The Truth of Perceptions

I read a strange book a while back where the author was arguing that the Buddha was too sophisticated to hold to the concept of truth, seeing that there were no truths that would be true for everybody. And for some reason the Buddha didn’t call the four noble truths “the four noble truths.” He called them “the four,” because the word “noble,” of course, is just advertisement—that was what the author said. Basically, according to this person, the Buddha was telling each of us that we should find our own truth, and he was just giving suggestions.

When you read something like that, a good way to take a reality check is to look in the Vinaya, because that shows how the Buddha would deal with real life issues, not just abstractions. And it’s obvious from the Vinaya that your perceptions can either be objectively true or false. Many of the rules make allowances for cases where you perceive something to be x even when it’s actually y. For instance, you see something that you think is an inanimate lump and you sit down on it, and it turns out that it’s an animal and you’ve killed it. Well, you didn’t perceive it as an animal, so there’s no offense. But if you perceived it as an animal, your perception was true, and you intentionally sat down on it to kill it, that would be an offense.

So, obviously there are true and false perceptions—given, of course, the fact that every perception is a sketch. When you perceive an animal, you don’t perceive all the details of the animal. You perceive just enough to know that for the purposes of that rule, it counts as an animal.

Basically, this is a pragmatic approach to truth. You hold to different perceptions and you’re trying to make them as accurate as possible so that you can know what to do with whatever comes up. For example, sensual desire comes up. There are lots of different ways you could look at it. You could say, “Well, this is simply a result of my past conditioning.” Or, “It’s something I enjoy thinking about.” Or you could remind yourself, “This is a hindrance.” And for the purposes of mindfulness, what do you do with hindrances? You try to abandon them. That’s part of the duty with regard to the four noble truths. That’s a case of correct perception for the purpose of the path: You sort things out to see which noble truth they fall under so that you know which duty applies. In this case, as a hindrance, the desire falls under the cause of suffering, so you’ve got abandon it.

So when the Buddha says that perceptions are mirages, he’s not saying that they’re totally without relationship to reality. The question simply is, for what purpose are you using your perceptions? When a perception is useful for one particular instance or one particular situation, is it going to be useful in another? For example, you’re sitting here with the body right now. When you’re moving around, you want to have a very clear sense of where your arms are, where your legs are, so that you don’t bump into things. But as you’re sitting here, you can get the sense of the body so refined that the sense of even having a body begins to disappear. You can put aside your perception of the form of the body when the breath gets really still and you can hold a perception of space. That’s a choice you make.

You could hold on to your perception of the shape of the body. There are enough sensations here, even when the breath is still, that you can maintain that perception. But if you’re trying to get the mind into something subtler, more refined, you can change your perception.

Or before you go to space, Ajaan Fuang would recommend that you perceive all the different elements in the body and amplify them for a bit. You’ve worked with the breath as it gets more and more refined, more and more subtle, to the point where the breath energy fills the body. All the breath channels in the body are connected, and the breath can grow still.

Then he would have you think about fire, the warmth in the body. Where do you feel the warmth in the body in the midst of that stillness? Focus on that. Hold the perception of fire in mind. You could even have an image of a fire burning, but make sure that you’re also in touch with the actual sensation of warmth. Then remind yourself that there’s a certain amount of warmth throughout the body. Some parts may be warmer than others, but in the same way that you connect the blatant breath with the subtler breath energies in the body, try to connect the different sensations of warmth. And just hold that perception in mind.

On a warm day like this, though, you might prefer water. Okay, think about the cool sensations in the body. They’re there as well. Make a survey of the body and see which spots seem to be cooler than others and focus there. Think of cool water and then connect up that coolness with other cool sensations in the body. Here again, you find that they can fill the body. You’re beginning to get a sense of the power of perception. Different perceptions, but they’re all equally true. The question is, which ones do you want? On a warm day like this, water is a good one. When you go someplace where it’s cold, focus on the warmth.

Then there’s earth, the solidity of the body. Think of the body as being one large, solid lump here. Hold that perception in mind. Depending on the power of your concentration and your ability to stay focused on single perceptions, you find you can get a very strong sense of solidity. Ajaan Fuang had a student one time who, as he was going through the different elements, found that he had a perception that his body was made out of brass. It was that solid and stiff. Okay, that’s extreme.

The next exercise Ajaan Fuang would have you do is to bring everything into balance. Balance the warmth with the coolness, balance the lightness and energy of the breath with the solidity of the body, so that everything feels just perfectly right and balanced. Then he would have you focus on the sensation of space. The Canon recommends that you think about the space in the ears, the space in the nose, but you can also think about all the space between the atoms and in the atoms of your body, and that permeates everywhere. That ultimately is where you want to go with this perception: space everywhere, permeating everything. It’s a different perception from the ones you’ve been dealing with, but it’s equally true. There is that aspect of space throughout your sensation of the body.

Then you can ask yourself, “Well, what is it that’s aware of the space?” That’s when you can have a perception of consciousness, awareness, knowing. And again, depending on how strong your concentration is and how steady your ability to stick with one perception, you can have a very strong sense of awareness just filling everything.

From there, Ajaan Fuang would have you ask: What happens if you put aside this perception of the mind being one? The mind goes to a perception of nothingness. This takes you as far as perception can go, but you’ve learned an important lesson: Perceptions are a sketch. They focus on different aspects of reality. And some are true, some are false. But you can have lots of different true perceptions about just the body sitting here.

That’s when Dogen, the Zen master, would have you ask questions about, “What is to sit here? Do you perceive that the body is in the mind?” In other words, is the body in your range of awareness? “Or is the mind in the body?” Either perception would be valid. Which one is preferable? Again, it’s preferable in the sense of what can you do with it? And that’s for you to explore.

Another strange comment I read one time was that there’s no one true version of the Dhamma because everything you describe is like a map, and all maps distort. So how can any version of the Dhamma be the true Dhamma? Well, the answer is, look more carefully at maps. There are accurate maps and there are inaccurate maps. And there are different accurate maps for different purposes. We have a whole book of maps in our library. On the centenary of Saskatchewan, they printed a book of different maps of the province. If you want to find out where the different geological features are, there’s a map for that. If you want to find out where the different mineral ores can be found, that’s another map. If you want to find out where the glaciers were, that’s another map: all maps of the same place, all accurate, and they look different because they’re intended for different purposes.

In the same way, the four noble truths are a very accurate and useful map. They’re a convention, a sketch, but they’re a convention that has lots of uses. They contain the noble eightfold path, and there is a right version and a wrong version of the path. The same with perceptions in general: When you see a human being as a human being or an animal as an animal, okay, that’s right. If you see an animal as an inanimate lump, that’s wrong. But when you go back and you look at the human being—okay, yes, this is a human being—what are you going to do with that perception? It’s useful for some circumstances, but not useful for others.

So, learn to look at your perceptions, both with an eye to how accurate they are and how useful they are. Think again about the Buddha’s statement about the words he would speak. Only if something was true and useful would he speak it, and even then he’d have to be clear about what was the right time and the right place for that particular statement. Some statements would be pleasing; other statements would be displeasing. Which way of speaking would be appropriate for the situation at hand?

In the same way, perceptions have to be true and beneficial. On top of that, there may be some perceptions that you don’t like, but they’re useful. As the Buddha said, the perception of the foulness of food or the foulness of the body, or the fact that the body is going to die someday, it’s going to disintegrate—those may be unpleasant perceptions but sometimes they’re exactly what the mind needs.

So, when you’re dealing with these sketches, be clear about the fact that they are sketches. Even the accurate ones don’t give the total picture of reality, but they can be useful for some things and not useful for others. A lot of the practice is learning which is which.

The fact that we’re dealing in sketches all the time is why cartoons can be so expressive. Sometimes a cartoon conveys an emotion or an idea a lot more clearly than an actual picture of a person, say, or a picture of people, because the cartoon highlights things that speak to the mind, makes them stand out.

In the same way, you want to use perceptions as you’re meditating that highlight the useful things so that you recognize which states of mind should be encouraged and which ones should not be encouraged.

So don’t just throw perceptions away and say, “Well, they’re all mirages, there’s no substance to them, so there’s nothing true to them.” That’s not the case. There are perceptions that are accurate, there are perceptions that are useful, and they play a huge role in the path. Discernment is made out of perceptions. It’s one of the reasons why we have to practice it. But at the same time, someday we’re going to put it aside, because we’re trying to arrive at the real thing, arrive at the deathless, arrive to the unconditioned. And that’s not a sketch, that’s not a perception. You’ve got the reality.

Meanwhile, look for the perceptions that point you there.