The Path Beyond Suffering is the Path Beyond Self. Each of us must decide when to take it.
How Much of our Ego do we want to Relinquish?
Enlightenment is to be Beyond this Personal Perspective. It is to be Free of That.
The Five Causes of Suffering
[Discourse given on an Advanced Vipassana Retreat 2012]
How Much of our Ego do we want to Relinquish?
The steerage I have been giving you in these recent retreats shows you a slightly more personal approach to what in essence is an impersonal process. I do this because while it is true that life is not personal and the Dhamma is not personal, it feels very personal to each one of us while we are still in the grip of the egoic self. In the past, I have given you the teaching and the practice that points directly at the genuine experience of No Self as the definitive transformational experience. There has been a great emphasis in recent years placed upon developing insight into impermanence, but from my experience as a teacher, I have seen few students really letting go at the deepest level only on account of developing the experience of impermanence. Far more people are prompted to let go when they truly penetrate the nature of suffering and see for themselves how deeply we are each bound up in this on account of the law of dependent origination. This I can see is a far more compelling prompt to let go attachment than insight into impermanence alone. But many people do not yet see how inevitably their attachment will bring suffering in the future and so are not even prompted to let go. It seems we are willing to suffer much to uphold our attachments. For many it is necessary to develop further insight into the relationship between our experience of ‘self’ and No Self to really break through and break apart our conditioned mind and our attachment to it. And of course this insight is harder to arrive at than the insight into impermanence and suffering.
So it remains likely that for most yogis, we develop insight into impermanence first to loosen the first layers of clinging, that settles the mind so we are more able to penetrate the subtler layers of suffering and affliction we have grown accustomed to. As we let go more so our concentration deepens further and the subtlety of our perception deepens also. It is not until we have matured in both Samatha and Vipassana that our meditative stability is such that we can discern clearly the mechanism by which the perception of self is created and the process by which it passes away and the genuine experience of no self arises. Until then, we have to stand only upon the reasoning in response to the investigation of the 5 aggregates, that tells us that ‘self’ is illusionary. We reason that if all five aggregates are dependently arising then there is no permanent ‘self’ within our experience. But this is not real insight. And we know this from our experience of Vipassana because even though we may have broken down the compactness of our experience into the 5 aggregates and their constituent parts, we are still left with the lingering perception feeling or sense of self at the centre of our experience. Such mere reasoning alone, rarely works deeply enough upon us to cut off at the root the grasping mind that denies us access to the Unconditioned.
In over twenty years of teaching thousands of students I have yet to meet a single yogi who has attained to Path Knowledge with this insight alone. Experience has shown that everyone must reach a definitive meditative experience of No Self, before the deeper, more unconscious and instinctual layers of attachment are relinquished. I cannot say that no one attains to Path knowledge with less insight than this, but within my experience of teaching lay practitioners I have not seen it. Although we read in the Suttas many accounts of people attaining more directly than this, I think we have to take into consideration the unparalleled skill of the Buddha as a teacher and the equally unrivalled paramis of those fortunate enough to practise under his guidance. For most of us these days it seems a more thorough, gradual and systematic approach will be necessary. What is more, with regard to the type of person I have tended to find coming to me for guidance, most are not suffering abjectly. Most of us in the modern world are very fixated on the idea of ourselves, so much so that I would be inclined to suggest that the majority of modern day yogis come initially to the path actually seeking some kind of personal resolution to their idea of self. Few initially come with the expectation that liberation from suffering will require them to relinquish such a personal perspective. And so it is for this reason that I have said at the beginning of this discourse, that I have needed to offer a more personal approach to what is essentially an impersonal process. Indeed, for the most part, most people are not able to really fathom what the Buddha actually means when he talks of No-Self, until their own meditative experience of No-Self has matured to a sufficient degree.
All that being said, most of you who have practised consistently with me these past few years , will have developed and assimilated to some degree the insight that shows you that the ego, or ‘self’ or 'I-maker,' call it what you will, is ultimately the root of your suffering. But you will also know from experience that even reaching this relatively mature level of insight is not in itself enough to guarantee that you will free yourself of that suffering. And so once this insight into No-Self has begun to arise in us, thereafter we have to make a very personal arrangement with ourselves as to how we want to integrate that understanding into our personal lives. If we are even basically provided for in our life, if we are not unwell, abused or exploited then we are not obviously afflicted by unbearable suffering, not outwardly at least. In which case we have to reflect that we are experiencing good fortune. Of course now and again we all experience some degree of suffering but generally our life is supported with good fortune. And whilst experiencing a life of good fortune we must remember to live it consciously virtuously and mindfully. As I have said many times, it is far easier to fall from good fortune than it is to come to it.
So now begins the exploration and investigation into where we each are at personally in the journey of working our own suffering, finding our balance, peace, resolution, refuge, protection and freedom from suffering. And how much of the inevitable inconveniences and challenges that come our way are we willing to forbear for the purposes of enjoying this life sensibly?
That is a very delicate balance that we have to come to. Quite often we will only come to learn from our mistakes. We get ourselves into a state of hardship and we reflect “I can’t believe it, there I am again, there I go again, I must stop doing that, how could I have been so careless to come to this situation.” But the point is that most often we only let go our desire when we truly see that what we desire will not actually bring us happiness. This is an understanding we come to through lived experience, not through hearing the Dhamma. We have to come to that understanding for ourselves.
At a higher level or even just through reflecting on it hypothetically in our mind we can glimpse this. At first, as I have said, we might not be able to see, but there does come a point where we do see “whilst I’m free of this ego, I experience freedom. As soon as the grasping mind appears I experience some degree of bondage and affliction.” Even this we can come to see clearly and yet we might still not choose to give this ego up. And so we learn for ourselves that seeing where the path out of suffering lies doesn't necessarily mean we choose it. We choose it in a timely way, each of us, for ourselves. Sadly it seems we all too often only choose it when we find our suffering unbearable. Such times are rarely the most conducive to painless progress. Far better it is to recognise the remaining danger of falling into future suffering and strive to free ourselves of that while conditions are supportive and we have sound mind and body.
So we find ourselves now in that transition out of this personal, 'self' orientated and very individual investigation of life that we may have first brought to our practice, into a maturing relationship with a more unified experience of life itself. That’s what Samsara is. It’s this journey that we go on, that we learn from and that raises us up, in stages, to a higher state of being. Samsara is the tangled not of ‘self’ and the endless rounds of suffering it leads us on. Nibanna is the breaking free of Samsara and breaking free of this tangled knot of ‘self’ and the entering into a unified, unconditioned experience of reality in its such-ness that is beyond suffering.
Life is sometimes an opportunity to experience and delight in good fortune. It is sometimes an opportunity to purify misfortune. And in times when we are unable to see our suffering as our teacher, life is also at times simply a hardship. So sometimes there is an enjoyment round of being and sometimes there is a learning round of being, and sometimes there is a suffering round of being. We will all have experienced each of these many times in our wandering on. But for us not to fall backwards each time, the enjoyment round of being needs to be a learning round as well. Most of you have been born in a time of good fortune and your life is not a struggle. More often than not life is a struggle. You only have to look around you to see this. Your life may have its challenges but it is not an insurmountable struggle. The challenges most of us face are largely the result of past poor choices or negligence and the rest of it is the result of kamma as it fruits.
Generally our kamma is fortunate. So when one finds oneself in this position one has to make wise reflection, “This is a very rare opportunity to consciously engage in this human life. It may be a long time before I have this opportunity again. Conditions are not getting any easier.” So in this life you may choose, “I wish to live completely and as fully as I can whilst I learn to clean and wash the dust that I need to clear.” This is when it becomes very personal to us individually and we have to take stock of where we are at and how far we wish to go with the Dhamma right now in this very life. When I check, most of my students are practising with the attitude of laying the ground for the future while enjoying the life in the here and now. Few have their hearts set of achieving genuine freedom in this very life. But the Buddha would have told us that we should go all the way now while the way is open for us. And so I have given you that teaching and inspired you and motivated you on that path. But if you choose not to do that, then that is of course your choice. I must respect it. And in that case my duty as a teacher becomes one of pointing out to you how to go as far as you are willing to go, in a way that is safe that will give you an enriching experience of life. That then becomes an exercise in meeting your ‘self’ where you are at. It is not the exercise in getting beyond ‘self’ yet. But if you wish to take such a path, you will need to meet yourself honestly and deeply enough to see whether you need to get beyond 'self,' or just make friends with it. That is what I mean when I say it is a personal journey into an impersonal process.
Enlightenment is to be Beyond this Personal Perspective. It is to be Free of That.
For some of you, this practice might be an exercise in making friends with yourself. For others, it might be an exercise in needing to move on and move forward. I can’t tell you, you will have to find that out for yourself. But I have tried to teach you Dhamma in such a way that you would be able to integrate that personal aspect - the transformation of 'my' idea of self and 'my' experience of 'myself '- into the teaching that implies the transcendence of this idea of self. That is what awakening is. Awakening, or Enlightenment is to be beyond this personal perspective. It is to be free of itself and the suffering sense of separation it creates. It is to enter into the unified experience that is beyond self.
Many of you may not have elected for that. You may have elected in this life to learn how to live as completely and as usefully as you possibly can. It may be a very personal investigation into what this is all about that you feel you need to complete before you are willing to let it go. So I am now teaching you how to meet the parts of you that put you at risk whilst doing that, where there is potential to create suffering for yourself and others that we ought to avoid, until we get to the point where we might glimpse, “Ah! What I want now is a taste of real freedom or complete freedom.”
There is a certain freedom in feeling unvexed, un-oppressed and gladdened about your life, free of regret and remorse. There is a certain freedom for one who is willing to accept that this life comes with the inevitability that we are going to fall apart, we are going to get sick, we are going to die and everybody around us will too. And so, when we can really accept what is involved in being alive and the truth of it, we can live this experience of being alive fearlessly. And why shouldn’t we? Once you have fearlessly lived it and you get to the end, your kamma and your attachment will present you the conditions for your own continued wandering on.
The Five Causes of Suffering
So now I'm asking you to look at the causes of suffering. The causes being ignorance, craving, clinging, volitional formations and kamma. I’ve asked you to investigate them so you can see for yourself whether you are ready and able to let them go. What I have often had to point out to people in interviews is that we tend to fall back upon what we perceive to be stable ground and do not go far enough into the causes of suffering as we need to. So for this we need to remember the teachings we have already had. When we see anger, jealousy, unreasonable behaviour, greed and restlessness overcoming us and driving us, it isn’t enough just to see that. You need to remember that you have to also see the cause for it and the ignorance behind that.
It is not about just meeting our anger and our greed and trying to become equanimous to it. It is about going into that aspect of 'me' that justifies it. To let go your anger in one moment but to continue to fall prey to anger is not real healing. It is not true relinquishing. We have to surmount the real cause for its continued tendency, by seeing the ignorance that lies behind it. That is seeing dependent origination. I’ve said many times it is not the anger that is the cause of suffering. The anger or the greed is merely an expression of suffering. It is the ignorance that is the cause of the suffering. So when you are seeing yourself and meeting yourself, within your experience, with some of these things you are now experiencing, or you are meeting echoes of yourself from the past that you are still hanging on to, don’t just stop at “it was jealousy,” or “it was fear.” That is not enough. See the ignorance that will allow jealousy to arise in you again in the future. The ignorance is always our attachment to our idea of ourself.
Ignorance is our fixation on the idea of self. It is the NOT seeing self as an illusion. So when you are experiencing your suffering, you have to experience the 'self' in it. What is the idea about myself and others that is justifying and conditioning the renewed arising of these unwholesome states. You’ll see that it is some kind of self-importance, sense of entitlement, some kind of pride, comparing yourself, thinking you are better, thinking that you should be better, thinking that you deserve more, some kind of idea that thinks about how important you are. Or equally it can be some sense of shame or the idea of unworthy you are. It always comes back to that, if you investigate, “If I didn’t cling to this idea of self and other, why would I be so angry about that?” It is the importance of 'me' that I put into my experience of being alive, that has smothered it. It is removing this importance of 'me' that we are working on.
Actually we are each just another human being, one of countless to come and go. Now that alone is extraordinary enough without us adding our little story to it. It is the experiencing of what it is to be alive that is extraordinary, not that you are you. We are all unique, but in our vanity we are all prone to think that we are in some way special on account of that. That's the booby trap if you like, the rabbit hole. Getting lost in this idea of ‘me’. We are all indeed a unique expression of life, but it is the whole idea of ourselves that is the vexation. It is already unique enough just to be you without any ideas added. So try to look into that. Look at how important you are in your own story and how by upholding your own importance within the story, you have missed the main plot. Sometimes we are so fixated upon ourselves that we even lose the plot. Many aspects of psychosis, though of course not all, when we strip them bare are nothing more than a dysfunctional fixation on some idea of ourselves.
Now of course please understand, this is not how the Buddha would have asked you to practise. He was not interested in helping us reach some kind of personal resolution. No. He knew well enough that there is ultimately no resolution to be found in 'self’. But I acknowledge that many of you will feel the need to reach some kind of personal resolution before you are able to let it go. When you have met yourself in the here and now, and seen with discernment where this, 'I-Maker' has come from, then you can make more informed decisions about where you go from there. I have taught enough people to have learned that no one relinquishes their ego simply because they are encouraged to. Each of us has to see for ourselves the suffering it has caused and will continue to cause for as long as we remain attached to it.
But if we are going to take this path that leads only part of the way, then we must at least, come to the insight that allows us to take responsibility for our suffering, and not hold anyone or anything else to blame. We have to learn to live it and let it teach us. We can’t run away from it. There isn’t any running away from it. Everything is our teacher, whatever it is. With this attitude, we can really learn from life. If it is not that bad at the moment, and if you still have the choice, I recognise that you may well not choose to let go now, which is why I have to teach you the way I’m teaching you. If you want to continue to dance your personal dance and stay out of trouble, then you have to at least know how dependent origination functions and how the law of kamma works. That is the minimum level of insight that will prompt you to take sufficient care to stay out of unbearable suffering. But please don't think that life is just suffering. It is only suffering because of carelessness. And that carelessness is rooted in insufficient understanding, which is ignorance.
When you stop being careless, you can take as much time as you like walking the path. Once we have seen where we are careless, we can then start to be careful. Gradually we get to a stage where we feel quite safe, right here right now, wherever we are at, knowing that we are moving forward. We recognise that we are going to face hardship and we are going die. It is a certainty. We will all have to surmount our fear when it comes, everyone of us will, either before we get there or right as we approach death. So reflect on all of this, do what you need to do until you are really happy to just be who you are, without the endless need to keep adding to that. Go at least as far as that. Make sure that your happiness is real happiness; not just 'a little bit pleased with myself,' but a deep feeling of contentment, and then enjoy it.
If you want to go beyond that, you can make that decision when you reach that point. It is the same work that we do at the beginning as at the end. We just go gradually more deeply into it. So start right now, letting go of the causes of suffering and creating the causes of happiness, as if you were trying to reach all the way to the end.
From where you are, you don’t have to get to the very end of the Path, to find happiness, if you are careful, conscious, caring human beings. But such good fortune and such an opportunity as that does not stay around for long if we are careless. So guard it, treasure it, uphold your virtue, delight in it, really polish it, really glow with your total unwillingness to be selfish and then by all means from that place you can go out and find out about all the joys this life has got to offer. But be careful not to consume yourself and the world around you in the gratification of your desires. For if you do, you may well find yourself coming back to me some years from now with your tail between your legs, or even in another life time, approaching a teacher saying “Please can you teach me about the causal cessation of suffering please!” So be aware, that if you choose to do it later, it might be a harder path you have to walk than the one you could take now in this very life. That choice each of us must make for ourselves. I know what the Buddha would urge you to do. He would tell you to “Strive earnestly now, less you regret it later.”
