Vipassana Fellowship Newsletter

from Vipassana.com

Vesak 2004 Edition

Vesak Greetings

The Full Moon of May commemorates the birth, Enlightenment and passing of the Buddha. May the blessings of this Vesak season be with you. May Vesak serve as an opportunity to deepen the application of the teachings of the Buddha in our lives.

July Course

Our next online Meditation Course begins on July 24th, 2004. The course has been offered since 1997 and serves as a practical introduction to samatha (tranquility) and vipassana (insight) techniques from the Theravada tradition of Buddhism. Intended primarily for beginners, the 90 day course is also suitable for experienced meditators who wish to explore different aspects of the tradition. The course is led by Andrew Quernmore, an experienced meditation teacher based in England.

Registration details are available at:

http://vipassana.com/course/

Karuna - Compassion

A course participant writes:

The course has been an unexpected opening and a real challenge for me, especially the brahmavihara practice. I was rather suspicious about this section, and the power and richness of the feelings coming surprises me. It flows - except of the karuna part. I can't find an entry to this feeling of compassion, it is almost like a hole there. I can see the suffering of the people, but not feel it. I realize it is there and it makes me thoughtful and somehow sad, but it is impossible to empathize deeply. I try 'hard', but the result seems very artificial and stiff. I didn't know that so clearly before and I'm worried about it. Do you have an idea how to come closer to the feeling? A second question deriving from this: If I try to 'create' feelings in this way, isn't there a danger that I repress my original ones and start pretending?

Andrew replies:

I think the most profitable approach would be to spend quite a bit of time working with those people whom you know best. Concentrate for a while on the recognition of suffering - in all its forms, large and small - in the lives of the people around you. Notice how your heart goes out to those whom you already care about. There is a natural wish that they could be free of their burdens and that their lives could run as smoothly and trouble-free as possible. Although all of the brahmavihara practices are universal and essentially 'socially engaged' i.e. they look outward, these training sections benefit from including a section on oneself. It is here, for some of us, that we can most completely see ordinary everyday suffering and can witness how that makes us feel. Of course, we are not normally dealing with the 'big stuff' of acute poverty and hunger, etc., but the very real suffering and unsatisfactoriness that is present in all of our lives. It is not the magnitude of the suffering that matters in our training but the recognition of its endemic nature and its myriad forms. Sometimes dukkha can be witnessed as mild dissatisfaction or longing; at other times it may be more obvious as bodily pain or grief. In whatever guise it arises we can feel its impact on our being. We can recognize our reactions to it: that it is a part of life that is usually unwanted and unwelcome. Even in its mildest manifestations we would rather be free from it. This is the same for all sentient beings - they face hardship, uncertainty and loss because that is part of the reality of their existence.

The recognition of the presence of dukkha (suffering, unsatisfactoriness) is only part of the exercise. Were we to rest with that the process would be leaden and possibly depressing. Karuna is about recognising the reality of a situation and acknowledging how common this unsatisfactoriness is. The second part of the exercise is founded on that recognition - just as I suffer and have suffered, so too do all of these other beings with whom I share this world. Just as I would like to be free from all forms of suffering, so too would all other sentient beings. Getting to know these other sentient beings narrows the distance. In the same way that we care deeply about our close friends, and will often do anything possible to maximise their happiness, we can also come to empathise with other sentient beings.

It may not be possible at first to see beyond the circumstances that we feel have caused their suffering. This is particularly difficult where there has been very obvious wrongdoing that offends our own moral sensibilities. Detaching ourselves, for a moment, from causes we cannot know in detail, it is the job of the meditator to go to the nub of the problem: the fact that this being suffers. Whatever actions may have caused the situation are past and cannot be undone. The individual has to face his or her predicament in the present. It is this moment that we engage with in karuna meditation. We recognise the simple truth that there is suffering here and our heart moves at the hope of its alleviation: "May this person be free from the pain they feel"; "May this person be free from fear".

With regard to your second question about repression of existing feelings and the 'creation' of new ones: this shouldn't really arise if you work methodically. If we concentrate on the existence of the reality of suffering we are dealing with a very precise thing. We are not exploring why's and wherefore's about what happened in the past or whether our own choices would have been different. Any such analysis should remain outside the meditation session. Dukkha is common to all sentient beings; it is a characteristic of each of our lives. It is the presence of dukkha, here and now, that concerns us. As we come to better know - to consider - the beings on whom we are focusing in our meditation sittings our response will be evoked by what we know they experience now. Our reaction to the presence of pain and anguish - any pain and anguish - is usually that we would like it to stop. Knowing that such suffering is a universal experience, different only in the detail, enables us to share the commonality of experience. This makes true empathy possible. We can walk alongside them and feel with them. Our suffering, their suffering - so very different on the surface and yet its importance and impact reverberates in similar ways.

Each of the brahmaviharas is about cultivating a particular quality. The quality of compassion, for example, already exists in us in varying degrees based on our history and the choices we have made. We can't create compassion, but what we can do is to strengthen our own capacity to use it. It is already present in us but, like most other skills and aptitudes, we need to devote energy to optimizing it. This is largely what these training sessions are about: moving from the seed of compassion (so small that it can serve only those we consider close to us to), through germination (when it can sustain others we have made an effort to consider) to full growth (where all can benefit from it - universally and impartially). This is a path of development; there is no need to repress feelings or try to artificially create 'better' ones. Meditation relies on honesty and precision. If we focus precisely the presence of suffering will be seen free of judgement and our response will be simply to its presence and the hurt it causes the individual. This is where compassion arises. It may not feel strong at first, but our ability to share compassion will grow and extend as we engage with this form of meditation in the coming months and years.

With metta

Andrew

Our Buddhist Heritage

In the coming months, this Newsletter will be exploring a little of the history of Early Buddhism. We continue our series with an introduction to the Buddha's Noble Path.

Early Buddhism
by T.W. Rhys Davids (1843-1922)

CHAPTER 4
THE ARYAN PATH

The summary of the main features of his system of beliefs which Gotama is said, in our earliest authorities, to have put before his five friends at Benares, gives us what those authorities held to be most important in his teaching. We may possibly go even further. It is not very probable, after the long and careful course of instruction they had received from him, that the early disciples can have misunderstood him on such a point. There are distinct traces in our earliest documents of a development of thought in the views of his followers regarding the personality of their master, in their Buddhology. No such traces have yet been found of development in fundamental doctrine. The balance of probability is therefore in favour of the tradition having preserved the actual views of Gotama himself; and very possibly the expressions he used. But even if we adopt the more difficult hypothesis, and suppose that the tradition embodies the views of the early disciples, and that they invented these utterances, put forward by them as the first discourse of their Master, - even then we have in these words the oldest and most authoritative statement of Buddhist doctrine that we possess.

The Word Aryan. - In the text, preserved in two separate places in the Canon [Samyutta, v. 420, and Vinaya, i. 10.], the Path pointed out is called the Aryan path, the Truths enumerated are called the Aryan truths. The word Aryan is ambiguous. Already in the Vedas it means both 'of Aryan race' and 'gentle, noble, kindly.' Some etymologists give different derivations for the different meanings. It is more probable that the second meaning is derived from the first, just as our word gentle meant originally of gentle birth. By the time of the rise of Buddhism, the secondary meaning had become so fixed in the connotation of the word that it conveyed all the senses of belonging to the Aryan race, gentle and noble. In some passages the stress is laid upon the point of race, in others on the ethical, in others on the aesthetic side. But all three were present together to the minds of speakers and hearers alike. In the text we are now discussing, all three would be applicable, and were probably meant to be implied. I have rendered the word 'noble'; and that translation can easily be defended. But I am inclined to think that at least one idea hinted at by the use of this epithet was, that the new system then promulgated was considered worthy of, suitable for, the free clansmen, for the men of Aryan race. The Buddhist commentators, writing long afterwards, when the word had quite lost its racial sense, always interpret it as meaning 'worthy of, suitable for Arahats.' And there are several passages in the old texts in which Ariya and Arahat are used as synonymous terms. [For instance Majjhima, i. 280, and my wife's note at Duka Patthina, i. 366.] This is only one of many instances of a new, and as the speakers thought, a better, deeper meaning being put into older words, and may, therefore, have been intended by Gotama in this case also.

One other remark by way of introduction is necessary. The words we have are a condensed summary of a talk that lasted over some days. Whoever chose the words, they are very carefully chosen. To translate them without using words with a Christian bias or modern ideas is not easy, as so many excellent English words are thus shut out. Every word is important, and it is a great pity that, in popular works on Buddhism, the expressions have been usually further condensed (which they will not bear), or so altered as to misrepresent the meaning. The full text is as follows:-

'There are two extremes which he who has gone forth ought not to follow - habitual devotion on the one hand to the passions, to the pleasures of sensual things, a low and pagan way (of seeking satisfaction), ignoble, unprofitable, fit only for the worldly-minded ; and habitual devotion, on the other hand, to self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, unprofitable. There is a Middle Path discovered by the Tathagata [That is by the Arahat ; the title the Buddha always uses of himself. He does not call himself the Buddha; and his followers never address him as such.] - a path which opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace, to insight, to the higher wisdom, to Nirvana. Verily ! it is this Aryan Eightfold Path; that is to say Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right mode of livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Rapture.

'Now this is the Noble Truth as to suffering. Birth is attended with pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful. Union with the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation from the pleasant ; and any craving unsatisfied, that, too, is painful. In brief, the five aggregates of clinging (that is, the conditions of individuality) are painful.

'Now this is the noble Truth as to the origin of suffering. Verily ! it is the craving thirst that causes the renewal of becomings, that is accompanied by sensual delights, and seeks satisfaction, now here now there - that is to say, the craving for the gratification of the senses, or the craving for a future life, or the craving for prosperity.

'Now this is the Noble Truth as to the passing away of pain. Verily! it is the passing away so that no passion remains, the giving up, the getting rid of, the emancipation from, the harbouring no longer of this craving thirst.

'Now this is the Noble Truth as to the way that leads to the passing away of pain. Verily I it is this Aryan Eightfold Path, that is to say, Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, conduct, and mode of livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Rapture.'

A few words follow as to the threefold way in which the speaker claimed to have grasped each of these Four Truths. That is all. There is not a word about God or the soul, not a word about the Buddha or Buddhism. It seems simple, almost jejune ; so thin and weak that one wonders how it can have formed the foundation for a system so mighty in its historical results. But the simple words are pregnant with meaning. Their implications were clear enough to the hearers to whom they were addressed. They were not intended, however, to answer the questionings of a twentieth-century European student, and are liable now to be misunderstood. Fortunately each word, each clause, each idea in the discourse is repeated, commented on, enlarged upon, almost ad nauseam, in the Suttas [See, for instance, Digha, ii. 305 to 307, and 311 to 313 ; Majjhima, iii. 231; Samyutta, v. 8 ; Patisambhida, i. 37-42.]. A short comment in the light of those explanations, though it can only be a repetition of what I have often said before, is necessary to bring out the meaning that was meant.

The End of Pain. - The passing away of pain or suffering is said to depend on an emancipation. And the Buddha is elsewhere (Vinaya i. 239) made to declare : 'Just as the great ocean has one taste only, the taste of salt, just so have this doctrine and discipline but one flavour only, the flavour of emancipation.' And again : 'When a brother has, by himself, known and realised, and continues to abide, here in this visible world, in that emancipation of mind, in that emancipation of heart which is Arahatship - that is a condition higher still, and sweeter still, for the sake of which the brethren lead the religious life under me.' [Mahali Suttanta ; translated in Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. p. 201. Compare p. 204.]

The emancipation is found in a habit of mind, in the being free from a specified sort of craving that is said to be the origin of certain specified sorts of pain. In some European books this is completely spoiled by being represented as the doctrine that existence is misery, and that desire is to be suppressed. Nothing of the kind is said in the text. The description of suffering or pain is, in fact, a string of truisms quite plain and undisputable until the last clause. That clause declares that the five Upadana Skandhas, the five groups of bodily and mental qualities that make up an individual, involve pain.

Pain and Individuality. - One can express that in more modern language by saying that the conditions that make an individual are precisely the conditions that also give rise to pain. No sooner has an individual arisen, become separate, than disease and decay begin to act upon it. Individuality involves limitation, limitation involves ignorance, ignorance ends in sorrow. All the sorts and sources of pain here specified - birth, decay, death, union with the pleasant, separation from the pleasant, unsatisfied longings - are each simply a result of individuality. This is a deeper generalisation than that which said : 'A man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.' But it is put forward as a mere statement of fact. And the previous history of religious belief in India would tend to show that emphasis was laid on the fact, not as an explanation of the origin of evil, but rather as a protest against the then current pessimistic idea that salvation could not be reached on earth, and must therefore be sought for in rebirth in heaven. For if the argument were admitted, it would follow that even in heaven the individual would still be subject to sorrow ; and by admitting this the five ascetics, to whom the words were addressed, would have to admit also all that followed.

Craving. - The threefold division of craving at the end of the second truth might be rendered : 'The lust of the flesh, the lust of life, and the love of this present world.' The two last are said elsewhere to be directed against two sets of thinkers, called the Eternalists and the Annihilationists, who held respectively the everlasting-life heresy, and the let-us-eat-and-drink-for-to-morrow-we-die heresy. [See Iti-vuttaka, p. 44 ; Samyutta, iii. 57.] This may be so. But in any case the division of craving would have appealed to the five hearers as correct.

Impermanence. - The details of the Path include several terms whose meaning and implication are by no means apparent at first sight. Right views, for instance, mean mainly right views as to the Four Truths and the Three Signs. Of the latter, one is identical, or nearly so, with the First Truth. The others are Impermanence, and non-soul (the absence of a soul) - both declared to be 'signs' of every individual, whether god, animal, or man. Of these two, again, the Impermanence has become an Indian rather than a Buddhist idea; and we are familiar enough with it also in the West. There is no Being, there is only a Becoming. The state of every individual is unstable, temporary, sure to pass away. Even in things we find, in each individual, Form and other Material qualities. In living organisms there is a continually ascending series of Mental qualities also. It is the union of these that makes the individual. Every person, or thing, or god is therefore a putting together, a compound. And in each individual, without any exception, the relation of its component parts is ever changing, is never the same for two consecutive moments. It follows that no sooner has separateness, individuality, begun, than dissolution, disintegration, also begins. There can be no individuality without a putting together : there can be no putting together without a becoming : there can be no becoming without a becoming different : and there can be no becoming different without a dissolution, a passing away, which sooner or later will inevitably be complete.

Herakleitos, who was a generation or two later than the Buddha, had very similar ideas; [Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 149.] and similar ideas are found in post-Buddhistic Indian works. [Katha Up., 2.10; Bhag. Gita 2.14 ; 9.33.] But in neither case are they worked out in the same uncompromising way. Both in Europe, and in all Indian thought except the Buddhist, souls, and the gods who are made in imitation of souls, are considered as exceptions. To these spirits is attributed a Being without Becoming, an individuality without change, a beginning without an end. To hold any such view would, according to the doctrine of the Noble (or Aryan) Path, be erroneous, and the error would block the way against the very entrance on the Path.

So important is this position in Buddhism that it is put in the forefront of Buddhist expositions of Buddhism. The Buddha himself is stated in the books to have devoted to it the very first discourse he addressed to the first converts.[The Anatta-lakkhana Sutta (Vinaya, i. 13 = Samyutta, iii. 66 and iv. 34), translated in Vinaya Texts, vol. i. pp. 100.102.] The first in the collection of the Dialogues of Gotama discusses and completely, categorically, and systematically rejects all the current theories about 'souls.' Later books follow these precedents. Thus the Katha Vatthu, the latest book included in the canon, discusses points of disagreement that had arisen in the community. It places this question of 'soul' at the head of all the points it deals with, and devotes to it an amount of space quite overshadowing all the rest. [See my article on Buddhist Schools of Thought in the J.R.A.S. for 1892.] So also in the earliest Buddhist book later than the canon - the very interesting and suggestive series of conversations between the Greek King Menander and the Buddhist teacher Nagasena. It is precisely this question of the 'soul' that the unknown author takes up first, describing how Nagasena convinces the king that there is no such thing as the 'soul' in the ordinary sense. And he returns to the subject again and again. [Questions of King Milinda, translated by Rhys Davids (Oxford, 1890-1894), vol. i. pp. 40, 41, 85-87 ; vol. ii. pp. 2125,86-89.]

Right Desires. - After Right Views come Right Aspirations. It is evil desires, low ideals, useless cravings, idle excitements that are to be suppressed by the cultivation of the opposite - of right desires, lofty aspirations. In one of the Dialogues [Majjhima, iii. 251. Compare Samyutta, v. 8.] instances are given - the desire for emancipation from sensuality, aspirations towards the attainment of love to others, the wish not to injure any living thing, the desire for the eradication of wrong, and for the promotion of right, dispositions in one's own heart ; and so on. This portion of the Path is indeed quite simple ; and would require no commentary were it not for the still constantly repeated blunder that Buddhism teaches the suppression of all desire.

Right Effort. - Of the remaining stages of the Path it is only necessary to mention two. The one is Right Effort, a constant intellectual alertness is required. This is not only insisted upon elsewhere in countless passages, but of the three cardinal sins in Buddhism (raga, dosa, moha) the last and worst is stupidity or dullness, the others being sensuality and ill-will. Right Effort is closely connected with the seventh stage, Right Mindfulness. Two of the Dialogues are devoted to this subject, and it is constantly referred to elsewhere. [Digha, ii. 290-315; Majjhima, i. 55 fol. Compare Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, p. 81.] The disciple, whatsoever he does - whether going forth or coming back, standing or walking, speaking or silent, eating or drinking, - is to keep clearly in mind all that it means, the temporary character of the act, its ethical significance, and, above all, that behind the act there is no actor (goer, seer, eater, speaker) that is an eternally persistent unity. It is the Buddhist analogue to the Christian precept : 'Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.'

Love. - Under the head of Right Conduct the two most important points are Love and Joy. Love is in Pali Metta, and the Metta Sutta [No. 8 in the Sutta Nipata (p. 26 of Fausboll's edition). It is translated by Fausboll in vol. x. of the S.B.E. and by Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 109.] (no doubt with reference to the Right Mindfulness just described) says :-

'As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, protects her son, her only son, so let him cultivate love without measure towards all beings. Let him cultivate towards the whole world - above, below, around - a heart of love unstinted, unmixed with the sense of differing or opposing interests. Let a man maintain this mindfulness all the while he is awake, whether he be standing, walking, sitting, or lying down. This state of heart is the best in the world.'

Often elsewhere four such states are described, the Brahma Vihara or Sublime Conditions. They are Love, Sorrow at the sorrows of others, Joy in the joys of others, and Equanimity as regards one's own joys and sorrows. [Digha, ii. 186, 187. 61] Each of these feelings was to be deliberately practised, beginning with a single object and gradually increasing till the whole world was suffused with the feeling.

'Our mind shall not waver. No evil speech will we utter. Tender and compassionate will we abide, loving in heart, void of malice within. And we will be ever suffusing such an one with the rays of our loving thought. And with that feeling as a basis we will ever be suffusing the whole world with thought of love, far-reaching, grown great, beyond measure, void of anger or ill-will.' [Majjhima, i. 129.]

The relative importance of Love, as compared with other habits, is thus described :-

'All the means that can be used as bases for doing right are not worth the sixteenth part of the emancipation of heart through Love. That takes all those up into itself, outshining them in radiance and glory. Just as whatsoever stars there be, their radiance avails not the sixteenth part of the radiance of the moon. That takes all those up into itself, outshining them in radiance and glory just as in the last month of the rains, at harvest time, the sun, mounting up on high into the clear and cloudless sky, overwhelms all darkness in the realms of space, and shines forth in radiance and glory just as in the night, when the dawn is breaking, the Morning Star shines out in radiance and glory - just so all the means that can be used as helps towards doing right avail not the sixteenth part of the emancipation of heart through Love.' [Itivuttaka, pp. 19-21.]

Joy. - The intense bliss, pervading the whole being, which follows on the assurance of salvation won, is independent of the dogmas or beliefs of those who have felt the disenchantment, passed through the struggle, and won the victory. We have undoubted and most interesting examples among the adherents of the most antagonistic forms of Christian belief. And Moslem Sufis and Buddhist Arahats have had the same experience. There are preserved in the canon two collections of the Songs of the Elders, ascribed respectively to one hundred and seven men and seventy-three women who became Arahats in the life-time of the Buddha. They are, with a very few exceptions, paeans of joy and victory. They have, unfortunately, not been translated as yet into English [Editor: several translations do now exist]; but the spirit they breathe is shown in the following prose passage. [Taken from my Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. p. 84.] After pointing out that the Hindrances (Nivarana) - sensuality, ill-will, torpor of mind or body, worry, and wavering - affect a man like debt, disease, imprisonment, slavery, and anxiety - it goes on:-

'When these five Hindrances have been put away within him, he looks upon himself as freed from debt, rid of disease, out of jail, a free man, and secure. And gladness springs up within him on his realising that, and joy arises to him thus gladdened, and so rejoicing all his frame becomes at ease, and being thus at ease he is pervaded with a sense of peace, and in that peace his heart is stayed.'

There is a string of verses in the Dhammapada on this state of bliss, the Right Rapture, the last stage of the Path. The following is one of them:-

'It is in very bliss we dwell, we who hate not those who hate us ;
Among men full of hate, we continue void of hate.
It is in very bliss we dwell, we in health among the ailing ;
Among men weary and sick, we continue well.
It is in very bliss we dwell, free from care among the careworn ;
Among men full of worries, we continue calm.
It is in very bliss we dwell, we who have no hindrances ;
We will become feeders on joy, like the gods in their shining splendour!'
[Dhammapada, verses 197-200.]

Another verse from the same anthology says:-

'When the wise man by earnestness hath driven
Vanity far away, the terraced heights
Of wisdom doth he climb, and, free from care,
Looks down on the vain world, the careworn crowd -
As he who stands upon a mountain top
Can watch, serene himself, the toilers in the plains.'
[Dhammapada, verse 28.]

(To be continued)

The Vipassana Fellowship Newsletter is published about 10 times each year and is sent only on request and to previous participants of our courses. Vipassana Fellowship is an organisation dedicated to the dissemination of accurate and useful information on Buddhist meditation practices as found in the Theravada tradition. Our next mailing will be in June. Our site can be accessed via the vipassana.com and vipassana.org domains.

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