| |
Venerable Ajahn Sucitto -
Discipline
Today, I thought
I would talk about discipline. The words discipline and disciple come fromthe
Latin word meaning `to know'. A disciple, then, is someone who follows a
discipline,someone who really wants to know. That desire to know is so strong
that it createsa certain form in their life. This is the Buddhist understanding
of discipline as compared tomilitary discipline which is a way of not knowing,
of making sure that you don't know what'sgoing on and preventing you from
questioning or investigating at all.The Buddhist attitude to discipline is that
you want to know something not in an idealisticway but from a practical point of
view. Discipline is, in a way, a transformation of idealisminto a practical
path. When you really want to understand life, you have to take holdof it very
firmly and be able to hold it steady and look at it clearly: life as you live
it, your ownconsciousness, your reactions, responses, perceptions and thoughts.
Hold them steady andlook at them. Then you can see whether each one is worthy or
useful, what it's about, andwhat its results are.Discipline in Buddhist practice
is intended to make life more available for reflection. Whenwe hold something
steady, then we can use it for reflection - rather like holding a mirrorsteady.
If we just constantly think about our thoughts, having opinions about
ourfeelings and ideas about how life should be, this is not reflection. Rather,
it is creating moreof the very stuff that we are trying to understand. It's not
that we're against thoughts, feelings,and impulses - but in order to understand
these, we need to hold them in a steady and silentway; only then can we look and
see how they affect us. This is the essence of what Buddhistdiscipline is and
what reflection means.Buddhism is a reflective teaching. It asks us to reflect
on the state of the body, reflect onold age, sickness and death. We reflect on
our kamma. We reflect on loving kindness. Theseare all Buddhist reflections
meaning that we hold the mind steady, allow one of thesethemes to enter and then
see what happens. We are actually keeping the minddispassionate, neither leaning
towards some sort of conclusion nor looking for a result.When we use the body
for reflection, we keep the mind steady and allow ourselves towitness the
feelings in the body, the weight, the warmth or the energies that flow around
it.We can also reflect upon the mind. When we reflect on a teaching, we listen
and see whathappens when we hear that teaching. We don't listen in order to
believe it or to becomeconvinced or indoctrinated by it. As we listen, we don't
think `I'm not going to accept that. Youcan't make me believe that!' So we are
not entering an argument, but rather holding themind steady, letting the
teaching go into it and then seeing what happens. There may beunderstanding or
not, approval, disapproval or whatever. This is what reflection is about. Oneof
the fundamental disciplines is the discipline that enables us to be still and
not needto find answers or to prove anything. To not need to have an opinion
requires a mental orspiritual discipline. This could be called the discipline of
awakening because in order toawaken, we have to have be free from opinions.The
Buddha's enlightenment was based upon reviewing many of the ideas and
assumptionsthat are made about the spiritual path. For example, we may assume
that we have to getaway from the sensory world or that we must stop our
thoughts, and that in this way we willtranscend the sense world. These are
assumptions we make about the spiritual path if we'venever applied a discipline
of reflection using our thoughts, feelings and sensory experiencesas objects.
We've never really managed just to be still with these, and so they have
becomeobstacles to our practice. We constantly react, get caught up or reject
our sensoryexperience. When we feel anger, we either repress it or act upon it;
we don't ever reflect onit.As long as our subconscious or conditioned habit is
to constantly engage with thoughts andsensory experience, we have no ability to
contemplate, to reflect. We therefore assume thatthese things have to be pushed
away or changed in some way. Even the idea of meditationor of discipline seems
to us basically an annihilation, a `getting rid of', because we have nothad the
inner strength to be still with life as it flows through us. We always feel that
ifsomething is flowing, we're either going to get swept away by it or else we
have to stop it.But the Buddha's Middle Path is a more subtle kind of
discipline. It's not the discipline tocontrol, it's a discipline that comes from
the desire to know, to really know clearly. What isthis actually about? What is
happiness? What is unhappiness? What is pleasure? Have webecome frightened of
pleasure or pain or discomfort, blame or worry?The Buddha had developed a great
deal of self-discipline through the desire to controlthings: so to a certain
extent, that can be a skilful practice. At first, perhaps we need tocultivate
self-respect and strength of mind by determining to reject and renounce
certainthings and almost push ourselves into situations that we don't want to go
into but that we feelwill enhance our practice. This is often the beginning. We
have to establish ourindependence. We use resolution to do retreats, to commit
ourselves to compassionateaction. The blessing of such a practice is that we can
eventually grow from a discipline basedupon control and move towards a higher
discipline, which is based upon understanding,upon wanting to know. What is
anger, or greed, or craving; what is existence about? Thatleads to reflection.It
must always be remembered that the Buddha called his teachings `Dhamma-Vinaya':Vinaya
being the training or, as it's sometimes called, the discipline. This training
is not just aforceful thing, it's a way of cultivating skilful action by which
we can transform our lives intosomething like a craft. Calligraphy, wood carving
and pottery are disciplines. In each, youhave to have a certain clarity and
ability to work within the limitations of your instrumentsand to know them
thoroughly so that you don't blot or blur the lines in the writing, split
thewood, or cause cracks in the clay. Dhamma-Vinaya is like that. It gives a
sense of beingclearly conscious of what is suitable, correct and skilful and
what is uninformed, casual orunskilful use of body, speech or mind.The forest
monasteries where meditation is developed and lived to a very high degree
arealso places of very strong discipline, not just in moral terms but also in
the way things aredone. Things are done in clearly prescribed ways. The emphasis
on the training is so thatwe are attentive to and use every moment of life. We
use the form in our daily routines as away to hold the mind steady and watch.
When we bow, for example, in one particular way,we're not doing it casually or
unconsciously; we have a certain attentiveness to it and thenwe look within
that. What's happening? How do we feel? Then we notice if we feel resistanceor
unwillingness, eagerness, impatience or whatever. Within that, we can also
recognise thatis doesn't matter what we are feeling or how we are judging our
thoughts and feelings;these are just experiences that come and go and that we
let happen. We reach this vantagepoint by having a discipline to enable life to
pass through us and then to learn. What is it liketo feel boredom? Is it helpful
or not? Do we act upon it, do we believe in it or are we ableto let it go and
re-establish a sense of clarity and attention to what we're doing?I found
myself, after some years of practising meditation, studying a little bit,
reading a littlebit and thinking quite a lot, not actually having anything that
I really had a commitment to. Iwas living as a monk, but even living as a monk
within the discipline wasn't a moment-by-moment commitment because most of the
time I was actually just sitting around. What Ineeded and found very helpful was
a training in doing things in the right way, in looking afterthe simple
requisites that I had. As a monk, I have to fold my robes in a certain way. I
can'tjust fling them off and dump them on the floor when I get back to my room
like I used to dowith my clothes when I was a student. As a monk, I have to fold
my robe around my hands toform a neat band and then hang them up over a line in
a certain way. I have to be with themat dawn which means that I have to be aware
of what time it is, whether it's dawn or not andwhether I am apart from my
robes.I have to clean my room every day, or rather any room, because a monk
doesn't actuallyhave a room. For a monk, a room is just a lodging, a temporary
place. Even if we're beenthere ten years, it's still only one night at a time.
When we go somewhere else, that's ourroom for one night or two hours or however
long. We're supposed to treat each place that wedwell in with the same attitude:
to keep it clean and tidy it up properly, not thinking `Oh, thisis somebody
else's house; they'll do it for me.'I must look after my alms bowl. Before I
receive food, I always clean the bowl and makesure there are no tiny creatures
in it. Then I have to receive food in a special way. I have tocome up so that
we're really quite close to each other and then someone actually puts iteither
into my hands or into my bowl. I have to receive it looking at the bowl, not
having aconversation with them but actually holding the bowl still and looking
into it. It's a veryattentive action. When I've finished my alms round, I have
to empty the food out, share itwith other people, eat what I need and then wash
the bowl immediately - not leave it floatingin the sink for three hours - wash
it immediately and carefully, dry it properly and then store itin such a way
that it's neither on a hard surface and nor in a place where it could fall
overand be damaged.These are just little items of a monk's discipline. They
aren't hard; they're actually quitebeautiful. I've found that having to be
attentive to things like that means that I can't just getcaught up with my own
brooding mind. Training in this way, being attentive tocircumstances around me
and respecting things in a certain way, means that I can't just getlost in
thoughts, moods and feelings. I have to keep awake to what is going on. This is
thetraditional way, the monk's way, and it's actually very useful.I've noticed
that this training of the mind helps one to develop beyond the training
itself.Much of life in our society is dealing with things like equipment, tools,
cars, houses, clothesand so on. Things actually have their own nature, their own
way of working, andwe have to learn how they work. We can't kick a machine and
expect it to work. If we don'ttrain in any way, we tend to break things or use
them in the wrong way. We always haveworkshops in monasteries and there's a
whole training in how to use the tools properly.People tend to use tools and not
clean them or put them away or to use themwrongly because they want to do a
particular thing but they don't really want to understandhow the tool works. We
don't want to know that we've got to hold a tool gently or wait for it towarm
up, that we've got to hold it in a certain way since otherwise it won't
cutproperly, or that we can't cut nails with saws. If there's a nail in the
wood, we have to stopand take it out. The impatience in our mind will say `Give
me the machine and just bashthrough' and this, of course, never really works. We
always end up breaking something orhurting ourselves.Discipline and reflection
work together like this and, gradually, this is the way of clearing themind. The
mind eventually becomes just attentive, caring, able to give and to focus on
thepresent moment without adding thoughts about how things should or should not
be. Allthat inner turmoil stops because we have not believed in it, involved
ourselves with it, foughtwith it, cursed it or adopted it. We've kept the mind
on the subject in hand and let this stuffjust pass through us until eventually
it loses its power to grip, bind and stick to us.This is the way for
enlightenment, for clarity - discipline and reflection - and there's a craft
toit.
[This
article, published in PRABUDDHA BHARATA was based on a talk given at
TheBuddhist Society in London.]
back |