In our everyday world, we live in ignorance of what we really are. We also have deeply ingrained notions of what we think we are. Each one of us lives out our existence, with the notion that I is real, it is upper most in our minds, at every moment of our day. We take for granted that we are a solid individual, separate from the rest of creation. It is just this deluded notion we carry about, that is the cause of all of our continuing dissatisfactions and unhappiness. The way we automatically respond to every single situation throughout our days, reinforces this ignorance and solidifies our sense of self. The most profound understanding of the mind and how it operates, is to be found, not in the annals of western psychology, but within the awakened realisations of Buddhism. For centuries these enlightened beings have penetrated the very deepest crevices of the human psyche, whereas the western approach tries to deal with outside influences upon mind, not understanding that these so called outside influences are merely the creations of mind in the first place. The awakened one has realised that all phenomena are empty. And this understanding can only be realised once we have let go of all of our clingings to appearances. So, how does this notion of the delusion of a solid self reinforce itself within us constantly? In the Buddhist tradition, we talk about the five conditioned responses or Skandas, that we bring to single every situation we encounter. These five are, form, feeling, discrimination (perception), concept- impulse and consciousness. Together this is how we constantly reinforce this so called solid idea of self and other. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche written wonderfully about the whole process of how the delusion begins and how it is reinforced: The most primary basis for clinging to the notion of self is the aggregate of form—that is, the body. When this body undergoes various experiences, we perceive some things as pleasant and desire them. Other things are perceived as unpleasant, and we want to get rid of them. This corresponds to the second aggregate, feeling. The third aggregate is discrimination. We start to discriminate between what is pleasant and what is unpleasant. The fourth aggregate is impulse. Once we have identified something as being pleasant, desire for it arises. At the same time, we want to get rid of whatever is unpleasant and try to accomplish this in various ways. What actually experiences the ensuing feelings of satisfaction or misery is consciousness, the fifth aggregate. Consciousness itself has five aspects, related to sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Prior to these five aspects and underlying them at all times, there is a basic, undetermined ground consciousness, which corresponds to a vague perception of the outer world and of existence, an awareness that “there is a world out there.” It is to all these aggregates coming together that we attach the notion of a self. As a result the aggregates become intimately linked with suffering. However, when we try to investigate these different elements, one by one, they cannot withstand analysis. They have no shape, no colour, no location. We cannot determine where they come from, where they remain, and where they go. In no way do they constitute autonomous entities. In truth, the notion of self we attach to the aggregates is a mere mental fabrication, a label put on something that does not exist. People who wear tinted glasses or suffer from a visual impairment would see a white conch as yellow, even though the conch has never been anything but white. In the same way, our deluded minds attribute reality to something that is utterly non-existent. This is what we call ignorance: not recognising the void nature of phenomena and assuming that phenomena possess the attribute of true existence although in fact they are devoid of it. With ignorance comes attachment to all that is pleasant to the ego as well as hatred and repulsion for all that is unpleasant. In that way the three poisons—ignorance, attachment, and hatred—come into being. Under the influence of these three poisons, the mind becomes like a servant running here and there. This is how the suffering of samsara is built up. It all derives from a lack of discernment and a distorted perception of the nature of phenomena. Because of this distortion, some people perceive samsara as quite a happy place. They don’t realise that it is pervaded with suffering. They imagine that the body is something exceedingly beautiful and desirable. They don’t see that when investigated, it is found to be composed of rather foul substances. In this erroneous ways of seeing things, we take suffering for happiness and perceive the impermanent world as permanent. We thus labour under four main misconceptions: believing that phenomena are pure when they are not; misconstruing suffering for happiness; considering phenomena to be permanent when they are transitory; and imagining that there is a self abiding in the midst of all this, when there is none to be found. These are the roots of afflictive mental states, the kleshas. To counteract them, we have to establish clearly the empty nature of the eight consciousnesses [the all-ground consciousness, the defiled mental consciousness, the mental cognition, and the five cognitions of sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch], the five aggregates [the physical and mental constituents of a sentient being: form, feeling, discrimination, impulse, and consciousness], the five elements [earth, air, water, fire, and space], and all phenomena, so that we correctly perceive their true nature, which is devoid of intrinsic existence. There are different ways to come to such a conclusion and experience it directly. We may undertake a whole course of study, reflection, and meditation, which gives rise to a clear understanding of the relative and absolute truth. Or we may apprehend it directly through contemplative practice, and recognize through our own experience the dream-like nature of phenomena, which is the way of the yogis. These teachings help us to progress in both ways, through a logical investigation of mind and through experiencing and integrating the result of this investigation through meditation. Let’s now examine this object. If we begin by examining a human body to which we are attached, we acknowledge that it is made up of the five aggregates (skandhas) of form, feeling, discrimination, impulse, and consciousness. The first one, the aggregate of form, is the foundation for the other four, just as the earth is the supporting ground for all the mountains, forests, and lakes upon it. There are several aspects of this aggregate of form, but here we will investigate the one related to the human body. It is because we cling to the entity of a body that even a tiny prick from a thorn makes us miserable. When there is warm sunshine outside, we feel comfortable and the body is pleased. We are constantly preoccupied with the comfort and attractiveness of our body and treat it like the most precious thing. Clinging to the body is the reason we experience such reactions to the pleasant and the unpleasant. To eradicate this clinging, we have to examine what the body is really made of. Let’s imagine that like a surgeon, we cut a body open and separate all its major constituents—the blood, the flesh, the bones, the fat, the five main internal organs, the four limbs. If we consider these components separately, not a single one looks clean or pure. Taken one by one, each of the components does not seem at all appealing. The whole body is just a collection of rather disgusting parts, formed of the five elements. The flesh corresponds to the earth element, the blood and the other fluids correspond to the water element, the breath corresponds to the wind element, our body warmth corresponds to the fire element, and the cavities within the body correspond to the space element. One of the main ways to decrease or eliminate our attachment to the body is to examine the various parts of the body one by one. When we conduct such an examination of a human body, where has the object of our attachment gone? What is left for us to be attached to? We should keep examining each part more and more minutely until we reach the point where we cannot find the object of our attachment. At that point, the attachment itself just vanishes. Unavoidably we come to the conclusion that the body does not truly exist. We have then recognised the void nature of our body and of all forms. When this state of understanding is reached, we simply rest for a while in the equanimity of this recognition. When a thought arises within this state, we repeat the same investigation. Once it has been fully grasped that this “body” is empty of true existence, we can easily understand that it is the same with our “name” and with the “mind” made up of the thoughts that go through our consciousness. In investigating the nature of phenomena, there are Four Seals or main points we should understand: (1) All things are compounded; that is, they are an assemblage of multiple elements instead of being unitary entities. (2) They are therefore impermanent and (3) are linked with suffering. (4) They are devoid of self-identity. As for impermanence, we have a very strong feeling that our body, our mind, our name, and our ego are all permanent. This leads to strong clinging. So to gain certainty in the realisation that all phenomena are utterly transitory is very important. It is like when a thief is unmasked and everyone learns his identity: he then becomes completely powerless to fool anyone, since all are aware of his mischievous nature. The thief can no longer harm anyone. In the same way, if we recognise that everything is impermanent—the universe as well as our thoughts—then naturally we will turn our backs on the objects of our grasping and embrace the dharma as the only thing that can really benefit us. Regarding the truth of suffering, we need to recognise that suffering is the condition of all phenomena pertaining to relative truth. Whatever is linked to the five aggregates is intimately connected with suffering. This is because grasping at the aggregates leads to the arising of the five mental poisons (kleshas)— hatred, desire, delusion, pride, and jealousy—which themselves are the causes of nothing but suffering. Even though we may enjoy some kind of temporary happiness in samsara, close inspection reveals that we have often achieved this happiness at the expense of others, or even through harming others, by cheating, stealing, and the like. In behaving like this, although we experience a fleeting happiness, at the same time we are creating causes for our future misery. It is like eating plants that are tasty but poisonous. We may savor them for a few moments, but soon afterward we will die. It is the same for all enjoyments that are linked with negative actions. Once we realise this, we no longer take pleasure in samsaric life, and our desire for it is completely exhausted. This leads to a strong wish to renounce our attachment to worldly affairs and our addiction to the causes of suffering. The final one of the four points is about the negative consequence of clinging to the self and the recognition that phenomena are devoid of self-identity. All of the first three points boil down to grasping at self, the main cause of suffering in samsara. Once we latch onto the concepts of “I” and “mine,” anything that seems to threaten that “self”—or an extension of it, such as friends and relatives—is identified as an “enemy.” This leads to craving, hatred, and lack of discernment, the basic causes of samsara. How did this happen at all? It happened because of our mental process, the chain of thoughts. For instance, the thought comes to your mind, “I shall leave my retreat and go into town,” and you follow it. You go into town and perform all kinds of actions there, accumulating a great deal of karma. If, at the moment the thought first arose, it had occurred to you, “There is no point in going to town,” the sequence of thoughts would have been interrupted and all the impulses that followed would have never have occurred. Nothing will happen at all. The cause of delusion is the linking of thoughts, one thought leading to the other and forming a garland of thoughts. We need to free ourselves from these automatic processes. This is the reason for these teachings, which are like a spinning wheel of lucid investigation of the nature of discursive thoughts and the ego. After paying attention to the teacher’s words, we should also put them into practice and investigate thoroughly our thoughts and our psychophysical aggregates, until we gain a true certainty about their nature. Until now, we had the strong conviction that the self exists as a separate entity. With the help of these teachings, we can now achieve a strong and firm conviction that the ego has no true existence. This will lead to the gradual disappearance of afflictive emotions and thoughts. In turn, this will lead to mastering the mind. In our ordinary condition, when a thought of hatred arises, we have no idea how to deal with it. We let that thought grow and become stronger. This could eventually lead us to seize a weapon and go to war. It all began with a thought, nothing more. Look at the succession of thoughts that lead to full-blown hatred: The past thoughts are dead and gone. The present thoughts will soon vanish. There is nothing graspable in either of them. So if we examine the thoughts in depth, we cannot find anything truly existing in them. Under scrutiny, they vanish like a big heap of grass set ablaze. Nothing will be left of it. We really must verify for ourselves that whatever thought comes into our mind has never acquired any true existence: thoughts are never born, they never dwell as something truly existing, and they have nowhere to go when they disappear from our mind. Unless we come to a clear understanding of this, why talk about things like the “primordial purity of the Great Perfection” or the “innate wisdom of the Mahamudra”? None of these will help, so long as we perceive phenomena in a deluded way. We have spoken of the main ways in which we distort reality: by assuming that conditioned phenomena are endowed with true existence; that fleeting phenomena are permanent; that samsara is generally imbued with happiness despite the pervasiveness of suffering; and that there could ever be such a thing as an autonomous, truly existing self. Now we have to replace these distorted perceptions with accurate ways of thinking. Instead of being convinced that there is a self-entity, we realise that self is a mere concept. We should get used to this and impress it on our minds. To achieve this, we must investigate with determined effort the non-existence of the self until we have covered every aspect of the analysis. Then, like someone who has finally completed an exhausting journey after painstakingly walking over a long distance, we can completely relax in the natural, open state of mind. Without entertaining any thoughts, we simply rest in equanimity for a while. After we have recovered our mental strength, thoughts will return. Instead of falling under their influence, apply the same investigation over again, and remain clearly mindful of the non-existence of the self. This will result in a genuine and powerful realisation of the absence of a truly existing self. There are two aspects of mindfulness: first, to remember what causes suffering and needs to be avoided, and what brings happiness and needs to be accomplished; and second, to be constantly vigilant lest we fall under the power of delusion. If we mechanically follow our wandering thoughts instead of remembering to investigate our mind, afflictive emotions such as craving and hatred will rise up strongly. Whenever these assail your mind, you should react just as if you had seen an enemy coming at you: Lift the weapon of mindfulness and resume your investigation of the mind. Simply by turning on the light, you can instantly destroy the darkness. Likewise, even a rather simple analysis of ego-clinging and afflictive emotions can make them collapse. By suppression we may temporarily subdue our afflictive emotions, but only an investigation of their true nature will completely eradicate them. The Measure of Progress Once this is accomplished, a great happiness will settle in the mind. As soon as we notice deluded thoughts arising in relation to conditioned phenomena, generating the scorching heat of samsara, we will recognise the unsurpassable, supreme, unconditioned nature of nirvana, which bestows a cooling, pacifying shade. Following our analysis, we should check whether or not the practice has taken birth within us. Having pursued this investigation over and over again, we naturally arrive at a genuine understanding that all our aggregates, like all phenomena, are molded by numberless fleeting causes and conditions. They are compounded things, so that if we take them apart there is nothing left such as a “body” or any of the other entities whose existence we are so convinced of. We will know without doubt that there are no permanent phenomena, since everything changes at every moment. We will also know that all phenomena are linked with suffering, and that various ways of assuming the existence of a “self” are all groundless. Thus we will have thoroughly integrated these Four Seals of the Buddha’s teaching into our understanding. From then on, our mindfulness will come naturally and we won’t have to exert so much effort to maintain it. This achievement comes from the power of gaining confidence in the fact that phenomena are devoid of true, inherent existence. A great master once declared that the solidity of the phenomenal world will start to collapse even if one simply begins to doubt that phenomena truly exist and merely glimpses the fact that emptiness is the nature of all phenomena and appearances. When we begin to win the struggle to free ourselves from the waves of afflictive emotions, the mind will become like a calm and vast lake. This peaceful state, the natural tranquillity of mind, will lead to deep samadhi [concentration], which is the pacification of wandering, deluded thoughts. From The Collected Works of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche,
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 23:45:04 +0000
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