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Venerable
Ajahn Viradhammo -
The End of Rebirth
"Whether you are an
artist, a doctor, a photographer or on the dole, that is your monastery, that is
where you practise."
In Buddhism we speak of two levels of consideration. The
first is the conventional level of "me", as a person, and
"you", as a person. For example, there is "Viradhammo":
fifty-ish, quickly getting out of shape, has duties, is a senior monk at
Amaravati; his Mom is in Canada - and he has a little scar on his head with
three stitches. That is "me", as a person. There is the sense here of
a person, of social responsibility, of a position in society; of the age of the
body, of its genetic and cultural make-up. This is the packaged sense of self
that a typical person works with, which is quite valid.
At this level, the
considerations are morality, right livelihood, responsibility for the
environment, social action, expression and creativity. This is one level we
operate on, where we can find all kinds of fulfilment; it is a very rewarding
thing to be able to work to express and create something. However, it is not
liberating - because things change. We really notice that it is not liberating
when someone criticises what we are doing. You might think you are doing a great
job but when someone pokes a few holes in it, then you see how un-liberating it
is - how bound one can be to it. If all we are trying to do is to find
fulfilment on the level of family, social action and creativity, then of course
our hearts are never fully appeased, because those conditions are always
changing and they depend on so many other factors which are beyond our control.
If my whole sense of fulfilment is my family, but then my kids leave home, or
someone dies, or my child comes home with a red Mohican - what do I do if my
whole life is dependent on that?! So we would say that fulfilment on this level
is not where liberation lies, it is not a refuge - although that is not to put
it down.
The second level is the Dhamma
level, the level of liberation of the heart. When we develop a Buddhist
lifestyle, we can see how our families and our social positions can actually be
our `monasteries'. They are the place where we practise inner vigilance and
contemplation. Whether you are an artist, a doctor, a photographer or on the
dole, that is your monastery, that is where you practise.
"So without denying the necessity and the challenge of living in the
world, you also recognise the inner world."
I was in New Zealand for nine years and was involved with
a very beautiful monastery project. During that time there was the necessity to
function on the social level - I had to work and to organise things - but,
through all that, the most important things to consider were suffering and
non-suffering: the inner world. We built this lovely meditation hall (half my
monastic life has been spent on building sites!). One whole side of it was open,
and we had doors that were ten feet by ten feet - pretty big doors! However, the
joiner who was making the doors up was not very efficient. He would always tell
us that the doors were coming next week - and this went on for four months! On
the worldly level, we had to say to him, "Hey, listen! We have a contract,
you are not meeting your responsibilities." But on the inner level, we all
had to take responsibility for our annoyance at this joiner. So both levels were
operating.
This meditation hall is
convertible. There is a cloister at the front, onto which these huge doors open.
On top of the cloister we had a marquee custom - made, so we could double the
size of the hall on big occasions. We got the best tentmaker in New Zealand to
make this marquee - but it was faulty. We had to take tough steps to ensure he
didn't rip us off, but we still could not hate him. Sometimes we wanted to; the
mind was saying, "What a rip-off! What are we paying this man all this
money for?"
Our practice was right there;
the tentmaker was our monastery. So without denying the necessity and the
challenge of living in the world, we also recognise the inner world. If we view
those two worlds skilfully we find a balance between conventional reality and
the inner work. Then the tentmaker becomes a person with whom I learn to stand
up for what is right, rather than putting my tail between my legs and running
away. He helps me learn to be patient.
This inner world is what we
work with on a retreat. Although we should not forget the conventional world -
Buddhism is not just a weird experience called retreat! We cannot spend our life
on a retreat, we have to live in the world. The gift of a retreat, of course, is
that we don't have to do so much social re-organising. If the toast is burned,
it's burned; we don't sue the cooks. So we work with whatever we have, and we
have the freedom to observe. A retreat offers the opportunity to look at
suffering and non-suffering.
"The hub of the wheel is the centre of knowing and being; this can take
it all. This is where the unconditioned lies."
Maybe in your own lives you have difficulties to deal with
- mortgages or recalcitrant teenagers? Don't try to solve those problems now!
Instead, I suggest you work with that very feeling of anxiety or worry as a
present condition. This is the skill of moving from the conventional, social
level of "me", as a person, to the impersonal level of basic Dhamma
elements. This level of the teaching then breaks down our conscious experience
to fundamentals which we can look at, no matter what our social situation is.
For example, thought - mental activity - is one of the fundamental things we
have been looking at. If this activity is always kept on the personal level,
it's, "Well, what am I going to do tomorrow? I don't know... We need to do
this; but what if we do that? Yes, let's try this, then we'll do that... "
All that is on the personal level - but on the Dhamma level, this is
simply planning, worry, thought.
If we remain on the personal
level, there will always be this to-ing and fro-ing - struggling. It is only on
that impersonal level of consciousness that we can understand not-self anatta.
It's not that life itself is impersonal - we still have our individual kamma,
but it is on this level that we can penetrate to a liberating understanding, by
passing beyond ignorance. We are not going to avoid the tentmakers and the
joiners altogether; life is always going to be that way.
There are many teachings that
can help us; for example the Four Noble Truths or Dependent Origination paticca-samuppada.
Sometimes, we might feel over-whelmed if we try to figure these out, but in time
we come to see that it's a really beautiful package, intellectually very lovely.
More than that, these teachings encourage us to look in the right place, and
show us the path to freedom. They take us away from the personal situation with
the joiner or the tentmaker, directly to a fundamental sense of stress. So we
develop the ability to examine on this level all the time. If I can look at the
"aggro" I feel towards the joiner and take it out of the personal
realm by simply looking at it as stress, then I will be able to understand any
"aggro" I may have for the rest of my life and know how to deal with
it.
Last night we talked about
craving tanha, the sense of wanting: wanting to become, wanting to get
rid of, or simply wanting something essentially nice. Craving is a fundamental
human characteristic, neither right nor wrong, just part of the package. The
three kinds of tanha - bhava tanha, vibhava tanha and kama tanha -
should be understood.
Bhava tanha is the
craving for being. Notice how much on retreat we are being something or someone?
Sometimes there is a feeling of being kidnapped by the memory; we find ourselves
back in time. Or maybe it is a future possibility; in thought, there is the
sense of being a person - of becoming - through anticipation and expectation. If
we are not aware of that, then our attention will be pre-occupied, kidnapped by
a constant level of stress in the mind. Then there is vibhava tanha,
which is a repression. We have a lot of ideals about what we should not be and
what we should not have. Vibhava tanha is the desire to get rid of those
things.
Kama tanha is the
craving for sense pleasure. Around the body there is a lot of kama tanha.
We like comfort in this body, we don't like arthritis or pain; yet one of the
lessons in this life, for some seemingly cruel reason, is that we need to
witness to bodily pain. That is part of life. So, on the social level, we deal
with the pain. We find some Chinese herbs or get the acupuncturist to poke us,
whatever we have faith in; we work on that level. But, on the Dhamma
level, we reflect: there is sickness. Why is there sickness? Because there is
birth. That is just the way it is - like it or not. So sickness is something
which needs to be learned about, as is pain.
On a retreat you get pain; I
hope you don't get too sick or painful, but you will probably feel some pain in
the knees or the back, or somewhere. So there is pain, and there is craving for
comfort; that is a basic, fundamental instinct which needs to be understood. Now
if one can understand the craving for non-pain and be at peace with pain, then
one obviously has done oneself a great service. So try to use the feeling of
pain to examine craving, to understand the wanting and see the end of wanting.
The same holds true for the emotions and the way sense-consciousness works.
The Buddha encouraged us to
consider how human consciousness and the human body are involved with pleasant,
unpleasant and neutral feelings and sensations; to use feeling (vedana) as a
framework for contemplation. When you are thirsty, you drink a glass of orange
juice; it is pleasant. When you are sitting here and your knees hurt, that is
unpleasant. That is very obvious. So no matter what you are finding pleasant or
unpleasant - the body, the weather, a person, or your own mind - notice the
feeling of pleasant-unpleasant-neutral; consider
attraction-repulsion-neutrality.
When we are not in touch with Dhamma
we often don't consider these fundamental states of mind. We just enjoy the
pleasant and try to minimise the unpleasant - which seems like a logical thing
to do. But then that keeps us very restless, because no matter how hard we try
to do this, there will always be pleasant, unpleasant and neutral.
Sense-consciousness is this way.
Seeking the pleasant, trying to
be rid of the unpleasant is samsara. The more we do this, the more we want to do
it, and the more we have to do it. We become addicted to this way of operating.
We get into this very restless phenomenon called rebirth – becoming, doing,
all the time. And this takes us away from our real home. This takes us away from
the unconditioned, because pleasure and pain are always conditioned. As they
change, we feel the need to change. As we grasp pleasure and pain, we find
ourselves being spun around the samsaric wheel.
The wheel is one of our
traditional images. The rim of the wheel represents sense experience - the
contacts we experience, pleasant and unpleasant - all of it spinning around.
Grasping the rim of a wheel simply wrings us around with the general momentum.
So grasping the pleasant, then trying to hold onto it and afraid of losing it,
we make tremendous effort to keep it going; or getting angry at the unpleasant -
in both cases we continue to spin around endlessly. But the hub of the wheel is
the centre of knowing and being, and this can take it all. This is where the
unconditioned lies. If we can summon awareness and be that still centre of
knowing, there are still comings and goings - but we have a refuge. This is what
Ajahn Chah called, "our real home."
This is the basic structure
that the Buddha asks us to look at. Our sensitive body contacts objects. That
contact produces pleasant, unpleasant, neutral feelings - vedana. From
there comes craving tanha, the grasping of craving upadana, and
the whole process of becoming bhava and rebirth jati. If one
carries on like this over time, it becomes a habit. It is then very difficult to
return to the still centre of being, because one is so restlessly engaged with
that which moves, with the emotions and the thoughts.
Why are we kidnapped so much?
Even though we sit here determining, "I will not get kidnapped!" -
it's very hard, isn't it? Don't think you are alone in this, we are all in the
same boat! It is very difficult because of our habits, our kamma. Even
though we might have really good intentions, situations arise where we feel
anger or fear. That is kamma.
What we are trying to do is to
break up all these kammic patterns. The way we can do this is by beginning to
look at Dhamma, rather than remaining stuck on the level of personality.
The contemplation of feelings vedanupassana is one of the Four
Foundations of Mindfulness. It requires careful attention to notice this basic
structure of the way that some things attract our attention, while others repel.
We can try it with an emotion, with a bodily feeling, with a thought; or with
people. On this retreat maybe you find difficulty with someone, or maybe you
fall in love with them. Notice how some people are physically very attractive,
while some are not. Some people have a lot of charisma, and others don't. Notice
how you are attracted or repelled; look at that very simple movement of the
heart. This is where our habitual emotions are really arising from.
If you can know that movement
and learn to not follow or react to it, then you begin not to suffer. For
example, your own psyche, the things you don't like about yourself, the emotions
you think should not be there; all these come up as very unpleasant. So ask,
"What does an unpleasant emotion feel like?" Or in meditation you
might sometimes experience tranquillity, bliss or bright lights, or notice how
beautiful silence is, how really attractive that is... but then comes the
coarseness of the sound of the JCB! So we attach to the pleasant and the
refined, and we try to get rid of the ugly. But what is it that knows pleasant
and unpleasant?
Sometimes when you are sitting,
the mind is bored, the eyes look around, and you find yourself attracted to
someone... ah!... and then you start to create. Romance. There is the creation
of "me" and "that person", and what "we" are going
to do, what is going to happen to "us" - sometimes it's called a
"vipassana marriage" - and then suddenly the bell rings! It can happen
with hatred too, for example when there is something unappealing about someone.
Rather than just noticing our desire to pull away from them, sitting with that
until it reaches neutrality - we become very critical, caught in aversion, and
try to push them away. But in contemplation of feelings, we can simply bring up
an image of a person, and be mindful of the attraction or aversion. That takes
us to peace of the mind - to neutrality, rarther than identification with the
feeling itself.
Quite often we are so caught up
with the craving for pleasure that we don't even notice neutrality, which we
find boring. As Luang Por Chah said, the neutral, the ordinary is like the space
between the end of the out-breath and the beginning of the in-breath. It is very
calming but we don't tend to notice it, because we want excitement – we seek
to react to difficult or frightening things.
The practice of vedanupassana
requires refined attention; taking this theme for contemplation to break down
the whole self-structure. So no matter what you may be as a self, as a person,
suggest to yourself that today you are going to simply try to notice attraction
and repulsion in the mind. That way you are contemplating Dhamma, instead
of just being a person. Then ask, "What is it that knows that which you are
noticing?" That knowing is where we find our freedom. This structure is
very analytical, but in Buddhism we need a certain amount of analysis.
You have a body with senses;
you live in an environment with which you have contact; that contact produces
pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings. Right there is where you work. Then
you have tanha: wanting the pleasant, not wanting the unpleasant, and the
sleepiness and delusion around the neutrality. When that wanting arises, there
might be grasping of it, believing in it; you really think that if you follow it
you will be truly happy, or that to get rid of it will be the right thing to do.
So there is belief in the wanting, and the grasping upadana. From the
grasping comes the sense of becoming; one gets involved in this whole process
and is reborn into the new situation. From there emerges the sense of
dissatisfaction, and you get lost in that: "Oh, here I go again!"
Notice how birth and death
work. You are bored with meditation, your knees are hurting, you want to get up
and do something interesting. Then we get a pleasant beautiful, creative idea
that is really going to help the world. Rather than simply noticing this as a
pleasant idea, craving develops to keep it going. We start to think, we grasp
the craving and them we create something. This is where we seek rebirth; we go
on from one to the next to another. It is important to notice this, because at
that point we have a choice. If we can see craving clearly and not grasp it, we
save ourselves a rebirth, and experience the silence of the mind. If, on the
other hand we choose to be reborn then out next option will be a death. Death is
when the dancing will not stop; it continues on and on in the mind. That is the
decline the kamma of attachment; rather that face that decline into
despair and boredom, we seek an alternative rebirth. That is why boredom and
disillusionment are so very important. If we can simply bear to be with the
ending of a cycle, that acceptance can take us beyond rebirth.
So we choose. Sometimes we will
be able to notice that movement towards the pleasant, and we will say, "No,
I don't really need that". At other times we will get caught up with the
pleasure. Then we will experience its decline, and have to bear with that.
Remember that if you are reborn, you will need to die again!
Nibbana, liberation, is that
which is not born and does not die, it carries us beyond the cycle - not in
terms of whether we will be a rabbit in the next life - but right now. If you
get that principle right, it will always work for us in this way.
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