animitta

"without a mysterious cause"

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diṭṭhi

Views (diṭṭhi, fixed ideas, absolutes, ideals) are one of the two categories of mental events that must be clearly understood & seen, if liberation is to be achieved through Gotama’s teaching. The other is kama, sense pleasure. Both of these create delusion, obscuring the true nature of human experience, contributing to a false understanding of the self (as a separate, independent, solid thing, rather than a process dependent on many other processes). They create stress & suffering (dukkha) because they are impermanent, teasing some true mental satisfaction without providing it.

This is not to suggest that all experiences of thought are categorically bad. Ideas can be useful, as tools. Clinging to them, allowing them to become rigid, & believing them to be “true” is some ultimate, Platonic sense—in all times & under all circumstances—that is what causes dukkha. “Right (correct) view” in Gotama’s teaching is to see all human experience arising dependent on specific conditions.

dependent arising • dukkha • kama

dukkha

Dukkha is the feeling-thought of stress, suffering & dissatisfaction caused by our nature, as conditioned by evolution, to feel that things are never what they “should be.” Beneath it all lies our continuous, usually unconscious fear about our mortality, both as individuals, & through loss of all we care for. The Pāli word dukkha is usually translated as “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness.” These are accurate as far as they go, but the concept is much more far-reaching & fundamental than any single word can express. Along with anicca, impermanence, & anattā, not-self, dukkha is one of three characteristics of human experience. Experience is made up of a stream of constantly changing events in the mind; we have the illusion of a solid, separate self among this flow; this illusion arose because having it increases the likelihood we will survive & pass on our DNA. The painful friction between the illusion of a solid self & the reality of impermanence, especially death, creates the third characteristic of experience: pain & suffering: dukkha. The process of the three characteristics is observable with a mind trained by meditation; the goal of Gotama’s training is to eliminate dukkha by dissolving its origin through clearly seeing mental processes. This complex process is detailed by Gotama as dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda). All of Gotama’s teachings can be understood through their relationship to understanding & eliminating dukkha. 1

dependent arising • impermanence • not self • terror management • three characteristics

  1. pubbe cahaṃ bhikkhave
    etarahi ca dukkhañceva
    paññapemi dukkhassa ca nirodhaṃ

ethics

Ethics in Gotama’s teachings is one of several techniques used to eliminate dukkha. There are no absolutes or ideals, as in most traditional religions, only ever-deepening understanding of the nature of experience. Evolution uses emotion to steer behaviors that increase the survival of others who carry some of an individual’s genes1. It does this by causing us to feel unpleasant feelings when we do certain actions (killing, lying, stealing, e.g.); these actions create stress & suffering. Ethics provides training rules, behaviors that teach by creating an undistracted feeling-experience2, creating the felt sense of an experience without the dukkha we create when we act against our moral instincts. This idea is captured in the phrase, “Do the right thing.” We know instinctively what this means. Acting ethically can be self-reinforcing, creating wholesome habits, thus having a positive effect on kamma: Ethical behavior creates conditions, through our influences on others, that last through time, as tendencies or habits. This affects particular “selves” in the future.

dependent arising • dukkha • kamma • nibbāna • practice • sīla • terror management

  1. Not all behaviors, of course, are unselfish; quite the contrary. Nevertheless, what ethical instincts we do have arose through encouraging unselfish behavior toward others, originally in kin groups, that is, those who share some of our DNA. Ethics in cultures & religions emerged from this. See Robert Wright, The Moral Animal. ↩
  2. Guideline for ethical behavior in Gotama’s teachings are largely contained in the ennobling eightfold path. See also the topic “practice.” ↩

evolution

Dukkha came to exist through the process of evolution, since dissatisfaction & suffering of various kinds provide motivations for beings to act in ways that lead to increased probability of survival of the species. To put it another way, the human existential problem arises through evolution, which created increasingly intelligent beings until eventually individuals could imagine the future & recognize their own mortality. Thus, when Gotama says “All life is dukkha” in the first ennobling truth of his teachings, he is describing this reality in a way even someone who doesn’t know about evolution can understand. Other aspects of the teachings inherently recognize other products of evolution, such as feelings that encourage certain behaviors toward others who carry similar genes (see ethics), & tendencies toward unwholesome habits (see sense pleasure, views). Through evolution, bodily sensations (vedanā) enforce habits, or unconscious programming—our underlying tendencies. This is a key mechanism of what Gotama would call kamma. Escaping these automatic reactions is one of the major tasks of liberation from dukkha. Evolution is important to my understanding of Gotama’s teaching because it harmonizes with the idea that nothing mysterious or outside of nature is required to understand the origin & escape from dukkha. While describing the origin of the human problem in scientific terms was not important in Gotama’s time, the development of sophisticated science & technology now requires it, if only to prevent Gotama’s teaching from being rejected as superstition & empty ritual.

dukkha • ethics • habits • hedonic • sense pleasure • vedana

faith

Although some translate the Pāli word saddhā as “faith,” in my understanding the baggage this word carries from Christian & other Abrahamic cultures makes that misleading. Gotama simply does not ask those who undertake his teachings for “faith” in the sense of belief in something that cannot be confirmed by evidence. He asks only for trust in the teachings; he says “ehipassiko,” which means “come & see.” The clear implication of all his teachings is that you can & should—in fact, must, to make progress—verify the teachings for yourself at each stage of developing understanding. Indeed, that development simply won’t work if you don’t approach it that way. For this reason, the world “trust” seems a much better translation of saddhā. Gotama plainly states that he is not a god; he rejects the use of miracles as proofs; he asks for the trust one gives to an experienced teacher, not the unquestioning blind belief in a deity.

fear

Fear is how knowledge of mortality makes itself felt in human experience. It arises as an aspect of evolution, since beings with no fear do not survive. Once beings with intelligence, memory, & so on arise, fear attaches to thoughts about the future & attachment to the body. The terror management matrix of self identity (e.g., “my male culture,” tribe) attempts to control this existential fear. In fact fear is merely pushed into the subconscious; it reappears as anxiety, anger, & other forms of aversion. As long as we believe that the object of the fear—death—cannot be dealt with in the long run, we cling to some terror-management matrix: the existence of a self, which has the flavor of an immortal meaning; the culture that supports that belief; & running battles against anything that threatens the matrix of beliefs (tribes, other groups, ideas, material belongings). Gotama’s teachings can train us to experience life without clinging to the traditional matrix of self & culture, including its newest forms, such as scientific materialism, without giving up common sense. Fear has a common-sense role—just as the ability to feel pain prevents us from burning ourselves without knowing it. Fear can perform its role of preserving the body without creating an experience of existential dread. The gnawing sub-conscious sensations that well up when we cannot see what’s going on in the moment—dukkha—can cease.

dukkha • impermanence • sacred • terror management