One of the thorniest issues we face on a spiritual path is the question of how we can know with any certainty that this is a path that leads somewhere worth the journey. Are we not perhaps deluding ourselves into thinking we are moving forward when, at best, we are staying in one place or, at worst, backsliding into some sort of spiritual slough? How are we to know? Teachers can, of course, be extremely helpful, but here we tend to get
hung up in concepts of status, hierarchy and complexity, assuming that
the person with the PhD or the lengthy C.V. or the complicated ritual has more to offer than the
simple, quiet, uneducated person. In this country, we see status
conferred upon the spiritual teacher if he or she has
been a monk, with bonus points given for being a monk in an Asian
country, all of this despite the fact that the Buddha never left a relatively small area near his home. How are we to know the true teacher and the true teachings?
In attempting to answer these questions we often seek out the hierarchy of power, seek to know who and what is preeminent in any aspect of spirituality, what is the rightest or truest. In the early stages of the evolution of our species, understanding and respecting the hierarchy of biological systems was essential to our survival; if we did not respect the gradations of power, we would not survive. Hierarchy is also present in many forms of learning; we must understand addition and subtraction before we can comprehend multiplication and division. If we were learning mathematics or geology or astronomy a certain level of knowledge is necessary before one can penetrate the higher levels of knowledge. But is this useful for spiritual pursuits? Or is this way of looking at things in fact antithetical to the path of awakening? It's common to get stuck in the phase of accumulation of knowledge and believe that the finger pointing to the moon is actually the moon, that the teachings are the way to enlightenment and that if we become more and more knowledgeable and erudite we are getting closer and closer to that state of being. This causes us to fall into the same sort of status fallacy that often traps us. If we come to expect some form of status to be conferred upon us, some signpost to say we have achieved adequate understanding and are qualified to move on to the next level of knowledge, we will inevitably be deeply disappointed. If we come to believe that all of this accumulated learning and experience will somehow lead us inevitably to a state of awakening, this only reinforces the idea that we are all separate egos struggling toward an individual goal, the belief that if we place ourselves on a path and walk it we will inevitably reach our destination, will achieve Nirvana. This way of thinking also implies that I can see your status compared to mine and judge you as being further along or somewhat behind me. Status and complexity give us comfort, but freedom is found in devolving, in narrowing down to simplicity rather than evolving into complexity and self-importance.
Just as in every cell contains the DNA not just of that individual cell but of the entire organism, every moment, every breath, every action contains the seed of our awakening. We do not have to look for elaborate rituals or ornate teachings to show us the way; we can look within and find everything we require quite literally at our fingertips. The miracle of DNA is that it is not only a blueprint for the entire organism, but is also the end result of millions of years of evolution that led to this state of being and as such is a record of every step along the way. Just so, in every millisecond are the seeds of awakening awaiting our discovery and each contains the wisdom of millenia. Yet we also know that it is easy to become misled and complacent, to think we have achieved something and then to come to understand that we have simply been deluded by our deep need to have it be so.
What is the true essence of liberation? Where is it to be found? How do we know it when we see it? If we trust our own hearts to tell us, how can we keep from being deceived? Believing with all our hearts that we are right doesn't make it so. Hitler believed he was doing the right thing, the Crusaders truly believed that killing the heathen Muslim was a service to God. We know just as surely they were wrong, but are our convictions any more infallable than theirs? How, then, are we to know? By the time we come to seek spiritual understanding, we have already layered over our innate understanding with so much accreted assumption and fear that we do not have the objectivity to see what is real and what is false. We must somehow chip away at these layers of psuedo-understanding and hierachy and control in order to get at the simplicity that lies at the core of our awakening. All the stories we hear about people listening to the teachings of the Buddha and becoming suddenly enlightened are not so much about the Buddha's direct influence as they are about each individual realizing in him or herself that the seeds of awakening were always there. The Buddha was just the best of all possible teachers in creating the causes and conditions for this awakening.
So we are on the path of refining our judgment to the point where we can finally perceive what is and is not true. But how can we be certain that any assumption we make that we are perceiving rightly is not another manifestation of our egoistic need to be right rather than true wisdom? One sure method is to resort to the four noble truths and measure any understanding by the degree to which it tends away from or toward suffering and to always choose the path that leads to less suffering for all beings, not just ourselves. But we must be cautious here, as well; inherent in the path is the fact that self-discovery can be intensely painful. Causing such pain to ourselves is essential to awakening; the way out of suffering involves suffering. Avoiding all suffering is mere hedonism, which we know cannot lead to awakening. This is the way of comfort and safety rather than courage and risk. When we are sitting on the meditation cushion it often happens that a thought or feeling will arise that we would really rather not have to experience, yet there we are, we have made a commitment to sit here through thick and thin until the bell rings. The perception may cause us great discomfort but the skillful response is to do nothing. This can feel like great suffering, yet we know it actually leads to the end of suffering. By allowing such experiences to arise and pass away we negate the power of such perceptions to harm us.
The only way to find the answers we seek is by availing ourselves of faith, trust, hope, courage, vision and commitment. As far as I can tell, there is no other way. We must have faith not only in others and the instruction of the Buddha and those who came after him, but in ourselves, that we have an innate capacity for knowing that can always be more finely developed. We must trust that there are those who have answers, who can steer us on our path. While it is true that our path is purely individual and there is no map that works for everyone, if we trust we can look to those who have gone before us to show where we may be misguided. We must have hope that awakening is available to us in this very life and that even if we do not find it here, the closer we get to it the more free we are. We must have the courage to face those things we would rather not face, to walk through pain without flinching on the road to finding true freedom. We must have vision in the prosaic sense of a clear seeing. Much of the work we do in meditation is the progressive clarification of our ability to see clearly, the cleansing of the lenses through which we view things, lenses sullied by decades and lifetimes of assumptions, prejudices and fears. We accrue these not only through our own experiences but are given them by those who teach us: our parents and siblings and friends and children and teachers and lovers. We must have commitment to carry on when we question whether or not we are making any progress. We must come to know that the looking itself is the goal; the destination we may perceive as the ultimate place of arrival is a mere chimera.
Above all, we must realize the many paradoxes of the spiritual quest, primary among them that while we must seek to learn, we are not building one piece of knowledge on top of another, not building an edifice of greater and greater complexity. Rather, we are seeking knowledge that drives out knowing and leads to simplicity and a true knowing that is of the heart and not the head.
In attempting to answer these questions we often seek out the hierarchy of power, seek to know who and what is preeminent in any aspect of spirituality, what is the rightest or truest. In the early stages of the evolution of our species, understanding and respecting the hierarchy of biological systems was essential to our survival; if we did not respect the gradations of power, we would not survive. Hierarchy is also present in many forms of learning; we must understand addition and subtraction before we can comprehend multiplication and division. If we were learning mathematics or geology or astronomy a certain level of knowledge is necessary before one can penetrate the higher levels of knowledge. But is this useful for spiritual pursuits? Or is this way of looking at things in fact antithetical to the path of awakening? It's common to get stuck in the phase of accumulation of knowledge and believe that the finger pointing to the moon is actually the moon, that the teachings are the way to enlightenment and that if we become more and more knowledgeable and erudite we are getting closer and closer to that state of being. This causes us to fall into the same sort of status fallacy that often traps us. If we come to expect some form of status to be conferred upon us, some signpost to say we have achieved adequate understanding and are qualified to move on to the next level of knowledge, we will inevitably be deeply disappointed. If we come to believe that all of this accumulated learning and experience will somehow lead us inevitably to a state of awakening, this only reinforces the idea that we are all separate egos struggling toward an individual goal, the belief that if we place ourselves on a path and walk it we will inevitably reach our destination, will achieve Nirvana. This way of thinking also implies that I can see your status compared to mine and judge you as being further along or somewhat behind me. Status and complexity give us comfort, but freedom is found in devolving, in narrowing down to simplicity rather than evolving into complexity and self-importance.
Just as in every cell contains the DNA not just of that individual cell but of the entire organism, every moment, every breath, every action contains the seed of our awakening. We do not have to look for elaborate rituals or ornate teachings to show us the way; we can look within and find everything we require quite literally at our fingertips. The miracle of DNA is that it is not only a blueprint for the entire organism, but is also the end result of millions of years of evolution that led to this state of being and as such is a record of every step along the way. Just so, in every millisecond are the seeds of awakening awaiting our discovery and each contains the wisdom of millenia. Yet we also know that it is easy to become misled and complacent, to think we have achieved something and then to come to understand that we have simply been deluded by our deep need to have it be so.
What is the true essence of liberation? Where is it to be found? How do we know it when we see it? If we trust our own hearts to tell us, how can we keep from being deceived? Believing with all our hearts that we are right doesn't make it so. Hitler believed he was doing the right thing, the Crusaders truly believed that killing the heathen Muslim was a service to God. We know just as surely they were wrong, but are our convictions any more infallable than theirs? How, then, are we to know? By the time we come to seek spiritual understanding, we have already layered over our innate understanding with so much accreted assumption and fear that we do not have the objectivity to see what is real and what is false. We must somehow chip away at these layers of psuedo-understanding and hierachy and control in order to get at the simplicity that lies at the core of our awakening. All the stories we hear about people listening to the teachings of the Buddha and becoming suddenly enlightened are not so much about the Buddha's direct influence as they are about each individual realizing in him or herself that the seeds of awakening were always there. The Buddha was just the best of all possible teachers in creating the causes and conditions for this awakening.
So we are on the path of refining our judgment to the point where we can finally perceive what is and is not true. But how can we be certain that any assumption we make that we are perceiving rightly is not another manifestation of our egoistic need to be right rather than true wisdom? One sure method is to resort to the four noble truths and measure any understanding by the degree to which it tends away from or toward suffering and to always choose the path that leads to less suffering for all beings, not just ourselves. But we must be cautious here, as well; inherent in the path is the fact that self-discovery can be intensely painful. Causing such pain to ourselves is essential to awakening; the way out of suffering involves suffering. Avoiding all suffering is mere hedonism, which we know cannot lead to awakening. This is the way of comfort and safety rather than courage and risk. When we are sitting on the meditation cushion it often happens that a thought or feeling will arise that we would really rather not have to experience, yet there we are, we have made a commitment to sit here through thick and thin until the bell rings. The perception may cause us great discomfort but the skillful response is to do nothing. This can feel like great suffering, yet we know it actually leads to the end of suffering. By allowing such experiences to arise and pass away we negate the power of such perceptions to harm us.
The only way to find the answers we seek is by availing ourselves of faith, trust, hope, courage, vision and commitment. As far as I can tell, there is no other way. We must have faith not only in others and the instruction of the Buddha and those who came after him, but in ourselves, that we have an innate capacity for knowing that can always be more finely developed. We must trust that there are those who have answers, who can steer us on our path. While it is true that our path is purely individual and there is no map that works for everyone, if we trust we can look to those who have gone before us to show where we may be misguided. We must have hope that awakening is available to us in this very life and that even if we do not find it here, the closer we get to it the more free we are. We must have the courage to face those things we would rather not face, to walk through pain without flinching on the road to finding true freedom. We must have vision in the prosaic sense of a clear seeing. Much of the work we do in meditation is the progressive clarification of our ability to see clearly, the cleansing of the lenses through which we view things, lenses sullied by decades and lifetimes of assumptions, prejudices and fears. We accrue these not only through our own experiences but are given them by those who teach us: our parents and siblings and friends and children and teachers and lovers. We must have commitment to carry on when we question whether or not we are making any progress. We must come to know that the looking itself is the goal; the destination we may perceive as the ultimate place of arrival is a mere chimera.
Above all, we must realize the many paradoxes of the spiritual quest, primary among them that while we must seek to learn, we are not building one piece of knowledge on top of another, not building an edifice of greater and greater complexity. Rather, we are seeking knowledge that drives out knowing and leads to simplicity and a true knowing that is of the heart and not the head.
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