Ch. 17 - Outlining the Initial Stages of Vipassanā Practice

Outlining the Initial Stages of Vipassanā Practice, Where do we Start?

Reviewing Impermanence, Anicca

The Truth of Suffering, Dukkha

The Cessation of Self within the Experience, brings the perception of Suffering to Cessation, Anatta

[This discourse was given on an eight day Vipassanā retreat and looks at the initial stages of insight-knowledge giving the context for the emergence of insight knowledge.]

Outlining the Initial Stages of Vipassanā Practice, Where do we Start?

So, how might we engage in this practice of vipassanā? Firstly, obviously, one has to take for granted that one can concentrate and that one has enough mindfulness to view these things with some clarity. That clarity itself will need to continue to develop as we progress with meditation month by month, year by year, but the first aggregate that we need to know, or the first aspect that makes up our experience of reality that we need to know, is the aggregate of material states or materiality. We need to understand materiality as it is; that’s where we start.

So we start with the investigation of our body, which is materiality. And it is no different, the materiality in your body, to all the materiality in the universe. So, if we can come to know the materiality in our body then we will know materiality in general. So for this I taught you four elements meditation, I taught you body-parts meditation, and thereafter the detailed investigation of materiality as I have previously discussed. Some of you are becoming reasonably versed in and practised at that.

When we have understood materiality and seen it for what it is, we start to be able to perceive mentality. Now mentality is extremely difficult to perceive with direct perception. We contemplate, we think about it, we try to fathom it with our mind but to see how it functions takes great concentration and mindfulness. It is while developing mindfulness of materiality that our understanding of the mind begins to emerge as you have seen for yourselves.

Anyway, how we investigate materiality or mentality will depend upon how much time we have to commit to our practice. Whether we investigate it in a brief way or a detailed way will vary, but once we have come to know that this is materiality and this is mentality we need to have a very clear discernment of the fact that these two things are not the same. And it sounds very obvious but in our experience we don’t necessarily experience mind and body as separate until we start to pay wise attention and that’s what you have been doing so far. You have started to separate out the material aggregate from the feeling aggregate from the perception aggregate from the volitional formations aggregate from the consciousness aggregate. So separating mind from body, the knowledge that this is mind and this is body and they are separate is the next stage of insight or preparation for vipassanā.

Then we need to have to come to understand Dependent Origination, which I have also spoken about previously. And Dependent Origination also reveals itself in stages the same way that materiality and mentality do. As you start to see how materiality functions, you start to see how mentality functions, you start to see their interconnectedness, the causal link between these two.

So the first glimpses into the truth that all things are conditioned starts to emerge in you. It may well be that prior to that point we are of the view that, “I just happen to be here, the world just happens to be here, things just happen to come into being.” Previously we possibly haven’t contemplated the fact that without its cause, nothing comes into being. As the cause for things changes, that which appears changes. Everything is merely a reflection of those conditions for its becoming and therein lies our first insight into the fact that the law of kamma is a universal truth affecting all conditioned things.

We start to see that volition is the cause for the coming into being of things, that volition is kamma and this truth of kamma that you may have, until now, perceived as being the philosophical belief of some and something that is refuted by others, is now seen by us, to be woven into the very fabric of reality. And so we see how the law of Dependent Origination and the law of Kamma are contained within each other.

With this knowledge of materiality and mentality (nāma-rūpa pariccheda ñāṇa) and the knowledge of discerning cause and condition (paccaya-parrigaha ñāṇa) which is knowing Dependent Origination, we are now ready to practice the insight that purifies the mind, which is the practice of vipassanā. And we can do so knowing that our insight into nāma-rūpa and Dependent Origination will continue to mature over time. But at least by now we have done enough preparatory work for our practice of vipassanā to start to be effective.

So strictly speaking our vipassanā begins when we have seen Dependent Origination, or at least we have overcome doubt about it, even if it still has not shown itself in all its detail yet. At that point we review material and mental formations and their causes as dependently arising, as impermanent, suffering and no-self. Anicca, dukkha, anatta. So we look for, we start to perceive directly the impermanence, the transience of this conditionally arising complex of mind and body.

So, everything prior to that would be considered to be preparatory work – so the knowing of mind and the knowing of matter, knowing dependant origination is all preparatory work. The next stage of our vipassanā is to review the appearance of things as impermanent. We see into the truth of impermanence, and it is seeing the truth of impermanence that starts to perform the function of cutting off our attachment.

Reviewing Impermanence, Anicca

Now yesterday you were reviewing impermanence. When you first came on meditation retreat and when you were meditating on your body, you were also perceiving impermanence. How swiftly the perception of impermanence cuts off your attachment will depend on how deeply and clearly you have broken down the compactness of that which you are reviewing. So your preparatory work will determine how swiftly your insight matures when you practise vipassanā. I am sure that many of you found that even on your first retreat, your initial experience of impermanence had the effect of loosening some of your attachment.

How did the Buddha do it? The Buddha spent many years practising concentration, then for some days or weeks he reviewed his body, he reviewed his mind and gradually he saw Dependent Origination. And during that one night of meditating on impermanence, suffering and no-self he purified all defilements in his mind and realized Nibbāna. Why did it happen so quickly? Because his insight was so sharp and because he had thoroughly understood that this is mind, this is body, and this is Dependent Origination.

If you review impermanence in formations but you have not perceived these things clearly, then the understanding of impermanence will only gradually, over time, wear out your attachment, but may not bring you to the experience of the cessation of suffering that the Buddha reached. So, we may, with less discernment than the Buddha, have to practice vipassanā for slightly longer. And if our discernment is unclear and preparatory work only brief then this may take much longer, maybe even your whole life.

So, it doesn’t matter at what point you start to reflect upon impermanence, as soon as we make the reflection on impermanence it will start to cut off attachment. Even if we were to reflect, “Goodness me, this life is one day going to end. I’m not forever going to be this handsome young chap. One day I’ll grow old, I’ve already started, to grow decrepit and old. It would be good if I didn’t always assume that I would be this way. This life is impermanent.” Even that kind of reflection will loosen the grip of attachment.

When you feel how the body is changing, when you meditate with mindfulness upon the body, you feel more immediately the impermanence. When you see how your mind is utterly conditioned, is utterly impermanent, that everything that arises passes away in the moment of its arising, this is the knowledge of arising and passing (udayabbaya ñāṇa). Then we see impermanence very clearly like this - we see that there is nothing that can be clung to.

So the capacity for our insight into impermanence to cut off our attachment depends upon how deep is that insight into impermanence. And that doesn’t depend on your thoughts and ideas about impermanence, it depends on how deeply you experience this truth. You might sit there thinking, “Yes, Burgs has told us that everything that arises passes away at the moment of its arising, I shall surely let go all of my attachment.” But you won’t because you haven’t seen it, yet. As you do see it more clearly you will relinquish more attachment, as you come to see, of course, that it is attachment itself that is one of the fundamental causes of your suffering.

The Truth of Suffering, Dukkha

Thereafter we start to perceive the truth of suffering itself, we start to see suffering that is innate within this bound up, attached to, clung to attitude, towards this process that is conditionally arising and that we can’t be freed from just because we want it to go away. We see that the suffering we encounter now is utterly caused by those conditions from the past. What we are doing now will become the cause of our suffering or otherwise in the future and that there is no way that just because we don’t want something to be, that it won’t be. Things are the way they are, dependent on past causes and not dependent on how we would like them to be.

So we start to perceive this more clearly, the more deeply we fathom Dependent Origination. The more deeply we fathom dependant origination the more we see that there is no inherent self here in the process. That actually the fundamental cause of my suffering is this clinging to this idea that it is me that is engaging in this process. And all these personal needs, all this attachment to this idea of me, is the cause of my suffering and it is separating me from being able to enter, simply, into the suchness of what it is that I am experiencing.

So our first reflection is impermanence, then we start to reflect upon the suffering that is caused by clinging to conditioned states and then we start to see the truth of no-self within the experience. And as we review these three truths, it performs the function of cutting off in stages our attachment and purifying our mind of our defilements. So, it is a function of meditating correctly, that you don’t have to struggle to let go. If you’re struggling to let go it’s because you’ve started to see impermanence but you haven’t seen no-self.

So the impermanence is suggesting, “Oh my goodness, I’m not going to last forever, what’s going to happen to me?” but it isn’t until you see no-self that there is a blissful letting go, and not this abhorrent sense of, “I’m nothing, my life is utterly worthless, it doesn’t mean anything.” These kind of messy conclusions are caused by imperfections of insight, by not seeing into things deeply enough. Remember the resolution is peace, not more suffering.

Mature insight brings us to the recognition and experience that we are no longer personally separated from that which we are a part of. The ego perceives the idea of no-self as abhorrent, but when you truly perceive no-self it is an utter relief. So just anticipate that paradox rather than think, “I can’t possibly let go my idea of my self,” because this is where most people get stuck.

Alright. So, just let your insight perform its function; that’s how vipassanā works. Now, you haven’t necessarily thoroughly come to know mentality. You haven’t yet thoroughly understood Dependent Origination but you are starting to. And even as today you review impermanence of those formations that arise within you, your understanding of mentality and materiality and Dependent Origination is slowly maturing for you, regardless of how much is pointed out by the teacher.

As we mature our understanding, as I point out how to discern things more skilfully, then your insight will cut more deeply in and cutoff your attachment. So just do exactly the same as you were doing yesterday but with a little more insight, a little bit more mindfulness, a little more concentration. Remember how we started out? I said just rest with things and leave them as they are whilst you observe them. Just do that until you can’t leave them as they are any more, and in that moment know the loss of your equanimity.

The moment you can’t just be with formations as they are is the moment our reactive mind appears and that’s the moment of loss of equanimity. It is also the moment that your sense of self impinges upon the moment. See this for yourself. Spot that moment and spot that it is because of unwise attention and failure to break down compactness of your experience that you lost equanimity. At that point, break the formations down. You couldn’t leave them to be as they are because you saw self in your experience. And you saw self because there was, at that moment, too much compactness in your experience.

This is the delicate area to practise in. At this point you review the moment that you lost your equanimity. You practise vipassanā on that moment. You switch from abiding to reviewing. So then you need to break it down – this is the materiality, this is the feeling, this is perception, these are the volitional formations, this is consciousness.

When you break that experience down, you come back to a state of equanimity, stay with that equanimity, reviewing formations as impermanent until you regain your equanimity. Then you can rest there in awareness, leaving everything alone again, diligent and mindful, fully aware so that you see clearly the next moment that the mind stiffens, and equanimity is lost. Again when there is too much compactness in your experience, break it down again.

So rather than tiring yourself by always investigating states, go to your equanimity and abide in it whilst reviewing things as impermanent until you can no longer remain equanimous. Rest in the awareness of impermanence, but do not review states until you spot the arising of the compactness that causes you to lose equanimity, or causes some subtle craving, subtle attachment or subtle aversion, and see formations as they arise in you and break them down at this point.

The Cessation of Self within the Experience, brings the perception of Suffering to Cessation, Anatta

Look for the cause for your loss of equanimity, which would be ignorance. So what is the ignorance? The ignorance is seeing self in the experience, not seeing arising and passing clearly enough so that compactness and sense of self appears again within our experience. There was suddenly too much compactness in your experience and so you see yourself in it again and so arose aversion, so arose attachment. The moment that sense of self is removed by the breaking down of compactness there will be only equanimity.

This is the most skilful way to practise in the beginning, in the middle and in the end regardless of how clearly we can discern formations. Rest supremely aware and mindful, in equanimity itself, spotting clearly the very moment your ego-mind appears. Watch it smother the moment and produce some kind of compactness. Watch the encroaching of sense of self upon the moment. Then review this moment and break it down, until you come to the sure knowledge that it is the arising of even the subtlest sense of self within the experience that produces the loss of spaciousness and the first beginnings of the feeling and perception that it is unsatisfactory.

This is your insight into self as the cause of suffering and no-self as the cessation of suffering. You must come to this categoric experience that it is always the removal of self from the experience that brings suffering to cessation, either through absorption or equanimity or just abiding in awareness, which are the three experiences of the momentary cessation of suffering, or when we see formations themselves come to cessation, which is Nibbāna – the causal cessation of suffering.

Regardless of which one it is, it is always the appearance of our genuine experience of being beyond self that brings our sense of suffering to cessation. This is the Dhamma, the whole Dhamma. This is the pith and heart essence of the path. Your whole practice of vipassanā should point to this insight, this experience that brings us to a point beyond doubt, that self is the cause of suffering and no-self is its cessation.

However else we might choose to dress up the Dhamma, if we don’t see this point we are missing the whole point. This is the most important instruction you will ever receive...so don’t just gloss over it. Alright, very good, we can try like that.