20241101 - 19:55
Continuing where we left off in the question raised but left unanswered: what is this path? “Liberation from suffering”: sure, more words on a screen, a bold and grandiose claim from someone who seemingly can’t cope with the utter normality of everyday life. The words are just the same as when I heard them 4 years ago, so how could they hope to convey the difference? Evidently everything is circumscribing a recent shift in values. Something happened, and yet it completely lacked any characteristic of ‘an experience’, and certainly didn’t bring about any ‘improvement’ in life-quality, neither mundane nor supra-. The outset is undeniable: she left. Yet far be it from having anything to do with her, or her absence, it simply marked the last place wherein I could hide. But what am (was?) I hiding from? What changed? What is this path? Self-honesty. How long have I claimed myself to walk the Buddha’s path? How long have I (even implicitly) held the belief of knowing? How long have I held the attitude of compromise? How long have I been dishonest enough to believe my own lies?
Meditation, mindfulness, concentration, yoga, self-care, ‘letting go’. To what end? To live a better life, to be sure. To attain happiness in the form of subtler, more prolonged, more stable, pleasure. Resting on the belief that ‘internal’ sensations are pure, that states conditioned only by ‘internal’ effort are free from clinging, free from suffering, such an approach justifies itself on the shoulders of the Buddha-dhamma. But the main point here is just this: justifies. Because it always needs to. Only when we are dishonest can we lie to ourselves and believe it. And dishonesty is active. These practices cover up precisely that which we do not want to admit. There is pressure, and we avoid it. There is suffering, and we are liable to it. The ease of slipping up into coarser ways of indulging through food, drugs, sex, and entertainment only goes to show the fact that we are still operating on the same level. The horror and rejection of someone even suggesting that the path lies in the direction of such a renunciation should be enough to confirm its truth. Things we take for granted, we are attached to, we cannot be without. The addict’s mantra, all to often scoffed at, “I can stop if I want to”, might be taken with a bit more empathic eyes.
Assumptions are adhered to because of the comfort that they bring. We do not know what we do not know, and the biggest obstacle to any progress is thinking that we know what we, in fact, do not. The first attainment of “Stream-entry”, sotapanna, is in fact only the understanding of what Dhamma is, what the path is, and how to go about walking it. With Sotapanna, Dhamma begins. And yet, to the normal person, Sotapanna is effectively enlightened. Comparing the burden, suffering, the difference is “7 grains of sand compared to the weight of the Himalayas”, as the Buddha puts it. Until then, we do not know. Not what suffering is, nor the way out of suffering. Our measurement of suffering is itself wrong, and so all actions that are taken to “rid ourselves of suffering” miss the mark. What they instead do is target that which is all we know: pleasure and pain. And so, although with newfound confidence and in slightly subtler ways, again we are in the process of ridding ourselves of pain and of attaining pleasure. Samsara continues.
Against the grain. This is our mantra. The reason why we need a Buddha to find and communicate the path to us. Because it goes against being itself. It goes against not only everything we know, but the very basis upon which we know things. The pressure that we feel on the basis of pain and pleasure is unavoidable. The fact that we act out of it is not. But when the pressure arises, it implies action. And every time, we fall for it. Is not the search itself based on this very implication? I feel pressure. The question arises: What shall I do? This is thus where we must start. By not doing. Restraint and renunciation, these are prerequisites. Learning to endure the pressure, we might learn to look forward. The end to suffering is found precisely in the only thing we are not willing to stop: acting out of pressure.