Usually translated “ignorance,” avijjā refers to strong habits that literally prevent us from seeing clearly the true nature of human experience. That is, being caught up in clinging to painful ways of experiencing the world, chasing shallow forms of happiness that do not last, being constantly dissatisfied with life because of this. It is an unconscious habit of not clearly seeing habits, if you will. It is like “The Matrix,” a persistent delusion hiding what’s really going on. Unless we train ourselves to see clearly, ignorance masks how we experience the world. Evolution leads to this design because whatever habits produce more beings (with particular DNA) are the ones that are preserved through time; your happiness as an individual matters only as part of that mindless process. This is why dukkha, “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness,” is normally a basic characteristic of our experience. Ajahn Sucitto’s translation of avijjā, in Kama and the End of Kamma, is “loss of stable awareness,” which highlights this lack of clear seeing. Rather than something solid, to which the world happens, each of us is a small, intricate whirlpool of change within the rolling ocean of the world. Seeing how this works gives us the power to end dukkha, stress & suffering.
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communications
In the context of the animitta.org project, this means the methods by which Gotama’s teachings are transmitted, whether directly by teachers, through written texts, or mediated by other technologies, especially the internet.
In Gotama’s time, teaches’ roles were direct: ideas were passed on by word of mouth, from memory, & by direct example. Seeing a teacher in person allows you to observe their psychological affect, equanimity & moral behavior. The internet provides recordings of teachers, live conversations as well as written materials. All these abilities create new possible structures for the sangha. Over time, religious hierarchies grow rigid orthodoxies, corruption, & tend toward cynical uses by politicians. It seems wise to use technology to encourage a diverse, distributed sangha, retaining only small-village-sized groups of geographically close members who can provide direct support to each other. This does not need to exclude small groups of those who can’t find like-minded people near them, of course. There is also a role for people to curate information available online, but this same issue exists across all topics. It is notable that Gotama told his monks to use the local language of those to whom they were speaking. When he was encouraged to formalize his teachings in a single sacred language (Sanskrit), he refused.
culture
In the context of animitta.org, “culture” refers to its role in kamma, that is, the process by which the moral & psychological effects of our actions spread among people: as individuals, both horizontally (in the present) & vertically (through time, into the future). This is linked to how these actions become shared habits. Cultures provide behaviors & words (language being a form of behavior) through which we learn the habitual ways of reacting to experience used by parents, peers, & society. These are ideas like religions, ethnic beliefs (those that are not religions, as such), political & economic ideas (democracy, free markets, forms of government), roles of institutions (e.g., media). This network of habits reinforces mistaken understandings of what “I” am, what “we” are, & so on. Together they reinforce the illusion of reality from which we must wake up. Terror management psychology is a deeply rooted energy that drives much of the creation of culture, since terror management relies on the largest possible group of people who share a psychological strategy for managing their fear of death, and the cognitive dissonance these cultural beliefs create.
death
Knowledge of our mortality drives human experience. Growing up, we steadily recognize our fear, & usually push it into our unconscious minds. Cultures arise as ways to soothe this fear: ideas about immortality, beliefs ranging from rebirth to heaven to uploading consciousness into a cyber cloud. Gotama realized this underlying fear as part of dukkha. Our refusal to deal with it, he said, is like ignoring four mountains, rushing toward you from all sides. His training aims to change how we understand & experience what we are—the true nature of the self—as an antidote to this fear; that changes the very nature of “birth” & “death” at the core of our illusions about what’s really going on. Looking honestly at how our fear of death affects us can be strong motivation for practicing Gotama’s teachings.
culture • fear • terror management • notSelf
dependent arising
To free us from stress & suffering, Gotama teaches us to see the world as the experience of our senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, & thinking (mind is a sense, just as sight is). We can see all this continuously arising & passing away. No sight, sound, or touch is a solid self—who or what we are; there is only this continuous process, not a someone doing something. He calls this understanding of experience “dependent arising” (paṭiccasamuppāda). Craving, taṅhā, or wanting something to be different (more pleasant, less painful) becomes the key point where the well-trained mind can interrupt the arising of the process of dukkha, through mindfulness. By seeing directly (through training in meditation) how experience arises, we see how suffering & stress arise; we can let go of mental activities that cause suffering, dukkha, when they are still sparks, rather than allowing them to burst into flames. Dependent arising, clearly seen, embraces the whole of Gotama’s teaching.1 The sensation of a solid self is seen as an illusion arising dependent on conditions, including habits of mind. We grasp after forms, sensations, perceptions, habits of reacting to what we see, hear & think. This is our painful untrained way of experiencing the world, but we can change it.
- See the touchstone teaching, “I teaching only suffering & the end of suffering,” pubbe cāhaṃ, bhikkhave… ↩
dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort of holding two or more beliefs that conflict with each other. It appears notably in trying to hold to traditional belief systems in the face of the fear of death (see terror management). More recent rationalizations, such as scientific materialism and humanism, also create dissonance when used in management of existential terror. Terror management that relies on irrational beliefs—needing to believe the unbelievable—requires psychological support from the largest possible group of other people. Cognitive dissonance may have undermined faith irreparably.1 For all these reasons, cognitive dissonance is a major source of dukkha, stress & suffering. It contributes to ignorance (avijjā, subconsciousless willful ignorance of the real nature of human experience), since without training we fall back on habits of distracting ourselves with sense pleasure, & craving for views (sets of ideas; diṭṭhi-taṇhā). By reinforcing unwholesome habits of thought, cognitive dissonance plays a key role in kamma, influencing future behavior. While Gotama does not teach cognitive dissonance under such a term, it is seen in his teachings about not clinging to views.2
avijjā • culture • dukkha • kamma • religion • sci-tech-mat • sacred • terror management
- See Festinger, et. al, & Becker, Escape from Evil, & Gray, Straw Dogs ↩
- See the Brahmajāla Sutta, for instance. Here is the Brahmajala Sutta at Sutta Central.