An
Outline of the Buddha's Teachings
and
Glossary of Buddhism's Basic Concepts
Buddha's Eightfold Path as a Step Program
© bradford hatcher, 2013, Version 13.12, Rev. 3-8-20
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Abstract
Dhamma-Vinaya, or Doctrine-and-Discipline, was
Buddhism's name for most of its long history. It has
been called a religion and a spiritual discipline,
even though it has no concept of a god or of spirit.
More than anything else it is an array of ideas and
exercises aimed at eradicating the internal causes of
our suffering, our painful dissatisfactions. Three of
the primary causes, the three Unwholesome Roots, are
craving, aversion and delusion, each of which goes by
many names. Recovery from addictive behavior in the
West is concerned with patterns of addiction and
denial. Addiction is simply a more entrenched and
intractable form of craving, primarily due to the
behavior's immediate effect on the evolved reward
circuits in the brain. Denial represents a formidable
combination of aversion and delusion that forms the
armament and defense of addictive behavior. It is the
assertion here that the ideas and exercises of
Buddhism are perfectly applicable to recovery from our
addictions and have been available as such for a very
long time. No modification of the system is necessary,
except that the specific applicability of some
elements of the doctrine might be pointed out in this
context, and augmented with some of the further
knowledge we have gained in the last twenty-five
centuries.
Despite the contributions of alternatives to 12-Step programs, there is still an insufficiency of recovery approaches which avoid religious or spiritual indoctrination, and the adoption of a victim or disease model of addiction. Most alternatives which do exist have borrowed heavily from Buddhism, with or without due acknowledgement. Yet Dhamma-Vinaya remains the most highly articulated and time-tested methodology. Many have tried to rephrase the twelve steps in more Buddhist-sounding terms, but this is a disservice to both. This book presents Buddhism strait up, but interpreted here as a path to recovery, from addiction and denial, as well as from our more garden-variety sufferings.
Despite the contributions of alternatives to 12-Step programs, there is still an insufficiency of recovery approaches which avoid religious or spiritual indoctrination, and the adoption of a victim or disease model of addiction. Most alternatives which do exist have borrowed heavily from Buddhism, with or without due acknowledgement. Yet Dhamma-Vinaya remains the most highly articulated and time-tested methodology. Many have tried to rephrase the twelve steps in more Buddhist-sounding terms, but this is a disservice to both. This book presents Buddhism strait up, but interpreted here as a path to recovery, from addiction and denial, as well as from our more garden-variety sufferings.
Table of Contents
To the Reader
Disclaimer
Introduction
Recover what?
Which Buddhism?
Problematic Conflations
Hinduism
The Perennial Philosophy
Theosophy
New Age
Romanticism
Transpersonal Psychology
Buddhism and religion
Buddhism and psychology
Buddhism and science
The Four Noble Truths
Suffering
Dukkha Nanam, the knowledge of suffering
Anicca, impermanence
Dukkha, painful imperfection
Anatta, we imaginary beings
Khandas, the five aggregates
The emergent self
Suffering's Causes
Tanha, craving and thirst
Kama tanha, eros, craving enjoyment
Bhava tanha, ontos, craving more being
Vibhava tanha, thanatos, craving oblivion
Akusala Mulas, the three unwholesome roots
Lobha, craving and attachment
Dosa, aversion and hatred
Moha, delusion and stupidity
Paticca-Samuppada, the chain of conditioned arising
Addiction and denial
Suffering's Cessation
The chain's weakest links
Restraint and renunciation
Upanisa, the twelve proximate conditions of liberation
Samvega
Upanisa, continued
The Eightfold Path
That a path exists
The path as a conceptual metaphor
The steps of the path
A different kind of faith
Right View, Cognitive Self-control
The ownership of kamma
The Four Noble Truths
The voice of another and wise attention
Higher purpose and reframing
Unlearning
Discerning wholesome and unwholesome, skilled and unskilled
Right Intention, Emotional Self-control
Substitution
Latent tendencies and the evolutionary functions of affect
Emotional intelligence
Brahmaviharas, the immeasurable healing states
Metta, loving-kindness
Karuna, compassion
Mudita, sympathetic joy
Upekkha, equanimity
Four more Brahmaviharas that we might think to add here
Khama, forgiveness
Katannuta, gratitude or thankfulness
Garava, reverence or deep respect
Khanti, patience
The first tasks of Right Intention
Freedom from craving
Freedom from aversion and ill-will
Avihimsa, doing no harm
Right Speech, Verbal Self-control
Musavada veramani, avoiding falsehood, speaking true
Pisunaya vacaya veramani, avoiding slander, speaking to reconcile
Pharusaya vacaya veramani, avoiding invective, speaking to benefit
Samphappalapa veramani, avoiding frivolity, speaking to the point
Conflicts between the principles
Sophistry and argumentativeness
The power of the word
Right Action, Behavioral Self-control
Good karma
Natural, ingrained goodness
Morals and ethics
The precepts for the laity
The precepts for monks and nuns
Positive ethics and recovery
Right Livelihood
Five unwholesome occupations
Compassion for future generations
Simple living
Livelihood in the social environment
Right Effort
Restraint: preventing the arising of unwholesome states
Renunciation: abandoning the arisen unwholesome states
Development: cultivating the wholesome states
Persistence: maintaining the wholesome states
The function of self-control
Drives, motivations, desires and wants
Right Mindfulness
Beginner's Mind
Kayanupassana, contemplations of the organism
Vedananupassana, contemplations of feelings and sensations
Cittanupassana, contemplations of mental activity
Dhammanupassana, contemplations of mental phenomena
Cognitive bias and distortion
Cognitive biases
Defense mechanisms
Coping strategies
Logical fallacies
Right Concentration
The Cetasikas of Right Concentration
The Four Rupa Jhanas
The Four Arupa Jhanas
We're Not There Yet
Appendices - Surveying the Field
A Buddhist's look at the Twelve Steps
Attempts to merge twelve steps with eight
The twelve traditional steps
Lessons from 12-Steps other than steps
A fellowship of men and women
The serenity prayer
My best thinking got me here
Hitting bottom
Attraction rather than promotion
An attitude of gratitude
Enabling
The geographical cure
The pink cloud
Phrases of mixed blessing
One day at a time
Fake it 'til you make it
Self-will run riot
Alternative Recovery Programs
The recovery approach
Rational Recovery
Smart Recovery
Psychology's Concepts and Therapies
Clinical addiction, abuse and dependence
Psychology as taxonomic behavior
Classifying and enumerating mental states and processes
Narcissism
Conditioned behavior
Other ideas for study
Cognitive Behavioral Therapies
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT)
Cognitive reframing and restructuring
Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Motivational Interviewing and self-efficacy (MI)
Greek Philosophy
Stoicism
Epicurean Hedonism
Evolutionary Psychology
Human nature
Social functions
That no man is created or equal
The mind-made body
Problem solving
Cognitive Neuroscience
The field
The computational model
Neurochemistry
Neuroplasticity
Embodied cognition
Positive Psychology
The problem of happiness
Individuation and the temporary self
First things first
Self-optimization
To the Reader
This book
is not intended to be an easy read with mass-market
appeal: that book is for somebody else to write.
Neither is it written for a majority of the people who
are trying to recover from addiction. It is presented
for the non-theist or a-theist who is ready to claim
personal responsibility for both addictive behavior
and its correction. Sobriety, especially the kind that
will put the problem behind and get on with life, is a
lot of dedicated, hard work. This is written for
someone either intelligent or patient enough to read
it through, or else for their therapist's benefit.
It's also written as a broad introduction to Buddhism,
since the doctrine has not been altered to fit the
subject at hand. There exist several attempts at
developing a Buddhist Recovery program, one for those
without a deity to fall back on, but most of these try
to rework Buddhist doctrine to fit into the 12-Step
model instead of regarding the Middle Path in and of
itself as steps along an ancient path that leads to
the elimination of suffering due to craving, aversion,
and delusion.
Where I
use the words drink or alcoholic here, this is meant
to stand in for all forms of addictive behavior.
Whether substance abuse or behavioral, all addiction
is ultimately chemical addiction, a feeling-seeking
behavior that has employed the organism's evolved
chemistry, the endocrinological reward systems, in
cementing and armoring itself into place. Addiction
also implies that the behavior is a problem, and not
something like basic needs for oxygen, water or
coffee. Drink is also a reference to the Buddhist word
tanha, one of its many words for craving: its
primary meaning is thirst.
It is not
the goal of this work to convert anybody to Buddhism,
or even from alcoholism. As Buddha said, "Let him who
is your teacher remain your teacher" (DN 25). While I
personally feel affinity with the doctrine, I would
not call myself a Buddhist unless the name was
inserted into a much longer string of labels. There is
nothing easy about being a real Buddhist. Eight steps
instead of twelve is not an indication. It's even more
than the work of not having an imaginary deity helping
you, or the placebo effect that that entails.
Salvation in Buddhism is a matter of lifelong
diligence and heedfulness, and you don't even get an
eternal or immortal soul for a reward. And what
rewards there are you aren't even allowed to hang on
to, although it's OK to enjoy them
while present, even as they are slipping way. At least
all of the work you get to do here will help keep your
mind off the the thing that you used to think you
needed.
Buddhism
is a first-person investigation of whatever may prove
to be true, a first-person science. The states of
awareness that are needed to reprogram one's views and
intentions and thereby transcend addiction, call them
apotheosis, epiphany, gratitude, awe, forgiveness,
compassion, patience, equanimity, etc., may be arrived
at by any number of routes. This particular path, and
the techniques for attaining these states, has
undergone considerable testing over the centuries.
But, with that said, yes, I am aware of a number of
important popularizers of Buddhism in the West who had
serious problems with alcohol addiction. The method
here is not automatic: it still has to be applied
specifically to the problems at hand. The practice of
Buddhism is not a guarantee of sobriety, well-
adjustedness or of mental health. The talk must be
walked, and this is a fundamental part of the
teaching.
I have written
this from some experience. I had a 15-year drinking
habit and a 25-year tobacco habit, both fairly heavy,
now broken, 22 and 20 years ago respectively. Being an
atheist with a background in science and an
inclination to stay grounded, I had great
philosophical difficulties with the 12-Step model as I
was groping for a way out. I know that I was not alone
in this: I met many along the path with similar
problems with god and his inscrutable plans. I tend to
regard the 12-Step paradigm (and the DSM's as well) as
a toxic model insofar as it promotes the victim and
disease mentalities over the taking of full personal
responsibility and the diligent practice of correcting
our defects. If I did have a disease it was a disease
of the values that I was holding. I could in fact help
myself, but I needed to learn the keys for doing that
effectively, and replace some toxic values with
wholesome ones.
I intend
to base this on the general structure of Buddhist
doctrine, and adhere as closely as I can to the
original teachings, which means using the Theravada
school and its Pali-language terminology. There is a
good chance that this approach will be a lot more
critical and less squishy than the forms most
Westerners are familiar with. It might even be that
some hapless spiritual fellow who thought he was a
Buddhist finds out he was really a Hindu. At any rate,
I have also taken care to omit some of the more
hyperbolic nonsense that all wisdom teachings are
inclined to attract. Clearly, we have learned some
useful things about our addictive behaviors in the 25
centuries since these teachings were first spoken. We
have learned several from psychology, biology and
recovery that the Buddha never articulated. Many will
be introduced in the course of the discussion, even if
they seem to be square pegs in round holes. Others
will be offered in their appropriate appendices.
The Buddha
as presented here, and generally in the Theravada
school, was simply a man who woke up. In doing so he
became humanity's first true psychologist, but one who
had a particularly strict and challenging definition
of mental health. The normal human state of mind is
far from mentally healthy. It's important to note that
this strict definition need not be fully realized in
order to mark real progress along the path that leads
to suffering's end. It might even be enough for now to
simply stop killing ourselves for things that we don't
need.
Disclaimer
The reader
is responsible for anything he or she does with any of
the information contained in this book. Accepting
personal responsibility for our own cognitive and
affective states, accepting ownership of the
consequences of our actions, the ownership of our own
kamma, is a fundamental premise of Buddhism and
of this book. If you cannot accept this, read no
further: there are plenty of alternative approaches,
and books that are written specifically for the
victims of disease, circumstance and persuasive
suggestion.
Recover What?
How far
you want to go with recovery might say something about
whether you belong here. To simply recover from an
addiction leaves you the same person who got into
trouble in the first place, though somewhat further
damaged and with some makeup work to be done. At a
minimum, new behaviors need to be learned to avoid
relapse indefinitely. This is recovery from, "the
action or process of regaining possession or control
of something stolen or lost" and a return to a normal
state of health, mind, or strength. It is frequently
claimed that Buddhism cannot be considered therapy
because it starts with a psychology of the normal and
proceeds towards more extraordinary states. It shares
this with today's "Positive Psychology." While it is
understandable, knowing humans as we do, that most
people would regard the normative state of human
experience to be the baseline for measuring mental
health, or simply that normalcy defines mental health,
there are other points of view. The Buddha took a
harder line: normal is a long, long way from healthy,
and it is a grievous error to state that a mental
phenomenon cannot be a mental illness simply because a
majority of people suffer from it. This recalls Jiddu
Krishnamurti's quip: "It is no measure of health to be
well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." A
Buddhist approach to addiction, once withdrawal is out
of the way, is not simply a new habit of abstinence.
Sights are set on becoming healthier than normal.
Health is more than the absence of disease. And
freedom is a lot more than freedom from unmanageable
craving.
Suppose
you were to see some hapless fellow fall ten meters
from a third-floor roof. There are a large numbers of
moves he could make on the way down. Suppose he made
precisely the right moves at the right time, and
striking the ground sent him into a horizontal roll
from which he emerged like a circus gymnast. Instead
of a ten-meter fall he has made a ten-meter flight,
nailed his dismount, and made a nice "recovery." We
want recovery in this sense. But one thing that this
requires is something Castaneda called "using all the
event," investigating and accepting all of the things
that happened on the way down, as givens, as momentum,
to serve the transformation of disaster into victory.
This sort of acceptance is not the same thing as
approval: it is simply the conquest of denial. All of
the component factors are a part of the reality to be
taken as a given. If there is a need, the dark times
being salvaged and redeemed can be called something
else. In my own case, this was time spent "integrating
my shadow" and credit for "time served." It is a
lesser-known principle of Buddhism that suffering
itself, and not ignorance, is the first step in a
second chain of conditioned arising, one which leads
to freedom. We will be looking at this important
insight shortly. Suffering then, given the appropriate
wisdom or guidance, can be made into a growth
experience.
We know
that to move ourselves in new directions we need
either a new obedience or a new motivation and
discipline. Obedience comes from respect for, or at
least acceptance of, an authority, while discipline
comes from an inner valuation. We also know that
addicts, as a class, are some of humankind's less
obedient folk. Court-ordered sobriety doesn't work any
better than broken kneecaps from the bookie's thugs.
That leaves motivation, which in turn wants a new set
of values, which in its turn wants a new world-view.
Values are soluble in alcohol, so here's a head start:
the old ones are less likely to stand in the way,
having already proven themselves to be worthless. Old
world-views can be a little more stubborn, but their
failure too can help clear the mind of some rubbish.
Salvation is salvage, recycling, the act of obtaining
useable substances from what seemed unusable sources.
Redemption can mean being saved from sin, error, or
evil, or the action of regaining or gaining possession
of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a
debt. You know what the payment has been. In our case
this is the discharge of a debt, the debt due to the
accumulated consequences of our intentional actions,
or kamma (the Pali version of the better
known Sanskrit karma). This is not a
retributive justice, but simply the harvest of things
sown. Harvests can be hard but rewarding work.
Salvation, to the Buddha, was a question of diligence
and heedfulness. So there are lots of things that can
be recovered here other than your normalcy: the
original promise of youth, whatever remains of your
years, and even a meaning to your lost years.
Which Buddhism?
There are four major schools or divisions of Buddhism.
Only one, Theravada, will be developed here at any
length. The reason for this is a need for structure
and consistency that is specific to the recovery
process. Combining the four introduces too much
internal contradiction. These four schools are often
referred to as vehicles or rafts for crossing the
Stream. It is most important that an awareness of
their instrumentality be preserved, lest any one
become an end in itself. The Buddha had this to say on
the impermanent utility of the method used to wake up:
“Then the man,
having gathered grass, twigs, branches, & leaves,
having bound them together to make a raft, would cross
over to safety on the far shore in dependence on the
raft, making an effort with his hands & feet.
Having crossed over to the far shore, he might think,
‘How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in
dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my
hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the
far shore. Why don’t I, having hoisted it on my head
or carrying on my back, go wherever I like?’ What do
you think, monks? Would the man, in doing that, be
doing what should be done with the raft?”
“No, lord.” “And what
should the man do in order to be doing what should be
done with the raft? There is the case where the man,
having crossed over to the far shore, would think,
‘How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in
dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my
hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the
far shore. Why don’t I, having dragged it on dry land
or sinking it in the water, go wherever I like?’ In
doing this, he would be doing what should be done with
the raft” (MN 22, tr. Thanissaro Bikkhu).
Buddha is
reported to have lived eighty years, from 563 to 483 BCE.
Several councils were convened in the centuries
following his death to examine the state of the
doctrine and counteract the natural tendency to
schism. The 3rd Council was held in 247 BCE,
during the reign of the Buddhist emperor Ashoka
(304-232 BCE), by which time there
were already a number of factions. One of a few Fourth
Councils, held by the Theravada sect in the 1st
century BCE, committed a Pali-language
version of the formerly-oral doctrine into writing. It
is claimed that this followed the teachings agreed
upon in the 3rd Council. This was the massive Three
Baskets or Tipitaka. Other versions of the doctrine
would follow, most notably the canon of the Mahayana
sect, beginning in the 2nd century CE.
The term Buddhism is a late invention by the 19th
century West. Until that time it was known by the
Buddha's own label, Dhamma-Vinaya, Doctrine and
Discipline. These two terms will be used
interchangeably throughout this book.
The
Theravada school is the last thriving version of
Indian Buddhism, but this, too, generally migrated out
of India, to take lasting root across Southeast Asia.
Because of its antiquity and conservative approach to
the doctrine, it is generally assumed to have the most
faithful representation of the actual words of the
Buddha. A lot can happen, however, in just a couple of
centuries of oral tradition, even when transmitted
religiously, or especially when transmitted
religiously. The Buddha himself had a great deal to
say about what the inner proclivities of our needy
minds and our insistent feelings could do to objective
understanding. Most systems of thought and practice
involving human followers make use of hyperbole,
exaggeration, myth, embellishment,
false attribution and glamor. Only a few, notably Zen,
have described the glamor of spiritual accomplishment
in terms of such mundane activities as chopping wood
and carrying water. Even the Buddha made ample use of
myth in his teaching. It is unlikely that this
mythology is completely a later fabrication of his
followers, but it is also possible that he still saw
some kind of reality in them. Why do speakers of
truths venture so far from truth? In Nietzsche's
words: "At bottom, it has been an aesthetic taste that
has hindered man the most: it believed in the
picturesque effect of truth. It demanded of the man of
knowledge that he should produce a powerful effect on
the imagination" (WTP #469). The glamor of it all
seems to hold great sway over human perspective. There
may be in this some dim appreciation of the fact that
learning that really comes home personally, that is
felt with some depth and a perception of personal
relevance, is somehow more complete than learning done
only in theory, without any affect attached. The
challenge, then, is having the depth of feeling
without getting attached to the lies. At any rate,
with regard to the transmission of Buddha's teaching,
successive generations might easily have given
additional color and structure to the doctrine for the
sake of improved memorization, or altered the nuance
of words and phrases to improve upon the teacher's
dignity, impressiveness
and impact. But, with that understanding, the doctrine
presented here will generally follow the Theravada
version.
I do have
one real issue with the Theravadan approach, however.
Like many Westerners, my introduction to Buddhism was
through the folk art, particularly the seated and
laughing Buddha statues, and the rice paper paintings
of eccentric Buddhist and Daoist monks caught in
mid-guffaw. Then came the friendly phrasings of Alan
Watts and all the volumes of largely humorous teaching
stories from Zen lore. But these led to college
courses and then exposure to the utterly serious,
stoic and seemingly pessimistic side of the story.
Buddhism as a Downer was soon confirmed in my first
encounters with real-life religious renunciates and
cloistered Zen monks, who showed no inclination
whatsoever to laughter, or even to those wise and
twinkling eyes. I thought I had resolved the
discrepancy in understanding the difference between
religious believers and wise men, between the seekers
and the finders, between the teachers and the lifelong
learners. Surely the Buddha must have laughed: this
was a necessary part of wisdom's perspective on life.
Maybe he didn't go in for the mean stuff and the
schadenfreude, maybe he grudgingly groaned at
the occasional pun, but certainly he found a laugh
when life's absurdities came together perfectly in a
higher understanding. Then I read the Suttas of the
Pali Canon, where there is only one mention of the
Buddha even smiling, and this is noted by a disciple
with surprise bordering on shock. Is it possible that,
in the four centuries between the original teaching
and the first permanent recording of the doctrine, all
traces of laughter were edited out of the story,
perhaps for the sake of dignity and sobriety? Or is
this my own denial at work?
The
Theravada doctrine is largely concerned with the
development of the individual, or more precisely, what
is experienced as the individual. Ultimately, the full
scope of the Dhamma or Doctrine (Dharma in the
better-known Sanskrit) was intended for "beings whose
eyes are only a little covered with dust: the[se] will
understand the truth" (MN 26). There is, if you will,
a Buddhism Light, which consists of those portions of
the doctrine and its precepts which can be practiced
by the householder, the person who is not yet ready to
renounce the everyday world to follow the path into
the dark forest. Worthwhile attainments are still
available to the householder, though, and progress to
within a few lifetimes of distance to a final
liberation. This is not regarded as insignificant. But
the extremely intricate and highly articulated
psychology of the "Third Basket" of the scriptures, or
Abhidhamma Pitaka, and the intricately
developed code of monastic behavior of the First
Basket, or Vinaya Pitaka, are essentially for
the renunciate who is beset with fewer distractions.
The focus of the Theravada program is ultimately on
the liberation of the arahants, the worthies
or the accomplished ones. Their program demands a
lifetime of "striving with heedful diligence,"
Buddha's final words. Their instructions from the
Teacher: "You should train thus: We shall be wise men,
we shall be inquirers" (MN 114).
The
teacher's ongoing challenge is to "speak to each in
accord with his degree of understanding" (a directive
first attributed to Mohammed). Any attempt to package
up a monolithic teaching applicable to the whole of
humankind will have to resist the forces pressing for
schism, and it must eventually succumb. The dimmest of
familiarity with the mindsets of the masses of mankind
in any epoch will evidence a resistance to the notion
that any "spiritual" salvation is a lot of hard work,
and worse, that this is really only available to a
select or more evolved elite. Thus, an egalitarian
revolution was inevitable, in which all beings could
partake in an easier salvation. The Mahayana school
filled this much larger niche and soon it became
Buddhism's most popular form, particularly from the
2nd century CE onward, when it spread
northward into China with a growing set of newer
scriptures that broadened the appeal of the teaching.
Mahayana means Great Raft or Vehicle, alluding to its
expanded accessibility, and it adopted the derogatory
term Hinayana, meaning Small Raft or Vehicle, to refer
to the rival and more elitist Theravada sect. The
Mahayana sect is much closer to what we normally think
of as a religion. It has a much broader lay appeal, a
more pervasive use of ritual, and a stronger tone of
reverential prayer and devotion. Mahayana does,
however, maintain its own versions of most of the
critical aspects of the Buddha's teaching, even some
of those regarding the ultimate non-existence of an
eternal spirit or soul.
In
Mahayana teaching, salvation is open and available to
all sentient beings, not merely to the more developed
and diligent. Or at least this liberation is available
with far less work and in a much shorter series of
lifetimes. It is a Mahayana tenet that all beings
possess Buddha Nature and so are ultimately destined
for enlightenment. This is not a part of Theravada
doctrine, which would therefore be less impeded in
embracing evolution's idea that selection and
extinction can help move the parade or stream of life
forward. The Mahayana ideal, then, is the Bodhisattva,
as contrasted with the Arahant: this is the
practitioner who vows to embrace the whole of sentient
life and not fully attain his own final liberation
until the last blade of grass is enlightened. The
Theravadin also has many uses for true selflessness,
loving-kindness, empathy and compassion, and has
plenty of reasons on his own path to help others
along, but the crux of his help is to lead by deed and
example. "You yourselves must strive. The Buddhas are
only teachers" (Dhp 276). This is a Mahayana doctrine
as well, from the Dhammapada, but you nevertheless see
the Teacher cast in a role there that looks similar to
that of Savior, at least until you read the words in
the hymnals.
The
original Dhamma teaching is referred to as the First
Turning of the Wheel of Dhamma. The development of the
Mahayana school, with its additional scriptures, is
called the Second Turning. The Third Turning was the
development of the Vajrayana school, the Diamond
Vehicle. It began to emerge with its texts out of
India in the 4th century, eventually spreading to
Tibet, Bhutan and Japan (as Shingon), and it developed
gradually over the next eight or so centuries. Its
scriptures are referred to as Tantras, hence the
alternate term Tantric Buddhism, which can lead to
some confusion with Tantric sexual yoga practice. This
sect is best known for its ritual practice, called upaya,
meaning skillful means or method. These methods, which
often involve mantra, mudra and mandala (chant,
gesture and design) will generally take the place of
the more abstract and communicable forms of meditation
that were developed in Theravada and Mahayana. Upaya
is a Mahayana term, where it is regarded as one of the
paramitas or perfections, but it also carries
the negative connotation of attachment or
over-involvement, and this suggests caution, as upaya
can tread a thin line between empty ritual and
effective method. Over-reliance on the forms, clinging
to rules and rituals (silabatta upadana),
thinking that the rituals alone can "take you there"
without making fundamental changes within, was
regarded by the Buddha himself as one of the Ten
Fetters (samyojanas), one of the four kinds of
unwholesome clinging (akusala upadana) and one
of the four types of bondage to the material world (kayaganthas).
But we should probably make a distinction here between
ritual and the sort of orderly behavior that lends
consistency to meditative practice. Given the nature
of these rituals, together with the language in which
they are performed, Vajrayana is not regarded as a
path to be walked or learned alone. It is esoteric and
its methods are passed on by initiation through a line
of transmission. This is one of several reasons that
it will not be discussed here at length, even though
some of the ritual methods that are used here have
attracted the attention of neuroscientists researching
neuroplasticity, the ability to reprogram the brain
that is such a fundamental part of an effective
recovery process.
The
fourth major school of Buddhism, known as Chan in
China and Zen in Japan, also developed out of the
Mahayana teachings, this time in the 6th century CE.
But something curious happened in its creation. The
teachings collided and merged with the Chinese Daojia
or Philosophical Daoism. In the process, a lot of the
dogma, doctrine and ritual from both sides got knocked
loose. Depending on your definition of silliness, it
also lost or gained in silliness. What was left was
left relatively speechless, relying more on direct
experience. The word Chan is the Chinese for the Pali
Jhana and the Sanskrit Dhyana, meaning
absorption. The Theravadin Eightfold Path's Samma
Samadhi or Right Concentration, develops eight
forms of concentrative absorption. Zazen, the Chan or
Zen form of meditation, is just one single form of
straightforward alertness. It is not meditation upon
anything but the arising and falling of it all, up out
of and back into the stream. The optimal state of mind
here is neither overly calm nor hyper-vigilant: maybe
the word readiness best describes it. The objective
(with the understanding that this misuses the term
objective) is understanding that comes through a
direct experience of the transient nature of all
things, including the mind that seeks to grasp them.
While Chan and Zen have their forms, rituals, lines of
transmission, reliance on interaction with an
accomplished teacher, and even a little bit of basic
doctrine, they really don't provide the kind of
structure or discipline that is useful for our
purposes here. Simple Zazen, however, is worth doing a
little research and finding some instruction, as it
can be readily included as a ninth form of meditative
practice in Samma Samadhi, the Eighth Step on
the Eightfold Path.
Problematic Conflations
In
general, Buddhism and belief are not very compatible,
a trait held in common with science. Our minds are not
developed enough to lay such serious claims on truth.
We are too emotionally scattered, insecure and
impatient. We cannot turn our perceptions into perfect
objective visions as long as our suffering and our
neediness are so ready to twist what we see and hear
to placate our various anxieties and neuroses. The
highest priority on the Buddhist path is the
correction of our minds, the cleaning of our lenses,
the cleaning of our hearts, so that bad ideas and
theories and emotional resentments no longer confuse
our experience. This is what we put first. You must
get your mental health before you get your answers. In
the Buddha's own words:
"Malunkyaputta, if anyone were to say, 'I won't live
the holy life under the Blessed One as long as he does
not declare to me that "The cosmos is eternal,"... or
that "After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does
not exist,"' the man would die and those things would
still remain undeclared by the Tathagata.
"It's
just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly
smeared with poison. His friends & companions,
kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a
surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this
arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded
me was a noble warrior, a brahman, a merchant, or a
worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow
removed until I know the given name & clan name of
the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was
tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was
dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know
his home village, town, or city... until I know
whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long
bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the
bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo
threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether
the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or
cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the
shaft with which I was wounded were those of a
vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another
bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I
was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water
buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I
won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the
shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common
arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an
oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things
would still remain unknown to him....
"So, Malunkyaputta, remember what is undeclared by me as undeclared, and what is declared by me as declared. And what is undeclared by me? 'The cosmos is eternal,' is undeclared by me. 'The cosmos is not eternal,' is undeclared by me. 'The cosmos is finite'... 'The cosmos is infinite'... 'The soul & the body are the same'... 'The soul is one thing and the body another'... 'After death a Tathagata exists'... 'After death a Tathagata does not exist'... 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist'... 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,' is undeclared by me. And why are they undeclared by me? Because they are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life. They do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, unbinding. That is why they are undeclared by me" (MN 63).
"So, Malunkyaputta, remember what is undeclared by me as undeclared, and what is declared by me as declared. And what is undeclared by me? 'The cosmos is eternal,' is undeclared by me. 'The cosmos is not eternal,' is undeclared by me. 'The cosmos is finite'... 'The cosmos is infinite'... 'The soul & the body are the same'... 'The soul is one thing and the body another'... 'After death a Tathagata exists'... 'After death a Tathagata does not exist'... 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist'... 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,' is undeclared by me. And why are they undeclared by me? Because they are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life. They do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, unbinding. That is why they are undeclared by me" (MN 63).
Buddhism
is impressively adaptable and protean with respect to
the cultures it enters. This is in part because it
doesn't carry the baggage of a metaphysics along with
it. Even the occasional and relatively enlightened
Christian monk has put its methodologies to good (if
incomplete) use. As this has come to the West, it has
been repackaged to suit more Western sensibilities.
This frequently involves the deification of the
individual or the self as it appears to extend into
larger frames of interconnectedness, oneness or
oceanic feeling, which the Freudians liked to call
infantile self-grandiosity. This trend has been
nowhere more apparent than in its introduction to the
self-improvement movement. A real Buddhist, upon
hearing "One day my soul just opened up!" might wonder
how many hungry children got fed by way of that, or if
anything useful got learned. As central elements at
least, feelings of interconnectedness, wholeness and
ecstatic loving are more of a projection of the West
onto Buddhism. So is the anti-intellectual cast that
Buddhism tends to be given in the West, even though
Zen had already gone a long way towards repudiation of
the rational or discursive intellect, and Mahayana
represented a serious veering away from more rigorous
thought towards the more pleasant or immeasurable
states. Given this, it might be of some use here to
distance Buddhism from some of the areas of study,
philosophies and religions that it has recently been
conflated with. The following paragraphs are fairly
negative in tone because some bubbles need to be
popped. More positive associations to developments in
Western psychology, philosophy and neuroscience are
developed in the Appendices.
Hinduism
While the
Buddha himself emerged out of the Hindu, Vedantin and
broader Indian traditions, he repudiated a number of
the fundamental tenets. He never, for instance,
asserted that reality was an illusion created by a
consciousness that was fundamental to the structure of
the universe. There exists a real world. Human beings
are just particularly inept at perceiving it
accurately. There is also a real self, but this
resembles a verb more than a noun. Self is just a
process that emerges out of numerous preconditions.
When the necessary preconditions go away, so does the
self. At death, the self goes to the same place your
lap goes when you stand up, where your fist goes when
you open your hand, where your consciousness goes when
you sleep. It's perfectly permissible to perceive and
work with the conventional self, as this is, in all
the worlds, the "thing" that most needs improvement.
However, this improvement is most authentically made
without the hope that some divine spark at your inmost
center is preparing to unite with a god like Brahman
on its way to living forever in light and perfection.
Yes, it is true that all things are so interconnected
that even the notion of a conventional self is at best
a convention, but this does not turn our dissolution
into a divine ascension with a higher cosmic
awareness. The great old gag about Buddha asking the
hot dog vendor to "make me one with everything" is
better applied to Vedantins and Yogis.
The Perennial Philosophy
The point
of view of Perennial Philosophy or Perennialism is
that each of the world's religious traditions is a
local cultural expression of a larger, single,
universal, underlying religious truth. The apparent
diversity and contradiction is thought to be
relatively superficial. At bottom, the highest good is
the union of the inmost core of the self with a
supreme, divine being, that must, if everybody is to
be correct, be both immanent and transcendent. The
Buddha is dragged into this by virtue of his silence
on the metaphysical questions (well, he doesn't deny
it). The also-a-theistic Rujiao (Confucianism) is
similarly volunteered. Although the term and idea is
centuries old, it was popularized recently in the West
by Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy,
published in 1945. As much as I enjoy Huxley's
writing, I have to call this idea a great disservice
to human culture, analogous to a reduction in
biodiversity in the biological sphere. Evolution has
given us a great many points of view, but it doesn't
move forward through time without selection being
applied to that diversity, and thinning it out again
for fitness. Without selection in the world of
cognition we are left with a cluttered metaphysical
and moral relativism that suggests everything and
every point of view is equally valid and true. This is
most emphatically not the case in Buddhism. The great
bulk of what we experience in these religious realms
is ultimately ignorance and delusion. The experiences
that we associate with our notions of a soul are real
enough, but they are not fundamental properties of an
all-knowing entity: they are emergent properties
conditioned by a recognizable pattern of causes and
they do not exist in the absence of those causes.
Neither are those causes to be considered divine,
except in the context of our own capacities for
reverence. In effect, the Buddha taught that
psychology preceded philosophy: we fathom the world
best when we first fathom our own motives for
perceiving the world as we do, when we have examined
how and why we would twist the truth to suit our
desires and dislikes. This approach is not more
"advanced" than religion. It does not go as far as
religion. It doesn't even get off the ground. Buddhism
just sticks to foundations.
Theosophy
The word
theosophy, uncapitalized, is an ancient term for any
wisdom regarding the divine. It goes back to the early
centuries of the current era. It developed throughout
the middle ages and the enlightenment, accruing wisdom
from a wide range of sources, religious, alchemical,
theurgic, qabalistic and hermetic. In the late 19th
century it began to incorporate material from the
mysterious East, particularly from Hinduism, Vedanta
and Buddhism. The Theosophical Society, formed by
Helena Blavatsky, has codified much of the doctrine
now referred to as capital-T Theosophy. Because the
subject is rooted in Theos, or divinity, the word
being cousin to Deus and Zeus, most of the focus of
the philosophy is upon the divine, divine nature and
humanity's divinely ordained place and purpose within
this. Citing the Society's own Encyclopedic
Theosophical Dictionary: "Theosophy [from Greek
theosophia from theos god, divinity + sophia
wisdom] Divine wisdom, the knowledge of things divine;
often described as attainable by direct experience, by
becoming conscious of the essential, divine part of
our nature, self-identification with the inner god,
leading to communion with other similar divine beings.
Theosophy actually is the substratum and basis of all
the world-religions and philosophies, taught and
practiced by a few elect ever since man became a
thinking being.” Buddhism, and particularly Theravada
Buddhism, does not fit this description even remotely.
Buddhism's immense vocabulary is selectively raided
for philosophical support, and some of it's sects and
schisms are exploited for their proximity to the
Theosophical doctrine. Theosophy isn't a bad thing
(and its Theosophical Glossary is a truly
precious resource), but one still does not find much
of the Buddha's unadulterated teaching there.
New Age
The New
Age, from an outsider's perspective, is a loose
collection of world and self views which appears to be
centered around the repudiation of critical thinking
skills in favor of "positive feelings" and
metaphysical relativism. This is deemed to be some
sort of victory of the right brain over the left, or
the heart over the head, according to an assumption
that thinking people somehow feel less. It is averse
to judgment, except in response to skeptics and its
detractors, or generally to people who think. It is
prone to narcissism, and a normally-sublimated
auto-eroticism in which the higher meditative states
are reified as metaphysical realities and then united
with in ecstasy. Apparently, excessive economic
well-being is also central to the core beliefs, both
to the marketers and to their marks. While there are
numerous texts, it appears to be largely
platitude-driven, by such meretricious statements as
"everything happens for a reason." It has adopted a
goodly number of Buddhist ideas and ideals, several of
them correctly, such as the importance of good karmic
practice and the need to develop karuna or
compassion. It has, however, misinterpreted the
Buddhist notion of rebirth as meaning reincarnation,
which is not the case. Another characteristic belief
is that we are all somehow entitled to unconditional
love, to self-esteem and self-acceptance, even if our
actions would define us instead as inferior and
unprincipled people. Buddhism, in contrast, is
judgmental, discriminating and discerning. In order to
save yourself from suffering you judge thoughts and
feelings and behaviors to be unwholesome or wholesome.
You get rid of the bad ones and develop the good ones.
Self-esteem is conceit to begin with. The positive
feelings associated with higher wisdom are not
centered in a self. All of the sentient beings' truths
are not equally valid, and most are better described
as ignorance and delusion. A Buddhist can begin with
low self-esteem as an honest appraisal of his present
state and transform this into a true humility, which
can in turn be transformed into reverence and growth.
This cannot be done with unearned self-esteem.
Romanticism
Romanticism, as a reaction to the industrial age,
mechanization, and the materialistic reductionism of
science, is an important reassertion of human
intuition and emotion. In seeming contrast, emotional
self-control, detachment and distancing hold a
prominent place in the methodology of Buddhism, as do
rational analysis and critical decision-making skills
with regard to what is worth accepting and doing.
However, it is a mistake to think that feelings are
therefore not welcome in Buddhism. Feelings are not
the problem. The craving of feelings, the clinging to
feelings, the mourning of the absence of feelings, the
pursuit of feelings, the denial of unwanted feelings:
these are the problems. That feelings appropriately
come and then appropriately go, spontaneously, without
the excessive over-dramatization associated with
self-obsession: this is where we want to be as
sentient beings. What we don't want of feelings and
emotions is unnecessary pain and self-destruction.
Buddhism is a middle path. Mind, cognition and
perception are complex compositions. Thoughts,
feelings, sensations, memories, imaginations,
motivations - all are components of mind, without
which there is less mind and less mindfulness. Many of
those who have sought to import Buddhism to the West
have correctly seen past the interpretation of
Buddhism as being pessimistic and overly rational, but
have gone too far the other way and envisioned a
Buddhism where we are all one loving heart, feeling
the interconnectedness of all things, and the drama of
this deeply-felt emotion is what carries us aloft to
Nirvana. Buddhism isn't all that interested in the
drama of the personal story and in how deeply and
uniquely one feels, but neither is it cold. Feelings
are important components of mind, but they are not the
true and authentic inner self that they seem to claim
to be. Personal experiences, the qualities of
subjectivity, mental analogies and conceptual
metaphors, are a lot more important to science than
most of science knows or admits, and perhaps some
reassertion of this is in order and long overdue, but
let's suggest that this be done "within reason." There
is a useful online essay on this subject by Thanissaro
Bhikkhu entitled "The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism,"
here.
Transpersonal Psychology
Transcending the person, getting beyond the person,
getting over the person, must be regarded as one of
Buddhism's main goals. Transpersonal psychology is
also concerned with expanding the sense of identity
beyond the individual and embracing greater realities,
the human family, the web of life, the cosmos evolving
to study itself, and exploring our more distant
horizons, from the depths of experienced time up to
the higher orders of trans-human awareness. Perhaps
the biggest difference between these two is that
Buddhism is not "spiritual" in any strict sense of the
word. Within these greater contexts, which may be real
enough, our spirit is not at the center or heart of
them. At best, what we think of or experience as our
spirit is just some humble little node in the web, a
place where some energy has gotten knotted up for a
while, off in some nondescript corner of things,
having come and soon to go. The Universe is not the
story of me and you. The two disciplines aren't
antithetical: as sentient beings evolving along our
paths, it is a healthy thing to get beyond or outside
of ourselves. It is even a good thing to occasionally
feel ourselves at the very center of the larger
realities, from one point of view among many.
Expansion of the mind is good for the practice of
mindfulness. Working diligently on personal growth,
detailing the factors and experiences that have held
us back, spending long stretches of time in
self-study, all have important places in Buddhism. But
the autoeroticism and narcissism of these
self-centered alternative states are not dwelling
places. They are experiences to acknowledge and then
learn from in passing. Having the experience that
proves to you once and for all that "we are all one
and interconnected" is not a spiritual attainment. It
is merely a little piece of ground to stand on and
another place to explore. It is a place to begin, and
not the final goal of wisdom.
Buddhism and Religion
Most
religions come to us as packages. This is much like
being given a lovely wooden box with a glass lid, and
below the glass are arranged gold and platinum nuggets
and beautiful gems for study and appreciation. But the
box is always sealed and one is sternly advised
against unprescribed methods of inquiry, such as
opening the thing and examining the contents one item
at a time, studying each piece from all sides, and
weighing them. But, religions being by nature
parochial, much of the gold is invariably fool's gold,
and most of the jewels paste. It takes a special kind
of seeker to crack the box open, assay the contents,
pocket the good stuff and then abandon the rest, and
travel lightly on, to raid some more boxes. Let's call
this kind of seeker a finder.
If you
can find a definition of religion that hasn't been
deliberately contorted to include clearly non-theistic
disciplines like Confucianism,
Buddhism, and in some cases, Yoga,
you get something like: "the belief in and worship of
a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or
gods." Objections are made that such a definition
fails to include the diversity of religious thought
and experience, but this does nothing more than beg
the question. Adding the word spiritual does nothing
to reach out and embrace Buddhism, as the existence of
the spirit is specifically denied in the doctrine of anatta.
For our purposes here, Buddhism is simply
Dhamma-Vinaya, Doctrine and Discipline. To call it a
religion is an error attributable to ditthi or
wrong views, born of ignorance and delusion. Neither
morals nor the so-called religious or spiritual states
of mind require a religion, or a deity, or even a
conception of spirit.
An honest
look around will show that, despite all of the laws,
religion has very little to do with the development of
truly ethical behavior, and only contributes
ineffectively to morality. For our purposes here, we
will use the term moral to refer to behavioral choices
guided by social mores, or peer pressure, and
the term ethical to refer to behavioral principles
that have been investigated or examined, since ethics
is properly understood as a branch of philosophy.
Buddhism finds an ethic in its investigations, an
appropriate way for human beings to treat fellow human
beings and other sentient life. Both neuroscience and
evolutionary psychology are now converging upon these
findings as well, and with more objective evidence to
substantiate them. Certain behaviors are known through
investigation to be unwholesome, unprofitable, or
unskillful, leading to suffering and unhappiness. But
this is learned by inquiring into the nature of
things, by watching kamma in action, at work
according to natural law. It is not learned by
examining divine decree or scripture. According to the
7th century Indian Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti,
the criterion of truth is causal efficacy. You do
this, that happens. If you don't want that, don't do
this. The concern for efficacy also suggests remaining
open to situational ethics, which are not normally
discussed in more generalized religious decrees. All
of the permutations of situational ethics just won't
fit on the tablets. There is even an ethic to be drawn
from the existential fact of our finitude: "There are
those who do not realize that one day we all must must
come to an end. But those who do know this settle
their quarrels at once" (Dhammapada).
In
performing a number of the practices and exercises of
Buddhism, numerous kinds of mental states are reached,
momentary conditions of mind which are claimed to be
fundamental to one or more of the world's religions:
cosmic consciousness, awe, reverence, gratitude and
grace, for example. The sense of self vanishes, or
expands to fill the universe. States of mind may be
entered into which might be described as "spiritual,"
and certainly altered or alternate. These experiences
might have been given special names, and mythical or
metaphysical explanations, within the various
religious traditions. But this does not make them the
exclusive domain of religion. That some of the states
attained in meditation are described in religious
texts does not mean that a technology for attaining
these states is a religion. That logic doesn't work.
Nor can we say that it is religious behavior to seek
the states of mind that happen to be found at the core
of certain religious beliefs or narratives. It might
only be a kind of first-person scientific inquiry. We
are merely seeking to be wise men and inquirers. These
experiences are known or generally assumed to be
important portions of the inherited human repertoire,
as evolved cognitive capabilities. We simply want to
verify this. We have no real need to draw great and
impressive conclusions from these experiences about
the nature of the world. We are not wise enough for
that yet.
Many
myths and stories of deities and demons survived in
the Pali Canon. It is difficult to guess how far and
in what way these were taken seriously by the Buddha
himself, or how many were embellishments or artifacts
of the transmitters of the teaching. In these stories
there are many kinds of beings, both above and below
us in evolutionary terms, different in physical or
immaterial composition, in longevity, in wisdom, in
ethical sensibility, and so on. But even the wisest
deity here is still unenlightened and still subject to
kamma. It's hard to guess what Buddha might
have said in private to someone he knew to be his
equal, or how he might have discussed his own use of
myth and fable. But like all myths, these will have
angles of interpretation that are strictly allegorical
and can be read completely free of literal
interpretation, so the question can remain open.
It is as
incorrect to describe Buddhism as materialist as it is
to call it spiritual. Buddha, or at least his earlier
interpreters, did happen to offer some general
thoughts on the irreducible nature of reality, even
though they weren't heavily stressed as doctrine.
These generally resemble the Panta Rhei
(everything flows) of Heraclitus and the atomic theory
of Democritus and the Epicureans. There are also many
similarities to the process philosophy of A. N.
Whitehead. The substrate of existence is in perpetual
motion, with nothing fixed and eternal, with nothing
perfect or perfected. This is called a Stream, and the
mind that attends it is also a mindstream, and the
relatively evolved sentient beings who have begun to
actualize this discovery in their lives are called
stream-enterers. Some sects argue that Nibbana
(Sanskrit: Nirvana) is an unconditioned state
that is somehow unmoved and above all of this, but for
our purposes here, Nibbana is a state of being
that is simply unconditioned and unmoved by the sheer
terror of this. Beyond that, let us not pretend to
know what Nibbana is. Whitehead came close to
this basic idea in describing this Stream as process,
and all things within it as being in process, and
while he departed from the Dhamma in calling this
process God, at least he suggested that this God never
stopped changing and never grew all the way up, that
its evolution went on forever. Whitehead concurred
with Buddha in rejecting the mind vs. body or spirit
vs. matter dualism that characterizes most of Western
religion. Obviously your own constituent factors are a
part of everything, and this same everything just goes
on and on and doesn't die like all things within it
do. This is only a simple truism that you can make
into a religion if you want to, but we are just not
going to do that here.
The
bottom line with regard to religion is this: We have
got no business laying any sort of claim to
metaphysical truth. As long as we are suffering we
will only see what we want to see, as long as we are
craving, detesting and suffering, our perceptions of a
deity are going to be an untrustworthy mess of
wish-fulfillment and revenge fantasies. We will be
biased towards what is most comforting to believe,
unless we are guilty masochists. And our suffering is
a proof of our inability to see correctly. Social
consensus means nothing: "Just like a file of blind
men, clinging to each other, and the first one sees
nothing, the middle one sees nothing, and the last one
sees nothing" (DN 13).
Buddhism and Psychology
Poor
psychology. It has struggled so hard for so many
decades to win respect and esteem as a real science,
without even knowing what sort of science it is
destined to become some day. So far it has been like
the blind men and the elephant, many limited points of
view, each arguing that its own find is either the
whole of it all or the very center. More than any
discipline except education, psychology has made
itself prey to fads and shortsighted arguments like
nature vs. nurture. Too few can meet in the middle, or
look to the synthesis of the disparate factions. Mind
is a very complicated process, and mind looking at
mind is more so. How far has the discipline come? It
seems at least to have convinced courts of law that
experts do in fact exist, but phrenology also did that
at one time.
Originally, of course, psychology was the -ology of
the psyche or soul, whatever that might mean. We
should perhaps start with its own, most- consensual
definition: "The scientific study of the human mind
and its functions, especially those affecting behavior
in a given context; of the mental characteristics or
attitudes of a person or group; and of the mental and
emotional factors governing a situation or activity."
First
question: What is science? Is it some pure, detached
objectivity, wherein all things are subject to
measurement? But even
physics isn't that: at least half of its concepts are
analogs of subjective human sensory experiences called
sensory or conceptual metaphors. And don't let's get
started on measuring the quantum events. Psychology
has resisted being lumped in with the other social
sciences, with all their probabilities and deviations
and fuzzy, indeterminate edges. Eventually, that's
where it's headed, but the probabilities will at least
work better, the deviations will at least be more
standard, and the fuzz on the edges might have more of
the fine detail of fractals. This clarity is not just
around the corner. This science still has big pieces
missing, with many to come along fairly soon out of
neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, and
who-knows how many other fields, some still
uninvented. In the meantime, this science may need to
get patient and work less ambitiously, perhaps
concentrating on such scientific values as
predictability and repeatability instead of the
digital measurements. That the field's future
cornerstones are not yet fully identified is not
really psychology's fault. The current field is much
more to blame for its presumptions and pretentiousness
than for its ignorance and self-delusion.
Second
question: What is study? Can this only study the
measurable things? Should it concentrate on things
that are billable to Blue Cross and Medicare or have
pharmaceutical protocols? This is where the APA and
its DSM are wholeheartedly headed, even in the face of
much criticism. Can one study oneself in the first
person? What things can be done with phenomenology,
the study of the qualities or the qualia of
first-person subjective experience? Maybe the single
greatest embarrassment that psychology has been [sic]
is during its behaviorist period, where it tried
seriously to ignore the relevance of the emergent,
subjective dimensions of life, even in the driving,
control and adaptation of behavior. If you, the
reader, are anything like me, the writer, you probably
have, at least in the conventional sense, some psyche.
You, like me, probably think that that's somehow
relevant to the study of one. How is it that these
fools could pretend it wasn't even there? Of course,
to the Buddha, the conventional psyche was a process,
not a thing, a verb instead of a noun, but that's
still behavior, isn't it? Do mental phenomenon and
qualia somehow become more legitimate when they can be
causally tied to specific behaviors of the organism?
The integration of those may be the route it will
take. It is often assumed that everything about the
mind and mental processes must finally be explicable
in terms of brain and other neural events, but this
gives us a poor explanation for self-directed
behavior, of agency, of the behavior we need to
exercise in order to deliver ourselves successfully
from addictive behavior. We need to jump to software
metaphors for this, but this leaves us without the use
of sensation and affect. To the Buddha, the mind and
its will are determined but capable of being free.
Freedom emerges out of conditions that we are able to
alter and adjust, but the cognitive tools that it uses
do not originate entirely or directly out of our
biological processes. They are conditioned. Biology
can learn them, but ultimately they are emergent
properties of the mind.
Third
question: Why study just the human mind? Why not
incorporate sentience in general? Is it still because
the animals don't have souls and won't go to heaven?
Did all those monkeys and lab rats suffer and die in
vain? Modern biology and Darwinian medicine are busily
painting a much different story of mind, one that
increasingly includes more of the organism and its
zoological relations. The brain extends all the way
out to the fingertips, to the wingtips and the
flippers as well. We live one life, scientifically
speaking. The jaguar on the hunt is consummately
mindful. Therefore it might be a good idea to specify
what is meant by mind here. Throughout we will use the
word mind in the sense Buddha intended, which will
tend to integrate cognition, affect, feeling, sense
perception, apperception, memory, imagination,
intention, attention and self-aware sentience. The
mind is a whole team of generally identifiable
processes, and neither consciousness nor a rational
intellect is team captain. There is no team captain,
and no one process remains in charge. In a way this
mind is closer to the sense found in the question "do
you mind?" It is certainly not the mind of the
Cartesian mind-body dualism.
Fourth
question: What of the second person in psychology's
science? Phenomenology has ventured off into this, in
part to corroborate its first-person research.
Intersubjectivity is now being used to understand how
humans understand. We build on our confirmations as
well as go astray. Unlearning, relearning, personal
transformation and the rewiring of our behavior can be
dramatic in person-on-person encounters, even with a
psychotherapist involved. A good part of the primate
brain just seems to be built for the interpersonal
encounter. Can't this be part of the science?
Including the relationships between human beings has
certainly played a role in the social sciences, which
have had their own problems with objectivity and
cultural differences. While neuroscience and
evolutionary psychology are quickly rescuing us from
the delusion of human as tabula rasa or blank
slate, and beginning to articulate the dimensions of
human nature that underpin our cultural differences,
sociology is showing us that verstehen, the
understanding and use of empathy,
has a useful place in the social sciences. It is now
permissible to try to relate to that unfortunate
savage as a fellow human being with a similar neural
architecture to the researcher's own. First there is
our common human ground and then there are the
cultural differences.
One of
the things that psychology seems to have perennially
failed to learn, whether it was studying behavior or
the mental functions affecting behavior, is that
psychology itself is a form of behavior, particularly
a cognitive and linguistic behavior. Human behavior is
driven by various motivating forces. A science of
behavior that doesn't start by seeing itself as
behavior, may fail to question its own motives and
wind up seeing only what it wishes to see and taking
too much for granted. A philosophy which never asks
why it would want to see things in a certain way is
subject to some quite vast and complicated unconscious
influences. A true science that addressed this first
would thereby aim more true, as your better archers
will look first to their posture or stance. Psychology
is still much in need of good rules for assigning
words, both nouns and verbs, to functions and
processes that are meaningful in both the subjective
and objective worlds, mental objects that are
functionally related. Sweet, for example, will refer
to a specific neuron that is structurally different
from the one that tastes sour. Our personal experience
is biological as well as phenomenological. How
marvelous it will be to have a language connecting the
two. My id may be out of control and bringing forth
monsters, and my superego powerless to stop it, partly
because I just don't have a good cognitive
understanding of what's really going on down in there.
The devil is working me overtime.
In all
the above, Buddhism offers some too-long-ignored
contributions to psyche's -ology. Of particular
importance for our purposes here is its offering in
the various arenas of self-efficacy and self-directed
behavior, cognitive self-control, emotional
self-control, behavioral self-control
or self-modification, intentional
neuroplasticity or cortical reprogramming, and
widening our experiential repertoires, extending our
horizons, to facilitate better choices. In a sense,
the Buddha developed his psychology as an operating
system for the mind. It was meant to be a
psychological therapy, for the cure of normalness, but
this required deep, subjective examination that would
lead to altered cognition, altered affect, and altered
behavior. It was techne, it wasn't just
something recited in praise of a deity. With regard to
Buddhism as a therapy, it is important to stipulate
that it's goal is not to help the individual to adapt,
adjust or conform to society at large. The Buddhistly
well-adjusted might easily find themselves at a still
greater distance from normative human social
acceptability than where they began.
The
preoccupation of the Western world with individuality
and self has given Buddhism-as-therapy a bit of a
chasm to cross. Dhamma-Vinaya as originally presented
doesn't spend much time fussing over whether my mother
breastfed or hugged me enough, or whether my father
berated or abandoned me. My specialness can be largely
ignored unless somebody is helping me with a very
particular problem. How much the method was meant to
be personalized or customized to cultures and
individuals is not really clear, but mindfulness is an
exploration of our own minds, not of our neighbors',
and maybe this brings in the balance we want. There
are universals in human nature. Any competent
neurosurgeon can identify the corresponding endocrine
glands in each of us well enough. We have the same
neurotransmitters. Where does our specialness, our
self-esteem, our self-actualization, our
individuation, belong in a Buddhist context? Well,
maybe that's worth meditating on.
Buddhism and Science
Einstein
is alleged to have said: "The religion of the future
will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend
personal god and avoid dogma and theology. Covering
both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based
on a religious sense arising from the experience of
all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful
unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is
any religion that could cope with modern scientific
needs it would be Buddhism."
For a
definition of science we can start with the New Oxford
American Dictionary's: "the intellectual and practical
activity encompassing the systematic study of the
structure and behavior of the physical and natural
world through observation and experiment" and add:
resulting in testable explanations and repeatable
predictions about the universe. Science isn't just
knowing or learning facts and equations. Scientes,
Latin for knowing and the word science's root, was
know-how, reliable knowledge, reliably knowing. And
reliability usually means predictability and
repeatability. In the human mind, things only tend to
work in certain ways, and are only generally
predictable or repeatable. Sometimes science must look
at fuzz that it cannot resolve into finer lines, or
look at a range of things or a spectrum. But that's
what the mind is: a moving process, a spectrum and
range. The mind is not entirely digital, and it's only
half third-person.
In
Theravada, the Buddha recognized that the world or
world-stream was bigger than the mind or mindstream.
Sentient beings are only a part of a greater whole.
This observation is not always shared in other forms
of Buddhism. While the various sentient beings are
made up of their own components (called khandas),
the world too had its constituent factors, such as the
dhatus or elements, which constitute rupa
or physical form. The Buddha lived in India, in a
cultural climate full of wild and rampant metaphysical
speculation, as between competing schools of
eternalism and nihilism. He noted frequently that most
of these raging debates went nowhere. The various
beliefs did nothing to improve the lives of their
champions, or their ethics either. He would view the
great bulk of this as sophistry, and distraction from
the higher work that we need to do to beat suffering.
He noted how people were only seeing what they wanted
to see. He also noted why they wanted to see things in
these ways. We can ask, however, what he might have
thought of knowledge gained by more reliable means,
and tested, as science does. Clearly, science is not
free of human and personal bias, but let's call it
generally so. Buddha's big thing was teaching what was
true, which he called the Dhamma (or Dharma). He would
likely agree that the Dhamma was more closely tied to
what was true than to the words of doctrine he spoke.
So what about world that is independent of human
mental processes?
The issue
of the relevance to liberation and an end to the
suffering of sentient beings would still hold fast.
But pondering the size and wonder of the macro
universe makes a great exercise in both mindfulness
and concentration. The story of evolution is not at
all inconsistent with the Buddha's account of the
sentient beings undergoing millions and billions of
years of rebirth into a world that is the result of
their intentional actions or kamma. It is not
necessary to think of kamma in terms of
retributive justice. It is our intentional action,
actions out of want, need, motive and drive. A few
generations long ago decided they wanted that new kind
of mate, without the tail and all that hair. That soon
became the predominant mate, except for the real
losers. Such want or intentional action drives
evolution and conditions rebirth. It is likely that
Theravada could more easily accept the benefits of
natural selection than other forms, since it takes a
harder line on unwholesomeness. Since Buddha's express
aim was to get at any doctrine or truth by way of
direct personal investigation, it is permitted to
investigate any science that meets its criteria and
adopt what meets its objectives.
If
demonstrable truth is the criterion, then reality or
nature would be the scripture, not dogma about the
nature of reality. This was actually held as a tenet
by Islam, during its golden age when it kept the fires
of science alight. Sadly, it disintegrated. We will
want to find and read this scripture of reality
without twisting it all around with our biases and
preconceptions. Ergo, any insight that is
grounded in reality and provable is also Dhamma, with
a capital-D, even if it is the product of subsequent
centuries, and even if this happens to be the
accidental discovery of a relatively unenlightened
being. Further, if a particular teaching of the Buddha
was shown to be untrue, that teaching would need to be
replaced or amended. Buddhism also has much to offer
science since, in Manly P. Hall's words, "it has found
the weak point in most schools of Western philosophy:
namely, the failure to analyze the analyzing power."
It doesn't matter at all if a living being flinches or
cringes when reading the truth. It isn't tailored to
that being's comfort. Truth and adaptation to truth is
the being's problem, not that of the universe. As
Darwin noted: "We are not here concerned with hopes
and fears, only with truth as far as our reason
permits us to discover it."
Clearly,
cognitive neuroscience, in addition to evolution,
would be a Buddhist's first focus: they are the same
inquiry, only from different but complementary
perspectives. Both, for example, have an interest in
the physical, chemical, electronic and experiential
dynamics of our emotional arousal or in the allocation
of attention to a sense object. This is not to say
that they cover the same ground in the same way.
Buddhism is allowed to look for the first-person
counterparts or experiences of the processes that
neuroscience uncovers, and then adjust its models
accordingly. Similarly, neuroscience is challenged to
find samadhi, or karuna, or a higher
state of mental health, or the structures of cognitive
and emotional self-control. Both are interested in
neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain and mind to
change. Together they can define science away from
1st-3rd person debate. What is known? What is
predictable? What is repeatable? What hurts? How can
we stop hurting ourselves and each other?
What use is your braided
hair, oh witless man? And your garment of antelope
skin? Within you is ravenousness, but the outside you
make to look clean. (Dhammapada)
The First Noble Truth is:
The First Noble Truth is:
Dukkha Nanam, the Knowledge of Suffering
Dukkha
is called the most pressing fact of human existence.
Although this is normally translated as suffering, it
is a word richer in meanings, including
unsatisfactoriness, imperfection, inability to
satisfy, frustration, vulnerability, unease, stress,
pain, hardship, deprivation, discomfort, what is hard
to endure. It is being made aware that we don't occupy
the very center of a universe created just for us. Dukkha
is our constant whining about being given the gift of
life. There is an irony to the verb suffering: since
it's a verb it refers to something that you do. This
comes with an implication that it is something you may
not really need to do. Much of Buddhism is about how
to not do this, how to stop doing it and then how to
stay stopped. Much suffering has its beginnings deep
in the darkness, long before we are aware of its
emergence, so it isn't always easy to catch it before
it gets going, but there are techniques taught here,
preemptive strategies, even for this. Sometimes, too,
it can seem that we suffer by choice, in part because
we do this so consistently. Some of this is due to the
unforeseen consequences of our choices. Sometimes we
really have no choice that does not lead to suffering.
Sometimes we suffer on purpose because we choose to
feel guilty or because we want to feel alive, or feel
at the center of things, or feel what we think of as
deeply, or simply feel some dramatic effect in being
moved about by our circumstances. And sometimes we
suffer because bad things happen to good people for no
reason whatsoever, not even from our personal karma.
Although believers might want to disagree on this last
point, we do live one life, scientifically speaking,
and our own karma gets all tangled up with others. As
usually understood, suffering is something that is
done unto you, the helpless victim. It speaks of
passivity, of not rising up and taking a stand. I once
heard an anecdote in AA where someone who was asked
how he was doing replied "OK, under the
circumstances." "What are you doing under there?" was
the reply. To be so passive is to be subject to
circumstances, to be inanimate. To be a subject is the
opposite of being a noble. It is to have no say in the
matter. The Buddha further subdivided Dukkha
into three parts that he called the Tilakkhana,
the three marks or characteristics of our existence: Anicca
or impermanence, Dukkha or hurt feelings,
frustration and disapproval of reality, and Anatta,
the nonexistence of the eternal and perfect spirit
that would be the core of our being. These three words
are used throughout the doctrine and are worth
remembering.
Anicca, Impermanence
Nothing
holds still. Truth be told, one cannot step into the
same river even once as long as our stepping takes any
time at all. And eternity, for humankind, is the
briefest flash of all. But boy do we love to
pontificate on how much we know of eternity and
perfection, and how superior that is to the inferior,
ordinary reality that moves the ever-changing galaxies
around. The concept of anicca is one of
humankind's first philosophical statements of the
second law of thermodynamics: that order is local and
limited in time, and ultimately must give way to
change. This is not a problem that the universe has.
Impermanence doesn't even need to be a problem for us.
The real problem that we have is in our obsession with
permanence, our grabbiness towards it, and our
resistance to the natural order of things.
After
waiting for years to have a child, a Japanese feudal
Lord was at last blessed with the birth of a son. A
Zen master who was renowned for his exquisite
calligraphy was commissioned by the Lord to create a
fine work of art as a blessing for the birth. It was
to be presented at a grand celebration. The Master
arrived at the festivities three days later and
unrolled a small scroll that read: "Grandfather dies,
father dies, son dies." The Lord was enraged and had
the Roshi seized and dragged before him, demanding
either a satisfactory account or a severed head. The
Master explained "Sir, the greatest blessing is to be
in accord with the natural order of things, but I can
write these in any other order you might prefer."
We have
all known pleasure, but with the exception of any
pleasure we are currently enjoying, all of these
pleasures have now passed. We have all known pain as
well, with the same result. The inevitable coming and
going of pleasure and pain has got to be one of the
most consistent and reliable experiences we have in
life. What keeps us from accepting this? All it takes
is some tiny external thing changing, something
insignificant going right or wrong, and within a few
seconds, we are suddenly either unreasonably ecstatic
or unreasonably upset, and with the sense that that
feeling could go on forever. Imagine if we listened to
musical symphonies like that. All of a sudden we reach
a perfect moment where the note of every instrument
pleases us beyond reason. We would freeze the thing
right there, with everybody holding that one
particular note. How exciting would that be! The
junkie chasing his dragon will continue his elusive
pursuit of that first high that just will not stand
still. I drank trying to snag that perfect bliss that
lasted for two minutes halfway between drinks two and
three, but I never could get it to stop running.
That your
own mind is capable of change, and in fact, that
change is fundamental to the very nature of mind,
should come as welcome news, particularly if you have
been suffering from one of these fixations. But first
you need to come to grips with the nature of mind. The
fundamental cause of all these problems is in the way
mind reacts to change, so the fundamental solution is
to adapt, to learn resilience, responsiveness and
flexibility, to learn a healthier way to respond to
changes. But here's the rub with recovery: if you want
to put some problem behavior behind you, you will want
to put it permanently behind you. Any true sobriety is
a permanent solution. This makes people anxious and
crazy. Most recovery groups try to soften this with
advice to just stay sober one day at a time. Rational
recovery, on the other hand, insists that this
one-day-at-a-time thinking only allows you to
entertain thoughts of some future relapse. But this
problem is ultimately topographical or geographical.
Saying "never again" assumes in a way that there is
only forward and back, progress and backsliding. What
it doesn't see is there is also moving on sideways and
diagonally, never to pass through these parts again,
not because of anxiety or fear, but because the world
that has just opened up is just too damn big to waste
time retracing your steps in either direction.
Ultimately it's not that you can change, but
that you must. For someone who is suffering, thoughts
of impermanence can offer hope instead of fear and
anxiety. As much as beliefs like to stay put and hold
fast, these are specifically the beliefs that need to
go, the ones that hold you stuck here. We just need to
look at them differently.
Dukkha, Painful Imperfection
"Life in
any world is unstable, it is swept away. It has no
shelter and no protector. It has nothing of its own,
but must leave all and pass on. It is incomplete,
insatiate, the slave of craving" (MN 82).
The price
of knowing what pleasure is is knowing when it is
missing or unattainable. The price of knowing how
precious a gift life is is knowing that it has to end
in death. But this sort of knowing is done backwards,
and this is why it seems like there is a price. In
fact, any chance to know pleasure in life is a gift.
From a more noble perspective, the whining done over
the pleasures of life coming up short of our prayers
and expectations is really nothing more than an
ignoble ingratitude. We seem to have the wrong default
setting for our approvals and satisfactions: these
should be set at the minimum levels that are needed
for continued existence. Then everything else is a
gift. We feel as though we are entitled to pleasure
and happiness, to life and all of the good things it
has to offer. Given this, we can only fall short of
what this delusion seems to promise. It's as though we
believe we were made by a god in his own image, with
no reason to struggle to survive or do anything to
merit the good things in life. It really isn't that
surprising that we blunder so badly. There is nothing
wrong with either pleasure or happiness. They are in
fact superior states- and worth enjoying. The mistake
is in pursuing them, particularly in pursuing them
directly without the intermediate step of doing the
work needed to merit them and bring them naturally
about. This is especially true of our addictive
behavior: we skip the part about deserving our
happiness. The rest of the mistake is in trying to
cling to them when the time comes for them or us to
move on.
We have
evolved the ability to shift our sense of identity
around, to locate ourselves in a thought, a feeling, a
sensation, a memory, or a plan. A feeling that we are
having, as of deprivation, frustration, unhappiness or
revulsion, seems able to hijack who we feel we really
are. We don't seem to know why, but we tend to prefer
identifying with passing and vulnerable states, while
deluding ourselves into thinking that they will last.
One of the most important techniques in Buddhist
psychology takes charge of this assignment of
identity. Whenever we get an unpleasant or unwholesome
feeling, such as craving, or hatred, or disgust, this
"wants" to fully occupy our sense of identity, and our
personal feelings, almost by definition, feel intimate
enough to convince us that this speaks for our inmost
and most-authentic self. But these things are not our
authentic selves, they are nothing more than feelings.
When we are taken over by them everything is always
always or never: you always think of yourself first,
you never respect my feelings. They always come and
go, and never last. The Buddha offered us a useful
mantra for this, applicable to any thought, feeling or
sensation that enters our awareness: "N'etam mama,
n'eso'ham asmi, na me so atta. This is not
mine, I am not this, this is not my spirit." This is
not inauthentic since the identification in the first
place is mind-made out of false or arbitrary ideas
about how things are or how they should be.
I have
always been amused by the Western theologians' opinion
on the almighty with respect to change and
imperfection, to anicca and dukkha.
Their initial or a priori assumption was that
divinity had to be perpetually and eternally perfect:
"He" could not simply be moving in that direction. To
them, this meant that if he was in one place he could
not then move to another, because he must already have
been in the perfect place. If he was in a particular
state of being he could not change into another state.
If he knew one thing he could not then learn another
thing that was different. He was denied the ability to
move, to change or to grow. The theologians apparently
made him in their own image. What the Buddha tried to
teach us to do is to begin with the assumption that
changes and imperfections describe the natural order
and proper state of things. If we want to be in a
different place, we can begin by taking an honest and
unflinching look at where we stand because this is the
place where we begin to move our feet in order to
travel to someplace else. We learn to accept reality
as it is, not necessarily because we approve of it,
but because we want to work with it in something other
than our fantasies and delusions.
Anatta, We Imaginary Beings
In the
Indian context in which Buddhism arose there was (and
remains) the widespread belief that the essential part
of sentient beings was a spirit or soul called the Atta
or Atman, each spirit a spark of an
infinite divinity called Brahman that dreamed
existence into being so that it might play hide and
seek with itself. These spirits or souls would learn
whatever they could learn, and find whatever they
could find, over the course of their many lifetimes.
At death they would transmigrate into new bodies, over
and over again, until they learned or found out all
the secrets and hiding places of the divine, at which
point they would be liberated and reunited with
Brahman, the game of hide and seek being over.
Etymologically the word reincarnation means "going
back into meat." It implies that there is some thing
to do this going back. The Buddha rejected this idea
with his doctrine of Anatta, meaning "no
spirit (or soul)." What we sentient beings perceive,
think of or feel as such an identity is a process that
emerges out of the interplay of the component
processes that condition or form us. These components
provide the necessary conditions for this new spirit
or soul-like process to emerge into our awareness,
just as heat, oxygen and fuel provide the necessary
conditions for flames to exist. At the same time, the
Buddha elected to confuse everybody by talking about
how we are reborn again and again, according to kamma,
the laws of cause and effect, until we wake up and set
ourselves free. We do not survive death and
transmigrate as spirits, but somehow there is a
continuity of process that is transmitted from
lifetime to lifetime, and, significantly, this felt
sense of continuity, and even a persistence of
memories, is somehow able to cross this gap between a
moment of death in one place and a moment of
conception in another. The flame often provided a
useful metaphor:
King Milinda questions: “Venerable Nagasena, does
rebirth take place without anything transmigrating?” “Yes, O King. Rebirth takes
place without anything transmigrating.”
“Give me an illustration, Venerable Sir.”
“Suppose, O King, a man were to light a lamp from another lamp. Pray, would the one light have passed over to the other light?”
“No, indeed, Venerable Sir.”
“In exactly the same way, O King, does rebirth take place without anything transmigrating.”
“Give me another illustration.”
“Do you remember, O King, having learnt, when you were a boy, some verse or other from your teacher of poetry?”
“Yes, Venerable Sir.”
“Pray, O King, did the verse pass over to you from your teacher?”
“No, indeed, Venerable Sir.
“In exactly the same way, O King, does rebirth take place without anything transmigrating” (Tr. from the Milinda Panha, Burmese KN 47a).
“Give me an illustration, Venerable Sir.”
“Suppose, O King, a man were to light a lamp from another lamp. Pray, would the one light have passed over to the other light?”
“No, indeed, Venerable Sir.”
“In exactly the same way, O King, does rebirth take place without anything transmigrating.”
“Give me another illustration.”
“Do you remember, O King, having learnt, when you were a boy, some verse or other from your teacher of poetry?”
“Yes, Venerable Sir.”
“Pray, O King, did the verse pass over to you from your teacher?”
“No, indeed, Venerable Sir.
“In exactly the same way, O King, does rebirth take place without anything transmigrating” (Tr. from the Milinda Panha, Burmese KN 47a).
Phrased a
different way by Peter Santina in The Tree of
Enlightenment: "Where is this from? - when we
light one candle from another candle, no substance or
soul travels from one to the other, even though the
first is the cause of the second; when one billiard
ball strikes another, there is a continuity - the
energy and direction of the first ball is imparted to
the second. The first ball is the cause of the second
billiard ball moving in a particular direction and at
a particular speed, but it is not the same ball."
So, if
you were to take two candles, one lit and one not,
light the unlit one and blow out the first, and ask
whether the new flame was the same flame, the answer
would have to be no, even though you could say that
the flame was as if reborn. Further, "the extinguished
flame cannot be described as having gone to any
direction" (MN n723). To the question "where does the
soul go when the body dies?" Jacob Boehme answered,
"There is no necessity for it to go anywhere." The new
flame is the same process and uses the same kind of
fuel, and oxygen from the same room, and heat from the
old flame. There is still continuity there, in the
actions of the transference, in the starting of the
fire, and in the manufacture of the candles. This
characterizes all intentional acts or kamma.
The sense of continuity that we have, including the
survival of memories, is never fully explained in
complete and satisfying detail. In Theravada, the
continuous part of the "rebirth" process is called the
patisandhi vinnana, the relinking
consciousness, or the linking-up-again consciousness.
Today we might liken it to an upload and subsequent
download of information from the web (of life). Other
forms of Buddhism elaborate more on this web or
"cloud" idea, retaining versions of the Hindu Akashic
Record or a Storehouse Consciousness that supports the
upload and the download during the transition. It may
not be necessary to postulate this much before we are
able to move on. Occam's Razor suggests that we look
for the simplest solutions, perhaps a simple
transmission or signal. It still might suggest some
sort of living field or equivalent of the old
luminiferous ether. This has no answer yet. As to the
conditions which create a specific perception of a
particular self, these can persist across lifetimes
because kamma is rich in patterns that repeat
with regularity across many lifetimes. At a minimum
they persist in this both genetically and culturally.
Reincarnation is usually used (or abused) to
rationalize the injustices of mortal life, why bad
things happen to good people, or good things to bad,
or why events in life appear random when somebody is
trying to tell you instead that there are rules that
ought to be followed. But the fact that all things
ultimately have causes does not mean that all things
happen for reasons, or are unfolding according to some
law or plan. It is perhaps a lot more sane to admit
that not everything happens to us by means of some
moral law. Good or ethical behavior increases our odds
of living a better life, this we can see, but, like
Zhuangzi said, "perfect sincerity offers no
guarantee." The little girl playing in her sandbox,
who gets killed by a stray bullet from a gang fight
happening two blocks way, is not playing a part in
some larger divine plan. That thinking is pure,
clinical paranoia, plain and simple. There is much in
life over which we have no control, even by the
circuitous route of becoming ethically perfect, but a
truer or more authentic personal and ethical
development will arm us against our own
self-destructive reactions to life's little surprises
and injustices. There are evils that we cannot
control, but the appropriate response to them can
often turn them around and press them into the service
of the good. This requires accepting them first,
instead of denying their existence. None of our
rewards are guaranteed. We can only improve our odds.
Obviously, those who are clinging to the law of kamma
as retributive justice will take exception to this
idea.
We seem
to betray our illusions a little every time we say "my
spirit" or "my soul." If this spirit or soul is who we
really are, then why are we making our inmost being an
extraneous possession like this? Shouldn't the first
person be the spirit itself? Or are we admitting that
we are living our lives at some distance from our real
nature? If this were a mere trap of language, why have
we not rebelled against this and created a popular
grammatical form for the "real" me and you?
A great
deal of the effort spent in a human life is an
investment in the continuity and integrity of one's
perception of a fundamental self. There are
investments in finding it, in keeping it going, in
keeping it the same, in keeping it protected from
challenging information, in keeping it from not
feeling wrong or ashamed, in maintaining its sense of
sovereignty or independence. Now the Buddha suggests
that it may not be desirable for us to protect this
fundamental self from change and eventual dissolution,
especially dissolution into wiser ways of seeing
things. The fundamental self is little more than a
mental image produced by a stream of mental
experiences upon attending a stream of physical
experiences. It is one that costs a great deal of
energy to maintain. If we were to recognize our sense
of being a fundamental self as no more than a
constructed mental image, perhaps given to us by
millions of years of evolution to perform specific
cognitive tasks, and admittedly useful in addressing
many of our various physical and social needs, we
could still make use of it in conventional ways to
perform whatever functions it does best. Also, to
recognize it as a construct would help set us free to
do some useful re-construction. We could then free
ourselves from being its slave or servant, and begin
to adopt new notions of who we really are that lead us
into less trouble. We could then begin to get over
ourselves.
Self is
not precisely an illusion in Buddhism, as it is in the
Maya and Samsara concepts of Hinduism.
It's a convention. It's not unreal, it just isn't what
we'd like to think it is, and it certainly isn't going
to last. It's a sense of something real, but it's
distorted. This conventional self cannot exist without
any of its components, particularly the body. Neither
is the world an illusion. The world of Samsara
is as real as Nibbana, and not a bad dream. Nibbana
and samsara ultimately refer to the same
world, the real world, just experienced differently.
What is unreal is the world that we think, feel and
perceive it to be. If you have tried to imagine a
world that is stripped of our organic sensations like
sight and touch, perhaps as a vast, moving field of
full-spectrum energy, in varying densities, streaming
through time, always changing, with countless nodes or
pockets of self- organizing energy feeding on energy
gradients, you likely have at least a closer picture
of reality than the one our senses give us, even
though the best you can do is still laden with sensory
and cognitive metaphors.
We hold
beliefs about what we are, and the nature of the world
that we live in, that turn us into whining and
ineffective participants, obsessing on this or that,
throwing our lives away for things we are only told
that we need. Yet we are also able to hold views that
include a self that sits near the center of our world
and is able to correct most of these difficulties. The
Buddha referred to himself in the first person. He
recognized that the sentient beings who came to him
were people, who had boundaries. Self is formed from
our experiences in the world. We are genetically
evolved to make and use these constructs. They have
uses, and these allowed our progenitors to survive and
breed our ancestors. But the self does not come into
the world to collect experiences. It is the
experiences that give rise to the self. As Dogen put
it, "To carry the self forward and realize the ten
thousand dharmas is delusion. That the ten
thousand dharmas advance and realize the self
is enlightenment." (Little-d dhamma or dharma
refers to any object that can be grasped by the mind,
including beings). Buddha never said that the self did
not exist. But he "found that, when the inner world is
studied closely, all that can be found is a constantly
changing flow and what is taken for an intrinsic self
or soul is just the sum of certain factors of the mind
that are all impermanent and in constant flux. He also
found that attachment to any of these impermanent
factors inevitably leads to suffering, so the way to
internal freedom and happiness that the Buddha
advocated was to learn to accept and live in the face
of impermanence without clinging to anything."
(Fredrik Falkenstrom, "A Buddhist Contribution to the
Psychoanalytic Psychology of Self").
All
individual phenomena, all dhammas,
thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, plans and
ideas, can be contemplated, examined, re-envisioned
and revised using these three points of view, in terms
of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and
not-self. Sammasana-nana is the exploration
and contemplation of individual phenomena in terms of
these three marks. The three Liberations, or vimokkha,
are counter-meditations on the three marks, doorways
out to a broader perspective. Animitta is a
meditation on signlessness or formlessness,
contemplating how all things must pass. Appanihita
is a meditation on desirelessness or dispassion,
contemplating how all compounded beings are ultimately
unable to attain any lasting satisfaction or
happiness. Finally, Sunnata is a
meditation on emptiness, contemplating how all
compounded beings are without a substantial or
substantive core, without any individuality that is
independent of the conditions which led to their
emergence. Deliberately inviting these three into our
awareness might be seen as "just asking for it,"
standing up to and staring down the nearly suicidal
existentialist's nausea, angst and
sickness-unto-death. But Buddhism isn't for sissies,
and it's better to get this over with sooner than
later.
Khandas, The Five Aggregates
The Five
Aggregates (Panca Khandas) are the factors or
constituent processes comprising the perceived
individual identity of living beings. Collectively the
five are also called the existing person (sakkaya),
the current assemblage or identity, and alternately
the five aggregates affected by clinging or grasping (panca-upadana-khandha).
What appears to be an integral self is really a
compounded thing, or more correctly, a complex,
interwoven, multidimensional and ever-shifting
process. It does have a conventional reality, but not
a fundamental, substantive or lasting one. We are
aggregate beings and can't separate who we are from
the combination of our organism, behavior, sensations,
emotions and narratives. Identity jumps around from
part to part. Sometimes it's an action, sometimes it's
a feeling, sometimes a sensation, an emotion, a
motive, a behavioral script or a story. Identity
grasps or clings first to one then another. We think
we derive our identity from what we experience: it
lights us up, gives us the sense of being this or
owning that. But this always passes. Everything that
we find in the mind is just a weave of physical
reaction, affect, sensation, remembrance, motivation,
cognition and awareness. But there is no pure and
disembodied witness, no doer apart from things getting
done, no feeler feeling, no thinker thinking. Self is
something like a running poll or vote of these many
components, and the locus of whichever component is
currently drawing the most attention. Self is like a
colony or a hive mind of lots of little identities and
identifications. Self is the squeakiest wheel at the
moment. You are the thought while the thought is
attended, or as T. S. Eliot said, "you are the music
while the music lasts." The quintet of constituent
processes described by the Buddha were physical form (rupa),
feeling (vedana), perception (sanna),
volitional formations (sankhara) and
consciousness (vinnana). These simple, one-word
translations don't do the ideas justice. In a little
more detail:
Rupa
refers to the physical organism, the organization, the
structured matter obedient to the laws of the
elements, material qualities, form or shape,
corporeality, what makes phenomena sensible, the basis
for figure-ground perception, out to the boundaries
where the qualities change. It is the sensible,
including the physical structure of the senses
themselves, the nervous system and the physical
modules of the brain. Rupa is in turn
constituted from the four elements (in Buddhist
doctrine), and kamma,
or consequences of intentional action. "This body is
not yours, nor does it belong to others. It is old kamma,
to be seen as generated (abhisankhata) and
fashioned by volition (cetayita), as something
to be felt (vedaniya)" (SN 12).
Vedana
refers to feeling, sensation, receptiveness, the
sensory and affective reactions to contact. This was
largely understood in Buddha's time in the very
simplistic terms of pleasantness (sukha),
unpleasantness (dukkha), and neutrality (adukkhamasukha),
neither-painful-nor-pleasant. This is the beginning of
wanting more and wanting less, feeling whether to open
up or close down, whether to approach or avoid. Today
we would say that there is much more to this than just
plus, minus and neutral. One common but still
simplistic classification of feelings assumes that
each affect has a combination of pleasantness
(pleasant or unpleasant) and activation (high or low).
Excitement is a combination of pleasantness and high
activation, while tranquility is a combination of
pleasantness and low activation. Rage would be
unpleasant with a high activation, while depression
would be unpleasant with low activation. Ambivalence
would be high-activation neutrality, apathy would be
low. Further articulation of the dimensions of
feelings could go on and on. We also bring our pre-
existing and longer-term affective states, like moods,
dispositions and temperaments, into our experiences.
Hormones and neurotransmitters are at the heart of
awareness of these affective tones, so their full
articulation could be as complex as the permutations
of our neurochemistry.
Sanna
refers to perception, or more precisely, apperception,
combining raw sensation with all of the things that
the historical person and its brain does with
sensation before it arises into awareness. Sanna
is recognition, not merely sensation. The word sanna
means to make intelligible. This is the process of
comprehending the specific marks (nimitta) or
qualia of phenomenal objects, such as blueness,
sharpness, shrillness, spiciness, etc. It is called
"distinguishing a thing by its marks" (SN 22.79). As
sensations, thoughts and feelings arise in the mind
they are compared with past experiences, matched up
with memories and expectations, re-cognized,
interpreted, discerned, bordered, associated, labeled,
and re-filed. Sanna involves the whole nervous
system, not merely the outer sense organs. Here the
brain doesn't really end in the head but out at the
farthest nerve endings and involves the most distant
endocrine glands. These are discussed in six classes,
the five most-often cited senses, and the mind. Here
our awareness of the goings-on in our minds, such as memories
and expectations, is treated in
the same category as sensory experiences. This could
be called cerebroception. These are processed by the
mind in much the same way as new sensory input. These
mental objects are called dhamma, with a
small-d. A modern re-envisioning of this piece of the
Buddha's doctrine would need to expand and reintegrate
what we have more recently learned of the senses,
which number a lot more than five. Given the
importance of our cognitive metaphors to our
understanding of how we think, in the important new
idea of embodied mind, we would do well to include
such processes as proprioception, the vestibular and
otolithic senses of the inner ear, the kinesthetic
senses in our muscles, tendons and bones, the organic
senses, the sensations of pain (nocioception), and
last but not least, the lively nerve endings of eros.
Sankhara,
in the sense used here, might best be described as
volitional formations. In modern terms, this is the
behavioral conditioning that the behaviorists tried to
regard as the whole of what we are. In scope it runs
the gamut from our genetically and epigenetically
conditioned behavioral traits, to the most artificial
and modern of human cultural adaptations. Included in
this are the thoughts, values and evaluative beliefs
which guide our actions, as well as the motive forces,
the emotions, which drive or power our actions. These
too are discussed in six classes, by primary sense
involvement, and including mental objects or mental
formations. Like the word dhamma, sankhara
is broad in its meanings. It generally refers to
formations, fabrications, constructions, fashionings,
methods, metaphors and models of any sort. It even
refers to the five khandas themselves as
formational factors. But here, as one of the
khandas, it is narrowed to conditioning and
reconditioning. Important to our purposes here, if it
is built it can get rebuilt, if programed,
reprogrammed.
The word
kamma is understood as volitional or
intentional action, and does not really include
mindless or inorganic physical causation. It is our
volitional formations that are responsible for
bringing forth the future states of our existence.
They predispose us to have certain categories of
experience and prepare us to respond to those
experiences in narrowed ways. They draw or drive us
with what-if simulations of future behavior, complete
with estimates and projections of what our sensory
experiences and emotional responses are likely to be.
Evolution fashioned important parts of these driving
processes deep in the old parts of the brain, where
homeostasis is regulated, where powerful neurochemical
reward and disincentive systems operate, adjacent to
our deepest hopes and fears, the triggering of potent
endocrine cocktails, and the mechanics of attention.
This is important here because this is where our
addictive patterns set up their base of operations.
Vinnana
refers to the processes that we call consciousness,
attention, sentience, awareness, or cognizance. We can
leave any kind of conceptual cognition back in the
previous categories. Consciousness is also discussed
in six classes. Unlike in some religions, Buddhist
consciousness is not some otherworldly or spiritual
substrate of existence, nor is it that which creates
existence. It's merely another process developing out
of existence. It is an emergent property, conditioned
by billions of years of biological evolution. It is
always associated with an object, however nebulous or
formless that object might be. In the Buddha's words,
"Annatra paccaya natthi vinnanassa sambhavo:
there is no arising of consciousness without reference
to a condition" (MN 38). This is what neuroscientist
Antonio Damasio calls our core consciousness, our
here-and-now awareness, a transient entity,
continuously recreated. It is dependent upon ancient
brain structures shared with much of the animal
kingdom. Consciousness only gets exalted above that of
the beasts on those special occasions where it is
attending to loftier things, like self-actualizing
states, or flow, or how to quit suffering. It is often
concentrated on internal verbal dialog, which gives
the appearance of its being raised above the beasts.
Mind is
never some airy thing devoid of content. It is always
a minding or reminding of something. Importantly,
consciousness is discontinuous. It doesn't exist in
deep sleep or between lives. It doesn't make up the
heart of the universe. When we get to Samma
Samadhi, the eighth step of Right Concentration,
there are advanced meditations on such subjects as the
"Sphere of Infinite Consciousness." It's important to
understand that this is not to be reified, or made
into an understanding of how the universe is built,
even when this has become part of your experience. It
is merely an exercise, and an experience with the
mental object that is presently being attended.
The Emergent Self
The
emergent is the opposite of the fundamental. It is
something that arises out of prior conditions and
something that didn't exist before. This something,
however, is not necessarily a thing. It could just as
easily be a process or a verb, or even be described
solely by adjectives and adverbs. The emergent may be
thought of as the difference between the whole and the
sum of its parts, the consequence of the synergy of
the fundamental conditions acting together. Weak
emergence describes properties which might have been
predicted from antecedent conditions, assuming a great
deal of knowledge and understanding of these
conditions. Chemistry is an example of weak emergence.
For a long time following the big bang of the local
universe there were no chemical reactions. There were
only hydrogen and inert helium molecules. It wasn't
until the first stars had lived and then exploded,
creating the variety of atomic elements, that chemical
reactions could even occur and show us patterns of
activity that could then be described as the laws of
chemistry.
Strong
emergence, on the other hand, refers to unpredictable
outcomes. Subjectivity, the subjective experiences of
our sentience, and qualia, the personal experience of
the qualities of a mental object or phenomenon, are
the most cited examples. However much you might know
about the electromagnetic spectrum and the 450-500
nanometer wavelength, and however you combine this
with what you know about the irritability and
plasticity of human neurons, you will still never be
able to forecast or deduce what the personal
experience of the color blue will be. Blue is strongly
emergent, as are our most subjective phenomena,
including feelings, remembered experience, mind and
consciousness. The hardened scientists and many
skeptics aren't really happy with strong emergence
theory for the very good reason that it doesn't really
explain anything: it merely walks us away from a lot
of silly metaphysical problems and speculations. It's
good that they are annoyed by this, because they will
keep digging for us and learn a bunch of new stuff
that we can use. But the bottom line is: subjective
experience has a reality of its own, and it will
likely be seen to work according to its own set of
discoverable laws.
It is
important to understand from this discussion that a
thing, process or property that is emergent is not for
this reason less real or important than other, more
fundamental properties of existence. That the mind or
consciousness did not exist at the beginning of the
local universe does not make mind or consciousness any
less important. It merely suggests that the
foundational conditions will need to be maintained in
order for mind and consciousness to be sustained in
the future. Like much of
Buddhist philosophy, this resets the locus of
responsibility for continued existence squarely back
into human hands. All life must live with the
consequences of our previous choices.
Evolution has given us an autobiographical self,
an emergent construct. It is a simplified mental model
made from our various identifications and values,
memories, remembered sensations and feelings,
summarizations of our more invariant characteristics,
with an extra dose of us in our most shining and our
most humiliating moments. It has two arms, two legs
and senses too. We use this self-image to perform
stunts in our imagination, exercises in vicarious
trial and error. When this imaginary self gets hurt it
only hurts a little. We can send it out to test our
boldest plans and it only bleeds or dies in theory.
Evolution and selection have kept the ability to make
such models due to their utility in survival and
adaptive fitness. We can make mistakes in the first
and third person imagination, predict some evil
outcomes in advance and not suffer any real-world
consequences. It has been demonstrated in the lab that
in practice its use will often activate the same brain
events that real physical activity does and will lead
to real changes in neuro- and blood chemistry. The
self does not simply come into being from a narrative
about the self involved in the act of knowing, nor is
it simply from a need to provide a grammatical subject
for our sentences. It's there in reality, it's just
not what we thought it was. It is emergent and not
fundamental to who we really are, except as it enables
us to survive, adapt, breed and rear our young.
Our
distant progenitors and ancestors developed and handed
down this self-reflexive insight, this inner self or
I, along with its inner eye and ear and innersense. It
assisted them in making better choices, improved our
intentional actions or kamma, and so it
survived. It gave us a new form of perception, like
new sense organs, even doubling up on use of parts of
the brain otherwise occupied. The brain holds models
of the mind-body and the self that can be manipulated
at will, at least to the extent that one has even
formed a will. The Buddha also spoke frequently of
developing this model further into a "mind-made body,"
for traveling elsewhere during meditation. And
shamans, of course, adopt these sorts of bodies as
totems and dream states. Through this image we can
feel things that are not real, that have not happened,
that never will happen. We enable flights of fancy and
utter self-delusion. We can also send it off to
explore the routes out of our suffering.
At
bottom, this emergent sense, model and narrative of
self is all that we have for a self, at least beyond
the physical organism. What then becomes of our quest
to discover "our authentic selves"? This is a good
question for Buddhists to ask. The best and most
authentic self that we have, the purest and most
original self that we have, is a still construct. This
does not, however, pull the ground entirely from
beneath us. After our ridiculous foray into believing
self to be a tabula rasa, a blank slate on
which superior culture and good parenting can write
most anything it pleases, we are now coming to
understand that there is after all a human nature,
developed over many millions of years of evolution,
developing behavioral traits, perceptual archetypes,
social protocols and even ethics. For the Buddhist
this is the best of all worlds. There are techniques
of inquiry that can help us explore what this original
nature is and there are techniques of
self-modification and self-control that can help us to
correct the parts of these models that serve us
poorly. It is not necessary to accept yourself as you
currently appear to be and refer to this as your
authentic self. The fact that you are having a
self-destructive feeling does not make it "your"
feeling simply because it feels close to you. Any
constructed self is subject to reconstruction and the
sense of authenticity can be redirected to relate to
higher purposes. We can decide, even choose, even
invent, who we truly and authentically are without
having to compromise our authenticity.
Nevertheless, flowers fall
with our attachment, and weeds spring up with our
aversion. Dogen
The Second Noble Truth states that suffering has identifiable causes.
The Second Noble Truth states that suffering has identifiable causes.
Tanha, Craving and Thirst
Suffering
arises, emerges or originates (samudaya) out of
a network of causes. When these causes develop as a
sequence this is called the Chain of Conditioned
Arising (paticca samuppada) or Dependent
Origination. There are twelve links that are named in
this chain. Tanha, the selfish motivation of
the misunderstood self, its craving, desire or thirst,
is the eighth link and the standard representative for
the twelve in speaking of the Second Truth. Used more
broadly, it encompasses both craving and aversion,
wanting what-is-not to be, and wanting what-is to not
be. These lead us on to endless becoming, which may be
best understood here as endless complications or
ramifications. Literally, the word is journeying (samsara).
Where two representatives from the chain are used,
they are usually avijja (ignorance or
blindness) and tanha.
Kama
tanha is the craving for pleasure, particularly
craving sensory pleasure, craving the enjoyment of
sense objects. A modern interpretation would
presumably include references to the associated
neurochemistry. As we will see later, there are many
kinds of noble and elevated pleasures that were
encouraged by the Buddha. Further, we are not warned
quite as sternly about enjoying our pleasure or
happiness as it is passing us by, so much as we are
cautioned against pursuing, going out of our way to
get, to have or possess pleasure or happiness. In this
inferior sense we are looking more at lust, at desire
that has an element of cravenness, loss of
perspective, loss of self-control and loss of dignity.
This is Eros in its darker and more desperate aspect,
not as life that is freely or exuberantly expressed,
but something which takes more than it gives.
Bhava
tanha is the craving for more being, craving
more than simply to continue our own existence. We
want to be increasingly important, powerful, popular,
or known, to be too big to fail, to be secure, to
never slip back onto obscurity or nothingness. This is
Ontos, being the thing, and has some aspects of
Nietzsche's Will to Power as a characteristic of all
of life, especially in its carelessness or wantonness,
and even disregard for its own self-preservation, and
some of Sartre's Being-for-Others in its inauthentic
self-objectification.
Vibhava
tanha is the craving not to be, to be nothing,
or be on the way to nothing by becoming less and less.
It is fugue, denial, and aversion to life and
aliveness. It is thirst for the waters of the Lethe,
for forgetting, for numbness, oblivion or extinction.
It is wanting to be separated from all pain and
unpleasantness, even if this means separating from
life itself. It's the death wish that the Freudians
called Thanatos, even though this is not always a wish
for a speedy or timely death. Most, in fact, seem to only
have courage enough to move in
this direction one day at a time.
The Buddha used the word Chanda, desire or zeal, specifically a desire to act or wish to do, when he wanted to put a positive spin on wanting things to be something other than what they presently are, for reasons that are skillful and wholesome, desiring, for instance, to put an end to suffering.
The Buddha used the word Chanda, desire or zeal, specifically a desire to act or wish to do, when he wanted to put a positive spin on wanting things to be something other than what they presently are, for reasons that are skillful and wholesome, desiring, for instance, to put an end to suffering.
Akusala Mulas, the Three Unwholesome Roots
Much of
our suffering is conditioned by our inclinations to
overreact to situations in three general ways:
craving, aversion and delusion. These are also called
the Three Poisons (tivisa) and sometimes the
makers of measurement (pamanakarana) perhaps
because they divide the world into pieces for
apportionment. Wise attention (yoniso manasikara)
is required to cut off these roots. Wise attention
allows us to intervene in this process of
overreaction. Because these states arise from deep
within the mind, often if not usually in pre-conscious
processes, they can be well on their way to expression
before our attention can attend to them. In the fifth
step of the Eightfold Path, Samma Vayama,
Right Effort, we study ways to intervene, interrupt or
short-circuit these eruptions. Because they arise from
deep within they are often regarded as being one with
our inmost selves and therefore righteously insisting
upon expression. Psychologists may speak of the need
for catharsis and the dangers of repression, as though
these were some sort of hydraulic fluids that have a
need to go somewhere. The Buddha took the approach
that they didn't need to be created in the first
place, and they certainly don't need to be maintained.
Lobha
is a broad term for craving and attachment,
covetousness, thirst, passion, lust, greed, unskillful
desire, self-centered grasping for more. It is
sometimes called raga, which is closer to
simple passion (one that complicates things). It is
also a synonym of tanha. We can see the
origins of lobha in the appetites we are born
with. If we don't want to die young we need to satisfy
many of these. If we want to be clear-minded and wise
inquirers we will do a skillful job of satisfying
them, taking care of first things first. Maslow's
hierarchy of needs gives us a fairly useful guide to
addressing these in a fairly optimal order. It's
usually when our needs are repeatedly thwarted that we
start to develop unwholesome approaches to needs
fulfillment. Advertising doesn't help much at all with
its ability to create artificial needs, particularly
those that can never be satisfied. We encounter
additional problems with appetites in our evolved
biology that drive us to attain to things that were
once much harder to find in nature: sugar, fat,
safety, and having children who would live past their
first year. Without self-control we come predisposed
to overdo all of these now. It is now a learned skill
set to first want what you have and then to choose
what to want according to how this will best serve
you. As part of this skill set, pleasure and happiness
aren't for seeking: they are for informing.
Dosa
is a general term for aversion and hatred, anger,
aggression, fear of getting what we don't want, or of
not getting what we want, avoidance, rejection, a will
to be separate, often coming from unwise contemplation
of repulsive objects. This word covers a wide range of
hostile feelings. Buddhist scriptures often substitute
the synonyms vyapada or patigha.
Whether it's wanting something you don't have or
having something you don't want, you want what is not
and don't approve of existence. Dosa, too, has
ancient evolutionary roots. The displeasure that we
feel at being unable to accomplish a task gives us
some incentive to try again. The displeasure that we
feel at being in a bad situation motivates us to
either change it or go elsewhere. Perhaps more
importantly, the displeasure we feel towards others
when we are cheated, bullied or otherwise betrayed,
motivates us to provide some form of negative feedback
to the bad actor in the troop. It served important
functions of social regulation. But this was something
that served a lesser and temporary function, to
provide information that led to the resolution of an
untenable situation. Pain and unpleasantness contain
valuable information. It was not intended for the one
who felt it to carry it around and harbor in the form
of resentment. The Buddha claimed that holding a
grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the
other person to die. Acceptance is the right skill for
this problem, but this is not to be confused with
approval. When we accept that things are what they
are, this gives us a reality to work with, and either
change or move away from, instead of a fantasy over
which we have only imaginary control.
Moha
is a general term for delusion and stupidity, mental
dullness or darkness, infatuation, bewilderment,
confusion, ignorance, sentimentality,
or folly. Sometimes the
synonym avijja, blindness or ignorance, is
used, especially when the three unwholesome roots are
being called the three Defilements (kilesas).
Set minds, prejudices, hasty assumptions and false
views have their roots in the evolution of the human
brain. Our more primitive cognitive skills allowed us
to develop rules of thumb for getting by, and for
making snap decisions in a simpler but often more
dangerous world. An evolutionary compromise was
reached that allowed us to skip the effort of
examining the world carefully and thinking things
through. Unfortunately, we also have a tendency to
consider these rules of thumb, beliefs,
presuppositions, prejudices, profilings and
oversimplifications as essential to our view of the
world, and frequently in need of defending. When these
concern our sense of self we protect them with a
formidable array of defense mechanisms, which are now
charted in great detail by psychologists. When it is
only our sensations, thoughts and feelings that are so
threatened we have a similar array of cognitive
biases, also well enumerated by psychologists and
sociologists. When stress threatens we can adopt
coping strategies which often include self-deception.
And when these beliefs have built themselves into full
theories, we protect ourselves from new and often
superior information with the aid of logical
fallacies, which are now well-enumerated by logicians.
More will be said later of moha, when we
discuss human self-deception, cognitive biases,
defense mechanisms, coping strategies and logical
fallacies at Right Mindfulness.
It might be that Buddhism and science represent our two best efforts to get and stay free of the tyranny of our own thought processes. In theory at least, a Buddhist doesn't own his own views: "this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self." In theory at least, a true scientist doesn't believe in a theory like evolution: to him it is simply the best current explanation for the available data. Still, scientists are human and cling to their favorite ideas, leading us to Max Planck being paraphrased as saying: "Science progresses one funeral at a time." Buddhists, too, often have notions that they grip with white knuckles.
It might be that Buddhism and science represent our two best efforts to get and stay free of the tyranny of our own thought processes. In theory at least, a Buddhist doesn't own his own views: "this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self." In theory at least, a true scientist doesn't believe in a theory like evolution: to him it is simply the best current explanation for the available data. Still, scientists are human and cling to their favorite ideas, leading us to Max Planck being paraphrased as saying: "Science progresses one funeral at a time." Buddhists, too, often have notions that they grip with white knuckles.
Paticca-Samuppada, the Chain of Conditioned Arising
Patient: "It hurts when I do this, doc."
Doctor: "Then stop doing that."
One thing
leads to another as suffering is conditioned or
created out of a chain of twelve causes (nidanas).
The twelve links of the chain begin with blindness or
ignorance. In a modern context, now informed by our
developing neuroscience, it may more useful to view
this chain as an example of how things might unfold
causally, rather than dogmatically as a rigid,
invariable and universal sequence. The important thing
is that, by attending the stream as an experience
unfolds, you see a chain of causes working, and our
wise attention can lead to useful inferences about the
development of states of mind even before they become
conscious. A lot of our reasons and explanations, as
for why we think and feel in certain ways, are
after-the-fact assumptions, rationalizations or
justifications that might have little to do with the
actual process. The human mind is more concerned with
the making of meanings that it can hold onto than it
is about the accuracy of those meanings, so we often
come up short of the optimum explanations for our
mental states. Look at how dreams work: neurons put on
standby, but unfired during the day, start firing off
as they gradually return to a rest state. They were on
standby for being at least approximately relevant to
the prior day's experience. As the brain relaxes, a
stream of sub- and semiconscious experience, a soup of
mental objects, confronts the half-aware mind with a
general disorder containing strong hints of relevance.
The mind abhors such a thing and produces a narrative
to make sense of it. It does this by a cognitive
process called pareidolia, the same vision that sees
familiar objects in clouds. The narrative then
entrains the mental images into a semi-lifelike
experience. The dream is a synthetic and synergetic
process that evolved out of numerous prior and
unconscious conditions. Dreams are already an
interpretation of more basic neurological events. In
this sense, the suffering self arises like a dream out
of less-than-conscious conditions.
Most of
us have a sense of agency, even of free will, but if
we examine closely how the thoughts and emotions that
guide and drive us are formed in chains of cause and
effect, we see that any agency or will that we have is
conditioned and dependent. This is not to say that we
cannot be free, but we first want to learn enough
about these causes to be able to move them around, to
replace unwholesome triggers with wholesome choices,
or to break our chains at their weakest links. The
state of mind that might be troubling you now is only
a phenomenon, a link in a chain of events that can be
entered and broken. Sometimes the chain needs to be
traced all the way back, where it's often begun in
craving, ill will, ignorance, etc. In the broadest of
its senses, the chain of conditioned arising is a long
one. Over millions of years of acting according to our
wants, desires and intentions we have constructed our
inherited nature. Along one axis, the chain tracks the
effects of evolution and natural selection in a
Darwinian sense. Here, evolutionary psychology can
look at the evolution of certain emotional states in
terms of what services they provided, what survival
value they might have had, including the emotions that
tend to eat us alive. This chain of conditioned
arising thus refers both to the progress of life
itself and to the progress of each sentient being.
1. Avijja,
blindness or ignorance, is the first condition. The
beings are driven blindly forward, making choices that
only rarely are conscious, subject to being made into
this and that, unaware of what brought them here,
unaware of where they are headed, deluded about the
factors and constituents of the present and
misunderstanding the point of it all. But such is
life: living is all about learning. Life is a
self-organizing process out of which new things
emerge. Wisdom, such as it is, is a fairly recent
arrival. Avijja will only become a derogatory
or pejorative term when humans support it. But for
billions of years of evolution, life could not be
blamed for not being more evolved. You can't fault the
old cyanobacteria for not having evolved eyeballs.
Life stumbled forward, slowly picking up skills, ways
to interpret the environment and respond in ways that
statistically favored survival. Nowadays, of course,
we have people who are blind and ignorant by choice.
Much of the stupidity humans exhibit doesn't come from
a low or average IQ: you can still do a lot with one
of those, and still be a decent person too. But to
spend a lifetime resisting learning at every turn, and
then to torment those who try to go beyond the
ordinary, to fight against any kind of knowledge that
one hasn't already been taught, to prefer being
enslaved by consensus and peer pressure, to dumb down
for the sake of social acceptance: these are almost
certain to bring about suffering. Avijja is
corrected with panna, or discriminating
wisdom, developed by practicing the Eightfold Path
with a sustained and dedicated mindfulness.
2. Sankhara,
the volitional formations already discussed above as
one of the khandas, is the learning that we
have done in our stumbling blindly forward, the
results of our self-organizing. Once again, this
includes both the evolved structures of the species,
family, phylum and kingdom, as well as the learned
behavioral patterns of each sentient being. These are
the structures we use to move through the world, built
according to what worked in the past, built according
to the consequences of our intentional acts or kamma.
Some of these formations are pretty good: they allowed
every single one of our many millions of direct
ancestors to survive long enough to breed
successfully. They are certainly a lot more developed
than was thought in mid-20th century, when the human
mind, unlike the animals, was thought to be a blank
slate, nearly free of baser instincts, a thing for
culture to write freely upon. In theory, everyone
could be saved. Our sankharas include what we
have of our instincts and natural drives, which even
incorporates a broad-brush primate version of morality
and appropriate social functioning. As said before,
included in this are the thoughts, values and
evaluative beliefs which guide our actions, as well as
the motive force, the emotions, which drive or power
our actions. And it includes the multitude of
structures picked up throughout our childhood
development. It includes whatever the horrors of
adolescence did to us. It includes the structural
consequences of our social activities. It includes the
belief systems of the home culture or the ones we
adopted in getting free of the home culture. Much of
what the Buddha had to address is relatively new to
the human species, problems that evolved recently with
civilization over the last ten millennia, the
complexities of life that humans haven't had time to
adapt to or be genetically prepared for. Across the
spectrum from life itself to the individual, most of
these formations are pre-conscious. Some of our most
troublesome traits, our emotional and behavioral
triggers, and our self-deceptions begin here, the
spawn of our monsters from the id.
3. Vinnana,
consciousness, arises out of the volitional or
intentional formations. However dimly perceived they
may be, the sankharas are intentions, agendas,
scripts and even plans to behave in certain ways, in
response to certain stimuli, to obtain certain
results. "Bhikkhus, what one intends, and what one
plans, and whatever one has a tendency towards: this
becomes a basis for the maintenance of consciousness.
When there is a basis there is a support for the
establishing of consciousness. When consciousness is
established and has come to growth, there is the
production of future renewed existence" (SN 12:38).
Consciousness then evolves to light the way to the
execution of these intentions and plans, the
expression of our volitional formations. One needs to
read the situations, watch one's progress into them,
process feedback that tells of being on course or
going astray, be alerted by irritants and
inconsistencies, and tell us when at last we need go
no further. Consciousness, like mind and its other
functions, evolves in service to the more basic and
pre-conscious processes of life. It is not born where
these darker things are born and normally it will have
no access to their workings. It is not regarded as a
fundamental property of existence even if it is
central to our experience. Importantly, it is
difficult for consciousness to be conscious of its
origins, just as it is difficult to see our own
eyeballs. We need to look to effects instead, such as
looking to the harm that we do, or to the good. As
with psychological therapy, we try to examine our
actions, our thoughts and our words, and make our best
inferences from these.
4. Nama-rupa, mind-and-body, or literally,
name and form, refers to the cognitive-plus-physical
sides of individual existence, to these phenomena as
experienced and reified, or made to seem real, by
consciousness. This is not the spirit vs. matter
dualism that is found in Hinduism: nama and rupa
here are interdependent. Nama and rupa
together represent the five khandas, the
organism, feeling, apperception, volitional formations
and consciousness. It is vinnana, the
consciousness khanda, that will seek to
untangle their interdependence and make them into
separate realities.
5. Salayatana,
the sixfold base of the senses, follows the arising of
mind-and-body. Here again, beyond the five
conventionally recognized senses, the sixth sense is
the mind that is sensing itself and its own mental
objects, including states, memories, perceptions and
anticipations. These stand ready to create a private
version of an exterior world, personalized in ways
which presumably serve nama-rupa, but also
make a narcissistic, limited and distorted portrayal
of the ever-changing world-stream that is yathabhuta,
or reality-as-it-is. All sense perception beyond the
rawest sensation is apperception. Mind and body are
both involved in adapting what is sensed to the body
of what has already been experienced. Thus the senses
are conditioned by what is formed before, while the
sensations themselves become mental objects and
conceptual metaphors for later mental operations. Most
of our vaunted mental concepts ultimately refer back
to sensorimotor domains. The feeling of pushing an
object forward informs our more abstract idea of
force. Our separate sense memories of what particles
are and what waves are help to keep us from
envisioning something which might behave as both. Out
of this process we develop a vocabulary of conceptual
metaphors, and the result is called embodied
cognition.
6. Phassa,
contact, follows the awakening of the six senses. This
refers to the first contact between a sensed or mental
object and awareness. As the word implies, this is
what reaches us, impinges on us, or gets to us, but it
is not yet being touched, moved, gotten to, or
impressed. There is no affect yet. We are simply
connecting at this point, tuning in, starting to
attend, but this is prior to any reaction to this. It
is noticing, or being put on notice. If what is being
sensed is a mental object it may have been developing
unconsciously for some time prior to this first
contact. If a sensed object, it is a matter of
attention being drawn there, by novelty, an increase
in intensity beyond a threshold, or some other change
in the stream. Often something like an emotion will be
halfway grown before it draws any attention at all.
This is also true of a lot of our conditioned behavior
patterns. It is at this point that we first "find"
ourselves in certain states. If breaking a particular
chain of conditioned arising is the object, contact is
the first logical link for intervention, obviously by
preventing or avoiding contact, other than going back
to the beginning and replacing ignorance with wisdom.
The action in this case is no more complicated than
cutting off contact, not letting something touch or
get to you. This may require some mindfulness training
to catch the earliest signs of something like a
trigger. But intervention here is somewhat limited.
You can avoid being in a place where an undesired
stimulus is known to exist. But we don't want to
confuse this with denial, or with certain neurotic
defense mechanisms like dissociation or regression. It
is simply a choice not to attend or feed something
known to be unwholesome.
7. Vedana,
feeling, follows upon contact, in reaction to contact.
It is another of the five khandas and regarded
as a universal mental function, one that is present in
all mental states. The raw experience is assessed in
terms of positive, negative and neutral values, but
not yet as articulated and meaningful. This is the
first impression, the sense of being moved to approach
or avoid, or to simply attend. This is sometimes
called "hedonic tone." It is the beginning of wanting
more and wanting less, the beginning of acceptance or
rejection as far as the conscious mind is concerned.
But mental states are often well on their way to
expression before they are even noticed. To break the
chain at this point, before it leads to some of the
more troublesome links, requires either cutting off
the stimulus, or denying the experience any form of
personal relevance, or imposing a more neutral
valuation somewhere along the spectrum from apathy to
ambivalence to equanimity, equanimity being the
preferred response.
8. Tanha,
desire, craving or thirst, arises out of feeling. Here
it includes both ends of the spectrum, wanting an
experience to grow more intense and desiring to be
separated from any noxious stimuli. This is the actual
wanting more and wanting less that was only suggested
in vedana. Tanha does not necessarily
follow from vedana, particularly given an
intention to intervene in the development or progress
of unwholesome states. This is potentially the weakest
link in the chain. Cultures abound with folk
techniques for this intervention, perhaps most
notably, taking a few deep breaths or counting to ten.
Some of our many defense mechanisms, both wholesome
and unwholesome, may also be called into play when
there is a suggestion of danger in having a particular
response. In Buddhist terms, the more mindful we are
in attending these feelings and sensations, the less
they demand a particular response. We have a measure
of control over what we require before we can call
ourselves satisfied. We can even be satisfied with
having no part of something. We can train ourselves to
dissociate sensations of pain from emotional
involvement in pain.
We have a
couple of inherited traits working against us at this
point, however. Consider this analogy: when we are
moving, say in a car or in an elevator, we don't
really feel the motion unless we are accelerating or
decelerating (acceleration also refers to turns and
sideways bumps). Our affections of pleasure and
happiness can be problematically similar to our sense
of acceleration: we will tend to forget them when we
remain in a balanced state and attend them best when
things are changing. We are wired to keep seeking
improvement, not homeostasis. This bodes ill for
maintaining pleasure and happiness in steady and more
sustainable states. This phenomenon is also called
"hedonic adaptation": we get used to the pleasant
things, and until we can learn to control our
subjective states we are left with having to combat
this by adding endless variations to our experiences.
Further, we are somewhat more sensitive to a loss than
to a gain: when our precious thing gets lost or stolen
we usually have stronger negative feelings than we had
positive feelings when we acquired the precious thing
in the first place. This means the game is rigged in
favor of dissatisfaction as expectations adapt
primarily upward. This is sometimes called the hedonic
treadmill. We have a similar problem in economics.
Rational people understand rationally that sustained
growth in a finite system is unsustainable, yet a
decline in the positive rate of growth is called a
recession or even a depression. The best models we
know for true sustainability are natural climax
ecosystems, which maintain a dynamic equilibrium where
the quantity of living equals the quantity of dying.
Anything short of this must by definition collapse. It
requires reason to embrace our feelings and emotions
with this understanding. It seems that we need to
consciously cultivate our senses of appreciation,
satisfaction and gratitude in order to successfully
manage a steady-state, equilibrated, sustainable life
and livelihood.
9. Upadana,
clinging, grasping or attachment arises from craving.
This word is often associated with Buddhism. It also
means intake or uptake, as of fuel, like oil for a
lamp, or nutriment, for good or ill. In this aspect it
speaks of our dependence on conditions, as a flame
needs a log, and dies out when separated from its
source. This in turn suggests that upadana is
clinging that is related to security issues and a fear
that states either will or will not last. To stretch
the conceptual metaphor a bit, clinging to something
will add your own personal weight or gravitas to it,
making it harder for either of you to come and go. It
is at this point that the one who grasps becomes
personally identified with that which is clung to,
losing the dividing space between them that is
necessary for wise attention. If we have learned
anything here in life it's that good and bad, pleasant
and unpleasant, will come and go. To the extent that
we fight this inexorable fact of existence (anicca)
we will be bound to our suffering. When we attempt to
fix something against change, our fixations become
either stagnant or small obstructions in an
irresistible stream. Clinging may be to sensual
pleasures, to incorrect ideas or views, to rites and
rituals in the belief that these will take you to the
goal, and to ideas about who and what you are.
Commonly, the breaking of this link is called
detachment, for which there are a number of words and
nuances. Detachment reaches its highest expression in
upekkha or equanimity, a virtue that will be
much-discussed later.
As a
practice, the key to detachment is in taking control
of our power to assign value to experiences, and in
this particular case, a neutral or null value. A thing
can be assessed to be of little worth for any number
of reasons: personal irrelevance, excessive effort,
unintended consequences, validity only from a myopic
view of things, or long-term harmfulness or
unwholesomeness. The suffering saved can easily
justify the application of reason and logic to one's
cherished feelings. It is a myth that people who
retain this sort of emotional control are somehow less
capable of feeling, just as it's a myth that an artist
sees more beauty in a flower than a scientist, or that
smart people somehow feel less. The application of
logic in detachment, and in equanimity in particular,
does not lead to numbness or coldness, but rather
clears the way for a higher and more wholesome
pleasantness, even if this too must be allowed to come
and go. The mistake we make is not in having feelings
and emotions, nor even in enjoying them. It's in
wanting them to get stronger, get weaker, to hurry up,
or to go away. It's in taking them as an end in
themselves, or in taking a property of cognitive
states as some sort of property to be owned. The
states will come and go: this is the nature of
cognition. Something that comes and goes cannot be of
the same lasting value as the stream it comes and goes
within.
One of
the problematic consequences of attachment is
confusion about the chain of causation. First will
come the promising feeling, then the craving, then the
clinging, then perhaps the pleasant experience. Once
these become fused together we are inclined to "think"
subconsciously that craving is the cause of the
pleasure, that if we crave or want more we will have
more pleasure and happiness. We then want to cement
this into our repertoire of conditioned behavioral
skills so that we can call up more pleasure at will.
The pleasure is no longer the consequence of doing the
right thing or performing acts that merit pleasure:
instead it becomes the consequence of trying to take
shortcuts straight to the pleasure centers of the
brain. It isn't really all that surprising that this
approach so often leads to suffering. A child who does
this is called spoiled. And kamma does the
spanking.
10. Bhava,
becoming or being, arises out of attachment. We
identify who we are with the things we cherish and
cling to, things we own, things we've accomplished, or
with the nobler feelings we've once entertained. The
more attachments that we have the "greater" we are.
Etymologically, the word existence comes from a verb
meaning to stand out or stand forth. Existence that
always wants more must believe in growth for its own
sake. So we keep putting on existential weight. The
heaviness of our feelings, the dramas that weigh us
down, even the pain and suffering we undergo, give us
a sense of substance and identity. We incline to the
gross instead of the net. We incline to dismiss only
the worst embarrassments to our social and
self-esteem. It is not necessarily harmful trying to
keep one experience and avoid another in order to
maintain a consistent identity. The harm comes from
doing this badly, from starting forth with a deluded
sense of identity and worsening that with every new
delusion we cling to. Mindfulness, trained on who we
really are, can still work with a healthy sense of
self.
Of the
four forms of clinging mentioned above, bhava
arises most exuberantly out of clinging to our ideas
about who and what we are (attavadupadana).
This is the ego, and conceit, and it takes a
tremendous amount of energy to maintain and defend.
Maintenance and defense require belief, and such
belief in turn requires the adoption of views that
must be blind to anything that challenges them. The
ego thus becomes a fortress that its occupants are
soon not permitted to leave at all because it's under
continuous siege by the reality it needs to deny. It
is ironic indeed that this self-inflation and
self-aggrandizement leads to becoming so small and
temporary. Where is the vaunted, enlightened
self-interest? Or even the instinct to
self-preservation? Paradoxically, true greatness comes
from the development of humility, from the knowledge
of our true size and importance in the grander scheme.
It is this that allows to open up into the greater
things and higher purposes that we can be part of.
11. Jati,
future birth or rebirth, the arising of new living
entities, arises out of the old living entities, the
beings and becomings that have been and gone. Though
past, they condition the present. Birth, whether from
"eggs, wombs, moisture or transformations," is the
continuing onward of the consequences of past
intentions. The present is fully determined and there
is no "could have been." The present is the only
possible consequence of the past. The present,
however, can be altered, conditioning a future that is
different than the one determined without alteration.
If unpleasant and distasteful things are occurring at
present, there is no point or power in denying that
these exist. Power is in knowing how they are
conditioned and then altering those conditions in the
present. To the extent that self- belief is based on
illusion, delusion and ignorance, it will blunder
through life, making many errors. These errors have
consequences, repercussions, backlashes and echoes.
These move on, incarnate in new forms. Family
fixations, such as patterns of abuse, get handed down
the line along with the family fortune. Cultural
errors persist, are replicated, are reborn again and
again. The people who pick up on these errors anew
will renew and perpetuate them until they are
corrected by someone who is paying better attention.
Take a closer look at the ancient practice of ancestor
worship. Superficially it looks like a primitive
superstition, but there is a deeper, hidden sense to
it all: there is a subtle implication that we
ourselves could one day merit such reverence if we
tried to become better ancestors. This is how we can
look at a fully conditioned present without despair:
here and now are the place and time to recondition the
future and all of the things to be reborn there. This
is also the only place and time to fail to do that,
and thus vote to continue to propagate suffering.
12. Jaramarana,
old age and death, are the consequences of rebirth,
along with decay, illness, mental suffering,
lamentation, pain, grief and despair. Without
enlightenment we can expect these to come and stay and
kill us. With enlightenment we can expect these to
come and go and take us with them. Enlightenment lets
us lower our expectations about some perfect kind of
future and pay closer attention to what can be done in
the present to help condition better wisdom in the
beings being propagated by today's errors and
insights. A more awakened world will not be perfect
either. Perfect wisdom and insight will not even
guarantee any error-free living in an awakened being.
We've got some time on our hands though, and doing
good work within wholesome states just beats the snot
out of suffering on and on. Buddhism does not offer a
cure for illness, aging and death, although certainly
wisdom can help us to cure illness and delay aging and
dying a little. There is only a cure here for
hastening these things towards us, and strategies for
waking up to appreciate a world that we
don't need to have cravings to get to, the world that
we cannot be deprived of.
Addiction and Denial
There is
some sort of line that gets crossed when we pass from
simple craving and aversion into what we can call
clinical addiction and denial. Is substance dependence
qualitatively different from simple craving, or just a
matter of degrees? Is there a point at which it
becomes morbidly pathological or malignant? I'm aware
that the DSM has dropped the term addiction altogether
in favor of dependence and abuse, but something is
lost in losing this term. The original Latin verb addicare
meant to assign or sign into slavery, to award some
person's sovereignty to the highest bidder. To do this
to yourself is to turn yourself over to a master, or a
shepherd, or frequently even to something inanimate.
Choice is involved in the development of patterns of
addiction, and the gradual surrender of
responsibility, and choice is also a sine qua non
of recovery. There is at least some truth to the
disease model, at least in the form of individual
differences in inherited susceptibility, whether
genetic or epigenetic, and sometimes susceptibility is
even statistically ethnic or racial. But this is a
dangerous thought to isolate and attach to, and is
often the only excuse that is needed for a complete
abdication of responsibility and surrender of all
self-control. The most we can say if we are being
honest is that an inherent susceptibility will make
addiction a step or two more likely, and recovery a
step or two more difficult.
Evolution
has given us a large array of endocrinonological
processes that provide positive and negative feedback
both to ourselves and to those around us in response
to certain behaviors and experiences. These are
experienced as emotions, and these tend to move us
into certain general courses of action. They begin as
hormones, like cortisol and epinephrine; and peptides
like B-endorphin and oxytocin; and neurotransmitters
like monoamines, norepinephrine, serotonin and
dopamine. Dopamine, for example, "plays a major role
in the brain system that is responsible for
reward-driven learning. Every type of reward that has
been studied increases the level of dopamine
transmission in the brain" (see).
These substances will occur naturally in ordinary
activities, during exercise, excitement, competition,
pain, eating spicy food, vicarious experience,
affection, grooming, nursing and orgasm. They can act
as analgesics, opiates, mood elevators, stimulants,
depressants and even hallucinogens. While the milder
forms of pleasure and displeasure might modify this
endo-chemical soup of ours somewhat, the activities of
chemical and behavioral addiction stimulate production
of these substances as though they were drugs in
themselves, in potent doses. In this sense all
addiction is chemical. Steven Pinker describes
emotions as "adaptations, software modules. Each human
emotion mobilizes the mind and body to meet one of the
challenges of living and reproduction in the cognitive
niche. The function of happiness would be to mobilize
the mind to seek the keys to Darwinian fitness."
Emotions are ultimately about movement or behavior.
They didn't survive genetically to be ends in
themselves: the chemistry would serve its motivational
function and then be gone or reabsorbed.
Experientially, addiction feels like a conditioned
behavioral pattern that has become inextricably
entrenched, wired up to hypersensitive triggers that
are largely subliminal, and then armored against
intervention with cognitive tricks. The first line of
an addiction's defense seems to be an ability to
dissociate the progress of the behavior from any of
the negative feedback that the due consequences of the
activity have to offer. These are taken out of the
equation, set aside in some other room, or denied.
Take that awful hangover, for example. When you think
about it, all of the discomfort of withdrawal from an
alcohol addiction (the more serious DT's excepted)
doesn't really amount to the unpleasantness of one or
at most two decent hangovers. And yet the
unpleasantness of the hangover doesn't really factor
into the "decision" to drink again the next day, and
in fact, often becomes just an excuse to take "a hair
of the dog that bit you" immediately upon awakening
(here we will use the word awakening somewhat
differently than in Buddhism). The negative feedback
alone seems to stand no chance at all against our own
neurochemistry. These ill-gotten or unearned pleasures
exact a price, often a heavy one, from broken
kneecaps, courtesy of your frustrated bookie, to AIDS
and Hep C, to imprisonment, to homelessness, to the
death of your young daughter riding in the car that
you were driving while drunk. But the armoring can
hide nearly all of the real costs. Any effective
recovery program has to develop a sharp enough edge
and enough brute force to cut this armor
away. This requires both
cognitive skill and emotional force potent enough to
rival both the "stinking thinking" and the intensity
of the neuro-chemical high. And one of these is not
likely to work without the other. Simply thinking
correctly, or reading a book, or correcting cognitive
errors, or talking it out with a counselor are just
not enough. There needs to be a powerful affective
component. But the word powerful here needs
clarification: in physics, the word power measures a
rate of transformation, not a quantity of force. The
power of a feeling or emotion expresses itself as
behavioral change, not as noise, as work done, not as
resistance felt. While anger can at times be powerful,
such gentle states as gratitude and forgiveness can
often be even more powerful if they lead to real
change. When a behavior is as entrenched as an
addiction or a dependence you sometimes need to dig a
new trench.
The
ability that we have to disconnect ourselves from the
consequences of our choices and actions is only
apparent and temporary, and it does us no service at
all. We will readily accept the idea that it's the
craving that causes our pleasure, but quickly shift
the blame for the subsequent pain to other causes
entirely. The whole point of having the freedom to
choose lies in learning what our successes and
failures have to teach us. The great point in
exercising our liberties lies in finding where those
end, in a respect for the rights of others, in the
limits imposed by our finitude, and in our sense of
duty. The consequences that teach us best need to be
felt without buffering, without insulation and without
any unnecessary delay. Interference with this valuable
information is known as enabling. The due consequences
need to be associated with their appropriate causes.
As Herbert Spencer said, "The ultimate result of
shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the
world with fools." Yet we insist on creating the
buffers, the insulation and the delays. To this end we
can call up our impressive array of defense mechanisms
and cognitive biases, our coping mechanisms and
logical fallacies. Repression, for example, is a
defense mechanism that pushes from the mind any
experience that it deems unacceptable, but according
to unacceptable criteria when this only leads to
suffering. Rationalization is a favorite among
addicts. Some recovery programs work to strip these
protections away, perhaps most obviously Tough Love.
This is central and fundamental to a Buddhist
approach, as the whole chain of conditioned arising
emerges from ignorance and our getting the appropriate
feedback is central to its eradication by applying
discriminating wisdom. Denial, whether of
responsibility, of causes, of
preconditions, or of consequences,
may be the first major factor defining the pathology
of addiction. Denial can be thought of as a
combination of the Unwholesome Roots of aversion
and delusion, of dosa
and moha.
The
second factor, or second line of the pathology's armor
or defense, is usually some version of the spiral of
guilt, self-loathing or shame. This, more than a
little perversely, will take what you are still able
to feel of negative feedback and turn it into a
stimulus, a condition which begs for further
medication or, behaviorally, neurochemical endomedication,
to coin a new term. This will keep the vicious cycle
going. Pain, insecurity, suspicion, mistrust and fear
are all played like trump cards. The addict's eroded
self-image, self-confidence and self-respect leave him
with no firm place to make a stand. All the while his
brain's reward systems are insisting that he is doing
something the way that things should be done, or
otherwise he would not be feeling such pleasure. Maybe
he is just not craving enough to cause enough pleasure
and avoid enough pain.
Addiction, then, may be viewed as an interconnected
cluster of learned cognitive and behavioral
subroutines that have now become a "second nature" by
way of extensive reinforcement, the persistent heavy
use of consciousness-altering behaviors, and the
denial or the perverse use of negative reinforcement.
These will subjectively mimic the basic drives, having
co-opted their neurochemical responses. The problems
here are formidable. But it wasn't an infection or a
bad gene that created this. It was a series of poor
choices made according to evaluative beliefs and
gradually disintegrating values. Meanwhile, a great
thing about the brain is that neuroplasticity is a
real process: both learning and unlearning are still
possible, even for adults. Conditions can be
reconditioned, structures can be reconstructed, and
our models can be remodeled. And the bottom line,
regardless of any disease theory, is that if you quit
drinking and never drink again, it's behind you.
Further, no matter how special you are, you would not
be the first special person to succeed at this.
I say of this kind of
pleasure that it should be followed, that it should be
developed, that it should be cultivated, and that it
should not be feared (MN 139).
The Chain's Weakest Links
The Third
Noble Truth states that suffering can be brought to an
end. This cessation or eradication is called nirodha.
We do not achieve this by craving liberation or by
abhorring bondage, but by breaking the chains of
causation that lead to unwholesome states. We cease to
perform those acts by which we create our suffering.
This cessation is a choice or decision, based upon
things we have learned from our experience.
Eradication is a good gloss for nirodha since
this carries the old word for root, radix: one
extinguishes suffering here by pulling out causes by
the root, or cutting them off at their source. This
freedom, in its highest form, is known as nibbana,
the Sanskrit nirvana, extinguishing,
extinction or unbinding. The dissolution (bhanga)
of the false will not take the seeker to some better
elsewhere or a heaven but to reality-as-it-is, to yathabhuta,
the correct, or the here-and-now, suchness, or tathata.
It's a long journey and a lot of work to arrive here
at the place that was right before our eyes and under
our noses the whole time. The knowledge and vision of
things as they really are is yathabhuta
nanadassana.
Conditionality is specific (idappaccayata). It
follows rules. Wherever there is a chain of causes,
"when this exists, that comes to be; with the
arising of this, that arises. When this does not
exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of
this, that ceases" (MN115). Both our ego and our
suffering are conditioned and emergent phenomena.
Phenomena remain only as long as their causes or
conditions remain. Consequently, problem phenomena may
be undone by breaking the chain and undoing the
causes. We don't feed the things we don't want, we tax
the things we want less of, we cease to provide them
with nourishment, and they die out. In the last
section we looked at some of the weak points on the
chain of Conditioned Arising. Living to learn, living
to outgrow ignorance, was an effective way to
intervene in the ignorance at the very start of it
all. Some of our preconscious links, particularly our
conditioned behavior and emotional responses, require
more roundabout methods for conscious correction,
since these are often not even noticed until they are
already in play. Here we often have to look to the
behavioral or verbal expression of a sub- conscious
problem to root out these constructions. Consciousness
often needs to use tricks or trick mirrors to see
what's beneath it.
Avoiding
contact is sometimes a useful solution, unless this
involves self-deception. Feelings that are felt in
response to contact can be quickly reassessed in more
neutral or value-free terms. Craving and aversion can
be interrupted in many ways, from counting to ten, to
controlling our requirements for satisfaction, to
driving a wedge between pain and the taking of pain
personally. Clinging and attachment are best broken by
using our power to assign and withdraw value and
perceived relevance. Becoming and self-identification
can best be broken by humility and authenticity. Any
item along any causal chain may be comprehended in
terms of the simple formula: "This is, because that
is. This is not, because that is not. This
ceases to be, because that ceases to be." I can stop
having this consequence if I can stop supporting its
cause.
Restraint and Renunciation
Many if
not most of the conditioned reactions we have on the
way to suffering are immediate in the sense that they
happen without mediation, as if automatically, but
they can often be interrupted simply by inserting a
little bit of time, space or metaphorical distance
between cause and effect. Done skillfully, we get the
right or optimum amount of distance from the stimulus
and a little breathing room in which to choose a
response. This is not escape or fugue. It is not
running away from our problems but finding better ways
to solve them. And it isn't an inauthentic denial of
our true self's sacred feelings because what is trying
to pass for our authentic, true self is the process
that is getting us into trouble. Einstein once said,
"The significant problems that we face cannot be
solved at the same level of thinking we were at when
we created them." Often the right intervention is no
more complicated than stepping just one level up, or
getting a little bit more leverage or perspective on
the problem. Much of the big human dilemma may be
likened to crawling through a complicated maze on our
hands and knees, lost, bewildered, indulging in the
drama and tragedy of it all, and unaware that the
walls of the maze are only one meter high. A lot of
our solutions simply require walking erect and looking
around us.
Patience
is one of our most vital lessons in the noble life,
since here we take the side of time itself, and side
with impermanence or anicca. The Spanish have
a plucky challenge: "Time and I, against any two." One
of that team will always survive. Our haste, our
jumping to conclusions, our selling ourselves short,
our shortsighted and precipitous actions, our lack of
impulse control, our intolerance for even the most
momentary of our frustrations, our tendency to
discount the future, or to value it less when choosing
immediate if inferior paths: these traits and
tendencies are our undoing, and in fact are posing
real threats to the survival of our species on earth.
As Dame Rebecca West once noted: "If the whole human
race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone
might well be: It seemed a good idea at the time.”
Often all that we need for impulse control is just an
eight or ten-count or a few deep breaths.
Dissociation, as a defense mechanism named in
psychology, covers a wide range of experiences, from
simply turning aside or away to attend to something
better, to having psychotic breaks with reality as
consensually understood. Sometimes it is just a simple
coping mechanism to avoid, minimize or tolerate
stress, or to avoid entering into anxiety-producing
situations. Sometimes it is just an assertion of our
personal integrity and boundaries in the face of
unreasonable social demands. Etymologically, to
dissociate is to un-belong or separate from others of
formerly common purpose. In the sense of un-belonging,
it's to cut ties and bonds and assert liberation.
Non-attachment is not the same as denial or avoidance.
In fact, it may be closer to acceptance, of reality as
it is, closer to not clinging to any one outcome over
another. Detachment permits resilience, becoming
unstuck. Any real freedom will require acceptance of
what is presently determined and predetermined,
because then we make our new creative determinations
with the actual situations and forces in play, and not
with our wishes for what we think should be the case.
The fact that our will is determined by antecedent
causes does not mean that our will is not free. In
fact the only real free will we have is in the honest
recognition and use of its determining factors.
Feelings and emotions come and go, but there are ways
to not have some of them in the first place, and there
are ways to change them into something else more
wholesome and useful. But these are choices that
cannot be made without making a little separation from
their immediate causes and a taking little time to
examine the options. Detachment isn't necessarily the
denial of feelings and emotions. These are not the
enemy of reason and clarity, but neither should they
be the masters. Feelings and emotions are not the
authentic and fundamental self that the romantics
might have us believe.
Renunciation can be accomplished with both reason and
emotion. Even considering renunciation can be a big
step. With most of the inertia of our lives, we seem
to reckon most of the energy we have spent until now
as an investment in our present self, in our momentum
and in our direction. Our cognitive biases and defense
mechanisms are all in place to defend our past
choices. It can take a lot to admit to ourselves that
we've taken wrong turns, thought wrong thoughts,
helped to spread lies or befriended inferior people.
Don't quit, don't give up, is the mantra, even when
the behavior is known to be self-destructive.
Nietzsche's Zarathustra wanted looking aside to be his
sole negation, not in anger or disgust, but with a
view to all that will otherwise be missed. It isn't
necessary to renounce prior conditions with excessive
affective or emotive force, and this is important for
those resolving or making resolutions to quit an
addiction. In simplest terms it is simply a matter of
redefining ourselves, calmly and realistically, and
letting go of the identifications that have failed to
serve us, while not becoming blind to those parts of
ourselves that need to be removed instead of simply
ignored. Renunciation is only part of a broader
process of self-redefinition. To take a greater degree
of responsibility and control
over what you regard as constituting your person is
also to gain a greater control over what you need to
take personally.
The word
resolution itself contains an educational mystery. On
the one hand it represents the resolve of a purposeful
being to pursue a particular path, and this takes some
sort of energy or motive force (this subject will be
discussed in more depth under Samma Vayama or
Right Effort). On the other hand, resolution is a term
used in optics to denote clarity of view or vision, as
with the resolving power of a telescope or a camera
lens. The resolution that we want to use in the
renouncing of some precondition of a present
unacceptable state is a combination of these two, a
combining of force with light. While we are
probably rarely in danger of
getting an excess of clarity, an excess of emotional
force will likely lead to setbacks. We want to use the
clarity to find where the force is best applied and
save the rest of our energy for the long road ahead.
Upanisa, the Twelve Proximate Conditions of Liberation
In one
part of the doctrine, the Chain of Conditioned Arising
continues beyond suffering to condition liberation (vimutti).
Just as suffering is brought about by a chain of
causes, described above in the Second Noble Truth, so
too does liberation have its own causal sequences by
which it emerges. There are twelve Supporting
Conditions or Proximate Causes (upanisa). This
has also been termed Transcendental Dependent Arising
(lokuttara-paticcasamuppada) in the Nettipakarana,
a later Pali text. This is an extension of the first
chain of twelve, charting steps upward from suffering
to emancipation, a further conditional structure (see
SN 12:23 / S II 29 Upanisa Sutta. See also MN
74). This sutta has not received the
attention it deserves, particularly with respect to
the progress of recovery from the states of our
suffering. Bhikkhu Bodhi has written a must-read
translation and exposition of this here.
There is one notable difference, though, between the
two chains. In the chain of Conditioned Arising we see
suffering and its preconditions as emergent
properties. In the chain of Transcendental Arising,
the end state is an abiding in reality-as-it-is, that
which does not still have to come to be. "What is new
under the sun" here, the emergent quality, is the
gradual awakening to reality, which is marked here by
the gradual disappearance of the emergent phenomena
that stood in the way of this, including the misguided
sense of the self, conceit and its cravings.
1. Dukkha.
The foundation of the path to liberation is nothing
less than the existence of suffering itself. Earlier
we saw that the term ignorance isn't always
pejorative, that life is about learning, which in turn
is gleaned from moving forward and making our errors,
such as turning down the one-way, dead-end street of
perpetual drunkenness. In order for this to be a
supporting condition for recovery, we can refuse to
take our suffering personally. When we realize "this
is not me or this is not mine," then suffering becomes
information, often about having taken a wrong turn
somewhere, about having failed to avoid what should
have been avoided, or having been led by false views
into a compromising situation. If this information can
be taken in without anger, shame and self-loathing
then detachment will permit suffering to become
useful.
Samvega
Bhikkhu
Bodhi, in The Noble Eightfold Path: The Way to the
End of Suffering, Ch 1, offers: "For suffering
to give birth to a genuine spiritual search, it must
amount to more than something passively received from
without. It has to trigger an inner realization, a
perception which pierces through the facile
complacency of our usual encounter with the world to
glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot.
When this insight dawns, even if only momentarily, it
can precipitate a profound personal crisis. It
overturns accustomed goals and values, mocks our
routine preoccupations, leaves old enjoyments
stubbornly unsatisfying."
The state
of mind that Bodhi is speaking of here has a name: Samvega.
This is quite likely the most important experience
that we can have in the process of recovery. While
this concept might be discussed often enough
throughout Buddhist scriptures, I believe it was a
mistake to have omitted it here in the context of the
Upanisa Sutta. Manly P. Hall, in Buddhism
and Psychotherapy, suggests that "suffering, by
its own painfulness must lead to the end of suffering"
and one "must therefore determine how much suffering
he is willing to endure, how long he is content to be
unhappy and insecure as the result of his own
ignorance or lack of courage" (pp. 292 & 303).
Samvega
was what the young Prince Siddhartha experienced on
his first exposure to aging, illness, death and
importantly, renunciation. It's what drove the young
prince out of his palace. In Buddhism, samvega
is also a positive state, worth cultivating, one
that can help with Right Effort as well as Right
Intention. Thanissaro Bikkhu, in "Affirming the Truths
of the Heart" (see),
asserts that samvega is "a hard word to
translate because it covers such a complex range, at
least three clusters of feelings at once: the
oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that
comes with realizing the futility and meaninglessness
of life as it's normally lived; a chastening sense of
our own complacency and foolishness in having let
ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of
urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless
cycle." But there also is a fourth cluster of affect
here: a certainty, and sometimes a remembering, that
there is a much better way to live. It is often a
heart attack of the mind that winds up saving
someone's life. While it may be as serious as a heart
attack, it is not altogether unkind.
The
experience of samvega has something in common
with what in recovery is called "hitting bottom," or
at least with a particularly cogent sense of "having
had enough." But in this context it's important to
note that the location of one's "bottom" is variable,
and ultimately a function of our values, or what
remains of them. We don't need to go all the way to
jail or intensive care. We can raise our bottom, the
point below which we cannot go, by finding what is
left of our dignity. It is in fact viewing the path we
have been traveling with horror and revulsion, and
understanding that this path leads to even greater
suffering, usually followed by death. But there is
something further here that distinguishes this from
the more familiar negative emotions that set off the
guilt and shame spirals that any addict should be
familiar with. There is a positive vision to it as
well, a glimpse or even a memory of an alternative way
of being, something of life outside of the pit, and
this comes with a sense of urgency that now is the
time to make this choice. While the feeling combines
both horror and urgency, it draws the mind and
attention to the problem for diagnosis, treatment and
healing.
Samvega
is an affective state, and a potent one. It is not
something you simply read about and think a good idea.
In fact it is probably most reliably attained under
the influence of the powerful class of drugs
called mind-expanding or psychedelic.
This is likely the reason that these substances have
such a remarkable track record in treating addictive
disorders, with the propaganda, ignorance and denial
on the part of our governments notwithstanding. Samvega
is getting outside of or beyond yourself, into
something larger, greater, more important, more
significant, more loving, longer
lasting, more sustainable,
something beyond the addict's life of desperation. It
is in fact an altered state, a breaking open of the
head. The experience of religious or spiritual
conversion that is often cited as an effective cure
for addiction might be samvega misnamed or
misidentified, particularly when atheists and
agnostics also manage to wriggle free. While it is not
widely broadcast, it is also no secret that Bill
Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, became
enamored with LSD in the 1950's as a potential
treatment for addiction, and he even proposed for a
time that special AA meetings be conducted where the
drug was administered under proper supervision as a
key part of a spiritual program for recovery.
Unfortunately, the drug was also helping to turn a
generation of young people against war and the
government's war-machine propaganda and that could not
be allowed to continue.
Samvega
can be reached by a number of paths, particularly
including Buddhist Vipassana meditation. I personally
found my own samvega with the help of
Ayahuasca, an entheogen from the Brasilian rainforest.
But I would at this point like to call the reader's
attention to the disclaimer found at the end of the
Preface. Your decisions are your own.
Upanisa, Continued
2. Saddha.
The second step, conditioned by dukkha or
suffering, is saddha, usually translated as
faith, conviction or confidence. It should be obvious
by now that something quite different is meant than
the blind faith of the theistic scriptural traditions.
Clearly, we cannot be "wise men and inquirers" while
we are simultaneously blinded by our faith and
beliefs. Rather, this shade of conviction is simply in
knowing that there is a way out, one that has been
traveled many times before, by at least some people
who were even more special than we are. It is the
knowledge that there is a place of refuge, or in this
Buddhist context, three places of refuge, one in the
example set by the Buddha, a mortal human being who
was able to awaken and get free, one in the Dhamma,
the teaching embodied in the Doctrine and Discipline
prescribed by the Buddha, and one in the Sangha, the
community, fellowship and assistance of others sharing
the path to liberation from suffering. The faith
placed in these is not to be uncritical. It is
unrelated to both belief and disbelief, and in fact
both of these must be suspended. There is a degree to
which the doctrinal tenets will probably need to be
provisionally accepted. It is quite probable that a
number of these tenets will be beyond one's present
capacity for verification. Some of the propositions
offered by the Buddha fly in the face of just about
everything some cultures have to teach us about the
meaning of life. This provisional acceptance is done
in precisely the same spirit that scientists
provisionally accept hypotheses in order to test their
validity: Suppose x were true. It would then follow
that y would happen … . Does it? In Buddhism this is
"repeatedly arising or tentative faith" (aparaparam
uppajjana-saddha), something that is to be
confirmed by firsthand experience. Importantly, we
should understand the difference between examining
something to verify that it is true and examining
something to see whether or not it is true. Only the
latter can be a truly authentic inquiry. It is
important that we can also be prepared to say no, I
cannot or cannot yet agree with this, if experience
says so.
Several
purported paths to liberation already exist. In the
next section we will explore more of what paths can
mean as conceptual metaphors. For now, let it simply
mean that you are not alone and breaking trail in the
wilderness, even if it feels like this. Others have
been here before. There are already grounds for
trusting a little in this, even though some of the
methods have led others astray into religious belief
and delusion. It is not really necessary to make all
of the possible mistakes in the first person. Others
have already thought up the wheel, and fire, and
figured out how to make suffering optional. We are
able, as the Spanish say, "aprender en cabeza ajena,"
to learn in another's head.
3. Pamojja.
The knowledge that there is most likely some way out,
and that this way out is truly attainable for someone
in a volitionally degraded condition, conditions pamojja,
variously translated relief, joy or gladness. There is
something new worth trying, perhaps a reality that
doesn't need to be created. The one-way-ness of
pessimism and despair ends. We may begin to see our
suffering as at least somewhat optional and
unnecessary. According to the Buddha, this creates a
readiness to hear the doctrine and undertake the
discipline, beginning with the basic rules of ethical
training. Pamojja might be likened to hearing,
after a particularly long wait, that the medics
have arrived.
4. Piti.
The path, now being tried, begins to provide positive
feedback. The renunciate has begun to realize the
effects of samatha and vipassana
(serenity and insight) meditative practice. The first
of the effects presents itself as piti,
variously translated as rapture, elation, enthusiasm,
delight, zest,
refreshment, exhilaration, bliss. The scriptures
enumerate five stages or levels of this bliss (see
Outline, Pleasant States), but these are usually
inflated with some hyperbolic verbiage praising the
extraordinariness of such states. Buddhist teachers
are not always above using bait in the form of fancy
descriptions of exalted states in order to attract
seekers down the path, even though this is the wrong
kind of motivation. As elsewhere in world religions,
too much attention is paid to the glamor of the final
states and not enough to the work to be done to get
there. Truthfully, this is the beginning of moving
into and taking part in higher altered states, using
nothing more than internally available resources, but
the hyperbole is unnecessary to a true inquirer and
even a little embarrassing. And yet the lowest level
of piti as rapture is indeed accompanied by
goosebumps, and the higher levels do feel as though
you are being showered with grace, or transported.
Once again, some sort of religious conversion
experience may be unnecessarily named or credited
here. You may have felt this first "goosebumps" level
before, perhaps at the moment you learned you've been
offered the dream job you have wanted for years, or
have just won something big in a contest. Most of the
high, higher and highest feelings and emotions occur
naturally in the human organism, conditioned by
millions of years of want-driven action or kamma.
What is specific to the methods of Buddhism is the
cultivation of the wholesome ones in ways that
lead to more frequent occurrence but do not lead to
clinging to these states.
For those in early recovery, piti can signal
the discovery that sobriety itself is a superior and
less costly high. In recovery groups this stage of
development is often referred to as the Pink Cloud, a
temporary sensation of well-being and euphoria, and this
should be taken as a serious
warning. This stage does not last, it will not last,
it cannot last, because any reality is characterized
by anicca or impermanence. It can, however,
be a most- pleasant "welcome back," provided that more
realistic expectations can be developed and
remembered. You're out of the
gutter now, and standing high atop the curb.
5. Passadhi.
Piti or rapture, with a little bit of extra or
applied work, conditions passadhi, usually
translated as tranquility or serenity. Piti
cannot last. Neither will recovery's Pink Cloud
experience. In the last chapter I suggested that we
are wired to keep seeking improvement rather than mere
homeostasis. We much prefer states that get
continually better, while a continuous state of
happiness will soon tend to feel stagnant or boring.
We have now "been there and done that." Our baseline
for what we recognize as satisfactory states keeps
getting elevated by a steadier supply of happier
places. This does not serve us well at all. It
requires reason to embrace our feelings and emotions
with this understanding. It seems that we need to
consciously cultivate our senses of appreciation,
satisfaction and gratitude in order to successfully
manage a steady-state, equilibrated, sustainable life
and livelihood. We need to train ourselves to settle
in, to cultivate our appreciation for what we already
have and our "acceptance of the things we cannot
change," such as the nature of the reality that tugs
the galaxies around. It doesn't hurt us here to
remember that we have now found our way to the "right
track," and in fact this sort of faith or saddha,
is sometimes given as a gloss for passadhi.
Clarity and serene confidence are also mentioned.
Probably
the worst thing to do at this stage is to conflate
serenity with smugness, as is often seen with those
who have found their lord, prophet or savior. Serenity
can indeed be a less assailable place, something of a
refuge from some of the vagaries of fortune, but this
is not the same thing as being wrapped up in a
delusion of unassailability guarded by ignorance and
denial. Passadhi must face the challenges as
they come, and accept the things that won't be
changed. It learns to accept that both moods and the
tides of fortune will continue to rise and fall, and
be satisfied that, on average, things will tend to
improve to the extent that we can stick with the
program.
6. Sukha.
Passadhi, serenity, conditions sukha,
happiness, well-being, pleasantness, satisfaction,
blessedness or ease. But this is not quite the same
happiness that comes to most people's minds when they
think of the word. This is a little like wanting what
you already have, but including the trials and
challenges, and not caring to chase the impossible or
the unnecessary. Happiness, and even taking pleasure
in happiness, is a fine thing in Buddhism. What is not
OK is the pursuit of happiness, or the clinging to
happiness when the time has come for this to change or
move on. Sukha is the knowledge that we either
have or will soon have all that we truly need. Sukha
is merely a sign that we are on the right track. And
instead of taking endless photos of ourselves standing
next to that sign, as proof that we have been there,
what we want to do is simply stay on the right track.
Sukha is information that helps us with
guidance, but it isn't proof of our merit any more
than distress is proof of our demerit. It is a
byproduct of our behavior. Sukha embodies an
understanding that it is we ourselves who create our
own states, and that we have a degree of mental
control that is independent of circumstances and
objective phenomena. Sukha is a happiness that
occurs without any illusions that we can exempt
ourselves from anicca, dukkha and anatta.
It does not signal the end of our challenges.
7. Samadhi.
Sukha, as a truer happiness, conditions samadhi,
mental concentration or concentrative absorption. Here
we begin to enter a more rarified climate where few
people are found spending much of their time. Samadhi
is a difficult state to attain amidst endless
fretting, handwringing and emotional drama. The whole
world, within the mind and without, is endlessly
distracting, even when it is being pleasantly
entertaining. What Buddha called the five Hindrances
or Nivaranana, begin to remain set aside when we put
them aside (see Glossary at V., Akusala). The five
hindrances are particularly troublesome in developing
the Eightfold Path steps of Right Effort and Right
Mindfulness. These five are identified as sensual
craving, ill-will, sloth-and-torpor,
restlessness-and-regret and cynical doubt. There are,
of course, other hindrances to concentration. To be
without distraction, to be focussed or concentrated is
not the same as shutting out the rest of the world.
The word "concentrate" means to be with or in the
center. The circles spreading outward from the place
the pebble landed in the pond are concentric circles.
They cover the pond. The circus performer up on the
high wire with his long pole is about as focussed as
humans can get on his very narrow path ahead, but he
is also acutely aware of the far right-hand and
left-hand ends of his pole. The bottom line is
remaining in the middle, without distraction. The
middle may be thought of as the place or track that is
nearest to the widest array of options or solutions to
problems. It is not limited to the center but is
balanced there.
8. Yathabhuta
Nanadassana. Samadhi, or concentration,
conditions the Knowledge and Vision of
Reality-As-It-Is, or of things as they truly are. This
is also known as Vipassana Bhavana or the
Development of Insight. Concentration is not an end in
itself but a means to understand things as they really
are. Most of our knowledge and vision is self-centered
and self-serving, and concerns what the world can do
for us. After all, the mechanisms by which we know and
see evolved out of our intentions to survive as
individuals and breed more of the same. It might even
be said that the very ideas of knowledge and vision
are meaningless without assuming at least one self-ish
point of view or perspective. If this is the case, and
given that the range of possible points of view or
perspectives on any one objective is practically
infinite, then yathabhuta nanadassana is only
something we can approach by gaining additional points
of view or perspectives and removing distortion and
error from those we already have. This, in other
words, this is an ongoing process and not a single
epiphany. Panna (Sanskrit prajna) is
the discriminating wisdom that puts each of the
elements of our knowledge and vision into its proper
place, allowing and correcting for our self-serving
vantage points and views. It should be noted that the
self's ability to distort reality is also a part of
the greater reality. But it is one that we can do
something about. The asavas, taints or
defilements, are the mental processes that contribute
the most to this distortion. These begin to disappear
here, or rather, these denote the work to be done here
by developing our insight. There are the taints of
addiction to sensation and pleasure (kamasava),
taints of ego and its compulsion to growth (bhavasava),
taints of speculative mentality and false views (ditthisava)
and taints of delusion and ignorance (avijjasava).
9. Nibbida,
disenchantment or disillusionment, is conditioned by
the knowledge and vision of things as they really are.
This word points to some serious flaws in the way
human beings like to see things. It is as though we
would rather have our enchantments and illusions, no
matter how much they contribute to our suffering. To
some, the experience of awe is a humbling encounter
with sacredness of it all, yet in common use we use
the word awful for what scares or fails to please us.
People sing "Amazing Grace" as a song of high praise
without understanding that amazement is the
disorientation and bewilderment of being lost. Glamor
is highly praised in human culture, but fundamentally
it refers to the distortion of vision and
interpretation by spells of the dark arts. Nibbida
is the withdrawal from illusion, nearsightedness and
shortsightedness. It is rising above appearances.
Nibbida is a lot more serene and dignified than
disgust, revulsion or aversion, although the word is
sometimes translated this way. It is more of a choice
to move out of involvement with things that have shown
themselves to be not worth the time and effort. The
inferior things are discharged, or they have their
emotional charges released. They are not permanent,
they don't lead to happiness and they aren't even real
to begin with. We simply know better now and are on to
nobler endeavors.
10. Viraga
is conditioned by nibbida. Viraga is
dispassion, the fading of passions, the cessation of
affectively toned action and reaction. It is to be
without rage. Just as nibbida can be mistaken
for disgust or revulsion, viraga can be
mistaken for numbness, anhedonia or some other version
of affective neutering. It is, rather, a higher order
of serenity and equanimity. It does represent a
transition into realms where sensations, feelings and
ideas may not be particularly relevant. To call it a
step into a more supra-mundane universe misunderstands
the ultimate locus of yathabhuta: this
ultimate world is the same world as the one we live
in. We are simply encountering the more unconditioned
aspects of the stream. The taints or defilements fall
away.
11. Vimutti
(or vimokkha) is conditioned by viraga.
Vimutti is freedom, liberation, emancipation or
release. Relative to the 3 marks of existence,
liberation is threefold. Animitta or
formlessness is the comprehension that all forms are
impermanent and all things are transitory, or better
still, that all forms and all things are merely
temporarily perceptible eddies in a greater process or
stream. It is the final transcending of anicca.
Apanihita or passionlessness is the
comprehension that all formations are unable to attain
or provide any lasting equilibrium or happiness. This
is the final transcending of dukkha. Sunnata
or emptiness is the comprehension that all formations
are without self or soul, that all conditioned or
emergent beings are ephemeral. This is the final
transcending of anatta.
12. Asavakkhaya-nana
is conditioned by vimutti. This is the
knowledge of the ending or destruction of the taints
or defilements, and represents a sort of final review
of the path and a valediction. The mind is not gone,
the taints are not forgotten. The yogin is now in a
position to retire as an arahant or return to
the world to teach as a bodhisattva. There is
no judgment attached to either choice. “Destroyed
is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be
done has been done, there is nothing further here.”
That a Path Exists
The
Fourth Noble Truth is the knowledge that there is a
path that leads to suffering's cessation (dukkha
nirodha-gamini-patipadaya nanam). This path is
known as the Noble Eightfold Path (Ariya Atthangika
Magga) and is also called the Middle Way (Majjhima
Patipada) because it is said to lie between the
extremes of self-mortification and sensual
gratification or, along another axis, between nihilism
and eternalism.
The
simple metaphor of a path or way seems to be universal
in human culture. As a prescribed series or sequence
of steps to be taken, it has an obvious place in
certain recovery programs. In Christianity it takes on
the toxic meaning of the one and only permissible way
to salvation. The term is central to the philosophy of
Daoism, as the word Dao simply means Way or Path, but
the word carried the symbolic meaning of functionally
correct behavior long before this, and soon evolved
meanings of ethically correct behavior as well. As the
course of a journey, it also took on the meaning of
the narrative of the journey or the unfolding of the
story. I explore the use of the path metaphor at some
length in my essay "The Other Original Dao: The Path,
before Kongzi and Laozi Paved It," found here.
What follows is an exploration of the Path symbol as a
conceptual metaphor taken from that essay. All of this
can be related in some way to the Buddha's use of the
term as well:
The Path as a Conceptual Metaphor
"Trails
and paths, and waterways too, have been an important
part of the human experience ever since we climbed
down out of the trees four million years ago and began
to either follow or avoid specific trails, and to
follow the streams up and down. The work that we do
with these is bred in the bone by now. The archetype
is so taken for granted that paths and roads are
omitted from most of our symbol dictionaries. We can
ask the question: what do all humans everywhere know
about ways, roads, paths, routes, courses, channels
and waterways? … .
"Ways can be either level or steep, narrow or
broad, rough or smooth, safe or dangerous. They can be
discontinuous, as when a bridge washes out, and our
detours can be long and arduous. Beyond the edge of
the traveled way are mysteries and risks, ambushes and
opportunities, the potential for getting lost, or an
opportune digression that you might have missed if you
hadn't risked getting lost. It is possible to get off
track or off of the path, or to be misguided or
misdirected. We can lose our way. Sometimes one wants
to step off the path only briefly, in order to relieve
oneself, because it's just rude to do that in the
middle. Sometimes that's a metaphor for deviating from
our primary way to satisfy other needs.
"Ways
have varying degrees of historical use, from the
single set of hoof tracks left by the prey we are
tracking, to the major highways connecting large
cities. Thus we have the lonely trails (John Muir's is
no longer lonely) and the roads less traveled, and we
have ways that whole mobs and large armies can march
dozens abreast upon.
"Roads
are not motive or causal forces. They do not take us
anywhere: we have to do that, under our own power. But
they do offer a way, a way out, or our way back home.
They offer guidance and direction. The obstacles to
our journey are pre-avoided by design, barring climate
events and the bandits. Roads can offer tremendous
magical powers that can radically alter whole
landscapes: We can improve the weather by travel- ing
a thousand miles to the south. We can get ourselves a
better king by moving a thousand miles east. And
sometimes we return by the same road we went forth on,
although we now have older eyes and newer
perspectives.
"If you
are presently on a road or a path, then you are not
being a pioneer or explorer: you are being a tourist.
Others have come before you. Others have figured
things out about this journey that you will not need
to trouble yourself with. In this way, roads are like
culture. This extends even to the notion of right of
way: roads and paths are shared solutions to cultural
problems. The benefits are shared as well. And thanks
to culture, there is usually a way to know where you
are going, if you can stop and ask for directions.
"A given
leg of a journey, section of road, or reach of a
river, goes from Point A to Point B. Because the
journey takes time and effort, Points A and B also
represent a journey through time, a sequence of events
and experiences. Extended journeys may be represented
as a series of connected legs. Ultimately this can be
extended to cover the entire course or journey of a
lifetime, from zygote to death.
"We can
study a way or a path, get familiar with it, get to
know it by heart, learn the ins and outs, ups and
downs. Moving back and forth along such a way can
become like a second nature. We can show or teach this
way to others. In this way a path is like an art or a
craft, a method, the way that certain things are done.
"If we do
not know a road or path, we describe it by its
characteristics. When we do know a road or path, we
describe it by its actual route. The word refers to
the general idea. The route or the name of the route
refers to the real thing. Similarly, the unknown river
is defined by its substance, water between and over
the earth, while the known river is defined by its
course. The way refers to the real river, not to the
imaginary, generic or hypothetical one… .
"To study
the nature of something is to study its ways, the
roads and paths it takes or prefers, the choices it
tends to make, and this implies a degree of
predictability proportionate to one's knowledge. One
can reason from its antecedents to possible
conclusions. This is only possible if a thing has a
nature or a second nature.
"Roads have crossroads and forks, just as life has
decisions and choices. A journey can be a string of
decisions and choices, and where these are made in
large numbers, the possible journeys are practically
endless. But once the journey is made there is no
"could have been." Reality does not exist in
potential, but in the path that is traveled in fact.
When the branching or dendritic structure gets very
complex it starts to look like a field. In fact, in
physics, some of the tracks made through time are made
by tensor fields. But there are still places these do
not go: the totality of the real does not include the
unreal.
"Roads do
not go everywhere. They do not cover the field but
merely trace lines across it. With the most effective
systems of roads, the greatest area or territory is
accessed by the least length of line. The way is not a
field comprised of all the possibilities. It is the
sum of all of the paths that are traveled in fact,
which must of course also account for any emergent
properties of the sum or the whole, such as the effect
of the Silk Road on human culture or the old Road to
Damascus on the future of human intelligence. Quo
imus?
"A
journey moves us through a changing landscape, and a
good journey changes us in the process. A difficult
journey does that as well. A journey is a personal
history. It is a story. It can be journaled. It can be
narrated, described, related, recounted, retold as a
sequence of events. Directions and guidance can be
provided to others in the telling of the tale.
"Roads
will take us just about anywhere. There's an old gag
that says "you can't get there from here," wherein the
comic jolt comes from the knowledge that the larger
way, road, path or course ultimately leads everywhere.
Roads and waterways both branch, exhibiting dendritic
structure. Laozi's hundred valleys pay tribute to
their sovereign, the lowliest waters. These branching
structures can be mapped, the directions can be
shared. Seen from above, they share properties with
the organization of plants above ground, plants below
ground, and circulatory systems in both plant and
animals. Dendritic or branching structure is one of
nature's go-to processes for accessing material,
energy and territory. The Road, as in 'life on the
road" is a complex network that encircles each
continent. "The road goes ever on and on" is sung by
Hobbits on leaving the Shire.
"One
level of abstraction up, the extended journey of a
single lifetime can be regarded a branch of a family
tree, which continues to reach back through time,
through race, through the origin of the species,
genera, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, to the
very first, simple, one-celled organisms. You get the
picture without needing to see the fuller account of
what happens when primordial stars explode and make
carbon. Whatever living being might be nearest to you,
be it a cricket or a fern, for instance, it has a
similar unbroken line that goes all the way back to
the beginning of time, a line which for much of that
way was also your own line of descent. This makes all
of life family… .
"Roads
can often optimize a transition from A to B by taking
a route that is not a straight line, but rather, a
line that is analogous to the path of least
resistance. They do not just plunge through mountains
except where tunnels are absolutely necessary. Fords
are similarly limited. They can only achieve this
optimization by being specific to the terrain. There
may be a general set of standards or principles for
laying out a road, but there is no general road, not
even in Heaven or the World of Ideas.
"The
physical location of a road or path can be seen as a
function of certain principles and variables working
together. For instance, there may be design parameters
concerning gradient, cross-slope and curvature. The
terrain presents a set of variables, big rocks and
cliffs, canyons, marshes and rivers. The final
location will represent an entrainment to, or a
convergence around optimum solutions as compromises
between the parameters and the variables. We should be
reluctant to call this compromise a function of an
ideal. The process of optimization is similar in
effect to the principle of fitness in evolution - it's
a force that pushes things towards convergence. If you
know the rules by which the road was laid out, you may
or may not approximate the result in an independent
design. Sometimes the terrain is so demanding that
solutions must converge. And sometimes the hope of a
solution needs to be abandoned."
By way of
a summary, a path does not represent a field of
possibilities. It is a narrowing of the possibilities,
according to constraints from within in the
limitations of the typical traveler and constraints
from without in the features of the terrain that do
not contribute to our well-being or effectively moving
us towards a goal. A path has the same
relationship to a field as order does to entropy or
natural law does to chaos.
The Steps of the Path
The path
set by the Buddha is a series of behavioral
recommendations, not a list of commandments, based
upon what might today be called his understanding of
the natural laws affecting the well-being of sentient
creatures. The eight steps are often organized into
three categories.
Steps one
and two are called Panna Sampada, the wisdom
attainments. While this only covers the first two
practices, in some places these are considered to be
the final culmination of the steps. Presumably this is
the difference between laying the groundwork for
understanding and the final realization of
understanding. Panna as wisdom is more than
intellectual understanding. And it is not an
all-encompassing, unconditional wisdom that validates
all ideas and points of view. It discriminates and
judges, especially on the basis of wholesomeness and
well-being. It is a wisdom with cutting edges, a
wisdom that is able to say "no, that is incorrect," or
"no, that is a toxic idea, even if your entire culture
approves of it." To exercise panna is to take
charge of the contents of our minds. A friend named
Daniel Tucker once asked a group he was teaching what
they might think if they arose one morning and went
downstairs for that first cup of coffee, only to find
some complete stranger on the couch, watching
television, burping, farting, smoking and drinking
beer. What would they do? Would they not make a
serious inquiry regarding how that person got there,
what was he doing and whether he proposed to leave
before the authorities arrived? While this is just not
acceptable behavior in life, most people seem to allow
their own minds to fill up with such uninvited
strangers and don't even question their presence.
Unquestioned ideas from who-knows-where soon dominate
their thoughts. Panna means cognitive
self-control and develops the critical thinking skills
that distinguish between the wholesome and
unwholesome. Panna Sampada incorporates:
Step One: Samma Ditthi, Right View or
Understanding, andStep Two, Samma Sankappa, Right Intention or Thought
The next
triad of steps is called Sila Sampada, the
ethical or virtuous attainments. Sila refers
to how we conduct ourselves in the world, the behavior
by which we propagate our kamma and thus its
consequences, which include our future selves. Sila
has the connotation of habitual or regular practice.
This is in the sense of self-directed discipline
rather than obedience to a moral law. It is purely
pragmatic. Sentient beings are not what they think
they are; they do not conform to some Platonic ideal.
You are what you do. Human is as human does. There is
no hypocrisy with this view: the hypocrite is merely
deluded or a liar. The lofty ideals by which hunan
beings try to define, understand and measure
themselves are illusions. Sila requires a more
honest look. And the bottom line is: if you are
suffering, the first place to look for the roots of
this is in your own behavior. This is not to say that
bad things don't happen to good people, although it is
likely that even a majority of Buddhist followers
might object and claim the law of kamma to be
more absolute. Here we will simply assert that
improved behavior tends to contribute to well-being,
to better the odds of being well. Sila Sampada
incorporates:
Step Three: SammaVaca, Right SpeechStep Four: Samma Kammanta, Right Action
Step Five: Samma Ajiva, Right Livelihood
The final
triad of steps is called Citta Sampada, the
meditative or mental attainments. These may be thought
of as the training of the mind in changing the mind,
or mental self control, where the word mental also
includes attention and our feelings as well as
thoughts. That the mind is a made, conditioned and
emergent "entity," dependent on the processes that
produce it, does not mean that the mind cannot be free
and creative. This training helps us to move from
state to state at will, and particularly from
unwholesome to wholesome states. This is the
exercising and training of mental freedom. Citta
Sampada incorporates:
Step Six: Samma Vayama, Right EffortStep Seven: Samma Sati, Right Mindfulness
Step Eight: Samma Samadhi, Right Concentration
These
Eight Steps form the "program" that Buddha prescribed
for the alleviation of suffering. In the next eight
chapters we will examine them individually, with some
added references for their use in recovery from
addiction and denial, which are taken here to be a
special subset of the broader class of suffering's
causes. These are causes which have armored themselves
against change. This armor is broken down methodically
by the practice of these steps.
There are
some interesting parallels here in the field of
psychology. For example, in a Psych textbook called Psychology
Applied to Modern Life: Adjustment in the 21st
Century, Wayne Weiten suggests three general
types of "coping strategies": "Appraisal-focused
strategies occur when the person modifies the way they
think [adaptive cognitive] … . People using
problem-focused strategies try to deal with the cause
of their problem [adaptive behavioral] … . [and]
Emotion-focused strategies involve releasing pent-up
emotions, distracting oneself, managing hostile
feelings, meditating or using systematic relaxation
procedures." These three are none other than Panna,
Sila and Citta Sampada, in
sequence.
A Different Kind of Faith
There is
a question of trust in starting down such a path. Upon
seeing a physical path, there is an automatic kind of
faith that leaves you fairly certain that it will lead
you somewhere, and that others have been here before
and that this has led them somewhere. There are
different degrees and categories of doubt. The Buddha
never dismissed the value of critical thinking skills.
He did have some negative things to say about vicikiccha,
a word frequently translated as "skeptical doubt" but
which is better understood as cynicism in the more
modern sense of the word. This is dismissing a thing
before giving it a chance, or even a lack of trust or
conviction that anything might be properly called
true. Any authentic investigation asks for an ability
to suspend disbelief as well as belief, to understand
an object of inquiry from inside and out. The sort of
faith needed in Buddhism is more like wanting to know
that the plane you are about to board has sober pilots
and licensed mechanics. Values want a positive core,
not necessarily something or someone to believe in,
but at least something that looks like it might pass a
test of trustworthiness. Pre-existing disbeliefs do
not make for an adequate core. In the Buddha's own
words:
“Don't go
by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture,
by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by
agreement through pondering views, by probability, or
by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’
When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities
are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these
qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities,
when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to
suffering’ — then you should abandon them.” And “When
you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are
skillful; these qualities are blameless; these
qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities,
when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare &
to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in
them.” (Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65).
And, on
becoming prematurely attached to a discovery: "If a
person has faith he preserves faith when he says "my
faith is thus," but he does not yet come to the
definite conclusion "only this is true, anything else
is wrong." … In this way he preserves truth … but as
yet there is no discovery of truth" (MN 95).
Self-efficacy, the ability to act as your own agent in
life and exert some decision-making authority that
will translate into real change, is only distantly
related to fierce independence. Much of success really
lies in the ability to learn from others, from both
successes and failures. No matter how special we are,
there is usually someone around we can learn from.
Even a person who is in the 99.9th percentile in
intelligence, a one-in-a-thousand intellect, still has
a major global metropolis of seven million people on
earth who can solve puzzles faster still. Culture
carries these solutions to problems across the
centuries, so our teachers don't even need to be alive
anymore. Fire and the wheel don't need reinventing.
It's no embarrassment to learn from culture. To
replace old patterns of behavior with ones that we
find preferable, we must first develop our
preferences. But if first-hand experience is the only
way we can
locate new, potential preferences, the choice is
usually poor, and often limited to extrapolations and
recombinations of the same behaviors that we are
trying to get free from. The challenge is in deciding
what to "believe in." Here we want to believe in what
works. The trap is to believe in the words instead of
the actions. Nietzsche said: "But what convinces us
isn't necessarily true: it is merely convincing. A
note for asses." Human is as human does. That's all
there need be to faith.
I am not under the sway of what I know. DN 24
There
are eight behavioral values presented in the Eightfold
Path, each preceded by the word Samma, usually
translated "Right ..." Samma also glosses as:
complete, coherent, perfect, ideal, skillful, optimal,
good and wholesome.
Samma Ditthi might be best translated as Right View, although ditthi also means point of view, perspective, outlook, opinion, understanding and belief. But understanding, when right, might be a little too broad and admit more relativity than critical and discriminating intelligence would allow. Right View means we are attempting to keep the big picture and all relevant and correct frames of reference in mind, beyond the small little dramas that occupy us to our detriment. Right View is understanding the Four Noble Truths and the ephemeral, unsatisfactory and illusory nature of the self (anicca, dukkha, anatta). This is to see things as they are, not as they appear, not to accept or deny, not to cling or refuse. This is to get your thinking straight and not twist what you see into what you want to see. The default value of the word ditthi in Buddhism is negative, i.e. often problematic and limiting views. The word ditthigata refers to fixed, biased or pre-established views. Right View is coming to terms with the basic facts of life, as Buddha understood them of course. Right View is also seeing the things that are worth seeing, by eliminating what keeps us blind or asleep. Without Right View we are like drunks passed out under the northern lights.
Samma Ditthi might be best translated as Right View, although ditthi also means point of view, perspective, outlook, opinion, understanding and belief. But understanding, when right, might be a little too broad and admit more relativity than critical and discriminating intelligence would allow. Right View means we are attempting to keep the big picture and all relevant and correct frames of reference in mind, beyond the small little dramas that occupy us to our detriment. Right View is understanding the Four Noble Truths and the ephemeral, unsatisfactory and illusory nature of the self (anicca, dukkha, anatta). This is to see things as they are, not as they appear, not to accept or deny, not to cling or refuse. This is to get your thinking straight and not twist what you see into what you want to see. The default value of the word ditthi in Buddhism is negative, i.e. often problematic and limiting views. The word ditthigata refers to fixed, biased or pre-established views. Right View is coming to terms with the basic facts of life, as Buddha understood them of course. Right View is also seeing the things that are worth seeing, by eliminating what keeps us blind or asleep. Without Right View we are like drunks passed out under the northern lights.
The Ownership of Kamma
We do not know what we want
and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is
the fact. Jean-Paul Sartre
The first axiom of Right View is that all beings are responsible for their own kamma. This is expressed as sabbe satta kammasaka, "all beings own their kamma." This is also called the right view of the ownership of action (kammassakata sammaditthi). Simply put, you own what you have done and you own what you do. Further, you are responsible for what you will become. "Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions for refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior" (MN 135). As mentioned earlier, the word action refers to intentional actions, to the choices we make, to behavior with some sort of purposeful or goal-directed vector. This acceptance of responsibility is the first step to freedom. Guidelines for good behavior are developed further in the subsequent steps on the Path, particularly Samma Vaca, Samma Kammanta and Samma Ajiva. We learn to recognize good, skillful or wholesome (kusala) kamma as it develops the mind and benefits others, and bad, unskillful or unwholesome (akusala) kamma as it defiles the mind and harms others.
The first axiom of Right View is that all beings are responsible for their own kamma. This is expressed as sabbe satta kammasaka, "all beings own their kamma." This is also called the right view of the ownership of action (kammassakata sammaditthi). Simply put, you own what you have done and you own what you do. Further, you are responsible for what you will become. "Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions for refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior" (MN 135). As mentioned earlier, the word action refers to intentional actions, to the choices we make, to behavior with some sort of purposeful or goal-directed vector. This acceptance of responsibility is the first step to freedom. Guidelines for good behavior are developed further in the subsequent steps on the Path, particularly Samma Vaca, Samma Kammanta and Samma Ajiva. We learn to recognize good, skillful or wholesome (kusala) kamma as it develops the mind and benefits others, and bad, unskillful or unwholesome (akusala) kamma as it defiles the mind and harms others.
We can
get into some pretty questionable logic when we start
to look at kamma as some kind of moral law,
and some especially specious logic when we look for
retributive justice in the "law of kamma."
Regardless of how well-behaved we may be, unfortunate
things are almost certain to happen to us. Bad things
will happen to good people, and half of human religion
is fabricated to account for this. The feeble-minded
will make misfortune out to be a test given to them by
their deity, or as a blessing in disguise. Others will
invoke multiple lifetimes. None of this is necessary.
Being good or behaving well happens to improve our
odds, and draws less retribution in social contexts,
and fewer negative consequences in physical contexts.
Understanding the limits to the so-called "laws" of kamma
and merit are a part of Right View. The fact that we
own or are responsible for our kamma does not
mean there is a precise one-to-one correspondence
between our behavior and our fortunes. It merely means
that we have significantly affected our fortunes by
the decisions we have made, and if these fortunes are
not as we would like them to be, the first place to
look is to our own actions. Our situations can be
improved by setting better intentions, but it's
foolish to expect that better consequences are
guaranteed by a simple combination of moral behavior
and natural law. Simply put: intentional actions have
consequences, consequences can be altered by changing
acts and acts changed by changing intentions. Finally,
intentions can be changed by changing our views, and
corrected by correcting our views. We can change our
minds and this is usually the key to changing our
fortunes.
There can
be a larger-scale understanding of kamma as
well, played out across evolutionary time scales. The
choices our ancestors made, going all the way back to
our first progenitors with neurons, have left us with
a human nature, a set of cognitive, emotive and
behavioral skills and a set of ways to oversimplify
our perceptions, to take shortcuts and make hasty
decisions. In addition to this inheritance, which by
itself almost suggests a sort of determinism, we have
also inherited certain emergent faculties, such as an
ability to form various ideas of a self and various
cognitive tricks that give us some control over our
intentions or some agency to our actions. This means
that our intentions are potentially our servants. Much
the same can be said of the human culture and
civilization that we have inherited, but here, beyond
a certain point in a person's development and for
those who are capable of learning, the freedom to pick
and choose allows us to develop a far more liberated
second nature. The bottom line: you are what you do,
and what you have done, and human is as human does.
The human being is not some philosopher's or poet's
flattering ideal. We are the result of the choices
we've made over millions of years. We and our heirs
will be the result of the choices we make today.
The Four Noble Truths
Next on
the list for Right View is knowledge and insight into
the Four Noble Truths, to recap: 1) Dukkhe nanam,
penetrative insight into the truth of suffering, 2) Dukkha
samudaye nanam, penetrative insight into the
truth of the origination of suffering, 3) Dukkha
nirodhe nanam, penetrative insight into the
truth of the cessation of suffering, and finally 4) Dukkha
nirodhagaminipatipaddya nanam, penetrative
insight into the truth of the path leading to the
cessation of suffering. A working knowledge of all
eight steps of the path falls within the first step.
There is more material on the Four Noble Truths and
the Eightfold Path than is presented here. See "An
Outline of the Buddha’s Teachings And Glossary of
Buddhism’s Basic Concepts" here.
The Voice of Another and Wise Attention
In MN 43,
the Buddha names two further conditions for the
arising of Right View: the voice of another (parato
ghosa) and wise attention (yoniso-manasikara).
And he names five more assisting factors "when [this]
has deliverance of mind for its fruit": virtue,
learning, discussion, serenity and insight. The "voice
of another" is said to mean listening to conducive or
advantageous Dhamma. But it's more than this.
It points to the need to see what we are learning from
both inside and out, to use others as a sounding
board, to test ideas in the open air instead of
hearing them only in our minds. Consensus isn't as
necessary as seeing dhammas from multiple
angles. This is meant to work in conjunction with wise
attention. We are examining and questioning these
views the whole time we are entertaining them, because
for all of the value that the voice of another may
have, the potential for error never goes away. We need
the second opinions and other perspectives if we want
the broader truths, but we need just as much to vet
them, to subject them to verification. The wise in
wise attention has other translations: deep, to the
root, systematic, thoroughgoing and careful. The human
mind pays its best attention when a subject is still
less than fully understood and filed away as known.
"Been there, done that" is death to our ongoing
understanding. Premature conclusions put the mind to
sleep and leave us with unwise attention (ayoniso
manisikara), shallow and unsystematic reflection
that allows us to adopt wrong views.
Higher Purpose and Reframing
To most
human beings the three marks of existence, anicca,
dukkha and anatta, or the impermanence,
imperfection and conditionality of self, are things to
hide from or defend our beliefs from. Our elaborate
heavens are stubborn negations of all three, where we
go on forever without aging, happy all the time and
free at last of the prison of the body. Order and
perfection live high above the coarse and dirty
realities of the world. In contrast, what the Buddha
asks us to give up is seeing these three marks as bad
features of reality and to see their acceptance as a
relief from the lifelong, tedious effort of defending
our precious ignorance and delusions. To do this will
require us to completely reconstruct our understanding
of what a self is, and thus to understand it first as
a construction and not a fundamental property of the
universe. Neither was the universe put here to serve
the needs of sentient beings. The best of us can
emerge from this understanding with the feeling that
we are lucky to be here at all, and knowing that it's
in our own best interests to quit whining about life.
Our
schemas or self-representations of who we are are
normally too limited to let us see the bright side of
these three "horrible" truths. We need to learn to
take the perspective of something greater than our own
personal limitations. For me it was helpful to disregard
the notion of "my higher power" and instead
look to serving "a higher purpose," redirecting my
activities into something bigger than me and more
likely to outlive me than my self. A higher purpose is
not any sort of plan that the universe has for us,
although it can have some things in common with
something like destiny. A higher purpose has no good
will or love for us. If it were all about us it would
not be higher purpose. We may not get thanked or even
encouraged. This can be a cause, like driving the
British out of India or curing smallpox. It can be
helping science take the next step, or turning a
vacant lot into a community park or garden. It might
be an effort to try and be worth something to the
world, or to leave the place a better place than we
found it, or simply to pay our rent here in this
ecosystem. We get outside our own borders and
boundaries. For the Buddha: "It is because I see two
benefits that I still resort to remote jungle-thicket
resting places in the forest: I see a pleasant abiding
for myself here and now, and I have compassion for
future generations" (MN 4). Future generations is one
of the best, especially if future generations of all
sentient beings are included here and not just
humankind. This is taken up again at Right
Livelihood.
From
within our own boundaries the whole parade of
existence is all about us, how it can serve us and
what it can do to us. It is little wonder that our
stories are about narcissism, greed and insecurity. We
form our identities out of what we attend to and we
can grow more expansive identities by attending more
expansively. We can shift our identities from things
to processes to make change easier to comprehend and
work with. We can cease to identify with our hungers
and appetites to better attend to a range of
alternatives. We can give ourselves ever-larger
playpens to play in: a planet instead of a nation, a
species instead of a race, life itself instead of a
species. We can expand our time horizons and refer all
of our self-important little cultural fads and
fashions to a greater criterion for meaning and value.
Being able to tune our own sense of the passing of
time is exceedingly helpful in developing our patience
and deferring our gratifications. Losing
self-importance we can develop gratitude to take its
place, lower our expectations and set ourselves a more
attainable baseline for happiness. This is not the
same as giving up our loftier goals, such as waking up
and ending our suffering. All of these open up
alternatives to limited view and the suffering that
comes from seeing no way out. Seeing ourselves as
humble and small, subject to change, to imperfection
and dying, with no sky god's loving arms to embrace
and comfort us, can be as liberating to some of us as
it is terrifying to others. But a life built on the
I-me-mine, with its endless fussing and fretting, is
inconsistent with liberation.
When we
identify with our wants and desires, or when we locate
our identities within these, we will then become only
partial people whenever these wants and desires "fail"
to get met. We doom ourselves to being less than what
we believe we are. Shifting our perceptions of our
contexts and paradigms, gaining some measure of
authority over these, reframing our problems and
moving between levels of scale and abstraction, helps
us to develop cognitive self-control. When we have a
broader array of optional states of mind and attitudes
in our repertoire, we find it is much easier to
substitute one thought for another, to weed the mind
and to plant better crops. In Dhamma-Vinaya this
substitution is called tadanga or thought
replacement. William James claimed: "The greatest
weapon against stress is our ability to choose one
thought over another." It begins with work on our
views, but comes to a fuller expression in Samma
Sankappa, Right Intention.
Unlearning
In
psychology, a self-schema is a construction made up of
perceptions, beliefs, memories, ideas and values that
we hold about ourselves. It helps us to organize and
integrate the information we process about ourselves,
or about experience in general that is relevant to
ourselves. This also incorporates biases in what
people allow themselves to pay attention to, or
remember, or consider relevant, or regard as
plausible. It is a bricolage, a creation made over a
span of time using whatever experiential materials
were available at the time, some of it from parental
sources, and some from cultural sources. Usually the
earliest layers are adopted unexamined
and unvetted into place, and
much of this may be erroneous, leading to further
cumulative errors. And we don't always get better at
examining and vetting the newer stuff either. Beliefs
develop over extended periods. They are over-learned
or ingrained. This schematic structure is usually felt
to be the investment of a life's worth of living, and
such investments are usually perceived as worth
defending, often at any cost. To defend them we have
an impressive array or arsenal of cognitive biases,
defense mechanisms, coping strategies and logical
fallacies. Our self-schemas get encrusted with this
defensive armor, protecting both the wisdom and the
foolishness therein. Defenses are not merely an
intellectually structured edifice of concepts either:
otherwise it would be an easier matter just to name
the things that are wrong and delete them. Instead
they are "wired" to our emotions and feelings, often
our fears and anxieties, and this gives our beliefs an
affective value. We use the beliefs to value our
experience relative to the maintenance or enhancement
of our self-schemas.
After
trying to defend a belief and, in spite of this,
having to face the realization that the belief is in
error or has failed us, we need to use both clear
thinking and sufficient affect to replace it with
something more useful to us. Replacement or
overwriting is considerably more effective than just
leaving an old idea alone, much as weeding a garden is
more lasting if there are wanted plants in place. We
want to either reassign the older idea to a more
negative affective value or the newer idea to a more
positive one, or do a combination of these two, all
while not burdening ourselves with negative affect or
inferior feelings. In Dhamma-Vinaya, disillusionment
and disenchantment (nibbida) are regarded as
useful tools for this task. Illusions and enchantments
that have failed us are not worth keeping. Knowledge
is a dynamic process, not a static library or cache of
information. As a "fact" is remembered, or re-minded,
the brain scans for the personal history of
experiences that this fact is associated with, using
some, ignoring others, but each time this happens new
associations from the present are wired in to the
memory as well. We can add a new sense of serenity,
understanding, or forgiveness to an old experience of
anxiety, hurt or resentment. We do this whenever we
reexamine and question our thoughts. That is, we do
this when we practice mindfulness. It is at this point
that we can add new connections that correct the
problem beliefs in our self-schemas, when we are not
replacing the old beliefs altogether.
A self-schema is a function of the autobiographical
self, of one's sense of continuity and personal
history. And obviously when we are trying to free
ourselves from outdated patterns and evaluative
beliefs, personal history can be an anchor or a drag,
offering only inertial resistance to change. But
memory, like history, is dynamic, and like history it
is often rewritten by the victor. What is past becomes
prologue. We can learn from the lessons of our
personal history too, and so not be doomed to repeat
it. This is a liberation from insanity, as it's
aphoristically defined as doing the same thing over
and over while expecting different results. To the
extent that a self-schema can incorporate a model of
dynamic evolution, the beliefs that once had to defend
themselves, in place and as they were, can loosen up a
little bit and submit themselves to growth. An
evolutionary model is not a position or a stance, and
so has no reason to stay still. Until we can make this
transition from static to dynamic we are simply
"living our life out of some basic assumptions that we
made up about life. And all we’ve been interested in
doing is gathering evidence that attests to the
rightness of our assumptions" (Sarpashana, p.
124).
We cannot
see the real thing from a static point of view, but
only fixed ideas, scripts and narratives that keep
replaying themselves. We live from the positions that
we take and hold, and not with the moving stream. The
stream is forever leaving the fixed position behind.
The ability to make self-schemas is an evolved trait
and self-schemas address real needs in life, even on
the path to enlightenment. But they do not have to be
nouns, things isolated from dynamic change. The self,
like the mind, is much better understood and developed
as a process, as a verb. In Buddhism the three
conceits (mana) of I-making, mine-making and
personality views (mamakara, ahankara and sakkayaditthi)
will arrest the self and hold it against personal
evolution into maturity. This is mine. I am this. This
is what my spirit is. These are the false views that
cognitive biases, defense mechanisms, coping
strategies and logical fallacies are called upon to
defend, and this only adds to our ignorance and
delusion. The dynamic view welcomes contradiction:
"Hmm. That was not mine. I'm not that any more. Is
this really who I am?" Fixed ideas are exposed
to the experience that has the potential to correct
them. Some will pass the test, others will fail. If
the failures are not really who we are, isn't it
better to be rid of them? As was mentioned earlier,
the Buddha gave us a useful mantra for this:"You
should train thus: We shall be wise men, we shall be
inquirers" (MN 114). It is permissible to not be here
entirely in the present. To be only here now is just
another platitude-driven way of getting stuck. We can
look ahead to the kind of beings we are capable of
becoming.
Discerning Wholesome and Unwholesome, Skilled and Unskilled
It is
common these days, especially in new age circles, to
hear the phrase "don't be so judgmental." It usually
goes along with several other vacuous platitudes.
Aside from the hypocrisy of this in itself being a
judgment, the irony is that this bit of so-called
wisdom encourages a life misguided by bad judgment. Panna,
the ideal of wisdom in Dhamma-Vinaya, is not an
all-embracing, all-accepting, all-tolerant,
unconditional loving wisdom. It is a discriminating
wisdom. It isn't just a pretty jewel to be admired:
it's a cutting tool.
The
proper use of acceptance will be similarly
misunderstood by the platitude-driven, just as people
who make an effort to take charge of their lives are
termed "control freaks." But ask: how is that working
out for them? Just like wizards and sorcerers do, we
first identify and name the things that bedevil us in
order to control or master them. This is the point of
wrapping our heads around mental objects. Ultimately,
we do want to be kind to ourselves. We want to feel
like we are listening to that "small, still voice" and
acting genuinely, spontaneously, according to the
intrinsic goodness within us. But the point of
acceptance is not to allow ourselves to stay the same:
it's to learn what we really are and what we've
become, in order to not have a distorted view. Being
in control is not a character defect: it allows us to
"change the things we can," to make some genuine
changes to the things we have adopted that are doing
us a disservice. It's OK to be mean
and unkind to these things if they don't belong in a
better, healthier us. Self is a construct and we are
the builders. And ultimately, we only cheat ourselves
by using inferior materials. If we leave these alone
they will just continue giving us trouble. "The point
is that given who you are and what your basic
considerations are, without recognizing your basic
assumptions about reality, you may pluck out the
alcoholism, but you will only generate it again like a
starfish generating lost arms" (Sarpashana p.
125).
A large
part of what human beings think, do, believe in and
even feel, is unwholesome, wrong, unskillful, harmful,
toxic, flawed, ineffective, productive of unhappy
results, all covered by the Pali word akusala.
It doesn't matter that the majority of people accept
these as normal: these are the reasons that suffering
is normal. We need to find ways to put the stink-eye
on these things. We need to step outside of them,
objectify them, dis-identify with them, find reasons
to want to come to believe that "this is not mine,
this is not me, this is not who I am." One of the best
favors that anybody ever did for me while I was
drinking was to take a couple of photos of me, one
passed out in an armchair with a half-finished pint of
vodka in hand, and another on the floor, halfway under
the table. That was rude, and unspeakably kind. It got
it all right out there in the open, where I couldn't
deny it from inside. It might be a useful tool for
others to ask friends to gather similar objective
evidence. It's also good to know that it's OK to be
ruthless in this, that if these behaviors are not the
real you, then why not put them out of your misery?
Good
judgment requires good values and standards, goals,
objectives, criteria related to benefit. It assumes an
executive function, the emergent property of self
called agency, self-efficacy or will. In the modern
cultural and economic climate, just about all of the
words associated with value have been perversely
twisted around: the value of a thing is not based on
how you value it: this is set by others, or by a
mindless market. The same holds with appreciation and
interest. These are your job, not the market's.
Economy used to mean thrift. Treasure is now something
that you kill yourself for instead of something you
do. But we have the ability to take all of this back,
to redeem and reclaim the vocabulary. We have the
power to set our own values and then revise them as
needed. But to do this, Right View must become
dynamic, and our self-schema must become a process
instead of a thing.
Right Intention, Emotional Self-control
I am one finished with hell,
finished with the animal realm, finished with the
domain of ghosts, finished with the plane of misery,
the bad destinations and the nether world. [I am]
fixed in destiny, with enlightenment as my
destination. (SN II 12)
Samma
Sankappa is Right Intention. Sankappa
may also be translated as thought, aim, commitment,
purpose, aspiration, mindset, plan, motive or resolve.
It is a blend of thought and feeling, or an
affectively charged thought, a thought that is moving
us somewhere and not merely floating around in our
minds. It is mental intent, will or volition, or cetana,
a word that is sometimes translated as the "wish to
do," that propels the mind forward into wholesome (kusala)
or unwholesome (akusala) states. It is the
intention in action that is the stuff of kamma.
It is the want that drives our own and our species'
evolution. Right Intention is a commitment to ethical
and mental self-improvement. While it doesn't
necessarily mean assuming a higher purpose, it will at
at least be a higher personal sense of purpose. We
looked earlier at the word resolution as a species of
janus word that referred to both a force of
determination and a clarity of vision, and this
combination expresses the idea of combining drive with
vision in Right Intention.
Anybody
with their mind or eyes open knows there is no way in
hell that we can honestly call man a rational animal.
This vision is perpetuated by a very small, only
somewhat rational minority, and most of them are
pretty deluded about the affective side of cognition.
Yet even as this myth persists, the rational control
of our emotions is somehow perceived as inauthentic,
or a betrayal of our heart or of our inmost nature,
and part of us feels sorry for Star Trek's Mr. Spock
because he misses out on so much of our illogical
human confusion. But the goal of Samma Sankappa
isn't some sort of smart numbness, or cold
rationality, or rationally constrained feeling. It is
simply a focus on being emotionally equilibrated and
calmly self-directed, while both the emotion and the
calm are rich and enjoyable states.
Substitution
In
Dhamma-Vinaya, a process called "thought substitution"
(tadanga) is used to replace the unwholesome
intentions with the wholesome. These positive
intentions are not the same good intentions that the
road to hell is paved with. At this point in our
evolution the aim is still self-correction, or a more
wholesome self-organization. There is still a place
for fixing what's wrong with the world, but this comes
a little later in the priorities. The unwholesome
intentions (such as compulsive craving, getting even,
doing harm, etc) are subjected to techniques for
unlearning, extinction, de-conditioning,
deprogramming, or desensitization. These methods tend
to work best with an overwriting of the behavioral
programs rather than simple erasure. The overwriting,
in turn, requires some sort of rewarding experience to
support the alternative: if behavioral substitutes are
simply good ideas they just won't "sink in," they
won't carve much of a groove or niche for themselves.
The replacements need to get wired into the brain, to
form an expanded set of associations that integrate
with the memories and ideas that formerly acted as
triggers for the unwholesome behavior. Reprogramming
requires rewards, but in Dhamma-Vinaya we can learn
how to "switch on" the positive states as rewards,
like method actors, and sometimes this can be done
simply by remembering these states and how pleasant
they can be. It takes practice, particularly with the
mindfulness and concentration exercises of the Seventh
and Eighth steps, but we can indeed learn to tell
ourselves: "feel this instead."
Rewriting
our mental programs takes a kind of applied energy or
work: it's not just a theoretical, cognitive
adjustment. Changing our minds is a skill. There needs
to be affective involvement and applying this is a
skill. In theory this is pretty basic stuff even in
psychology where it has long been known as operant
conditioning. Pleasantness and unpleasantness drive
learning. In recovery, maintaining a rewarding
experience is best done with something that is
difficult to enjoy without being sober and preferably
with an object or experience that we can identify as
having deep personal significance or value. In this
way our efforts to get through withdrawal and early
abstinence are more than simple distractions. We can
use the time spent in early abstinence to build new
memories and patterns, to explore new reward systems,
and put these new habits and skills into place.
We are
required to revisit, rather than escape, the negative
emotional states that hound us with repeated
appearances, the re-sentiments. There is a utility in
examining these states in detail at the same time that
they are trying to occur. We look for roots and
triggers in childhood issues and traumas, in
existential problems, in memory-specific fears and
anxieties. There is an educational experience in
having these feelings at least one more time following
our stepping onto the Path. In part this is to better
understand them, but the effect has more to do with
our dynamic memory. When we can conjure up more
wholesome states while we are doing this revisiting,
these higher states will become associated with the
revisited memory, contributing a better set of
optional associations and reactions. We can associate
a new memory of forgiveness or compassion with an old
memory of an insult or injury. We can add a new
attitude or response to the cumulative memory and
refile it in modified form, freshly attached to
resolution, closure, forgiveness, etc.
In many
cases we find that the negative states we are trying
to eradicate have no basis in reality, as though they
simply generate themselves out of nothing, or are just
produced on the fly, to then become self-sustaining.
Sometimes they arise out of our suspicions, or
delusions, or free-floating anxieties. These in turn
will give us the ability to create "things" and
boogeymen that aren't really there. Sometimes we give
states substance when substance is simply the wrong
model. What might be called the hydraulic theory of
emotions sees our affective states as akin to liquids
under varying degrees of pressure, not compressible,
not expandable, not dismissible. If we repress them
they will force their way out somewhere else. In this
view they cannot be stuffed. They need to be processed
in a way that "re-channels" them into a more wholesome
outlet. The volume or quantity of this emotional stuff
is conserved, like matter and energy. We only have so
much love to give, so if one person wants it all, too
bad for all of the others. We cannot simply evaporate
our resentments: they need to be given their full
weight to process them properly, or sometimes even
exaggerated and expressed with a more explosive force
in a process called catharsis. In many cases this is
simply delusional and self-fulfilling perception. Many
of these states never needed to be created in the
first place, and the ones that truly are created from
nothing might be replaced with nothing more
complicated than a simple bit of wisdom. In these
cases suffering is purely optional, and not simply
conditionally optional.
Latent Tendencies and the Evolutionary Functions of Affect
It is
helpful to look at Why our various feelings and
emotions were preserved as such a big portion of our
evolutionary mental inheritance. This is not the same
as asking why they were created. They are adaptive
responses, and they include the more lasting or
durable states that we refer to as temperaments and
dispositions. Why we have them is not as valid a
question as why we Still have them. Naturally, most of
them have to do either with physical survival or
reproduction, and particularly in mammals, this calls
for getting along socially, finding mates and rearing
young. A lot of our most useful data here has been
trying to present itself in various fields within
zoology, primatology in particular, but has been most
thoroughly obscured by our deluded and arrogant
anthropocentrism. Just how much we have to learn here
in fields ranging from economics to ethics is only now
becoming widely shared, and is still meeting
resistance from those who hold that only humans are
sentient, ensouled and eligible for admittance to
Heaven. This evolutionary study, particularly in the
new field of evolutionary psychology, will be a
separate-but-useful adjunct to Buddhism, especially in
helping us to understand that our feelings and
emotions do not represent any sort of fundamental core
of our being. In fact they are often better understood
as tricks that life has learned to play on us to get
certain tasks accomplished.
Take
anger, for example. This arises in us when we receive
some sort of insult, or a betrayal of our trust, or a
trespass across our boundaries, or a disrespectful
gesture, etc. It doesn't really do us any good to feel
anger, and there is certainly not much value or health
benefit in hanging onto it. The Buddha left us his
well-known comment that holding on to anger is like
taking poison and hoping the other person will die
from it. Anger is with us because it serves a social
function: it leads us to perform specific behaviors
that let the offending person know that his or her
behavior was unacceptable and not to be tolerated. It
is the first step in a chain that produces negative
feedback that helps to order the social group. Anger
solves a problem on occasion, or rather, initiates
some behavior that does. Anger evolved before words,
as a form of communication. It conveyed the meaning
that what somebody did was socially unacceptable. If
there are more rational ways to accomplish this task,
such as publishing some sort of negative review, or
simply setting forth your grievance to the offending
party, then other parts of the brain can take over and
the anger can be dispensed with altogether. The social
emotions, of mammals and especially those of primates,
are our original moral compass, while our
misapprehending them is our greatest moral detriment,
often leading to outcomes like murder or war.
An
objective look at insecurity is particularly helpful
when it brings us to an understanding of all of the
economic and political forces that have reasons to
cultivate insecurities within us. Affect such as
dissatisfaction, or greed in its more pronounced form,
are there to help us acquire what we need to better
our living conditions. Some level of greed may also
assist us in acquiring things to bestow as favors in
exchange for power. To the extent that we can
recognize this, the forebrain can take over and more
calmly and rationally make other choices that
accomplish the same thing, or else determine that
bettering our condition in this manner isn't worth the
anticipated costs.
The
so-called infant emotions are the easiest to
understand, those like anger, fear, distress, disgust,
sadness, interest, contentment and happiness (to
exceed the usual list). With these we make it known
that we need help, or else that experiencing
more-of-the-same would be just fine with us. Later in
life they urge us on to either approach or withdraw,
continue or discontinue. When we want or don't want
something our vision of the world changes. The world
then speaks to us in terms of our wants, our fears and
our identity issues. When we learn to relax this
want-and-don't-want and practice equanimity (upekkha)
or serenity (passaddhi) the world can return to
speaking to us in its own terms.
The Buddha only had a few things to say that were
specific to our latent tendencies, which he called the
anusayas. The seven that he names are lust, ill
will, false views, conceit, egotism and ignorance (kamaraga,
patigha, ditthi, mana, bhavaraga and avijja).
These are problems that crop up in other lists as
well, like the fetters (samyojanas). There are
of course more. All are best understood as inherited
characteristics that persist with varying
explanations, that likely had some useful function at
some point deep in our history, and that today demand
a second look due to their maladaptive
characteristics.
Evolutionary psychology looks at our "human nature," at our typical behaviors, the styles of living and levels of social interaction that we have had millennia to adapt to genetically, or millions of years as primates. The early results of this research have helped to clarify a large number of our human problems centered in evolved traits that have become maladaptive in our urban, agricultural, overpopulated, industrial and overspecialized modern environment. We see a lot more than simple beginnings in our closest relatives in the Hominidae family. We may have some things that apes lack, but in converse, if the apes have it, it's also fairly certain to be in us, and there really isn't a lot in the basic human emotional makeup that the apes lack. They have reciprocal altruism. They feel hurt, betrayal and rejection. They know grief, fear, embarrassment, jealousy, cowardice, discouragement, pride, depression, guilt, and free-floating anxiety. They use anger and contempt to avoid or punish cheaters, sympathy and trust to proactively extend the first favor, gratitude and loyalty to repay favors, guilt and shame to deter them from hurting others or not repaying favors, and indignation to guard both physical and psychological boundaries. There are game theories that can predict hominidae behavior with some statistical regularity, even though there are as many individual differences on their limbs of the family tree as on ours. And they are subject to the many of the same mood disorders.
Evolutionary psychology looks at our "human nature," at our typical behaviors, the styles of living and levels of social interaction that we have had millennia to adapt to genetically, or millions of years as primates. The early results of this research have helped to clarify a large number of our human problems centered in evolved traits that have become maladaptive in our urban, agricultural, overpopulated, industrial and overspecialized modern environment. We see a lot more than simple beginnings in our closest relatives in the Hominidae family. We may have some things that apes lack, but in converse, if the apes have it, it's also fairly certain to be in us, and there really isn't a lot in the basic human emotional makeup that the apes lack. They have reciprocal altruism. They feel hurt, betrayal and rejection. They know grief, fear, embarrassment, jealousy, cowardice, discouragement, pride, depression, guilt, and free-floating anxiety. They use anger and contempt to avoid or punish cheaters, sympathy and trust to proactively extend the first favor, gratitude and loyalty to repay favors, guilt and shame to deter them from hurting others or not repaying favors, and indignation to guard both physical and psychological boundaries. There are game theories that can predict hominidae behavior with some statistical regularity, even though there are as many individual differences on their limbs of the family tree as on ours. And they are subject to the many of the same mood disorders.
Now that
we have our high culture and civilization and a wide
range of unnatural conditions ranging from severe
overcrowding to superabundant resources, we are
finding that a lot of the traits that helped us to
adapt to a simpler, more natural world have become
maladaptive in the new and improved environment. The
classic physiological example is our now- untempered
response to dietary sugars and fats, evolved in an era
where these were scarce, but now inclining us to
obesity in our modern fields of plenty. Another is
excessive social stress from our living in much larger
groups than we adapted to in ancient times. Robin
Dunbar suggests that our optimum adapted population
size is under 150. Since Dunbar himself suspected that
this number was a little high, and since this is a
function of geometrical complexity, I would place the
maximum closer to 128. This is only a village, not
even a small town. Communities larger than this tend
to develop schisms and split off in processes
analogous to mitosis. City life, as we have built it,
requires an all-new second nature. Buddha came along
midway through this transition, and much of what he
had to offer dealt with problems that were new to us,
emerging from our culture and civilization. But a lot
of his solutions are on cognitive levels that are also
capable of reaching down into our deeper brains,
sensing, examining, instructing and overriding our
apely minds too. Culture and civilization reshape our
emotional expression, particularly in terms of what is
socially welcome or permissible, and in attaching
affective loads to both physical objects and private
behavior that either weren't there before or that were
differently loaded. Sex is of course the most screwed
up example, but we also never had as many possessions
to covet, or possessions for which we have no real
need.
We can
probably best distinguish between feelings and
emotions by identifying the latter with motion, as a
response that implies movement or at least agitation.
Feeling is less outward. The set of positive feelings
that we have is an evolved reward system, and the
associated neurochemistry is gradually becoming better
understood. The system provides a fair first
indication that our behavior might be on the right
track, across a spectrum ranging from physical diet to
self-actualization. Usually these positive feelings
mean we are doing something that millions of years of
evolution supports. And yet there is no quicker way to
get off the right path than to start chasing them as
rewards instead of letting them come to us in direct
consequence of our staying on track, which will often
require patience, priorities, vision and deferred
gratification. Given this, the inalienable, god-given
right to pursue happiness is a really bad idea.
Obviously, this willingness to skip the work and take
shortcuts directly to positive states is central to
the problem of addiction. Here the only behavior you
have performed in getting to the reward is the
addictive behavior itself, and so it is this activity
that gets powerful and, initially, cheap
reinforcement.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional
intelligence is a recent term that is not without its
detractors and
ambiguities. Here we will use it to refer to our
abilities to perceive, identify, apply, understand,
regulate, modify, manage and substitute affective
states. A lack of such intelligence would then mean
being at the mercy of affective states, and perhaps
mistaking them for the authentic or fundamental self.
When we are skillful with this intelligence we can
cultivate those feelings that allow us to remember
where we want to go, and stop having those that
distract us. We can learn how to want the right things
and renounce the wrong ones. We learn to start, move,
motivate and drive ourselves. We even
learn how to turn negative
emotions around, using them to initiate appropriate
behavioral responses without having to hang on to the
more painful feelings themselves as though this were
the important part of having them. We then no longer
need to take everything so personally and dramatically
just to feel alive, or to blow things out of
proportion just to add drama, import or
self-importance to our lives.
Impulse
control may be the most important skill to learn with
respect to addictive behavior. The triggers and other
stimuli present themselves as urgencies and fire up
the specific emotional urge, while it takes a little
more time for the forebrain to catch up or even notice
what is going on. Emotions just cannot be trusted to
incorporate a reasonable sense of time. If you listen
to two people in the midst of a heated argument, you
will hear lots of "you Always do this" and "you Never
do that." It's a sure sign that somebody has been
carried away by their emotions. Sometimes and seldom
just seem to lack the desired heat or dramatic force.
Always and never can be pretty scary, too: I will
always be on a diet, and I can never drink again.
The
ability to play around constructively with our sense
of time, to bend, stretch, warp or compress time, is a
talent we develop with the meditation exercises of
Dhamma-Vinaya. There is also nothing like a half hour
of Zazen for experiencing three very long hours worth
of time. Sometimes all it takes is a few seconds of
counting to ten to stop, calm or forget an urge. Or
time for a few deep breaths. Across longer scales of
time we have a less-than-beneficial habit of using
hyperbolic discounting, wherein we value rewards that
are near at hand far out of proportion to those only
slightly more distant, such as preferring to take five
tokens now over ten tokens an hour from now. It's even
worse with our cookies and pies. It doesn't improve
very much with adulthood either, at least not without
intervention. Deferring or even forgoing gratification
does not seem to be something that comes naturally to
humans. We seem from infancy to have an innate
intolerance of frustration and discomfort. When
children don't learn this tolerance in childhood, we
called them spoiled, but we cannot seem to see this in
the adults who are deforesting this planet and laying
waste to the world's petroleum reserves. Patience and
pacing ourselves seem to require longer time horizons
and bigger pictures than our evolved affective
responses are able to provide. We need to add culture,
thought and reason to make this work. The meditation
exercises of Dhamma-Vinaya are particularly useful in
expanding or stretching our time horizons. It is
interesting, and not really just a sidebar, that
Buddha, who came from the Indian or Vedanta tradition,
often spoke in terms of millions and billions of
years, in very close to identical time scales that
today's evolutionary biology and astrophysics are
using. In those religions that don't really stop to
ponder and meditate, the world is only 6000 years old
and their adherents' behavior is almost infinitely
shortsighted. You can even wait until the very last
minute of your whole, wicked and sinful life to
request and obtain immediate salvation for all of
eternity. Sometimes it's just
really fucking embarrassing to be a human being.
We can
also exhibit an innate intolerance for boredom and
restlessness. We have primary drives to seek
stimulation, to explore our environment, and to
manipulate things just to see what happens. But we
also have a learnable ability to regulate the
importance of what we experience. We can spend long
hours looking through a microscope, just contemplating
the leg hairs on an insect. National television news
can set aside ten full minutes to discuss some fool
celebrity's new hairstyle and then less than a minute
to discuss the brutal slaughter of thousands somewhere
across the ocean. This ability to regulate import or
importance is our ability to assign and revise the
value that we give to our experiences. Even though
this isn't exercised often by the population at large,
it is one of the most important tools we have for
emotional self-control. When perseverance fails us,
revaluation enables resilience, when firmness fails us
it enables flexibility. It also has useful analgesic
properties: we can use it to put pain in its proper
place. We can fill empty time by valuing empty time.
We can take the simplest pleasures and turn them into
treasures. We can make an activity interesting,
relevant and satisfying just by deeming it so. This is
the key to intrinsic motivation, which in turn is the
key to self-directed behavior. Appreciation, interest
and value are adjustable. Because of this, the
"bottom" that addicts need to hit is also adjustable
and samvega can be fine-tuned by adjusting our
own standards. That this may be a learned behavior
does not make it inauthentic. There is no rule that
says we need to take things at their socially assigned
values, or our motivations from extrinsic sources,
particularly within a culture as out of balance with
our evolved nature as this one. Self-control is no
more inauthentic than doing things incorrectly just
because that's the way the rest of the species does
things.
How many
of our constants and standards of reference are
adjustable? The revaluation of values was central to
Nietzsche's thought: "From the Sun did I learn this,
when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it
then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches,
so that even the poorest fisherman roweth even with
golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire
of weeping in beholding it" (TSZ, 56-3). A
field of fresh snow under a full moon is almost
nothing but diamonds. Letting go of avarice doesn't
mean repudiation. It might mean simply dialing down
the value of something and looking aside. To wake up
is to see wealth everywhere, so much so that it's
silly to try to collect and possess it all. We can own
a mountain simply by climbing it. This is a higher
enrichment. Our sense of poverty, once our basic needs
have been met, or the poor quality of our moments, is
a disease of proportion, importance, or of value.
Enrichment does not require hyperbole, exaggeration,
self-importance or other forms of drunkenness. For the
most part, beyond some simple necessities, we need
only wake up and start minding and wanting what
already we have. "Valuing is creating: hear it, ye
creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and
jewel of the valued things" (Nietzsche, WTP 260). And
this is also how we manufacture most of our pain, by
investing the wrong things with the wrong sort of
value.
Brahmaviharas, the Immeasurable Healing States
The Pali
Canon enumerates four states of mind called the Abodes
of Brahma (Brahmaviharas), or sometimes the
Immeasurable or Boundless States (Appamanna).
These represent the proper approach, attitude and
conduct towards the world and other living beings and
serve us in Right Intention as antidotes, used in the
Substitution process, to counter the three greatest
problems of affect that Right Intention is
specifically directed to solving: craving, ill will
and harmfulness. A handful of states which are equally
useful in this exercise were omitted from this list,
although they are also important elsewhere in Buddhist
doctrine. We will be discussing them here as well, and
putting them on an equal footing. For these
"immeasurable" states to function as antidotes we have
to first remember that they have this use, and then
remember to call them up. This is not always easily
done in the midst of an emotional hijacking. This
remembrance is a big part of Right Intention. It is a
learned skill that has to be practiced in the middle
of the unwholesome mental states in question. It makes
use of dynamic memory and the ability to "rewire" new
associations to old emotional triggers and
resentments. Several of the practices using these
states are given in the Visuddhimagga, Chapter
9, "The Divine Abidings," which offers this for
purpose:
"The
general purpose of these four divine abidings is the
bliss of insight and an excellent [form of future]
existence. That peculiar to each is respectively the
warding off of ill will, and so on. For here
loving-kindness has the purpose of warding off ill
will, while the others have the respective purposes of
warding off cruelty, aversion (boredom), and greed or
resentment. And this is said too: “For this is the
escape from ill will, friends, that is to say, the
mind-deliverance of loving-kindness … For this is the
escape from cruelty, friends, that is to say, the
mind- deliverance of compassion … For this is the
escape from boredom, friends, that is to say, the
mind-deliverance of gladness … For this is the escape
from greed, friends, that is to say, the
mind-deliverance of equanimity” (D III 248). (The Visuddhimagga,
by the way, is a large and useful book. Like most
Buddhist scriptures, it is available as a free
download, see Links).
The first
Immeasurable is Metta, literally meaning
friend or friendship, but usually more precisely
translated as loving-kindness. It is also good will,
fraternal love, the bestowing happiness, amity, or
benevolence. It is love without any desire to possess,
love without clinging. It is to see and know the
goodness in others. It is the wish for happiness for
all sentient beings. It is advised in the Visuddhimagga
that metta first be practiced towards oneself,
then a friend, then a neutral person, then a difficult
person, then all equally, and finally the world.
Obviously it gets more difficult, but we learn things
as we grow, especially about the usefulness of time
and fortune in our growth process. The
word kind is a closely related to the word kindred. In
other words, to treat others with kindness is to treat
them as relatives, whether they are human beings, wild
animals or trees. Our capacity for kindness can evolve
with our ability to see our genetic relationship with
others who share this world. The Lakota Sioux phrase Mitakuye
Oyasin, all my relations, is prayed in an
affirmation of this interconnectedness that reminds us
to be kind.
The
second is Karuna, compassion, sympathy, mercy,
gentle affection, and the aspiration to be truly
helpful. It is to be with eyes and ears open to the
cries of the sentient beings and their suffering. To
"attend the cries" is Guan Yin in Chinese, and
the name of the goddess of compassion who evolved out
of an earlier male deity, Avalokitasvara, who is the
Mahayana Boddhisattva of compassion. Karuna is
not simply pity or sentimentality, a bleeding heart,
or fellow suffering, but a willingness to bear the
pain of others and not turn away, not shut down or
flee. It helps us to develop empathy and consider
another being's feelings before taking actions that
affect others. It also moves us to be of some use in
the world, even as we are renouncing worldly life. We
cannot be oblivious to our impact on other lives when
we can feel what pain we might cause.
The third
is Mudita, rendered as appreciative,
altruistic, sympathetic, vicarious, or empathetic joy.
This is gladness or joy in anothers success, in their
well-being, or virtue, or happiness, rejoicing in
anothers skillful action, merits or attainments. This
is the positive complement to karuna, and
these two in combination are the opposite of schadenfreude,
finding humor or pleasure in anothers misfortune. Mudita
is also a polar opposite to jealousy and envy: it is a
generosity of heart, the love that wants the best for
another sentient being, even if this means
surrendering something of value, or permitting them to
have a life that is free of your interference. It also
has something in common with the Yiddish naches,
the pride or gratification for others, especially at
the achievements of one's children, except that mudita
is a little more selfless, reaching beyond our own
family and hopefully even beyond our own species. It's
also less prideful, and less attached to outcomes.
The
fourth is Upekkha, variously translated as
equanimity, dispassion, detachment, serenity,
impartiality, tolerance, evenness, equipoise, balance
of mind, even-mindedness, or dispassionate onlooking.
This is not the same as apathy or indifference. It
embodies an understanding that many of our problems
must work themselves out, and that sentient beings
must work themselves out of their own problems, to
which they were generally led by their own intentions
and decisions. There is also an extent to which upekkha
can express itself as tough love, which can place it
in apparent opposition to karuna or
compassion. In Dhamma-Vinaya, detachment and
compassion form a paradox that must be lived with.
Sometimes those lessons that a being needs most to
learn can only be learned first hand, and
compassionate intervention in that process will do
that being no good at all. "For this is hardest of
all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep
modest as a giver" (Nietzsche, TSZ #23). Upekkha
is not flight: it is occupying a place in the eye of
the storm, or at the hub of the wheel. It is accepting
without approving, and tolerating without resenting.
Forgiveness (Khama) as a practice (khamanasila)
belongs among these healing states. It is the opposite
of upanaha, or resentment, vengefulness,
rancor, withholding forgiveness, intending retaliatory
harm. Sometimes the Pali khanti, one of the
ten paramitas or perfections, is translated as
forgiveness, but this word might be better understood
as forbearance, endurance, or tolerance. Forgiveness
is the willingness to let go of anger, resentment,
bitterness, or vengefulness in response to an insult
or injury, but it comes along with the understanding
that these difficult affective states are ultimately
our own creation and our responsibility. We may
question the reality or the "right" to exist of such
states, and we certainly question the good that they
do for us. Forgiveness is not primarily done for the
benefit of the person being forgiven. It is even fully
permissible to consider that such a person does not
deserve it. There can always be the hope, however,
that the other person will grow by the experience, by
the guilt or remorse they may feel, or by the act of
being forgiven. But this is not the primary point,
which is that it does us no good whatsoever to keep
ourselves tied up in knots of resentment. Neither is
forgiveness the same as forgetting, and we are
well-advised to keep a memory of the insult or injury
"on file," even after it has been stripped of its
emotional charge. This will help us to avoid getting
insulted or injured in this way again. Such an
attitude makes considering forgiveness easier, which
is not to say easy. When we refuse to forgive we only
maintain a pocket of pain and suffering inside us, and
the encrustations, scabs and scars that will form
around this become integrated into our
self-identities, a part of who we mistakenly think we
are. It isn't worth the trouble and pain.
Gratitude
(Katannuta) or thankfulness, is a healing
affective state that was only incompletely developed
by the Buddha. In general, he only spoke of gratitude
towards a "gratitee," someone who provided a kindness
or something of value for us, and he used the seeker's
parents as his go-to example. So he considered
requited or reciprocated gratitude (katannuta-kataveda)
to be katannuta's proper practice. But
gratitude as used here, as a nominee for Brahmavihara
status, has a much farther reach. To feel gratitude
for the whole of existence, for life itself, for the
ancestors all the way back, and for the opportunity to
be alive, does not, as many might hastily think,
require a god or creator to be thankful to. This is a
feeling that is necessary to truly feel oneself in a
state of grace, but it is not one that is denied to
the atheist or the agnostic. Far from it. Some might
argue that this does not obligate us to helping or
giving in return, to reciprocity, or to "paying our
rent" to the biosphere, because these sources for our
gifts are not watching or judging us, but these are
just the arguments of infantile and brainwashed minds.
Real gratitude must express itself. This state has
some subjective aspects in common with piti or
rapture, but the two are not the same because piti
doesn't require the specific tone of thankfulness.
Ingratitude (akatannuta) is a smug sense of
entitlement, that is incapable of appreciating or
tolerating temporary frustration or lack. It fails to
see the worth of what we already have and thus binds
us to what we do not have. It is a guarantee of
suffering.
Reverence
(Garava) or devotion, is another noble state
that has only received a partial development in
Dhamma-Vinaya. It finds its primary expression in apacayana,
the act of of paying our respects to those who are
worthy of it. Sometimes the term saddha,
treated here as the uniquely Buddhist version of
faith, is also translated as reverence, but this does
not fit the context, except as Buddha specifically
used it to refer to a deep and reverential respect for
the Dhamma. As with gratitude, reverence does not
require an object of reverence or devotion. It does
not require a deity, or the deification of
all-of-life, of our world, of existence or the
universe. But if we want to feel its full force, it
will require us to open ourselves up to how freaking
big the universe is, how cool it is that there is
something rather than nothing, and what a miracle it
is that some of it can look around at the rest of it.
And to regard all of that as good fortune. A deep
sense of the sacredness of it all requires no feeling
that needs to be called religious, and a good
scientist is just as capable of entering this state as
any mystic poet. A reverential and devotional state of
mind is a normal consequence of what is great and
noble, and what is great and noble is hardly limited
to we human beings and our primitive ideas about
divinity. Reverence here is a
deeply-felt combination of awe, respect and humility.
Patience
(Khanti) is another of the ten paramitas
or perfections that deserves consideration as one of
the divine healing states. Its meanings include
tolerance, forbearance, acceptance, acquiescence,
compliance and endurance. It is sometimes rendered
forgiveness but this is not its finest gloss. In the
Visuddhimagga it is prerequisite to the
development of metta, along with contemplating
the dangers of hate. It can be regarded as a cousin,
or even a sibling, to upekkha or equanimity,
but it has its own qualities, and is more specific to
the dimensions of time and the unfolding of time at
time's proper pace. It encourages the development of
expanded time horizons. For some this seems to require
a perception that all things are unfolding as they
should or ought to in this, the best of all possible
worlds, but this view is neither necessary nor
respectful of the way the world works. At its
simplest, it is simply the proverb "don't push the
river, it flows by itself." Impatience leaves us with
no control over our urges. It leaves us in a battle
with the inertia of the universe, which has a lot of
inertia that even the galaxies can't resist. It is
better to take some time to learn which direction the
universe wants to take and work with that. Then we
have free energy. "Time and I, against any two,"
as the Spanish say.
The First Tasks of Right Intention
In Right
Intention the greatest of our motivational
distractions from the path are clustered into three
general groups and targeted for correction. The more
purely cognitive distractions leading to ignorance and
delusion received a similar treatment in Right View.
Here we turn to the affective states of feeling and
emotion, and, with longer-term practice, we can even
attempt to tune up our longer-term temperaments and
dispositions.
Freedom from Craving
Nekkhamma
is the renunciation of lust and craving, resisting the
draw of desire and sensuality. You can see the root of
the word in no-kama, that is, an abandonment of
the pleasure motive. A synonym for nekkhamma
is viraga, fading of passions, detachment,
dispassion, no raga or rage, letting go. This
requires deep, systematic attention (yoniso-manasikara)
to the unwholesome root of desire, the sense of
oneself as perpetually unfulfilled. This is the
opposite of and substitution for sense craving or
sense passion (kama-tanha or kama-raga).
This renunciation merits a little clarification. We
all have needs and necessities, and we are moved to
fulfill them by various evolved traits and innate
motivations that express themselves in our awareness
as feelings and emotions. In addition to these we have
wants, some of which are wholesome and lead us to
wiser, more skillful living, and some of which are
neurotic, or unnecessary to an optimal life, or wholly
manufactured and implanted in us by social forces.
It's important to remember that Buddha called his path
"The Middle Path," one lying between the extremes of
self-mortification and sensual gratification. He was
not an enemy of pleasure and happiness, and he is
frequently seen in the scriptures praising the
pleasantness of desirable states, and the happiness of
a pleasant abiding. What he worked against was the
destructive and self-destructive behaviors that people
engage in while in the pursuit of pleasure and
happiness, the lust and the craving in particular. We
can enjoy, or at least appreciate, just about anything
while it is happening and in its passing.
It's just a bad idea to get attached to it.
It's
fairly easy to imagine the Buddha examining Abraham
Maslow's pyramid of needs and agreeing that an optimum
way to move through life would be to take these needs
systematically, in the order of their priority, set
about to meet them at some level of simple
sufficiency, and then move on. It is also easy to
imagine him not rebuking a student for enjoying a
little pleasure or happiness as it comes and goes.
These are simply facts of our existence and any wisdom
that authentically seeks the facts of our existence
will not run and hide from them. Enjoyment is not the
problem: craving, clinging and attachment are the
problems.
There are
many synonyms and cognates for kama as it
names this category of affective troubles (see
glossary), among them: kamachanda sensual
desire, cravenness; amisa, worldly or carnal
happiness; tanha, desire, craving or thirst;
lobha, craving, covetousness, thirst, desire,
passion, lust, greed, attachment, unskillful desire,
self-centered desire for more; raga, the rage
for more; kamasava, taints of sense,
addictions to senses, lust, longing; bhavasava,
taints of being and becoming for the ego, lust for
life, existence infatuation; abhijja kayagantha,
the bondage of craving, greed, covetousness; issa,
jealousy or envy; macchariya, stinginess,
avarice, miserliness, selfishness; adinnadana,
taking what is not given, stealing; kamesu-micchacara
misconduct in sensual pleasures; and upadana,
clinging, grasping, holding or attachment. The
renunciation and conquest of craving makes use of
equanimity, gratitude, reverence and patience.
Freedom from Aversion and Ill-Will
Abyapada
is the absence of aversion, ill-will, anger,
resentment and animosity; it is the intention of good
will, resisting the draw of anger. It is
loving-kindness (metta), put to use to get the
kamma moving in the right direction. Metta,
of course, needs to begin with some self-acceptance
and self-love. If you love your neighbor as you love
yourself, but then you hate yourself … . This is the
opposite of and substitution for vyapada (or byapada),
as aversion, ill-will, anger, resentment, irritation,
distaste, dislike and animosity. Vyapada
kayagantha refers to this as a kind of bondage.
One of the synonyms used for bypada is dosa,
meaning hatred, aversion,
anger, aggression, fear of getting what we don't want
or of not getting what we want, avoidance, rejection,
a will to be separate, resulting from the unwise
contemplation of repulsive objects. Another synonym
often encountered is patigha, meaning
repugnance, aversion, revulsion, repulsion,
resentment, resistance; also sensory impact or
impingement. This is often felt specifically as a
reaction to an intense, offensive or aggressive
stimulus, and is the subsequent resentment or grudge,
giving it a shade of distinction from dosa.
One of
the most logical reasons to call upon Metta
early in a negative emotional reaction is that it
helps to restore the benefit of the doubt and a
presumption of innocence towards what we perceive to
be an offending party. It helps to not take an offense
personally while our understanding of the situation is
still ripening. Unpleasant emotional reactions usually
present themselves as responses to facts rather than
to our perceptions, but frequently a perceived offense
is only a misunderstanding. Sometimes it is only an
honest and thoughtful comment that is tactlessly
delivered. Sometimes the offending party is
temporarily subject to a hormonally driven
irritability. Sometimes the cause is clinical, as with
depression, bipolar disorder, autism, or OCD,
and the offending party deserves an attempt at
compassionate understanding. Sometimes there is a
smaller fault involved, like a simple lack of
proactive courtesy. The word "slight" is interesting
in this context. Being the victim of a social or
interpersonal slight does feel more like a "huge" when
it involves an undeserved lack of attention or
respect, but the word at least reminds us that it
might be manageable. Sometimes taking a few seconds to
back up and look for these less highly-charged
possibilities, all while trying to presume that the
other person isn't out to hurt us, can save a good
relationship, or at least save ourselves from a bad
day.
Abyapada
also means cooler heads prevailing. We can begin
halfway towards defeating these feelings of ill-will
by not overreacting to the stimulus or trigger to
begin with, which might entail the assumption a noble
stance and regarding ill-will as beneath us. Victims
are all too ready to welcome such stimuli and triggers
and respond as they are supposed to because they
believe they cannot help themselves. A defensive
strategy, by definition, has us on the defensive and
calling on defense mechanisms and cognitive biases, to
deny either the realities or our affective reactions
to them. Some common favorites here are alcohol and
drugs, or extreme behaviors that otherwise alter our
neurochemistry. If we avoid having the original
sentiment in the first place we avoid the re-sentiment
as well. The release from aversion and ill-will makes
use of compassion, equanimity,
loving-kindness, forgiveness and
patience.
Doing No Harm
Avihimsa
is better known as ahimsa, its Sanskrit
equivalent, thanks to Gandhi's use of the term. This
is the intention of harmlessness, of non- violence,
resisting the draw to violence, cruelty and harm. Avihimsa
is central to the Jain religion of India, where it is
taken to such extremes that insects are gently brushed
away from the path of pedestrian adherents. Buddhism
doesn't take it anywhere near this far, and in fact
many sects permit the eating of meat, and most will
even allow for violence in acts of self-defense. This
is the opposite of and substitution for vhimsa,
doing injury, harmfulness,
cruelty, malice, violence. At its worst, vhimsa
is panatipata, the destruction life, the
injuring or killing of living beings. Panatipata
veramani is one of the five moral precepts,
being a conscious restraint from doing harm. In its
most obvious form, vhimsa is kodha,
anger, fury, or rage, or upanaha, resentment,
vengefulness, or rancor converted to assertive action,
but its roots can be more subliminal, and cruelty,
acting out, passive aggression or just a simpler
meanness is often expressed without conscious
awareness.
The idea
of harmfulness goes beyond doing physical injury to
flesh and bone. Harm can be done by words, for which
Right Speech is the proper corrective; by indirect
action such as theft, for which Right Action is the
corrective; and by degrading the social, cultural or
natural environment, for which Right Livelihood is the
corrective. Harmlessness is developed across the whole
range of sila sampada or the moral
attainments, detailed below in the next three steps of
the Eightfold Path. This is one of Buddhism's several
expressions of the Golden Rule, since we recognize our
own struggles with our own suffering as they reappear
in sentient beings everywhere. The conquest of
harmfulness makes use of loving-kindness, compassion,
forgiveness, reverence and patience.
With Samma
Vaca we begin to develop Sila Sampada,
the three ethical or virtuous attainments comprising
Steps Three, Four and Five on the Path. By these
practices we manage the effects that our intentions
have on the world. Here we are consciously taking
charge of our kamma and its repercussions.
Most of the discussions of Right Speech that are found
in the suttas concentrate on four general
principles, each one being both an abstinence (veramani)
from a particular way of speaking and a positive
exhortation to speak towards a more wholesome effect.
While these principles may be enforced as rules of
etiquette within the sangha, to the Buddhist
on the loose they are not regarded as commandments.
There is nobody watching or sitting in judgment, not
even a law of kamma. They are merely
prescriptions for verbal behaviors that have shown
themselves to be conducive to our well-being and good
mental health while generally avoiding the more
troublesome consequences of unmindful speech.
Musavada Veramani, Avoid Falsehood, Speak True
Musavada
veramani avoids falsehood, lying or deceit and
speaks truth, reliably and worthy of confidence.
Truth, of course, is an unreachable asymptote, and
often just a pretentious delusion. True as a verb
works better with the real world, but only carpenters,
archers and wheelwrights get to use it this way. This
is unfortunate because "truing our speech" translates
the core meaning of Samma Vaca quite well. So,
backing off a bit, we want to not knowingly or
intentionally lie or deceive. We want to avoid
representing more than we are certain about as the
truth, without qualifying our further conjecture as
guesswork and our filling in of blanks as hypothesis.
Partial truths, revealing only the parts that we want
to have heard, are the mainstay of our courts with
their adversarial system for getting to "justice," so
a Buddhist talking an oath to "tell the whole truth
and nothing but the truth" might want to consider
having a sidebar with the judge. The Buddha himself
would sometimes get a little extreme here and cite
pranking and kidding around, teasing someone with a
fabrication before finally revealing the truth, as
false speech and an ethical weakness. Perhaps whether
or not this was done in a mean-spirited fashion would
count for something, but he does not say so in the suttas.
The Buddha is not officially known to have had much
fun or to have had much of a sense of humor. False
speech can be an easy vehicle for the expression and
the work of greed, hatred and delusion, and so ruling
our speech can deprive these three of some of their
most useful tools. And just as important as disarming
these three is the creation of climates of trust or
trustworthiness in human society, which are many times
easier to break down than they are to build up.
Hundreds
of millions of people in this world will tell you with
a strait face that this earth was created around 6000
years ago by a celestial deity with an image similar
to human. They believe they are speaking the truth,
and that they have the written word of this deity to
prove it. When offered some equally preposterous
explanation from somebody else's beliefs they will
dismiss this as myth and superstition. But these are
not the kind of truths that Buddha wanted his
disciples speaking about in the first place. All of
the metaphysical stuff was both too grandiose and too
premature for someone on the path: the truths that
concerned the seeker were all down at the scale of
living correctly and simply being true.
Both self-delusion and exaggeration can be big
portions of an addict's cognitive, social and verbal
worlds. Dialing down all of the whiskey talk, the
mouthing off, boasting, alcoholic grandiosity and tall
tales to a more modest, more authentic, simpler,
humbler reality might be challenging at first, even
given what the humiliations of addiction can do to the
addict's self-esteem, but there is also something of
an element of relief in giving up the maintenance and
herding of these big packs of lies. Like Mark Twain
told us, if you tell the truth you don't have to
remember anything. Recovery groups not only offer an
encouragement to speak the truth: they are also
attended by people who have heard most of the lies
before. The relative difficulty in telling
"unheard-before" lies to such a group might contribute
even more to the recovery group's success rate than
the actual program that the group practices.
Pisunaya Vacaya Veramani, Avoid Slander, Speak to Reconcile
Pisunaya
vacaya veramani avoids tale bearing, slander,
backbiting, calumny, malicious or divisive talk or
speech and speaks to
friendship, reconciliation,
concord and harmony. The main point of such speech is
to drive wedges between people or alienate one person
or group from another, but sometimes it's also a
misguided attempt to boost one's own public esteem or
repute by tearing down the repute of another. And as
transparent and pathetic as this may seem, other
people and groups cannot always see through it, and so
it works to achieve the intended effect and the cycle
is perpetuated. Writ large, this also perpetuates
xenophobia and war. The outcast becomes a scapegoat,
the out-group becomes an enemy and often something
less than human and sentient. This only contributes to
more suffering and works against enlightenment. The
counter-effort engages in diplomacy, arbitration
and mediation and the celebration of tolerance and
diversity. Here, biodiversity has become a paradigm
for creating systems with greater strength and
resilience. But as with the building of trust, peace
and harmony are much more easily ruptured than
repaired until they can grow robust.
Pharusaya Vacaya Veramani, Avoid Invective, Speak to Benefit
Pharusaya
vacaya veramani avoids harsh, angry, abusive, insulting,
impolite, hurtful, sarcastic, or
offensive speech and speaks instead to benefit,
refinement and courtesy. "He avoids harsh language and
abstains from it. He speaks such words as are gentle,
soothing to the ear, loving, such words as go to the
heart, and are courteous, friendly, and agreeable to
many." Usually invective is intended to directly cause
the hearer pain, by a second-person bad-mouthing, as
slander is done for the third-person listener. There
may not be enough said in the suttas regarding
the more problematic aspects of sweet talk, even
though it is still pretty clear that smarminess,
mawkishness, fawning and flattery are not what is
being recommended here. It would be inconsistent with
the rest of Buddhism to assert here that we cannot
explicitly disagree with someone, or to point out the
error in their thinking. The Buddha himself is quoted
in the suttas as beginning some of his verbal
responses with "Oh, witless man …" and "Oh, misguided
man … ."
The great
challenge arises when all concerned would clearly be
better off if constructive criticism could be
delivered without any of the usual defensiveness,
overreaction, antagonism and polarization. A true
friend may have even a duty to point out the error of
someone's ways. Honesty or candor can often be better
for the cultivation of wisdom than sweetness and
agreeableness. The challenge of course is in using
tact, which is only infrequently a perfected skill.
The tact issue also brings up the question: To what
extent is a speaker or writer accountable for
another's negative misunderstanding or overreaction?
To the Buddha he was at least partly so, as long as
speech is intentional action.
A young
woman has just returned from the beauty parlor with
the latest bad idea in feminist hairstyles. Is it
really doing her a favor to flatter her and thereby
encourage her to continue to look like a man with
hormone problems? Does it help the culture for that
beautician to stay in business? Who wants to be the
one friend who is not lying to her by calling this new
look adorable? Outspokenness, the Parrhesia of
Diogenes, the original Cynic, has a definite place in
a world that sorely needs to evolve into something
better. The culture that is just too polite to unlearn
its errors, silliness and stupidity will soon becomes
full of meaningless and shallow clutter. All evolution
wants selection, and truth is as good as criteria get.
At macro scales as well, organizations, governments
and corporations will almost certainly run amok if
none will speak truth to power. Few will deny that
Gandhi did a pretty good job of this with his Satyagraha,
the practice of holding true in speech, deed and
livelihood. Yes, he angered the British empire, but he
also got it to leave without going to war. This may be
our best example to date of what a middle path can do.
Samphappalapa Veramani, Avoid Frivolity, Speak to the Point
Samphappalapa
veramani avoids useless, frivolous, pointless, silly,
fruitless, senseless, shallow,
vain, idle speech, gossip, chatter and foolish babble.
"Abandoning idle chatter, he speaks at the right time,
what is correct and to the point (atthavadi)"
(DN 1). Rephrased elsewhere: "One speaks well-spoken
words (subhasitasutta) at the right time, in
accord with facts, what is useful and profitable,
gently, with a kind heart" (See MN 27, 38, 51); and
"wise words, words to be treasured, words in season"
(DN 28). Words should be timely, honest, kind and
useful.
The
Buddha was more than a little critical or disparaging
of most of the usual topics of human conversation,
which he called tiracchanakatha, low, animal
or bestial conversation, a category in which he
included "conversation about kings, robbers and
ministers of state; armies, alarms and battles; food
and drink; clothing, furniture, garlands and scents;
relatives; vehicles; villages, towns, cities, the
countryside; women and heroes; the gossip of the
street and the well; tales of the dead; tales of
diversity, the creation of the world and of the sea;
talk of whether things exist or not" (AN 10.69). He
wasn't much for the small talk. And the kind of
conversations that he most supported were fairly
limited in number: "There are these ten topics of
[proper] conversation. Which ten? Talk on modesty, on
contentment, on seclusion, on non-entanglement, on
arousing persistence, on virtue, on concentration, on
discernment, on release, and on the knowledge and
vision of release."
Perhaps
if this approach had to be summarized or thumbnailed
it could be "mind your own business and don't get
distracted."
Conflicts Between the Principles
Conflicts
between these four general principles will arise from
time to time, as when there is a real need to speak
truth, but hurting somebody's feelings in the process
may not be avoidable. Easily-remembered tablets of law
are notoriously difficult to reconcile with
situational ethics: the complex permutations just
won't fit on the tablets. The Buddha of course
preferred that all four principles be satisfied, and
had this to say about that:
"In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, yet unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, yet endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, but unbeneficial, yet endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, and endearing and agreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them. Why is that? Because the Tathagata has sympathy for living beings."Abhaya Sutta (MN 58)
We can wonder if this might have accounted for some of the Buddha's long periods of silence. It might be that he just wanted to keep some of the chatter down around the retreat. A rule this strict would certainly keep talk to a minimum, but if a whole community took up a simple guideline of speaking from the heart to the point we might soon learn to listen more carefully. We might also learn how to listen with the right words, instead of being so eager to re-translate what is being heard.
Still, it is difficult to regard letting errors go uncorrected as a service to the one in error, or to higher purposes of awakening and the elimination of suffering. At the same time, our attempts to rectify errors in others, particularly in highly charged matters of personal evaluative beliefs that reflexively call up defensive strategies when threatened, will often make matters worse and further cement the errors into place. And now trickery, and maybe even subtlety, is regarded as at least potentially wrong. In the end, such conundrums are just one more reason that we seek wisdom first. Wisdom is so much better suited than precepts to those situational ethical questions.
"In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, yet unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, yet endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, but unbeneficial, yet endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, and endearing and agreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them. Why is that? Because the Tathagata has sympathy for living beings."Abhaya Sutta (MN 58)
We can wonder if this might have accounted for some of the Buddha's long periods of silence. It might be that he just wanted to keep some of the chatter down around the retreat. A rule this strict would certainly keep talk to a minimum, but if a whole community took up a simple guideline of speaking from the heart to the point we might soon learn to listen more carefully. We might also learn how to listen with the right words, instead of being so eager to re-translate what is being heard.
Still, it is difficult to regard letting errors go uncorrected as a service to the one in error, or to higher purposes of awakening and the elimination of suffering. At the same time, our attempts to rectify errors in others, particularly in highly charged matters of personal evaluative beliefs that reflexively call up defensive strategies when threatened, will often make matters worse and further cement the errors into place. And now trickery, and maybe even subtlety, is regarded as at least potentially wrong. In the end, such conundrums are just one more reason that we seek wisdom first. Wisdom is so much better suited than precepts to those situational ethical questions.
Sophistry and Argumentativeness
In the
Buddha's day, the Vedas and other traditions were a
big deal, and there was already a great lot of
philosophical and metaphysical wrangling between rival
teachers and competing schools of thought. Fishing for
seekers appears to be yet another of the world's
oldest professions, and the disciples of the Buddha
who developed and passed down the suttas were
among those who were ever ready to compare their own
teacher with others. But they particularly liked to
recount his words when he was observing two other
doctrines and their zealots in mid-wrangle:
"You don't understand this doctrine and discipline. I am the one who understands this doctrine and discipline." "How can you understand this doctrine and discipline?" "You're practicing the wrong way. I'm practicing the right way." "I'm being consistent. You're inconsistent." "What should have been said first you said last, what should have been said last you said first." "What you took so long to think out has been confuted." "Your doctrine has been refuted. You're defeated. Go, try to save your doctrine, or disentangle yourself now if you can." The recluse Gotama abstains from such wrangling argumentation." (Brahmajala Sutta, DN1).
In modern times, the latest of sophistry's attacks is on the whole idea of meaning itself, under banners like post-modernism and deconstruction. Meaning cannot be shared because it changes as it moves, so the intent of an author to convey a meaning is meaningless in itself and we are simply stuck with whatever we can make of the words. But it may in fact be most true of these particular thinkers that there was not much meaning there to begin with. Nietzsche offered the suggestion that what drives the endless obfuscation was an effort to muddle the waters to make them seem deep. In modern terms it has been expressed as "baffling with bullshit." It's like solitaire to the death for two or more.
"You don't understand this doctrine and discipline. I am the one who understands this doctrine and discipline." "How can you understand this doctrine and discipline?" "You're practicing the wrong way. I'm practicing the right way." "I'm being consistent. You're inconsistent." "What should have been said first you said last, what should have been said last you said first." "What you took so long to think out has been confuted." "Your doctrine has been refuted. You're defeated. Go, try to save your doctrine, or disentangle yourself now if you can." The recluse Gotama abstains from such wrangling argumentation." (Brahmajala Sutta, DN1).
In modern times, the latest of sophistry's attacks is on the whole idea of meaning itself, under banners like post-modernism and deconstruction. Meaning cannot be shared because it changes as it moves, so the intent of an author to convey a meaning is meaningless in itself and we are simply stuck with whatever we can make of the words. But it may in fact be most true of these particular thinkers that there was not much meaning there to begin with. Nietzsche offered the suggestion that what drives the endless obfuscation was an effort to muddle the waters to make them seem deep. In modern terms it has been expressed as "baffling with bullshit." It's like solitaire to the death for two or more.
The Power of the Word
The
Buddha became one of the first teachers to explicitly
acknowledge the power of words, written or spoken, in
doctrine and in dogma, for good or for ill. Today of
course we see so much damage done in the quoting of
religious scripture to justify atrocities, or in the
sweeping panoramic shots taken at one of Hitler's
rallies. And we see the benefits done in surveying
thousands of years of accumulated human wisdom, or in
the diplomatic mediation that can stop a war in
mid-carnage. And it all starts with the running
monologues and dialogues that we hold in our own
heads. Our words shape our thoughts, our thoughts
shape our mental states, and our mental states shape
our lives. When we rule our words we gain some new
footholds, power and control, early in this process.
There is a logic to the more innocent, pragmatic and
vital lies that we tell ourselves to get by in the
everyday world. While the Buddha would most likely
still disparage most of these, he might take a gentler
approach to their eradication and simply advise that
mindfulness be applied to watch them in their telling.
By mindfulness we see where the words come from and
what they are worth. Above all, we take a more honest
look at long-term outcomes.
We are
referring here to both speech to others, verbal and
written, and to the lies, slander, invective and
nonsense that we tell to ourselves. In the beginning,
learning to true our speech to others is practice for
the more difficult art of truing our speech to
ourselves. The point of correcting our internal
monologues and dialogues is not to save our souls:
it's to stop propagating the errors where the error
and the propagation begins, in thoughts that lead to
actions.
With
respect to recovery, Right Speech would suggest that
we begin with an honest and candid admission of the
dimensions of the problems that we have to solve. We
do this first to ourselves and then gradually to
others. I say gradually because we learn as we go and
communication that isn't small talk is often
uncomfortable to others. But it's important that what
needs to be said gets said and this means tact, and
subtlety. It isn't necessary to tell anybody other
than yourself that you're beginning to correct
addictive patterns of behavior, but it may solicit
some help from friends to know that you are working on
your issues, and in some cases it will tell you which
of your friends are not really your friends and permit
you to cut some bad influences loose. Following our
admissions we may also find confessions and/or
apologies to be in order. Both admissions and
confessions are central to the 12-Step approaches to
recovery and more will be said on those in the first
Appendix, which reviews the steps from one of many
possible Theravada Buddhist points of view.
A fool is characterized by
his actions; a wise man is characterized by his
actions. (MN 33)
Good Karma
Samma
Kammanta, Right Action, is behaving yourself. It
recognizes that all intentional actions or doings (kamma)
have their consequences. The bad ones may be escaped
in advance by not doing inappropriate acts. Kammanta
is the same root word as kamma, which is
better-known as Karma. Samma has a wide range
of meanings, including simply good, so in a
linguistically respectable way, Right Action could
also be translated "Good Karma." Samma also
means "making the most of," so here is the practice of
optimizing the consequences of
our intentional actions. While Right Action is usually
understood as concentrating on several Precepts,
instructions on types of behavior to avoid performing,
another series of abstentions (veramani) like
we found in Right Speech, the name can also imply
doing or practicing the right thing positively and
proactively.
Natural, Ingrained Goodness
The
Buddha had the idea that we humans are basically good
or moral. We have a normal, natural, genuine way of
knowing right from wrong called natural
virtue (pakati-sila), and
sometimes rendered "without-crisis morality." Under
normal circumstances we behave ourselves reasonably
well. It's when our complications lead into confusion
and crisis that we increasingly stray, often
increasing the confusion and exacerbating the crisis
and so engaging in vicious cycles. In part we owe this
natural virtue to two of eleven "wholesome mental
factors" (kusala cetasikas), also found among
the seven attributes of the virtuous (satta
saddhammas). The first is Hiri, an
innate sense of shame and disgust with wrong or evil
that seeks to maintain a sense of personal dignity and
self-respect. This is internal and without regard to
external consequences. It is our conscience and our
conscientiousness, illumined by consciousness or
mindfulness. The second is Otappa, an ethical
wariness, fear of wrongdoing
or moral dread that seeks to maintain discretion,
prudence and decorum and avoid the reproach of others.
This is consideration or concern that arises out of
our observations of how the world responds to our
behavior. Opposite to Hiri and Otappa are
Ahirika and Anottappa, which are found
among the Ten Defilements.
Human
social sciences are slowly emerging from a long,
embarrassing phase wherein it was believed that, while
the animals were behaviorally informed primarily by
instinct, humans ran by a different set of rules, due
to us being made in god's image. We were more like
blank slates and the bulk of our behavior was shaped
and in large part determined by what our various
cultures had inscribed or scribbled thereon. Often
conjoined with equally ignorant ideas of cultural
relativity, this human exceptionalism has long
protected us from learning many of the truths of the
world we live in. The evolutionary sciences, including
evolutionary psychology and darwinian medicine, are
slowly stripping away this nonsense to expose a human
nature that is looking increasingly like that of many
of the other sentient beings with which we share the
planet, most particularly the birds and mammals and
especially our fellow primates. We have, as it were,
an ingrained morality that we can move with or
against. We have a way of being that is natural to us.
There is a human Dao.
Our basic
natural morality provides us with a rough
approximation of how best to get along in our social
environment. It's by no means a tablet of rules or
laws, and it still leaves us with much learning to do,
but it sets us up with something akin to what Kevin
Horrigan calls "moral taste buds," a readiness to
sense experience along several identifiable axes such
as care and compassion, or fairness and justice, or
liberty and oppression, or loyalty and betrayal, or
authority and subversion, or sanctity and de-
gradation. We seem born to recognize and categorize
behaviors according to a number of universal types, as
though these were set up as modules in the brain. As
we grow up, certain social roles become reliably
associated with certain types of behavior: mother,
thief, shaman, trickster, helper, hero,
puer, coward, ally,
stranger, etc. Our perceptions of these roles seem to
carry natural affective loads urging us to move
towards or away from them. By this relatively simple
form of sorting we develop approximately universal
archetypes for behavioral patterns, our good and bad
examples of how to behave.
This ultimately leads us straight into was David Hume
termed the "is- ought problem." In this case, nature
has given us a moral foundation, with neurological
substrates, that is a fact of life, and evolution has
preserved it for having served our needs. Does this
mean it is necessarily right? That question goes too
far of course, but it will keep us from saying with
any certainty that we have now grounded our new
behavioral values in the scientific facts, which is
probably a good thing following our experience with
religious certainty. Our natural human virtue is only
a starting point. We build from there. But it begins
with something that we were "born to be" and if we
cannot accept that as a starting point then we begin
with a delusion. When we begin with what we are given,
and if we bravely look around us at what "behaving
like animals" truly means, we note that we might just
be genetically programmed for empathy, reciprocity, affection,
friendship, and fairness.
And a readiness to bite evildoers.
It can
probably be safely said that the Buddha regarded wrong
as that which caused or perpetuated the suffering of
sentient beings. He did not stop with human beings,
nor did he stop with the sentient beings in the
present: he explicitly expressed his care and
compassion for the future generations several times in
the suttas. He appealed to the "better angels of our
nature." But we need to grow there. Given that we can
use criteria like suffering to distinguish wholesome
from unwholesome, and apply them to all sentient
beings across cultures and longer spans of time, we
can assert our ability to avoid moral relativism and
its toxic notion that there are no right answers. We
have only to learn our lesson from religion with its
tablets of law and quit carving our answers in stone.
Morals and Ethics
Irrigators regulate the
waters, fletchers straighten arrow shafts, carpenters
shape wood, and the good control themselves. (Dhammapada
145)
It might
be useful here to again distinguish morals from
ethics. We can let morals stand as a subset of the
broader mores, the conventions of a community,
and see these as developing out of our needs to get
along and find our places socially, supported to an
extent by biological evolution. Thus they are closely
tied to our "natural virtue" or pakati-sila.
But they are not fundamentally tied to conscious and
thoughtful reflection and analysis, and in fact our
pressures to conformity and getting along can quickly
turn into getting swept along with the momentum of the
crowd, with tragic and horrifying results,
particularly since our civilization has so far
outgrown the sort of social environments to which
evolution has adapted us. Philip Zimbardo's "Lucifer
Effect" illuminates this problem further, if pondering
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" fails to
enlighten. So morality gets us started with modules in
the brain and the archetypes developing out of these
modules and out of our social experience. Ethics,
regarded here as a branch of philosophy, implies the
next steps: inquiry, analysis, evaluation and
decision. Ethics generally tries to systematize mental
concepts of right and wrong and prescribe behavior
according to rules, whether the rules are generalized
precepts or situational guidelines. The word ethics
comes from the Greek ethos, meaning character.
When it manages to detach itself from what we have
evolved to be, as from the body with its drives and
feelings, it can set up some very deep conflicts and
schisms in its practitioners. Such was St. Augustine's
conflict with Brother Ass.
Ethical
wisdom in Buddhism is judgmental. It will say: "this
is unwise, unwholesome, unskillful, unworthy." But it
does not say this by calling rules down from Heaven or
by insisting we follow some teacher's decree as there
is no moral authority in Dhamma-Vinaya, not even the
Buddha. We develop the rules by observing the
consequences of our behaving in specific ways. An act
is unworthy if it impedes our progress towards the end
of suffering. And this judgment takes the whole being
into account, from the glandular secretions on up.
The Precepts for the Laity
Sila,
as ethical practice or virtue, provides an objective
guide, a way to gauge behavior outside of our
subjective judgment, although not entirely outside our
formidable powers of rationalization and denial. It is
in the nature of prescriptive approaches to start with
the proscriptive, and suggest that not doing the wrong
thing is the first part of doing the right thing, or,
in order to start making things better you first have
to stop making things worse. Dhamma-Vinaya has not
been an exception. And in theory, not doing something
saves money and energy, so it's a cheaper way to feel
better, with fewer pesky karmic costs. The real
question here is: why would we need religious
conviction to behave morally? There is certainly an
ill-examined, population-wide, majority opinion that
the two are somehow entangled, one that somehow
survives a lot of evidence to suggest that religion
can just as often and easily promote evil as the good.
I personally think the entanglement is moronic and
needs to be outgrown, and that we can at last begin to
build a consensual ethic independently of any
religious belief. A consensual ethic will likely point
to a scientifically verifiable one, but not because of
some virtue that inheres in democracy. Rather, it will
evolve out of our human universals. Dhamma-Vinaya, at
least in its Theravada version, should not have been
called a religion in the first place. It is more
accurately a highly articulated psychology. In this
spirit, the precepts should not be viewed in the same
light as the Ten Commandments. Rather that "Thou shalt
not …" try "You're likely to be much better off not
…". It's not a sin to fail and you won't be punished,
but it's likely to be a mistake and there will most
likely be consequences. There are several versions or
enumerations of the Precepts, but the most commonly
encountered version lists Five Abstentions (Veramani),
called the Panca Silani:
1) Panatipata veramani is the restraint from
injuring or killing living, sentient creatures.
Positively, it is being desirous of the welfare of all
sentient beings or creatures (pani or satta).
This is closely related to the virtue of harmlessness
(avihimsa). There are several much-explored
dimensions to this. Some sects will take this in the
direction of the Jains and become vegan or vegetarian,
while Buddha himself allowed his disciples to eat meat
that came from animals not butchered specifically to
feed them. For Buddhists, life begins at conception,
so abortion may be an issue. We can at least say that
since abortion is the most traumatic of all of the
forms of birth control, then much-improved and more
universal contraception practices are a very good
thing. Suicide is discouraged on the grounds that
there is no escape, but at MN 144 there is a
discussion of an arahant or saint "using the
knife blamelessly." Dhanna-Vinaya is not really
homocentric: all of the sentient beings are being
nudged towards awakening, although in Theravada this
is not necessarily a destiny and not the destination
of all sentient beings as it is in Mahayana. We can
suppose that the parasites may be targeted for "early
release," for their mindless contributions to the
general suffering, while symbiotes would be
encouraged. There is a whole new branch of zoology
that is waiting to be created, and named, that will
explore interspecies relationships that go beyond
simple commensalism into play, affection and
friendship. This could be a good Buddhist career. At
bottom, any urge to injure or kill can be driven out
by the Brahmaviharas: metta, karuna,
mudita and upekkha, together with the
four I've made bold to add, khama, katannuta,
garava and khanti, already discussed
under Right Intention.
2) Adinnadana
veramani is the restraint from taking what is
not given, taking anything by force, fraud or theft.
Positively, any such urges may be pushed aside by our
cultivating gratitude, by senses of satisfaction and
generosity. There are, of course, gray areas here: one
classic example is Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of
bread for his starving sister and her family. I stole
a valuable book once in an act that I justified to
myself by using it to help dozens of people, and I
don't feel any guilt about it to this day. But I doubt
that anybody ever discovered that it was missing.
Property is an interesting concept that is not a human
universal. But the usefulness of trust is, and that is
what this precept is ultimately supposed to secure.
3) Kamesu
micchacara veramani is the restraint from
misconduct in sensual pleasures. Generally this refers
to any craving of sensation that leads to loss of
equilibrium. Elsewhere it is specified primarily as
sexual misconduct, ignoble practice or unchastity (abrahmacariya)
which for the laity refers to rape and relations with
women who are married, betrothed or have not yet come
of age. The sexual initiation of young boys by older
women isn't mentioned, so I think we're still good
there.
4) Musavada
veramani is restraint from lying, deceit, or the
speaking of falsehood. This is one of the five
precepts but it is not given as one of the elements of
Samma Kammanta because it was already presented
as an element of Samma Vaca.
5) Surameraya-majja-pamadatthana
veramani is restraint from using wine, liquor or
intoxicants* which result in heedlessness or
negligence (pamada) of the mind or emotions. *
Note what happens if we punctuate this with a comma
after intoxicants: we remove the possibility that
there are intoxicants that do not cause heedlessness
and negligence. This is how the Fifth Precept is often
presented by those with a recovery agenda. Obviously
the fifth precept is seized upon by nearly all
programs linking Buddhism and recovery. The essence of
the message is clear enough: stop doing the behaviors
that compromise your heedfulness and mindfulness.
Given what we now know of the neurochemistry of
addiction, we can also classify a variety of addictive
behaviors as intoxicants, even where they involve no
ingestion of substances, activities that get us doped
up on dopamine or oxytocin, for instance.
I would
submit that there are intoxicants, or at least
experiences with intoxicants, which do in fact
contribute to heedfulness and mindfulness, and not
just coffee and tea either. Here I am speaking of
entheogens or psychedelics, and with the assumption
that these are being taken with an informed,
responsible and mature attitude. In
a Tricycle article entitled "Recovery and the
Fifth Precept" (see)
its author Don Lattin, wonders: "whether drug-induced
feelings of wonder, awe, empathy, and
intercon-nectedness are authentic religious
experiences. My answer is that while the experiences
may be authentic, the real issue is what we do with
them. Do the experiences change the way we live our
lives? Do they make us more aware and compassionate
human beings? Looking back on my own history, I’d have
to say that a few psychedelic drug experiences back in
the day did change the way I think about the world and
live my life. They did make me a better person. But I
can’t say the same thing about a few decades of
experiences with other drugs, including alcohol." As
offered, and with specific regard to recovery, a large
part of this effect is the gift of samvega, an
unflinching glimpse into the two worlds of what has
been and what could be. In the latter is a rekindling
of a sense of the sacred. Bill Wilson, of AA fame,
began taking LSD in 1956 and credited LSD's success to
ego reduction instead of reframing. Wilson even took
first preliminary steps towards working regular
special meetings with LSD into the AA program, but
this proved a little too much for the republic.
Despite all the propaganda to the contrary, I do think
that for brave and responsible souls, the hands-down
most effective first step in a cure for addiction is
the careful use of entheogens, especially within the
context of accepted and sometimes even legal spiritual
disciplines, such as peyote within the Native American
Church, ayahuasca (hoasca or daime) in
the syncretic churches of South America, ibogaine in
the Bwiti rituals of Africa, psilocybes and toad venom
globally, and even the temporarily-illegal
administration of LSD-25 by clinical psychiatrists.
Fortunately, some doors seem to be opening up again
for the resumption of serious, peer-reviewed
scientific research into the psychiatric uses of these
substances. Out of ignorance, arrogance and fear,
repressive governments have been allowed to obstruct
research into these methods, partly to insure that
they can continue to call any success stories "merely
anecdotal," but these walls seem to be cracking. The MAPS and the Vaults of Erowid
websites are currently the two best internet resources
for ongoing progress reports on these scientific
fronts. Unfortunately, addiction sufferers must still
find their own way to these largely illegal medicines.
Or to their samvega by alternate routes.
The
ethical discipline continues with the adoption of the
Ten Precepts (dasa-sila), ten aversions to or
abstentions from further unwholesome behavioral
missteps (veramani-sikkhapadam samadiyami). But
the ten includes the remaining three abstentions
already presented for Samma Vaca: pisunaya vacaya
veramani, avoiding slander and speaking to
reconcile; pharusaya vacaya veramani, avoiding
invective and speaking to benefit; and samphappalapa
veramani, avoiding frivolity and speaking to the
point. So for our purposes here on this step of the
path, we have three remaining precepts, all
restatements of the need to eradicate the three
unwholesome roots (lobha, dosa and moha)
discussed at the Second Noble Truth of Suffering:
Abhijjhaya veramani is restraint from actions born of covetousness, envy or unrighteous greed. Abhijjhaya has synonyms at lobha, raga, kamaraga, and kamacchando.
Ayapada veramani is restraint from actions born of aversion, ill-will, animosity, malice, anger, hatred, malevolence, hostility, resistance, irritation. Vyapada has synonyms at dosa, patigha, pratigha, dvesha and others.
Micchaditthiya veramani is restraint from actions born of wrong views, misbelief or misunderstanding. Micchaditthiya has synonyms at moha, ditthi, ditthasava, and avijja.
Abhijjhaya veramani is restraint from actions born of covetousness, envy or unrighteous greed. Abhijjhaya has synonyms at lobha, raga, kamaraga, and kamacchando.
Ayapada veramani is restraint from actions born of aversion, ill-will, animosity, malice, anger, hatred, malevolence, hostility, resistance, irritation. Vyapada has synonyms at dosa, patigha, pratigha, dvesha and others.
Micchaditthiya veramani is restraint from actions born of wrong views, misbelief or misunderstanding. Micchaditthiya has synonyms at moha, ditthi, ditthasava, and avijja.
The Precepts for Monks and Nuns
Although
this is probably not immediately relevant to any
recovery process, we might at least mention that a few
more general precepts are adopted by Buddhist monks or
nuns (bhikkus or bhikkunis, respectively).
The Third
Precept, kamesu micchacara veramani, the
restraint from sensual misconduct, is reinterpreted in
a much stricter sense here and followers are enjoined
from any sexual activity whatsoever, as well as
pleasure seeking in general. Further, within the
context of the explicit social contracts of monastic
life, the consequences of violating this precept can
be as severe as banishment for life.
Further
abstentions are from solid food after noon (vikala-bhojana);
and a litany of various sensual entertainments (nacca-gita-vadita-visuka-dassana);
various bodily decorations (mala-gandha-vilepana-dharana-mandana-vibhusana-tthana);
high and luxurious beds (ucca-sayana-maha-sayana);
and accepting alms of gold and silver (jatarupa-rajata-patiggahana).
The codes
of conduct for monastic life don't end here. One third
of the Buddhist scriptures found in the Tipitaka
or Pali Canon comprise the monastic rules for bhikkhus
and bhikkhunis. This section is known as the Vinaya
Pitaka. Followers have counted 227 major rules
for monks and 311 for nuns, nearly rivaling the Tanach
(Old Testament) of Judaism in scope. Conventions of
etiquette, political organization, practices of
confession, procedures for conflict resolution,
administration of justice: all find their articulation
here.
Positive Ethics and Recovery
When you choose an action
whose consequences you can foresee you are also
choosing the consequences, and you accept that fact.
(Dark Buddhism, p. 124) Whether
proscriptive or proactive, the word sila means
moral disciple or virtuous conduct, with the
connotations of practice and habit. To the extent that
sila requires initial concentration and effort,
beginning with withdrawal in the case of addiction, it
is also initial training in Right Mindfulness (Samma
Sati) and Right Concentration (Samma Samadhi).
And to the extent that it requires the the maintenance
of both energy and attitude it is also training in
Right Effort (Samma Vayama). Except where the
meddlers and democratic socialism have prevailed and
"everything not forbidden is compulsory," it is easier
to specify what not to do than what to do. Once we
have our don'ts in place and have plugged some of our
major energy leaks it will behoove us to find
something to do with the rest of our lives and our
newly rediscovered surplus of elan vital and brio,
hopefully some useful activity beyond attending
regular 12-Step meetings for life. In this regard, it
is fortunate that most addicts deserving of the name
have left at least some damage in their kammic
wake that may now be possible to repair. The making of
amends, which holds a prominent place in the 12-Step
programs, can give us some great starter projects, and
it makes a nice addition to the "admission, confession
and apology" that we saw in Samma Vaca. The
4th step of the 12-Step programs calls for a
"searching and fearless moral inventory" and this too
can provide a good punch list for the projects ahead.
Where there is damage done that cannot be directly
repaired there is always reparation or atonement in
kind, such as an act of generosity to atone for a
theft. Nobody is saying that this works because of
some cosmic plenum of kammic justice, or even
that it works at all: only that accountability can be
practiced, and to some extent it might be monitored by
some form of accounting, just to keep us honest and
our efforts proportionate.
Our addiction itself may or may not have been a
failure of morals or a defect of character, although
certainly a deterioration of our values can easily
lead to a weakening of our character, and the way out
will require the adoption of healthier values and the
strengthening of our character. Sometimes a good, or
sensitive, or bright, or otherwise promising human
being can get so discouraged by repeated
disappointments with human society and certain
self-destructive aspects of human civilization that
they just give up and start sinking. But if, after
learning what they can of what suffering has to teach,
they cannot find the strength to pick themselves up
and go on, then it will have to be someone more fit to
carry our evolution forward. We have to live and
learn, and turn our errors into life lessons. The
errors themselves are not the failures. A refusal to
learn is a failure: to repeatedly and
willfully ignore good
information is ignor-ance at its root.
Liberty is a teacher. Libertinism is potentially a teacher as well. A lot of the people who would champion their liberties and rights over duties and the rights of others have missed the point entirely about how liberty works: it's the ultimate teacher of duty. In the exercise of my rights I learn that they end where yours are compromised, and we learn that we require the pact of mutual respect for reciprocal rights for the system to keep working. Importantly, we need the exercise of our liberties in order to discover what their limits are. And equally important is that we not be prevented from experiencing the due consequences of our actions. Parents may have a duty to guard their children against mortal danger, but it's also important to let the child touch the fire or stick his finger in the fan to really learn what "hot" and "owie" mean. Governments that shield their adults from the consequences of the free exercise of liberty simply fail to understand the whole point of liberty.
Liberty is a teacher. Libertinism is potentially a teacher as well. A lot of the people who would champion their liberties and rights over duties and the rights of others have missed the point entirely about how liberty works: it's the ultimate teacher of duty. In the exercise of my rights I learn that they end where yours are compromised, and we learn that we require the pact of mutual respect for reciprocal rights for the system to keep working. Importantly, we need the exercise of our liberties in order to discover what their limits are. And equally important is that we not be prevented from experiencing the due consequences of our actions. Parents may have a duty to guard their children against mortal danger, but it's also important to let the child touch the fire or stick his finger in the fan to really learn what "hot" and "owie" mean. Governments that shield their adults from the consequences of the free exercise of liberty simply fail to understand the whole point of liberty.
Looking
forward next, instead of back, we have to look for
guidance within ourselves, to take the place of the
bait and the allurements we have until recently been
following. Hopefully we have now learned something
about our inferior self-leadership and won't get taken
in by some new movement or fad. In the 3,000-year-old
original portion of the Chinese Book of Changes
there is a short phrase, yǒu fú, that is used 23
times. Yǒu is simply the verb to be, or hold, or have,
fú denotes truth, sincerity and confidence. For some
reason this simple phrase has quite bedeviled western
translators and its straightforward meaning has passed
right over the heads of respected scholars and
diviners alike: Be True. In effect it has the same
literal and etymological meaning as Gandhi's Sataygraha.
Perhaps the difficulty in arriving at this comes from
the fact that the Book of Changes does not
once explain what "true" is. But, in fact, that is the
whole point. Deep down in our original nature we
already know what being true means and what it asks of
us, and this may be why we avoid it. We just need to
stop lying to ourselves and others. Archers,
carpenters and wheelwrights use the word true as a
verb: to bring something into a correct, upright or
balanced state. In these three contexts, true is
devoid of any and all of the moralistic, philosophical
or metaphysical overtones and simply means doing
something correctly. The proper path could be our
default path if we could only recover the genuine in
our nature and learn to hold true to this, even in
times of confusion and stress. In Dhamma-Vinaya this
is being informed by Hiri and Otappa,
by our conscience and by what we have learned of
consequences.
We can
take our directive to Be True in two directions. We
can live for ourselves and for our own personal
evolution or we can serve a higher purpose. No stigma
is being attached here to living for ourselves, or
being self-ish. Any bad reputation that selfishness
has really comes from doing it poorly. Someone who is
truly optimizing their life is very likely also
working on the ethical problem of suffering. They will
probably have meaningful friendships and be taking
great care about what enemies they are making. Someone
who is selfish in this way has nothing to prevent him
from being charitable or altruistic. In the other
direction, serving a higher purpose is living for
something greater than we are, something longer
lasting, farther reaching, more sustainable. It may
not in fact be as rewarding as living for ourselves,
and a lifetime of dedication and hard work might even
go completely unrecognized and unrewarded. This can be
a painful discovery or a rude awakening for someone
who is expecting the cosmos or society to find ways to
reward them or to celebrate their efforts, but this is
also a useful lesson that higher purpose is not about
you and it may even have nothing whatsoever to do with
you. Both of these offer a life of living forward and
plenty of incentive to practice Right Action. And both
are leagues beyond living aimlessly and desperately.
Samma
Ajiva, Right Livelihood or Occupation also has
its proscriptive and proactive sides. First, it
abandons ways of living which bring harm and suffering
to ourselves and other sentient beings, and then it
adopts ways of living which will further our personal
evolution and our higher purposes. There are also two
sides to Right Livelihood along a different axis: at
it's most literal level it refers to our occupation,
the means by which we acquire the wherewithal, usually
money, to meet our physical needs; and at it's most
comprehensive level it refers to our Work in the
highest sense, how we develop character and dignity,
how we fulfill our human potential by meeting our
broader range of needs, how we live a noble life and
make the world a better place. To the Hermetic
alchemists of the west, the Great Work was the
transformation of humankind. To Eliphas Levi: "the
Great Work is, before all things, the creation of man
by himself, that is to say, the full and entire
conquest of his faculties and his future." Nietzsche,
of course, took this another step forward in claiming
"Man is something to be surpassed." In Buddhist terms,
this Work is the cultivation of wholesomeness and
skillful living. In Theravada Buddhism particularly,
studying and learning go nowhere when they find no way
into practice and our everyday lives. In general this
also pervades the rest of Buddhism. The Dhammapada,
a Mahayana text says: "Much though he recites the
sacred texts, but acts not accordingly, that heedless
man is like a cowherd who only counts the cows of
others: he does not partake of the blessings of the
holy life." (D19). The talk must be walked.
As with
the virtuous practices (sila) of Right Speech
and Action, this is not simply moralizing. Right
Livelihood will free the disciple from the
distraction, remorse, regret, misgivings, guilt and
shame, from the inferior kamma, from the
consequences or ripenings (vipaka) or fruit (phala)
of unwholesome action.
Five Unwholesome Occupations
The most
familiar of the teachings on the subject of Right
Livelihood runs thus: "These are the five types of
business that a lay follower should not engage in" (AN
5.177):
1) Satthavanijja, trafficking in weapons or lethal arms;
2) Sattavanijja, trafficking in people, slaves, prostitutes and children;
3) Mamsavanijja, trafficking in flesh, butchery, and animals for slaughter;
4) Majjavanijja, trafficking in intoxicants (drinks and drugs); and
5) Visavinijja, trafficking in poisons or toxic products.
1) Satthavanijja, trafficking in weapons or lethal arms;
2) Sattavanijja, trafficking in people, slaves, prostitutes and children;
3) Mamsavanijja, trafficking in flesh, butchery, and animals for slaughter;
4) Majjavanijja, trafficking in intoxicants (drinks and drugs); and
5) Visavinijja, trafficking in poisons or toxic products.
These
five are all straightforward enough to require little
elaboration. Today we know things about the human
condition and its future that were likely not
foreseeable twenty-five centuries ago. Civilization
has brought new problems and occupations into our
lives and even simple common sense could expand the
list quite a bit. We might now, for instance, add
advertising to the list, at least to the extent that
it creates artificial wants and dissatisfactions that
it then turns into artificial needs in order to sell
products to the newly insecure. And we can also can
include those occupations that overexploit the
environment, extinguish species, pollute the commons
and lay whole ecosystems to waste.
While the Buddhist monks and nuns live pretty simple
lives, they too will find themselves needing to gather
food, clothing, money and other wherewithal. In the Majimha
Nikaya, Sutta 117, and in the Vsm
I:61-65, five more forms of wrong livelihood by deceit
(kuhanadi micchajiva) are identified:
1) Kuhana, deceit, scheming, trickery, fraud, especially by pretending to work wonders;
2) Lapana, flattery, talking to please donors with a view to acquiring gain, honor and renown;
3) Nemittikata, innuendo, hinting, semblances, inviting others to make offerings by giving all kinds of hints (as at supernatural rewards);
4) Nippesikata, belittling, disparaging, backbiting, harassing in order to induce offerings; and
5) Labhena labhau nijiginsabata, offering enticements of getting goods with goods, gain from invested money.
Monks are also enjoined from using the base arts of reading signs and omens (tiracchana vikka micchajiva virati).
There are legitimate half-measures to Right Livelihood, for people on the path to liberation but not yet ready for the renunciate's life. A great deal of the progress that we are making towards enlightenment and the elimination of suffering might still be made by the householder with property and a family to care for. In the Vyagghapajja Sutta (AN 8.54), economic stability and well-being come to the householder by way of:
1) Kuhana, deceit, scheming, trickery, fraud, especially by pretending to work wonders;
2) Lapana, flattery, talking to please donors with a view to acquiring gain, honor and renown;
3) Nemittikata, innuendo, hinting, semblances, inviting others to make offerings by giving all kinds of hints (as at supernatural rewards);
4) Nippesikata, belittling, disparaging, backbiting, harassing in order to induce offerings; and
5) Labhena labhau nijiginsabata, offering enticements of getting goods with goods, gain from invested money.
Monks are also enjoined from using the base arts of reading signs and omens (tiracchana vikka micchajiva virati).
There are legitimate half-measures to Right Livelihood, for people on the path to liberation but not yet ready for the renunciate's life. A great deal of the progress that we are making towards enlightenment and the elimination of suffering might still be made by the householder with property and a family to care for. In the Vyagghapajja Sutta (AN 8.54), economic stability and well-being come to the householder by way of:
1) Utthana sampada,
the production of wealth by skilled and earnest
endeavor;
2) Arakkha sampada, the protection, wise investment and savings of these earnings; and
3) Samajivikata, living within one's means, or balanced livelihood. This of course is a big one in a culture with so little restraint as ours.
2) Arakkha sampada, the protection, wise investment and savings of these earnings; and
3) Samajivikata, living within one's means, or balanced livelihood. This of course is a big one in a culture with so little restraint as ours.
In the Anana
Sutta (AN 4.62) the householder or layman might
help himself to four kinds of happiness (sukha)
or satisfactoriness without straying from the path:
1) Atthi-sukha, the happiness of ownership, economic security, sufficient means, wealth righteously gained by work and zeal;
2) Bhoga-sukha, the happiness of enjoyment, from wise and economical expenditure of lawful wealth, especially in funding meritorious deeds;
3) Anana-sukha, the happiness of debtlessness, of solvency, of not owing others, freedom from usury and the threat of repossession; and
4) Anavajja-sukkha, the happiness of blamelessness and harmlessness in body, speech and mind.
1) Atthi-sukha, the happiness of ownership, economic security, sufficient means, wealth righteously gained by work and zeal;
2) Bhoga-sukha, the happiness of enjoyment, from wise and economical expenditure of lawful wealth, especially in funding meritorious deeds;
3) Anana-sukha, the happiness of debtlessness, of solvency, of not owing others, freedom from usury and the threat of repossession; and
4) Anavajja-sukkha, the happiness of blamelessness and harmlessness in body, speech and mind.
There may
be a misconception about Buddhism suggesting that we
are to shun beauty and other finer things of life,
renouncing all but simplicity and plainness. There is
a point of view from which the main purpose of
gathering wealth is gaining control over what you have
to see and hear, particularly out of the windows of
your own home, together with gaining control of what
others see of you. Much wealth is spent on this pair.
It is certainly true of Dhamma-Vinaya that we are
encouraged to see past and through all of the
"trappings" of glamor and culture. But when we do see
past this it is often the case that what we see is
more beauty, and of a deeper, more authentic kind.
There is a lot of beauty that we overlook or dismiss
just because we overlay a film of plainness on it,
beauty that we only glimpse rarely in those special
moments when the ordinariness seems to rub off. There
is beauty that we will take for granted only because
we have "been here and done that", or because we have
now learned a once-wonderful thing's name or category.
Sometimes we will simply but perversely refuse to
adopt the point of view needed to see it. And there is
beauty that is available only to giant squids because
only they have the giant squid eyeballs that are
needed to see it. The world also has music both above
and below the range of our hearing. Because so many of
us are out to find only the most glamorous beauty, the
most pleasing surfaces, most of us miss the more
interesting big picture. A simple life of just
adequate prosperity frees us to renew our way of
seeing, to find the things we overlook. And
importantly, entering into this richer world does not
require selling ourselves into slavery.
Compassion for Future Generations It is
central to Buddhist philosophy that the future is the
consequence or the kamma of the past and the
present. There is a continuity in the journeying
forward (samsara) that goes beyond genetics and
the physics of cause and effect. The people waking up
in the years to come with our memories, and with what
we have passed down of our evolved sentience, will
have us to either thank or curse for their conditions.
Cultures with philosophical traditions of either
rebirth or reincarnation have a head start towards
this understanding, a more familiar sense of
connectedness to future generations. If the world is
worse the next time around it is so because of our
human greed, ill-will and shortsightedness (lobha,
dosa, and moha). Others have managed to
develop an ethic towards our legacy in other ways. The
Native Americans developed an ethical tenet to act
with regard, remembrance and respect for the seventh
generation down the line from ours. The cultures that
practiced ancestor worship had a subtler message
hidden between the lines of their ritual scripts: if
you wanted to be honored or revered in this way, you
would make an effort to become worthy ancestors
yourselves.
The
Buddha voiced his concern for future generations in a
number of places. In some his first concern was with
the propagation of inferior dhammas, ideas or
doctrines, and in others with the quality of life that
we are leaving to the unborn. We have a responsibility
to the natural world as stewards for the simple reason
that there is nobody else that is able to take
responsibility for the damage we are doing. It is our
job because it is our mess and at best we can only
avoid the consequences temporarily. The exhaustion of
natural resources, the extinction of species,
pollution, even the loss of natural beauty are
increasingly pressing the more perceptive among us to
develop consensual environmental and social ethics
that can stand independently of divisive religious and
cultural factions.
To a much
greater extent than in Buddha's day, the human being
is a parasite on this world, and yet the majority of
human beings alive still will not or cannot admit that
overpopulation and overconsumption are serious
problems. I once tried to get the board of directors
of a statewide environmental group to publicly
acknowledge human overpopulation as an environmental
problem. They refused to touch the issue for political
reasons. I left the group in disgust. We have cooked
up our terminology to support our denial, so that now
something that is either "green" or "environmentally
friendly" is only ten percent less damaging than the
business-as-usual thing it seeks to replace. We don't
look at real costs, life-cycle costs or net values. We
don't look at embedded materials, energy or nutrients,
the real costs of manufacturing products. Most of the
people in government seem incapable of seeing anything
beyond the next budget or election year. And the
single most abused term in the English language today
is the word "sustainable." To the U.S. Forest Service,
a "sustainable harvest" doesn't mean a level that can
be continued in perpetuity, it means "a
non-diminishing flow of commodity outputs." Then there
is "sustainable petrochemistry" that ignores the end
of oil to concentrate on the steep costs of the next
congressional election and the costly purchase of new
congressmen. The U.S. "national debt" is another
example of deceitful language. It doesn't include any
of those "unfunded liabilities" like the commitments
to Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits or
pensions, the sum of which dwarfs what is officially
called the debt. This may be taken as a very general
reflection of the human capacity for denial in matters
of livelihood: most of us are spoiled children,
borrowing with no thought of paying back the debt. One
supposes that there are architects who will set their
foundations on wishful thinking, but they build
nothing for future generations.
Simple Living
A bird, wherever it goes, flies with its wings as its only burden. (MN 51)
Waking up
in such a world as our species is making, really
waking up, is problematic to somebody with a
conscience, who cannot simply "go with the flow." And
it's particularly problematic to a Buddhist who cannot
submit to anger and outrage any more than they can
submit to ignorance and denial. This will discourage
many from waking up at all. Of all of the things that
I invited to drive me to drink, the powerless outrage
at my species' unspeakably dangerous and ignorant
behavior topped the list. I seized on Sebastien
Chamfort's words, "Whoever is not a misanthrope at
forty years can never have loved mankind." And I am
still much more embarrassed than proud to be a human.
The best I could do was to calm down eventually, sober
and wake up, and continue to live the simplest, most
harmless, smallest-footprint life that I could manage
to live. And write furiously, and publish the work for
free. It was easy to adopt Dave Foreman's
prescription, used by Earth First: "… do something.
Pay your rent for the privilege of living on this
beautiful, blue-green, living Earth." And this image
from Loren Eiseley helped a little, too:
A small
boy was running up and down the beach, feverishly
hurling starfish, deposited by the tide, back into the
water before they died. An old man approached him and
skeptically asked, "Do you honestly think your work
will make a difference?" The boy looked at him with
sparking eyes, held up a starfish and said, "It makes
a difference to this one!" and threw the starfish back
into the sea.
There are
tradeoffs to the benefits of simple living. I get
experiences instead of stuff. I'm spared a lot of
pressure, stress and fatigue. But I can't get a credit
card since I haven't owed anybody any money in forty
years. There are no waiting lines for potential lovers
or mates wanting to share in my wealth. The nice
things I own will fit in just a few boxes, except for
a decent library, compiled just in time for books to
become obsolete and the eyesight to start failing.
What I have had, that some people work all of their
lives to get and never do, is forty hours a week to
spend in any way that I wish. These aren't regular
hours either, but cubic hours, with length, breadth
and depth. This is the kind of time that labors of
love require. It also doesn't hurt to live without
having to run the human race.
Some
researchers have correlated income with happiness and
graphed the results. Not surprisingly, the curve rose
steeply at the lower income levels, below subsistence,
so that somebody making twice the income was vastly
more happy. As the higher incomes were reached the
curve leveled off, so that the billionaire was only
slightly happier than the millionaire. There was a
point where the curve could be bifurcated, called an
inflection point, that represented the maximum bang
for the buck and the real beginning of diminishing
returns when it came to acquiring wealth for the sake
of happiness. That point was almost precisely at the
United States poverty line, the point where our real
needs can be met and discretionary expenditure of
life's time and energy becomes practical. Discretion,
then, has a cash value that is largely ignored in an
affluent society. Part of the problem here is the
standardized forty-hour work week, when the wages
earned exceed the cost of true necessities: people
resign themselves to spending their whole paycheck and
more instead of saving for early retirement or working
less than full-time. Such a shift requires discipline,
which requires motivation, which requires reassessing
the value of our time. Reassessment like this often
comes with the untimely death of a close friend or
loved one. We rethink what is important and reevaluate
our values. The Buddha had his disciples ponder their
own mortality as well as that of others to get the
sense of urgency needed to forcibly remove
distractions and dead weight from their lives. To lose
what you did not need is not a real loss.
Right Livelihood means leading by example. There is
certainly less danger of hypocrisy when it comes to
environmental concerns, and that often counts for
something. But making the impressive impressions is
not the main point of the effort, and that is
fortunate: simple living isn't really all that
attractive to others unless we have something else to
show that such a lifestyle clearly enables. It cannot
be counted upon to glorify much of anything, and so it
appears mainly to those who can notice the subtle and
the understated. In other words, it's mostly great for
preaching to the choir.
Livelihood in the Social Environment
Once the
disciple Ananda spoke to the Buddha, saying, “It seems
to me that half of a holy life is association with
good and noble friends.” The Buddha replied, “Not so,
Ananda. The whole of a holy life is association with
good and noble friends, with noble practices and with
noble ways of living.” And "admirable friendship,
admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is
actually the whole of the holy life" (SN 45.2).
Our means
of livelihood concerns the social environment as well
as the natural. It is, after all, the human culture
that now carries the bulk of the human project forward
through time, with all of its problems and all its
solutions. It's this environment that future
generations will live within. It is an economy with
its own kind of currencies, such as trust, reputation,
charity, good will, knowledge and wisdom. We all make
our living in this way as well.
The
Buddha tells us that advantageous friendships (kalyana-mittata,
and metta) are crucial to our awakening.
Although he would propose that we eventually try to
attain to an unconditional fraternal love, compassion
and supportiveness (metta, karuna and
mudita), we must begin with the conditions that
are imposed by our own necessity, the conditionality
of advantageousness in friendship, the need for
selection and discretion. In recovery, this might
sometimes mean upgrading our circle of friends to
something more like a Sangha than our old circle of
ex-drinking buddies. "Should a seeker not find a
companion who is better or equal, let him resolutely
pursue a solitary course; there is no fellowship with
the fool" (Dhammapada 61). This one was
particularly challenging for me in a rural environment
with a less than vast pool of potential relationships.
But I did wind up going to the occasional AA meeting
just to meet people to whom I couldn't lie. There were
also a number of internet forums, once the internet
really came into being.
Surrounding ourselves with people of like inclination,
such as a Sangha or intentional community, was a large
part of the Buddha's approach. We are, however, still
living for ourselves. The group life, and particularly
the group mind or conscience, is still only a fiction.
Social livelihood isn't a question of immersion,
submission or conformity, or at least it isn't when
it's healthy. Our own health and welfare will be
served or else we do not belong. The good doctor will
attend to his own health first. "Let one not neglect
one's own welfare for the sake of another, however
great. Clearly understanding one's own welfare, let
one be intent upon the good" (Dhammapada 166).
The value is in symbiosis and synergy, or mutual
benefit. The feeling of belonging is only a feeling
that we have: it isn't a master to be served. If being
honest about the problems of the group itself is
needed, then consider that the group itself has no
feelings and lay the problems out. Let's say that a
recovery group is bogged down and going nowhere in a
swamp of collective helplessness. Some flesh-and-blood
individual really needs to point that out if it is
ever going to change. And if such a group cannot get
that message, this is good information about the need
to find another group.
Refuge or
sanctuary will have two functions. The first is
protective, it can provide a safe place for
confession, apology, the acknowledgement of our error
and the reestablishment trust. A recovery process is a
deliberate vulnerability. Out in the world there is
cultural pressure to feel insecure, unloveable and
ashamed. The young trees need staking and fencing. New
relationships with others need to be nurtured, and
sometimes new kinds of relationships need to be
invented. But shelter or protection is only an interim
need, and protection from the truth of the longer-term
goals, of competence, self-reliance, or self-efficacy,
doesn't even serve in the short term. The common
problems are not all common troubles. We just want the
troubles out of the way right away so we can get to
work on problems, and in an environment where we can
regard the problems as puzzles.
If I had to sum up an ethic of Right Livelihood that would apply to our impacts on both natural and social environments, I think it would be: Leave the world a better place than the one you emerged from. Failing that, at least don't make things worse.
If I had to sum up an ethic of Right Livelihood that would apply to our impacts on both natural and social environments, I think it would be: Leave the world a better place than the one you emerged from. Failing that, at least don't make things worse.
When we are tired, we are
attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
Nietzsche
Samma
Vayama, Right Effort, endeavor or exertion, is
the cultivation of energy, diligence and persistence.
Given that we are each responsible for our fortunes
and the mental states with which we either create or
greet them, there are no shortcuts. What we get out of
our efforts is directly proportional to what we invest
in them, and if we want something as lofty as wisdom
or enlightenment or an end to suffering, we really
ought to be prepared to make a proportionate
investment. Energy (viriya) names the mental
factor (cetasika) for effort and this wants
good sources of fuel, or what Buddha called "wholesome
nutriment." The broader problems with our hungers
notwithstanding, one still needs a healthy appetite,
just not in the sense of a big,
largely random appetite. The disciple needs to sustain
both his energy and his enthusiasm for the practice of
heedful diligence (appamada). Often a lot of
energy can be obtained simply by plugging energy
leaks, or avoiding them to begin with. "A bhikkhu
awakens zeal, makes effort, arouses energy, exerts his
mind and strives" (MN 77). There are four Right
Efforts generally prescribed for this step of the
path, four strivings, exertions or endeavors (sammappadana),
efforts to be carried out "without any unwillingness,
and with zealous energy" (atapaviraya).
It might
be useful to remember here that energy is frequently
used as a metaphor or description of a subjective
feeling. It is not always being used for something
convertible to calories or kilowatt hours. Someone
walking into a room may say that they feel a strong or
peculiar energy, or vibe, but this is not always the
kind of energy that does work. This is a conceptual
metaphor that can be incorporated into our models of
how the world works, but it is only useful to the
extent that this itself can be put to work. Otherwise
it is simply a sensation. If we want to think of this
as a quantity, or some sort of current which we can
run through our mental devices to get something done
in our minds, or keep us awake, energized or enthused,
we might as well use it. It can give us some command
or organizational power over our thoughts. If you're
going to pay attention with mindfulness (sati)
and concentration (samadhi), it's good to have
some currency to pay with. Just bear in mind that this
is real only to the extent that it works, or performs
work, or gets work performed. This is useful to know
because there are also other ways to stay awake that
do not involve a great deal of excitement.
You
should now be familiar with the terms akusala
and kusala, which are central to the practice
of this step of the path. Akusala is demerit,
bad, unskillful states and deeds, karmically
unprofitable, unhealthy, flawed, unwholesome,
ineffective, productive of
unhappy results. Kusala is merit,
good, skillful states and deeds,
karmically profitable, healthy, efficient,
wholesome, productive of happy results. Buddha left us
with many lists of unwholesome processes and states
that threaten the seeker's progress on the path, and
many lists of wholesome processes and states that
further the seeker's progress. A few of these lists
are specifically cited in the suttas as being
associated with this step. The process of Right Effort
is aided by the cultivation of the Five Root Faculties
(panc indriyani) or Five Mental Powers (panc
balani): conditional faith (saddha),
energy (viriya), mindfulness (sati),
concentration (samadhi) and discriminating
wisdom (panna). It is also said to be important
that conditional faith and discriminating wisdom not
be out of balance with each other, and that energy and
concentration remain in balance with each other as
well.
To avoid all evil, to
cultivate good, and to cleanse one's mind - this is
the teaching of the Buddhas (Dhammapada 183).
Restraint: Preventing the Arising of Unwholesome States
To
prevent the arising (anuppadaya) of unwholesome
(akusala) states or
thoughts (dhamma), the first prescription is to
practice restraint of the senses (samvara padhana),
also called the faculty of guarding the sense doors (indriyesu
guttadvarata). We ought not forget here that the
mind is regarded as one of the six senses, so the term
refers as well to guarding or keeping watch on our
mental activity in general. Here we make use of our
memories to identify those enticements, hot buttons,
triggers and baits which tend to draw us into trouble.
Here we practice shutting down our usual, habitual or
historical response and reaction patterns. More
broadly speaking, it is restraint, patience, deferred
gratification and the ability to look away or aside.
In our discussion of paticca-samuppada, the
Chain of Conditioned Arising, we talked about the
chain reaction of mental events that culminates in
suffering and identified a number of links along this
chain where timely intervention would most effectively
short-circuit this process. Guarding the sense doors
is only one of these links (the 5th, salayatana)
but it's the first where we can really step into the
process with the accompaniment of awareness. As such,
restraint of the senses might be better considered as
a mnemonic for the act or process of intervention in
the chain in general, and equally applicable to later
links, particularly contact (phassa), feeling (vedana),
desire (tanha), grasping (upadana) and
self-identification (bhava). The further along
this chain we go, the closer we are to having to
disengage from states that are already arisen or
well-developed instead of preventing or precluding
them in the first place. Sustained watchfulness or
mindfulness is required here. In theory, the trouble
that is avoided hereby will free up some energy for
the process. The loss of a minus is as good as a plus.
There is a "tirelessness in whole- some states" (appamado
kusalesu dhammesu). (DN 34)
Renunciation: Abandoning the Arisen Unwholesome States.
To set
aside, abandon, discard or dispel (pahanaya)
the already-arisen unwholesome thoughts or states, the
second prescription offered is ahana padhana,
abandoning or overcoming the Ten Defilements (kilesas).
The removal of the defilements is also called
effacement (sallekha). In other places the Five
Hindrances are given (also or instead) as unwholesome
states to be targeted. There is considerable overlap
in these lists (see Glossary for more detail and
glosses). The Ten Defilements are: craving (lobha),
ill-will (dosa), delusion (moha),
conceit (mana), misunderstand- ing (ditthi),
cynical doubt (vicikiccha), sloth (thina),
agitation (uddhaca), shamelessness (ahirika),
and carelessness (anottappa). The Hindrances (nivaranana)
are: craving pleasure (kamacchanda, roughly
synonymous with lobha), ill-will (vyapada,
synonymous with dosa), sloth and torpor (thina-middha),
agitation and regret (uddhacca-kukkucca), and
cynical doubt (vicikiccha).
Some of the recommended methods for removing these
states are: thought substitution (tadanga),
attention to conscience and consequences (hiri-ottappa),
the diversion or redirection of attention,
confrontation and investigation, and the forcible
suppression of inferior states. This array of tools is
described in the sutta for The Removal of
Distracting Thoughts, or The Relaxation of
Thoughts, MN
20. The simplest approach uses the understanding
that wholesome and unwholesome states will either
wither and die or thrive and flourish according to the
nutrition that we provide for them. This story has
been making the rounds quite a bit lately:
An old
Cherokee was teaching his grandson about life. 'A
fight is going on inside me,' he said to the boy. 'It
is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One
is evil; he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority,
lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.' He
continued, 'The other is good; he is joy, peace, love,
serenity, hope,
humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity,
compassion, truth,
and faith. The same fight is going on inside you, and
inside every other person, too.'
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked grandfather, 'Which wolf will win?'
The old Cherokee replied, 'The one you feed.'
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked grandfather, 'Which wolf will win?'
The old Cherokee replied, 'The one you feed.'
Negativity has acquired a bad name of late,
particularly among the so- called spiritual folk. Even
among those who profess an acceptance of evolution
there seems to be a serious distaste for selection. At
least they are under tremendous social pressure to
deny the potential utility of any selection within the
human population, which somehow gets transferred to
saying yes to all culture. But Buddhism is not afraid
of judgment. To prevent or remove the bad is a good,
to prevent or remove the wrong is a right, to prevent
or remove a loss is a gain. To identify the defects
and negatives and avoid them is a positive act. Amory
Lovins, an energy consultant, coined the term
negawatts to quantify energy conserved, and early on
in the conservation movement he began convincing
public utilities that they could increase their
profits by providing energy saving devices to their
customers, sometimes free of charge, and thereby spare
themselves the still-higher costs of building new
power plants. Laozi, of course, also extolled the
virtues of getting things done by not doing.
There is
power, therefore, in the surrender or renunciation of
something that is holding you back, or wasting your
energy and resources. There is freedom in letting go
of what you are gripping too tightly. Governments the
world over all have the power to destroy organized
crime overnight, with little more than the energy it
takes to lift a pen. The only thing that organizes
crime is prohibition. The whole ugly mess would
collapse completely with the simple decriminalization
of drugs, prostitution and gambling. That would assume
that this was a priority, instead of the creation and
maintenance of enemies and the police power. But as
with individuals, they have other reasons to
perpetuate the suffering. Most war would go away too
if governments could let go of their need to create
devils and their minions in order to define themselves
from the outside.
Development: Cultivating the Wholesome States
To
create, nurture, cultivate and develop (uppadaya)
the wholesome (kusala) thoughts or states (dhamma),
the third prescription is bhavana padhana,
cultivating or developing the Seven Enlightenment
Factors (satta bojjhanga). The first three of
the seven, energy (viriya), mindful- ness (sati)
and concentration (samadhi) have already been
mentioned with the five mental powers, declared useful
throughout this step of Right Effort. These are seven
states or conditions of mind to be regarded as vital
sources of stamina and persistence. The remaining four
are mental investigations (dhammavicaya),
exhilaration (piti), tranquility (passadhi)
and equanimity (upekkha). Clearly these last
two also contribute to the effort by avoiding the
waste of energy in nearsighted overreaction.
As upekkha has already been mentioned, it
probably wouldn't hurt to suggest the cultivation of
the remaining three Bramaviharas here as well:
lovingkindness (metta), compassion (karuna),
altruism (mudita). And then, for good measure,
we can also add the four states that we previously
nominated for Bramavihara status to correct
their omission: forgiveness (khama), gratitude
(katannuta), reverence (garava) and
patience (khanti).
How do we
cultivate such states? With mindfulness and
concentration we take the time and expend the effort
to get to know ourselves, instead of endlessly
distracting ourselves. We learn which attitudes lead
to which kinds of experiences and adopt the attitudes
that give us the wholesome states. It isn't as easily
done as it is said, and it certainly isn't as quick
and easy as letting your mind go to be embraced by
some deity. But quick and easy only gets you cheap and
sketchy. Mindfulness and concentration train us to
adopt our mental states at will. For the addict in
recovery, samvega is a most useful goal and
state to develop and practice.
Persistence: Maintaining the Arisen Wholesome States
To
support, promote or maintain (thitiya) the
already-arisen wholesome thoughts or states, the
fourth prescription is for anurakkhana padhana,
preserving vigilance, concentration, or heedfulness.
As anybody who has ever made a New Year's resolution
knows well, our best intentions and our firmest
resolutions have a way of fading over time or running
out of energy. It doesn't even seem to matter that the
new direction that we have chosen is rich in rewards,
so there is little wonder that the addict who is
asking himself to give up his potent dopamine fixes in
exchange for a far milder sort of serenity soon finds
plenty of excuses to turn back. A big part of the
problem is hedonic adaptation, or the hedonic
treadmill, already discussed under Tanha in
the chapter on Suffering's Causes. We tend to get used
to and bored with the steady states as our
expectations adapt upwards. If we can't have constant
improvement, or at least some gradual intensification,
then we will go after variety instead. It is perhaps
for this reason that the Buddha recommended all seven
of the Enlightenment Factors to keep us moving
forward. And perhaps it is also a good reason to have
added a few more Brahmaviharas as well. With
these we can have more of a palette to paint with,
more notes on our instrument. We can have our variety
and texture and still remain not-bored, on the Path
and in forward motion.
The Function of Self-Control
When a
human being judges a particular course of action to be
the best course, why would this being take any course
other than this? Where are the disconnects here? Akrasia,
the lack of command over oneself, acting against one's
better judgement, is an old philosophical problem in
the West, and Greeks like Plato and Aristotle had no
solution. There are a lot of factors and culprits that
might be identified here: aboulia or weakness
of will, conflicting drives and motivations,
disagreements between head and heart, or reason and
emotion, or left and right brains, impatience or
hyperbolic discounting on a long-term path, or guilt
and self-sabotage. At one point our souls were just
caught in a tug-of-war between god and the devil, or
we were cursed by the village witch.
A Buddhist can offer a straightforward answer here: anatta.
There is no single or simple entity at the core of our
being. What we call self is a momentary snapshot of an
ever-shifting coalition of the multitude of components
of our being. Each of us are legion. We are a running
straw poll taken from this mob. Some people are better
than others at holding this coalition together in
more-or-less stable formations, and when this has
stable and meritorious results, these people are said
to have integrity and character. They have their shit
together. This comes from developing a constructed
sense of self, which is only an illusion in Buddhism
if it is mistaken to be some essential core self or
homunculus. It is not an error unless it acts in error
or perceives itself to be the very center of things.
It is, in essence, an ego. While Buddha had plenty of
problems with conceit (mana), the sense of self
that identified with or laid ownership claims on the
endless transient phenomena of experience, there is
still a healthy use for a sense of who we choose to
be, who is going where we choose to go. Thanissaro
Bhikkhu, in "Hang On to Your Ego" offers: "The test of
how far your wisdom has matured lies in the strategic
skill with which you can keep yourself from doing
things that you like to do but that would cause
long-term harm, and the skill with which you can talk
yourself into doing things that you don't like to do
but that would lead to long-term well-being and
happiness. In other words, mature wisdom requires a
mature ego."
What are
the components in our mental makeup that enable our
acts of self-control, self-determination or
self-efficacy? Where in the brain is our free will or
agency enthroned? Or is it a question of neural
software? It certainly isn't enough to simply believe
that we have free will and flick it on like some kind
of mental switch. Religious believers who hold that
free will is god's gift are often the quickest to fall
into hypocrisy and sin. Just saying to themselves "god
gave me free will" does not give them any free will.
They find the function inoperable or unplugged, so
disconnected from what is going on in their
subconscious and their glands that these mysterious
processes often appear to them to be the work of some
devil.
I have
never been a big fan of the extended analogy between
the mind and computers. Those who believe that
computers will someday wake up and be sentient when
they finally get the capacity, the right information
and the right software, are oblivious to the
neurochemistry involved, the juices of cognition, and
their synergies with neural information storage and
processing, as well as the possibilities of strong
emergence. But with that said, here is one more
analogy: There are three general levels of software to
your actual desktop computer. Down at the bottom are
all of the ones and zeroes. These are almost certainly
incomprehensible to you. At the middle level lives the
programming language that the software developers use.
This is in code, but the specialists can understand
and use it. At the top is the graphical interface with
its pointers, its windows and its pull-down menus. If
the programmer has done his job, you need not worry
about those two mysterious lower levels. Your pointer
or window or pull-down menu allows you to reach down
and move those ones and zeros around just fine.
Sometimes the software that allows you to do this is
intuitive and user-friendly, but more often you have a
PC. Our best functions of self-control want to be on
the upper level and accessible to our conscious minds.
But it is not enough just to see those things on the
desktop. We have enough dummy buttons to push in our
psyches. These need to be integrated with the deeper
workings of the mind. This requires something akin to
science. It is not the same as science, since the
study of the software below is deeply personal,
subjective and phenomenological. We must, as the faux
Buddhist poster says, "inquire within" and come to
understand our own neural code with practice. This is
what the next two steps, Right Mindfulness and
Concentration are all about: learning what is going on
down below and finding ways to turn this understanding
into an ability to make correct, wholesome and
skillful choices in life. This is connecting the
commands that we give to ourselves to what our neural
circuits and glands are really doing. It's a
complicated business and it takes a lot of time and
effort, but we start out imperfectly and live and
learn. We use teachers as well, and "learn in other
heads."
Control
functions are emergent processes. They are qualia.
They do not need to assume the existence of an abiding
core self, possessed of free will, although they often
get mistaken for one. Emergent processes such as the
human will emerge out of antecedent conditions. They
remain dependent upon the conditions out of which they
emerged. The human will is more determined than it is
free, and it is not at all clear that much of it
exists in most human beings. But when you know what
you are doing, you can nominate a part of yourself to
intervene in this dependent or conditioned arising as
an interested party and thus co-determine the will,
freeing it at least to a point. To do this requires
having more than one optional state of mind. It
requires favoring one element in the mind over another
and being able to choose.
Drives, Motivations, Desires and Wants
You
dangles a carrot in front of his nose and he goes
wherever the carrot goes. Author
unknown.
The word
discipline (vinaya) is used a lot in Buddhism,
and for monks the training is rigorous enough to
warrant such frequent use. But our self- discipline is
not the motive force that moves us towards our goals:
this force is supplied by drives, motivations, desires
and wants. Yes, desires (chanda) are useful
even in Buddhism, although hopefully we can learn to
stop well-short of cravings and obsessions. To be
moving forward, we need to see ourselves as
incomplete, as not yet done. We need the energy that
our displacement from what is desired can provide us.
It is not a Buddhist recommendation to view ourselves
as already perfect in this moment. That's just another
narcissistic, new-age platitude. We need something to
fill our sails. Discipline is only a rudder, and
useless when the boat isn't moving.
Deeper
down even than drives and motivations are those
baseline states that tend to change only slowly if at
all. The slowest moving of these are our native
temperaments, which are generally regarded as
permanent. Experiments seem to indicate that a
person's overall emotional intensity, as well as the
felt intensity of specific feelings and emotions, will
tend to vary around "set points" or durable averages.
So some people will always be happier on average than
others. And this is not fair at all, particularly when
the happiest person in the room has never does a thing
to better himself and would never even consider trying
to improve the world or even harm it a little less.
Meanwhile the sensitive one with great promise and
compassion commits suicide. It's really hard to find
justice in such kamma. The irony of it all
once inspired me to write this:
"A master
and student were walking one day through an old
cemetery, discussing the lessons of history. In one
corner they came upon a pair of dissimilar graves,
both with monuments. One was that of a long-dead and
still-detested tyrant, memorialized for his
contributions to an orderly government, but vilified
for his arrogance, thoughtlessness towards his
subjects and cruelty to captives from the neighboring
tribes. Next to this was the grave of a still-loved
sage, a holy man who spent - and gave - his life
helping others less fortunate, righting the wrongs of
the tyrant and teaching Dhamma.
"Master," the student queried, "there are two peculiar things here. It is odd enough that these men were buried side by side, but I am troubled that the grave of the tyrant is covered with such a thick carpet of flowers in full bloom, while the grave of the sage is barren, except for some thistles and a little thorn bush. What is this?"
"Young sir," the master said, "this is what to expect from this world. That these men are side by side is no mystery - they lived and died at a time when this part of the cemetery was being filled. But as for the second: over the centuries mourners have come to the sage’s grave to weep for his passing and, one tear at a time, salted the soil. But the people would visit the grave of the tyrant and leave tributes of garbage and shit, and spit on his memory."
"Master," the student queried, "there are two peculiar things here. It is odd enough that these men were buried side by side, but I am troubled that the grave of the tyrant is covered with such a thick carpet of flowers in full bloom, while the grave of the sage is barren, except for some thistles and a little thorn bush. What is this?"
"Young sir," the master said, "this is what to expect from this world. That these men are side by side is no mystery - they lived and died at a time when this part of the cemetery was being filled. But as for the second: over the centuries mourners have come to the sage’s grave to weep for his passing and, one tear at a time, salted the soil. But the people would visit the grave of the tyrant and leave tributes of garbage and shit, and spit on his memory."
There's
no moral to that story. Some of the kamma
survives intact in the memory, much of it still
circulates in the general soup of all things. We can
suffer a great deal simply over wondering why. We can
whine all we want, but the bottom line is that we have
to play the hand we are dealt. How important is
happiness if it is not the best measure of merit?
Maybe the value in that question is that asking it
gets us to look around a little. Maybe there is much
more to life than our happiness.
Dispositional affect lies somewhere between native
temperament and our somewhat more ephemeral moods.
These are background states that beings brings to the
experience. Like primordial drives, they are internal
sensations of agitation or calm, fatigue or
liveliness, discouragement or enthusiasm, malaise or
health, disequilibrium or stability. These are a
little more susceptible of the Buddhist training, but
we shouldn't expect miraculous results unless we are
also attending to diet, potential neuro-chemical
imbalances, exercise, and control of environmental
stresses as well. The goals of Right Effort are first
to enable our choice, and then sustained effort in
accord with that choice. We can work all we want on
the levels of affect that are easier to tune or
adjust, notably our drives, motivations, desires and
wants, but we really need to attend to the deeper,
less conscious levels as well.
The
tendency in psychology is to think of drives in terms
of internal and generally homeostatic processes, like
temperature regulation, hunger, thirst, pain
avoidance, positional change, exercise, sleep, and
even raw exploration. They set us in motion by way of
signals from interoceptors, without requiring external
stimuli. Sometimes the emotions associated with these
are called primordial, although there is considerable
control that can be exerted here using higher cortical
functions. Drives assume a deficiency. Motivations, on
the other hand, are said to be derived from appraisals
of the external environment. Some liken the difference
to push vs pull, contrasting drives with desires.
Motivations are associated with the co-called
classical emotions, fear, attraction, love, anger,
etc. And the happiness of pursuit. Some also claim the
motivations do not assume a deficiency, at least not
in the ways that drives do. Many are wired in to the
neural modules that we have evolved for life in a
society.
Presumably, the
Buddha would ask right away what became of the motive
forces originating primarily in the mental world or
brain. Or we could ask what became of the motivations
that Maslow identified as our higher needs for
self-actualization. Maybe a decent word to use for
this category of mental affect is attitude, as the
Buddha used it here: "The world is conducted by our
attitude (cittena), the world is harassed by
our attitude. Everything comes under the control of
this unique power" (SN 1.39). The word attitude is
useful in its comprehensiveness, as it implies a
position to take, a direction to face, a combination
of thought and affect, a valuation and general
implications of the behavior required to get where we
want to go. These are the components of Right Effort.
This leaves us with the task of weeding out the wrong
or bad attitudes, choosing the ones that most
skillfully serve our ends and then committing to
expending whatever investment of energy our project is
likely to take. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of
this aspect of our mentality is that there is a wide
variety of attitudes that are potentially available to
us in any given situation. The scope of this variety
is a function of the examination or investigation that
we have done. In any given situation particular
attitudes can be examined for their worth, value,
utility, relevance, promise and salience. Frequently
these will come with behavioral scripts that help us
to plan our activities. But most important is the fact
that when a number of alternative attitudes are known,
then choices are offered, and choices are the absolute
key to freedom of the will. We then back our choices
by deciding what to really want and commit ourselves
to the needed action.
In the
early 1970's I went to stay with a shaman who served
an island's population in an hereditary capacity. He
lived in the rainforest and had never spoken with a
white man before. I brought him two questions: 1) In
my culture it is believed that a person needs to be
down as well as up, unhappy as well as happy,
depressed as well as elated. Do you agree, or is it
possible to be up, happy and elated all of the time?
[in effect I was asking about his psychology] and 2) I
have been a student of people who perform your
function in other societies and know some things about
their methods. If I share some of these with you, will
you share some of yours with me? His reply to me:
"When you are up you have accepted your power, when
you are down you have abandoned it. So instead of
complaining, you decide what you want. Then to answer
your second question, if you have accepted your power,
these methods will come from you naturally. And if you
have abandoned your power, you can learn everything
there is to know about them and they will still do you
no good. So instead of complaining, decide what you
want." That could have been the Buddha talking.
Deciding what we want enables Right Effort.
The
Buddha used the term mind functions (cetasikas)
for many useful attitudes, and there are dozens listed
in the Glossary (search cetasikas) Take
special note of the list of the "beautiful
mental functions" (sobhana cetasikas). These
include such states as enjoying the nimbleness of
consciousness (cittamuduta) or enjoying its
competence (cittapagunnata). They include also
the Brahmaviharas. This may surprise some
people, but catalogues of our alternative attitudes
exist the world over in systems of thought that are
used in divination. This shouldn't be surprising as
they identify alternative attitudes with which to face
our future prospects. This of course isn't a
particularly shallow or commonplace approach to these
systems. The sixty-four Hexagrams of the Chinese Book
of Changes are an excellent example of such a
catalog of attitudes. Or the 78 cards of the Tarot. Or
the the 120 combinations of Planet and Sign in
Astrology. Or the Ten Sephirot of the Qabalah. These
systems will take on a whole new level of meaning and
depth when examined in this light, and they will also
be relieved of the need to prove any pretentious and
erroneous claims that they represent some sort of
science. They are simply languages about mental
states, developed rather spontaneously, as languages
are wont to develop, in counseling contexts to address
people's anxieties about their future and their
choices. They help us identify the attitude that
allows us to want what is best for ourselves.
I do not say that final
knowledge is achieved all at once. On the contrary,
final knowledge is achieved by gradual training, by
gradual practice, by gradual progress. (MN 70)
Samma
Sati, Right Mindfulness, attention or awareness,
is the second of the three mental attainments (citta
sampada) between Right Effort and Right
Concentration, and the seventh step on the Path. The
word sati also means memory or recollection.
The phrase "keeping in mind" may be a common link, but
here it would carry the charge to not keep by
clinging. This is not an easy practice and will
require most of the energy developed in Right Effort:
"Arise! Sit up! Train yourselves strenuously for peace
of mind. This doctrine, monks, is for the energetic,
strong and firm in pur- pose, and not for the
indolent" (AN 8.30).
First-hand
or direct experience was more important to the Buddha
than the acceptance of his teaching by students. He
taught a discipline, not a system of belief, and the
directive in this discipline was to get to the
first-hand experience and attend to it mindfully.
There are
two general directions in which the practices of
Mindfulness and Concentration may be taken, and these
two will somewhat color the practices themselves. The
first Samatha Bhavana, the development of
serenity or tranquility, peace or calmness, and
fixedness of the mind or concentration. This is also
referred to as unification or one-pointedness of mind
(cittekaggata). It is the attainment of the
unitive experience. It is letting go of habits of mind
that like and dislike, that get us "worked up" and
work us over, that maintain our many illusions about
who we are. We try to accept what is, reality
unfiltered by our anxieties. Bhavana is the
word used for meditative practice, but its primary
meaning here is development, specifically mental
development or mental cultivation, literally
making-to-become. The second direction is Vipassana
Bhavana, the development of insight, through
introspection, by being unblinkingly watchful, seeing
or knowing phenomena for what they are as they arise
and disappear. The experience of every specific thing
that is attended is recognized to be impermanent,
unsatisfactory and not-self. The insights of vipassana
are tools for living, not states of attainment.
Insight isn't as passive as serenity: it means a
dynamic reorganization of our perceptions and
cognitions. Critical analysis is permitted, but after
something is seen for what it is and not before. An
insight that doesn't get down and dirty and start
shifting things around just doesn't get the job done.
This wisdom isn't attained, it's lived and practiced.
Beginner's Mind
Sati
is called bare attention, direct mental experience,
mindfulness that is, as much as possible, stripped of
belief and disbelief, without judgment, evaluation,
interpretation, association, or choice. It is "the
‘clear and single-minded awareness of what actually
happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of
perception" (Nyanaponika Thera, 1972, p. 30). The mind
is kept detached from feeling, reaction and emotion.
There is no need to fight thoughts and feelings if you
do not take them personally. When they arise they are
not suppressed or fought back down but simply allowed
to pass. Their passage may be registered in the
moment, but then it's on to the next moment. The onset
of a sensation of fear or pain might simply prompt
closer examination instead of a reaction. The general
state of mind is peaceful but not relaxed, alert but
not hypervigilant: it might best be described as
simply "ready." A friend who conducted a regular Zazen
group would on occasion clap his hands loudly in the
middle of the session. Anyone who was either too
agitated or too sleepy would just about jump out of
their skins, but when we were in the right frame of
mind, the sound would just wash through us. It was a
very good way to learn and teach what this "ready"
meant.
Daniel
Goleman offers: "While we mind or attend the various
objects of mindfulness, we merely notice them as they
come and go, like frames in a film, not allowing them
to stimulate the mind into thought-chains of reactions
to them" (B&P, p. 9). In a way this is
similar to listening to music: you don't freeze a
piece of music on one particularly good note just to
keep hearing it. The experience is in the ongoing
diversity and the progression of the individual
moments. You are not constantly referring back to
previous notes. The moving finger, having writ, moves
on.
Beginner's mind is sometimes used to describe
attending to experience with fresh eyes, as if for the
first time. The term jamais vu names the
opposite of deja vu: you know that you have
been here before, but the experience feels like the
first time. This is a common experience with
entheogens ("have you ever really looked at
your hands?"). Maintaining a beginner's mind requires
us to avoid concluding our perceptions and then filing
them away. We leave some mystery still open, we let
some novelty and specialness remain in what we
experience. The faculty of attention is most readily
triggered in the brain by a promise of novelty, by
changes in the environment or in mental states. The
threshold of awareness keeps rising when a stimulus
level is constant and the object familiar. When the
objects of our attention stabilize into familiar
states the brain adapts, tries to go back to sleep or
move on to something new. In sati we attempt
to keep things new, fresh and alive, even when they
are same old same old. We want to avoid having been
there and done that.
The
Buddha outlined four categories of mindfulness
exercises which he referred to as the Four Foundations
or Establishments of Mindfulness (Cattaro
Satipatthana) or four realms for the practice of
contemplation (anupassana).
Kayanupassana, Contemplations of the Organism
Mindfulness immersed in body (kayagata-sati) is
usually the gateway practice for sati. It
might seem like something of a paradox or
contradiction when we understand that many of the more
advanced meditative practices seek to leave physical
awareness behind altogether, and with directives
having names like "guarding the sense doors." But
since who or what we are is not fundamentally on some
higher level but emerges from a synergy that very much
includes the "physical plane," the work that we have
to do on ourselves requires our inquiry, investigation
and understanding on all levels. The fully mindful
person is fully present, not daydreaming, or indulging
in this or that, not worrying, and not living
elsewhere. But, lest this be misunderstood, we will
still peer into the future and anticipate
consequences, and learn from the past, and look both
ways before crossing the street. The present moment
that we live in is only the center of things, not
their outer limit. We can be in the center of
something and still embrace the farther reaches.
Of
special usefulness and importance here is mindfulness
of breathing (anapana-sati). While techniques
exist for special breathing, the normal exercise here
does not involve any control of the breath. It is
nothing more than paying extended attention to all
aspects of our natural breath, including the wind in
the nostrils, the movement of the diaphragm and
ribcage and the general feeling of oxygenation.
Kayanupassana
continues bodily mindfulness through the four "usual"
postures (iriyapatha): standing up (caram),
walking (nissino va), sitting (sayano)
and lying down (yavata), all of which are
suitable positions for mindfulness meditation,
assuming we can avoid sloth or sleepiness. Many would
be quick to add such meditations as chopping wood and
carrying water, synecdoches for the living of everyday
life or meditation in action. Such pervasive
mindfulness is indeed the goal here, being able to
wake up within our everyday, moving-about life, at
least when this sort of mindfulness is wanted.
It will
be helpful here to explode the oversimplification of
our sensory world into five senses, or six, counting
the sensations of our minds. There is too much we
ignore in doing this. We actually have a different
sense for every kind of sensory neuron we have, and
binocular and binaural seeing and hearing can even be
considered separately from monocular and monaural. We
have five kinds of taste that we know of, and even
more smells. Too often overlooked are the senses
called interoception or somatoception that give us the
world within. The kinesthetic, vestibular and
otolithic senses give us our muscle, tendon and joint
position and movement, linear acceleration and angular
acceleration in space. We have receptors for pain
(nocioception), heat loss and heat gain. We have
visceral sensations and erotic sensations. We sense
our memories and our movements within the brain. We
have senses of time and rhythm. Each of these in fact
can be made into an exercise in kayanupassana,
and each will give us something more to awaken to.
The brain
or the mind does not end in the skull. In fact, we
have some abilities to control sensory inputs at the
organs of sense themselves. In a classical experiment
the signals in a cat's auditory nerve were sent to an
amplifier. Signals sent by a metronome registered
until a mouse was let into the room, whereupon they
diminished and stopped. While it is possible that the
signal's relevance was decided in the brain, the
action was taken at the organ of sense. Turning a
blind eye or a deaf ear on an experience may not
always be a metaphor.
Another reason to enrich our understanding of our
sensory world is that our memories of sensations
become key components in our conceptual worlds, where
they are termed sensory or conceptual metaphors. For
example, many of our go-to references for abstract
force in the field of physics derive ultimately from
kinesthetic signals and our perceptions of resistance
to our muscular activities. The term for this
phenomenon is embodied cognition. And it may be only
the limitations of our sensory metaphors that prevent
us from regarding it as obvious that light would
behave as both particle and wave, or that magnetism is
electricity seen sideways, or that time and space are
made of the same stuff. In the rich acoustic world of
the cetaceans, time is the go-to measure of space.
When we finally learn to communicate with them they
might tell us that special relativity is obvious. The
scope of sensory or conceptual metaphors will also be
important below when we speak of mindfulness of mental
objects.
The
Buddha outlines a number of other exercises in
body-mindfulness that I will only mention briefly
here. Simply Google the Pali terms for more
information. Satisampajanna, mindfulness and
clear comprehension adds to bare awareness, making
some basic connections that reach outside of the
moment, but without trailing off into endless
proliferation of associations and embellishments (papanca).
We see more context and real intent, salience and
appropriateness of the phenomena under study. With dhatuvavatthana,
analysis into elements, we deconstruct or reduce the
organism into its elemental components, exposing our
ultimately impersonal nature. We contemplate ourselves
as a physicist might, as heat, fluidity, oscillation
and solidity (the four dhatus, fire, water,
air and earth). With asubha-kammatthana,
contemplation of unattractiveness, we contemplate
parts of the body and its functions with intentional
disgust in order to learn to distance ourselves from
the fleshly passions. And with sivathika, the
cemetery meditations, we envision the body's final
stages of dissolution.
Vedananupassana, Contemplations of Feelings and Sensations
Mindfulness of feelings or sensations forms the second
group of the Buddha's mindfulness exercises. Vedana,
you might recall, is the second of the Five Aggregates
or constituting factors of our being, as well as the
seventh link in the Chain of Conditioned Arising. It
is the very beginning of wanting more or wanting less,
following contact (phassa) with the world. We
ought to be be careful how we understand this
contemplation, however, because in many ways it is the
exact opposite of "getting in touch with our
feelings." Rather, this requires us to put a little of
the distance of objectivity between the observer and
the observed. We are simply assessing what Bhikkhu
Bodhi calls the "affective tone or hedonic quality of
experience." The main interpretive axis by which the
Buddha himself assessed these feelings and sensations
was the simple scale from unpleasant, through neutral,
to pleasant, although we mentioned at least one
additional candidate earlier, that being the level of
activation or intensity. Vedana is not the
same as fully developed emotion. It does not yet have
any mental overlay of value, or utility, or purpose.
We are only now becoming aware that we are feeling
anything at all. It isn't any more complex or
articulated than the rawest of data. The task might be
likened to being only one of a large crew operating a
complicated aircraft, and your one assignment is to
call out the readings on the air speed indicator. You
do not yet have any additional information to tell you
what this means, so you are not fearful about stalling
the craft or anxious about wings falling off. Your
only business is to watch the needle go up and down
and note how quickly or slowly it does so. When we
contemplate a feeling or sensation we are not looking
to name or identify it. We are only looking at its
charge and the charge's intensity. We are also
observing where the affect seems to come from and
where it tries to go, from contact (phassa)
onward through the chain of conditioned arising, and
we practice not-grasping or clinging the whole way.
Vedayita
is feeling what is felt, as it comes and goes. We
attend instead of indulge. We may have a sense of what
the feelings are, and we might even appreciate them
for what they are: we just no longer need to own them
or believe in them, or try to make them go or stay. A
more detached observation of these comings and goings
of our affect accomplishes these three things: 1) the
ephemerality or impermanence of these states is
recognized (annica); 2) the incompleteness or
unsatisfactoriness of these states is experienced (dukkha);
and 3) the distance between these states and what we
would like to think or as a core or essential self is
stretched (anatta). This is a study in study in
impermanence, imperfection and non- identification.
Seeing the great and ever-shifting variety of affect
helps us with all of these insights. Guan Yin,
the Chinese name of the Mahayana Bodhisattva of
compassion, means to "attend the cries." Guan
is also the name of the 20th Gua of the Book
of Changes, and is usually translated as observe
or contemplate. It is a visual metaphor but it needs
to be understood as feeling with all six senses
(especially since Yin, cries, are only
audible). Guan Yin does not have the kind of
compassion that gets sucked into suffering: rather,
she has the kind that offers a way out. The same can
be said of vedananupassana.
Similar to the crime fighter's adage "follow the
money," following the affect back down the causal
chain can lead us to discover those original traumas
and experiences that now generate anxieties, fears and
other problems. While we are not oblivious to the
emotions that try to arise, including desire and
distaste, we just don't let them grow into some big
dramatic play. We can see how these feelings and
sensations could lead to problems, and we can see
foreshadowings of what these problems could be. But we
don't follow them there. For the addict this helps us
to identify more of our triggers, slippery places, and
excuses. We start to decondition these reactions and
habitual recourses as we associate them with the more
equilibrated states of calm and dispassionate
observation. Each time a memory is evoked, our brain
has the potential of wiring that up to new, updated or
improved associations. We can examine a resentment and
attach a healthier response, specifically, the higher
and more mindful state that we are currently in. We
will then know subliminally that the last time that
state came up we were calm. This is in part how
exposure therapy works. We can examine the affect of
an old grievance and re-associate that with today's
equanimity or forgiveness. It is in such neural
rewiring of associations that forgiveness sets us
free. Using affect and sense to alter the emotional
charge of our triggers, we use some of the same reward
structures that worked to ingrain our addictive
behavior patterns to begin with.
Feeling (vedana)
arises with contact (phassa) as its condition.
Contact arises with the six sense bases (salayatana)
as its condition. Thus, in these meditations we
practice attending to feeling arising from all six
kinds of contact, sensory information from our five
conventionally named senses (and those we are now able
to add) and also the sensations in our minds. We are
not doing concentration yet, only mindfulness. But we
may begin by practicing alerting ourselves to our
senses one at a time.
Cittanupassana, Contemplations of Mental Activity
Cittanupassana
is mindfulness of the mind itself, even though it
isn't correct to call the mind an it. The Buddha had a
unique understanding of what the mind is. A citta
is the word used for the mental apprehension of
ordinary consciousness. This may be though of as a
mental moment, like a frame in a motion picture film.
Each frame is more or less distinct from the frames
that precede and follow it, each is painted with a
different palette, different shapes, colors sounds,
rhythms, textures, smells, tastes. The constituent
factors that these frames are composed from are called
cetasikas, usually translated as mental factors
or activities. These are specific mental functions or
specialized tasks, particularly functions of the
nervous system working in conjunction with the
endocrine. They are numerous. One of the Buddha's own
enumerations counts fifty-two of them. See Mind
Functions in the Glossary for the full list. The mind
or mentality is really little more than a process, or
a procession of these momentary frames. It is the
attending and collecting of impressions. It is both
heart and head, emotion and reason. There is no such
thing as a mind, and there is no mind or minding that
doesn't arise out of contact with some object of
attention or consciousness. We have no mind when we
are unconscious or dead. We ought to clarify here that
Mahayana and later Buddhist developments have departed
a little from this rather stern construction of mind
to add some loftier conceptions, Buddha Mind, for
example, but we are not exploring those here as they
are not a part of Theravada doctrine.
It might
be helpful to imagine the cittas, or
successive mind states, as the successive images in a
kaleidoscope. We have, let's say, 52 pieces of glass,
our cetasikas, tumbling around in our
objective lens. The precise pattern never repeats.
Now, it so happens that seven of these pieces are so
sizable that they appear in every frame, while the
others may come and go. The big ones are the seven
general cetasikas (sabba citta sadharana),
being contact, feeling, perception, intention, focus,
vitality and attention (phassa, vedana, sanna,
cetana, ekaggata, jivitindriya and manasikara).
Others come and go, such as initial thought,
connective thought, resolve, energy, exhilaration, and
desire (vitakka, vicara, adhimokkha, viriya, piti and
chanda). Some of the remaining pieces are really
nice to look at (the twenty-five beautiful cetasikas)
and some are pretty ugly (the fourteen unwholesome cetasikas).
Most beings seem to regard it as their lot in life to
take what comes and deny what they don't like, while
Buddhists seem to take to the notion that they can
fool around with at least some of the elements in the
tumbler. Like all analogies, this one has limits.
There is no objective observer here: the components
together create a kind of self- awareness. And the
mirrors do not stand for some sort of transcendent
consciousness. It's hard to tell if this makes it
easier or harder to tamper with the tumbler.
What we are doing as we contemplate this ever-shifting
composition of mental processes is twofold. Where we
are practicing Samatha Bhavana, or serenity
meditation, we are cultivating our understanding that
all of these states and all of their combinations are
anicca, dukkha and anatta. We are
freeing ourselves from the traps of believing
otherwise, especially the traps of lobha, dosa and
moha. Where we are practicing Vipassana
Bhavana, we are mapping out our possibilities,
learning how we tick and how to tinker with our
natures. This part of mindfulness begins with raw
exploration. Put a rat into an unfamiliar environment
and watch him explore: there is no purpose there other
than to map out his environment, but he is driven to
do so. Then, when the time comes for him to start
solving problems he knows where the puzzle's pieces
are to be found. It is more than an illusion of
intelligence that he can solve his problems so quickly
because there is innate intelligence in the drive to
collect the database. Cognitive flexibility is a
function of options, which in turn are a function of
experience. Mindfulness increases our experience in
normally unfamiliar realms, and thus increasing our
options when the time comes to choose between
alternative states of mind.
Dhammanupassana, Contemplations of Mental Phenomena
With this
set of exercises we attend to all of the little-d dhammas,
the constructions, contents and phenomena that we find
in our minds. These phenomena include our memories and
aspirations, thoughts and emotions, reaction patterns
and behavioral scripts, including both innate and
learned scripts for cognitive behavior. With cittanupassana
we simply let our minds run and attended to what they
were doing. Here we take up mental dhammas one
at a time and hold them up to examination. This has a
little more in common with concentration or samadhi,
except that we are surrounding the dhamma with
our different points of view. The everyday mind wants
to take its object of study and run around with it,
comparing and associating it to this and that, and
then connecting the this and the that to other things.
This is called papanca, often translated as
conceptual proliferation. It is trying to hunt down
all of the sequiturs. And it is perfectly
understandable that the mind is wired to do this. But
here we try to restrain this activity to the object of
our study in its immediate context or boundaries. We
necessarily add new associations to the things we
bring to mind in this way, since memory is dynamic, so
we don't always leave them unaffected. Once again,
this is in part how psychological therapy works: we
can add our new perspectives and understandings to
what we are remembering or recalling to mind. These
can become part of the recollection. This is the
mechanism by which mindfulness exercises help us to
develop serenity.
The
Buddha offered a handful of his many lists of mental
processes and happenings to be used in systematizing
these contemplations. First, each of the Five
Hindrances (nivarana) to our meditative
efforts become the object of our attention. Second, we
examine the Five Aggregates (khandas) the
constituent factors of our being. Third, we take up
the sensations, ideas and memories provided us by way
of the Six Sense Bases (sadayatana), which we
can now take to include the underpinnings of our
sensory and conceptual metaphors. Fourth, we take up
the Seven Factors of Enlightenment (satta bojjanga)
and work for a while on each one in order. Fifth, we
make a contemplative study of the Four Noble Truths.
Once
through initial withdrawal, the addict, in theory,
will have some free time, even after going around town
confessing and making amends. There will be plenty of
character defects remaining, and values to repair. A
disciplined practice of Right Mindfulness can provide
a structure for examining any of these remaining
problems one at a time, a format for the indispensable
step that the 12-Steppers call "a searching and
fearless moral inventory." This is assuming that our
subject can set aside the time and energy. There is no
need to be limited to meditations on the Buddha's five
sets of mental objects. Any set of mental functions or
problems can be addressed in this way. There is much
to be said for addressing whole sets of mental objects
systematically and in sequence, particularly for
someone who has not spent much time or effort in
keeping an organized mind: there is a sense of
security in not being adrift and picking at things at
random. Such an approach might also be likened to an
organized search and rescue pattern. It's partly a
question of efficiency, one of covering the maximum
ground with the least wasted effort. It also has us
covering ground that we might not intuit to be worth
searching. We all live in part by undetected errors
that lead to suffering, so the problem becomes one of
detection. Given that so many of our errors can learn
to either conceal or defend themselves, sometimes it helps
to sneak up on them, or catch them by surprise in
their unexpected places.
Cognitive Bias and Distortion
There are
a number of questionable claims made by proponents of
the Buddhist doctrine about the powers of mindfulness,
at least given what modern sciences have led us to
suspect. Specifically, it is claimed that we can
penetrate to the true nature of phenomena to know the
actual reality that underlies them, that we can know
things as they truly are, that we can fully get around
our thoughts, concepts, ideas and metaphors, and the
limitations that our limited sensory experiences
impose upon these. I certainly wouldn't go that far.
For a fact, we can collect a lot more and more varied
experience with reality. There are good reasons to
think that mindfulness can get us considerably closer
to grasping reality as it is. Mindfulness can help us
to get around many of the limitations of words and
symbols. It has a well-proven value in helping us to
true our lives, to adjust how we live in accordance
with a higher degree of wisdom. It brings us closer to
waking up and being truly alive. It it allows us to
put enough space between ourselves and the phenomenal
to make more rational choices and avoid being victims
and puppets of this and that. And it brings us a lot
closer to understanding and accepting that all of our
phenomena are going to be temporary, imperfect and
inessential.
Phenomenology and self-examination are not the same as
science, and there are always difficulties in assuming
that we humans can be truly objective about anything.
There are very few reasons, even for the most evolved
among us, to forsake the second-person opinions of
good friends, mentors, counselors, confidants and
confessors. Peer review may be a drag in science, a
generational brake on our headlong progress, but the
right idea eventually takes hold. It is a healthy
thing to keep questioning the precision of our own
objectivity. Still, the Buddha asks us to dive right
in and start trying to be objective about ourselves.
It's really the only way to get the kind of first-hand
experience that connects those abstract buttons and
commands in our conscious minds to the more messy
affairs of our neural circuits and glands.
Evolutionary psychology has taught us over the last
few decades that we arrive with some considerable
prepackaged neurological software, adaptive,
evolutionary cognitive traits that the Buddha called
formations (sankharas) conditioned by past
intentional action (kamma). The world is
notably different now from the one in which most of
these cognitive traits evolved. The social world is a
lot more complex. We have become by far our own worst
predators. Xenophobia isn't serving us at all well
anymore. Once-scarce resources are much easier to come
by today, while once- plentiful resources are growing
more scarce. We invent new needs every day. Inherited
cognitive traits are adaptive responses to an
environment that no longer exists. Many of them
allowed us to make snap judgments and fast, unthinking
decisions in potentially life-threatening situations.
This is "the 'first line of cognitive processing of
all perceptions, including internally generated
'pseudo-perceptions', which automatically,
subcons-ciously and near-instantaneously produces
emotionally valenced judg- ments of their probable
effect on the individual's well-being" (Wiki).
We also evolved higher cortical functions that allow
us to further ponder these matters, provided we have
the time. We often have to wait for these to offer a
more reasoned second opinion, but even here the gut
instinct or knee-jerk reaction, even in error, may get
the benefit of the doubt, having already mobilized
forces such as adrenaline.
We
developed such mental processes as pareidolia and
apophenia, the abilities to perceive order where
little or none presents itself in any obvious manner.
These two give us an ability to make apparent sense of
utter rubbish and nonsense, and jump to our
conclusions with impressive speed. Pareidolia finds
meaning in cloud formations and tea leaves. It also
fuels the new age imagination and conspiracy theory.
Apophenia will find meaning in white noise. Both are
fundamental to creativity. Maybe it was better from
the point of view of survival to imagine the tiger in
the tall, striped grass or hear some menacing approach
in the rustling of the wind, just to give us the
tiniest bit of a head start. But these processes also
give us an increasingly inaccurate picture of the
world as the new world itself evolves. We do a lot of
our responding to perceptual illusions. Anybody who
has played with optical illusions or watched a magic
show should get how convincing illusion can be.
The human
capacity for self-deception and denial is very
impressive. It would and probably should constitute a
large sub-domain for the field of psychology.
Psychologist and Buddhist scholar, Daniel Goleman,
wrote an interesting book on the subject called Vital
Lies, Simple Truths: the Psychology of
Self-Deception, in which he scoped out the field
from the microscopic world of cells up to the scale of
global social and economic dynamics. With various
explanations (which is instead of saying "for various
reasons") we have evolved and maintained a number of
whole categories worth of cognitive processes in which
self-deception plays key roles. Most of these appear
to be mental processes that we come equipped with, at
least judging by their relative universality across
human cultures.
One category is composed of our Cognitive Biases, when
this is viewed as a set of flaws, or Cognitive
Heuristics, when viewed more positively as a set of
somewhat dated or primitive cognitive tools. "This …
explicitly challenges the prevalent view that humans
are rational agents maximizing expected value/utility,
using formal analytical methods to do so" (ib). These
are perceptual and cognitive shortcuts that spare us
pondering and agonizing when our urges are urging us
on, or when the beast is snapping at our heels. About
the best known of these is the confirmation bias, the
inclination to cherry-pick information that confirms
our preconceptions. The self-serving bias is another
big one, our inclination to remember our successes and
forget our failures. The scariest is the Bandwagon
Bias, the force that holds the lemmings together, and
the Nazis, and the Christians. Many dozens of these
have been identified, as this (Wiki)
list will attest.
A second
category collects our Coping Strategies. These are
cognitive and behavioral scripts that we use to manage
our internal and external stresses when these appear
to push the envelope of our limitations. We try to
either master, minimize, or tolerate these stressors,
but this is often accomplished at the expense of a
more authentic view of the world or of ourselves
within it. The strategies may address our appraisal or
evaluation of the problem, or the causes and
dimensions of the problem itself, or they may
reevaluate our own affective response to the situation
in search of a calmer approach. An addict is likely to
be quite familiar with some of the more maladaptive
strategies, since addiction and denial themselves are
two of them, but he might need to step back out of his
problem for a while to begin to know them more
clearly. Only a portion of our coping strategies can
be called maladaptive. Buddhism or Dhamma-Vinaya
itself might be called an adaptive coping strategy.
Another (Wiki)
list.
A third
category is our arsenal of Defense Mechanisms. These
are stratagems that we use to protect our egos,
self-images or self-schemas from perceived threats,
even if this means lying to ourselves or distorting
reality. In George Eman Vaillant's (1977)
categorization, defenses form a continuum related to
their psychoanalytical developmental level. There are:
1) pathological defenses (psychotic denial, delusional
projection), 2) immature defenses (fantasy,
projection, passive aggression, acting out), 3)
neurotic defenses (dissociation, intellectualization,
reaction formation, displacement, repression), and 4)
mature defenses (humor, sublimation, suppression,
altruism, anticipation). It also considers some of the
"mature defenses" to be immature. It is perfectly fine
to use both Buddhism and meditation defensively, such
as in dissociating yourself if you've been associating
with the wrong thing. It is frequently OK simply to
flee from trouble, to ignore a bad influence, to get
distance from a thought that would otherwise
over-involve or obsess us. We don't need to be mindful
in ways that harm us.
A fourth
category gathers together our Logical Fallacies. A
crude but more easily-remembered introduction to these
is Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit"(see),
but this is a long way from being a complete list.
See, for example, another (Wiki)
list. Fallacy or specious reasoning underpins a lot of
the propaganda, both intentional and inadvertent, that
sways both individuals and whole cultures off the
broad path to truth. A common example is the Excluded
Middle fallacy that considers only two either-or
extremes in a range of possibilities. Another is the
Argument from Authority that assumes someone with
greater power holds the greater answer. Another is post
hoc ergo propter hoc: after this, therefore
because of this. Many people take up heroin after
smoking pot, therefore pot is a gateway drug that
causes you to go further. In fact the gateways are 1)
you discover that the government has been lying to
you, so further investigation is warranted, 2) you can
now regard yourself as an outlaw, so why not take
another step? and 3) you have put yourself in contact
with the black market and/or organized crime now, so
you can purchase just about anything you can imagine.
The
Buddha's use of the Five Hindrances as a central set
for exercises in Samma Sati suggests that the
above four sets of dhammas or mental phenomena
might also be well-used for this same purpose. Since
the field of psychology is still a relatively backward
science, still more of an art, and somewhat more bluff
than true expertise, there are no complete and
definitive lists of the dhammas within the
above four categories. Partially because there is no
authority to appeal to, it might be more interesting
to try the following: Rather than attempt to develop a
set of four lists of these processes here, I think I
should simply suggest that the reader or recovering
addict do some research and reading on these four
subjects and come up with a personalized list of the
processes that seem most relevant. Some of these
categories have examples numbering in the dozens and
hundreds but I would think that ten of each would be a
good place to start. Then I would suggest taking them
systematically and in order, perhaps working on one a
day for forty days. This approach makes the exercise
an inquiry on two levels: into the nature of the
category of behavior and then down into the relevance
of the particular activities and processes. Maybe
these exercises could be thought of as a photographer
getting to know his lenses and filters, to understand
the mechanisms by which he sees what he sees, and
those by which he also distorts what he intends to
see.
For
anyone who had read this far, we might assume that the
seeker here is interested in doing the work needed to
get past the self-deception and denial. This is not a
light challenge. Most of these processes are used to
serve, protect and defend the ideas of self that we
have spent a lifetime in constructing. This tends to
be regarded as a big and precious investment.
Divestment will require at least some provisional
disinterestedness or equanimity, founded on
understanding that we cannot be fully committed to
getting at the truth as long as protecting our own
feelings from hurt remains a top priority. But it
hurts my feelings quite a bit less if I try to
understand that there is no real me to begin with, and
that it's only this process of self-deception that
will be doing the suffering.
Samma
Samadhi is Right Concentration or concentrative
absorption. The mind is fixed and held here on a
single object or objective. This is a narrower
application of one of the seven always-present mental
functions called one-pointedness of mind (cittekeggata),
or focus.
As with
Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration is developed in
two aspects of mental concentration, culture or
cultivation (bhavana): there is Samatha
Bhavana, the development of tranquility,
serenity or calmness and the fixedness of mind or
concentration; and Vipassana Bhavana, the
development of insight by introspection, seeing or
knowing phenomena for what they are as they arise and
disappear, the formations that are ever impermanent,
unsatisfactory and not-self.
Regardless of the object, the initial stage of the
meditation is called preliminary concentration (parikamma-samadhi)
and the object taken up is the preliminary sign (parikamma-nimitta).
Some meditation manuals collect the objects for
serenity meditation into a set of forty, called the
Places of Work (kammatthana). These forty
include ten objects with colors (kasinas),
physical objects which are turned into strictly mental
objects; ten unattractive objects (dasa asubha),
concerning death and decay; ten recollections (dasa
anussatiyo), being an assortment of ideas from
the scriptures such as the Three Refuges; the four
sublime states (Brahmaviharas); four immaterial
states (aruppa), discussed below, one
perception (eka sanna) of the repulsiveness of
food, and one analysis (eka vavatthana) of the
being reduced to its material or elemental components.
You can clearly see in some of these meditations a
deliberate attempt to cultivate the more horrifying
half of samvega. The serenity provides or
permits the kinder half. There can be other objects of
serenity meditation, which are usually prescribed by a
teacher. On the other hand, the object of vipassana
meditation can be anything requiring investigation. It
can also be a simple, straightforward stream of
consciousness meditation or momentary concentration (khanika
samadhi), wherein the meditator just maintains
mindfulness of the stream itself, while noting what
emerges and dissolves, but clinging to nothing. This
is equivalent to Zazen. The approach to absorption is
called access or neighborhood concentration (upacara
samadhi). This is being on the threshold, still
examining, not yet one-pointed, not yet absorbed. The
approach to full absorption, as anyone who has tried
it will attest, is much like herding cats or monkeys.
The work done collecting sources of energy is useful
here. Distractions will abound, but mind is returned
again and again to the center of focus, firmly but
without any agitation or forcefulness. Full absorption
is called appana samadhi. We are not really
doing samadhi until we are doing appana
samadhi, which names a progression through
several layers of depth of concentration called jhanas.
Jhana is the Pali equivalent of the
Sanskrit Dhyana, the Chinese Chan, and
the Japanese Zen.
The Cetasikas of Right Concentration
As
mentioned before, all cittas or mental states
are accompanied by seven omnipresent cetasikas
or mental processes (sabba citta sadharana), to
wit: contact, feeling, perception, intention,
one-pointedness, vitality and attention.
One-pointedness or focus is of course central to samadhi,
where it is augmented. One of its functions is to
orient and unify the other factors. But samadhi also
enlists the assistance of several more cetasikas.
These are sometimes called the jhana factors
or the factors of absorption. Appana samadhi
names a state that is not really entered until all
five of the Hindrances are brought under some degree
of control. The jhana factors are applied
towards this end and then released or transcended as
deeper levels of concentration are reached. The five
mental factors mentioned and developed here are said
to counter the Five Hindrances. They are vitakka,
vicara, piti, sukha and ekagatta.
Vitakka
is called the initial application of mind, directed
or applied thought,
conceptualization, mentation, the movement of the mind
onto its object. It is closely related to sanna,
perception, but follows this with ideation, not simply
noting the salient features of a mental object but
getting a boundary or a name around it to distinguish
the figure from its ground.
Vicara
is called the sustained application of mind, evaluation,
analysis, examination, ongoing
or discursive thought or reasoning. This allows us to
examine a mental object from different points of view
and across a span of time. It's a moving reflection,
or a movement of perspective. This allows us to watch
mental objects change and evolve. To distinguish this
from conceptual proliferation (papanca), we
might think of vicara as more linear, where
the later thought follows from or is conditioned by
the earlier thought. Papanca will branch in
every direction that it can find a connection.
Piti
is called exhilaration, elation, ecstasy, rapture,
joy, bliss, delight, zest, refreshment, brio
or enthusiasm. Elsewhere, this can often be an
anticipatory state as sukha, below, but here
it refers to the relishing of states already attained,
and thus it is less in danger from disappointment.
Sukha
is happiness, pleasantness, pleasure, satisfaction,
blessedness, ease,
happiness, well-being and sweetness. It has the same
Indo-European root as sugar. Here again it refers to
the relishing of mental states already attained,
instead of happy anticipation and potential
disappointment.
Ekagatta
is one-pointedness of mind, focus, concentration,
singleness of preoccupation. This mental factor is
broader in scope than samadhi, which is
specifically concentration with wholesome mental
factors, while the focus of ekagatta could be
that of a hunter about to kill, or neutral, as with
someone threading a needle. It is the mental
equivalent of foveal vision.
Upekkha,
equanimity, is one of the four Brahmaviharas,
and the seven enlightenment factors, and the ten
perfections, but only finds its way onto the list of
"beautiful cetasikas" by way of a synonym: tatramajjhittata,
balance or neutrality of mind, equilibration, impartiality,
equanimity, or
even-mindedness, It is, however, mentioned here
as one of the mental factors involved in appana
samadhi, and so must also be assumed to be a cetasika
here.
The Five Hindrances (nivaranana) are called thus specifically because they hinder or obstruct right effort, mindfulness and concentration. The hindrance of sensual craving (kamacchanda) is countered best with one-pointedness, which resists distraction; that of ill-will and aversion (vyapada) with exhilaration (piti); that of sloth and torpor (thina-middha) with applied thought (vitakka); that of restlessness and worry (uddhacca-kukkucca) with happiness (sukha); that of cynical doubt (vicikiccha) with sustained thought (vicara).
The Five Hindrances (nivaranana) are called thus specifically because they hinder or obstruct right effort, mindfulness and concentration. The hindrance of sensual craving (kamacchanda) is countered best with one-pointedness, which resists distraction; that of ill-will and aversion (vyapada) with exhilaration (piti); that of sloth and torpor (thina-middha) with applied thought (vitakka); that of restlessness and worry (uddhacca-kukkucca) with happiness (sukha); that of cynical doubt (vicikiccha) with sustained thought (vicara).
The Four Rupa Jhanas
Four
levels or stages of mental concentration or meditative
absorption (appana samadhi) are described many
times in the suttas. They are called the Four
Fine-Material Absorptions (Rupa Jhanas) because
they have some bounded form or mental object at their
center. These are epistemic or psychological
realities, not metaphysical ones. They are the
training grounds for the development of insight. These
four are progressive, as are the four
still-more-mystical states to follow. As discussed,
several mental factors are brought into the meditative
process, and as they serve their function they are
gradually left behind. These stages of concentration
are defined by what we have transcended and by what is
still with us. It is counterproductive to think of
these as spiritual attainments, even though they are a
way of noting our progress.
With
concentration on the First Jhana (patthamajhana
samadhi) we are still accompanied by both
applied and sustained thought, by ideas and their
analysis (vitakka-vicara). We are still
experiencing within reason, thinking discursively,
even as we begin to fill with the higher affect of
exhilaration and happiness (piti and sukha),
which begins when we have detached or secluded
ourselves (viveka) from the hindrances
(nivarana). One-pointedness (ekagatta) is a
necessary condition of this state.
With concentration on the Second Jhana (dutiyajjhana samadhi) we detach ourselves from applied and sustained thought, from thinking and pondering (vitakka-vicara). Exhilaration and happiness (piti-sukha) now occupy more of our mind states as one-pointedness (ekagatta) becomes a truer concentration (cetaso ekodibhavai) and we develop more internal confidence (ajjhattai sampasadanai).
With concentration on the Third Jhana (tatiyajjhana samadhi) we leave exhilaration (piti) behind, but a happiness (sukha) related to abiding in equanimity (upekkha), or a "sweet equanimity" (upekkhā-sukha) stays with us. We have developed mindfulness (sati) and clear comprehension (sampajanna).
With concentration on the Fourth Jhana (cututthajjhana samadhi) we leave behind any happiness that might be related to a lack of pain, retaining only such imperturbable (anenja) forms as the happiness of renunciation (nekkhamma sukha), seclusion (paviveka sukha), peace (upasama sukha) and enlightenment (sambodha sukha). We abide with a purified mind consciousness (parisuddha manovinnana) arising from equanimity (upekkha). We are now "serene, pure, lucid, stainless, devoid of evil, pliable, able to act, firm and imperturbable." (Nyanatiloka, 1994, p. 34)
With concentration on the Second Jhana (dutiyajjhana samadhi) we detach ourselves from applied and sustained thought, from thinking and pondering (vitakka-vicara). Exhilaration and happiness (piti-sukha) now occupy more of our mind states as one-pointedness (ekagatta) becomes a truer concentration (cetaso ekodibhavai) and we develop more internal confidence (ajjhattai sampasadanai).
With concentration on the Third Jhana (tatiyajjhana samadhi) we leave exhilaration (piti) behind, but a happiness (sukha) related to abiding in equanimity (upekkha), or a "sweet equanimity" (upekkhā-sukha) stays with us. We have developed mindfulness (sati) and clear comprehension (sampajanna).
With concentration on the Fourth Jhana (cututthajjhana samadhi) we leave behind any happiness that might be related to a lack of pain, retaining only such imperturbable (anenja) forms as the happiness of renunciation (nekkhamma sukha), seclusion (paviveka sukha), peace (upasama sukha) and enlightenment (sambodha sukha). We abide with a purified mind consciousness (parisuddha manovinnana) arising from equanimity (upekkha). We are now "serene, pure, lucid, stainless, devoid of evil, pliable, able to act, firm and imperturbable." (Nyanatiloka, 1994, p. 34)
The Four Arupa Jhanas
The next
four meditations are now referred to as the four
Formless or Immaterial Absorptions (arupa jhanas)
or the Formless Realms, although they were not yet
called jhanas when the Pali Canon was written.
These states are "beyond bodily sensations, without
sense of resistance, without attraction to the
perception of diversity" (DN 9). Once again,
these are simply experiences and not metaphysical
worlds. As soon as they are transformed into entities
with anything like an objective reality, they will try
to become permanent, satisfying and spiritually yours.
In these states, as the name indicates, the mind
strives to transcend all form and boundary, image and
visualization. Sensory and conceptual metaphors
founded on our sense memories can be the hardest of
all to let go of, if indeed this is even possible.
This is especially true of our most abstracted sensory
and conceptual metaphors of expansion in time and
space.
There is
a fun little mystery in our word "concentrate."
Etymologically it means "with the center." But this
does not mean the same thing as narrowness of focus to
the exclusion of everything else. This is in its
elements the same as the word concentric, as in
concentric circles, like the ripples spreading on a
pond. The outermost ring of these ripples is still
concentric or concentrated on the center. The formless
jhanas are expansive states. They do move
outward from a center, but this is a center for which
there is no boundary or circumference, since that
would be rupa or form.
Akasanancayatana
is meditation on the base, sphere or dimension of
infinite or boundless space. Space is not the same as
Nothing. If you were somehow able to travel to the
emptiest and darkest part of our universe, you would
find it still humming with electromagnetic and
gravitational fields, enough weird and intangible
stuff to hold light down to the speed of light. There
will be plenty of starlight passing through the
emptiest part of space. Space, which must now be
thought to include Time, is perhaps Existence's
ability to accommodate existences, or simply the locus
of the fact that it does. Physicists call the
difference in energy between empty space and nothing
"zero-point energy" and they even hope one day to
exploit this gradient. The meditation on infinite
space is practice in stretching and opening our minds
in acceptance and accommodation. But we are not
filling this space with anything yet. This is only a
stretching exercise.
Vinnanacayatana
is meditation on the base, sphere or dimension of
infinite or boundless consciousness. We have said many
times here that consciousness in Buddhism is simply an
emergent property, arising out of and conditioned upon
the stream of existence, not a core or fundamental
property of existence. Humans, being largely
vulnerable, ungrateful and frightened narcissists,
have great difficulty in coming to terms with the
three marks of existence, anicca, dukkha and
anatta. The vast majority will hasten to latch
on to this idea of infinite consciousness, with the
great relief that even the Buddha used the words, and
think: "Aha! that is the infinite Deity of which I am
a spark. This is the Deity with whom I will be
reunited, that I might live forever, unchanging, in
perfect bliss." But no, this is simply a meditation,
by which we seek to expand our minds ever outward, to
make room for everything that we could not otherwise
be mindful of, to increase the reach of our minds. But
we are not looking for anything here. We are not
filling this consciousness with anything yet. This is
only a stretching exercise.
Akincannayatana
is meditation on the base, sphere or dimension of
nothingness. This is the real nothing, not even
no-thing, about which not much can be said. It is the
vacuum abhorred by nature. Theories abound about how
this is required for anything to come into being. The
En Sof of Qabalah had to create En or
Nothing before it could bring anything else into
being. Only then could some of the Limitless Light (En
Sof Or) be fed into any kind of context that
enabled existence. Nothing allows for existence and is
creative in this way. It is the capacity for
existence, with capacity being a synonym for emptiness
or nothing. We are not looking for anything here with
this meditation. We are not putting anything into the
context of this nothingness yet. This is only a
stretching exercise.
Nevasannanasannayatana is meditation on the
base, sphere or dimen- sion of
neither-perception-nor-non-perception; there is
nothing perceived, nothing not perceived. Even less
can be said about this one, except that, unlike the
first three meditations, we are already fully immersed
in the possibilities of this experience. This is the
same world that we attempt to imagine when we try to
imagine the world as it truly is, the stream in which
we, and everything we think we know, are just tiny and
temporary eddies and bubbles. In this meditation we
try to go to this place, into this stream, but
paradoxically, at the same time, we quit trying to
figure it out. This is reality as it is (yathabhuta),
the ground of becoming (bhavanga), the stream (sota)
and suchness (tathata). When immersion is
complete this is release or liberation (vimutti)
and the final extinction of identity (nibbana).
We are probably not going all the way with this
meditation. At least not in this lifetime. For now,
this is primarily a stretching exercise.
In the
end, the main point of Right Concentration is the
creation and maintenance of the altered or alternate
states of mind that are required for the cognitive
flexibility that we need to put an end to our
suffering. They do not themselves end suffering. Not
all of these alternate states require a higher degree
of consciousness, and particularly not the
self-conscious consciousness that our new age
narcissists are so fond of. With Flow, for instance,
as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we can emerge
from ten straight hours of our single-minded, creative
immersion and not have a clue where the time went, or
where we were in that time. Stretching our mental
horizons, we acquire a lot more room in our minds,
room to move around in time or space, to distance
ourselves from the too-near, to get closer to the
too-far, to circle around for newer perspectives, to
frame our puzzles and problems in newer and more
effective ways.
We appear
to have evolved certain specific cognitive
capabilities for these alternative states of mind that
are founded or rooted in our neural structures and
neurochemistry. These have, at a minimum, been
exploited for dozens of millennia by the shamanic or
proto-shamanic elements in our societies, using both
rituals and entheogens. Abraham Maslow regarded such
needs as self-actualization, personal growth,
creativity, spontaneity, ethical evaluation, problem
solving (for its own sake), transcendence, and
acceptance as real needs of the very highest order,
and, if this is so, it not surprising when these
appear to have evolved some neurological support.
Neuro-cognitive evolution has given us some
fascinating capacities for trance and mystical states
that have been of great service to our cultural
inventiveness and hence our very survival, despite
leaving us with such toxic byproducts as religious
ideology and belief. When it was reported that part of
the human brain is especially active during intense
religious experience (Ramachandran, "Neural Basis of
Religious Experience"), the religious were quick to
call it the God Module. Alas, this is also the part
wherefrom He tells us to kill the entire family.
Further, it is even likely that we have evolved
pathological processes that allow us to explore new
cognitive pathways, as may be the case with the
emergence of genius in certain forms of autism, or
creativity in schizophrenia, or hypervigilance in
paranoia. Do we have real drives to explore altered
states, akin even to our drives for play and sex? This
could be evidenced by the frequency with which they
result in euphoric states. A reward system is likely
to be selected for. But it may also be possible for
such drives to exist and not be universal or
species-wide. It is sometimes enough for evolution to
give these gifts to only a portion of us, with some of
them activated only epigenetically during our fetal
development in response to certain environmental
stressors. It seems unlikely from looking around that
any form of Richard Bucke's "cosmic consciousness"
will ever be a consistent or universal feature of the
human experience.
We're Not There Yet
The
eighth and final step on the path does not bring us to
the end of the path. The path is a metaphor. Maybe we
could think of learning the steps as learning dance
steps. The path doesn't end until the consequences of
our intentional actions come to an end. The Buddha
doesn't leave us with a promise of salvation here. His
very last words were "compound beings are ephemeral,
strive with heedful-diligence" (vayadhamma
samkhara, appamadena sampadetha). It will all
end in time. If we have no off-world descendants it
could all end when our sun becomes a red giant, unless
of course it was Hindu Vedantins who were right all
along. In the doctrine it is claimed that many will
step off the wheel and out of the journeying (samsara)
long before this, and that many already have. In the
Pali Canon there is a familiar valediction spoken by
the Buddha and others who get free: "Birth is
finished, the holy life has been lived, done is what
had to be done, there is nothing further here" (DN 2).
In places
in the doctrine, the Eightfold Path is subdivided into
three categories of Panna Sampada, the Wisdom
Attainments of Right View and Intention; Sila
Sampada, the Moral Attainments of Right Speech,
Action and Livelihood; and Citta Sampada, the
Mental Attainments, of Right Effort, Mindfulness and
Concentration. In these it is said that development of
the Mental Attainments merely prepares us to begin
again by bringing new and improved wisdom to our
Wisdom Attainments. We have, in other words, done all
of this hard work for the sake of a better beginning,
starting over with better Views and Intentions.
In
the Mahacattarisaka Sutta and elsewhere we are
presented with two Surprise Bonus Steps. Lo, there are
not eight but ten path factors (See AN 10.118), ten
descriptions of the nearest and farthest shore and the
journey across. Here the Ninth Step is Samma Nana,
Right Knowledge. This is first-hand knowledge, clear
comprehension, discriminating wisdom and penetrating
insight. This step is said to include, among other
things, the remembering of previous births (pubbe
nivasanussati-nana), knowing the death and
rebirth of sentient beings according to their kammas
(sattanam cutupapata-nana) and knowledge of the
destruction or exhaustion of the defilements, taints,
cankers or stains (asavakkhaya-nana). The Tenth
Step is Samma Vimutti, or Right Liberation,
becoming completely unbound (parinibbuta),
having done what was to be done. It is liberation
through acquired wisdom or discernment (pannavimutti).
We're not there yet. This could
take a while.
There
are, of course, many who believe with all of their
hearts that the Buddha's wisdom was perfect, that his
word on the human condition was the final word, that
the Dhamma he left for us would need no amendment,
that the Discipline he left us is all we could ever
need to get free. It might go against the teachings to
spank these people, or to dunk them in icy water, but
in some cases they might benefit from such an
awakening. We've learned a lot about the human mind
and the minds of our fellow sentient creatures in the
twenty-five centuries since the Buddha's final release
or parinibbana. We've learned much about
craving and aversion, and about how these processes
can further entrench and armor themselves as addiction
and denial.
H. H. the Dalai Lama offers us his succinct understanding of doctrinal evolution: "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview."
H. H. the Dalai Lama offers us his succinct understanding of doctrinal evolution: "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview."
One of
the Buddha's primary teachings was to use the
information that we have personally verified and not
simply believe what our teachers tell us. Many would
argue that this does not open any door to eclecticism,
or to cherry-picking, or high-grading the doctrine.
But I, for one, am a fundamentalist eclectic and think
it right to pick and choose. While it makes some good
sense to look at systems as a whole and understand
their creators' main ideas within their intended
contexts, it makes no sense to load ourselves up with
ideas, rules, and scripts that we will never need. And
it certainly makes no sense at all to reject good
ideas, rules, and scripts for the simple reason that
they lie outside of a cherished system of belief. That
said, we can take some time with the following
Appendices to explore what those other people are
doing, those other alcoholists and their alcohology.
Dhamma-Vinaya has been known to the West for a few
centuries now, and not all of its significant
influences on our Western culture have been explicit
or acknowledged. Naturally it has been particularly
attractive to psychologists and, to a lesser extent,
philosophers. There are, therefore, likely to be a
number of ideas emergent in the field of psychology
that have derived their original inspiration from
Buddhist thought. This is in a addition to the
co-evolution and co-discovery of human universals and
convergent evolution due to universals. It should not
be surprising to find strong parallels between
Dhamma-Vinaya and several of psychology's disciplines
and practices.
Please
note that this is not entitled "A Buddhist look…" and
also recall that I am not, strictly speaking, a
Buddhist. This is a look at the Twelve Steps from an
adopted Theravadan Buddhist-like point of view. It
would be presumptuous to speak here for Buddhism in
general, within which lies much variation.
Attempts to Merge Twelve Steps with Eight
There is
no question that 12-Step programs like Alcoholics and
Narcotics Anonymous have done a lot of good for a lot
of people. Most of the evidence may be anecdotal, and
the scientific analysis isn't there, but people have
been getting and staying sober with these programs for
a long time. These programs are not for everybody,
however. Working the 12-Step programs with any kind of
doctrinal fidelity may necessitate the adoption of
certain philosophical, religious and spiritual
ideologies and assumptions that many consider to be
just as toxic as the behavior patterns that they are
trying to escape. Particularly controversial is the
request made to a deity for help out of a situation
over which one has no control, out of a predicament
that one has no responsibility for entering.
Buddhists, being non-theistic and committed to the
idea that we are each responsible for the consequences
of our own intentional choices and actions (kamma),
may be troubled by this problem. Many will refuse to
buy into a toxic narrative, seeing this as asking for
more evaluative beliefs of the sort that lead them
astray to begin with. But it isn't at all necessary to
trade one for the other.
Almost
all of the Buddhist recovery programs to date have
attempted to capitalize on the success and popularity
of the 12-Step programs by offering Buddhist versions,
wherein each of the more familiar twelve steps is
rephrased in more Buddhist-sounding terms. There are
two big problems with this: 1) The fit is a poor one.
The Buddhist doctrine has its own internal structure
that is organized around an entirely different
psychological model of mind and its place in the
universe, and 2) The ideas for which Buddhist
counterparts are sought are often irrelevant to the
real problems at hand. There are other difficulties
with many of the Buddhist 12-Step programs. After
rendering their steps into Buddhist-sounding terms,
they may offer little else beyond a recitation of the
fifth precept of Samma Kammanta, to wit:
"restraint from using wine, liquor or intoxicants
which result in heedlessness or negligence (pamada)
of the mind or emotions," and then remind us that
meditation is mentioned in the Eleventh Step. These
will generally regard Buddhism as more of a supplement
to the twelve steps, when in fact the general program
of Dhamma-Vinaya has point-by-point applications to
the problems of addiction and denial which are
sufficient to the task on their own. It is true that
Buddhist analogs can be found to many of the twelve
steps, and also to "apocryphal" elements of the
programs that lie outside the twelve enumerated
practices. But the place to identify these is in an
appendix, not in a rearrangement of Buddhist doctrine.
This chapter and the next will attempt this analysis,
because we do still have much that we can learn from
other recovery programs.
One of
the questions to ask here is: what are the ingredients
in religious and spiritual experience that allow the
12-Step programs to work, and can these be isolated
from the wrongheaded notions of a father god? Are we
prepared to also account for people sobering up under
the questionable guidance of the televangelists, and
signs found on burned tortillas and toast? Another
important question is: how far do we intend to go
beyond simply ending the addictive behavior? There is
much to be done in the first year of sobriety that may
take nearly all of the recovering addict's attention,
but many are fully prepared to see this as a lifelong
struggle. While it is laudable that the end steps of
the program encourage the more successful to reach
back and help others to recover, there is really
nothing said about simply moving on and putting
addiction behind you. It's really a question of
freedom from versus freedom for or to. Many will want
to set themselves up for a gradual transition to a
life with addiction well in the past and nearly
forgotten, having now returned to higher pursuits and
purposes. Many will only retreat by backing up, and
many of these will become addicted to the the meetings
or the recovery program itself, or else to their
substituted religious delusions. Others will retreat
by walking away facing forward, leaving
their problems behind, still not forgetting lessons
well and thoroughly learned.
The Twelve Traditional Steps
Step One: We
admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and
that our lives had become unmanageable.
It might be legitimate to claim that to date we have demonstrated an apparent powerlessness over our addictive behavior and have so far failed in our attempts to manage this problem. But the step as written actually helps to put the speaker into a position of powerlessness, if not one of inanimacy, like some insentient and lifeless puppet. This is the victim mentality: I have no power, and so ultimately I have no responsibility for being here. My childhood made me do it. My disease made me do it. My genetics made me do it. The devil made me do it. This flies in the face of one of Buddhism's most fundamental postulates: sabbe satta kammasaka, all beings own their kamma. You got yourself into this mess with your unwholesome views, intentions and actions. It is up to you to get yourself out. In fact, you might truly have had a messed up childhood, you may have a disease at work here, and you might even have inherited a genetic susceptibility to developing addictive behavior patterns. All three of these things may in fact have been contributing factors, but the most that can be authentically said is that they have made it somewhat easier to develop an addictive disorder, and that they can make it somewhat more difficult to break completely free. Addiction is both a disease and a choice, but only regarding it primarily or ultimately as a choice will offer an authentic way out that doesn't require delusional thinking.
It might be legitimate to claim that to date we have demonstrated an apparent powerlessness over our addictive behavior and have so far failed in our attempts to manage this problem. But the step as written actually helps to put the speaker into a position of powerlessness, if not one of inanimacy, like some insentient and lifeless puppet. This is the victim mentality: I have no power, and so ultimately I have no responsibility for being here. My childhood made me do it. My disease made me do it. My genetics made me do it. The devil made me do it. This flies in the face of one of Buddhism's most fundamental postulates: sabbe satta kammasaka, all beings own their kamma. You got yourself into this mess with your unwholesome views, intentions and actions. It is up to you to get yourself out. In fact, you might truly have had a messed up childhood, you may have a disease at work here, and you might even have inherited a genetic susceptibility to developing addictive behavior patterns. All three of these things may in fact have been contributing factors, but the most that can be authentically said is that they have made it somewhat easier to develop an addictive disorder, and that they can make it somewhat more difficult to break completely free. Addiction is both a disease and a choice, but only regarding it primarily or ultimately as a choice will offer an authentic way out that doesn't require delusional thinking.
According
to emergence theory, one of the problems we face here
is that we are not born with a fully formed faculty of
agency or will. This is something that develops out of
our also-emerging sense and cognitive assessment of
who and what we are. It may also be plausibly argued
that most human beings never really develop
self-efficacy to any noteworthy degree, but merely
drift along in a tide of peers and social pressures.
Agency and will require nurturing, and this makes Step
One dangerous as a self-fulfilling prophesy. In the
"How it Works" section of the AA Big Book it is said:
"Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning,
baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for
us." Alcohol is not sentient. It has no agency. It is
not cunning, or baffling, or powerful. But alcohol is
only a simple, colorless liquid composed of simple,
organic, sugar-like molecules. To somehow see this as
being "out to get us" is, in fact, paranoia. But so is
believing that the creator of the universe stands
ready to correct our mistakes for us, or that his
arch-rival is out to undo us. Agency and will are
tender things at first, and have likely taken quite a
beating so far in suffering the consequences of an
addict's unwholesome behavior. These don't need Step
One to make things even worse. We can simply admit
instead that we have failed to occupy an effective
causal position relative to this problem. The image of
ourselves as being passively swept along here might
keep us from examining the motives that brought us
here.
The
deeper understanding of the first step to be taken in
the recovery process is almost completely obscured by
the toxic verbiage. We need to accept the reality of
our situation and then acknowledge that something
important has been missing. This is different from
accepting the reality as the facts of life. It's OK to
accept that we have come to this bad state of affairs.
We need to admit reality instead of admitting defeat.
Once again, acceptance is not the same thing as
approval. Acceptance of things as they are is the
first step in changing them in realistic ways. Yes, we
have been caught up in a vicious cycle: eventually,
drinking is what we do to temporarily blot out the
suffering caused by the drinking. But we are only
powerless within the ambit or orbit and limitations of
that cycle. There are known ways to step off or out of
this, into a larger world that is full of other
options. Something is very wrong with an identity that
leaves me feeling powerless and unable to manage my
own life. But this identity does not yet encompass all
of the options that are available to me. The solution
may simply require me to step outside of myself and
locate a new sense of purpose, heedfulness and
diligence. Outside of the vicious circle,
powerlessness is not so permanent.
As we saw
in Chapter Three, samvega is the best
candidate experience for turning us around here. It's
the more positive way to hit bottom and thus change
direction abruptly, and it's less painful by far than
insanity, prison, injury, sickness and death. It still
means that you can't go on like this. But the samvega
experience really means it. Suffering is loaded with
all sorts of useful information if only we can get our
wrongheaded views and reactions even temporarily out
of the way. This suggests finding some way to get past
our ego, our big conceit, and our self-deceptions.
This helps to collapse the self-serving and other
biases that distort our view of things, without the
shame and guilt cycles that require a twisted,
negative sense of self-importance. There is a place
for an admission of defeat, but this is merely the
defeat of a construct of self that has proven
ineffective, the delusion that we have been
identifying with. It is not a defeat for the new thing
that can take its place, the new management. Neither
of these, according to the Buddha, is the real you
anyway, so why not choose the one least inimical to
our well-being and wholesomeness? Samvega is
only the first step here, a moment of clarity. It
cannot by itself override the unconscious, automatic,
compulsive behavior, but it can let the bad gas out of
the delusions that supports this.
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
It is
clear in the 12-Step literature that the only higher
power really being referred to here is a god. A great
deal of words are used to explain the liberality of
the use of the name, but ultimately it is still the
male sky-god of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
traditions, the one with a plan, the one who loves us
deeply enough to send us to hell for all eternity for
disobedience. The Big Book, in Chapter 4, "We
Agnostics," pleads with the newcomer to be patient and
just allow the program work, but this is inauthentic
as a call to any honest inquiry and is at bottom smug
in its implication that when you are well or more
mature you will find that this god is the real thing.
Also in this chapter it is asserted that when this
higher power is seen to work this constitutes
empirical evidence of its validity or reality, with no
acknowledgement of the psychodynamics of surrender or
the placebo effect. Step Two goes as far as asserting
that "One who won't believe in God is in a savage
state of mind." It is truly interesting, if sometimes
painful, to watch people in recovery trying to salvage
what they can from this by twisting the idea of higher
power: "I can even take that doorknob for my higher
power because that doorknob doesn't need a drink." I
went to such lengths myself and tried using the
physicist's definition of power as "the rate at which
energy transforms," and then saw life itself as the
power to transform my cheeseburgers into serenity,
courage and wisdom. Life was a higher power to the
extent that it elevates things, but ultimately the
arising was still my job. I'm not sure how much good
that did at that pre-samvega stage of recovery,
but at least I didn't need to entertain patent
falsehoods and fairy tales.
While
some forms of Buddhism are more religious than others,
most would agree that any higher power in Buddhism
would be pretty much the same as the one in science.
It would not have a plan for you. It would not love or
even like you. There exist people who are higher and
more evolved than you who would be more than happy to
help you straighten out your life, but these are all
creatures, not the creator. The Buddha never really
spoke of a power greater than ourselves or even of a
larger interconnectedness, other than the Stream out
of which we emerge and into which we dissolve and are
no more. Power would certainly not be a volitional
entity with a purpose or a plan.
What we
can be sure of relative to a power greater than
ourselves is that something significant is missing
from our makeup, our world view, our intentions, our
ethics, our values, and our mindfulness. There is a
big missing piece to our puzzle, as indicated by our
suffering. If it isn't buried deep within us then it
must be "out there" still, in the powerful world that
is truly greater than ourselves. I can still come to
understand (rather than believe) that there is
something I'm missing if others are sobering up. I can
come to see that others have addressed and beat this
problem, and I can acknowledge that many of them had
terminal specialness just like me. Maybe the bottom
line in this is in first getting some kind of real
humility, about how much of everything is greater than
ourselves. When this is truly known we may be
encouraged to get out of ourselves and do some more
exploring for what is missing. There are even paths
with signs that suggest this and people moving along
them without weaving and puking. We don't need to come
to believe in anything. We need to acknowledge the
evidence that there is in fact at least one way out,
and then set about to make it part of our repertoire
of life skills. Getting outside of ourselves is to get
things from outside of ourselves. Einstein's
definition of insanity was "doing the same thing over
and over and expecting different results." It may
therefore prove that the different thing we need to do
next time is something we will find out there, in our
culture, or maybe in something that nature has to
teach us. To do this we need a higher appreciation for
the potential of second-hand knowledge, in order to
avoid making all of the mistakes for ourselves. We
need more respect of the sort that comes with
humility. The word re-spect means "to look again."
Step 3: Made a decision
to turn our will and our life over to the care of
God as we understood Him.
It is
probable that most addicts have made a series of bad
decisions and probably understandable that they might
now want to externalize their steering and control
functions. AA has its point in referring to an
addict's loss of control as "self-will run riot," and
even its assertion that the locus of control stands
much in need of shifting. The Buddhist program isn't
about surrender: it's about our being victorious in a
noble way. There are things which need to be
surrendered, of course, although "renounced" is a much
better term for Dhamma-Vinaya. We renounce the things
that have been dragging us down. We blow ballast. We
cut away the necrotic parts. We dump parts of who we
have been. We abandon people we mistakenly regarded as
friends. We part ways. We do understand that there are
places in our lives where we need to submit and accept
help. We might surrender some of our sense of
self-reliance and accept some refuge in assistance
from others. But this refuge or sanctuary does not
free us from working on ourselves, from deciding what
we want to become. It is not a place to hide.
There is
also a viable alternative to "surrendering to a higher
power" to be found in "serving a higher purpose."
Higher purpose may be regarded as directed behavior
that is a function of something greater, better, more
lasting, or more sustainable than we are as sentient
bags of mortal meat. Both require a trust that after
this reawakening there will be new options for us on
the other side. But this is where Theistic faith and
Buddhist faith, or saddha, part ways.
Buddhists have no business with a god. To the extent
that we suffer we are going to twist our cognition and
affect around in order to see what we want to see.
There is, therefore, no reason to have faith in what
we see, and much less in what we cannot. We still make
a decision to try something new without clearly seeing
the end of the process. We trust that waking up
further will allow us to locate more options or
choices. And finally, being in service to a higher
purpose can give us the evidence that leads to prasada,
serene confidence, whereas blind faith may only lead
to smugness. Many confuse these two.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
It is
more than a little surprising that so few Buddhist
reinterpretations of the 12-Steps focus on Step Four
because this step is almost perfectly consistent with
Buddhist Doctrine and Discipline. This will not
correlate to any specific step on the Eightfold Path
because such an inventory runs throughout the Buddhist
program's eight steps. It might only require us
tweaking the term "moral inventory" to "ethical
inventory" to imply a process of rigorous
philosophical and psychological investigation instead
of the adoption of our society's mores. We are not
obliged to agree with everything the 12-Step
literature says about Step Four, but here is another partially
relevant statement: "Nearly
every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case
of misdirected instinct … we want to find out exactly
how, when and where our natural desires have warped
us." We should not be so quick to make instinct
(presumably meaning natural tendencies) the primary
culprit in our suffering. The Buddha did identify
seven Latent Tendencies (anusayas) that
approach some of the implications of the word instinct
here, while allowing nature to be not-all-bad or
contrary to god's plan for us. These seven were:
sensual lust, hostility, prejudgment, cynicism,
conceit, ego and ignorance (see Glossary, Anusayas).
But it is not our natural desires that have warped us.
It is what we have made of, or done with, our natural
desires, what we have created as workarounds following
the thwarting of these desires. Simple conduct with
respect to primary instincts or needs is what must
move us along if we're to survive, and we need to
honor these instead of deny them.
The
Big Book, in Chapter 5, "How it Works" relates
failure to being "incapable of grasping and developing
a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty."
Setting aside the problems that we may have with the
dishonesty of theistic approaches, our capacity for
rigorous honesty in developing insight into our views,
intentions, behavior patterns and practice is in fact
a key to success. The big problem here shows up when
we try synching honesty to being objective about
ourselves. Any ethical inventory in Buddhism means
looking long and hard at both the good and the harm
that we have done. Certainly one of the important
points in doing any inventory is to identify damaged
or unsaleable merchandise, but we also want to tally
our assets. The development of the wholesome is as
important to Right Effort as the prevention of the
unwholesome. We want to inventory our virtues and
strengths as well as our failings. We should also
understand that some of our failures might have had
good components. We might sometimes be inclined to
renounce all that we were, to paint the whole past in
a negative light and the bulk of our behavior as
monstrous, rousing ourselves to self-loathing and
contempt, all in order to give us some sort of
momentum to start fresh. This is also dishonesty.
The good that we do doesn't lie in our good intentions, so it's difficult for us to be a good judge of our own character. The good lies in what becomes of these good intentions. This morality is pragmatic, and often situational. This means our inventory needs to process feedback from outside of ourselves. We are well-served by getting second opinions. In Buddhism there is the sangha or community for help here. In 12-Step recovery there is the group and the sharing of our stories. In both of these there are usually peers to help with the second opinion, usually people who have used the same lies and self-deception that we have, and it's almost a relief to know that we are very likely to get caught and called out if we try to lie here.
The good that we do doesn't lie in our good intentions, so it's difficult for us to be a good judge of our own character. The good lies in what becomes of these good intentions. This morality is pragmatic, and often situational. This means our inventory needs to process feedback from outside of ourselves. We are well-served by getting second opinions. In Buddhism there is the sangha or community for help here. In 12-Step recovery there is the group and the sharing of our stories. In both of these there are usually peers to help with the second opinion, usually people who have used the same lies and self-deception that we have, and it's almost a relief to know that we are very likely to get caught and called out if we try to lie here.
The use
of the term fearless is also quite appropriate to
Buddhism. We are not talking about the fear of walking
along high ledges here, or of bandits in the bushes,
but of confronting the problems deep within our
psyche, particularly those that have managed to armor
themselves against discovery and correction, such as
addictive behaviors. We need to map what we own here,
and own what is ours, taking responsibility for our
problems, dealing sometimes ruthlessly with denial,
defenses and biases. The focus on what has been done
to us shifts to what has been done by us, including
the part we have played in becoming a victim. We
haven't entirely lost the ability to blame others, but
rigorous honesty demands we give all credit where
actually due. We have invested a great deal of time
and energy in developing our neuroses, cravings,
aversions and delusions, and we can't expect them to
go gently. This is not a task for sissies and cowards.
Step 5: Admitted to God,
to ourselves and to another human being the exact
nature of our wrongs.
Two-thirds of this step, at least, is consistent with
Dhamma-Vinaya. The tradition of confession is also
practiced in Buddhism, particularly in the sangha,
where it is a regular process termed apatti desana,
meaning confession of wrongdoing, infractions,
offenses or faults. Confession is the opposite of
blame. But unlike in Catholicism, there is no
subsequent absolution, no lifting of accountability.
There is certainly a feel-good element to this. In Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, the sense of great
relief that is felt in unburdening is described: "The
dammed-up emotions of years break out of their
confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they
are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing
tranquility takes place. And when humility and
serenity are so combined, something else of great
moment is apt to occur." The healing sense of release
is described here in Christian terms as the arrival of
god's grace. In Buddhism it is simply a species of pamojja,
relief, with maybe a touch of piti, or
rapture.
There are
several dimensions to the positive affect that follows
from confession. It may be regarded as the first step
to being forgiven. And the first step to receiving
counsel. There may be a hope of a reconciliation in
the process and thus the promise of being on both
sides of forgiveness. There are positive feelings that
are associated with the extending of trust. In
addition to acknowledging the pain we have caused,
there is also the likely possibility of discovering
the pain we did not cause, but only feared we had. It
may be that a lot of the people we thought we had hurt
really couldn't care less. Despite the fact that our
emotions are not the same as hydraulics, there is at
least the feeling that dammed up affect is being
released. Internalized guilt and shame do feel like
pressure and certainly are stressful. Another apt
analogy reminds us that sunlight is the best
disinfectant, that things kept in the dark will only
fester there, and rot us from the inside. And there is
a more cerebral, cognitive satisfaction that insights
from a second opinion or another point of view will
soon be coming our way. The tremendous effort put into
concealment is relieved when we stand up and say ecce
homo.
Confession does a lot, but it is sufficient to
attribute what it gives us to our evolved affective
and cognitive processes. It is also the exercise of Samma
Vaca, Right or True Speech. But again, it brings
us no absolution. The damage that we've done and the
pain we've caused are the kammic wake that is
following behind us. There is no escaping this, only
dealing with it. Buddhists cannot just walk away here
to sin some more. It is vital to declare and own this
damage and pain with karuna or compassion, to
try to feel it as it was felt by those we have
wronged, as the first step in setting things right.
Our kamma is never undone simply in theory, or
by mouthing a prayer.
Step 6: Were
entirely ready to have God remove all these defects
of character.
This of
course is completely inconsistent with Dhamma-Vinaya,
with the exception of the word ready and some of the
entirely. There is no easy path to salvation in
Buddhism, particularly in the Theravada school. It is
a lifetime of practice with heedfulness and diligence,
usually just to get us partway there. We are now
learning things about our defects of character,
especially that they are learned or conditioned
behaviors, and so we learn that they can be unlearned
or reconditioned. We are learning renunciation. After
authentically owning our defects we move into a
position where we can authentically disown them. First
we need to understand that they are peripheral to what
we are. Even who we are, or who we seem to be, is a
function of the life that we choose to practice. We
can start revaluing our difficulties as worthy of
being discarded. Once we get some authority over our
impressive powers of denial, we can start to say "This
is not mine, this is not me, this is not who I am." Sama
Vayama, Right Effort, is the practice of
refilling the voids left by these "losses" with
wholesome practices. We may not have a higher power,
but our higher projects and purposes will certainly
help diminish the attractiveness of practicing our
defects. The investments that we have made in these
start to look less significant as losses, and much
easier to cut. To an extent this is simply a natural
function of developing insight and a growing knowledge
of our options.
We can,
however, take a deep breath and say "let the healing
begin." Since we maintain our defects by effort, by
clinging and resentment, by actively practicing them,
letting these go means letting them go away, letting
them not be continually created and maintained. We let
nobody practice these defects, we let it not be us
doing these behaviors. There is in fact a real passive
element to this process. Being more or less entirely
ready is to open the windows and doors, to invite
circulation, to invite sunlight, to invite energy into
what has been a more stagnant system. And then, in the
words of Harold Morowitz in Energy Flow in Biology,
"the flow of energy through a system acts to organize
that system." We can accomplish much with wu wei
or not-doing. Simple self-organization does much of
the cleaning out and cleaning up when the system gets
more energetic and dynamic. Self-organization is
negative entropy. And health breeds more health.
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
The
humility here is consistent with Dhamma-Vinaya,
although we should be careful to understand humility
as something quite other than self-effacement. And
Buddhists can humbly ask that shortcomings be removed,
but it would be inconsistent to ask this of somebody
other than ourselves. At least this approach
acknowledges that these shortcomings have been
devalued to a negative worth in preparation for
detachment. We can ask our friends for some help. We
can even ask friends who died twenty-five centuries
ago, if we are honest about what kind of help they
still have to offer while remaining dead. Prayer is
different in Buddhism from what we see in the West,
and is quite unrelated to petitionary prayer. It is an
expression of our humble intent, a sharing of good
will with the world, not a request for favors and
gifts. Meister Eckhart had a sort of Buddhist slant on
the subject when he said it would suffice if the only
prayer we ever said was "thank you." He also said that
to ask the divine for anything other than more of the
divine was faithless and false.
The
Big Book, in Chapter 5, "How it Works," declares
that "we claim spiritual progress rather than
spiritual perfection." This shows the right attitude,
insofar as this can be practiced without coming to
believe that "He" has already responded to the prayer
by granting salvation. This can be a slippery slope to
smugness and further delusion. We should probably even
be cautious in using the word spiritual, and redefine
this without reference to any sort of immortal spirit.
Once again, salvation is a lifetime of heedfulness and
diligence even to get part of the way there. What we
wind up doing here is setting our intentions to
renounce unwholesome, inferior and ignoble patterns
and then replace them with something more worthy. A
combination of weeding and cultivation is particularly
relevant to the step of Samma Vayama or Right
Effort. The loss of a negative state is the loss of an
energy drain, the plugging of a leak, and so, in the
math of it all, it is as important as finding new
sources of energy.
Step 8: Made a list of
all persons we had harmed, and became willing to
make amends to them all.
This step
is also consistent with Dhamma-Vinaya. All beings own
their kamma. Recall that kamma is
understood here as intentional action and its
consequences. Religious devotees tend to overstate kamma
as a law of nature, with statements such as
"everything comes to us by way of the law of merit (punna)"
and its corollary that nothing does not. They may even
take this a step further and state that to merit
something is to deserve something. Then, because bad
things happen to good people and good things to bad,
the effect of the law must be extended across two or
more lifetimes. There is no need for us to do this
here. The so-called law of kamma is not some
cosmic retributive justice system. There is nobody
doing the accounting. We do not need to suggest that
six million Jews or ten million Native Americans
deserved their respective genocides. It is enough to
state that good kamma will improve our odds
for good consequences coming back from our
well-intentioned actions, and for negative
consequences from unskillful or unwholesome behavior.
This is still enough to merit an accounting. Unlike in
12-Step programs, we also want to account for the
damage we have done to ourselves, the damage done to
us by others, and the good we have done as well. We
need to take a comprehensive look at what is ripening
(vipaka) out of what we have sown, the fruits (phala)
of our behavior, to get a clear sense of the scope of
our problems here and begin to understand the degree
of commitment that it will take to set things right.
We need to clarify the bigger picture of our own role
in creating our situation and own it, to see clearly
who was truly harmed, who wasn't harmed, who really
had it coming, who didn't care or mind. Often, where
we can take responsibility, we can also then let go of
the resentments we carry in blaming others, which is
usually a welcome unburdening all by itself. Forgiving
is every bit as important as being forgiven.
Resentment derives from re-sentiment, to feel the same
thing over and over, to keep hammering ourselves with
the same emotions. This only drives us in circles.
Sentiment is information. If we are paying attention
we only need to take it in once.
Understanding the full scope of the greater ethical or
kammic problem is only the first step, but it
is critical. The ultimate aim is making amends, not
being forgiven. Although this will often, and even
usually, lead to being forgiven, the important thing
is the gaining the compassion or the empathy needed to
begin to feel what we have done as others have felt
it. It is this that will set us on course and teach
how better to move through through the social order
without negative repercussions. It is this that will
move us to actually do the work of making amends,
Step 9: Made direct
amends to such people wherever possible, except when
to do so would injure them or others.
This step too is fully consistent with Dhamma-Vinaya. We encounter this in its most straightforward form in the Eightfold Path step of Samma Kammanta, or Right Action. While Right Action is usually understood in Buddhism as concentrating on the Precepts, instructions on several types of behavior to avoid performing, Samma Kammanta can legitimately be translated "good karma," implying the directive to do or practice the right thing proactively. There are also applications of this making of amends in Samma Vaca, Right Speech, and Samma Ajiva, Right Livelihood.
This step too is fully consistent with Dhamma-Vinaya. We encounter this in its most straightforward form in the Eightfold Path step of Samma Kammanta, or Right Action. While Right Action is usually understood in Buddhism as concentrating on the Precepts, instructions on several types of behavior to avoid performing, Samma Kammanta can legitimately be translated "good karma," implying the directive to do or practice the right thing proactively. There are also applications of this making of amends in Samma Vaca, Right Speech, and Samma Ajiva, Right Livelihood.
Kammanta
as "karma repair" is a Buddhist form of redemption,
though this is more from error than from sin.
Forgiveness in both directions is a big part of this,
and these amends can even be justified in the selfish
terms of giving someone the gift of forgiving us.
Sometimes we find out that others didn't care, and
that the guilt was all in our heads, but even that
helps to repair our heads. Sometimes, too, we can find
ourselves repairing relationships that really aren't
worth repairing, or refriending those whom we are
better off leaving behind. But the making of such
repairs is not a commitment to linger there.
We
encounter a situational ethic here in the exception
"except when to do so," which is not typical in the
theistic point of view with its black-and-white ideas.
This complicates things a bit, since we're called on
to use courage, good timing, sensitivity, subtlety,
prudence, tact and other such skills that seem
unrelated to the making of amends, but then we are
becoming fit again to live among others, and social
reintegration, to a limited but elevated extent, is an
articulated goal of Dhamma-Vinaya, particularly the
Vinaya part that develops an ethical structure for the
sangha or fellowship. We are learning that a
local atmosphere of trust, intimacy and friendship is
weather that we can to some extent control and so is
worth rebuilding and maintaining.
Step 10: Continued to
take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it.
This is obviously compatible with Dhamma-Vinaya, with no alteration or "but" required. An ongoing commitment to a personal inventory is Samma Sati, Right Mindfulness, and the cultivation of a conscience that courageously and continuously faces up to our errors is represented in Budddhist doctrine by hiri, moral shame tied to dignity and self-respect, the internal sense of wrong, and ottappa, ethical wariness and due regard for the external consequences of wrongdoing. Hiri and ottappa develop along with our insights.
This is obviously compatible with Dhamma-Vinaya, with no alteration or "but" required. An ongoing commitment to a personal inventory is Samma Sati, Right Mindfulness, and the cultivation of a conscience that courageously and continuously faces up to our errors is represented in Budddhist doctrine by hiri, moral shame tied to dignity and self-respect, the internal sense of wrong, and ottappa, ethical wariness and due regard for the external consequences of wrongdoing. Hiri and ottappa develop along with our insights.
The
ongoing inventory is a little easier than the original
one if we are practicing Samma Vayama or Right
Effort properly and we are actively suppressing the
development of unwholesome patterns, but the human
mind is tricky and eternal vigilance the price of
personal freedom too. Resentments become easier to
identify when we are paying attention. When you've had
the same bad feeling before, only moments or days
before, you know now that it has already given you the
information you needed and now it can be set free.
There really isn't anything easy about apamada,
diligent and heedful practice, except that it makes
life run a lot smoother. Life is an ongoing process,
and the processing of feedback as we are moving along
is a big key to the self-organizing dynamics that make
contrived and self-conscious reorganization less
necessary. In other words, troubles don't build up in
ways that require unnatural correction. Now we take a
frequent look at our lives just like we take a daily
shower. Eventually the practice becomes second nature.
When we stay in balance we stop creating resentments.
The
12-Step literature goes way too far when it says "It
is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed,
no matter what the cause, there is something wrong
with us." It may be that the only thing wrong with us
is that we have allowed ourselves to be disturbed in a
way that leaves us less effective. We'll talk more on
this in the next chapter, but for now let's just say
that there are things going wrong in the world that
should move people to action. If it is ineffective to
let yourself be disturbed, then be something else that
at least allows you to not make the problems worse.
Once again, our acceptance is not approval. Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions closes its Step Ten
with some good wisdom: "Learning daily to spot, admit
and correct these flaws is the essence of character
building and good living. An honest regret for harms
done, a genuine gratitude for blessings received, and
a willingness to try for better things tomorrow will
be the permanent assets we shall seek."
Step 11: Sought through
prayer and meditation to improve our conscious
contact with God as we understood Him, praying only
for knowledge of His will for us and the power to
carry that out.
Buddhists can keep "… meditation to improve our conscious …" as the baby here, and let the bathwater go. We're not even going to include the word contact (phassa) here, since that will only lead to attachment. Not surprisingly, the 12-Step recovery Buddhists tend to get themselves all wet and excited over the use of the word meditation here. Prayer, not so much, although Buddhists have a form of prayer that is better described as expressing higher intentions. What we are seeking through meditation is a more precise knowledge of our nature and then more useful ways to optimize the fact that we can be conscious. We seek knowledge of which way to go from here. We seek awareness of how to live more skillfully. We seek through mindfulness and right intention how to wake up, quit suffering, and quit spreading suffering.
Buddhists can keep "… meditation to improve our conscious …" as the baby here, and let the bathwater go. We're not even going to include the word contact (phassa) here, since that will only lead to attachment. Not surprisingly, the 12-Step recovery Buddhists tend to get themselves all wet and excited over the use of the word meditation here. Prayer, not so much, although Buddhists have a form of prayer that is better described as expressing higher intentions. What we are seeking through meditation is a more precise knowledge of our nature and then more useful ways to optimize the fact that we can be conscious. We seek knowledge of which way to go from here. We seek awareness of how to live more skillfully. We seek through mindfulness and right intention how to wake up, quit suffering, and quit spreading suffering.
The main
points of practicing Buddhist meditation are twofold:
finding our equilibrium or serenity (samatha)
and developing insight (vipassana). We need no
external will for us, and the healthy states that we
attain by meditation provide all the power we need to
get up and carry ourselves out.
Step 12: Having had a
spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we
tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to
practice these principles in all our affairs.
There is
a hint of the Mahayana "Bodhisattva vow" in this last
step. We may turn back and help others. In the ten
Oxherding pictures of Zen, the highest accomplishment
is to find ourselves back in the world with giving
hands. David Viscott, in a quote often altered
and attributed to Joy Golliver or Picasso, noted: "The
purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of
life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give
it away." It is an enlightened self-interest to be
giving our gifts away, not a duty imposed from
without, but a description of how gifts and the gifted
behave. It should be noted that the phrase "carrying
the message" does not imply proselytizing in 12-Step
programs, and Tradition Eleven specifically states
that relations should be based on "attraction rather
than promotion." In other words, let the visible
improvements that you are making in your life do the
talking and do your leading by example. When we do
teach, we use upaya, or skillful means, and
present the teaching at the level at which individuals
are prepared to receive it. Unfortunately,
many-to-most people seem only to be prepared to
receive instruction at the level offered by 12-Step
programs, complete with the theology and the
victim-disease paradigm. For many, to adopt such a
position even for pragmatic purposes, is to tell lies
and so violate Samma Vaca. While compassion
will come with our understanding, the Theravada
Buddhist isn't obliged by any doctrinal ethic to serve
others, but it is recognized that increasing our
serenity and insight contribute to making the world a
better place. And anybody who has found a higher
purpose is at least living beyond themselves now and
is dedicated to a broader life. This is not the same
as altruism, nor is altruism required. It may be that
a Buddhist in recovery is moving past all things
related to addiction, including the addicts still
suffering, and sometimes even past the people who are
living in the present century.
It would
be pretentious for a Buddhist to claim spiritual
awakening, as even the word spiritual is problematic.
This is not to say that Buddhists don't do it.
Awakening is by steps and still a long way off for
somebody just entering recovery. We might claim that
we have at least made the journey from humiliated to
humbled, and that's a lot.
Practicing our principles in all our affairs has its
Buddhist counterpart in Samma Ajiva or Right
Livelihood, which goes beyond the things we do for
money, and even beyond our labors of love to the way
that we live our lives. Every day is "bring your
Buddha to work day." Human is as human does. Wisdom is
in living the wisdom, discriminating in right action,
not theorizing. Real awakening has no room for
hypocrisy. Or glamor either: we chop wood and carry
water to express our highest wisdom.
I've
spent almost all of my adult life in or near small,
rural towns, with the nearest stoplight nearly two
hours away. This meant that my choice of meetings was
limited solely to AA. Being a fundamentalist eclectic
I was used to sorting through systems of thought and
belief, picking out what worked and discarding the
rest. And, being an atheist, I had lots to sort
through with the 12-Step program as written. I
determined fairly early on to look beyond the twelve
delineated steps to the whole of the program and
select twelve ideas from that to customize my own
path. It worked fairly well except for one period when
the local group got infested with born-again
Christians, who maintained their aggressively
proselytizing approach until their leader committed
suicide. Of the twelve formal steps, keeping most of
four, five, eight, nine and ten was the most critical
part of the plan. The rest of the steps I had to
torture into a more honest form, as just discussed.
This approach wasn't very popular in any of the groups
I went to, especially when I had to bow out of my turn
reading most of the documents out loud due to a vow to
voice only truths under the Buddhist step of Samma
Vaca. In fact, the eclectic approach to AA is
specifically frowned upon as "Cafeteria Style," or
"you can take what you like and leave the rest." But
what can we say? Unexamined thoughts are not worth
swallowing?
A Fellowship of Men and Women
The brief
"Preamble" that is read at every meeting states: "AA
is a fellowship of men and women who share their
experience, strength and hope with each other that
they may solve their common problem and help others to
recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for
membership is a desire to stop drinking." Building a
social fellowship that is dedicated to this one
specific task may, in many ways, be the most important
and effective part of the program, yet there is no
mention made of this in the steps other than a
discussion of one of the aspects in Step Twelve. Many
if not most addicts have damaged or destroyed a good
percentage of their social and family relationships
and need to start practicing a new set of social
skills, particularly candid and honest communication.
The 12-Step fellowship provides this. It also provides
a climate in which delusional thinking about addictive
behavior, as well as the usual personal drama,
"alcoholic grandiosity," denial and hyperbole are just
not going to fool anybody. Just about everybody in the
room has "been there and done that." It's a safe bet
that honest sharing and confession will be welcome.
Social
development is also particularly important in
Dhamma-Vinaya. In fact, the structure and rules of the
sangha or fellowship are laid out in great
detail in the Vinaya Pitaka, and this is one
third of the Buddhist scriptures. The Buddha even
claimed that good, advantageous and whole- some
friendships (kalyana-mittata) were a
prerequisite to enlightenment. The sangha is
one of the three refuges.
Of
course, people gathering together in groups are in no
way protected from mass or group folly. There is
nothing inherent in the program to keep members from
being swept along by platitudes and cliches, by peer
pressure and the simple drive to get along. I heard
the inane and vacuous "everything happens for a
reason" until I was ready to scream. A majority of
recovery groups might also be inclined to reinforce
the ideas of individual helplessness and victimhood,
or cling to the disease model to the exclusion of all
the alternatives. Further, the sharing of misery can
be more common than the sharing of goals to leave the
problem of addiction behind.
The Serenity Prayer
A
simplified version of Reinhold Niebuhr's "The Serenity
Prayer" is offered in AA's Big Book, Step Three. This
is "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and
wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be
done." I found that the only part of this I could
recite with integrity was "grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change, [the] courage to
change the things I can, and [the] wisdom to know the
difference." With god out of the picture, this prayer,
spoken as a Buddhist intention, is actually very
profound. Unfortunately, it seems that a majority of
recovering alcoholics and addicts only seem to be
prepared to face the first third of this, often
winding up with something far short of serenity. Most
of the talk on the subject concerns acceptance, with
the common view being that if we are upset by events
the problem is almost certainly located solely in our
own attitudes: "My business is solely to change
myself. I have no business making changes in the
world." What if Gandhi thought that? Or Lincoln, or
Jefferson? If we don’t act as though we made a
difference, we won’t. Without the courage to change
the things we can, the wisdom to know the difference
is lost as well. Certainly we need to learn
acceptance, but as mentioned several times here, the
point of acceptance is to find a firmer ground in the
real world, a place where we can plant our feet and
begin to change the things we can in realistic ways.
We do not have to approve of the things we accept. My
use of the godless parts of the Serenity Prayer
effectively required that all three portions be given
equal weight.
My Best Thinking Got Me Here
With
statements like this, group members start getting the
habit of mistrusting their own self-centered views.
"The illness of the spiritual dimension, or 'spiritual
malady,' is considered in all 12-Step groups to be
self-centeredness … The process of working the steps
is intended to replace self-centeredness with a
growing moral consciousness and a willingness for
self-sacrifice and unselfish constructive action"
(Ronel). While the Buddha certainly spent a lot of
time detailing the problems associated with
self-views, he nevertheless recommended correcting
them instead of setting them aside, or immersing
oneself in our more altruistic endeavors. And
correcting self-views means altering our deepest
under-standing of what this thing called self really
is. The unenlightened tend to think of self or spirit
as the core of our being, something to be listened to
and honored, and are thus less likely to understand
that the inner self they feel most deeply is capable
of grave error, delusion and ignorance.
One
relevant aspect of the erroneous self-view in AA is
the idea of terminal uniqueness or specialness: "An
alcoholic's idea that his or her 'uniqueness' exempts
him or her from some part of the program." I was
accused of this, of course, on the basis of my
cafeteria style. But it was certainly true from other
perspectives.
Another
aspect is the useful term "Stinking Thinking: an
alcoholic's reversion to old thought patterns and
attitudes. Stinking thinking may include blaming
others, alcoholic grandiosity, fault-finding,
self-centered- ness, and thinking that you can control
your drinking." This describes someone building their
way back up to drinking again, and "clinging to any
resentment or circumstantial excuse." Particularly
conducive to relapse is time spent on the "pity pot."
Sometimes this process is referred to as a "Dry Drunk
(or Dry Bender): a condition of returning to one's old
alcoholic thinking and behavior without actually
having taken a drink."
Hitting Bottom
This is
"reaching such a state of utter hopelessness that we
become willing to admit complete defeat in dealing
with our alcoholism. In such a state we become
'teachable,' and are willing to do whatever is
necessary to achieve sobriety. The bottom we hit at
the end of our drinking days is usually emotional and
spiritual. It may or may not involve other comp-
lications such as poor health, financial and legal
problems." Bill Wilson referred to this as "complete
ego deflation at depth." We discussed this earlier in
speaking of samvega, the Buddhist counterpart
to this idea that includes a clear and horrifying
vision of what we have become, but also an undeniable
sense that there is a way out that is available now.
AA also
introduces the concept of a "high-bottom drunk: an
alcoholic who has maintained most of the trappings of
'success'; a family, a home, a job, a car, reputation,
health, etc. Almost everyone entering AA has hit some
kind of emotional bottom, but for some the social,
legal, or financial bottom may be relatively high."
What isn't discussed in the literature is that an
addict's bottom can be elevated by one or more
experiences that start to restore a better sense of
value. It is possible to cultivate samvega
using mindfulness, and also to deliberately immerse
ourselves in it using meditation or entheogens.
Attraction Rather than Promotion
A vital
piece of the recovery puzzle lies in this simple
phrase. It says, in effect, that words and depthless
appearances are not enough. There has been enough talk
and show that has only led to hypocrisy. We really
need to walk the talk, "to practice these principles
in all our affairs." Sobriety is not just getting and
staying sober: "It also means living a good life and
doing the right thing." Human is as human does.
An Attitude of Gratitude
Once we
are adequately fed, clothed, sheltered and educated in
the basic necessities of life, ingratitude becomes the
core of a great deal of human dissatisfaction and
suffering. Gratitude means being content with what we
have, and being resolved to play the hand we are
dealt, and being thankful for having anything at all,
such as the chance to be alive. Remember the Last
Rites of Bokonon from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle?
Bokonon was an atheist, of course, and being ironic,
but he still wrote the Book with a great Why
Not?:
"God made
mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud,
"Sit up!" "See all I've made," said God, "the hills,
the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the
mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me,
lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God
had done. Nice going, God. Nobody but you could have
done it, God! I certainly couldn't have. I feel very
unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel
the least bit important is to think of all the mud
that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got
so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the
honor! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What
memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds
of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw!
Good night."
There are
some things that are very poorly understood about
gratitude as a higher or spiritual state. Even the
Buddha failed to explore this one adequately, limiting
his discourses to "gratitude towards" a gratitee in
some form, citing gratitude towards one's parents as
his best example. He regarded this as very important,
and if you are looking for examples the search term is
katannuta. But gratitude does not require a
gratitee, and it certainly does not require a god. We
can say "thank you" to the world without saying that
the world needs therefore to be named god. Neither
does gratitude need to be expressed, which follows
from understanding that sometimes there is nobody to
express it to. But it should be allowed to work its
way into actions and affective states. And although it
sounds like a silly, new age practice, it doesn't hurt
a bit to make lists, paper or mental, of all the
things we are thankful for. If we need a place to file
that, either Right Effort or Right Mindfulness will
work just fine. And, as mentioned previously, we are
probably justified in adding gratitude (katannuta)
to the Buddha's list of four Sublime States or Brahmaviharas,
metta (loving-kindness), karuna
(compassion), mudita (supportive joy) and upekkha
(equanimity).
Enabling
This is a
cautionary term "used to describe overly compassionate
behavior towards an alcoholic. An alcoholic needs to
face all of the un- pleasant consequences of his or
her drinking." People surrounding a recovering addict
can be asked not to coddle them or make excuses.
Consequences are the best teachers in life and
insulating ourselves from them is just the road to
continued ignorance. As Herbert Spencer said, "The
ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of
folly is to fill the world with fools." The utility of
consequences is, in fact, the only reason that
extensive liberty works as a political system: the
feedback from both successes and errors helps the
system to self-organize. But feedback from error,
without insulation or padding, or laws to protect us
from ourselves, is absolutely vital to the process.
The recovery program that makes the best use of this
is Tough Love. It may very well be hard to back off
and let consequences teach, but understanding what the
Buddha really meant by equanimity will help. Sometimes
we just need to let what is necessary do what is
necessary.
The Geographical Cure
This is
another cautionary term. It is "an attempt to cure or
escape the 'disease' of addiction by moving to a
different geographical location in the hope that
distance from 'people, places, and things' associated
with drinking or using will make abstinence easier or
unnecessary." The terms "slippery places" and
"slippery faces" refer to physical places, emotional
states and people acting as triggers for the addictive
behavior. We need to come to terms with these
triggers, but not by fleeing from them. It is the
realization that "wherever you go, there you are." You
can't live safely by relying on shielding yourself
from taverns and ex mates. You need to get a grip.
The Pink Cloud
Another
cautionary term is the Pink Cloud. This is "the
temporary sensation of euphoria and well-being that is
characteristic to those who are new to sobriety. For
most, the pink cloud eventually dissipates. This
heralds the time to get down to business and start
seriously working the Steps." It doesn't usually take
all that long for sobriety to present itself as a
pleasant and inexpensive high in its own right. But
for someone in the habit of grasping for quick fixes
it can quickly become a substitute addiction which
fails when, like all affective states, it fails to
last. It is also easy in this stage to confuse
serenity with smugness, which soon leads to getting
slapped back down. The Pink Cloud is a nice reward,
but it doesn't serve us very well as a lasting
incentive. Here, as in Buddhism (where it is sometimes
called pamojja, sometimes piti) there
is no quick shortcut that avoids doing the work and
letting happiness find its own way.
Phrases of Mixed Blessing
One Day at a Time
According
to the literature, this is "a primary strategy for
staying sober. For many alcoholics, the concept of
permanent abstinence is too over- whelming an option."
We can see how this might help, but does it really, in
the long run? In Rational Recovery, this is viewed as
indicating an openness to drinking again some day, and
also a fear about making the longer-term commitment to
sobriety that is more useful in attaining it. Yes, it
is intimidating to utter "I will never drink again" or
"I will always practice these steps," and doing this
shows a poor understanding of the Buddhist anicca
or impermanence. But there are other ways to verbalize
the decision without using the words never, always or
forever, while indicating a time horizon greater than
a day. My own was "I'm retired" and if further
explanation was needed "I had my lifetime allowance,
but I already drank my way through it."
Fake it 'til You Make it
This is a
little bit like "use it or lose it" in reverse. It
hearkens back to seeking spiritual progress rather
than spiritual perfection, and recognizes that defects
of character aren't removed overnight, even by a god.
"When we try to do things perfectly, we are attempting
to do the impossible. The tendency toward
perfectionism is merely a reflection of our alcoholic
grandiosity." This is also phrased as "bring the body
and the mind will follow." The literature at least
acknowledges that small and realistic steps are the
surest progress, even with a god's help: "many
alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order
to recover they must acquire an immediate and
overwhelming “God-consciousness” followed at once by a
vast change in feeling and outlook. The advice given
is patience.
What one
does here, then, is to adopt both the doctrine and the
practices and practice them until the positive
feedback starts to roll in. And in ways this isn't
very different from the Buddhist version of faith
called saddha. You give the process a fair
chance to prove itself, in the same spirit as a
scientist testing an hypothesis. The caution here is
against faking it until you're really good at faking
it. Or against faking it because this is the only way
to feel like you belong. Or against faking it until
you're well and truly brainwashed. To fake it is to
become an actor in a script, a pretender. This is the
meaning of the Chinese Wei in Wu Wei,
not doing. It's opposite is Ziran,
spontaneity, acting in accord with one's nature.
Therefore, the sacrifice of this non-interference
should be temporary, used only until a healthier
nature is restored or reestablished. If you are caught
asking too many questions you can always blame that on
the advice to practice rigorous honesty.
Self-Will Run Riot
According
to the 12-Step literature, self-knowledge is not the
answer: "But the actual or potential alcoholic,
with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to
stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge" and "any
life run on self-will can hardly be a success." On the
one hand, this can be taken to refer to the self-views
(ditthi) that in Buddhism stand in the front
line in the defense of our ignorance and delusion.
Ego, conceit, self-importance: these are some of the
most formidable obstacles to our awakening. On the
other hand, Buddhism insists that it is self-knowledge
acquired correctly and self-will that learns to be
effective in steering us to wholesome and skillful
states that conduct us to success. Self is not the
enemy: it merely needs to be understood correctly, put
in its proper place as an emergent phenomenon, and
then fine-tuned to better effect. It is delusional to
think that we can flee the self in becoming the
servant of a higher power.
The Recovery Approach
The
programs and groups supporting recovery from addictive
disorders vary widely, but the best try to offer 1) a
sanctuary where problems may be freely discussed and
stories told, in the absence of both triggers and
enablers, 2) communication with people across a wider
range of recovery stages,
all sharing a history with similar problems, but with
opportunities to both give help and be helped, 3) the
opportunity to practice social skills with the goal of
some degree of social re-assimilation, 4) cognitive
tools for constructing a more robust and functional
sense of self, with effective behavioral self-control
and improved coping skills, and 5) help with the
reevaluation of life's worth,
meaning, values, and purpose,
including newer scripts and narratives and better role
models.
Many of
these recovery systems are built around the victim and
disease models of addictive disorders, and this may in
fact be exactly what many in recovery will need the
most, if we face the fact that most people won't
accomplish much of significance in their lives, and
indeed do not care to. A majority of people might be
just fine doing little more than escaping their
addiction and avoiding a relapse. The programs should
vary widely because people differ. The specific
Buddhist approach outlined here is almost certainly
not for everybody: it is for those who wish to travel
a much longer road and recover the potential for a
rich and meaningful life with addiction nearly
forgotten. This is too much work for most people. And
there are also, no doubt, more watered down and
abbreviated forms of a Buddhist approach that might be
made available to those who still want to work, but
not as much, and awaken, but not too much.
Two of
the better known alternatives to 12-Step programs are
Rational Recovery and Smart Recovery. Neither have
adopted a victim or disease mentality, and neither
require the adoption of any religious or spiritual
principles.
Rational Recovery
Rational
Recovery has borrowed some elements of CBT or
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, discussed a little
later. In its earlier incarnations, support groups had
more of a place in the program, but these have since
fallen away. RR's handbooks are Rational Recovery:
The New Cure for Substance Addiction and The
Small Book: A Revolutionary Alternative for
Overcoming Alcohol and Drug Dependence, both by
Jack Trimpey. The books are well worth reading,
although there are some baby-out-with-the-bathwater
repudiations of competing ideas that warrant reading
with a critical eye.
To regard
ourselves as rational beings is of course a little
pretentious and wrong. It has been a handful of
philosophers and propagandists, not farmers and
merchants and laborers, who defined the human being as
a rational being. In fact, human is as human does, and
only a few of us are rational in practice. We are more
of a stew that may include some reason, but even this
is more often than not reasons, especially
reasons to try to get away with this or that bit of
misbehavior. Still, the addict has also given himself
reasons to put his life back together, and giving
rationality a stronger role to play is a useful way to
do this.
Central
to Rational Recovery is a method called AVRT, or
Addictive Voice Recognition Technique. In brief, this
consists of taking all of the urges, drives,
motivations and obsessions that call for
participation in the addictive behavior and giving
them one voice, but one that is not your own, or the
voice of a friend. The addictive voice disguises
itself as you, but it doesn't care about you or
anything that you value. "It can use your name, has
access to everything you know, and remembers only the
good times drinking and drugging" (RR p. 36). It has
full access to all of your cognitive abilities and
tricks. With this program this voice becomes an "it"
trying to talk to you, trying to get your attention.
Your first job is to systematically deprived this
voice of any use of first and second person pronouns.
It is no longer "I want this" or "you want this." This
is not me talking, this is not you talking. It
wants this. It wants another drink. It
wants to gamble away another paycheck. It
wants another divorce. It is trying to get you
to do that sick thing again. And it's not going to
work this time. Reasons to drink are externalized,
made into things subject to better judgment, not into
the subject doing the judgment. This relegates the
unwholesome processes to peripheral realms, as mere
possessions and inanimate objects. With this you
identify, learn to recognize, objectify and devalue
those parts of you that try to speak on behalf of your
habit. You deprive the addictive voice of power and
authority. If this seems familiar in a Buddhist
context, it should: N'etam mama, n'eso'ham asmi,
na me so atta, "This is not mine, I am not this,
this is not my essence." This is the practice of
escaping the three conceits (mana) and
graspings (gaha).
Another
important aspect of RR is a negation of the
one-day-at-a-time approach used in the 12-Steps. This
is thought to be disingenuous. Either you want to quit
for good or you don't. The one who parrots the
one-day-at-a-time mantra is countered with: "what is
your plan for the future use of alcohol?" In the words
of Master Yoda: "Try not. Do or do not. There is no
try." Telling ourselves that we are clean, sober or
free just for today still leaves the door open for a
relapse tomorrow, almost as though we secretly want
this. Always and never are words that usually
accompany strong emotional states and never again is a
scary thing to say, but it may help to take a more
honest look at what we really want. Part of you wants
to drink and, to be perfectly honest, part of you
wants to die (vibhava tanha). Do you also want
something better than that, even more than you want
that? There is still much to be said for doing things
in steps: it is merely that our degree of commitment
should not be one of them. We can take things in steps
by changing first things first, and leaving some of
our flaws and personality defects for later.
In RR it
is important to recognize our ambivalence with
honesty. Part of the addict still believes that his
precious substance or behavior still has the power to
make the problems go away, to dull the pain, to settle
the anxiety. That part needs to be acknowledged and
then put in its place, as some third-person thing, and
the part that wants to plan a life around a permanent
abstinence needs to be allowed a stronger, more
personal voice. Yes, that behavior made being sociable
easier. Yes, the buzz was pretty pleasant sometimes.
Yes, this activity allowed me
to feel more spontaneous.
But no, it wasn't worth the costs. This conclusion
then needs the help of some good cognitive tools to
turn it into a real commitment, a real plan to live a
sober life. Without the commitment you never really
recover from being a sad, deprived, drunken person
whose nature is to be a slave. However, a part of
being honest is understanding that you will also be
grieving the loss of the things you enjoyed about the
addictive behavior. This will need to run its course,
in stages, like any other grieving process. But it is
permissible to simultaneously grieve the losses and
costs incurred by the addictive behavior itself.
RR also
acknowledges an exhilarating feeling following
withdrawal, and calls it the Abstinence Commitment
Effect or ACE. But it doesn't disparage this as an
ephemeral pink cloud. It identifies the feeling as the
Real You. Here at least, Buddhism is in disagreement.
In Buddhism this exhilaration is piti. It is
ephemeral. It may be enjoyed, but not counted upon,
and although it is good information to process, offers
hope, and rewards self-control, it certainly is not
the real you, since there is no such thing as a real
you.
In RR you
can still accept the things you cannot change, but
addiction doesn't have to be one of them. It need not
be regarded as something that hangs just inches over
your head for life. Having the courage to change the
things we can is too often neglected within the
disease and victim mindsets. Buddhism, of course, is
all about finding the wisdom to know the difference.
So is RR.
Smart Recovery
Smart is
an acronym for Self-Management And Recovery Training.
Its manual is the SMART Recovery Handbook, available
at a modest cost from (here). This
site also has free information and introductory
material. Smart Recovery makes use of Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and especially
Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). The
emphasis is on self-empowerment or self-efficacy. SR
has groups and meetings, and training programs for
facilitators.
SR has a
4-Point Program for the process of recovery: 1)
building and maintaining a motivation to abstain; 2)
coping with urges and cravings, which are not as
powerful as they seem when regarded as manageable,
short-term discomforts; 3) problem-solving skills,
using rational means for managing and retraining
thoughts, feelings and behaviors, exposing irrational
scripts and increasing frustration tolerance; and 4)
lifestyle balance, balancing short and long-term
pleasures and satisfactions, and learning to
appreciate the actual significance of emotions.
Some of
the tools that SR identifies are 1) ABC, a mnemonic
used for noting the Adversive or the Activating event
> evaluative Beliefs about the activating event
> the Consequences, three basic REBT principles
regarding the functional relationships of thoughts,
beliefs, feelings and behaviors; 2) DEFG a
mnemonic for four subsequent steps, > Disputing
irrational beliefs > new Effective beliefs > new
Feelings > new Goals; 3) CBA or cost-benefit
analysis, especially including long-term analysis; and
4) VACI or Vital Absorbing Creative Interest, a
self-made tool which may be either a personal purpose
or a higher purpose.
The
program identifies seven stages of change: 1)
pre-contemplation, where the participant may not even
realize that they have a problem, a fair parallel to avidya
and moha; 2) contemplation, where the
participant evaluates the advantages and disadvantages
of the addiction by perform- ing a cost/benefit
analysis; 3) determination and preparation, where the
participant completes a Change Plan Worksheet; 4)
action, where the participant seeks out new ways of
handling their addictive behavior, including
self-help, the support of addiction help groups or
professional guidance; 5) maintenance, where the
participant seeks to maintain the gains of altered
behavior; 6) relapse, not inevitable, but a normal
part of the change cycle and a potential learning
experience; and 7) termination, the choice to move on
and graduate from the program.
The
fundamental element in behavioral change is a decision
to change, followed by sensible action towards
identified goals. The acronym Smart is also used
as a mnemonic in business management theory, recalling
key performance indicators in the setting of
objectives. This was first seen in the November 1981
issue of Management Review by George T. Doran.
The most viable goals are: Specific, Measurable,
Attainable, Relevant and Time-specific. The acronym
fits with the goal setting in Smart Recovery as well.
Clinical Addiction, Abuse and Dependence
Traditional clinical psychology has its own methods
for dealing with addictive disorders, which now
include saying there is no such thing. They are now
called "substance abuse" and "substance dependence."
The American Psychiatric Association's 1994 DSM-IV
or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders identifies these conditions as
follows:
* DSM-IV Substance Abuse Criteria
Substance abuse is defined as a maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress as manifested by one (or more) of the following, occurring within a 12-month period:
1. Recurrent substance use resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligations at work, school, or home (such as repeated absences or poor work performance related to substance use; substance-related absences, suspensions, or expulsions from school; or neglect of children or household).
2. Recurrent substance use in situations in which it is physically hazardous (such as driving an automobile or operating a machine when impaired by substance use)
3. Recurrent substance-related legal problems (such as arrests for substance related disorderly conduct)
4. Continued substance use despite having persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems caused or exacerbated by the effects of the substance (for example, arguments with spouse about consequences of intoxication and physical fights).
Note: The symptoms for abuse have never met the criteria for dependence for this class of substance. According to the DSM-IV, a person can be abusing a substance or dependent on a substance but not both at the same time.
* DSM-IV Substance Dependence Criteria
Substance dependence is defined as a maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by three (or more) of the following, occurring any time in the same 12-month period:
1. Tolerance, as defined by either of the following: (a) A need for markedly increased amounts of the substance to achieve intoxication or the desired effect or (b) Markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of the substance.
2. Withdrawal, as manifested by either of the following: (a) The characteristic withdrawal syndrome for the substance or (b) The same (or closely related) substance is taken to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms.
3. The substance is often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended.
4. There is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control substance use.
5. A great deal of time is spent in activities necessary to obtain the substance, use the substance, or recover from its effects.
6. Important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of substance use.
7. The substance use is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent physical or psychological problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by the substance (for example, current cocaine use despite recognition of cocaine-induced depression or continued drinking despite recognition that an ulcer was made worse by alcohol
The most
interesting feature of the above is how little
information it contains about root causes and
prescribed treatments. There is no science, no
biology, no medicine. It sounds more like a
combination of industry and government speak. The best
that they can seem to do is describe some symptoms. It
seems as though the DSM has two real
functions: 1) to assist the mental health professional
in correctly filling out insurance forms, and 2) to
assist the mental health professional in associating a
specific diagnosed condition with the approved
prescription medication protocols for liability
purposes. It doesn't seem directly related to helping
patients recover mental health. As I write this, the
APA has just released its long-awaited DSM-5
to bad reviews. The quality of the information is not
getting better and many groups, such as the NIMH, are
talking about walking away from this altogether.
Arrogance can't sustain itself forever.
And meanwhile, we have real problems to solve.
Still,
even this has to be regarded as a step more
enlightened than the slightly older thinking of 1962,
as shown by Harris Hill in The Social Deviant and
Initial Addiction to Narcotics and Alcohol:
"Alcoholics and narcotic addicts in general are social
deviants prior to the initial addiction. This does not
imply that all such individuals are aggressive and
antisocial. The social deviant is deficient in
reactions of self-criticism, counter-anxiety, or
“guilt” which might deter unusual behavior. The
deviant appears to be more accepting of short-term
satisfactions, or at least less able to defer
short-term gains for long-range satisfaction. They are
deficient in daily pursuits which are reinforced by
and bring satis-faction to the larger society."
Ah, dipsomania.
For those
of us who would still use the word addiction, we have
a fair working definition proposed by Nils Bejerot
in Theories on Drug Abuse, Selected
Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 246-255, NIDA:
"An emotional fixation (sentiment) acquired through
learning, which intermittently or continually
expresses itself in purposeful, stereotyped behavior
with the character and force of a natural drive,
aiming at a specific pleasure or the avoidance of a
specific discomfort."
We do
from time to time get more useful information, but
this is more often from outside the field of
psychiatry: "Acute (or recreational) use of most
psychoactive drugs causes the release and prolonged
action of dopamine and serotonin within the reward
circuit. The reward circuit, also referred to as the
mesolimbic system, is characterized by the
inter-action of several areas of the brain (see
"Reward Circuit"). As a person continues to
overstimulate the “reward circuit”, the brain adapts
to the overwhelming surges in dopamine by producing
less of the hormones or by reducing the number of
receptors in the reward circuit. As a result, the
chemical’s impact on the reward circuit is lessened,
reducing the drug- abuser’s ability to enjoy the
things that previously brought pleasure. This decrease
compels those addicted to the dopaminergenic-effect of
the drug, to increase the drug consumption in order to
re-create the earlier or initial experiences and to
bring their "feel-good" hormone level back to normal -
an effect known as tolerance" (Wiki).
One of
the problems with conventional therapy that deserves
at least a brief mention is that the therapist does
not normally have a great deal of first-hand
experience with the problem of addiction. The patient
may sense this, and sometimes rightfully be dismissive
of the therapist's level of understanding, empathy or
depth of comprehension. This is at least one area
where the support group can have a decided advantage,
or where concentration on the greater problem of the
human condition might be better shared in the sangha.
Another
problem is a sort of built-in obliqueness of the
treatment's approach to the treatment's objectives. We
go to the orthopedist to get our legs fixed because we
don't like how our legs feels when they are broken and
it hampers our getting around. We seek treatment for
our schizo-phrenia because it's embarrassing to be
caught talking to people who aren't there. But we
don't seek treatment for drug addiction because we
hate getting high. The therapist is challenged to
uncover the subtler dimensions of the problems at
hand, and then to apply equally subtle solutions,
sometimes even needing to sneak these past the a
patient's formidable array of defenses. This can be a
lot to ask of human intelligence, even when these
brains have gone to college.
Therapy,
of course, looks to a disorder model, when not to a
disease model. This disorder tends to be either
inherited or socially or culturally contagious.
Therapy can find pre-existing dispositional problems
that may even be specific enough to predict the drug
or behavior of choice. There are people more prone
than others to addictive forms of behavior, even
though no set of consistent pre- or proto-addictive
set of genes or personality traits has yet been
identified. Certainly, any biological mechanisms or
susceptibilities need to be overridden. We shouldn't
discount medications if they can help stabilize
endocrine-based problems that cannot be corrected
behaviorally. But even for the prone, addiction is a
learned behavior, and recovery is in the unlearning,
or the reconditioning. We need to be open to what our
inquiry tells us, and some of our preconceptions about
addictive personality types can really get in the way.
We can't always generalize here.
Progress is the measure of success, and progress is usually gradual, and often too gradual for the therapy budget. We can also take on too much when we take on multiple problems. Few succeed who give up drinking and smoking at the same time, and perhaps fewer still, smoking and overeating.
Progress is the measure of success, and progress is usually gradual, and often too gradual for the therapy budget. We can also take on too much when we take on multiple problems. Few succeed who give up drinking and smoking at the same time, and perhaps fewer still, smoking and overeating.
Psychology as Taxonomic Behavior
The
maturation of the young field of psychology has been
hampered by a number of problems, some of its own
making.
1) It has
wasted a lot of time in the pursuit of several fads,
none more embarrassing than its extended, headlong
plunge into behaviorism. With this mindset, the entire
realm of subjective experience, and indeed, all of the
emergent qualia of the human experience, needed to be
dismissed as irrelevant. In effect, psychology had to
let go of the very psyche that it was supposed to be
-ologizing. Very little was thought to be happening in
the objectified subject in the tight little crack
between the stimulus and the response.
2) The
success of the professional in the treatment of his
patients is financially punished rather than rewarded.
When a patient is successfully treated, the
therapist's checks stop coming in. This is not to say
that professionals lack an ethic, only that it helps
to have better-rounded motivations in a money-driven
society. Success is better encouraged when it is
rewarded.
3) The
discipline's database, the environment to which it
must refer in formulating its theories and drawing its
conclusions, is constituted largely of disappointing
examples of human behavior, of complaints and squeaky
wheels, of pathologies, of failures to successfully
adapt, of unfitness. Far more study is done of
sub-normal and maladaptive behavior than is done of
successful, creative and self-actualizing behavior.
This both skews the curve and ignores models of
superior-to-normal mental health that might be useful
in therapy.
4) Even
in its behaviorist phase, but perhaps just as much
now, this so-called science of behavior seems to have
forgotten that science itself is also a form of
behavior, complete with its preconceived ideas,
feelings, beliefs, reactions, denials, motives, fears
and competitions, all of which need to be held in some
due amount of suspicion if the ultimate objective is
any sort of truth. And of the many kinds of behavior
involved, possibly none is as important as languaging
behavior. The discipline does, after all, have its
life, its longevity, and its reproductive success
located in cultural endeavor. It must be communicated,
to peers of course, but to ourselves as well.
Psychology tends to do this languaging naively.
It is
vital to get the words of psychology to describe
experience and refer to real phenomenon in a useful
way, whether these phenomena are biologically based or
the emergent subjective functions of qualia. Take the
example of Jung's archetypes. While Jung himself
insisted that these were inheritable cognitive
functions, which most likely implied both genetic and
neurological foundations, he knew too little of
neuroscience and other new disciplines to point to any
mechanism. All he could do is list those he could
identify and arrange them in some sort of ideological
order. Now there is new material coming from
neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and primatology
suggesting that we have evolved specific cognitive
modules in the brain, enabling us to recognize and
sort our perceptions of the specific behaviors that
are most relevant to our survival and reproduction.
This suggests a mechanism of inheritability that
Jung's ideological approach lacks, and it also has us
looking at the behavior of the great apes for clues,
finally. Archetypes are about to get grounded in more
reality and shed the conceptual ideology and some of
the various geometrical arrangements that have been
superimposed, even though some of the geometry may
survive. This will not, of course, prevent the
new-agers from continuing to mistake the collective
unconscious for universal consciousness and continuing
to pluck archetypes from Plato's etherial world of
ideas.
We are still awaiting a grander synthesis that will
tie together the whole of "mind science" from the most
objective, reductionist, third-person accounts of
neuroscience and endocrinology to the most careful,
first-person neuro-phenomenology of our bravest
psychonauts, who are frequently Buddhists, Yogis and
scientifically-bent shamans taking the lead. And the
in-between belongs as well, the somewhat more macro
modules, the traits and scripts discovered by
neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Psychology
will have its most useful role in the taxonomy of
emergent qualia and the development of new cognitive
software specifically to work with our brains as they
have evolved, as distinct from how we have imagined
them.
Classifying and Enumerating Mental States and Processes
The
taxonomy of psychology will be a collection of groups
of ideas within groups of ideas, hopefully with
groupings that make some sense all the way down into
neurons and glandular activity, and all the way up
into the cognitively artificial, emergent control
functions that allow an individual true self control
and self-efficacy. The progress that the field is
finally starting to make today is due largely to
contributions from outside the field, especially
neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, primatology and
biology. Much of this progress is linguistic. We are
still naming these creatures from the id. There will
be problems, of course, largely from believing in
things too soon. Many of us grew up thinking we had
four taste buds, sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Now we
have a fifth, umami. And now we have a lot more than
the old five senses. The Buddhist doctrine has similar
problems. The fact that Buddha seemed content with
naming four Brahmaviharas should not hold me
back from naming four more. Do infants really only
have the three emotions of interest, distress and
disgust available at birth? Do they add no more than
social pleasure, anger, fear, sadness
and surprise in the first few months of life? Is this
an oversimp-lification? Is there a geometry to their
neurochemistry? Is any one state really the opposite
of another?
In
Buddhism, and particularly Buddhist Abhidhamma,
the first-person or phenomenological side of
psyche-ology is far more articulated than any one form
of psychology. This is not to say that it is always
more precise in terms of verifiable criteria, or that
it has nothing to learn from psychology's attempts to
map the mental functions. There is much to be said for
using both as our sources for further development. The
goal is articulating meaningful sets of processes and
states, getting them in detail and into the right
categories, and getting the complete sets. We can
start with lists of affective states like happiness,
sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, love, sorrow,
confusion, excitement. awe, trust, security, grief,
exhilaration, jealousy, passion, self-possession,
agony, beauty, vengeance, longing, loneliness,
gratitude, relief, betrayal, astonishment, indignation,
guilt, resignation, sulkiness, shyness,
jealousy, ennui, angst, trepidation,
satisfaction, trust and suspicion. We would also be
well-advised to reach into other cultures and
languages, adding wabi, sabi, aware, yugen, amok,
naches, deja vu, jamais vu,
presque vu, schadenfreude, and frisson.
We should start with the most comprehensive lists that
we can make before we start designing a "wheel of the
eight primary emotions," and claiming which is the
opposite of what. How is this symmetry reflected in
the neuronal and endocrinological activity way down
below? People have suggested that we only have five
basic, universal human emotions: fear, sadness,
happiness, anger, and disgust. I doubt the results are
in for that.
Consider
the five stages of grief of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross:
shock and denial, anger or intense concern,
bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Are these
universals? No, they are not. Is the sequence wired?
No. Is the sequence consistent? No. This is merely
something somebody said that is sometimes helpful, but
it's something that gets used a lot and mistaken for
verified, with an assumption of some sort of
structural underpinning. The gods of ancient Greece,
who each had their well-defined dominions over the
various aspects of human existence, survived not
because they were immortal, but because of the unusual
clarity of this domain definition and the resonance of
this with the mortals who kept them alive. The
relevant spectrum here was the broader range of human
experience, with each slice of the spectrum having a
different deity, just as the colors of the rainbow
have names. The discipline of psychology tries to
accomplish a similar scaling with its terminologies,
to cover the ranges of human behaviors, emotions,
defense mechanisms, intelligences and so forth. It
hasn't done this with anything akin to patience, but
that may be just as well, because there is a lot of
data still coming in. Falling short is not the big
error here: the big error would be in pretending that
we are anywhere close to understanding the mind.
And then testifying in court as experts.
Anyhow,
we have the goal: connecting the talk to the walk,
connecting our subjective mental states to their
neurological and endocrinological correlates,
integrating the phenomenologically true with the
biologically true, with the rather straightforward end
of being able to make a state- ment about changing a
mental state, while at the same time making it so. As
long as our ideas are so disconnected from the deeper
coding, the software, the wetware, the electricity and
the chemistry down below, all of our fancy talk about
the mind and its many functions is just avidya
and moha, ignorance and delusion.
The gist of this discussion is that therapies
practiced within the field of psychology are going to
be limited by their vocabularies, as these reflect an
articulated understanding of effective processes. As
things stand now, for all of its limitations,
Dhamma-Vinaya is better articulated and more effective
in the development of self-efficacy. The forms of
therapy that are most often recognized as useful in
the treatment of addictive disorders are usually
versions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT. It is
not an accident that these forms usually acknowledge
an explicit debt to the Buddha's teaching, even though
this is sometimes only to the utility of a mindfulness
practice. These will be the subject of the next
Appendix. For now, I would like to offer a few other
ideas as items of vocabulary from the field of
psychology which might be of some use or service to
the reader. There are a lot more ideas suggested for
further research in the Links section. It could be
that some of today's cloistered Buddhists might be
permitted some use of Google and Wikipedia before
setting forth on their first-hand investigation of
mental states.
Narcissism
Narcissim
can be broadly and fairly neutrally regarded as the
spectrum from a useful kind of self-love to an
unhealthy obsession with self. While Buddhism
recognizes a healthy utility to certain constructs
that we can develop about who we are in the world,
most narcissism exceeds this, and so does the majority
of Western culture. For now we can use Robert
Stolorow’s functional definition of narcissism as
mental activity that functions to ‘maintain the
structural cohesiveness, temporal stability and
positive affective coloring of the
self-representation’ ("Toward a Functional Definition
of Narcissism," International Journal of
Psychoanalysis, 56-2 (1975) p. 179. Our
self-images, like all mental images, can become
subject, through conditioned or dependent arising, to
craving, aversion, ill-will, delusion and attachment.
We need vigilance and wise-attention (yoniso
manasikara) in making better use of our
self-images. When self-concerns begin costing us such
treasures as conscience and ethics (hiri-otappa),
or gratitude, or empathy, we know the time has come to
renounce them.
It is
unlikely that we will make much progress in either
recovery or Buddhism without cultivating a mature
sense of self, a healthy ego, a way to organize all of
the voices of all of the people that we are composed
of. This is, paradoxically, prerequisite to the
realization of selflessness. Even the religious
sometimes get this insight: love your neighbor AS you
love yourself, forgive us our trespasses AS we forgive
those who trespass against us. Physician, heal
thyself. The first moves have to be self-ish. Even a
little pride, self-esteem and dignity help. With
Buddhism, the self is the ever-shifting content of the
experience as it learns to self-organize, instead of
being the witness above it all. But this does not make
it any more difficult to change or correct, since the
overself is often constructed without much regard for
the realities below.
Conditioned Behavior
Classical
Conditioning is best known by the story of how
Pavlov's dog trained his master to take notes simply
by salivating when a bell rang. This is "a learning
process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly
paired; a response that is at first elicited by the
second stimulus is even- tually elicited by the first
stimulus alone." (New Oxford American Dict.).
Behavior conditioned thus is not maintained by
consequences. It simply appears with experience.
Operant
or instrumental conditioning is the modification of
behavior pursuant to its consequences. As a technique
it modifies behavior through positive or negative
reinforcement and positive and negative punishment.
Here, positive and negative refer to the addition or
removal of a stimulus, not to degrees of pleasantness.
Operant conditioning is the modification of voluntary
behavior or intentional action (the Buddhist kamma).
Evaluative conditioning is a development of likes and
dislikes towards something or someone by association
with a simultaneous experience or memory recalled.
This can include the conditioning of both craving and
aversion.
Fear
conditioning is the association of a normally neutral
stimulus with an aversive stimulus, whereby the
recurrence of the neutral stimulus will elicit an
anticipatory fear of the aversive. This can include
the condition- ing of aversion. This
can make a grown man fear bunnies.
These
forms of conditioning do not require or presuppose
conscious involvement in the conditioning process,
although the behaviors and states they elicit can
later be felt and perceived. Both forms create
elements of action and reaction that can form
component elements in larger constructions, reaction
patterns, behavioral scripts, etc.
Aversion therapy is used frequently in the treatment
of addictive disorders. The patient is first given a
stimulus, if not alcohol, drugs or the problem
behavior itself, then some close association, or
anticipation of their use. This is then paired with
some noxious, painful or otherwise unpleasant
experience. One would think in the case of alcohol
that a few particularly nasty hangovers would be
enough, but perhaps this comes too long after the
target behavior. And even a drunken night spent
getting buggered in a drunk tank doesn't seem to work.
The drug Antabuse, which alters the assimilation of
alcohol into something particularly unpleasant, is an
often-used example.
Exposure
therapy is often used with anxiety disorders and
phobias, but it can also be used in calming an
addict's response to emotional triggers for addictive
behavior. We have spoken of this process already in
the context of mindfulness and dynamic memory, wherein
a sensitive issue is given a new associations with the
more positive states of serenity and equilibrium.
About all psychology has done here is to claim a
connection between mindfulness meditation and the
release of negative emotions and habits. This
mechanism of dynamic memory and neuroplasticity is not
cited.
Extinction, as used in psychology, is another word for
deconditioning a response created through classical or
operant conditioning. Decondition- ing, in turn, is
really reconditioning, or relearning, using some form
of classical or operant conditioning to rewrite older
patterns of response. The challenge is that the new
stimulus needs to be either quantitatively stronger or
qualitatively superior or both to overcome old
patterns which are entrenched, fortified and defended
enough to be causing the serious problems that defy
merely rational solutions. Plain insight therapies
have a fairly poor track record: the whole being needs
to get involved. Clearly, the first step is to get the
actual problem behavior temporarily out of the way
with some sort of enforced withdrawal, allowing the
symptoms of withdrawal, such as anxiety, stress,
insecurity, irritability, physical pain and craving,
to dim and dull a little.
Other Ideas for Study
Therapy
has given us a list of traits and symptoms to look
for, and the fact that these terms are different from
those found in Dhamma-Vinaya should be regarded as
helpful. We cover more ground. This book has already
recommended a thoroughgoing study of the four arrays
of our mechanisms of self-defense and self-deception
at Right Mindfulness, to wit: cognitive biases, coping
strategies, defense mechanisms and logical fallacies.
Denial, deceit, covering up, and passing blame are
some of the biggest problems we have to deal with
here, and these lists can expose the mechanisms. We
might also consider training our vigilance and wise-
attention (yoniso manasikara) on such further
phenomena and processes as:
behavioral or process
addictioncompulsive behavior
core self-evaluations
cost-benefit analysis
deferred gratification
dispositional affect
hedonic treadmill
impulse control disorder
locus of control
reward systems or circuits
time horizon
This is only a partial list.
Many more subjects can be found in the Links,
Psychology sections, which are largely a collection of
links to Wikipedia pages. While this is not the final
authority on any subject, the links and references
there typically offer the best launching point for
further study, while the page itself has a useful
vocabulary for further searching.
Once
again, it is not an accident that treatments in
Western psychology most commonly cited as effective
against addictive disorders are those which cite
Buddhism and mindfulness practice as significant
inspirations. Generally, this is the category known as
Cognitive Behavioral Therapies. Unable to do justice
to these practices in the short space allotted here, I
only hope to provide a thumbnail sketch and enough
items of vocabulary as a starting point for further
research.
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive
psychology is a sub-discipline of psychology that
explores internal mental processes. The APA defines
this as "the study of higher mental processes such as
attention, language, decision making, judging,
reasoning, knowing, memory, perception, problem
solving, and thinking." Cognition is the processing of
information in the brain and mind, and how the results
of that processing are applied in behavior and
selection between behavioral preferences. CP looks at
a full range of our cognitive behaviors from the most
pre-conscious, intuitive, emotional, habitual and
automatic to the most conscious, judgmental,
rational, deliberative
and creative.
It accepts the scientific method as useful and
generally rejects introspection as being productive of
objective data. Individuals develop complex cognitive
schemata which intervene between stimulus and response
and so alter behavior. Changing the schemata changes
behavioral response, but most of these schemata
inhabit what is called the adaptive unconscious, in
which most mental processes, including most of the
so-called higher order functions like making decisions
and setting intentions, are unavailable to
introspection.
It isn't until we reach this last point dismissing
introspection that we depart radically from Buddhism.
It is certainly true that using the term introspection
as a conceptual metaphor for eyesight turned inward
instead of outward has severe limitations, especially
if we are going to think of what we see within as
objective evidence. But Buddhist introspection is
somewhat more akin to seeing outward from deeper
within. We can't see our eyes from our eyes, and no
amount of ogling from them will suggest to us what
rods and cones are, let alone an optic nerve. We can
still pay a great deal more attention to what is
deeper within and thus get to know ourselves better in
there, leading to improved cognitive self-management,
and leading to superior intelligence for processing
feedback and making better inferences about what goes
on within us. Whatever it takes to get those eyeballs
exploring. Because we have reasons to be suspicious of
the objectivity of knowledge gained by introspection
and phenomenology, we are once again deep into the
problem of rejecting our subjective states as
unscientific, unmeasurable and therefore irrelevant to
such a pure science as this. What is lost is all of
those processes that are found in the mind but not
really found in the brain. In other words, strong
emergence is lost, the synergies of the whole that
cannot be found in the parts, the functions that
reductionism will always be blind to. It is not so
easy to guess the chariot from a big, unlabeled box of
chariot parts, but it's more difficult still to guess
where those parts can take you. What matters here is
whether an idea gleaned from introspection can be used
to predictable effect. The fact that nobody can yet
explain how this higher-order cognition works to
real-world effect is not an indictment of
introspection.
Much of
the adaptive unconscious is made of evolutionary
adaptations. Our cognitive systems have adapted to our
needs to perform functions rapidly and almost
automatically, to evaluate situations and make snap
decisions, to jump to conclusions, to make leaps of
faith, giving us a dynamic, hasty, broad-brush sketch
of the world to live in. We frequently need another
whole set of reasons to go more slowly and thoroughly
than this. This requires energy that we are not always
willing to allocate, and so much of the world that we
live in is one given to us by unconscious reactions to
sensory input and other pre-conscious processes.
Further, what we call the product of introspection is
often merely an after-the-fact rationalization of
states that have already been created unconsciously.
And often these are states have been driven by our
various mechanisms of self-deception such as cognitive
bias.
In theory
there should be no conflict between cognitive
psychology and the studies of embodied cognition and
evolutionary psychology. But then every time you have
disciplines you get their border guards and pissing
contests. For cognitive psychology to be effective it
should not draw too tight a circle around itself. It
should not pretend to be the same sort of science as
physics or math. A sensation in the tricep is
information to be processed, and it has a place in the
physicist's idea of force. Blue, love, goals and
sunsets are all information available to cognitive
processing. The seat of will is not found in any one
pattern of neural circuitry, and even if it was, that
of the next person to be examined would have one
seated elsewhere. That it has no fixed locus in the
brain does not mean a will cannot be exercised, and in
scientifically predictable ways. Of course, this is
assuming that the subject has even developed a will.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT)
Cognitive
Behavioral Therapies are a collection of various
therapeutic techniques that interpose our cognitive
schemata into the space between stimulus and response.
In some places the cognitive schemata are called
evaluative beliefs, which implies, as it should, that
more than a simple intellect is at work here. The
world that we respond to with our behavior is not the
world itself as sensed, but the one that comes to us
largely pre-interpreted by our vast array of cognitive
processes, which includes sensory illusions,
inaccurate memories, cognitive errors, dysfunctional
emotions and maladaptive behavioral scripts, a big
portion of which are unconscious. The term belief also
implies a degree of entrenchment or resistance to
change. As the initials CB suggest, CBT is
dually-oriented to both cognition and behavior.
Successful therapy relies on our ability to alter or
adapt the way our reality is constructed in our minds,
thus altering the perceived world to which we respond.
As the systems develop, the focus on fine-tuning our
rational thinking will likely broaden further to
incorporate better understanding of what thinking
really is, particularly its sensory and affective and
generally messier and bloodier neurological and
neurochemical components.
The CBT
therapeutic process is oriented to achieving specific
goals, and this is normally transparent to the
patient, meaning that he is told how the process works
and required to participate or collaborate
consciously. With the exception of a specific doctor
or therapist-to-patient relationship as the basis for
guidance, the similarity to Buddhist practice is
obvious, and shows a likely influence of Buddhism. The
specific procedures will vary, with CBT being
considerably more streamlined and abbreviated.
Skipping steps that the Buddhists still take is not
necessarily an improve- ment, however. One version,
found (here),
identifies seven steps to the process: 1) Identifying
thoughts, feelings & behaviors; 2) Understanding
the links between thoughts, feelings & behaviors;
3) Making changes in behaviors or acquiring skills; 4)
Making changes in thoughts; 5) Challen- ging our
thoughts; 6) Distancing or defusing from thoughts; and
then 7) Practice. There are other versions.
In addiction therapy, the challenge is to construct
new schemata that override the dysfunctional target
schemata, displacing these with greater salience,
relevance, value, immediacy, and, if possible,
pleasantness, at least in the long term. This
overriding will be more effective if it our rational
reconstruction can be sensitized or alerted to the
powers of all four of our categories of
self-deception, all of them seemingly in place to
reinforce and defend our long-standing and entrenched
set of evaluative beliefs.
Cognitive Reframing and Restructuring
The
broadest definition of cognitive reframing can refer
to nearly any alteration in a person’s cognitive
perspective or point of view. This can be a shift to a
more erroneous, ineffective or maladaptive point of
view. It often occurs without conscious effort. It
simply describes the shiftings of our attitudes,
contexts, standpoints, and scales of time and distance
that change our images of the world. But this is not
itself a reason to not use the same term in the
narrower sense of intentionally moving our frames of
reference around to see both our problems and the
world at large from different points of vantage, and
within different contexts, using different lenses and
filters, to use a photography metaphor.
Using such
"found" frames is different from actively or
mechanically reconstructing our cognitive schemata and
points of view. Cognitive restructuring is a more
technical term used in the cognitive therapies to
refer to actively altering one’s mindset to achieve
specified goals. It may be called a subset of
reframing, although this ignores some useful
differences between found frames and constructed
frames, where the latter might imply a process of
demolition and remodeling pursuant to a plan or
design. It is not a reconstruction to simply back up
into a bigger-picture perspective, to try out someone
else's idea or to count to ten.
The
process of restructuring involves identifying problem
sensations, memories, thoughts, emotions, behaviors,
and core beliefs, dysfunctional constructs of
ourselves, the world, or future probabilities: "I'm
not worthy of love. I can't do anything right. I need
approval or encouragement first. I'm entitled to that.
I'm so special that I'm exempt from most rules. I have
better things to do than wait." Core beliefs like
these examples are often accompanied and reinforced by
longer-term dispositional affect, or ruts. The
shorthand for these is automatic
thoughts or AT's. Here we
identify the AT's, uncover how they distort our view
of things, dispute them with such tricks as Socratic
questioning, and then develop our more rational
rebuttals and replacements. Socratic questioning
involves challenging the evaluative beliefs: "What are
the disadvantages of continuing to believe that? What
are some alternative beliefs? What are the limits of
that belief? Where is that not true? What is your
evidence for that belief? What are the consequences of
holding that to be true?" It is a little naive to
think that simply changing our minds or our thinking
is enough to change either our emotions or our
behavior, or much of the inertial mass and momentum of
the adaptive unconscious. Simple changes in our
interpretations are not guaranteed to yield specified
changes in emotionality. And it is no less work to
realize these changes in therapy as it is in Buddhism,
even though the hours involved are far fewer
and far more expensive.
Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy began as Cognitive
Therapy and Rational Emotive Therapy (RET). It was
founded by Robert Ellis in the mid-1950's. Ellis
explicitly claimed significant inspiration from
ancient Asian, Greek and Roman sources. He quotes
Stoicism's Epictetus: “Men are disturbed not by
things, but by the views which they take of them” (Enchiridion).
The claim is that we are affected emotionally not by
the outside world directly, but by our "perceptions,
attitudes, or internalized sentences about outside
things and events." In other words, people's
perceptions, motivations, emotions, feelings,
reactions and behavioral responses are more closely
based on their beliefs about the world than on an
undistorted perception of an objective reality.
REBT is
an important part of both Rational and Smart Recovery,
and we reviewed a little of this earlier. We looked at
the ABC and DEFG templates: the Activating (or
Adversive) event > evaluative Beliefs about the
activating event > Consequences; and then >
Disputing irrational beliefs > new Effective
beliefs > new Feelings > new Goals. The real
work begins with the evaluative belief, or our
cognitive schemata. There are several kinds of beliefs
associated with a decision to engage in an addictive
behavior. To identify only a few: 1) this is going to
feel good, 2) this is going to take bad feelings away,
3) I can do this simply because I can, 4) I can do
this because I'm clever enough to skip ahead straight
to rewards, 5) I can do this because nothing gives me
more kicks for the amount of money I spend, 6) I can
pack more rewards into my life in this way, 7) I don't
need a doctor to medicate myself because they don't
know me like I know myself, 8) my circumstances have
been cruel to me, so I deserve a little relief, 9)
this predisposition runs in my family, so it's
genetic, 10) what I have is a disease, not a choice,
and 11) this will get rid of today's guilt and shame
about yesterday, so all I will have to deal with
tomorrow is today's. All of these beliefs are
supported structurally by the adaptive unconscious,
and these structures (formations or sankharas)
can consist of many moving parts. Things are just not
as they seem to be, especially when things are going
wrong. Importantly, the fact that bad consequences do
not follow necessarily or immediately from the
activating events can mean that continuing to see them
as doing helps to perpetuate self-defeating or
irrational evaluative beliefs. We have avoided the
feedback needed for self-correction.
A useful
synonym for evaluative belief is apperception or
apperceptive mass. The Oxford American dictionary
defines apperception "the mental process by which a
person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to
the body of ideas he or she already possesses." This
can also be thought of as conditioned perception. The
Buddhist term sanna, one of the 5 khandas,
and often translated perception, is closer in meaning
to apperception. In psychology it can be defined as
"the process by which new experience is assimilated to
and transformed by the residuum of past experience of
an individual to form a new whole." As is often said,
"we do not see things as they are, we see things as we
are." While this is not completely true, our
perceptions are not pure, and they have an inertia
about them which is our own personal resistance to
change. This is the things we already think we know
getting in the way of the things we need to learn. The
correction of evaluative belief in Buddhism is with
Right View and Right Intention.
REBT
asserts that we can replace "illogical and unrealistic
ideas with more realistic and adaptive ones through
direct intervention and confron-tation by the
therapist." But rational analysis or insight is seldom
enough to correct these beliefs. Reconstruction also
requires persistent emotional and behavioral
involvement. And we should remember that emotions are
not always sourced in ideas and beliefs, but often in
more bodily states. The rational approach can still
begin with such strategies as long-term CBA or
Cost-Benefit Analysis to help us envision and intend
the eventual results of self-correction. Other
rational analyses may be used, such as a Life-Cycle
Assessment (factoring the cost of a liver transplant
into the cost of a bottle of wine) or reevaluating our
Future Discounting (thinking that ten dollars next
week is far less valuable than ten dollars today). Any
study we do of our four sets of mechanisms of
self-deception would fit in here as well. Higher order
goals, on levels above the problem, are useful here
too, such as personal purpose, higher purpose, or
Smart Recovery's VACI: Vital Absorbing Creative
Interest.
Ellis, in Anger: How to Live With and Without It
(1997) describes an REBT process he calls "emotional
training" with this example: "Think of an intensely
pleasant experience you have had with the person with
whom you now feel angry. When you have fantasized such
a pleasant experience and have actually given yourself
unusually good, intensely warm feelings toward that
person as a result of this remembrance, con- tinue the
process. Recall pleasant experiences and good
feelings, and try to make these feelings paramount
over your feelings of hostility." This is nothing more
than a restatement of the Buddhist technique or
exercise of substitution (tadanga) that we
discussed under Right Intention. In this example, we
are doing the prescribed exercise of substituting metta
for abyapada. Again, we are working with
dynamic memory, making new associative connections
that are likely to come along with the memory the next
time we recall it, calming us, reducing our stress,
adding perspective. We are thus altering the affective
charge of this particular component of the adaptive
unconscious.
The processes of evaluation are fundamental to the
evolved human organism, and they works on both
biological and cultural levels. They are generally
inertial, self-sustaining or conservative within
feedback loops, maintaining evaluative parameters
using the cognitive biases that favor those behavioral
responses which tend to confirm the older evaluative
parameters. REBT practitioners work intimately with
patients to help uncover their individual set of
beliefs, prejudices, attitudes, expectations and
personal rules and the various defensive structures
that support them. Although the emphasis is on
presently-held beliefs, background personal history
may be explored to examine their development.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, was
originally called Comprehensive Distancing. Stepping
back, getting less immersed in the details,
experiencing the world within, without our
evaluations, accepting ourselves and the conditions
that we find ourselves in, is the first part of
learning what it is we may want to change. It's hard
to do this with our noses down in it. Thus it makes
use of both acceptance and mindfulness, which are also
typical of Buddhist exercises. The name ACT is also
used as another acronym for its three practical
principles of Accepting your reactions and being
present, Choosing a valued direction and then Taking
action. This therapy also uses the acronym FEAR as a
mnemonic for its version of four problems leading to
suffering: Fusion with your thoughts, Evaluation of
experience, Avoidance of your experience and
Reason-giving (or rationalization) for your behavior.
Rather than focusing on self-control, ACT works on
noticing and embracing first, on the theory that
healthier choices will follow from having better
information. It uses a model of a transcendent sense
of self called "self-as-context," an ever-observing
self that is independent of and above other mental
phenomena. Identity is shifted here, up out of the
details and the individual components of the psyche.
In Buddhism, of course, this transcendent self doesn't
exist, but all that we need to do to reconcile the two
is to strip the idea of reality from self-as-context
and simply call it a process or even a trick of
mindfulness.
The six
core parts of the process are identified
as 1) Contact with the present
moment (avoiding distraction of thoughts, emotions,
memories and expectations), 2) Self-as-context
(getting in touch with the transcen- dent, observing
self), 3) Defusion (reducing a tendency to reify
thoughts, images, emotions, and memories), 4)
Acceptance (specifically, not the same as approval,
but allowing experience to come and go without
strug-gling), 5) Values (finding out what is really
important and wanted) and 6) Committed action (setting
goals pursuant to what is learned about true values
and following this through responsibly). Psychological
suffering is usually caused by experiential avoidance
(Buddhist vyapada), cognitive entanglement
(Buddhist ditthi), and a resulting
psychological rigidity (Buddhist moha, upadana
and many others) that leads to a failure to take the
needed behavioral steps in accord with core values.
The goal is a clarification of values, knowing what we
want, which leads, draws, drives or motivates us into
intentional and effective behavior.
A similar
practice known as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy
(MBCT) is a group intervention program that is more
often used to treat depressive disorders. Mindfulness
is used to increase our awareness of incoming thoughts
and feelings from what is called a metacognitive
perspective, an ability to perceive negative thoughts
and feelings as phenomena which simply pass through
the mind and are not a part of a self. Metacognitive
awareness is in a "being" mode rather that a "doing"
mode which is "decentered" away from immediate
involvement and so can perceive thoughts and feelings
more objectively as transient mental events. This
state of detachment is akin to Buddhist states of
equanimity (upekkha) and detachment (viveka).
Motivational Interviewing and Self-Efficacy
Motivational Interviewing. or Motivational Enhancement
Therapy, is an active counseling approach to therapy,
in many ways the opposite of the stereotypical "mmhmm
… mmhmm … and how does that make you feel?" It is
called a "client-centered counseling style for
eliciting behavior change by helping clients to
explore and resolve ambivalence" wherein the counselor
is intentionally directive, something more like a life
coach. The therapist attempts to influence the client
and assist in the direction of future behavior, rather
than simply assist a client in exploring himself and
drawing his own conclusions. However, the conclusions
must still be the client's own.
Four
counseling skills are identified: 1) an ability to ask
open-ended questions, 2) an ability to provide
affirmations, 3) a capacity for reflective listening
(let me see if I understood what you said …), and 4)
an ability to periodically provide summary statements
to the client. Counseling is conducted in a
non-confrontational manner. The client is simply
exposed to more and better information about problems,
consequences, risks and options. The key, as the name
implies, is to arouse motivation to change, do the
right thing, or act more effectively.
There are
four general principles for the therapist: 1)
Expressing Empathy, trying to sense, think and feel
from the client's point of view, encouraging the
client to open up further; 2) Developing Discrepancy,
exposing, highlighting or articulating the gaps
between what is viable or real and what is desired or
claimed; 3) Rolling with Resistance, using an Aikido
or Jujitsu, if you will, to avoid confrontation and
defensiveness while gently guiding the interview's
momentum around and into desired
directions; and 4) Supporting Self-Efficacy, helping
the client to develop a sense of autonomy or
self-direction, maintain motivation, make practical
choices and overcome frustrations creatively.
The
identified goals of the therapy are to: 1) establish
rapport, 2) elicit talk of change, and 3) establish
commitment language. All motivation must ultimately be
that of the client, who must speak his own words and
set his own goals. This brings us back to the
management version of the SMART acronym: the viable
goals are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant
and Time-specific.
The
practice also uses the word Frames as a mnemonic
acronym, for a quick checklist in reviewing the
therapy as a collaborative process. Here the steps are
1) Feedback, such as reflective listening and
summarizing; 2) Responsibility, as shared in a
collaborative partnership; 3) Advice or counsel, 4)
Menu of options, 5) Empathy, and 6) Self-efficacy.
Finally,
ten processes are highlighted: 1) consciousness
raising, with improved information, feedback and
mindfulness; 2) dramatic relief, an affective sense of
the difference between how things are and how much
better they might be; 3) self-reevaluation, coming to
terms with changes needed to achieve more wholesome
behavior patterns; 4) environmental reevaluation, or
realizing how self-improvement might also improve life
for others; 5) social liberation, or seeing the
utility of more positive social feedback loops; 6)
self-liberation or coming to see that real change is a
viable option; 7) helping relationships, or actively
seeking more support- ive social circumstances; 8)
counter-conditioning or substituting the old patterns
for new; 9) reinforcement management, or minimizing
rewards for unwholesome behavior while maximizing
rewards for the wholesome; and 10) stimulus control,
attending to encouraging reminders and turning aside
from problematic triggers.
The
development of self-efficacy goes beyond the getting
of sufficient informational input. Simply getting in
touch with our feelings or building our self-esteem
will not take us there, particularly if we learn to
identify those feelings, even the bad ones, as "the
real me," or if self-esteem is encouraged even in
response to a failure or a maladaptive response. Self-
efficacy requires selection, figuring out which
behaviors do not warrant feeling any self-esteem
whatsoever. Skillfulness and competence are the
watchwords here, not an unconditional acceptance that
leaves us without any drive to change things.
Albert Bandura
identifies four main factors involved in
self-efficacy: 1) Experience, enactive attainment or
a developed sense of mastery rein- forced by
successes and diminished by failure, which in turn
recommends that only attainable goals be set; 2)
Modeling, "vicarious experience" or "learning in
other heads," including proper use of inspiring role
models as well as inferior examples; 3) Social
persuasion, the encouragement or discouragement from
others, where social discouragement often has the
greater impact; and 4) Physiological factors, such
as experiencing symp- toms of stress or distress
like anxiety and fear, then conflating these with
the tasks at hand in ways which are allowed to
affect performance.
Albert
Ellis, in Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy
(1962), credits some of his principles of REBT to
Stoicism: "This principle, which I have inducted from
many psychotherapeutic sessions with scores of
patients during the last several years, was originally
discovered and stated by the ancient Stoic
philosophers, especially Zeno of Citium (the founder
of the school), Chrysippus (his most influential
disciple), Panaetius of Rhodes (who introduced
Stoicism into Rome), Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and
Marcus Aurelius." The truths of Stoicism were perhaps
best set forth by Epictetus, who in the first century
A.D. wrote in the Enchiridion: “Men are disturbed not
by things, but by the views which they take of them.”
This point, I think, warrants a brief Appendix just to
look at some of the ethical and psychological aspects
of couple of Greek schools of thought in relation to
both addiction and Buddhism. Aristotle showed some
initial wisdom here by arguing that happiness is best
achieved in a roundabout way, simply as a byproduct or
consequence of other pursuits.
Stoicism
Stoicism,
founded in the 3rd century BCE, is
likely to be the first school to come to mind here. It
argued that a person of sufficient virtue, moral
character and intellectual development would be far
less prone to errors in judgment, and bad feelings or
suffering that followed in consequence. Wisdom
consists largely in bringing our will (prohairesis)
into better accord with nature. We are at our best
living agreeably with nature, and finding the
rationally appropriate position. Nature has an order (logos)
that is knowable if we use our reason, so that reason
or rational living is ultimately the key to right
living. In bringing ourselves into such an accord we
can gain a degree of freedom in an otherwise
deterministic universe. Without this our souls are
completely subject to fate.
We must
also set ourselves free from such destructive emotions
as envy and
anger. In modern usage, the word stoic often mean
numb, indifferent or apathetic, or "enduring pain or
hardship without showing feelings or complaining."
This fails to cover the original ground. It is true
that apathy (apatheia), or being without
passion (pathos), was a state of mind to be
sought, but passion usually meant suffering from being
passively dragged into less than wholesome conditions,
or at best, our emotional reaction to things
undergone. Apathy was the sense that we do not need to
submit to undergoing or going under: we want to stay
above. Pathos did not fully describe the
range of feelings that were available to the sage.
There were also eupatheia, the higher-order
feelings such as joy, inner peace, calm, mindfulness
and intention, in addition to a still loftier
equanimity. They did not, therefore, seek to
extinguish all feeling and emotion. Our highest
attainment in life is happiness or flourishing (eudaimonia).
Stoicism
is a way of life requiring ascetic practice or
training (askesis), as well as the exercise of
logic, Socratic questioning, the contemplation of
death, the training of our attention or mindfulness,
and self-reminding. Beyond tranquility, there were
four more cardinal virtues in the school: 1) Sophia
or wisdom, 2) Andreia or courage, 3) Dikaiosyne
or justice and 4) Sophrosyne or temperance.
Since most of the universe is deterministic, the most
useful application of our reason is in reasoning out
how best to adapt, understanding the processes of both
nature and our own nature and working with them rather
than against them. If we want to minimize our
suffering we must first track down its causes in what
tends to be our own malformed attitudes and irrational
thinking, or in our clinging to things that are fated
to pass. "Permit nothing to cleave to you that is not
your own; nothing to grow to you that may give you
agony when it is torn away" advised Epictetus in the Enchiridion.
The Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius advised "Get
rid of the judgment, get rid of the 'I am hurt,' and
you are rid of the hurt itself."
Stoicism
is a surrender to a world in which self means nothing.
Again from the Roman Marcus Aurelius: "Is it your
reputation that is bothering you? But look at how soon
we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that
swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding
hands." Of course, Marcus Aurelius was a famous Roman
Emperor, and is still well-known today, but
he did say endless time and our sun has not yet
exploded.
Epicurean Hedonism
While a
general kindredness of Buddhism to Stoicism is fairly
obvious, its affinity with the school of Epicurean
Hedonism may be a little more counterintuitive.
Hedonism alone, when it is considered separately from
the philosophical school of Epicurus, is the
conviction that pleasure is the highest good and that
the surest guide to right behavior is the maximization
of net pleasure, or the amount by which the
pleasantness of life exceeds the unpleasantness. The
school was founded in part by Aristippus of Cyrene (c
435-356 BCE), to whom the point of our
lives was to adapt circumstances to our advantage,
control adversity and optimize our prosperity. The
Cyrenaic school he founded advocated increasing one's
desires and even inventing new ones, so new and better
pleasures could be explored. But the elder Democritus
(c 460-370 BCE) is the better known
and perhaps the more deserving cofounder. To him our
highest good, or summum bonum, is in
contentment or cheerfulness; our joys and sorrows are
our most reliable guides to the beneficial and the
harmful.
Democritus and his heirs were materialists and
naturalists, best known for spreading such ideas as
atomic theory, cultural evolution, and a round Earth.
They thought to dispense altogether with ideas of
transcendent and spiritual entities. It is interesting
that they intuited the pleasure principle from their
early version of natural science and observation of
nature. This anticipated the theory that our reward
circuits and our nocioception were evolved adaptive
processes conducive to our biology's two highest
goods, survival and reproduction. This would not be
anywhere near central to any scientific thought for
more than two millennia. In fact, another great leader
of the school, the Roman poet Lucretius, gives a
pretty prophetic description of both evolution and
natural selection in his poem De Rerum Natura
(v. 820-875).
Parts of
Hedonism, and most of Democritus' thought, were taken
up by Epicurus (341-270 BCE). To him,
happiness is tranquility and the absence of pain and
mental disturbance. Sensations, pleasure and pain are
reliable guides to the life we should be living.
Misunderstanding has its roots in the irrational
inferences that we draw from sensation. His assertion
that sensations, including pain and pleasure,
presented us with an objective view of the world, was
perhaps where he went furthest astray, although
Lucretius stuck his neck out still further when he
claimed that women moved around too much and made too
much noise during sex. But while the Epicurean
philosophy made pleasure a primary point of focus, he
was clear that there was a world of qualitative
difference between higher and lower pleasures. You
might call his a long-range hedonism which extolled
the virtues of good taste, the refinement of our
desires and the deferral of shortsighted
self-gratification. "The greatest wealth is to live
content with little, for there is never want where the
mind is satisfied."
Like the
Buddha, Epicurus was not what you would call an
optimist. He even referred to life as "the bitter
gift." The highest pleasures are found in the
minimization of suffering, in freedom from pain (aponia),
in enjoyment without craving, in having a sense of
value, in being grateful, in prudence, in modest
living (even to the point of living anonymously),
in learning how this world works, in finding the
optimal limits for our desires, and in good
friendship. Right living leads to a state of
tranquility (ataraxia). Pleasures are our guide
to the fitness of our lives, pain and suffering are
the signs of unfitness, and excesses in the pursuit of
pleasure and happiness only lead to pain and
suffering. We follow our necessary desires and forgo
the unnecessary and artificial ones. We seek knowledge
to be rid of unfounded fears, and humankind's two
worst, most adversely productive fears are the fear of
gods and the fear of death. Our anxieties about
divinities and our mortality are the source of some of
our worst errors and suffering. To Epicurus, if there
are any gods or souls, they too are made of atoms and
material and ultimately have no relevance to our final
outcomes. "Death is nothing; for that which is
dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks
sensation is nothing to us." His attitude towards
learning and civilization had something in common with
that of Diogenes and Laozi. He felt that to the extent
that they aroused desires that were impossible to
satisfy, desires that led to endless dissatisfaction,
we ought to consider that they may not be worth the
trouble. "Natural wealth is limited and easily
obtained; the wealth defined by vain fancies is always
beyond reach."
Also like
the Buddha, Epicurus lived a celibate life, although
he did not ask this of his students and followers.
Given the above, and particularly that fidelity to a
principle of pleasure is actually the best teacher
that we could have of moderation and restraint, it is
difficult to understand the tongue and finger wagging
directed against Epicureanism by religions without
concluding that instilling fear, guilt and shame were
fundamental to the persistence of religion. But here
it was, the first comprehensive ethic that was based
on natural history, and also accounted for in terms of
what would later be called evolutionary adaptations
and reward circuits. The thought extended to the law,
which was viewed, not as divine order, but as a social
contract for the conservation of pleasure and
happiness.
"When we
say ... that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not
mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of
sensuality, as we are under- stood to do by some
through ignorance, prejudice or willful misrepresen-
tation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the
body and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an
unbroken succession of drinking bouts and of revelry,
not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment of fish and
other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a
pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out
the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and
banishing the beliefs through which the greatest
tumults take possession of the soul" (Epicurus, Letter
to Menoeceus). The highest and most pleasant states of
affect were identified as joy (khara) to
distinguish them from our more typical sense of
pleasure (hedone). And despite what was quoted
just above, true happiness (eudaimonia) was not
simply a neutral, anhedonic or apathetic state, but a
positive form of pleasure.
We are not here concerned
with hopes and fears, only with truth as far as our
reason permits us to discover it. Charles Darwin
Human Nature
When I
was in grade school, a big part of the standard
narrative about humankind was that we were
fundamentally different from those lower animals. The
animals had their instincts, while we had
consciousness, intelligence, culture and language. We
made ourselves into who we are using culture. To make
room for this, we had to be pretty much born as blank
slates, or tabula rasa. Human nature was
something we left behind long ago, even before we were
cave men. It was a lot more obvious then that we had
not descended from the apes. Yet in spite of our
specialness, behaviorism ruled psychology, because our
wondrous minds were, at bottom, going to be
comprehensible from without as learnable patterns. Who
we became derived from how we were given our nurture,
and the relationship of nurture to nature was termed versus.
And the word versus here has remained in the narrative
as one of our more persistent
bits of stupidity.
Evolutionary Psychology (EP) is a relatively new,
still-forming template or conceptual model, and still
existing partially outside of the field of psychology.
It is the study of our psychological traits as evolved
adaptations, products of mutation, natural selection
and sexual selection. Some say it's the study of
"human psychological traits," but some people are
missing the point in pulling us out of our biological,
zoological and primatological contexts. EP does
ultimately ask the questions "What is human nature?"
and "How has the human mind evolved?" but much of this
mind came about even before there were primates. What
sort of natural history would result in our brains and
minds functioning the way that they do now? Such a
question requires much conjecture about our ancestral
environments, and the kinds of survival-challenging
problems that tended to recur there, and of course
there is a circularity problem in inferring this
environment from the way our brains work. Carl Sagan
wrote some pretty good introductory reads here in The
Dragons of Eden and Shadows of Forgotten
Ancestors, although now there is much more to
the feast than these two works.
Social Functions
The
social functions form a large part of our evolved
cognitive array. Many of the cognitive and behavioral
traits that we see in ourselves we can also observe in
primates, suggesting that much of this behavior lies
beneath our much-vaunted human neocortex, and much of
this is well down into our limbic system. Only
recently are the researchers stepping forward to
announce that we have an inherited, if rudimentary,
morality arising from down in there, and intimately
wired to our social functions. What Jung called
archetypes arise there as well, universal, unconscious
and inherited predilections to sort and organize our
social experience into behavioral types that are
pertinent to survival and reproduction within the
social environment: fathers, mothers, heroes, role
models, allies, enemies, losers, tricksters,
strangers, sexual conquests, etc. This is a subset of
what EP calls cognitive modules. In places they are
called innate neurognostic structures, basic ways of
knowing that precede learning. Different social
modules help us to absorb the ambient language, or
learn which foods are edible by watching others not
die, or copy a basic craft or technological skill.
Still older modules will enable us to read another's
emotions, avoid committing incest, tell relatives from
strangers by scent, assess the likely genetic health
of our potential mates, and intuit the value of
reciprocal altruism. Finally, many of these modules
seem to come equipped with stock affective and
endocrinological responses, as the sight of a known
betrayer triggering hostility or the touch of a baby
triggering oxytocin and "awwwww." The more universal
these cognitive traits are, the more likely they are
to be much deeper than cultural.
EP has given us much new perspective on social
cognition. There are hereditary grounds for anger at
betrayal or defiance, shame from damaged repute,
confidence gained in conformity, kindheartedness in
reciprocity, suspicion towards known cheaters. We
track and remember the giving and taking of resources
as do the great apes. There is a social economy as
well as a social environment and its gold standard is
trust or confidence.
The web
of our social functions permit what is known as
distributed cognition, or hive mind as it is called on
lower cognitive orders. This is not to say that such a
mind is self-aware or sentient, although it may behave
as though it were self aware and fool a lot of people
into thinking that there is such a thing as a group
mind, potentially having a conscience and somehow
deserving of rights. There are social circuits of
information processing and sharing and even intricate,
distributed mechanisms of self- deception. EP suggests
that the mind is made up of a large number of
interacting sensory, cognitive, affective, and
motivational adaptations in cognitive modules.
Buddhism might suggest that there may be a useful
analogy here, since our individual cognition is a
group activity as well, without a central mind or
soul.
That No Man is Created or Equal
Because
of its focus on selection, EP is ideally not beholden
to the idea that all men are created, equal, or
created equal. There will be varying degrees of
fitness within every population. This is of course an
argument against the Mahayana assumption that all
beings have Buddha nature and all are destined one day
for the very highest states of enlightenment or
salvation, but a Theravada should have no problem with
this as long as compassion and other Brahmavijharas
are preserved. Herbert Spencer's famous phrase
"survival of the fittest" is much misunderstood. This
is not a question of might making right, or of the
victor writing history, but of fitting in, or
adapting, to the social and environmental niches. As
niches themselves change and evolve over time, fitness
might be continually challenged and adaptability
stressed or emphasized. The niches that we humans
occupy have been changing at dizzying speeds for some
time now, and many of us in the most-altered
environments are finding some of our old adaptations
to be dangerously maladapted to the new. Sixty-
thousand years back, fats and sugars were usually rare
enough that our organisms learned to over-consume them
whenever available. Today this is causing us big
problems. In the good old days we might chance upon a
natural cache of fermenting fruit, or an herb or
fungus that enhanced our experience. We never once
stumbled onto a moonshine still or big bag of
processed cocaine. Today, this too is causing us
problems. We usually got enough of an adrenaline rush
in bringing down the occasional great beast to feed
the tribe. Now, to get that rush we sometimes need to
prey on each other. We also very rarely encountered
humans in groups of more than a hundred, while many of
us today now live among millions. This entails
hormonal stresses that we do not come pre-adapted to.
While we
are slowly delineating a broad idea of human nature,
which by definition would indicate universal
characteristics, we humans are not uniform. Evolution
diverges, and there are better and worse human beings
along every axis that we can imagine or measure. The
idea of evolution is gradually gaining in popularity
against the stream of creationism, but this is still
poorly understood, especially among so-called
scientists who profess to believe in
evolution. The very idea of and necessity for
selection is a particularly sensitive subject that
triggers a great deal of denial and hostility. Just
try mentioning eugenics these days, whether positive
or negative. This runs contrary to the widely accepted
notion that sentient beings, in their essence, are
spiritual beings come down to earth from elsewhere, to
be cloaked in matter, wrapped up in meat, in order to
learn to be spirit again. In this model, every being
is either essentially or potentially pure and capable
of the highest success, salvation or redemption. Even
Jeffrey Dahmer could find Jesus and be forgiven at the
last moment of life. There are billions who would
decline the opportunity to go back in time and
strangle the baby Hitler. EP might suggest instead
that it is a good thing that so many lives end with an
early death, some by lethal injection, and that some
entire species are just not competent enough to carry
on, with humans, perhaps, about to become one of
these. Many would claim that the only real problem is
that our civilization is set up such that the wrong
people are dying young. At a minimum, some of our
human traits and modules could use some editing with
prejudice. If we could somehow cultivate a healthier
understanding of selection, or at least stop fleeing
the subject, we might collectively come up with ways
to put it to healthier use. The Buddha taught for
those "with little dust over their eyes" and knew that
most of humanity wasn't really ready to wake up. He
thought and spoke in terms of thousands and millions
of years for that to evolve. Any honest
look at evolution must be courageous, and absolutely
requires us to adopt such geological time horizons.
The Mind-Made Body
We have
evolved the ability to make cognitive models of who we
are, including a very complicated model called a
self-schema which at least attempts to hold each of us
all together and even to account for the wide
discrepancies and conflicts between the various
cognitive components like head and heart, or the ways
we are so very different in situations A versus B. We
can put this schema into a sort of mental flesh with
mental senses and send it out to run errands, to test
our bright ideas in theory and imaginary contexts
before they get tested in practice. This is a
beginning of what Buddha called the mind-made body and
what the Hindus call the astral body. With such a
vehicle we can do vicarious trial-and-error. The
vicious bites that this body sustains from imaginary
tigers hardly bleed at all, but the kind of
information that they provide has an anciently proven
value.
Buddhists
would tend to regard this sense of the self as a
useful but temporary illusion, even if it was a little
delusional to reify a process into a thing.
Emergentists would call this constructed self an
emergent entity, conditioned upon its causes and thus
non-existent without them. We could suggest that if a
function is emergent and not innate it would not be
all that inauthentic or un-spontaneous to bring it
under control. We have a license to say of anything
that occurs to our egos: "that's not me" and then make
it not me. Emergent functions like self-schemas or
similar personal constructs don't have bodies, even
though neuroscience might one day soon identify
certain patterns of neural processes that accompany
their appearance in awareness. Yet they are still
subjects for a science with slightly fuzzy edges if we
look at their value in predicting behavior. We just
need to keep putting this mind-made body of ours
through its trials and paces.
Problem Solving
Some
would say that consciousness evolved out of its
utility in finding novel responses to challenges to
survival and reproductive success, out of its ability
to reorganize or reframe a given perceptual field, out
of its ability to acknowledge and compare more than
one option or alternative, out of its ability to run
alternative scenarios with vicarious trial-and-error.
And all of these functions are performed with the
intent to correctly anticipate events and predict
their outcomes. The "being-here-now" part of
consciousness has only a small slice of this. Our
human consciousness evolved a number of shortcuts for
information processing, quick and dirty heuristics
that can be done on the fly, and whilst in flight from
hungry beasts with snapping jaws. One such set
includes our magical solutions and the conjuring of
meaning out of more-or-less random stimulations with
apophenia and pareidolia. This is a conscious form of
creative dreaming that has likely produced a lot of
ideas and insights that contributed to our survival.
We have reflexive cognitive and behavioral responses
that have fairly high probabilities of error, but
which give us an ability to react quickly to mere
suggestions of threats. We carry around large sets of
available, readily adoptable dispositions or attitudes
to pick and choose from whenever the need arises. Of
course, since our emotions tend to lock us into
specific behavioral scripts, the greater our facility
for emotional self-control, the freer will be our
access to our alternative dispositions. Survival in
complex environments requires such a diversity for
resilience. Adaptive fitness is depth, analogous to
having alternative players on our sports teams, with
different talents and plays. Simple organisms in
friendly environments have a more limited stock of
these dispositions, which is usually fine until the
environment turns hostile.
One of
our most useful cognitive shortcuts, although
scientifically and cognitively problematic, is our
analogical problem-solving behavior, or correlative
thought. This requires an ability to see or uncover
patterns where they exist, complete patterns that may
only be hinted at, and to completely fabricate
patterns wherever we can get away with it. We needed
the ability to map two apparently analogous sets of
conditions onto each other and allow the blank
positions in the patterns to be filled in by
implication or correspondence. Of course arguing from
analogy, claiming that conclusions derived in this way
must be true, is a common logical fallacy. The talent
is not often enough recognized for what it is: an
evolved heuristic for creating hypotheses, not for
testing or proving them right. Now, since most of our
experience is that of ourselves acting upon the world
or acting upon other humans, we predictably have the
tendency to over-analogize and project these analogies
onto the world and others: I make things. Things that
are not made by man look made. Therefore something
analogous to me made them. I have proven the existence
of God. I mess up my room when I am angry. Sometimes
nature messes things up. Nature is God's expression.
Therefore God is angry. The majority of human beings
do much of their thinking this way, and of course
claim to reject evolution, and especially selection.
The act of knowing and self
went from being inside a little brain person to being
nowhere. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What
Happens
The Field
When you
get to the outer edges of the mid-eastern religions
(Judaiam, Christianity and Islam) and you want to
explore a little beyond, you'll be looking into
archaeology, anthropology and the history of myth.
When you get to the same edges with Theravada Buddhism
you're pretty much stuck with cognitive neuroscience,
and not the out-of-date, ten-year-old, primitive stuff
either. Cognitive neuroscience is an
interdisciplinary field that explores one step deeper
than cognitive psychology into the living unconscious,
the structure of the brain, the processing and
recalling of sensations, the ones and zeros of
information processing, the plusses and minuses of
neuro-chemical states, and the synergies between
these. It's the study of how psychological and
cognitive events emerge out of neural structures and
functions. It is a little unfortunate that such a
large portion of the information that is easiest to
collect comes from patients who have neurological
damage, but now the study of healthy subjects with
various means of neural imaging is growing rapidly.
The study of these images is even making some room for
the self-reported descriptions of subjective states.
Buddhists are coming in handy here, since they have
long been mindful of these states from the other side
and have also developed an extensive vocabulary to
articulate them.
When we speak of brains today, we should be thinking
it a mistake to locate the brain entirely in the head
or to think that its sole function is the processing
of data by neural nets in zeros and ones. The brain
goes out to the fingertips, to pick up all of our
sensory neurons, and its functions include all the
complexities of the organism's blood-borne chemistry
that have their effects on our mental states. Western
psychology is only now starting to de-marginalize the
fundamental roles of the sensory world and affect in
our cognition. Of course fifty years ago it wouldn't
even look at subjective states, so there's some
progress. Given these errors, by people who fancy
themselves scientific, maybe "inquiring within" isn't
all that unscientific. At the very least, people who
are paying attention to how their minds seem to work
might now be consulted more often.
We have
come a long way from phrenology, the old attempt to
locate mental functions in specific spots in the brain
and expressed on the scalp. The spots tended to grow
into areas, and the areas into lobes, and then people
started to see that most mental functions arose from
networks of processes happening in different parts of
the brain. Eventually it may be better understood that
brain is the noun and mind is the verb and verbs must
deal in dynamic processes. And
emergent verbs still will not reduce entirely to the
reductionist's nouns.
The Computational Model
The
computer or cybernetic analog models are used a lot in
theoretical neuroscience, but they carry with them
some of the more problematic pitfalls of argument from
analogy. There is more to mind than the ones and the
zeros and the programs that move them around. There
remains a quite-common vision of an artificial
intelligence or AI one day becoming large and complex
enough to reach a tipping point and awaken as a
sentient being. Sometimes the scientists will think as
much too highly of information as others think too
highly of consciousness. Certainly the AI devices will
grow ever more proficient at crunching data and
solving problems, according to design parameters that
might even be inventions and output of previous AI
devices. And one of the persistent design goals here
will be to create devices that perform increasingly
better in Turing tests, tests of a device's ability to
convince its observers that it is intelligent and even
self-aware. Of course if you look around carefully,
you may notice that human observers can be convinced
of just about anything, especially if it conforms to
their hopes or expectations.
It's
probably even too reductionist to expand the
computational concept of mind outwards to embrace our
sensations, sense memories, feelings, emotions and
imaginings as being further forms of digital
information, even if we allow that they are of a
different quality. As horrifying as it may be to
science, we are probably still looking at synergy and
strong emergence as the best terms to name the arising
of sentience. This is horrifying because the theory
really explains nothing: it merely gives a name to the
process and announces the arrival of a new set of
rules. Beware of rabbit hole. If this is the case,
then ultimately neuroscience will not be able to tell
us all that we would like to hear about who and what
we are. We may have to go on making up names for
experiences that we may not be able to measure or
locate in the physical being. But this is alright.
This is how Buddhism and neuroscience can work
together. The important thing is that we keep getting
better at cognizing in ways that respect the way the
brain operates, so that we develop a healthier
relationship between the ideal and the real, a
relationship that diminishes delusion and increases
self-efficacy.
Neurochemistry
Neurochemistry studies how our neurotransmitters,
pharmaceuticals, hormones, entheogens, and other
chemicals can affect the functioning of neurons. The
most obvious effects from the subjective perspective
are on qualia such as the feeling of our feelings and
emotions, the levels of our attentional arousal, and
the maintenance of moods and other affective states of
even longer duration. In studying addictive behavior
we are especially concerned with such reward-system
chemicals as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin,
noradrenaline and cortisol. More objectively, neural
chemicals also direct a large range of processes such
as the outgrowth of axons and dendrites, the rewiring
of the brain, neuromodulation, sensory threshold
modulation, the growth of new brain tissue and
connections, memory regulation and the specialization
of neurons. Clearly there is too much of sentience in
the activities of chemicals in the brain to reduce it
all to digital ones and zeros, even without going down
the rabbit hole of strong emergence.
Thanks
are due to neuroscience for bringing the importance of
these, our sacred juices, to light, particularly the
neuroscientists who emerged out of the psychedelic
drug culture with their big new sets of chemistry
questions. Our sentience is all about dynamic
interaction, not a passive, contemplative recording of
ideas on some equally ethereal medium. It is probably
not even all digital until you get all the way down to
the electron shells of atoms.
Neuroplasticity
Irritability and plasticity are two of the
characteristics distinguishing neurons from other
cells. Neurons are subject to changes in ways that do
not signal injury. These changes occur on both
cellular and macro levels. By birth we have developed
a vastly over-connected neural network, with many more
possibilities and combinations than we can ever use.
This over-connectedness is subsequently pruned back by
a combination of use and neglect. Gross neural
development was once considered pretty much a done
deal by age five or so, but this thinking failed to
account for a growing body of evidence that the brain
would continue to change, or at least retained
the potential to change. The most compelling examples
are in the redeployment of neural tissues to new
functions following brain injures, but there are other
intriguing examples such as the intentional
development of echolocation by the blind,
brain-to-machine interfaces, chip implantation and the
technological development of artificial senses.
Data from
experiments with meditation and neuroimaging suggests
that physical reconfigurations of brain tissue can
occur in ways that modify our levels of stress and
anxiety, attention, levels of confidence and other
processes. Obviously, with each and every recallable
memory, something has changed in the brain, however
small that change may be. Given this, any old claims
that neuroplasticity was an exceptional phenomenon had
to refer to larger-scale changes in neural
architecture. I have touched upon this in a few places
earlier, suggesting dynamic memory as a descriptive
term for the process: bringing memories, desires and
aversions fully into awareness can augment, alter or
diminish the affective charges they carry by adding
new associations such as equanimity or forgiveness. As
long as we are practicing mindfulness, the memory or
other mental object that we are still attending has
yet to be fully experienced. The neural outcome of
past events can still be changed.
Embodied Cognition
A lebenswelt
or life-world is the world that is subjectively
experienced as the given. For closely-related,
sentient entities, especially in similar environments,
multiple life-worlds can lead us to a sort of
aggregated consensual world that approaches what some
might call objective truth or reality. But there are a
lot of conditions and assumptions here. And they do
not really help me out one bit if I am trying to
communicate with a bottlenose dolphin. This dolphin's
brain runs ten times the auditory data that mine does,
but only a fifth of the visual data. On the whole, his
neocortex has about twice the surface area of mine,
and is more fissured, but less deeply, and processes
about double the overall data. We are worlds apart. He
lives in his body in a way that is sensed much
differently: it is simpler, and needs less
computation, despite his extra dimension of movement.
If I try giving him a human IQ test he might score at
the kindergarden level, or maybe a chimpanzee. But if
he were to give me a dolphin intelligence test, I
would likely score below squid, and not the clever
kind. We build our cognitive worlds partly out of
original neural structures (neurognosis) but mostly
out of experience that is originally sensual and
sensory.
Embodied
cognition is the view that any creature's mental
experience is conditioned on its material form, which
represents a cluster of limitations on the way an
environment might be experienced given additional
forms. Bat and cetacean echolocation, shark
and platypus electroreception,
and cephalopod communication with chromatophores, are
but three examples beyond the bounds of our own
embodied cognition. There are creatures who see much
farther into the infrared and ultraviolet, although no
life form comes even close to sensing the fuller range
of the E-M spectrum that our technological sensory
extensions investigate. But even the data from our
cleverest extrasensory devices needs to be translated
back into data that lies within what is sensible to
us. In other words, the fact that something makes no
sense does not make it untrue.
Our
conceptual metaphors, constructed largely of our sense
memories or sensorimotor schemas, are the building
blocks of much of our thought. Sensory and conceptual
metaphors, together with our reasoning from analogies
based on configurations presented to us by our senses,
form the dramatis personae, stage, set and
theater of much of our cognitive world. And
importantly, neuroscience is gradually teaching us
with some greater conviction that this is not the
whole of the world.
It is no measure of health
to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti.
As I've
lamented earlier, much of psychology's database is
founded on damaged brains and disappointing human
behavior. It's more of a science of squeaky wheels,
and not one of impressively balanced and frictionless
wheels. Mental health in psychology tends to be
regarded in terms of the normal condition, the center
of the bell curve. It has little to say to the gifted,
creative, or self-actualizing human being except to
wish us well, and good luck trying to fit in.
Positive
psychology attempts to address this missing part of
the field. The term positive means to posit, put
forward, propose, advance or assert. The word suggests
creativity. While even the best of us needs work, and
at least some repair, this positive branch of the
field spends far less time in crying out for healing,
in looking backwards into what caused us, or what
caused us to go astray, or in wringing our hands and
rending our garments. Someone who is getting therapy
in positive psychology might be receiving life
coaching, or skydiving lessons, or vocational
guidance, or mindfulness training, or philosophical
counseling.
This
discipline was first named in the late 1990's by
founders Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (more) who
offered this definition in 1998: "We believe that a
psychology of positive human functioning will arise,
which achieves a scientific understanding and
effective interventions to build thriving individuals,
families, and communities. Positive psychologists seek
to find and nurture genius and talent, and to make
normal life more fulfilling, not simply to treat
mental illness. The field is intended to complement,
not to replace traditional psychology. It does not
seek to deny the importance of studying how things go
wrong, but rather to emphasize the importance of using
the scientific method to determine how things go
right."
We run
into a problem here right away: what is exceptional
will almost necessarily be anecdotal. It is oxymoronic
to study the exceptional as a group. This of course
has the critics wagging their fingers and questioning
whether this can ever be any sort of objective
science, capable of reliable measurements. Of course
the normal therapies are subject to objective
measurement and statistical analysis, as long as
individual differences in both patients and their
therapists can be either averaged or ignored. How can
you study exceptional, or even simple success, except
anecdotally? We just need a lot more anecdotes, or
anecdata.
The Problem of Happiness
Despite
the best intentions of p-psych's founders, a
significant number of enthusiasts are in danger of
missing the point by misunderstanding the meaning of
the word positive, as defined above. A lot of the
preliminary research seems to be using happiness as
the first measure of a person's psychological
well-being, or more specifically, conflating positive
with happy and negative with critical. The new age is
creeping onto that lovely new lawn like crabgrass.
There is much more to what Abraham Maslow called the
"farther reaches of human nature" than our
self-satisfied and narcissistic emotional states, even
though this misunderstanding does sit quite well with
modern culture. As Nietzsche put it: "My suffering and
my fellow-suffering: what matter about them! Do
I then strive after my happiness? I strive after
my work!" (TSZ 80). We have better and more
important things to do than dwell on ourselves. If our
happiness wants to come along, that's cool - but it
rides in the back.
Those near the core of this promising discipline are
not completely at fault for this confusion. It is
primarily an error of omission. But they might do well
to distance themselves from this misunderstanding of
the term positive and the enthronement of happiness as
the primary measure of our higher states. Among the
first criticisms of p-psych, it was noted just how
happy the Nazis were to have their strong, new leader.
Positivity without due self-regulation is like
evolution without selection, a condition that has only
just begun to plague our species. In Buddhism, the
word for wisdom is panna. It is often spoken
of as a jewel, but it's not for show: this wisdom is
discriminating wisdom, and the jewel is a cutting
tool. In the higher development of the human mind,
critical thinking skills are indispensable.
Negativity, as the negation of ignorance and delusion,
of nonsense and crap, is essential to wisdom. Being
correct often requires being corrected. That makes the
too-positive people unhappy and hurts their feelings,
but they will never get out of their ridiculous rut
otherwise.
There are
other problems with the measure of happiness, some
already discussed elsewhere. For someone in a creative
mode, acting in flow, or in service to a higher
purpose, or simply enjoying their engagement, or their
exercise of competence, perceptions of happiness might
be little more than distractions, if not actual
nuisances. Also, any expectations of happiness as a
reward for higher purpose or endeavor seem to miss the
whole point of higher purpose as something beyond
ourselves.
Research appears to indicate that individuals, with wide variations, will normally return to a "set point" level of self-assessed happiness following their temporary swings of positive and negative affect. The set point is thought to be inherited first, developmental second and learned least. However, even learning can have lasting effects, even if they are not overwhelming. Adjustments are sometimes referred to as hedonic adaptations, which were discussed earlier under Suffering's Causes. We are more in tune with our changes than with steady states, so we ourselves adapt when a feeling starts to get old. The final insult is the poor correlation between happiness and what might be called merit. Neither a good education nor a high IQ can be shown to increase happiness. At least quantitatively, one who is robbing the poor might easily be capable of a greater happiness than one who is feeding the poor. In short, Joy does not answer to Justice. In fact, she is a bit of a whore, sleeping with the witches one night and saints the next. And of course everything will go straight to hell when the unearned shortcuts to perceived happiness are available for just a few shekels, as is well known to addicts.
Research appears to indicate that individuals, with wide variations, will normally return to a "set point" level of self-assessed happiness following their temporary swings of positive and negative affect. The set point is thought to be inherited first, developmental second and learned least. However, even learning can have lasting effects, even if they are not overwhelming. Adjustments are sometimes referred to as hedonic adaptations, which were discussed earlier under Suffering's Causes. We are more in tune with our changes than with steady states, so we ourselves adapt when a feeling starts to get old. The final insult is the poor correlation between happiness and what might be called merit. Neither a good education nor a high IQ can be shown to increase happiness. At least quantitatively, one who is robbing the poor might easily be capable of a greater happiness than one who is feeding the poor. In short, Joy does not answer to Justice. In fact, she is a bit of a whore, sleeping with the witches one night and saints the next. And of course everything will go straight to hell when the unearned shortcuts to perceived happiness are available for just a few shekels, as is well known to addicts.
Individuation and the Temporary Self
We've
spoken quite a bit of the mind as it is known from
within, as a process of strong
emergence conditioned on
factors, as arising out of the organization of our
biological systems, while presenting "something new
under the sun," something unpredictable from merely
knowing the laws of biological systems. Most of the
phenomena of the inner world appear to us as qualia,
qualities or properties as sensed, perceived or
experienced by our being. Strongly emergent qualia,
such as the experience of blue, are unpredictable from
even perfect knowledge of the antecedents. Weak
emergence is also the arising of the new, but in ways
that might have been predictable: for example, the
elements we know in the periodic table and the laws of
chemistry that describe their behavior were
nonexistent for some time after the suspected big
bang. But it is conceivable that one might extrapolate
the science of chemistry from a perfect knowledge of
sub-atomic physics and quantum mechanics. Chemistry,
with its so-called laws, simply had not yet emerged
into any reality.
The most
significant elements of emergent mind concern
self-control, agency, or self-efficacy, the ability to
decide and change behavior. While it is asserted by
many, if not most, human beings that man has been
given free will, whether by design or by evolution,
this assertion is not at all in evidence in looking at
the bulk of humankind or in studying behavioral norms.
The will of the people is far from free. Most behave
precisely as they are told or are pressured to behave.
The only possible measure of the reality of agency is
in its effect on the world. If it is utterly
ineffective then it is most likely a delusion. It is
real only insofar as it works. If I claim that I am
going to exercise my free will to quit drinking today,
and then find myself drinking again tonight, then in
fact my will is not free at all. Human is as human
does. The rest is delusion. Agency is a practice. When
it isn't practicing, it ceases to exist, just as your
lap ceases to exist when you stand up.
Nearly
all of us have developed our own examples of
self-schema or egos, central organizing clusters of
perceptions and ideas about who and what we are. This
is admitted even in Buddhism, although the Buddhists
are the first to claim the self as merely a
conditionally useful artifice and illusion. The first
person is not a thing, but a process, not a noun, but
a verb. This does not make it less than real, but it
also does not make it fixed or permanent. There is for
each of us a process of individuation, a learning of
what boundaries there may be between us and the world,
or us and the others. This can be a useful and healthy
process, even on the road to nibbana, or it
can be a degenerate and neurotic process with a mess
of problematic boundaries. Self-control or agency must
emerge out of this self-schema or ego. An imaginary
self-control or agency emerges out of imaginary
processes: it just floats above, unconnected to what
we are below. An authentic self-control or agency is
known by its efficacy, which requires a connection to
the inner biological processes that are able to enact
those commands from on high in the head. It is learned
by experiencing the above along with the below, and
integrating the two in practice. This is a
construction, even an art form. It's a positing, a
putting forward.
First Things First
Abraham
Maslow (1908-1970) has a founding father status here.
In his theories there are certain basic needs that we
need to take care of first before we can be
fully-functioning individuals. These needs are usually
portrayed on a pyramid of five tiers, each tier being
a category of needs. In the original pyramid, the
lowest is for Biological or Physiological needs: air,
food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc., things
we can't survive without. The second is for Safety
needs: protection, security, order, law, limits,
stability, etc. The third is for Belongingness or Love
needs: family, work group, relationships,
affection, etc. The fourth
is for Esteem needs: achievement, reputation,
responsibility, status,
etc. The fifth is for Self-actualization, towards our
personal fulfillment and growth. Partially as an
illustration of just how fuzzy and agenda-laden the
psychology is, but also to cover more ground, we can
list these again using someone else's version:
The first tier is for Physiological needs: breathing,
food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis and excretion.
The second tier is for Safety need: security of body,
employment,
morality, resources,
the family, property and health. The third tier is for
Love and Belonging, friendship, family and sexual
intimacy. The fourth tier is for Esteem, self-esteem,
confidence, achievement, respect of others and respect
by others. The fifth and last tier is for
Self-actualization, morality, creativity, spontaneity,
problem solving, lack of prejudice and the acceptance
of facts. The enculturation agenda really pops in a
few of these later tiers.
There is
nothing set in concrete here. Clayton Alderfer
expanded on Maslow's hierarchy with what he called the
ERG theory, making three core
groups of needs instead of five: Existence,
Relatedness, and Growth. In subsuming the five tiers
into three, an evolutionary psychologist might
describe the lower two tiers in terms of adaptive
fitness in natural selection, the next two in terms of
sexual selection, and then open a discussion of the
fifth tier, asking what is it about our evolved nature
that drives us even beyond biological and reproductive
success. Nietzsche might have suggested a will to
power here, regarding man as something to be
surpassed. For Maslow it was called Being motivation,
as distinct from our Deficiency motivations, and a
purely positive drive. Someone could call this
analogous to exuberance, imagination and play in the
young of the species, a grown-up reason for living.
The
theory is that these tiers represent a hierarchy of
priority for needs and their satisfaction, with the
lowest being the most pressing or urgent. Once these
lower needs have been met, we can get on with meeting
our next-higher needs with less distraction. Implied
in all this is a recipe for self-cultivation. We take
care of first things first, meet needs and move on. It
then behooves us, if we ever want to catch the view
from the top, to be a little more careful about
wasting energy in meeting needs that don't really
belong to us, or needs that are only given to us by
the advertising industry, or needs defined by our
political and religious leaders. It is our own
responsibility to optimize our expenditures here.
Another part of the theory holds that people get stuck
on lower levels of needs satisfaction, where the
continued thwarting and frustration of needs cultures
neurotic and stereotypical behaviors that further tie
us to our lower levels.
I, for
one, am not convinced that the above is the best
explanation for the top tier being so sparsely
populated. It is true that many people show "inherent
growth tendencies," or what appears to be a dominant
inner motivation and drive for self-actualization, to
experience our most exalted experiences, to practice
our most beneficent behaviors, and to establish
foundations for the further cultural evolution of
humankind. It is just not obvious that this is what
they are driven to do next after their lower drives
have been met. It is possible that the great bulk of
humanity remains on the lower tiers and treadmills
because the majority of human beings do not possess
these higher order motives and drives in any innate
sense. It is also possible that such character or
virtue is only given to a few, to what Thomas
Jefferson called the Natural Aristocracy. Because
human is as human does, I would suggest that it should
be up to the equalitarians to demonstrate otherwise.
What else explains well-fed people not seeming to want
better, or not wanting to be better? Or even seeming
to want to make their lives even worse?
Self-optimization
I will
use the term self-optimization here instead of
self-actualization, since the self isn't actually
actual. A lot of affective states and behavioral
traits, and strengths, and virtues, get named in
charting the dimensions of these innate, intrinsic or
internal drives to self-optimization. P-psych sorts
these into positive emotions, positive traits, and
positive institutions. All concern nurturing the best
that's within us, not just patching the cracks. Of the
best states, all of the Buddha's Brahmaviharas
belong here: loving kindness (metta),
compassion (karuna), empathetic joy (mudita)
and equanimity (upekkha). So do the states that
I have made so bold to add to this list: forgiveness (khama),
gratitude (katannuta), reverence (garava)
and patience (khanti), with the qualifications
that I have offered for these that make reverence and
gratitude available to atheists. Subjectively we also
have states like flourishing, engagement,
transcendence, courage,
salience, belonging,
humor, playfulness,
connectedness, absorption,
interest, meaningfulness,
and brio. Behaviorally we have such values as
conscientiousness, competence,
authenticity, conscience,
commitment, self-efficacy,
leadership, spontaneity,
integrity, mindfulness, nurturing,
justice, influence,
autonomy,
creativity,
tolerance, and flow.
Finally, I would submit that relative to the extinguishing of addictive behavior, and its cognitive and emotional support structures, the self- optimizing state most usefully attained is samvega, the simultaneous experience of the life that you no longer want to want, held up against the life that brings you to to your potential. The old life pales in comparison. You no longer have time for the nonsense, or any good reason for self- destruction. Whether self-ish of purpose or in service to a higher purpose, you have better things to do now.
Finally, I would submit that relative to the extinguishing of addictive behavior, and its cognitive and emotional support structures, the self- optimizing state most usefully attained is samvega, the simultaneous experience of the life that you no longer want to want, held up against the life that brings you to to your potential. The old life pales in comparison. You no longer have time for the nonsense, or any good reason for self- destruction. Whether self-ish of purpose or in service to a higher purpose, you have better things to do now.