M: as not shrinking away from evil actions
P: disrespect for others
4. Restlessness—uddhacca
C: agitation, distraction, and disquiet, like water whipped by the wind
F: unsteadiness, like a flag or banner whipped by the wind
M: as turmoil, like ashes flung up when pelted with stones
P: unwise attention to things that stimulate mental disquiet
UNWHOLESOME OCCASIONALS
1. Greed, attachment—lobha
C: grasping an object as I or mine; craving for the object
F: sticking or clinging as meat sticks to a hot pan
M: as not giving up or adhering
P: seeing enjoyment in things that lead to bondage
Note: Greed (lobha) includes all forms and degrees of attachment, clinging, longing, and selfish desire.
2. Wrong view—diṭṭhi
C: unwise interpretation of things
F: to presume
M: as wrong interpretation, as attachment to opinions; holding the belief that the object is permanent, satisfying, or has self-essence
P: unwillingness to see Noble Ones, hear the true teachings, and so on
3. Conceit—māna
C: haughtiness, pride
F: to promote arrogance and self-exaltation
M: as an attitude of vainglory or the desire to promote oneself, narcissism
P: greed dissociated from wrong views
Note: Conceit (māna) is an unwholesome mental state that is rooted in greed or attachment (lobha). Wrong view is excluded as a proximate cause because the presence of wrong view would generate a state categorized as lobha diṭṭhi rather than lobha māna. An arrogant attachment to one’s genuine accomplishments (meditative or professional) could be a proximate cause for conceit to arise if attachment was present and the event was neither misunderstood nor justified by opinions. Note that although wrong views might be absent, delusion (moha), as a universal feature of every unwholesome state, would still be present.
4. Hatred—dosa
C: savageness, ferocity, animosity
F: to spread like poison; or to burn up and consume one’s own support, like a fire consumes a forest
M: as persecution, like an enemy who finds an opportunity to attack
P: the grounds for annoyance and ill will
Note: Hatred (dosa) includes all forms and degrees of aversion, ill will, anger, hostility, fear, impatience, aggression, intolerance, etc.
5. Envy—issā
C: being jealous of others’ success and good fortune
F: to be dissatisfied with the accomplishments of others
M: as aversion toward the accomplishments of others
P: another’s success
6. Possessiveness—macchariya
C: avarice; concealing one’s own success so that it will not benefit others
F: to obstruct sharing with others
M: as shrinking away to prevent sharing; as meanness or stinginess
P: one’s own success or good fortune
7. Worry—kukkucca
C: subsequent regret
F: to sorrow about what has and what has not been done
M: as remorse
P: wrongs of commission and omission
8. Sloth—thīna
C: lack of driving power, stiffness
F: to dispel energy
M: as subsiding, sluggishness, or sinking mind
P: unwise attention to boredom and drowsiness
9. Torpor—middha
C: unwieldiness, dullness
F: to smother
M: as laziness, nodding, and sleep
P: unwise attention to boredom and drowsiness
10. Doubt—vicikicchā
C: uncertainty
F: to waver
M: as indecisiveness; or as taking various sides
P: unwise attention
TABLE 16.5
Characteristic, Function, Manifestation, and Proximate Causes of Twelve Factors of Dependent Arising
Key:
C = characteristic
F = function
M = manifestation
P = proximate cause
1. Ignorance—avijjā
C: unknowing the ultimate, nonconventional reality of things
F: to confuse
M: as concealing the ultimate reality of things
P: the four taints (āsavas) of sensual desire, desire for existence, ignorance, and wrong view
2. Volitional formations—saṅkhārā
C: forming
F: to accumulate kamma, or to endeavor
M: as volition
P: ignorance
3. Consciousness—viññāṇa
C: cognizing an object
F: to go before
M: as rebirth-linking
P: volitional formations or the physical base and object
4. Mentality and materiality—nāma rūpa
Mentality—nāma
C: bending toward the object
F: to associate with other mental factors
M: as the inseparability of the three mental aggregates that compose mentality (feeling, perception, and mental formations)
P: consciousness
Materiality—rūpa
C: being molested by change
F: to be dispersed and subject to decay and change
M: as indeterminate, that is, neither intrinsically wholesome nor unwholesome
P: consciousness
5. Six-fold sense base—saḷāyatana
C: actuating, enlarging, extending
F: to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think
M: as the state of physical base and door
P: mentality and materiality
6. Contact—phassa
C: touching
F: impinging, to cause the object and consciousness to impinge
M: as the coincidence of internal and external base and consciousness
P: the six sense bases
7. Feeling—vedanā
C: experiencing
F: to exploit the stimulus of the object
M: as mental or bodily pleasure and mental or bodily pain
P: contact
8. Craving—taṇhā
C: being a cause of suffering
F: to delight
M: as insatiability
P: feeling
9. Clinging—upādāna
C: seizing, attachment, or grasping
F: not to release
M: as a strong form of craving and as false view
P: craving
10. Becoming—bhava
C: being kamma and kamma-result
F: by causing to exist; existence
M: as wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate
P: clinging
11. Birth—jāti
C: the first genesis in any sphere of becoming
F: to consign to a sphere of becoming
M: as an emerging in this existence from a past existence
P: kamma-process becoming (kamma-bhava)
12. Aging and death—jarāmaraṇa
Aging—jarā
C: the maturing of the aggregates
F: leading on to death
M: as the vanishing and destruction of youth
P: birth
Death—maraṇa
C: a fall, shifting, perishing, or passing
F: to disjoin
M: as absence from the destiny in which there was birth
P: birth
SECTION IV
Realizing the Deathless Liberation
CHAPTER 17
Liberating Insight: Contemplating Three Universal Characteristics259
All conditioned things are impermanent.
When one sees this with wisdom one turns away from suffering.
All conditioned things are unsatisfactory.
When one sees this with wisdom one turns away from suffering.
All things are not-se
lf.
When one sees this with wisdom one turns away from suffering.
—THE DHAMMAPADA260
WHERE DO YOU search for fresh insight? Do you turn to classes, books, teachers, or nature? Meditation invites us to look carefully into our own material and mental experience. The term “insight meditation” is a translation of the Pali word vipassanā, which is derived from the root word passati, meaning to see. Vipassanā can literally be translated as “clear seeing”—the seeing of things as they are actually occurring, not as you might believe they should be or desire them to be. Vipassanā is more than a practice of watching the breath, being with sensations, or letting go of thoughts. Vipassanā is the insight knowledge that comes when you see things as they are. To this end, vipassanā practices emphasize the contemplation of three particular characteristics: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness.
Many “ah ha” moments and personal revelations will accompany your development, providing general insight into the patterns that dominate daily experiences. However, insights that are based on concepts such as my body (with all its anatomy, notions of beauty, associations with health, and aches and pains) or my feelings and emotions (such as sadness, happiness, joy, or fear) may not reach the depth necessary to unravel the underlying patterns that perpetuate suffering.
THE OBJECT FOR VIPASSANĀ
It is important to contemplate the correct objects during vipassanā meditation. Only subtle realities and their causes can be held steadily enough to endure the rigorous and exacting contemplation that this method entails. Concepts and groupings cannot endure close scrutiny and will fade away when observed. Even the tiny particulate masses called rūpa kalāpas are not sufficiently refined. If they are taken as the object of vipassanā practice, they may soon vanish, leaving the meditator without a clear object, or the mind may slip into a calm but blank state in which there is no perceived object (bhavaṅga, discussed in chapters 4 and 13). Sometimes meditators misinterpret this disappearance of consciousness, or object, or both, to be an advanced stage of insight in which the perception of materiality or consciousness ceases. To avoid this error, meditate only upon the subtle realities of mind and matter.
In this process you will be contemplating the impermanence, suffering, and selfless quality of each moment of consciousness, interaction, causal relationship, component of the cognitive process, mental and material factor, and aggregate of experience, as you directly observe them arising and perishing. You must examine each parcel of material and mental experience, because it is in relationship to sense contact that attention is often ensnared by misperception, grasping, and attachment. Contemplate matter and mind, internally and externally, as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self. Just as a dermatological surgeon systematically roots out a skin cancer by examining many tissue biopsies to trace the extent of the incursion, you can carefully and thoroughly examine every possible type of subtle reality.
Most of the exercises contained in this book rely upon a gentle but clear application of mindfulness that nurtures a profound perception of the object. You may observe the breath as it transforms into a stable nimitta suitable for absorption. You may hold a basic concept such as a color or element until it expands into a kasiṇa. You may hold a tiny material mass (rūpa kalāpa) to examine its components or discern the functioning of subtle mental factors in a cognitive series. Throughout the course of this training you are learning how to apply wise attention to objects of perception.
As a doctor will examine multiple x-rays taken from different angles to diagnose a broken wrist, you will look carefully, again and again, from different angles and perspectives, to diagnose the conditions of reality. A single perspective might not adequately diagnose the condition, but if you examine phenomena from different perspectives, you will understand their supporting causes, composition, and function. Try to see as thoroughly as possible that every single object of perception, encompassing the totality of lived experience, is affected by the same three characteristics; that they are all impermanent, unsatisfactory, and without a fixed entity of self. Nothing is excluded from this scrutiny—internal, external; near, far; subtle, gross; past, present, and future. The entire universe of experiential phenomena is examined: sensory encounters, mental states, jhāna factors, and insight knowledge. With a concentrated mind and right effort, this level of detailed contemplation can proceed with relative ease.
CHARACTERISTIC OF IMPERMANENCE (ANICCA)
What happened to last summer’s vacation, yesterday’s meeting, and your first love? Where are all the plans you have made? Why are people repeatedly seduced by fantasies of lasting satisfaction when every event that ever occurs soon ends? The Buddha taught, “What is impermanent is not worth delighting in, not worth welcoming, not worth holding to.”261 Although you were probably convinced even before you picked up this book that things are impermanent, you may still find yourself attached to ephemeral things and suffer when they change. You know that the body, with its sensory organs, is subject to illness, decay, and death. You experience change everywhere you look. Even the way that you see the world changes as the eyes deteriorate with age. Extrapolating from this knowledge, how could any feeling or any state associated with eye-contact last?262 Ignoring the basic and pervasive fact of change keeps people seeking happiness where it can never be found. This is a great tragedy. The Buddha proclaimed that it would be better to live one day deeply, seeing the truth of impermanence, than to live one hundred years lacking effort and not seeing it.263 He praised the transformative value of perceiving impermanence, even if this insight lasted merely for the brief duration of a finger-snap.264 It is by actually engaging in the meditative process and wearing away the underlying tendencies toward misperception that this knowledge becomes potent enough to transform the mind and realize what lies beyond all concepts.
Impermanence refers to a radical change in the nature of a thing, from its present state into what is not its present state. There are three stages in the formation of all material phenomena: the arising stage, the standing stage, and the perishing stage.265 The standing stage is neither static nor continuous, but refers to an inherent inclination that propels matter from the arising stage to the perishing stage. Matter does not exist the moment prior to its arising, and it does not exist the moment after its perishing. Things are born and die, begin and end, arise and pass. At the ultimate level, no constancy can be found in any material or mental experience. All mental phenomena are impermanent as well.
Mental factors are fleeting. In your daily life, you know the inconstant feature of thoughts and mental states—fluctuating moods, transitory thoughts, dynamic feelings, and uncountable changes in perception. How many different mental states did you experience during this last hour? Were there moments of interest, boredom, irritation, calmness, equanimity? Because you know that the mind changes, you meditate, learn, grow, and cultivate wholesome states. If you had an entrenched belief that things could not change, you would not bother to read this book. Observing the ephemeral nature of mind and matter empowers a deep insight into impermanence. It is a potent practice that removes deeply entrenched obstacles, exhausts the tendency to reach for transient sensual experiences, and reduces attachment, ignorance, and self pride.266 The practice leads to the vivid realization that “this is not I.” As the Buddha stated so clearly, “Impermanent are all formations, their nature is to arise and vanish. Having arisen, they cease; their appeasement is blissful.”267
Impermanence in Daily Life
Watch the flow of changing experience as you go about your daily activities. Notice how you feel when you wake up in the morning; contemplate impermanence by recognizing that your moods are likely to be different at breakfast, in the afternoon, in the evening. Notice that your thoughts arise and pass as momentary mental phenomena; contemplate the impermanence in those mental states by recognizing their fleeting and fickle qualities. Notice how sensations change as you sit at the table, as you walk to work, as you chew a pi
ece of toast; contemplate the impermanence in those sensations by tracking changing sensations through the course of an activity. Notice how the breath transitions from an inhalation to an exhalation; contemplate the impermanence of the breath. Notice the temperature of the morning air and pause periodically during the day to notice how it changes; contemplate impermanence of temperature and weather. Notice your emotional states. When you feel irritated, excited, tranquil, angry, or frightened, do you expect to be feeling the very same emotion ten minutes later? Check to notice how emotions change. Highlight how the pervasive characteristic of impermanence affects every single moment of your life.
THE CHARACTERISTIC OF SUFFERING (DUKKHA)
Certainly you have experienced painful mental and material experiences such as injury, illness, depression, melancholy, distress, grief, or agitation. But suffering is also experienced in more subtle ways. One of the most pervasive is a basic unpleasant feeling of dissatisfaction. The traditional description of dukkha refers to matter as “molested by change” and to mentality as “unstable and without rest.” Insight into suffering is intimately linked to the recognition of impermanence.
Insight into the characteristic of dukkha is gained by realizing that everything that is impermanent will inevitably bring dissatisfaction or distress. In essence, anything that is pleasant is vulnerable to loss; anything born will die; anything unstable is an unreliable support for happiness. Simply because mental and material phenomena are impermanent, they are the basis for suffering, not happiness.
There simply is no place to rest in the cycle of birth, struggle for survival, aging, and death. The countless activities of living create a relentless impingement on the senses; we move from one activity to the next without ever finding a reliable place of comfort. As such, dukkha highlights the burden inherent in mind-body processes. When you directly see that conditioned phenomena are completely unsatisfactory, you will release your attachment to things and open to the insight that “this is not mine.”
Wisdom Wide and Deep Page 37