Having Taken the First Step
by M. O'C. Walshe
What
does it feel like when one has fairly recently embarked on a course of
Buddhism? The answers will vary a great deal, no doubt, but there ought
to be some general characteristics and some problems common to the
majority of “newborn” Buddhists in the West. Let us assume that you are a
person who has quite recently, or within the last year or so, begun to
take Buddhism seriously as a personal way of life. You may by now be
just looking round a bit in your new mental surroundings and trying to
take stock of what has happened, now that the first novelty of the
situation has worn off. You have, I sincerely hope, tried to do a bit of
meditation, though it would not surprise me in the least to hear that
you have found this difficult and disappointing. If so, I would like to
tell you straight away that you should not be discouraged. This is quite
the normal thing. Meditation may seem disappointing and even
almost useless for quite a long time, but if you persevere in it,
results are bound to come. But these results may not be at all the sort
of thing you expect. And you may not even be the person who first becomes aware of them. So press on regardless, and don’t look
for results. If you can see the point of this piece of advice you have
already in fact made useful progress. Insights often come very subtly.
People’s
motives for taking up Buddhism may vary a great deal on the surface.
But fundamentally you have probably come to it because, in one way or
another, it seems to promise you security. If you haven’t
realized before that this was a good part of your motive, you might
usefully use your next meditation period trying to find out whether I
was right or not. If you have realized this, then you may agree that you
find the formula “I go to the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha for
refuge” strangely comforting. And so it should be in one way, even
though fundamentally you have to learn to be “a refuge unto yourself.”
This is perhaps the first of the many paradoxes you will encounter
attempting to tread the Buddhist path.
Now
if we consider this problem of security a little further, we soon find
that we do indeed crave for it. The obvious reason is that we feel life
frankly unnerving, in fact, insecure. Here, then, we find straight away two of the three “Marks of Existence”: all things are marked by impermanence and suffering. Because
they—and we—are impermanent, they are frustrating, and cause us all
kinds of anguish. Buddhism offers a way out of this situation by
treading the Noble Eightfold Path. I am assuming that, having “taken the
first step,” you are now familiar with the Four Noble Truths and the
steps of this Path. So I just want to mention a few points which may
arise at this stage. The first step of the path is known as Right
Understanding or Right View. This is seeing things as they are. There
are large areas of experience which we would much rather know nothing
about. This is the origin of repression, to use a Freudian term which is
misleadingly translated. The German for “repression” in the
psychoanalytical sense is Verdrangung, “thrusting away.” It is
really successful self-deception. Getting rid of our repressions is
therefore not doing what we like, as seems to be popularly imagined, but
ceasing to deceive ourselves.
Fundamentally,
Buddhism is just a technique of self-undeception. This is not easy,
though sometimes it may be fun. It needs some study of theory as well as
practice. It is perfectly true that you never gain enlightenment by
intellectual knowledge alone, but if you haven’t studied the theory to
some extent you will almost certainly never be able to start properly on
the practice. Before you can develop your intuition you must know what
it is—or at least what it isn’t—and self-deception in this respect seems
to come terribly easy to many people. Intuition, or as I much prefer to
call it, insight, is not an emotion, but the best way to develop it is
by getting to know one’s emotions as thoroughly as possible. When these
emotions have been really seen for what are, they no longer stand in the
light. Now the biggest emotional blockage we have is that which
surrounds the ego-idea. Since it is to the ultimate elimination of this
idea that the whole Buddhist training is directed, it may be as well to
have a good look at it. In so doing we may get a shock.
By
the ego (or self) in Buddhism we mean of course the concept of “I am,”
though this is much more a feeling than a purely intellectual
concept—which is the very reason why it is so much more difficult to
uproot. From the psychological point of view we must take it to include
not only what, in Freudian terms, is called the ego, but also the id and
even the super-ego. Though not wholly adequate, the Freudian conception
goes a good way toward giving us the basic idea. This ego of ours is a
complex and dynamic set of functions which are not by any means all
conscious or under any form of normal conscious control. Its nature is
in fact blind ignorance and it fights desperately to maintain that
ignorance. It is most important for us to realize from the outset that
this is the case, because this is the root-cause of all our troubles.
The three unhealthy roots of human nature are greed, hatred, and
ignorance, and all our suffering is due to these three. Ignorance is the
most fundamental, and greed and hate spring from it.
Now
the power of ignorance is broken by knowledge, which is seeing
correctly. So all we have to do is to learn to see. A-VID-YA;
“unwitting” or not seeing is no mere passive principle—it is an active
force which opposes discovery of the truth at every turn. No need to
look for an external devil: the Father of Lies is within every one of
us. We all know the story of the Emperor’s new clothes. In Buddhism the
precise opposite of this situation occurs: the clothes go walking in the
procession, but there’s no emperor inside them. The whole show is laid
on for the honour and glory of a character who doesn’t really exist.
Here, then, is our second paradox, and it is certainly no less startling
than the first one: the ego is the most ruthlessly gluttonous
all-devouring monster there is, and yet really all the time there’s no
such thing! All its activities without exception are simply “a tale told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” How can we
solve this riddle? How can we ever come to grasp the nature of
this peculiar monster that “has no mouth and no belly, yet gobbles up
the entire world” (as some old Chinese monk might have said, but
probably didn’t)?
Clearly
there must be a sense in which the self exists and another sense in
which it doesn’t. Let us first of all have a frank look at it in the
sense of something existing. It is not a pretty sight. Underneath all
our lofty ideals, our pious thoughts and holy aspirations, we are all
alike. Our little personal petty self is the really important
thing to us. It is out to grab all it can get, whether in the way of
affection and admiration and sympathy or of more apparently tangible
satisfactions in the way of sex, money, power, nice things to eat and
drink and smell and touch and hear—all sorts of things and it
doesn’t care in the very least how it gets them. We don’t all want—at
least consciously—all of these things perhaps, but we usually want a lot
of credit for not wanting some of them or at least doing without them,
even if by necessity rather than choice. All these are aspects of greed
including the last, which is of course conceit. They are the things the
ego fattens on. Equally impressive and perhaps even more horrifying is
the list of items under the heading of hate; we are all capable in our
minds of murderous rage, sadism, treachery, and disloyalty of every
conceivable kind. Until we have found and identified the seeds of all these things in our own hearts, we cannot claim to have made much progress in self-knowledge.
Of
course most of us will never yield to such impulses, which may only be
very faint; but until a higher stage of development has been reached
they will not be totally eliminated as tendencies. The most likely way
in which they may find some outward expression will be, perhaps, in the
form of over-emotive indignation at the acts of hate committed by
somebody else.
What
can we do about this situation? First, face it. Second, penetrate to
its roots. Buddhism is not something airy-fairy or romantic, it is practical. It is first and last something to do.
To penetrate to the roots of greed, hatred, and delusion is not very
easy and it requires certain methods or techniques. But the great thing
is to keep going and not be diverted by irrelevancies, interesting
by-paths, plausible excuses or pseudo-mystical fantasies, born of
conceit and ignorance. A certain discipline is required, in fact. This
can be summed up in one word—restraint. Restraint is not repression. In
its simplest form it can be something as apparently “easy” as sitting
still. It is just not automatically yielding to every impulse that
arises while not, on the other hand, pretending that that impulse does
not exist. A good part of Buddhism, in modern terms, is
“sales-resistance”: cultivating at least a degree of immunity to the
appeals of the outside world which are today constantly attempting,
quite deliberately and purposefully, to arouse new desires within us. It
is being deaf to the blandishments of the hidden persuaders whether
from within or without, or better perhaps, hearing them without
reacting. Who is the rich man who, like the camel, cannot pass through
the eye of the needle? He is not only the millionaire, the
expense-account johnnie, the take-over charlie: he is anybody who has
too many mental encumbrances, too many wants.
Here
then is an exercise: sit down with a straight back for ten minutes
resolved not to make a single voluntary bodily movement during that
time, and just observe what happens. You may get some surprises,
but whatever happens you are bound to learn something. If you find, as
will probably be the case, that a lot of thoughts and mental images
arise, try to discover where they come from, to catch them at the very
moment of arising. You won’t succeed easily, but you will begin to see
something of the mechanism of desires and emotions, and this is
immensely valuable. Perhaps the most widespread meditational practice in
all schools of Buddhism is ānāpānasati or mindfulness of
breathing. Just watch the ebb and flow of your breath without
interfering and, as far as you can manage, with undivided attention.
This is the surest way to achieve calm, concentration, self-knowledge,
and insight.
There
is no Buddhism worthy of the name without practice, but study is also
required. This is especially so in the West, where we have not the
background of Buddhist thought which exists in Eastern countries. We
have to learn as adults what Eastern people have absorbed from
childhood. The study of Buddhist theory should therefore not be
neglected. Those who deny its necessity do so usually out of conceit,
laziness, or ignorance—or a combination of all three.
The
obvious problem which arises here is: “Where shall I start?” There are
many schools of Buddhism and their scriptures, even those readily
available in English, are voluminous. There is Theravada and Mahāyāna,
in the form of Zen, Tibetan Buddhism and several other varieties. There
are numerous books about most of them. Unguided and indiscriminate
reading will only lead to mental indigestion. The obvious thing is to
get down to basics. If we ask where these basic principles are set out,
the answer is in the Pali Canon of the Theravada school. In fact, the
seeds of all later, so-called Mahāyāna developments are there in this
basic Buddhism.
The
only reason why some people find Theravada Buddhism apparently
unsatisfying is its seemingly negative approach. In the Mahāyāna schools
there is greater explicit stress on two things: compassion and the
higher wisdom. But we need not worry. Compassion grows inevitably as one
trains oneself in Buddhism, and the higher wisdom cannot be gained
until the lower wisdom has been developed. It is to this task that the
basic training is directed. Before we can begin to grasp the nature of
Reality, which is transcendental, we must first grasp the nature of the
mundane, the phenomenal world as our senses present it to us. This
basically means knowing ourselves. Knowing ourselves means facing our
own insecurity. Recognizing the equal insecurity of others is
compassion.
Why
do we feel so insecure? If we can answer this question, we are on the
right track. It is due to our recognition that all things are transient.
We seek to achieve a stability in the world which, by the very nature
of things, cannot be. But Buddhism teaches us more than this: all things
are not only transient, they are “empty.” This applies to our precious
selves as much as to anything else. Man, said the Buddha, is a mere
compound of five things, the five khandhas or aggregates. He has a
physical body, feelings, perceptions, emotional reactions, and
consciousness. None of these constitutes any sort of a “self” which is
permanent and unchanging, nor is there any such thing outside of them.
His consciousness is just a series of states of awareness, conditioned
by the other factors, reaching back into a limitless past. All we are
actually aware of is the present moment, or rather consciousness is just that awareness. There is no separate entity behind it which is aware.
In the jargon of some modern philosophers, everything about man is
contingent or adjectival, not substantival. The further implications of
this must be left for study and meditation, but this is a fundamental
principle of all Buddhism. The search for a “self” behind all this is
futile. If you don’t believe this you can try to take up the Buddha’s
challenge and find it.
There
may well be a strong feeling of resistance to the acceptance of this
point. If so, this feeling itself should be very carefully examined. It
is the basis of our habitual ego-reactions. We want so badly to
have a “self” and we expend a vast amount of energy in trying to build
one up and support it in every way we can think of. That, fundamentally,
is why we feel insecure in the world. One could usefully devote a good
deal of time meditating on this point alone.
The
most notable contribution made to psychology by Alfred Adler was his
analysis of the inferiority complex. People who, for one reason or
another, feel inferior, says Adler, tend to over-compensate and present
an appearance of conceit and aggressiveness. Since Adler’s psychology is
very much one of social adaptation at not, perhaps, a very profound
level, he did not pursue this idea as far as he might have done. But as
far as it goes it is quite good Buddhism, though we might prefer to
rename his complex the “insecurity complex.” We might even go so far as
to say that for the Buddhist everybody’s ego practically consists of an
inferiority or insecurity complex, for such an assumption certainly
explains a great deal. Every form of ostentation we may indulge in is a
way of bolstering up the ego, whether in cruder or subtle form. The
large car which seems designed as wide as possible is as much an example
of ego-boosting as the padded shoulders worn by the tough: indeed the
resemblance is sometimes striking. Of course the compensation for
insecurity may take a reverse form of exaggerated modesty and simpering
sweetness, or of unnecessary and slightly ostentatious self-sacrifice.
This latter is a form of compensation we may choose when all else fails,
and it has the advantage of making us feel very holy. Martyrdom is in
fact the last consolation of a disappointed ego. And the hallmark of a
person who has really gone far in the conquest of self is genuine
unobtrusiveness.
The
formula of Dependent Origination shows by selecting twelve prominent
factors how it is that we go round and round the weary circle of
rebirths, and how karma operates. It is not a simple formula of
“causation” but rather of conditioning. Ignorance (avijjā) is a
necessary condition for our being here—hence if we were not ignorant we
would not have been reborn. And birth is a necessary condition for
death—if we had never been born we could not die. Thus, too, feeling
based on sense-impression is a necessary condition for the arising of
craving: if there were no such feeling there would be no craving. But we
can stop the craving from arising or at least prevent its developing
into grasping. This is the point at which karma comes into play.
Karma is volitional activity born of desire, and as such produces
pleasant or unpleasant results in the future. Whatever condition of body
and mind we happen to be in now is due to our past karma; it is vipāka or karma-resultant. In accordance with the vipāka
we are liable to act in the future, but if we have understanding we can
control our future actions, and thus their future effects.
The
aim of Buddhist training, of whatever school, is to break away from the
cycle of becoming. This means somehow attaining the Transcendental
Reality which is not karma-bound and therefore permanent, secure, and
free from suffering. We do not, as unenlightened individuals, know what
this is: at best we have a vague intuition of something wholly other.
Its true nature is hidden from us by the veils of our ignorance. The
state of enlightenment is called Nirvana (Nibbāna in Pali), which is, be it noted, selfless (anattā).
This means that we cannot grasp it as long as the self-concept (or
feeling) is operative. It is beyond the realm of duality, which is that
of subject and object, or self and other-than-self.
Probably
most people have at times had a feeling while in the normal sense “wide
awake” as if really they were dreaming and would soon wake up. This is
actually quite true as far as the first part is concerned. Life, as we
know it, is in one sense a dream. The Buddha was the Awakened One, and
our normal state is perhaps somewhere about half-way between ordinary
sleep and true enlightenment, or wakefulness. We can therefore usefully
regard the Buddhist training, if we like, as a way of making ourselves
wake up.
Sometimes
in sleep we become aware of being asleep and want to wake up.
Eventually we succeed, but it is often a struggle. The struggle to wake
up to enlightenment is far greater than this, because the resistance is
stronger. The resistance is stronger for a very simple reason: to the
ego it seems like death. This is fair enough, since in fact it is
the death of ego. And since we have no real experience of the egoless
state, it is unimaginable and therefore we are sceptical about it, but
this scepticism too really springs from fear. We should have to give up
all our attachments to attain it, and that is too high a price to pay.
We are like the rich young man to whom Christ said “Sell all that thou
hast and give it to the poor.” He went sorrowfully away.
What
then must we do, now that we have taken the first step and embarked on
the course of Buddhism? We need to have a chart and compass to help us
on our way. But first we have to know where we are supposed to be going.
The goal of Buddhism is Enlightenment or Awakening or Nirvana, the
Deathless State, which is the end of all suffering and frustration, the
one permanent and supremely desirable thing. Buddhism claims to be a way
of attaining this. There are five factors to be developed which, if
they are predominant in our minds, will tend increasingly to bring us to
the goal. They are Faith, Energy, Mindfulness, Concentration, and
Wisdom. The first of these may come as a surprise to some people. “I
thought,” they may say, “you didn’t have to have faith in
Buddhism.” In fact faith is an important factor to develop. We can call
it confidence or trust if we prefer it. But unless we have some
confidence that there is such a goal as Nirvana, we shall not even start
taking Buddhism seriously at all, and we need also to trust the Buddha
as the teacher who has shown the way to reach that goal. At the very
least we need to be free from the sort of nihilistic scepticism which is
so common today and which prevents us from believing wholeheartedly in anything
worthwhile. When we say “I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and
the Sangha” we are expressing faith in the Teaching and the Order of
monks who have preserved it and handed it on.
If
we have faith we next need to put forth effort, so we need energy.
Right Effort is a step of the Eightfold Path. It means getting rid of
wrong states of mind and developing right ones. Clearly a certain amount
of vigour is required to do this, and faith will strengthen our will to
persevere. Clearing up our mental muddle calls for increased
self-knowledge, and this is gained by Mindfulness. Mindfulness is being
aware of one’s own nature and observing one’s own reactions, being fully
cognizant of what one is about all the time. It is developed by
training, such exercises as mindfulness on breathing and on walking
being especially beneficial. With full mindfulness, self-deception
becomes impossible. It is the way of uncovering the subterfuges of the
ego. The Buddha described it as “the one and only way” to the liberation
of beings. It is an absolutely indispensable factor in all Buddhist
training. Being mindful one is, too, in some degree automatically
concentrated, but the practice of mental concentration can be carried
further, to samādhi, which is mental one-pointedness. By a
combination of these two factors, the mind can be sharpened to an
instrument capable of cutting through the veils of ego-created illusion.
The last of the five factors is Wisdom. Wisdom in this connection means
discernment. It includes investigation of all mental phenomena to their
essence, which is voidness. When this lower, still mundane wisdom has
been sufficiently developed, a basis has been created for the arising of
the higher Insight-Wisdom, the perfection of which is Enlightenment.
When this has been attained, the job is done.
But
these factors must be developed in such a manner that they are properly
balanced. Faith must be balanced with Wisdom, and Energy with
Concentration. Faith without Wisdom can overreach itself and turn into
that kind of blind faith which Buddhism does not encourage. On the other
hand, Wisdom without Faith is sterile. Energy unaccompanied by
Concentration can easily lead to restlessness, while Concentration
without sufficient Energy leads to sloth. It is the function of
Mindfulness, by watching over the other factors, to see that the proper
balance between them is maintained. These five factors are called indriyas
or “ruling factors.” This means that they can and should dominate the
mind and give it direction. They are the five guides to keep us on the
way. Having taken the first step, and with these as guides, but
especially under the leadership of Mindfulness, let us walk on.
Source: BPS, Kandy. Wheel 294 (excerpt). For Free Distribution Only.
