Daniel Ingram - Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

However, if we look to the life of the Buddha, who by definition is as enlightened as it gets in Buddhism, lots of bad things happened to him, at least according to the texts. He had chronic headaches and back pain, got illnesses, was attacked by bandits, people tried to kill him, his own order broke into warring factions, people harassed him, and so forth and so on. Thus, it is clear that even the Buddha was not free from the laws of karma, and so it would seem naïve to assume that we were also.

However, the karma models raise an interesting question, that of the timing of the fulfillment of the promises of enlightenment and what this has to do with death. The Theravada claims that the moment of complete freedom from suffering is at the death of an arahat or Buddha, as it is only then that there is no more coming into further birth and there is the complete cessation of the senses that cause pain and discomfort. The Tibetans would disagree, focusing on the perpetual life or continued series of rebirths of a Buddha or Bodhisattva throughout time to help awaken other beings. These conflicts bring us to other models, but in fact are paradoxes created by misperception.

However, the karma models are not entirely junk. By seeing each thought, state and emotion as it is, there is an increased ability to simply 306

Models of the Stages of Enlightenment watch these arise and vanish on their own, thus allowing for the causal force of them to not wash through to the future without some moderation of intelligence and wisdom. In this way, past causes, habits, tendencies and the like can be mitigated through clear seeing, and the actions we take based on these that create future causes can be done with more awareness, clarity, and a broader, more inclusive perspective.

This is not the same thing as eliminating all “negative” karma, but it is practical, realistic and verifiable, and thus represents the grain of truth found in the Karma Models.

THE PERPETUAL BLISS MODELS

Perpetual Bliss Models focus on enlightenment bringing on a state of continuous happiness, peace, joy, or bliss. These are commonly found in Hinduism, though they are in full force in Buddhism and other traditions as well, e.g. Christianity’s “the peace that passes all understanding.” Buddhism often describes Nirvana (Nibbana) as synonymous with the highest happiness and the end of suffering, and this end of suffering is the natural corollary of the Perpetual Bliss Models. Perpetual Bliss Models and their corollaries are so pervasive in the world of awakening as to be a central, nearly unassailable tenant of most people’s core beliefs. I am sorry to say, they need serious revision.

The first point is that about impermanence. Bliss, peace, happiness, as well as their counterparts pain, chaos, and misery, are all transient phenomena, subject to conditions, arising and passing like the weather.

As Zen says, the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows march through our lives according to the laws of reality that have always been in place. This returns us to the great question of realization: does realization change things or does realization reveal how things always were? I advocate a modified version of the latter view, both for practice and for having sane models, but the dogma and those selling something often stray into the promises of a radically different and better existence.

The standard Buddhist argument is that by removing the condition, namely ignorance or misperception, the suffering caused by this condition is also removed. The question then is how much suffering is caused by that particular condition and how much is caused by just being alive. I assert that most of our suffering is caused by simply being alive, but must concede that there is something about changing 307

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something in the relationship to the ordinary facts of life and humanity that does help, and why I am so reluctant to admit that there is some sort of peace that comes from realization is a question I am still looking into. While I strongly believe that there are practical reasons not to sell things in this way, I suspect that some residual quirk of my personality is also at play here, and you may have already come to that conclusion.

The other side of the Perpetual Bliss Models is the notion that somehow one will enter into a permanent jhanic state, such as the 4th jhana or some sort of Nibbanic jhana. These versions of the bliss models imply perfect, continuous concentration untouched by

circumstance or enhanced by some sort of inborn wellspring of jhanic qualities. As noted above, all the concentration states are temporary, not related directly to realization, attained both by some who are enlightened and some who are not, and thus are a false promise.

However, as so many people get a taste of jhana and are sure this must just get better and more continuous as they progress, they end up cultivating these states again and again and get nowhere in insight practice. Further, why would someone who was hanging onto a bliss model want to look into suffering? They don’t, and so the chances of them coming into real insight territory or handling the Dark Night well are slim. Now, it is true that there is some sort of relationship between the perspective on things that occurs in the first four jhanas and the four paths, and the panoramic perspective of both the fourth samatha jhana and the panoramic perspective of arahatship share some positive aspects in common, but they are not the same thing, and even mentioning these patterns and parallels is dangerous, as it can cause a lot of misguided effort and assessment of where people are on the path. I think that this is a good place to introduce the Tibetan concept of the Three Kayas, as it has some useful aspects that help make sense of these things.

THE THREE KAYAS

Contrary to what some Tibetan Buddhists would tell you, arahats have a deep understanding of what is meant by their teaching of the Three Kayas or “Bodies of Understanding.” For me, the Three Kayas are very close in meaning and implication to the scopes of the Three Trainings. Arahats understand the fullness of the implications of having been born and of there still being a body and mind (called the 308

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“nirmanakaya” or “manifestation body”), relating to training in morality.

All teachings of dependent arising, interconnection and

interdependence fall into the realm of the nirmanakaya.

Arahats know intimately the fullness of the ordinary realities of the human condition: sickness (physical and mental), health, sorrow, joy, conflict, harmony, pleasure, pain, clarity and confusion, stupidity and brilliance. All of these manifest according to the same natural laws that have always been in effect, contrary to popular belief. A body was born and it will get sick and die. The Eight Worldly Winds of praise and blame, fame and ill repute, success and failure, and gain and loss still blow impersonally as always. The laws of biochemistry, physics and physiology still hold. We still have to pay taxes. From a cynic’s point of view, the nirmanakaya is the most disappointing aspect of

enlightenment. Did one really imagine that somehow it would be otherwise? Don’t believe the hype! Another of the great Bill Hamilton one-liners was, “Suffering less, noticing it more.” The more we wake up, the more we notice exactly what it means to have been born.

The nirmanakaya is what is meant by this passage pertaining to the arahat: “The disturbances resulting from the taint of being can no longer be found here, the disturbances related to the taint of attraction can no longer be found here, the disturbances related to the taint of aversion can no longer be found here, and yet there remains the disturbances inherent in these six sense doors that are dependent on a body and conditioned by life”, from Sutta #121, The Shorter Discourse on Voidness, in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Notice that this says, “six sense doors.” Arahats still think, contrary to occasional myths about “stopping thought”, as noted above. While the content of thoughts is still inherently dual, the true nature of the way thoughts manifest is absolutely non-dual. Arahats know both aspects of thought directly, a bit like being able to see waves on the ocean and yet also that the whole thing is made of water and intimately connected. No wave would ever be fooled into thinking that one wave was watching, controlling, or isolated from another.

The nirmanakaya is also the aspect of understanding that has to do with personality, habits and issues of character. Don’t imagine that just by understanding the full ultimate truth of phenomena that these things 309

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will somehow lose their considerable causal inertia. To paraphrase Chi Nul, a great Korean Chan monk, just because the Sun is shining brightly doesn’t mean that all the snow will instantly melt.

On a related theme, the nirmanakaya also relates to the facts of the physiological inertia and biological conditioning of the bodily aspects of the emotional life. The mind of a true arahat is extremely resilient, but the flesh works according to the same laws that were in place before.

The spacious mental resilience of an arahat has some positive consequences for physical life, but it does not completely transform it.

Thus, physical sensations associated with hunger, pain, tiredness, sexual arousal, nervousness, fear and all the rest are still intimate realities for the living arahat when they arise and are not inconsequential, though the points made above in the Karma model about seeing things arise and vanish still apply. The nirmanakaya includes issues of biochemistry and neurochemistry, and all of the issues of mental pathology that may go along with these.

The nirmanakaya bears out the truth so well articulated by Lao Tzu when he talked about dark and light containing one another and difficulty and ease complementing one another. No level of

enlightenment will allow one to just pick one’s favorite half of reality or humanity and eradicate the rest. This simply never happens and is not possible.

I think that everyone on the spiritual path should occasionally sit down with a piece of paper and list their favorite half of reality that they imagine or wish would be left if they got fully enlightened, and then list all the aspects of reality that they wish or “know” would vanish forever.

They should then list the things that they imagine would show up as a result of full realization that are not here now. The differences between these lists often point directly to what blocks the development of wisdom from clear acceptance and understanding of reality.

Even arahats and buddhas have a favorite half of reality as well as dreams about how things could be, so these dreams are not the problem. The difference is that highly realized beings understand directly that both the “good” and “bad” halves are of the nature of ultimate truth, including all thoughts about them, and this makes all the difference. These sensations flicker effortlessly and vanish, getting no 310

Models of the Stages of Enlightenment more nor less consideration than they are due. The point I am trying to make here is to include the sensations that make up your world in your practice, and don’t retreat into idealized fantasies of what realization will be like, though notice such sensations if and when they occur.

Lastly, the nirmanakaya relates to our “stuff,” our issues, our childhood traumas, our dark secrets. I have routinely mentioned that when doing insight practices one should try to see these things at the moment-to-moment level. However, one must also find a way to deal with our stuff in the traditional ways, or perhaps non-traditional ones.