12. Day 5, afternoon#
This afternoon we are going to have a look at the first noble truth, have a look at dukkha. There is dukkha.
12.1. First noble truth#
We’ve been using this word dukkha this week. It’s a word that the Buddha appropriated from his local language at that time. The word dukkha means pain. There is pain. He was using it in a different way. Dukkha sacha, or the truth of dukkha. The noble truth of dukkha or the noble truth of suffering as it is normally translated. Suffering is kind of an unfortunate translation because it really gives a pessimistic view of the Buddha’s teaching. People sometimes think, life is suffering, the world is suffering, I am suffering, the Buddha is suffering – the Buddha is not suffering! The Buddha is free from suffering.
The first noble truth, like all four truths are given to us, is in the fourth section of the satipatthana text, the contemplation on dhammas. And we get a definition there of dukkha in the text. The Buddha asks what is dukkha. «Birth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair – these are all dukkha. Association with disliked things, separation from liked things, not getting what one wants – these are all dukkha.»
The Buddha then gives a very interesting ending to his definition of dukkha. In summary, « the five aggregates affected by clinging are dukkha 194 ». The five aggregates is the Buddha’s most common way of analyzing the human condition, the mind and body process. He divides us into five groups, that are joined together, that arise together and cease together. They are very briefly: (1) physical form, (2) feeling, (3) perception, (4) conditional formations and (5) consciousness.
A few of the translations like suffering, unsatisfactoriness, stress – they all bring with them their problems. In countries like Thailand or Burma, this teaching isn’t translated. They just take the word into their language. Dukkha is Thai. In the Myanmar it’s the same. Very difficult to translate a concept like dukkha, the noble truth of dukkha and bring it into another language. This is because other languages don’t contain this concept. The teaching in the Pali text is quite a unique one. Other people didn’t come up with it. Other people didn’t uncover it. So they don’t have the concepts and the words to be able to express it. We have to turn to the Buddha’s own word for him to express the nature of his teaching. Dukkha in our modern world includes all kinds of depressions, anxieties, stresses and worries, all kinds of disorders and illnesses.
Essentially, what the Buddha is saying, is, that dukkha is when these five aggregates have been affected by clinging. Clinging is an intensified form of craving; craving brings us to me and mine, clinging brings us to I – an intensified form with the five aggregates having been not only infected with craving, but they started to calcify, they started to solidify. More concrete, these independent momentary appropriations of things as being me and mine come to be joined together, they come to be so continuous that an image of an I springs up. Just like in a film when it is running through the projector. Individual frames of me and mine, me and mine, me and mine, me and mine, me and mine, taking things as happening to me or for me, being me and mine. Individual events that add up when we run the film through the projector, we get a movie. And that is what we get, we get a movie of our life. It’s flowing through the projector. It’s hard to see the individual moments, where we’re appropriating and identifying, infecting the mind and body process with this idea of a self. It’s not an easy thing to see, to witness. That’s what we are here to do. This is what Vipassana is all about, to see this 195 happening in real time with real data. The real data being your own mind and body process.
We find in the Pali texts certain usages of the word dukkha. When the Buddha used the word dukkha vedana, he is talking about painful feeling, as opposed to sukha vedana, pleasing feeling. These two often go together. A third one adukkhama-asukhama, a-dukkha, a-sukha, not painful, not pleasant feeling. We call that neutral, adukkhama-asukhama vedana. Three types of vedana.
Sometimes the Buddha uses the word sankhara dukkha. This is the dukkha that comes from formations. This is the dukkha that we see by having a body. Just the fact that we have this conditioned body arising in the moment, it’s the dukkha that we understand from the conditioning process from the mind and body process it is. Just the fact that we have this body is dukkha, inherent dukkha. It’s the dukkha we get to see from changing posture. It’s the dukkha that forces us to change, forces us to move, forces us to cure. That’s the type of dukkha that we are curing all the time. Sankhara dukkha.
Then there is dukkha lakana. Dukkha lakana is the characteristic of dukkha such as when we’re looking at impermanence-dukkha and non-self. One of the three characteristics. It’s a conditioned, dependently arisen phenomena. This is the dukkha we realize in our Vipassana practice when we are noting and knowing the individual characteristics of the mental and physical phenomena. When we’re occupied doing this continuously, moment after moment, fully absorbed into doing this activity, noting and knowing, developing equanimity towards the objects without a desire to change anything or own anything. When that desire drops away, we see dukkha. We see it, that’s the one we see in our Vipassana.
Finally, there is dukkha saccha. Dukkha saccha is the truth of suffering. This is the noble truth, inherent suffering. We can’t change the situation. When things are appropriated and identified with, that’s dukkha saccha, the truth of suffering. The Buddha asked us to observe it, to know it, fully. He asks us to know it fully.
In fact that this nama-rupa, the mind and body process is impermanent and vulnerable to pain, and completely is unable to provide us any security, 196 or any lasting satisfaction. It is by its nature unsecure and impermanent. It’s arising and passing away. How can we find any security, any long lasting safety in something which is so impermanent, something so changeable, something so conditioned and dependently arisen, something so impersonal that it is out of control? It is like trying to get safety in an out of control car shuttling down the highway. Find some safety and security in that! Of course, there isn’t! And if we do try to hold on to it, dukkha! Dukkha is there to greet us when we start to own the body.
The Buddha likes to explain and analyze the mind and body process. And he does so using two major categories. There are other categories as well but the two major ones: the six sense bases and the five aggregates. The five aggregates we just briefly touched on but the six sense bases we’ve been talking about this week, the bases of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. Suffering arises through these six bases. This is where dukkha arises in the present moment and this is where dukkha ceases in the present moment. If objects have been appropriated at the six sense doors and infected with the virus of me and mine, then dukkha is arising at those six sense doors. The Buddha said, the eye and visible forms are dukkha, the ear and sounds are dukkha, the nose and smells are dukkha, the tongue and tastes are dukkha, if they are appropriated and identified with. As they are themselves they are fine, they are neutral. That’s rupa, neither good nor bad, it’s just a body, it’s just a manifestation of old karmic intentions arising in the present moment. It’s physicality. It’s only dukkha if we own it. There is my physicality. As soon as we take ownership over it, we have dukkhered it. We are living in dukkha when we are owning the body and mind process. The Buddha’s first noble truth points this out to us. Have a look, here, in this body. There is dukkha, appropriated mental and physical phenomena. He often teaches uses the phrases «the six sense bases are imperma- nent». What is impermanent that is dukkha. What is dukkha that is non-self. How can you claim ownership, how can you claim to be something which is impermanent and dependently arisen. When we see it with our meditation wisdom, we see that the body and the mind is extremely impermanent. It is laboring under a conditionality process. It is fixed in its dependency. How can we find any happiness in this thing? And the Buddha is not saying that 197 life is all terrible. He is saying, when you hold on to it, when you attach and cling to the mind and body process, then this thing called dukkha arises.
Luckily for us, he gave us the second noble truth as well. He told us, that dukkha is arising from craving.
And then the third noble truth: this dukkha ceases, this dukkha ends. It’s possible to put out the flame of dukkha. We can move beyond this first noble truth. We can realize the third noble truth. There is an end from dukkha, there is freedom from dukkha. The Buddha called that nirvana.
And the fourth noble truth, that’s the causes and conditions for the arising of cessation, for the arising of the end of dukkha.
The Buddha wasn’t particularly concerned with full philosophical completeness. He was much more interested in a practical and pragmatic way of practicing. His teaching constantly directs us to the truth. Rarely is it, that he comes out with a statement exclaiming the truth. He much prefers to just point out the path that leads to the truth. He wants us to walk that path. He wants us to understand for ourselves, having realized the truth for ourselves. He was a very skillful teacher in the way he delivered his teachings for 45 years. On the age of 35, after his enlightenment, until the age of 80, he wandered the northern area of India teaching. He says, «now as before, I teach dukkha and the end of dukkha». That’s it. 45 years wandering around teaching about dukkha. Beings understanding those teachings and becoming enlightened themselves. If there is something that we truly need to understand in this life, it is dukkha! He tells us, that this dukkha needs to be fully understood in all ways. He tells us that consciousness is arising at these six sense bases. He calls these six sense bases the ALL. This is all there is. There is nothing outside of this. This six sense basis presents the world to us. We call it «ALL». «This is the ALL, monks.» And he says, the ALL is subject to birth, sickness and death. When the six sense bases are appropriated – there is nothing wrong with the six sense bases itself, they are actually fine, if we leave them alone – dukkha is produced when we appropriate, when we identify, when we take ownership of, when we start to build our identity or our personality based upon this basis, based upon these objects. The mind has been doing this for a very long time, efficiently and effectively. So completely that there are rarely any gaps. Very rarely does anyone ever have a 198 gap. Very rarely does anyone get to experience the world without a self being in the way. Some people have spontaneous realizations. Sometimes great traumas can trigger this in people. In states of depressions, or great physical traumas where people get injured they can break through. Sometimes people have a spontaneous experience when they are in nature, when they are in the jungle or in the dessert or when they are alone. An experience without a self in it. When the world is not divided, when it hasn’t slipped into duality, before it goes to duality, there is a oneness. Before the sense of self comes into to divide «now» into «my» and «that» there is a singleness that’s there. This is the cessation the Buddha is talking about. Some people have random and spontaneous experiences of it. Not the full enlightenment, not the full pulling out of the defilements but just a quick glimpse. Some psychedelic substances give us a weird taste of this experience. Unsustaining though, it slips away. The Buddha’s teaching is a systematic method and technique that brings us into the present moment without a sense of self. We can see things as they really are, freeing our consciousness from this infection.
12.2. Craving, conceit and views#
The Buddha calls the six sense bases the «world». So this is the world, the whole world. The whole world is empty of self and that which belongs to self. He calls the six internal bases old karma. The manifestation of these six internal bases is the manifestation of old karma. He also says that these are the six bases of conceivings. Once we are in, once a sense door has been activated, if consciousness has arisen at that door, feeling has arisen with it, pleasant or unpleasant – internal object, external object, contacting so that consciousness arises in the present moment and knows that experience in the present moment – if this has gone unnoted, if awareness hasn’t been sharp and particular at this exact point of contact, than that sense experience is infected by me or mine. It’s infected by craving, conceits and views.
Craving is what takes this experience as being mine. Conceit takes the experience as «this I am». And wrong views take the experiences as «this is my self». There are three different types of conceiving, all conceiving in a subjectified way. All of different intensities. Craving, conceit and views arise at the six sense doors.
199 Our Vipassana meditation practice is the systematic observation of the six sense doors. Noting, knowing and letting go what’s going on. We begin our practice at the body door, watching the rise and fall of the abdomen or the breath sensation as it passes in and out through the nostril, paying attention to our posture as well. It’s a difficult door. Then we bring the other doors in, the seeing, the hearing, the smelling and the tasting. We are aware when these doors are activated. We’re noting every moment we can, to stop the infection. And then the mind door! In its wanderings, in its versions of the truth, in its memory, grand plans and dreams. These are also being infected. These are also being used as base for the arising of self.
So, our practice leads to an abandoning of craving, conceit and views, leads us to an abandoning of conceiving of what the Buddha called papanca, conceptualization.
12.3. The six sense bases#
The six sense bases are our access to the world. This is how the body interacts. We are calling it the six doors sometimes, the six sense bases sometimes. The real definition is the chah ayatana, the six sense spheres. These doorways are actually spheres of experience. The ear door for example: the sphere of the ear is only sound. The ear cannot see, it cannot smell, it only cognizes sound. The eye door only cognizes visible forms. It doesn’t taste or smell either. The nose door has its sphere of experience. The tongue has its sphere of experience. The body door its own. The mind door experiences all five physical doors and its own door, its own sphere. For example we can listen to some music while we are sitting here in the hall. It’s the song in our head. That’s the mind door open – but we are listening probably to some awful sound that you can’t get rid of, repeating and looping around and around.
So these spheres, the six sense bases are like little radars, whenever they are activated. And these six sense spheres, their information is collected and compiled together. The feeling from all of them is assessed and analyzed very rapidly by the mind. We very rapidly build a picture or conceptualization of what’s going on, our perception or our recognition. We draw on our resources of previous recognitions and perceptions to paint a picture. We 200 very rapidly paint a conceptualization of what the experience is, what the event is. Of course, built into that experience is the fact that the experience is happening to me. That’s also another layer of paint that we put on. The subjective layer of paint. This is happening to me. This is something for me, this is mine. And it’s through doing this continuously over and over and over again, that a picture is painted. A very strong identity view arises. It doesn’t want to be told that it’s nothing. If I tried to tell you, that you are nothing, it’s not happening to you – «of course it’s happening to me», people say. They are very unwilling to let go of their sense of self. We are often quite scared! If there is no me, what will I do? Well, you are free, there is nothing to do for you. You are lying in the hammock. You are done. Done is what had to be done. There is no more coming to any state of being. That’s what our goal as humans is. We meditate ourselves out of existence so that the mind finds no longer a base upon which it can rest and call «me» and «mine» a home. Consciousness unfixed, consciousness unsettled, consciousness released. It’s the mind unentangled with the world. The world of mental and physical phenomena. When consciousness separates, steps away from that, then it is released. It’s free.
In the Samyutta Nikaya we have a wonderful sutta, called the Malunkyaputta sutta. Malunkya was a guy that came to visit the Buddha several times. His conversations have been recorded with the Buddha. He came on many occasions. We can trace his development actually. His first few questions he was quite unsure of what he was talking about. The Buddha set him straight, gave him a few instructions. He came back, asking deeper and more profound questions. Finally he came to the Buddha and said, look, just give me the short version. I don’t have much time. I’m an old man. I just want to know how to do it really quickly. I just want enlightenment, kind of now, don’t we all? And so the Buddha gave him this teaching: «Well, Malunkyaputta, regarding things seen, regarding things heard and sensed and things cognized by you, in the seen there should be just the seen, in the heard there should be just the heard, in the sensed there should be just the sensed and in the cognized there should be just the cognized. When, Malunkyaputta, in the seen there is just the seen, in the heard there is just the heard, in the sensed there is just the sensed and in the cognized there is just the cognized – nothing 201 more added – then you will not be ‚by that‘. You will not be ‚therein‘ and you will not be ‚anywhere between the two‘».
When you are not ‘therein’ and not ‘by that’, then you will be neither here nor there nor beyond the two. Just this is the end of suffering. So when we are no longer taking things – things seen, things heard, things sensed (sensed is the nose door, tongue door and body door), things cognized is the mind door, when you are no longer building your sense of self so that you no longer be by that or be therein, then we will no longer be anywhere. Being comes to an end, being ceases. We will no longer be between the two. This is the end of suffering. Malunkyaputta listened to that carefully and became fully enlightened. Maybe it will happen to you, I hope so (audience laughing).
12.4. The five aggregates#
The Buddha’s main way of analyzing the mind and body process is the five aggregates. It’s given to us in the definition of dukkha, the first noble truth. In short, the five aggregates affected by clinging are dukkha. Aggregate means something joined together, groups compounded together, things held together. This looks at one thing but it’s actually five things. Actually five individual things joined together, arising together and ceasing together. The Buddha’s primary scheme for analyzing sentient existence. It’s the ultimate referent to the first noble truth. The purpose of analyzing the body in this way is to let go of the mind and body process. The Buddha wasn’t analyzing the body and mind process into these five groups, so that we can come upon some scientific discoveries. He is not trying to analyze to the amino-acids and protons and neutrons and electrons. He is not trying to analyze every single type of nerve or brain pulsation that we may have. He is giving us a scheme with which we can practice in the present moment. He says, the five aggregates need to be fully inspected and fully understood. We need to know the five aggregates in the past, the present and the future. We need to know them internally and externally. The gross manifestations and the subtle manifestations. The inferior and superior manifestations. The far and near. The purpose of this investigation is liberation, not kind of analytical scientific study where we pigeonhole everything, put the information 202 over there. That’s the scientific method. Take something, cut it apart, analyze it, split it up, analyze it and try to understand it in that way. The Buddha is doing that on the internal bases with the mind, not with the eyes. You don’t divide the body and mind up with your eyes. How can you divide your mind with the eyes? You can’t even see the mind with your eyes. The mind is immaterial. It is not part of the body. It’s an immaterial experience. We need the mind to be able to understand the mind, to understand feeling, perception, formations and consciousness. In fact, we need awareness and wisdom for us to fully understand it.
The Buddha tells us that these five aggregates tend to affliction and cannot be made to conform to our desires. They are out of control, they are impersonal! He tells us that attachment to them leads to stress, sorrow and depression and that their change leads to fear, anxiety and distress. When we are attaching to it we get depressed, and when we are worried about it, we develop anxiety. Normally we are attached and concerned about the past. When we are obsessed with the past, it leads us to a sadness and to a depression. When we are obsessed with the future, it leads us to fear and worry and concern and anxiety. So we know, where depression and anxiety are coming from – spending too much time in the past or too much time in the future. Of course, the past and future are just thoughts arising in the present moment. Just a thought pattern that we started looping, started to persistently think about. «Whatever a bikkhu frequently thinks and ponders upon, that will become the inclination of his mind.» If we are frequently thinking and pondering upon a sad event, then guess what happens, we become sad! If we are frequently thinking and pondering and worrying upon the future, guess what happens, we become anxious. We condition ourselves into that state by constantly allowing the mind to loop in a particular thought pattern. We need to step out of that looping system otherwise we cause ourselves an enormous amount of problems. Our Vipassana technique is to dissolve this looping in the present moment. That we can move beyond habitual thought patterns. We’ll move beyond habitual emotional states.
Sometimes we have an emotional state that has been arising for so long, we don’t know any escape from it. It’s been going on for so long we don’t know any difference. People get addicted to things for 20, 30, 40, 203 50 years. Their experience is, that when that object comes into their mind, wanting, desiring and they go into it. There is a strong connection there. As soon as the object becomes an object of consciousness, they are straightforward identifying and wanting it. That is just a pattern they picked up. It’s an addiction. It’s a pattern way of thinking. Our awareness meditation can break through this. It won’t happen immediately but if you continue noting, knowing and letting go every time that these impulses arise, you start to see them as they are. You witness them and you won’t be fooled by them. You will have strength over them so that we can let them go and move beyond our attachment and identification with things.
Because the five aggregates are impermanent, they never fulfill our hopes of permanence and security, while they do give us some pleasure – that’s for sure! The Buddha says, there is happiness! There is joy going on, it does arise. He doesn’t say that the world is a barren place of evil and nothing is happy. That’s not what he is saying. He’s just saying there is dukkha here. Look out for it. He says whilst the five aggregates do give us pleasure and joy, they must change, they must alter, they must pass away. And if you are attached and holding to something that’s passed away – dukkha! If you are attached to your wallet and loose it – dukkha! Attachment gives the problem. It’s because of attachment that dukkha arises.
The story of a guy who wakes up in the morning after a big storm, he looks out to the window, to the left, sees a big tree that has fallen on his neighbor’s car, smashed it completely. «Oh, that’s unfortunate. Dave’s care has been smashed. Oh well, I hope he’s got insurance.» Then he looks to the right and sees another tree has smashed his car. He completely freaks out. «Oh, my car!» Why? The events are exactly the same but the level of attachment is different. He’s attached to his own car. He gets a lot of suffering from that. «Just lost 20 grant.» Insurance had expired, oops. We can see it’s attachment that causes us problems. When it’s not my car, «oh, well, I hope it’s all right». When it’s my car it’s an enormous amount of dukkha. Problems and issues come up. Problems and issues arise by taking things seriously, by taking them as «me» and «mine». When we do this, our only companion is dukkha. When you start to release this identification process, the world opens up, it becomes spacious. How wonderful it is to be homeless. 204 Not have to worry about paying a rent or a mortgage, having to do the garden or clean the house. All those things, all those problems just disappear when we are not attached to our dwelling, when we can let them go. When we let go, we know how it is, when we have a big clean up at home. You go through and throw away 25 black bags of garbage that you collected. How freeing that can be! Finally, all those things that we have been holding on to can be let go of. It’s a clutter. To clear out the clutter of our lives.
It’s attachment that causes the problem. It’s not the object. Pleasure does arise in this world. The Buddha says, that we need to understand the satisfaction, and the danger, and the escape of these five aggregates. We have to understand, yes they do bring satisfaction. Of course, they are bringing satisfaction. We wouldn’t identify with them if it wasn’t satisfying. If it was all total misery, then we wouldn’t be interested in it at all. But because, there is some pleasantness that’s there, we get sucked into it.
Habitually we assume control over the five aggregates. We think we are in control but in reality we are devoured by them moment after moment. These are the domain of defilements. This is where the nasty mental states arise. Appropriating and identifying.
12.5. Identity view#
When we do this, when we take the five aggregates to be a self, there arises what is known as sakaya ditti. Sakaya means identity or personality. Ditti means a view. Our five aggregates become infected with sakaya ditti, or identity view, or personality view, distorted view of personality. We say that the five aggregates have come to view. They have attained to view. The five aggregates have now become an identity instead of being an impersonal flow of mental and physical phenomena, just cruising along according to karma, according to cause and effect, arising and passing. When we don’t allow awareness to note and know the present, when we are out of the present, when we are unaware, when ignorance is arising, then the five aggregates are identified with. They come under identity view. And this identity view happens in four ways over the five aggregates. So there is 20 different types of identity view.
When we regard the body as a self, when we identify a particular aggregate, 205 one of the aggregates as a self. If we regard the body as a self, or a feeling as self, or a thought or consciousness as self, this is one way of appropriation. Taking things as a self.
The second way is taking the experience as happening to me. It’s possessing the experience. We possess the body, the feeling, the perception, the formation or the consciousness. We become the owner. So we start to identify in that way. Self possesses one of the aggregates.
The third way in which identity view arises is when we start to think we contain the aggregate. That the aggregate, the body, the feeling or a thought is somehow in self. It’s in the self. It’s part of the self.
And the fourth way is when we take the self as being in the aggregate. We say the self is in the body, or in the feeling or in the consciousness.
So in these four ways we may regard material form as self, or material form as possessed of self, or material form as in self, or self as in material form. And so on with the other aggregates. We regard consciousness as self, or we regard consciousness as possessed of self, or we regard self as in consciousness, or we regard consciousness in self. So in these ways, the mind and body process come to be. «Being» is established, from lots of «me»- and «mine»-experiences, «I» is established, with the sense if «I», being has come to be. The mind and body process have become infected by being. Becoming. There is an identity formed in there. They believe they are someone. Strongly believe. And when we do this, we start to attend to our experiences unwisely. We don’t see them as they really are. We start to have questions when the sense of I arises. Maybe we get a little freaked out, we start to ask these questions: «Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? How was I in the past? Where was I in the past? What was I in the past? – I am now». So it starts to reflect what I was before. It starts to reflect unwisely. Or it starts to reflect into the future. Identity view starts to be projected forward. «Shall I be in the future? What shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Where will I be in the future?» So once the mind and body starts to believe it is someone, it starts to ask these kinds of questions. And this gives just more fuel to the sense of I! It believes it has some kind of past and it has some kind of future. And so it starts to map out its live. It starts to dream up its personality, it starts to become somebody. 206 That has happened to all of us! It’s been happening for a long time.
Fortunately the Buddha taught us the way that we can see this process in action and that we can let it go, remove ourselves from it.
If it’s not in the past and not in the future, it can just be inwardly confused in the present moment. When it doesn’t see things as they are, it starts to think: «Am I? What am I? Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Am I a being?» It starts to think in all these different ways. It starts to attend unwisely to the present moment in this way. It’s subjectified to the present moment. A duality has been created. There is a dichotomy in the world, separation into two halves: the world of me and out there.
When this happens all kind of views start to arise. Stronger views. When he attends unwisely, these views arise in him. «Oh, it’s this self of mine that speaks and feels. This self of mine experiences here and now the results of good and bad actions. This self of mine is really permanent, really everlasting and not subject to change and it will endure as long as eternity.» The identity view has become so solid, that the being starts to think of itself in solid terms. «I mean, I am permanent. All this mind and matter, that stuff is passing away but the experiencer of it that’s the real self.» That’s the self with the big «S». That’s my true self, that’s what’s beyond or underneath all the swirling flow of mental and physical phenomena. The view of a big self arises. A really concrete and solid form. A full blown delusion. In that it starts to believe that it’s attached and identified with the five aggregates but then it starts to believe that it is something even beyond the five aggregates. It has really been infected by a sense of self.
The Buddha says when this happens, when he attends unwisely, these views arise. He says these views are a speculative view. It’s called the thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a facilitation of views, a fetter of views. «Fettered by this fetter of views, the untaught ordinary person is not freed from birth, aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. They are not freed from dukkha», I say.
So identity view is the leash that keeps us bound to existence. It keeps us bound to this circle of being, of craving to be, wanting to be – of suffering! It’s this identity view, this constant need for recognition, this constant need that it has for being «me». We spend so much time doing this in our 207 lives. We create an identity trying to develop an ego. Partly the result of our family, partly the result of our community and our society structure. Everyone is craving to be something. We are taught it from a very young age. «What are you going to be when you are going to grow up?» In our education system they want us to become something. It’s geared to get trained a particular thing for a particular task, with a label, with a hat on, with a name tag. «I’m a doctor, I’m a lawyer, I’m a plumber, carpenter, nurse, teacher, truck driver, psychiatrist.» We want to be something. When we don’t want, when we don’t get what we want to be – dukkha! Even worse, if we don’t know what we want to be, that’s even more confusing. Everyone’s telling us that we have to be something, that we have to get something, that we have to become something. The nature of reality is that we are nothing, and yet everyone is saying that we have to be something. There’s a huge gap between those two things. There’s a cognitive dissonance. Our expectations and our reality are two different things. It’s no wonder that we go crazy trying to think what we have to become. It’s no wonder that we have spent time in institutions of learning to try to become something. We are not really interested in counting other people’s money, but I want to be an accountant. It’s the being, we strive and try to become. This the cause of dukkha.
So identity view is removed when we reach the first path. When we arrive at the path of the stream-enterer or a sottapanna. The first level of enlightenment, the first level of awakening. Where this gross self, this identify view is pulled out by the roots and discarded. Wisdom completely removes it. The sense of self will no longer arise. It is impossible for it to arise again. Doubt also disappears or that the believe in rights and rituals can lead to awakening. This wrong view is also removed. Any doubt about what is the correct way to practice, the noble eightfold path, that’s also done away with. So identity view, believe in rights and rituals being efficacious leading to the desired result is thrown away, and also doubt is let go of. These three fetters are removed at the first path of awakening.
The path of stream entry is reachable in this very life. This is our goal as humans to enter the stream that flows to nirvana. If we can go further than that, even better. The heart of our Vipassana practice is to note our five aggregates, to see them clearly as impermanent, dukkha, dependently 208 arisen, conditioned, out of control, impersonal processes. Dukkha is finally removed by contemplating the rise and the fall of the aggregates.
«Venerable sir, how does one know and how does one see, so that in regard to this body with its consciousness and all the external conceptions, there is no I-making and no mine-making and no underlying tendency to conceit?» – «Well, bikkhu, any kind of material form, any kind of feeling, any kind of perception, any kind of mental formation, any kind of consciousness that arises, whether it be past, present or future, whether it be internal or external, whether it’s gross or subtle, superior or inferior, near or far, one sees all these five aggregates as they actually are with proper wisdom thus, this is not mine, this is not I, this is not myself. When he knows and sees thus, he becomes disenchanted with the five aggregates. Being disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. And through dispassion the mind is liberated. When it is liberated, there comes the knowledge it is liberated. He understands birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done, has been done. There is no more coming to any state of being.»
And this is how we remove dukkha, this is how we contemplate to pull ourselves out of this conditioned existence and transition into the unconditioned.