Bhikkhu Cintita

Category: Dependent Origination

  • The Āsavas (‘taints,’ ‘cankers,’ ‘fermentations,’ ‘corruptions,’ …)


    Āsavas are deep undercurrents or predispositions that induce us to live unsatisfactory lives, to misconstrue the world, to misdirect our motivations in that misconstrued world, and to try vainly to establish a footing for an unconvincing personal identity as an enduring misdirected agent in a misconstrued world, and to want to do it all over again. The concept is clearly of fundamental importance in the Dhamma, for āsavakkhaya ‘destruction of the āsavas’ is a synonym for awakening (bodhi) alongside vimutti ‘liberation,’ and nibbāna ‘extinguishing’ (of existence). However, āsavas seem to get less attention than the others in modern circles.

    There is no standard translation of āsava into English. Bhikkhu Bodhi uses ‘taints.’ Literally āsava means ‘in-’ or ‘out-flow’ or ‘in-’ or ‘out-flux’ in Pali. It also refers in Pali to a canker or ulceration (which suggest ‘corruption’), or to fermentation. Inflow or influx also suggests ‘influence.’ Āsava is translated in almost all of these ways into English. To my mind ‘taint’ and ‘influence’ do not do justice to the importance of the āsavas as the antithesis of awakening. My preferred translation is ‘corrupting influence,’ much as it is applied to attention-stealing social media, to purveyors of addictive drugs, and to celebrity worship.

    The corrupting influences are human predispositions toward:

    1. sensuality (kāmāsava),
    2. existence (bhavāsava),
    3. ignorance (avijjāsava).

    Sometimes a fourth āsava is added, which we will set aside,

    • views (dhiṭṭāsava).

    It is not often noticed that the effects of first three corrupting influences are spelled out in the twelve links of “dependent coarising,” whose unraveling leads indeed to awakening. In fact the whole chain might be be simplified as (note: ‘→’ should be read as ‘gives rise to’)

    ignorance → sensuality → existence.

    Ignorance thereby would unfold into the first six links of dependent coarising,

    ignorance → formations → consciousness → name&form→ sixfold sphere → contact →

    Ignorance is the drive to construct a highly presumptive, conceptual world of experience “out there,” based in sense data (rūpa), on existing dispositions (sankhāra) and on a variety of observable cognitive faculties. Ignorance is particularly evident in contact, a dualistic self-other interaction in an unmediated “billiard ball” world of self-existing, enduring, interacting objects.

    Sensuality would unfold into the next three links,

    → feeling → craving → appropriation →

    Sensuality is the affective drive to prefer, crave and possess select objects of contact in the quest for personal advantage. These affective factors determine attention and thereby attract consciousness. They also drive behavioral actions and thereby relate to ethics. Craving and clinging are also immediate sources of suffering.

    Existence would unfold into the final three links,

    → existence → birth → this mass of suffering

    Existence results from the drive to establish, adhere to and protect an enduring, coherent “personal identity,” transcending a single life, in a world primarily defined in terms of self-centered interests. Personal identity tends toward a large personal footprint in the world, doubling down on craving and clinging, and thereby suffering.

    In my attempt to understand what these corrupting influences are, and where they come from, I (ever the naturalist) have recently turned to evolutionary psychology. I propose that the āsavas are well-grounded adaptations to evolutionary pressures for individual success in highly competitive physical and social environments. This is perhaps clearest in the case of sensuality, since it drives the acquisition of the mandatory resources for genetic survival to ensure nourishment, security and procreation, and to avoid threats.

    Existence is built upon an ontological conviction of self, and its forward-looking nature is necessary for asserting oneself a competitive environment to ensure future success. Personal identity is to a human what a dam is to a beaver, but at a more complex level. It can be thought of as a game plan for success, for acquiring certain sets of skills, for acquiring and protecting resources to be held in reserve, for repelling threats, and for framing one’s agenthood conceptually in ways that support quick effective responses. These constitute a personal “footprint” that puts the human intellect to work in improving the prospect of success.

    Ignorance is the most critical āsava, but the most difficult to understand. It has to do with how we apprehend the world by default, alongside the prospect of apprehending otherwise. Our default way of apprehending the world is to presume that there is an objective reality “out there” independent of our awareness of it, but immediately accessible to us; all we have to do is show up,

    There it is, right there: your plush arm chair, the cat on your lap, the pipe in your mouth, a cup of tea, a snifter of cognac and a dog-eared copy of Buddhist Life / Buddhist Path on your side table, as you are engaged in scholarly conversation with a visiting colleague.

    For the Buddha things are not that simple. Hoffman, in his book The Case against Reality, gets at the same thing, and conveniently frames it for us in evolutionary terms as “fitness beats truth.” He argues that natural selection has not adapted perception to reveal truth “out there,” but to guide our actions in ways that supportive of evolutionary success. For instance, we seem to perceive certain things “out there” as sweet, and therefore desirable. We point to a bonbon “out there” and say, “That is sweet.” This is not a quality that a chemist could discover in a molecule “out there,” but is rather reflects an adaptive behavior at work to restore blood sugar. Hoffman goes further to suggest that perception actually serves to hide the complexity of what is “out there,” not to reveal it, much as a computer’s graphical interface hides the various processes that are set in motion within the computer when you simply click on an icon. The first six links of dependent coarising are in fact a description of the cognitive mechanisms at work in constructing our experience of what we presume is “out there,” much as a graphical interface constructs the user’s experience of what is happening “in there.”

    In short, I’ve argued that the āsavas are right there in the human gene pool, as sets of evolutionary adaptations that have served the successful proliferation of the human race. So, what is the problem? Why not keep them around? Why do we seek āsavakkhaya ‘destruction of the āsavas,’ through understanding dependent coarising and through practicing the noble eightfold path? Why do we call the āsavas corrupting influences? Without them, aren’t we rather helpless in a cruel world? Aren’t we likely to get eaten by a tiger, to starve for want of food, or to become impoverished by a con artist intent on growing his already huge personal footprint?

    Let me leave the reader with some homework:

    Submit your answer in the comments below to the question: “Why not keep the āsavas around, so we don’t get eaten by a tiger?”[Hint: there is a one-word Buddhist answer, and many ways to elaborate on it.]

  • Dhamma is found in experience, not theory

    What do we mean by “knowledge and vision of things as they are”? This question is asked less frequently than it deserves. Many may assume that it is ineffable, and that we’ll know it when we finally see it. Nonetheless, the early texts do provide some substantial clarity about what to expect. Consider the following exchange between the wanderer Kokanada of a non-Buddhist sect and the Buddha’s right-hand monk Ānanada,

    K: “How is it, sir? Do you hold the view ‘The world is eternal; this alone is true, anything else is wrong’?”

    Ā: “I don’t hold such a view, friend.”

    K: “Then do you hold the view ‘The world is not eternal; this alone is true, anything else is wrong’?”

    Ā: “I don’t hold such a view, friend.”

    Kokanada then asks further questions in this vein, such as whether the world is finite or infinite, whether the soul and the body are the same or different, and whether or not the Tathāgata exists after death. Each of Kokanada’s questions evokes in the same reply,

    Ā: “I don’t hold such a view, friend.”

    Kokanada seems taken aback at Ānanda’s apparent obliviousness,

    K: “Could it then be that you do not know and see?”

    Ā: “It isn’t the case, friend, that I do not know and see. I know and see.”

    K: “How, friend, should the meaning of this statement be understood?”

    Ā: “‘The world is eternal; this alone is true, anything else is wrong,’ friend, this is a speculative view.”

    … and so on for each of Kokanada’s questions.

    Ā: “To the extent, friend, that there is a speculative view, a basis for views, a foundation for views, obsession with views, the origination of views, and the uprooting of views, I know and see this. When I know and see this, why should I say: ‘I do not know and see.’ I know, friend, I see.” (AN 10.96)

    If there have ever been instances of two people talking right past one another, this is certainly one of them. Notice that Kokanada’s questions were all existential. He was probing for clarity about the Buddhist ontological stance on what was really true of the world “out there.” But we know that the Buddha famously left such questions unanswered (MN 63, MN 72). Ānanda’s responses to these questions, on the other hand, were explained epistemically. He was concerned with how the heck such existential views might get into one’s head, into the world “in here,” in the first place, as speculation, then as obsession, and with how we might rid ourselves of such vexing notions.

    The difference between these two perspectives was quite radical for the time. Traditionally the resolution of the human condition had been sought “out there,” through understanding to cosmological forces speculated to be at work “out there,” so that we might control or adapt to them. (We can think of our modern pursuit of happiness in much the same way, but through understanding economic and social forces at work “out there,” so that we might use them for personal success.) For this reason, the answers to existential questions were crucial. For the Buddha, the resolution of the question was to be sought “in here,” in the human capacity or incapacity to apprehend the world properly. The human mind is the origin of our experience, even of our experience of what we think is the world “out there.” Therefore, experience and the cognitive architecture that produces experience are the primary themes that run throughout the early wisdom teachings.

    The experience produced by our cognitive architecture is primarily of a world “out there,” an “objective reality” that appears to us to transcend experience, in the sense that it would be there even if we were not here to experience it. In this “objective reality” all the objects exist that we desire, fear, own or obsess over. In this “objective reality” existential, ontological and metaphysical views seem reasonable. As part of our experience we almost always take at face value that most of what we experience simply reflects this “objective reality” directly. Not only that, but immediate access to this outer world is simply there, effortlessly; all we have to do is show up,

    There it is: your plush arm chair, the cat on your lap, the pipe in your mouth, a cup of tea, a snifter of cognac and a dog-eared copy of Buddhist Life/Buddhist Path on your side table.

    Simple reflection on the science of this scenario shows that it cannot be so simple. As you sit in your arm chair, your brain sits in your skull in total darkness and total silence, communicating with whatever is “out there” through raw neural impulses originating in your retina, your eardrum, etc. If the brain in your fathom-long body is the source of your experience, then anything beyond neural sense impulses must be fabricated in the brain (or through the emergent mental processes running on your brain architecture). A lot of mental activity goes on from the impingement of neural impulses to the production of your cozy experience, no matter how vivid and immediate your experience seems.

    In fact, we have no direct access to such a reality independent of the filter of human cognition which produces our experience. A fundamental principle to keep in mind is,

    Experiencing things as real is not the same as experiencing real things.

    For all we know, we live in a the computer-generated Matrix®, or in a dream. Maybe what is really right side up is systematically converted to up side down before we experience it.

    The Buddha was perhaps the ultimate skeptic about our ability to know what is really going on “out there.” This would explain the Buddha’s reluctance to answer questions of existence. The Buddha also persistently reminds us of the unreliability of what we experience as reality “out there” when he points out the worldling’s vexing habit of seeing permanence in the impermanent, pleasure in suffering, beauty in the ugly, and self where there is none, habits that lead to a life of broken promises and pain when things turn out otherwise. It also explains the Buddha’s routine refusal to endorse views. For the Buddha, we have no basis for ever knowing if any view is really true or false objectively “out there”:

    There are five things, Bhāradvāja, that may turn out in two different ways here and now. What five? Faith, approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view. These five things may turn out in two different ways here and now.

    Now something may be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken. [as for faith, so for approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view] (MN 95 ii170)

    Views, by their very nature are presumptive (maññita), and for the Buddha,

    Presumption is a disease, presumption is a tumor, presumption is a dart. By overcoming all presumptions, bhikkhu, one is called a sage at peace. And the sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die; he is not shaken and does not yearn. For there is nothing present in him by which he might be born. (MN 140 iii246)

    Nonetheless, what we presume are parts our experiential world, and they are eliminated only by the sage at peace, who has learned to experience the world otherwise.

    In his wisdom teachings, the Buddha explicitly limits the word ‘world’ (loka) to refer to this world as we experience it, without attributing to it any special status as “real,”

    In this fathom-long living body, along with its percep­tions and thoughts, lies the world, the arising of the world, and the cessation of the world. (AN 4.45)

    Right at the beginning of the Dhammapada we find,

    Mind precedes all phenomena. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-made. (Dhp 1)

    Phenomenology is a field in modern philosophy that began similarly with the primacy of experience, as a challenge to the metaphysical premise of science that there is a real, objective world that transcends human experience, but that humans have special access to by other means. Accordingly, the Buddha has been described as a phenomenologist by some modern Buddhist thinkers. Loka seems to refer precisely to the phenomenal world, what the early modern phenomenologists call the life world (Lebenswelt). It is our world of experience.

    In any case, what goes on in some reality that transcends experience is not critical to practice. Practice occurs squarely in the world as we experience it, or as it appears to us. It is in this world that suffering arises, that our incentive for practice arises, that the factors arise that inform our kammic decisions (which constitute our practice), that we experience the fruits of practice, that we are able to track our progress, that we gain confidence in the Dhamma, and it is in this world that we awaken.

    Unfortunately, Dhamma is rarely taught or understood from this phenomenological perspective. I would caution that without this perspective the Dhamma is commonly misinterpreted, often trivialized, and often left obscure. To unlock Dhamma’s secrets start with practice experience, not theory.

    Excerpt from my forthcoming revision of
    Dependent Coarising, “1. The mechanics of experience.”

  • The world of experience

    excerpt from the upcoming new edition of Dependent Coarising

    The experience produced by our cognitive architecture is primarily of a world “out there,” an “objective reality” that appears to us to transcend experience, in the sense that it would be there even if we were not here to experience it. In this objective reality all the objects exist that we desire, fear, own or obsess over, and existential, ontological and other views seem reasonable. As part of our experience we almost always take at face value that most of what we experience simply reflects such an objective reality directly. Not only that, but immediate access to this objective outer world is simply there, effortlessly; all we have to do is show up.

    There it is: your plush arm chair, the cat on your lap, the pipe in your mouth, a cup of tea, a snifter of cognac and a dog-eared copy of Buddhist Life/Buddhist Path on your side table.

    Simple reflection on the science of this scenario shows that it cannot be so simple. As you sit in your arm chair, your brain sits in your skull in total darkness and total silence, communicating with whatever is “out there” through raw neural impulses originating in your retina, your eardrum, etc. If the brain in your fathom-long body is the source of your experience, then anything beyond neural sense impulses must be fabricated by the brain (or the emergent mental processes running on your brain architecture). A lot of mental activity goes on between the impingement of neural impulses and your cozy experience, no matter how vivid and immediate your experience seems.

    In fact, we have no direct access to such a reality independent of the filter of human cognition which produces our experience. A fundamental principle to keep in mind is,

    Experiencing things as real is not the same as experiencing real things.

    For all we know, we live in a the computer-generated Matrix®, or in a dream. Maybe what is really right side up is systematically converted to up side down before we experience it.

    The Buddha was perhaps the ultimate skeptic about our ability to know what is really going on “out there.” This would explain the Buddha’s reluctance to answer questions of existence. The Buddha also persistently reminds us of the unreliability of what we experience as reality “out there” when he points out the worldling’s vexing habit of seeing permanence in the impermanent, pleasure in suffering, beauty in the ugly, and self where there is none, a habit that leads to a life of broken promises and pain when things turn out otherwise. It also explains the Buddha’s routine refusal to endorse views. For the Buddha, we have no basis for ever knowing if any view is really true or false in an objective sense:

    There are five things, Bhāradvāja, that may turn out in two different ways here and now. What five? Faith, approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view. These five things may turn out in two different ways here and now.

    Now something may be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be empty, hollow, and false; but something else may not be fully accepted out of faith, yet it may be factual, true, and unmistaken. [as for faith, so for approval, oral tradition, reasoned cogitation, and reflective acceptance of a view] (MN 95 ii170)

    Views, by their very nature are presumptive (maññita), and for the Buddha,

    Presumption is a disease, presumption is a tumor, presumption is a dart. By overcoming all presumptions, bhikkhu, one is called a sage at peace. And the sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die; he is not shaken and does not yearn. For there is nothing present in him by which he might be born. (MN 140 iii246)

    What we presume are parts of the experiential world (we experience them as true). They are eliminated from experience by the sage at peace, who has learned to experience otherwise

    In his wisdom teachings, the Buddha explicitly limits the word ‘world’ (loka) to refer to the world of experience,

    In this fathom-long living body, along with its percep­tions and thoughts, lies the world, the arising of the world, and the cessation of the world. (AN 4.45)

    Right at the beginning of the Dhammapada we find,

    Mind precedes all phenomena. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-made. (Dhp 1)

    Phenomenology is a field in modern philosophy that began similarly with the primacy of experience, as a challenge to the metaphysical premise of science that there is a real, objective world, that transcends human awareness, but that humans have special access to. Accordingly, the Buddha has been described as a phenomenologist by some modern Buddhist thinkers. Loka seems to refer precisely to the phenomenal world, what the early modern phenomenologists call the life world (Lebenswelt). It is our world of experience.

    In any case, what goes on in some reality that transcends experience is not particularly relevant to practice. Practice occurs squarely in the world as we experience it, or as it appears to us. It is in this world that suffering arises, that our incentive for practice arises, that the factors arise that inform our kammic decisions (of which our practice is made), that we experience the fruits of practice, that we are able to track our progress, that we gain confidence in the Dhamma, and it is in this world that we awaken.

    Unfortunately, Dhamma is rarely taught or understood from this phenomenological perspective. I would caution that without this perspective the Dhamma is commonly misinterpreted, often trivialized, often left obscure.

  • Consciousness in the EBT

    Dhammānupassanā Series

    Thus, Ānanda, for beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, kamma is the field, consciousness the seed and craving the moisture for their consciousness to be established in an inferior [… repeated also for middling and superior] realm. (AN 3.76)

    Consciousness (viññāṇa) as represented in the early Buddhist texts (EBT) has received relatively little attention in modern Buddhist literature, in view of its centrality in human cognition. It is highlighted in the EBT as the third of the twelve links of dependent co-arising (paṭicca-samuppāda), to which I will make frequent reference in this essay:

    (1) ignorance → (2) formations → (3) consciousness →
    (4) name-and-form → (5) sixfold-sphere →
    (6) contact → (7) feeling → (8) craving →
    (9) attachment → (10) becoming → (11) birth →
    (12) old age, death, this mass of suffering.

    In this role consciousness and name-and-form are said to whirl continually around each other to produce our whole conceptual world. In fact, in the seminal Mahānidāna Sutta , which omits the two links prior to consciousness consciousness, we learn that consciousness and name-and-form are mutually conditioning:1

    (3) consciousness ↔ (4) name-and-form.

    Therefore, consciousness actually depends on two conditioning factors, formations and name-and-form. Through form, according to the same sutta, it is also subject to the impingement of new sense data.

    Consciousness also appears as the last of the five aggregates (khaṅdha) – which are form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness – that represent aspects of phenomenal experience, to which we will also make frequent reference in this essay. We will also see that consciousness tends to arise in the presence of craving. Consciousness is also mentioned as a dependent component of (6) contact.

    This essay attempts a coherent overview of consciousness based on earliest texts, but also from the perspective of a (retired) cognitive scientist. I will begin with an illustrative example, then point out the various properties attributed to consciousness in the EBT, and finally outline how consciousness gets us into trouble and what we do about it.

    Read More …

  • The Buddha as Biologist

    Dhammānupassanā Series

    babySwimmingThe Buddha taught suffering and the ending of suffering. His teachings were stringently parsimonious and practical. It made sense that he would teach us about craving the origin of suffering, because understanding those factors and internalizing their under­standing through practice makes a difference in how we deal with these factors in everyday experience: we see the dangers in crav­ing, we become dispassionate about craving, experience revulsion with regard to craving, abandon craving, and suffering ends. These are factors of phenomenal experience that we can learn to respond to directly as they arise, in more skillful ways. Such phe­nomena are the stuff of dhammānupassanā, examining phenom­ena as they arise in our experiential world through the lens of the Dhamma.

    So, why would the Buddha teach biology? It appears that he had important things to say about the nature of conception in the womb, and about the composition of the psychophysical organ­ism, and that he gave these things prominent roles at key junc­tures in his teachings. Or did he? Biology lies within the pro­cesses of the natural world that are largely beyond immediate ex­perience but that generally continue to play out, at least within this life, regardless of our practice or how we might respond to them. Such things, if they are valuable at all, belong to theory and not praxis.

    I don’t think the Buddha was a biologist, and hope to show this in this brief essay.

    MORE … (BuddhaBiologist.pdf)

     

  • What is the Eye?

    Dhammānupassanā Series

    The eye seems like a commonplace enough and useful thing. Who would imagine that it would be so implicated in the human pathology, nor that understanding the eye would play such an important role in its resolution?

    The Buddha attributes many, at first sight, puzzling properties to the eye in the Early Buddhist Texts (EBT), and equivalently to the other sense faculties – ear, nose, tongue, body and ofttimes mind. We learn that the eye is something that can be guarded or restrained, by not grasping signs and features of the forms it contacts, for Māra is constantly trying to gain access through the eye. More­over, “it is better for the eye faculty to be lacerated by a red-hot iron pin … than for one to grasp the features in a form cognizable through the eye” (SN 35.235). We learn that the eye is that by which one is “a perceiver of the world, a conceiver of the world” (SN 35.116). On the other hand, we learn that the eye is imperma­nent, and that its rise and fall can be discerned, and moreover reveals itself as impermanent with the devel­opment of concentration. Since the eye is im­permanent, it is suffering and cannot be a self.

    We learn that “that sphere should be understood where the eye ceases and the perception of forms fades away” (SN 35.117). It is possible not to conceive the eye, in the eye, from the eye, or “this eye is mine,” and, as a result, it is possible to end conceptualizing and clinging. As we gain such direct knowledge of the eye, we are able to de­velop dispassion for the eye, revulsion for eye and thereby abandon the eye. Surprisingly, we also learn that the eye itself is old kamma, fashioned by volition and something to be experi­enced.

    So, what is this eye the EBT speak of? And analogously, what are the ear, nose, tongue, body and ofttimes mind?

    Read More . . . (pdf)

  • The Art of Lay Life 4: Selecting Elements (cont.)

    Uposatha Day Teaching (Index to Series)

    Your life is based on a long history of lifestyle decisions of your own making. Some of these decisions are to include something because something appeals to you, some of these are to include elements out of obligation. This is the pull and push of decision making. If you are like most people you made these decisions with very little reflection.

    Last week I began discussing the “Selecting Elements” step, the first step in the Art of Lay Life (the steps are Select – Reject – Balance – Simplify). You’ve already done this step probably with poor results; this is a good time to revisit the Select Step with more reflection and with the wisdom gained through the experience of having lived with your decisions. I suggested that you prioritize the elements of your life, to try to discover which are non-negotiable and which are rather frivolous. Selecting Elements should be something you revisit over an over throughout your life, as you develop more insight in conjunction with your Buddhist practice; this is much more valuable than worrying about your investment portfolio, for instance, for living optimally.

    I want this week to add another dimension to the considerations behind Selecting Elements. When we think we are bringing in one element (“Ice cream. I like ice cream. I’m going to put that down as an essential element of my lifestyle.”) we are actually bringing in a mass of incidental, causally implicated elements at the same time (“How’d I get so Chubby?!?!).

    Incidental Elements. “Because this arises that arises.” This is the Buddhist principle of Dependent Origination, which the Buddha introduced to help us understand Samsara, how we get so stuck in life. We know it particularly in the twelvefold sequence that has

    Contact → feeling → desire → craving → becoming

    in the middle. A less known variant (from DN 15) touching on social issues also goes

    Craving → seeking → acquisition → decision making → lustful desire → attachment → appropriation → avarice → guarding of possessions → taking up sticks and swords, quarrels, disputes, arguments, strife, abuse, lying, etc.

    A modern variant might run,

    Stress → Watching T.V. → Seeing commercial → craving → buying → debt → work

    Although these lists traditionally are presented as linear sequences, it is clear that they actually trace lines through what is actually a complex network of causality in which each arising phenomenon has many conditions and conditions many arising phenomena. “Craving,” for instance, show up in all three sequences above. The point is when you bring one thing into your life, even if it is a simple thought, you generally bring a mass of consequences into your life as well. Sometimes these spin off into vicious circles, like

    anger → violence → vengeance → anger → violence → …

    Studying such causal relations is the primary part of studying samsara. This is why the Buddha taught Dependent Origination.

    In the unexamined life we inevitably get unwittingly pulled into this tangled mass of thorns, creepers and snarl, and wonder why life is so difficult. It is critical in Selecting Elements to consider all of the incidental elements in your life that you wish were not there, at least not in their present forms, yet have been brought in to sustain things you feel you need in your life:

    • Job, oppressive working conditions, boss from hell
    • Car, long commutes, breakdowns, providing free chauffeur service to family
    • Insecurity, suspicion, insurance, maintaining stuff
    • Debt, bills, overdrafts, plunging markets
    • Competition, undermining others, retaliation, malicious speech
    • Anger, hatred, dishonesty
    • Stress, anxiety, busy-ness, worry, panic, high blood pressure, heart disease, ulcers, back aches

    The Select step of the Art of Lay Life is to rationalize your life to the extent that you at least know what a pickle you’ve gotten yourself into, then to decide what is really important to you on that basis. This will probably inspire you to prune away at this mass of thorns and creepers to what is really essential, to what you really really value, and for what you are willing to incur the incidental costs for. What is left may or may not have Buddhist roots, but they will be yours.

    Of course incidental elements can just as well be desirable, and maybe unexpected at the same time. You might take up a sport like birdwatching because of the challenge or even the competitive element of spotting more birds than Fred, but discover an unexpected serenity and joy at the end of every outing. We all begin with some fundamental values that we would all like in our lives, such as Health, Preserving this Life and Happiness, and perhaps even Being Good, that is, being of net benefit rather than harm to others. Without understanding causal links you will not know specifically what to bring into your life to realize these things; the most fundamental things are incidentals. If you are like most people you don’t even have much of an idea of what Happiness is or how to recognize it. Buddhist practice can help. If you are like most people you probably have brought in a lot of elements that are even detrimental to these most fundamental values, often neglecting one while you vainly pursue another. Consider smoking, for instance.

    In sum, Become a Student of Samsara, and be ready to adjust your lifestyle to accord with what you discover! If you get serious about this you will probably start making a lot of changes in the grosser elements for the better in the short terms as you become quickly disenchanted with much you now thing is important through tallying up the most obvious incidental emotional, financial and other costs of the elements of your life. Then these changes will become more gradual as your understanding becomes more subtle.

    This study of Samsara for the serious student of Buddhism will deal for the most part with very subtle emotive and cognitive elements taught in detail by the Buddha and his disciples. Dependent Origination even leads to a very refined understanding of existence, and what the self might be. Nagarjuna, the Second Century philosopher-monk, wrote, “Emptiness is Dependent Origination,” and the Buddha said, “To understand Dependent Origination is to understand the Dharma.” The lifestyle elements we are dealing with here are the visible and much grosser manifestations of, and influences on, human thought. Tractable, but still a challenge to sort out.

    The human mind has not changed since the time of the Buddha so much as human artifacts, institutions and conventions . Many common elements of modern lives did not ever remotely exist during the time of the Buddha; things like credit cards, television commercials, cheerleaders, extended warranties and traffic tickets probably would have puzzled even Shariputra. I find that an invaluable source of wisdom on negotiating modern life, one that has put this network of conditionality in a proper perspective for modern life is the Voluntary Simplicity movement. It is not Buddhist in origin, but is nonetheless similarly concerned with understanding the causes of conditions at work in trying to realize our most fundamental values, and has a similar willingness to look outside the box. A book I have at hand is Your Money or Your Life, which focuses on simplifying your financial life in order to have more free time and a better sense of contentment. There is not much in there I can use as a monk, but I can report I regret not having followed their advice more closely as a layman. You can google Voluntary Simplicity and probably come up with a lot of current thinking on-line.

    I’ll return to some of these themes with the Simplifying Elements step in the Art of Lay Life. But next week I will take up Rejecting Elements, those things which Buddhism has been pretty clear about having ideally no place in the Buddhist life, even if they have a certain appeal.