisdom yield the flowers and fruits of
enlightenment, culminating in total freedom from bondage. Therefore,
just as a skillful gardener brings a sapling to growth by first
tending to the roots, so the earnest seeker of enlightenment should
begin his cultivation by tending to the roots of his practice — that
is, to his sila or moral virtue.
The Pali word sila originally meant simply conduct. But in
the context of the Buddhist spiritual training the term is used to
signify only a specific kind of conduct, i.e., good conduct, and by an
extension of meaning, the type of character for which such conduct
stands, i.e., good character. Hence sila means both moral
conduct, a body of habits governed by moral principles, and moral
virtue, the interior quality the regular observance of these
principles is intended to produce.
Both shades of meaning are essential to understand the place of sila
in the spectrum of Buddhist discipline. Sila in the former
sense consists in the non-transgression through body or speech of the
basic precepts regulating the moral life. It is moral discipline in
deed and word, beginning as the inhibition of immoral impulses seeking
an outlet through body and speech, and developing into the habitual
conformation to the principles of righteous conduct. But the full
range of sila is not exhausted by mere outward behavioral
control, for the term has in addition a deeper, more psychological
significance. In this second sense sila is moral purity, the
inner purification of character which results from a life consistently
moulded upon moral principles. This aspect of sila places the
stress on the subjective, motivational side of action. It looks not
towards the outward act itself, but towards the rectitude of mind from
which good conduct springs.
Upon inspection sila thus reveals itself to be a two-
dimensional quality: it contains an external dimension consisting in
purification of conduct, and an internal dimension consisting in
purification of character. However, in the Teaching of the Buddha,
these two dimensions of experience, the internal and the external, are
not torn apart and consigned to separate, self-sufficient domains.
They are recognized, rather, to be two facets of a single whole,
complementary poles of a unified field which mirror one another,
implicate one another, and penetrate one another with their own
respective potentialities of influence. Actions performed by body and
speech are not, from the Buddhist standpoint, so many detachable
appendages of a distinct spiritual essence, but concrete revelations
of the states of mind which stand behind them as their activating
source. And states of mind, in turn, do not remain closed up in a
purely mental isolation, but spill forth according to the play of
circumstances from the fountain of consciousness where they arise,
through the channels of body, speech and thought, out into the world
of inter-personally significant events. From the action we can infer
the state of mind, and from the state of mind we can predict the
probable course of action. The relationship between the two is as
integral as that between a musical score and its orchestrated
performance on the concert stage.
Because of this mutual dependence of the two domains, moral conduct
and purity of character lock up with one another in a subtle and
complex interrelationship. The fulfillment of the purification of
virtue requires that both aspects of sila be realized: on the
one side, behavior of body and speech must be brought into accord with
the moral ideal; on the other, the mental disposition must be cleansed
of its corruptions until it is impeccably pure. The former without the
latter is insufficient; the latter without the former is impossible.
Between the two, the internal aspect is the more important from the
standpoint of spiritual development, since bodily and verbal deeds
acquire ethical significance primarily as expressions of a
corresponding disposition of mind. In the sequence of spiritual
training, however, it is moral discipline that comes first. For at the
beginning of training, purification of character stands as an ideal
which must be reached; it is not a reality with which one can start.
According to the Buddhist principle of conditionality, the
actualization of any given state is only possible through the
actualization of its appropriate conditions, and this applies as much
to the achievement of the various stages of the training as to the
bare phenomena of matter and mind. Since beginningless time the
consciousness-continuum has been corrupted by the unwholesome roots of
greed, hatred and delusion; it is these defilements which have
functioned as the source for the greatest number of our thoughts, the
ground for our habits, and the springs for our actions and general
orientation towards other people and the world as a whole. To uproot
these defiling afflictions at a single stroke and reach the peak of
spiritual perfection by a mere act of will is a well-near impossible
task. A realistic system of spiritual training must work with the raw
material of human nature; it cannot rest content merely with
postulated paragons of human excellence or demands for achievement
without showing the method by which such demands can be realized.
The Buddha rests his teaching upon the thesis that with the right
method we have the capacity to change and transform ourselves. We are
not doomed to be for ever burdened by the weight of accumulated
tendencies, but through our own effort we can cast off all these
tendencies and attain a condition of complete purity and freedom. When
given the proper means in the context of right understanding, we can
bring about radical alterations in the workings of consciousness and
mould a new shape out of the seemingly immutable stuff of our own
minds.
The first step on this path is the purification of character, and
the efficient means for the restructuring of character the Buddha
provides in the observance of sila as a set of precepts
regulating bodily and verbal conduct. Sila as moral discipline,
in other words, becomes the means for inducing sila as moral
virtue. The effectiveness of this measure stems from the reciprocal
interlocking of the internal and external spheres of experience
already referred to. Because the inner and outer domains are mutually
implicated, the one can become the means for producing deep and
lasting changes in the other. Just as a state of mind expresses itself
outwardly in an action — in deed or speech — so too the avoidance
and performance of certain actions can recoil upon the mind and alter
the basic disposition of the mental life. If mental states dominated
by greed and hatred can engender deeds of killing, stealing, lying,
etc., then the abstinence on principle from killing, stealing and
lying can engender a mental disposition towards kindliness,
contentment, honesty and truthfulness. Thus, although sila as
moral purity may not be the starting point of spiritual training,
conformity to righteous standards of conduct can make it an attainable
end.
The medium which bridges the two dimensions of sila,
facilitating the translation of outward behavior into inner purity, is
volition or cetana. Volition is a mental factor common to every
occasion of experience, a universal concomitant of every act of
consciousness. It is the factor which makes experience teleological,
i.e., oriented to a goal, since its specific function is to direct its
associated factors towards the attainment of a particular end. All
action (kamma), the Buddha teaches, is in essence volition, for
the act itself is from the ultimate standpoint a manifestation of
volition through one of the three doors of action — body, speech or
mind: "It is volition, bhikkhus, that I call action. For having
willed, one performs an action through body, speech, or mind."
Volition determines an action as being of a definite sort, and
thence imparts to action its moral significance. But since volition is
invariably present in every state of consciousness, it is in its own
nature without ethical distinctiveness. Volition acquires its
distinctive ethical quality from certain other mental factors known as
roots (mula), in association with which it always arises on
occasions of active experience. Roots are of two morally determinate
kinds: unwholesome (akusala) and wholesome (kusala). The
unwholesome roots are greed, hatred and delusion; the wholesome roots
are non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion. These latter, though
expressed negatively, signify not merely the absence of the defiling
factors, but the presence of positive moral qualities as well;
generosity, loving-kindness and wisdom, respectively.
When volition is driven by the unwholesome roots of greed, hatred
and delusion, it breaks out through the doors of the body and speech
in the form of evil deeds — as killing, stealing and fornication, as
lying, slander, harsh speech and gossip. In this way the inner world
of mental defilement darkens the outer world of spatio-temporal
extension. But the defiled trend of volitional movement, though
strong, is not irrevocable. Unwholesome volition can be supplanted by
wholesome volition, and thence the entire disposition of the mental
life made subject to a reversal at its foundation. This redirecting of
volition is initiated by voluntarily undertaking the observance of
principles of conduct belonging to a righteous order — by willing to
abstain from evil and to practice the good. Then, when volition
tending to break out as evil action is restrained and replaced by
volition of the opposite kind, by the will to behave virtuously in
word and deed, a process of reversal will have been started which, if
followed through, can produce far-reaching alterations in the moral
tone of character. For acts of volition do not spend their full force
in their immediate exercise, but rebound upon the mental current which
gave birth to them, re-orienting that current in the direction towards
which they point as their own immanent tendency: the unwholesome
volitions towards moral depravation, and the wholesome volitions
towards moral purification. Each time, therefore, an unwholesome
volition is supplanted by its wholesome opposite, the will to the good
is strengthened.
A process of factor substitution, built upon the law that
incompatible mental qualities cannot be simultaneously present on a
single occasion of experience, then completes the transformation
through the efficacity of the associated roots. Just as unwholesome
volitions invariably arise in association with the unwholesome roots
— with greed, hatred and delusion — so do wholesome volitions
inevitably bring along with them as their concomitants the wholesome
roots of non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion. Since opposite
qualities cannot co-exist, the replacement of unwholesome volition by
wholesome volition at the same time means the transposition of the
unwholesome and the wholesome roots. Continually called into play by
the surge of volition, the wholesome roots "perfume" the
mental stream with the qualities for which they stand — with
generosity, loving-kindness and wisdom; and these, as they gather
cumulative force, come to prominence as regular propensities of the
personality, eclipsing the inclination towards the unwholesome. In
this way the exercise of wholesome volitions on repeated and varied
occasions effects a transformation of character from its initial moral
susceptibility to a pitch of purity where even the temptation to evil
remains at a safe remove.
Though volition or cetana is the primary instrument of
change, the will in itself is indeterminate, and requires specific
guidelines to direct its energy towards the actualization of the good.
A mere "good will,' from the Buddhist standpoint, is altogether
inadequate, for despite the nobility of the intention, as long as the
intelligence of the agent is clouded with the dust of delusion, the
possibility always lies open that laudable motives might express
themselves in foolish or even destructive courses of action. This has
been the case often enough in the past, and still stands as the
perennial bugbear of the ethical generalist. According to the Buddhist
outlook, goodness of will must be translated into concrete courses of
action. It must be regulated by specific principles of right conduct,
principles which, though flexible in their application, possess
normative validity independently of any historical culture or existing
scheme of values, entirely by virtue of their relation to a universal
law of moral retribution and their place in the timeless path of
practice leading to deliverance from suffering and the samsaric round.
To guide the will in its aspiration for the good, the Buddha has
prescribed in definite and lucid terms the factors of moral training
which must be fulfilled to safeguard progress along the path to
enlightenment. These factors are comprised in the three items which
make up the aggregate of virtue in the Noble Eightfold Path: namely,
right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Right speech is the
avoidance of all harmful forms of speech — the abstinence from
falsehood, slander, harsh speech and idle chatter. The speech of the
aspirant must be constantly truthful, conducive to harmony, gentle and
meaningful. Right action applies a brake upon unwholesome bodily
action, by prescribing abstinence from the destruction of life, from
stealing, and from sexual misconduct; the latter means incelibacy in
the case of monks, and adultery and other illicit relations in the
case of householders. The behavior of the aspirant must always be
compassionate, honest and pure. And right livelihood requires the
avoidance of trades which inflict harm and suffering upon other living
beings, such as dealing in meat, slaves, weapons, poisons and
intoxicants. Avoiding such harmful trades, the noble disciple earns
his living by a peaceful and righteous occupation.
The training factors embedded in these components of the Noble
Eightfold Path simultaneously inhibit the base, ignoble and
destructive impulses of the human mind and promote the performance of
whatever is noble and pure. Though worded negatively, in terms of the
types of conduct they are intended to shut out, they are positive in
effect, for when adopted as guidelines to action, they stimulate the
growth of healthy mental attitudes which come to expression as
beneficient courses of conduct. Intensively, these training rules
reach into the recesses of the mind, blunt the force of unwholesome
volition, and redirect the will to the attainment of the good.
Extensively, they reach into the commotion of man's social existence,
and arrest the tide of competition, exploitation, grasping, violence
and war. In their psychological dimension they confer mental health,
in their social dimension they promote peace, in their spiritual
dimension they serve as the irreplaceable foundation for all higher
progress along the path to emancipation. Regularly undertaken and put
into practice, they check all mental states rooted in greed, hatred
and delusion, promote actions rooted in non-greed, non-hatred and
non-delusion, and lead to a life of charity, love and wisdom.
From this it will be seen that from the Buddhist point of view
formulated rules of conduct are not superfluous accessories to a good
will, but necessary guidelines to right action. They are an essential
part of the training, and when implemented by the force of volition,
become a fundamental means to purification. Especially in the context
of the practice of meditation, the training precepts prevent the
eruption of defiled actions destructive to the purpose of the
meditative discipline. By following carefully the prescribed rules of
conduct, we can rest assured that we are avoiding at least the coarser
expressions of greed, hatred and delusion, and that we will not have
to face the obstacle of guilt, anxiety and restlessness that comes in
the trail of regular moral transgressions.
If we return to our earlier comparison of the Buddhist discipline
to a tree, and take virtue to be the roots, then the principles of
right conduct become the soil in which the roots grow. Just as the
soil contains the nutritive essences required for the tree to sprout
and flourish, so do the precepts contain the nutriment of purity and
virtue required for the growth of the spiritual life. The precepts
embody the natural conduct of the arahant or perfected saint. For the
arahant, his conduct flows outward as the spontaneous expression of
his innate purity. By his very nature, all his deeds are flawless,
free from blemish. He cannot follow any course of action motivated by
desire, ill will, delusion or fear — not through any forced
conformity to rules, but by the very law of his being.
The worldling, however, is not immune from the possibility of
immoral conduct. To the contrary, because the unwholesome roots remain
firmly planted in the makeup of his mind, he is constantly prone to
the temptation to moral transgression. He is liable to kill, steal,
commit adultery, lie, drink, etc.; and in the absence of any sound
moral code prohibiting such actions, he will often succumb to these
liabilities. Hence the necessity of providing him with a set of
ethical principles built upon the pillars of wisdom and compassion, by
which he can regulate his actions and conform to the natural,
spontaneous behavior of the Liberated One.
A precept is, therefore, from the Buddhist perspective much more
than a prohibition imposed upon conduct from without. Each precept is
a tangible expression of a corresponding attitude of mind, a principle
which clothes in the form of concrete action a beam of the light of
inward purity. The precepts render visible the invisible state of
purification. They make it accessible to us by refracting it through
the media of body and speech into specific rules of conduct we can
apply as guides to action when we find ourselves in the diverse
situations they are designed to cover. By bringing our conduct into
harmony with the precepts, we can nourish the root of our spiritual
endeavors, our virtue. And when virtue is made secure, the succeeding
stages of the path unfold spontaneously through the law of the
spiritual life, culminating at the crest in the perfection of
knowledge and the serene azure of deliverance. As the Master says:
For one who is virtuous, bhikkhus, endowed with virtue, no
deliberate volition need be exerted: "Let freedom from remorse
arise in me." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that freedom
from remorse arises in one who is virtuous, endowed with virtue.
For one who is free from remorse, no deliberate volition need be
exerted: "Let gladness arise in me." This is the natural
law, bhikkhus, that gladness arises in one free from remorse.
For one who is gladdened, no deliberate volition need be exerted:
"Let rapture arise in me." This is the natural law,
bhikkhus, that rapture arises in one who is gladdened.
For one filled with rapture, no deliberate volition need be
exerted: "Let my body become tranquil." This is the
natural law, bhikkhus, that for one filled with rapture the body
becomes tranquil.
For one tranquil in body, no deliberate volition need be exerted:
"May I experience bliss." This is the natural law,
bhikkhus, that one tranquil in body experiences bliss.
For one who is blissful, no deliberate volition need be exerted:
"Let my mind become concentrated." This is the natural
law, bhikkhus, that for one who is blissful the mind becomes
concentrated.
For one who is concentrated, no deliberate volition need be
exerted: "May I know and see things as they really are."
This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that one who is concentrated
knows and sees things as they really are.
For one knowing and seeing things as they really are, no
deliberate volition need be exerted: "May I become disenchanted
and dispassionate." This is the natural law, bhikkhus, that one
knowing and seeing things as they really are becomes disenchanted
and dispassionate.
For one who has become disenchanted and dispassionate, no
deliberate volition need be exerted: "May I realize the
knowledge and vision of deliverance." This is the natural law,
bhikkhus, that one who is disenchanted and dispassionate realizes
the knowledge and vision of deliverance...
Thus, bhikkhus, one stage flows into the succeeding stage, one
stage comes to fulfillment in the succeeding stage, for crossing
over from the hither shore to the beyond.
Anguttara Nikaya, 10:2
Mind and the Animate Order
As we cast our gaze out upon the landscape of animate nature, it
does not take long before our attention is struck by the tremendous
diversity of forms the animate order displays. The folds of nature's
lap, we find, teem with a multitude of living beings as staggering in
their range of specific differentiation as in the sheer impression of
their quantitative force. Before our eyes countless varieties of
creatures — insects and reptiles, fish and birds, mammals domestic
and wild — turn the earth With its seas and skies into a complex
metropolis, throbbing with the pulse of sentient life. But realms of
being beyond sight — vouched for by spiritual cosmology, folklore,
and the reports of seers — are no less crowded, and no less
diversified in their composition. According to this testimony, gods,
Brahmas, angels and demons populate boroughs of the city of life
invisible to fleshly eyes, while other creatures, such as fairies,
ghosts and goblins, fill up unfamiliar pockets of the same borough.
The human world, again, is itself far from homogeneous. The family
of man breaks down into a great diversity of types — into people
black, white, brown, yellow and red, dividing still further, according
to their fortunes and faculties, into the long-lived and the
short-lived, the healthy and the sickly, the successful and the
failures, the gifted and the deprived. Some people are intelligent,
others are dull-witted, some are noble, others ignoble, some are
spiritually evolved, others spiritually destitute. Human beings range
all the way from mental retards who can manage their bodily needs only
with great difficulty, to sages and saints who can comprehend the
deepest secrets of the universe and lift the moral outlook of their
less acute brothers and sisters to heights undreamed of in the common
stream of thought.
To the thinker who would dig below the surface presentations and
discover the reasons for the manifest phenomena, the question
naturally arises why life exhibits itself in such variegated apparel.
Reflection upon this question has given birth to a multitude of
schools of thought, religious and philosophical, each offering its own
speculations as the key to unravel the riddle of nature's
kaleidoscopic design. In the intellectual history of humanity, the two
dominant positions around which these schools cluster are theism and
materialism. Pitted against one another by their antithetical tenets,
the two have come down in different guises from ancient times even to
the present. Theism refers the diversity of sentient life, including
the disparities of fortune evident in the human world, to the will of
God. It is God, the theist holds, the omnipotent, omniscient author of
the universe, who creates through the fiat of his will the variety of
natural forms, allots to beings their respective shares of happiness
and suffering, and divides people into the high and the low, the
fortunate and the miserable.
Materialism, in contradistinction, rules out any recourse to an
extraterrestrial agency to account for the differentiation in the
faculties and capacities found amongst living beings, and attempts to
provide in its place a system of explanation which works exclusively
with naturalistic principles, pertaining to the material order. The
entire gamut of living forms together with all life's modes of
expression, the materialist claims, can be effectively reduced in the
end to the adventures of matter governed by physical, chemical and
biological laws. Even consciousness represents, for the materialist,
only a secondary superstructure built upon a material base devoid of
any larger significance in itself.
It is not our present purpose here to examine at length these two
rival doctrines. Let it suffice to note that both, in different ways,
throw into jeopardy the postulate of a progressive spiritual evolution
of beings by withholding, implicitly or explicitly, the necessary
condition for such a course of evolution — namely, an inwardly
autonomous will which finds in the diversity of the sentient order the
field for the working out of its own potentialities for growth and
transformation, in accordance with laws governing freely chosen
possibilities of action.
Theism withholds this condition by its basic postulate of an
omnipotent deity directing the entire field of nature from above. If
all of nature runs its course in obedience to divine command, then the
individual will, which belongs to the natural order, must be subject
to the same divine supervision as the rest of animate nature. The
autonomy of the individual will and its direct impact on the sentient
sphere are excluded, and with them also goes the thesis of a genuine
long-term spiritual growth, to which they are essential.
Materialism likewise shuts out the notion of a progressive
spiritual evolution of beings, but more simply and directly, by
explicitly denying the basic presupposition of such a notion. The
will's claim to freedom is here rejected, its autonomy usurped by the
irresistible pressure of the determinative influences at its base.
Consciousness becomes a mere by-product of material processes; the
individual life-stream leaves no impact on any continuous current of
experience enduring beyond the grave. Both conscious action and
evolution in the biotic sphere proceed in the grip of the same play of
cosmic forces — blind, brute, and insentient in their fundamental
mode of operation.
Buddhism also offers an explanation for the diversity of the
sentient order, an explanation which bridges the gap between volition
and the diversity and thus opens up the prospect for long-term
spiritual development. According to Buddhism, the explanation for the
variegation of sentient beings — in their kinds, faculties, and
fortunes — lies in their kamma, that is, their volitional action.
Beings are, in the words of the Buddha, "heirs of their
action." They spring forth from their store of accumulated action
as a matrix out of which they are fashioned, inheriting the results
proper to their deeds even across the gulf of lifetimes. Through the
succession of life-terms, kamma holds sway over the individual
evolutionary current. Acts of will, once completed, recede into the
forward moving mental stream out of which they emerged, and remaining
in the form of psychic potencies, pilot the future course of evolution
to be taken by that particular current of experience called an
"individual being." Just as the kamma rises up out of the
stream of consciousness, so does the stream of consciousness again
flow forth from the germinative kamma, which thus serves to link into
a single chain the series of separated lives. The kammic force drives
the current of consciousness onward into new modes of existence
conformable to its nature; it determines the specific form of life in
which the individual will take remanifestation, the set of faculties
with which the new being will be endowed, and a substantial portion of
the happiness and suffering that being will meet during the course of
its life.
It is, therefore, not God or chance in the Buddhist picture, but
the differentiation in volitional action, functioning across the
succession of lives, that accounts for the differentiation in the
animate order, and the differentiation in action again that divides
beings into the high and low, the happy and the miserable, the gifted
and the deprived. As the Buddha declares: "Beings are the owners
of their actions, heirs of their actions. Their action is the source
from which they spring, their kinsman and their refuge. Action divides
beings into the inferior and the superior."
Since the effective determinant of destiny is kamma, and kamma is
essentially volition, this means that the operative factor in the
formation of future becoming is lodged in the individual will. The
will, from the Buddhist perspective, is no accidental offshoot of the
machinery of nature, compelled to its course by the conspiracy of
cosmic forces; it is, rather, in the deepest sense the artisan behind
the entire process of animate evolution. Here will is primary and the
material factors secondary, the plastic substance with which the will
works and by which it gives tangible expression to its store of
dispositional tendencies. The varied landscape of sentient existence,
for Buddhism, represents but an outward register of the inward
transactions of the will, and the hierarchy of living forms — the
"great chain of being" — but a congellation of its
functional modalities in the world of spatio-temporal extension.
Differentiation in the biological sphere is thus preceded and
paralleled by a set of transformations in the mental sphere, which
finds in animate nature the channel for actualizing its own
potentialities throughout the series of successive becomings
comprising the individual continuum. Through the exercise of our will,
therefore, we build for ourselves our own world independent of
coercion by extrinsic forces and mould the destiny that awaits us in
time to come, whether for happiness or misery, for bondage or
liberation.
For the spiritual aspirant, however, it is not sufficient merely to
understand the theoretical ground for the differentiation of living
beings. For us it is of the utmost importance to know what we can do
to further our own progress along the scale of spiritual evolution —
to advance to higher levels of attainment during the course of our
earthly life, to secure a rebirth conducive to spiritual growth in the
life to come, and ultimately to transcend this repetitive cycle of
birth and death and attain Nibbana, the supreme and irreversible
deliverance.
The answer to this problem begins with the fact that kamma divides
itself, according to its moral quality, into two types — the
unwholesome (akusala) and the wholesome (kusala).
Unwholesome kamma is action — physical, verbal or mental — that
springs from the three unwholesome roots of action: greed (lobha),
hatred (dosa) and delusion (moha). Any action grounded
in these roots is spiritually detrimental and morally defective. It
destroys the higher faculties, entails suffering as its consequence,
and causes a plunge into lower states of existence; in short, it
brings decline along the scale of spiritual evolution and deeper
immersion in the mire of phenomenal existence. Wholesome kamma, on the
other hand, is action springing from the three contrary wholesome
roots — non-greed (alobha), non-hatred (adosa) and
non-delusion (amoha), finding positive expression in the
qualities of charity, loving-kindness and wisdom, respectively.
Wholesome action functions in a way diametrically opposite to its dark
counterpart. It is spiritually beneficial and morally commendable,
stimulates the unfolding of the higher faculties, and entails
happiness both in the present and in time to come. Consistently
practiced, it promotes progress along the evolutionary scale, leading
to higher states of existence in successive life-spans, and finally to
the realization of deliverance.
On ultimate analysis, life is a self-regenerating sequence of
occasions of experience, comprising occasions of action and occasions
of reception. Action is volition, and volition inevitably involves
decision or choice — a selection from the welter of possibilities
open to the will of that alternative most, conformable to the
individual's purpose, a selection even, at a higher level, of the
purposes themselves. Every moment of morally significant action,
therefore, confronts us with the call for a decision, with the
necessity for choice. Choice must work within the gamut of options
open to the will, and these options, despite their great differences
of qualitative character, necessarily fall into one of two classes
according to their ethical nature — into the wholesome or the
unwholesome. The one leads to progress, the other to decline.
Thence progress or decline depends entirely upon our choice, and
not upon any external agency whether conceived in spiritualistic or
materialistic garb. Through our fleeting, momentary decisions,
accumulated over long periods, we model our fortune and chisel out of
the unshaped block of futurity the destiny that will befall us in the
span of time to come. Each call for a decision may be depicted as a
ladder, one end leading upward to unknown heights, and the other
extending downward into forbidding depths, while our successive
decisions may be taken as the steps that lead us up or down the
ladder's graded rungs. Or again, each moment of action may be compared
to a crossroad at which we stand, a forked road one side of which
leads to a city of bliss and the other to a swampland of misery and
despair. The two roads stand, fixed and silent, awaiting our choice,
and only our decision determines whether we shall reach the one
destination or the other.
In sum, then, it is our kamma that precipitates our destiny, for it
is kamma that brings about manifestation of all the destinations (gati)
or realms of sentient existence, and kamma ultimately that fashions
the entire variegated landscape of sentient existence itself,
according to the ethical tone of its associated moral roots. As the
Exalted One explains, speaking not through speculation but through his
own direct penetration of the paths leading to all destinations:
It is not celestial beings (deva), or humans, or any other
creatures belonging to happy forms of existence, that appear through
action (kamma) born of greed, born of hate, born of delusion;
it is rather beings of the hells, of the animal kingdom, of the
ghostly realm, or any other others of miserable form of existence
that make their appearance through action born of greed, hate and
delusion...
It is not creatures of the hells, of the animal kingdom, of the
ghostly realm, or any others of a miserable form of existence, that
appear through action born of non-greed, born of non-hate, born of
non-delusion; it is rather celestial beings, humans, or any other
creatures belonging to a happy form of existence that make their
appearance through action born of non-greed, non-hate, and
non-delusion.
Anguttara Nikaya, 6:39
Merit and Spiritual Growth
The performance of deeds of merit forms one of the most essential
elements of Buddhist practice. Its various modes provide in their
totality a compendium of applied Buddhism, showing Buddhism not as a
system of ideas but as a complete way of life. Buddhist popular belief
has often emphasized merit as a productive source of worldly blessings
— of health, wealth, long life, beauty and friends. As a result of
this emphasis, meritorious activity has come to be conceived rather in
terms of a financial investment, as a religious business venture
yielding returns to the satisfaction of the agent's mundane desires.
While such a conception no doubt contains an element of truth, its
popularization has tended to eclipse the more important function merit
plays in the context of Buddhist practice. Seen in correct
perspective, merit is an essential ingredient in the harmony and
completeness of the spiritual life, a means of self-cultivation, and
an indispensable stepping-stone to spiritual progress.
The accumulation of a "stock of merit" is a primary
requisite for acquiring all the fruits of the Buddhist religious life,
from a pleasant abiding here and now to a favorable rebirth in the
life to come, from the initial stages of meditative progress to the
realization of the states of sanctity that come as the fruits of
entering upon the noble path. The highest fruition of merit is
identical with the culmination of the Buddhist holy life itself —
that is, emancipation from the shackles of samsaric existence and the
realization of Nibbana, the unconditioned state beyond the
insubstantial phenomena of the world. The mere piling up of merit, to
be sure, is not in itself sufficient to guarantee the attainment of
this goal. Merit is only one requisite, and it must be balanced by its
counterpart to secure the breakthrough from bondage to final freedom.
The counterpart of merit is knowledge (ñana), the direct
confrontation with the basic truths of existence through the eye of
intuitive wisdom.
Merit and knowledge together constitute the two sets of equipment
the spiritual aspirant requires in the quest for deliverance, the
equipment of merit (puññasambhara) and the equipment of
knowledge (ñanasambhara), respectively. Each set of equipment
has its own contribution to make to the fulfillment of the spiritual
life. The equipment of merit facilitates progress in the course of
samsaric wandering: it brings a favorable rebirth, the encounter with
good friends to guide one's footsteps along the path, the meeting with
opportunities for spiritual growth, the flowering of the lofty
qualities of character, and the maturation of the spiritual faculties
required for the higher attainments. The equipment of knowledge brings
the factor directly necessary for cutting the bonds of samsaric
existence: the penetration of truth, enlightenment, the undistorted
comprehension of the nature of actuality.
Either set of equipment, functioning in isolation, is insufficient
to the attainment of the goal; either pursued alone leads to a
deviant, one-sided development that departs from the straight path to
deliverance taught by the Buddha. Merit without knowledge produces
pleasant fruit and a blissful rebirth, but cannot issue in the
transcendence of the mundane order and entrance upon the supramundane
path. And knowledge without the factors of merit deteriorates into dry
intellectualism, mere erudition or scholasticism, impotent when
confronted with the task of grasping a truth outside the pale of
intellection. But when they function together in unison in the life of
the aspirant, the two sets of equipment acquire a potency capable of
propelling him to the heights of realization. When each set of
equipment complements the other, polishes the other, and perfects the
other, then they undergo a graduated course of mutual purification
culminating at the crest in the twin endowments of the Emancipated One
— in that clear knowledge (vijja) and flawless conduct (carana)
which make him, in the words of the Buddha, "supreme among gods
and humans."
But while merit and knowledge thus occupy coordinate positions, it
is merit that claims priority from the standpoint of spiritual
dynamics. The reason is that works of merit come first in the process
of inner growth. If knowledge be the flower that gives birth to the
fruit of liberation, and faith (saddha) the seed out of which
the flower unfolds, then merit is the soil, water and fertilizer all
in one — the indispensable nutriment for every stage of growth.
Merit paves the way for knowledge, and finds in knowledge the sanction
for its own claim to a place in the system of Buddhist training.
The reason for this particular sequential structure is closely
linked to the Buddhist conception of noetic realization. From the
Buddhist standpoint the comprehension of spiritual truth is not a
matter of mere intellectual cogitation but of existential
actualization. That is, it is a matter of grasping with our whole
being the truth towards which we aspire, and of inwardly appropriating
that truth in a manner so total and complete that our being becomes
transformed into a very reflex and effusion of the truth upon which we
stand. The understanding of truth in the context of the spiritual
life, in other words, is no affair of accumulating bits and pieces of
information publicly accessible and subjectively indifferent; it is,
rather, a process of uncovering the deepest truths about ourselves and
about the world, and of working the understanding that emerges into
the entire complex of the inner life. Hence the use of the words
"actualization" and "realization," which bring
into the open the ontological backdrop underlying the noetic process.
In order to grasp truth in this totalistic manner at any particular
stage of spiritual development, the tenor of our inner being must be
raised to a pitch where it is fit for the reception of some new
disclosure of the truth. Wisdom and character, though not identical,
are at any rate parallel terms, which in most cases mature in a
delicately balanced ratio. We can grasp only what we are fit to grasp,
and our fitness is largely a function of our character. The
existential comprehension of truth thus becomes a matter of inward
worth, of deservingness, or of merit. The way to effect this inward
worthiness is by the performance of works of merit, not merely
outwardly, but backed by the proper attitudes and disposition of mind.
For the capacity to comprehend truths pertaining to the spiritual
order is always proportional to the store and quality of accumulated
merit. The greater and finer the merit, the larger and deeper the
capacity for understanding. This principle holds at each level of
maturation in the ascent towards full realization, and applies with
special force to the comprehension of ultimate truth.
Ultimate truth, in the Buddha's Teaching, is Nibbana, the
unconditioned element (asankhata dhatu), and realization of
ultimate truth the realization of Nibbana. Nibbana is the perfection
of purity: the destruction of all passions, the eradication of
clinging, the abolition of every impulse towards self-affirmation. The
final thrust to the realization of Nibbana is the special province of
wisdom, since wisdom alone is adequate to the task of comprehending
all conditioned phenomena in their essential nature as impermanent,
suffering and not-self, and of turning away from them to penetrate the
unconditioned, where alone permanent freedom from suffering is to be
found. But that this penetration may take place, our interior must be
made commensurate in purity with the truth it would grasp, and this
requires in the first instance that it be purged of all those elements
obstructive to the florescence of a higher light and knowledge. The
apprehension of Nibbana, this perfect purity secluded from the dust of
passion, is only possible when a corresponding purity has been set up
within ourselves. For only a pure mind can discern, through the dark
mist of ignorance and defilement, the spotless purity of Nibbana,
abiding in absolute solitude beyond the turmoil of the phenomenal
procession.
The achievement of such a purification of our inward being is the
work of merit. Merit scours the mind of the coarser defilements,
attenuates the grip of the unwholesome roots, and fortifies the
productive power of the wholesome, beneficial states. Through its
cumulative force it provides the foundation for wisdom's final
breakthrough to the unconditioned. It is the fuel, so to speak, for
the ascent of wisdom from the mundane to the supramundane. Just as the
initial stages of a lunar rocket work up the momentum that enables the
uppermost stage to break the gravitational pull of the earth and reach
the moon, so does merit give to the spiritual life that forward thrust
that will propel the wisdom-faculty past the gravitational pull of the
mundane order and permit it to penetrate the transcendental truth.
The classical Buddhist commentators underscore this preparatory
purgative function of merit when they define merit (puñña)
etymologically as "that which purges and purifies the mental
continuum" (santanam punati visodheti). Merit performs its
purgative function in the context of a complex process involving an
agent and object of purification, and a mode of operation by which the
purification takes place. The agent of purification is the mind
itself, in its creative, formative role as the source and matrix of
action. Deeds of merit are, as we have already seen, instances of
wholesome kamma, and kamma ultimately reduces to volition. Therefore,
at the fundamental level of analysis, a deed of merit consists in a
volition, a determinative act of will belonging to the righteous order
(puññabhisankhara). Since volition is a mode of mental
activity, this means that merit turns out, under scrutiny, to be a
mode of mental activity. It is, at the core of the behavior-pattern
which serves as its vehicle, a particular application of thought by
which the mind marshalls its components for the achievement of a
chosen end.
This discovery cautions us against misconstruing the Buddhist
stress on the practice of merit as a call for blind subjection to
rules and rites. The primary instrument behind any act of merit, from
the Buddhist point of view, is the mind. The deed itself in its
physical or vocal dimension serves mainly as an expression of a
corresponding state of consciousness, and without a keen awareness of
the nature and significance of the meritorious deed, the bare outward
act is devoid of purgative value. Even when rules of conduct are
observed, or rituals and worship performed with a view to the
acquisition of merit, the spiritual potency of these structures
derives not from any intrinsic sanctity they might possess in
themselves, but from their effectiveness in channelizing the current
of mental activity in a spiritual beneficial direction. They function,
in effect, as skillful means or expedient devices for inducing
wholesome states of consciousness.
Mechanical conformity to moral rules, or the performance of
religious duties through unquestioning obedience to established forms,
far from serving as a means to salvation, in the Buddhist outlook
actually constitute obstacles. They are instances of "clinging to
rules and rituals" (silabbataparamasa), the third of the
fetters (samyojana) binding beings to the wheel of becoming,
which must be abandoned in order to enter upon the path to final
deliverance. Even in such relatively external forms of merit-making as
the undertaking of moral precepts and ceremonial worship, mindfulness
and clear comprehension are essential; much more, then, are they
necessary to the predominantly internal modes of meritorious activity,
such as meditation or the study of the Dhamma.
The object of the purifying process of merit is again the mind,
only here considered not from the standpoint of its immediacy, as a
creative source of action, but from the standpoint of its duration, as
a continuum (cittasantana). For, looked at from the temporal
point of view, the mind is no stable entity enduring self-identical
through its changing activities; it is, rather, a serial continuity
composed of discrete acts of mentation bound to one another by exact
laws of causal interconnection. Each thought-unit flashes into being,
persists for an extremely brief moment, and then perishes, passing on
to its immediate successor its storage of recorded impressions. Each
individual member of the series inherits, preserves and transmits,
along with its own novel modifications, the entire content of the
series as a whole, which thus underlies every one of its components.
Thence the series maintains, despite its discontinuous composition, an
element of uniformity that gives to the flow of separate
thought-moments the character of a continuum.
This sequential current of mentation has been going on, according
to Buddhism, without discernible beginning. Driven forward from life
to life by ignorance and craving, it appears now in one mode of
manifestation, now in another. Embedded in the mental continuum
throughout its beginningless journey is a host of particularly
afflictive and disruptive mental forces known as kilesas,
"defilements." Foremost among them are the three unwholesome
roots — greed, hatred and delusion; from this triad spring the
remaining members of the set, such as pride, opinion, selfishness,
envy, sloth and restlessness. During moments of passivity the
defilements lie dormant at the base of the mental continuum, as anusaya
or latent tendencies. But when, either through the impact of outer
sensory stimuli or their own subliminal process of growth, they
acquire sufficient force, they surge to the surface of consciousness
in the form of obsessions (pariyutthana). The obsessions
pollute the mind with their toxic flow and rebound upon the deeper
levels of consciousness, reinforcing their roots at the base of the
continuum. If they should gather still additional charge, the
defilements may reach the even more dangerous stage of transgression (vitikkama),
when they erupt as bodily or verbal actions that violate the
fundamental laws of morality and lead to pain and suffering as their
retributive consequence.
When merit is said to "purge and purify the mental
continuum," it is so described in reference to its capacity to
arrest the surging tide of the defilements which threatens to sweep
the mind towards the perilous deep of transgressional action. Only
wisdom — the supramundane wisdom of the noble paths — can
eradicate the defilements at the level of latency, which is necessary
if the bonds of existence are to be broken and deliverance attained.
But the practice of merit can contribute much towards attenuating
their obsessive force and establishing a foothold for wisdom to
exercise its liberating function. Wisdom can operate only upon the
base of a purified mind; the accumulation of merit purifies the mind;
hence merit provides the supporting condition for wisdom.
When the mind is allowed to flow according to its own momentum,
without restraint or control, like a turbulent river it casts up to
the surface — i.e., to the level of active consciousness — the
store of pollutants it harbors at its base: lust, hatred, delusion,
and their derivative defilements. If the defilements are then given
further scope to grow by indulging them, they will wither the
potential for good, darken the beam of awareness, and strangle the
faculty of wisdom until it is reduced to a mere vestige. The
performance of meritorious deeds serves as a means of resisting the
upsurge of defiling states, of replacing them with their wholesome
opposites, and of thereby purifying the mental continuum to an extent
sufficient to supply wisdom with the storage of strength it requires
in the work of abolishing the defilements.
The effectiveness of merit in purifying the mental continuum stems
from the concordance of a number of psychological laws. These laws,
which can only be indicated briefly here, together function as the
silent groundwork for the efficacy of the entire corpus of Buddhist
spiritual practice.
The first is the law that only one state of consciousness can occur
at a time; though seemingly trivial, this law leads to important
consequences when taken in conjunction with the rest. The second holds
that states of consciousness with mutually opposed ethical qualities
cannot coexist. The third stipulates that all the factors of
consciousness — feeling, perception, volition and the remaining
states included in the "aggregate of mental formations" —
must partake of the same ethical quality as the consciousness itself.
A kammically active state of consciousness is either entirely
wholesome, or entirely unwholesome; it cannot (by the second law) be
both. Therefore, if a wholesome state is occurring, no unwholesome
state can simultaneously occur. A wholesome, spiritually beneficial
state of consciousness necessarily shuts out every unwholesome,
detrimental state, as well as (by the third law) all unwholesome
concomitant factors of consciousness. So at the moment one is
performing an act of merit, the consciousness and volition behind that
meritorious deed will automatically preclude an unwholesome
consciousness, volition, and the associated defilements. At that
moment, at least, the consciousness will be pure. And the frequent
performance of meritorious acts will, on every occasion, bar out the
opportunity for the defilements to arise at the time of their
performance.
Thus the performance of deeds of merit always induces a momentary
purification, while the frequent performance of such deeds induces
many occasions of momentary purification. But that some more durable
result might be achieved an additional principle is necessary. This
principle is supplied by the fourth law.
The fourth law holds that repetition confers strength. Just as the
exercise of a particular muscle can transform that muscle from a
frail, ineffectual strip of flesh into a dynamo of power and strength,
so the repeated exercise of individual mental qualities can remodel
them from sleeping soldiers into invincible warriors in the spiritual
quest.
Repetition is the key to the entire process of self-transformation
which constitutes the essence of the spiritual life. It is the very
grounding that makes self-transformation possible. By force of
repetition the fragile, tender shoots of the pure and wholesome
qualities — faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom —
can blossom into sovereign faculties (indriya) in the struggle
for enlightenment, or into indomitable powers (bala) in the
battle against the defilements. By repeated resistance to the upsurge
of evil and repeated application to the cultivation of the good, the
demon can become a god and the criminal a saint.
If repetition provides the key to self-transformation, then
volition provides the instrument through which repetition works.
Volition acts as a vector force upon the mental continuum out of which
it emerges, reorienting the continuum according to its own moral tone.
Each act of will recedes with its passing into the onward rushing
current of mentation and drives the current in its own direction.
Wholesome volitions direct the continuum towards the good — towards
purity, wisdom and ultimate liberation; unwholesome volitions drive it
towards the evil — towards defilement, ignorance and inevitable
bondage.
Every occasion of volition modifies the mental life in some way and
to some degree, however slight, so that the overall character of an
individual at any one time stands as a reflex and revelation of the
volitions accumulated in the continuum.
Since the will propels the entire current of mental life in its own
direction, it is the will which must be strengthened by force of
repetition. The restructuring of mental life can only take place
through the reformation of the will by leading it unto wholesome
channels. The effective channel for re-orientation of the will is the
practice of merit.
When the will is directed towards the cultivation of merit, it will
spontaneously hamper the stream of defilements and bolster the company
of noble qualities in the storage of the continuum. Under its gentle
tutelage the factors of purity will awaken from their dormant
condition and take their place as regular propensities in the
personality. A will devoted to the practice of charity will generate
kindness and compassion; a will devoted to the observance of the
precepts will generate harmlessness, honesty, restraint, truthfulness
and sobriety; a will devoted to mental culture will generate calm and
insight. Faith, reverence, humility, sympathy, courage and equanimity
will come to growth. Consciousness will gain in tranquillity,
buoyancy, pliancy, agility and proficiency. And a consciousness made
pure by these factors will advance without hindrance through the
higher attainments in meditation and wisdom to the realization of
Nibbana, the consummation of spiritual endeavor.
The Path of Understanding
Prince Siddhattha renounced the life of the palace and entered the
forest as a hermit seeking a solution to the problem of suffering. Six
years after entering he came out a Buddha, ready to show others the
path he had found so that they too could work out their deliverance.
It was the experience of being bound to the perishable and
unsatisfying that gave the impetus to the Buddha's original quest, and
it was the certainty of having found the unperishing and perfectly
complete that inspired the execution of his mission. Thence the Buddha
could sum up his Teaching in the single phrase: "I teach only
suffering and the cessation of suffering." But though the
Buddha's Teaching might be simple in its statement, the meaning behind
the verbal formulation is profound and precise.
The Buddha envisages suffering in its full range and essence rather
than in its mere manifest forms. It is not just physical or mental
pain that he means by suffering, but the recurrent revolution of the
wheel of becoming, with its spokes of birth, aging and death. Taking
our immersion in a condition intrinsically inadequate as the starting
point of his doctrine, he devotes the remainder to showing the way out
of this condition. The solution the Buddha offers to the problem of
suffering draws its cogency from the strict logic of causality.
Suffering is neither an accident nor an imposition from without, but a
contingent phenomenon arising through the force of conditions. It
hangs upon a specific set of supports, and is therefore susceptible to
treatment by tackling the genetic structure which maintains it in
being. By removing the conditions out of which it arises, it is
possible to bring the whole phenomenon of suffering to an end.
In order to reach the state of emancipation, it is of the first
importance that the causal chain which originates suffering be snapped
in the right place. Any proposed solution which does not remedy the
problem of suffering at its source will eventually prove to be only a
palliative, not a final cure. That the chain be broken in the right
place requires an accurate determination of the interconnection of its
links. The chain must be traced back to its most fundamental factor
and cut off at that very point. Then suffering will no longer be able
to arise.
According to the Buddha's Teaching, the primary link in the
sequence of conditions generating suffering is ignorance (avijja).
Ignorance is a primordial blindness to the true nature of phenomena;
it is a lack of understanding of things as they really are. It
functions as a mental obscuration cloaking our normal process of
cognition and permeating our thought patterns with distortion and
error.
Among the various misconceptions produced by ignorance, the most
basic is the apprehension of phenomena through the category of
substantial existence. Phenomena are not isolated units locked up in
themselves, but participants in an interconnected field of events.
Their being derives from the entire system of relata to which they
belong, not from some immutable core of identity intrinsic to
themselves. Thence they are devoid of an abiding essence; their mode
of being is insubstantial, relational and interdependent. However,
under the influence of ignorance, this essenceless nature of phenomena
is not understood. It is blotted out by the basic unawareness, and as
a consequence, phenomena present themselves to cognition in a mode
different from their actual mode of being. They appear substantial,
self-subsistent, and exclusivistic.
The sphere where this illusion is most immediately felt is the
sphere where it is most accessible to us — namely, our own
experience. The experiential domain is reflectively divisible into two
sectors — a cognizing or subjective sector made up of consciousness
and its adjuncts, and a cognized or objective sector made up of the
cognitive data. Though the two sectors are interlocking and mutually
dependent, through the operation of ignorance they are conceptually
bifurcated and reduced to an adventitious subject-object
confrontation. On the one side the cognizing sector is split off from
the experiential complex and conceived as a subject distinct from the
cognitive act itself; the objective sector in turn congeals into a
world of external things pointing to the subject as its field of
action and concern. Consciousness awakens to itself as a persisting
ego standing up against the world as an "other" perpetually
estranged from itself. Thence it commences its long career of
conquest, control and domination in order to justify its own suspect
claim to a self-subsistent mode of being.
This cognitive error with its consequent solidification of the ego
is the source of the afflictions (kilesa) which hold us in
subjection to suffering. The lurking suspicion that the mode of being
we credit to ourselves may be unfounded arouses an inner disquietude,
a chronic anxiety compelling a drive to fortify the sense of egoity
and give it solid ground on which to stand. We need to establish our
existence to ourselves, to give inner confirmation to our conception
of personal substantiality, and this need occasions the ordering of
the psychic life around the focal point of ego.
The bid for self-confirmation makes its impact felt on both the
emotional and intellectual fronts. The dominion of the ego in the
emotional sphere appears most conspicuously in the weight of the
unwholesome roots — greed, hatred and delusion — as determinants
of conduct. Because the ego is essentially a vacuum, the illusion of
egohood generates a nagging sense of insufficiency. We feel oppressed
by an aching incompleteness, an inner lack requiring constantly to be
filled. The result is greed, a relentless drive to reach out and
devour whatever we can — of pleasure, wealth, power and fame — in
a never successful attempt to bring the discomfort fully to an end.
When our drive to satisfaction meets with frustration we react with
hatred, the urge to destroy the obstacle between our desire and its
satisfaction. If the obstructions to our satisfaction prove too
powerful for the tactics of aggression, a third strategy will be used:
dullness or delusion, an attitude of deliberate unawareness adopted as
a shell to hide our vulnerability to pain.
On the intellectual front the ego-illusion engenders a move by
reason to establish on logical grounds the existence of a substantial
self. The idea "I am" is a spontaneous notion born of
ignorance, the basic unawareness of the egoless nature of phenomena.
By accepting this idea at its face value, as pointing to a real
"I," and by attempting to fill in the reference, we develop
a "view of self," a belief confirming the existence of a
self and giving it an identity in the framework of our psycho-physical
constitution.
The theories which emerge invariably fall into one or another of
the two metaphysical extremes — either eternalism when we assume the
self to enjoy eternal existence after death, or annihilationism, when
we assume the self to be extinguished at death. Neither doctrine can
be established on absolutely compelling grounds, for both are rounded
on a common error: the assumption of a self as an enduring,
substantial entity.
Because the pivot of our cognitive adherences and their emotional
ramifications is the notion of an ego, a powerful current of psychic
energy comes to be invested in our interpretive schemes. And because
the notion of an ego is in actuality groundless, the product of a
fundamental misconception, this investment of energy brings only
disappointment in the end. We cling to things in the hope that they
will be permanent, satisfying and substantial, and they turn out to be
impermanent, unsatisfying and insubstantial. We seek to impose our
will upon the order of events, and we find that events obey a law of
their own, insubordinate to our urge towards control.
The result of our clinging is eventual suffering. Yet this
suffering which arises from the breakdown of our egocentric attempts
at dominance and manipulation is not entirely negative in value. It
contains a tremendous positive value, a vast potential, for by
shattering our presumptions it serves to awaken our basic intelligence
and set us on the quest for liberation. It forces us to discover the
ultimate futility of our drive to structure the world from the
standpoint of the ego, and makes us recognize the need to acquire a
new perspective free from the compulsive patterns which keep us tied
to suffering.
Since the most fundamental factor in the bondage of the ego is
ignorance, to reach this new perspective ignorance must be eliminated.
To eliminate ignorance it is not sufficient merely to observe rules of
conduct, to generate faith, devotion and virtue, or even to develop a
calm and concentrated mind. All these are requisites to be sure,
essential and powerful aids along the path, but even in unison they
are not enough. Something more is required, some other element that
alone can ensure the complete severing of the conditional nexus
sustaining the round of samsaric suffering. That something more is understanding.
The path to liberation is essentially a path of understanding. Its
core is the knowledge and vision of things as they really are:
"It is for one who knows and sees that the destruction of the
defilements takes place, not for one who does not know and does not
see." The objective domain where understanding is to be aroused
is our own experience. Since our distorted interpretations of our
experience provide the food which nourishes the process of ego, it is
here, in experience, that the ego-illusion must be dispelled. Our own
experience is, of all things, that which is "closest to
ourselves," for it is through this that everything else is
registered and known. And yet, though so close, our own experience is
at the same time shrouded in darkness, its true characteristics hidden
from our awareness by the screen of ignorance. The Buddha's Teaching
is the key which helps us to correct our understanding, enabling us to
see things as they are. It is the light which dispels the darkness of
ignorance, so that we can understand our own understanding of things
"just as a man with eyes might see forms illuminated by a
lamp."
The correct understanding of experience takes place in the context
of meditation. It requires the development of insight (vipassana)
based on a foundation of meditative calm (samatha). No amount
of merely intellectual knowledge can replace the need for personal
realization. Because our tendency to misconceive phenomena persists
through a blindness to their true nature, only the elimination of this
blindness through direct vision can rectify our erroneous patterns of
cognition. The practice of Buddhist meditation is not a way of
dissolving our sense of individual identity in some undifferentiated
absolute or of withdrawing into the bliss of a self-contained
interiority. It is, rather, a way of understanding the nature of
things through the portal where that nature is most accessible to
ourselves, namely, our own processes of body and of mind. The practice
of meditation has profound effects upon our sense of identity; the
alterations it produces, however, do not come about by subordinating
the intelligence to some uncritically accepted generalization, but
through a detached, sober and exhaustive scrutiny of the experiential
field that provides the locus for our sense of identity.
The focal method of the practice of meditation is reflective
awareness, a bending back of the beam of awareness upon itself in
order to illuminate the true characteristics of existence implicated
in each occasion of cognition. The path of understanding unfolds in
three successive stages called "the three full
understandings." In the first stage, the "full understanding
of the known" (natapariñña), the domain of experience is
broken down by meditative analysis into its constituting factors,
which are then carefully defined in terms of their salient qualities
and functions. The categories employed in this operation are the key
terms in the Buddhist analysis of personality — the aggregates (khandha),
sense bases (ayatana), and elements (dhatu). The purpose
of this dissection is to dispel the illusion of substantiality that
hovers over our gross perception of our experience. By revealing that
what common sense takes to be a solid monolithic whole is in reality a
conglomeration of discrete factors, the contemplation deprives the
sense of self-identification of its chief support, the notion of the
ego as a simple unity. The factors which emerge from this analytical
investigation are then correlated with their causes and conditions,
disclosing their contingency and lack of independence.
The second stage of understanding is the "full understanding
of scrutinization" (tiranapariñña). At this stage the
experiential field is examined, not as before in terms of its
individuating features, but by way of its universal marks. These
universal marks are three: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha)
and non-self (anatta). Under the limitations of ordinary
cognition, phenomena are apprehended as permanent, pleasurable and
self. In the contemplative situation these assumptions must be
corrected, replaced by the perception of phenomena as impermanent,
unpleasurable and non-self. The task of the meditative process, at
this level, is to ascribe these qualities to the material and mental
processes, and to attempt to view all phenomena in their light.
When the second stage is fully mature, it gives way gradually to
the third type of comprehension, the "full understanding of
abandonment" (pahanapariñña). Here the momentary
insights achieved at the previous level blossom into full
penetrations. Impermanence, suffering and selflessness are no longer
merely understood as qualities of phenomena, but are seen with
complete clarity as the nature of phenomena themselves. These
realizations bring about the final abandonment of the deluded
perceptions as well as the destruction of the ego-tainted emotions
which cluster around them.
To walk the path of understanding is to begin to see through the
deceptions which have held our imaginations captive through the long
stretch of beginningless time. It is to outgrow our passions and
prejudices, and to cast off the mask of false identities we are
accustomed to assume, the vast array of identities that constitute our
wandering in samsaric existence. The path is not an easy one, but
calls for great effort and personal integrity. Its reward lies in the
happiness of growing freedom which accompanies each courageous step,
and the ultimate emancipation which lies at the end.
About the Author
Bhikkhu Bodhi is a Buddhist monk of American nationality, born in
New York City in 1944. After completing a doctorate in philosophy at
Claremont Graduate School, he came to Sri Lanka in 1972 for the
purpose of entering the Sangha. He received pabbajja (novice
ordination) in 1972 and upasampada (higher ordination) in 1973,
both under the eminent scholar-monk, the Venerable Balangoda Ananda
Maitreya, with whom he studied Pall and Dhamma. He is the author of
several works on Theravada Buddhism, including four translations of
major Pali suttas along with their commentaries. Since 1984 he has
been the Editor for the Buddhist Publication Society and its President
since 1988.
| Source: The
Wheel Publication No. 259/260 (Kandy: Buddhist Publication
Society, 1990). Transcribed from the print edition in 1995 by
Jim McLaughlin and Jane Yudelman under the auspices of the
DharmaNet Dharma Book Transcription Project, with the kind
permission of the Buddhist Publication Society. Copyright ©
1990 Buddhist Publication Society. Reproduced and reformatted
from Access to Insight edition © 1995 For free distribution.
This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted, and
redistributed in any medium. It is the author's wish, however,
that any such republication and redistribution be made available
to the public on a free and unrestricted basis and that
translations and other derivative works be clearly marked as
such. |
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