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Venerable Ajahn Sucitto -
Gnosis and Non-Dualism
In the second of this series of talks on Gnosis,
Ajahn Sucitto explains how through letting go of mental proliferation
and experiencing that which divides us from reality - dukkha - we come
to realise Dhamma.
Though we have to talk in words that evoke ideas, images and
perceptions, insight knowledge, nyana, is more than just intellectual
knowledge; it is intuitive knowing or gnosis. For this kind of knowing,
we have to take things deeply, and let them work on us and penetrate our
being. Indeed, a lot of this practice can be described as 10% doing
things and 90% being worked on by things! We apply the effort to make
ourselves open to being worked on, whether it is by doubt, by worry, by
thought, feelings, or emotions until the dualisms; the defences, and the
justifications of self-view actually stop.
People find this rather a strain because something in us is having to
work and be exercised in a way that we are not accustomed to. Normally
we are accustomed to mental activity like creating and figuring things
out. Such activity gives a positive impression, and we can get high on
doing things. But to be is something that we haven't really learnt. Can
we do 'being'? Can we just be with what is, opening to our feelings and
perceptions without the need to control, understand, or make something
out of it?
Although we can have positive achievements in Dhamma practice, we have
to get beyond the level of doing things in order to have that sense of
furtherance. We have to do them in a way where we are no longer
dependent upon getting positive feed-back. We must do things simply in
order to take them into us, at a far deeper level than mere liking or
interest. To sustain mindfulness and awareness of things arising and
ceasing, we have to open beyond our personal view of what we need, or
what is important. Dealing with one silly nagging thought or a fuzzy
mind in Dhamma practice is humiliating when you can't feel it is of any
value. You think, 'What is there to do? What can we do with this?' But
for insight all we need to do is to be able to see clearly that this is
changing, this is unsatisfactory, this is not-self.
As long as the world is experienced as 'me' and 'it', there will always
be views and judgements about 'it', whether that is some other human
being, life in general, or some idea or principle. Take our attitudes
towards other people: even if we're not romantically involved,
relationships are generally aimed at getting positive feed-back. We want
to feel that sense of somebody fitting into and supporting 'our' world.
We expect our family to be supportive and if it's not, then we want to
make it so, and feel disappointed or annoyed if it isn't.
Unconsciously our whole way of perceiving things is based upon wish-fulfillment.
Perception is that which creates order, which recognises, which makes
things knowable, if we can't place our experiences conceptually, we feel
estranged, and don't know if we're doing the right thing. What should we
do? What have we not understood? With insight, all you need to know is
that things which arise and cease are unsatisfactory and not-self.
Sometimes, that very desire to understand is what should be understood,
gnostically, in this way.
However if we have 'not-self' purely as an idea we think, 'Well I
suppose that's right - if I'm looking at it, it's not me, it's something
out there other than me.' But then there is the 'me' who is looking at
it. Put another way, the watcher or meditator becomes the self, and the
states of mind he/she observes becomes not-self. But who is the self or
the not-self who is practising? We may think we are watching things that
are 'not' self, but there is still some residual self-view left in the
watcher who puts-up with the watching - just because they feel they have
to - even though they'd really like to watch something else for a
change!
So at that level of the experience of meditation, we find something
isn't working. We're stuck on this plane of unsatisfactoriness. This is
because the experience of anatta has not been realised. If we get to the
root of this dualism, me and it, we can recognise that there is only the
feeling of unsatisfactoriness itself. So 'There is suffering' is an
insight knowledge. 'There is' is a non-dualist statement. 'There is' is
not saying 'It's that out there'; instead it is allowing the dualistic
consciousness to relax until we no longer interpret the situation as,
'I'm here and that's there', but simply, 'There is.' We hold the mind
open so that its dualistic tendency can be relaxed and we let go of all
the defences, the projections, denials, and fascinations. Then we come
to 'there is.' 'There is dukkha.' This has to be understood, not in the
intellectual sense, but in gnostically seeing its origins in the
desires, aversions and attachments, which are usually built into the
personality way of seeing things.
The word 'dukkha' means 'hard to bear', so in order to bear something
that is hard to bear, we have to cultivate endurance. This is why it is
so important to become relentlessly patient in order that the
abandonment, or relinquishment of dukkha can take place. (Not that 'I'
abandon suffering!) In order to arrive at the abandonment of dukkha, we
have to give up our time to understand the origins of dukkha namely,
bhava tanha, vibhava tanha, karna tanha. These feelings operate at a
very deep level; kama tanha (sense desire) is fairly obvious, but bhava
tanha, the desire for becoming or being something, and vibhava tanha,
the craving for non-existence, are much more subtle and very, very
strong. They involve our whole sense of personal identity. So often the
origin of suffering is wanting to become something, wanting to be rid of
something. These are not corrupt or foolish desires but they are still
desires, and indicate the mind's lingering and identifying with the
presence (or the absence) of perception and feeling.
The practice is one of awareness of our perceptions and feelings, and
the response to circumstances. What does tiredness do to our mind?
Whilst we may see it as an unpleasant experience, we make it that way.
What does physical pain do, what does thinking do? How is our mind
affected by the weather, by crowds or solitude? Essentially, these are
all responses to feelings and perceptions. We note these reactions so
that we begin to develop insight, direct contact with the self-view,
that edge between the apparent 'me' and the apparent experience. How do
we feel about our mind being this way or that way? For the development
of insight, we always need to take our penetration to the ground of that
authenticity. Only this persistent investigation will take us beyond the
dualism of experience. We can also ask ourselves, 'Am I suffering?' We
may not necessarily be squirming in anguish but nevertheless we may feel
disquiet, or apathy, and we need to recognise it for what it is. 'Why is
it this way?' Keep up that continual questioning attitude: do I want it
to be another way, and if I want it to be another way, why? What have I
built my hope, my self-view upon?
As a person, I know what I need. I need comfort, I need to feel needed.
I need to feel I am achieving something, and that my life is worthwhile.
I need to feel that other people understand me. We should discover what
our wants are and then ask ourselves what is it that actually identifies
with those wishes. And what can recognise this? A lot of this practice
is holding attention onto dukkha until all the circumstantial details
die away and we get to the heart of the matter: not so much 'I want to
believe in something, I want to feel needed by somebody', but simply, 'I
want!', or, 'There is desire -the origin of dukkha.' No shoulds and
shouldn'ts about it. We need to break down all the complexities of life,
all the perceptual complexities of time and events and situations, into
the simple core experiences. This activity within the stillness of
meditation is very important if we are to get to the heart of things.
The fundamental wants of the heart can never be fulfilled by grasping
perceptions and feelings anyway. There is satisfaction, the cessation of
dukkha, but it only comes through awareness, through insight and
clarity. These enlightening qualities could be described as
unconditional love, in which instead of wanting something, there is a
giving, cago, an abandonment of self, a kind of communion with the way
it is.
So dukkha has to be understood; not changed, but understood in terms of
its cause: the origin of dukkha is our attachment to the sense of a
separate self that stands back, makes the judgement, and creates ideas
rather than seeing things as they are. This mental proliferation has to
be abandoned. Sometimes we only have to do it once to cut the illusion,
but sometimes it's not complete. Although something in us understands,
to not just believe and react to them, the thoughts and moods return.
This is where abandonment entails abandoning identification with those
patterns, and abandoning the wish to not have those mind patterns.
Insight knowledge occurs where there is this selfless recognition, and
is characterised by equanimity towards all mental events. Whatever the
feelings or perceptions, there is equanimity, and to cultivate
equanimity you have to be really patient.
Patience is both an active and passive mental state; activity being the
effort to just hold attention on and bear with conditions, whilst
passivity is to let things work on us until our struggle with them and
our denial of them is finished. Then the origin of suffering has been
abandoned and the cessation of suffering has been realised.
The word 'realisation' seems of little significance, yet most of our
life is not real. For this reason alone, insight into dukkha brings
about a transfiguration. It is far better to insightfully experience
dukkha than to get away from it, because as long as dukkha has not been
understood, and all the time it is fended off, our lives are operating
on a dualistic basis. Our life is not real. Dualistic life is a kind of
phantom life, made up of fantasies, as we run around being this, being
that, going here, going there, seeing this, seeing that, in a world of
fleeting forms and appearances, of temporary gratifications, birth,
death, arising and passing away. It's just this, just a phantasmagorical
magic-lantern show; because on that level, nothing is real, everything
else is transient.
When we taste something, what is the 'realness' of it? We can say, 'It
tastes nice' but this is what we think about it, not what the taste is.
We can say, 'It's a grape', but that's a designation, a perception,
isn't it? What is the actual taste? We say, 'It's sweet', but 'sweet' is
a judgement, isn't it? We come to understand that the reality of it is
indefinable, and that for most of our life we are operating at the level
of interpretations and classifications, of secondary experiences, rather
than living the actuality of it. We never even know who we really are,
because everything is constantly changing; the reference points are
changing so although we feel we're something, nothing quite fits. So as
long as we identify with the world of change and appearance, this is all
we shall ever feel ourselves to be, just an appearance that changes and
wants to find a certain position.
To understand dukkha, and to experience the cessation of dukkha, makes
life real; it is realisation. It's not that the world changes, but our
'knowledge' of it, and response to it, comes from a different place.
Instead of the discriminative, secondary level of knowledge, our
conceptual, abstract perceptual thinking, we get to the direct
'this-ness' of things, and this is where meditation, mindfulness, and
insight practice lead us to just the 'suchness' or 'thisness' of things.
It is a kind of communion.
Anatta, non-dualism, is a realisation of the communion with whatever is
in consciousness, from personal friendships to the wars in the world. We
may think, 'Well, what can I do about it? I don't want to know.' But we
can practise with that. The authentic life is one of compassion. So
often we assume that compassion is something that demands our practical
intervention, but however much that may be desirable, that is not the
basis for it's arising. The basis for compassion is selfless awareness;
the practical aspects arise from that.
The Path of Insight is therefore an opportunity to arrive at total
authenticity, to live as a real being by investigating the experiences
that happen to us. We note our reactions to meditation on the breath, to
routines, mind states, or even the same slightly dreary faces across the
breakfast table. Being in an imperfect situation asks and allows us to
bring forth the heart, the care, the forgiveness, and even the quiet
inner celebration. We find an unforced empathy towards all beings. We
don't have to embrace them, but recognise them as a part of our life.
Making it all a part of our life is like coming out from our shell; all
beings are as much a part of our mind as any other perception and
feeling. Once we begin to see our life as a way of supporting and
communing, then we, in our turn, feel supported by the universe and the
way our whole life has been given so mysteriously and wonderfully. The
realisation of anatta is thus: without division, without separation, it
is the practice and essence of the Dhamma.
Forest Sangha Newsletter: October 1993, Number 26
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