The Buddha’s Lists

One aspect of the Buddha’s teachings that some people find tedious is the number of lists. There are lots of them. If you were to take the Dhamma exams in Thailand, in the first two years, the Dhamma textbook is nothing but lists: lists of two members, lists of three, all the way up to lists of eleven.

But back when those Dhamma textbooks were first made, people expressed a lot of happiness about them because these were teachings that had been hidden for a long time. Now they were laid out clearly, in a form easy to digest. When you go to the suttas where the lists come from, at the end of the suttas people express their delight. So why would they delight in lists? Sometimes they would say it was as if the Buddha had taken a lamp into the dark so that people could see forms. These lists illuminate parts of your mind that have been in the dark for a long time.

Think of the Buddha’s definition of ignorance—the ignorance that leads to craving, that leads to suffering. It’s not knowing in terms of the four noble truths. Notice that “in terms of.” You see things in terms of the framework of the four truths and their duties. The names of what’s unskillful—the five hindrances, the ten fetters—are meant to illuminate the things that are making us suffer, so that we can know we have to abandon them. The skillful things—the seven factors for awakening, the five strengths, the four establishings of mindfulness—give us a hint on what we can develop as a path to put an end to suffering.

So learn to see the lists as there to help clear up the darkness in your mind, so that you can name the beasts in your mind, and also the strengths you have to deal with the beasts. When you don’t have a name for those strengths, you can hardly see them. They get very blurry, very vague. You don’t have a sense of what’s missing.

But when you’re trying to do your practice, you can think, say, of the four bases for success and you can ask yourself, “Do I have enough desire, and is my desire balanced?” “How about my persistence? How about my intent? How about my powers of analysis? Are they all in balance?” If you didn’t have names for these things, what would you do? You’d be thrashing around in the dark.

You might tell yourself, “Well, I’ll just be with the present moment,” but as you’re with the present moment, a lot of unskillful subterranean things are going on in the mind. If you’re just there in the present moment, you’re letting them continue to be there. You should want to say, “I’m happy to be able to do something about them, finally, for now I can see: These are the names of the monsters. These are their features.”

But the Buddha gives you not only names, but also a framework—that’s what the four noble truths and their duties are all about. They give you a pattern against which you can judge things.

And here again, we have a problem with the word, “judgment.” But, remember, the standards the Buddha has set for you—his “shoulds,” the duties of the four noble truths—are for your happiness. They’re in your favor. We live in a culture where a lot of people feel oppressed by the judgments of others. And some of those judgments are oppressive because they’re using terms that are not related to anything that we would want to do in our lives.

But if there are terms related to how to put an end to suffering, what you can do to put an end to suffering, that kind of judgment is really helpful. And being able to pass judgment like that should be a source of joy. So think of the four noble truths as the Buddha’s framework for judgment.

Then you learn the other lists so that you can figure out, “What do I need to do with these things in terms of the duties of the truths?” Try to learn the lists in their entirety, so that you don’t just get a partial idea of what’s going wrong and what has to be done.

That, for instance, is why we have the list of the five hindrances. If you didn’t know their names, you wouldn’t be able to identify them. You might know two of them, say, or three, but then you’d still be mystified, “Why is it that I’ve gotten rid of the three hindrances and yet my mind won’t settle down?” Well, there are two others that could also be getting in the way.

Or suppose you’re trying to use the three perceptions to let go of something, seeing that if it’s inconstant and stressful, it should be not-self—but you’re still clinging. Well, remember that the Buddha taught that kind of analysis as part of a larger framework in which there are five steps altogether.

When something unskillful comes up, you look for the origination: What in the mind is causing that thing to begin with? And can you see it pass away? When the cause passes away and the defilement passes away, you see there’s a connection between the two of them.

Then what’s the allure? This is the big one, because if you don’t see what the genuine allure is, what the appeal is for that particular kind of defilement, you can think about the drawbacks all you want—inconstant, stressful, not-self; inconstant, stressful, not-self. You can say it again and again and again—or as Ajaan Lee would say, anattā, anattā, anattā …tā, tā, tā—but it doesn’t do anything because you haven’t seen, “Why do I really go for this? What’s the appeal?” When you can see the appeal, then you can look for the drawbacks, compare them, and say, “Okay, is it really worth it?” You have good grounds for judgment now—a judgment that’s in your favor, for the sake of your true happiness.

So the Buddha didn’t just throw you into the present moment and say, “Be with the present moment. Be content with the present moment. Don’t pass judgment,” because there are a lot of things you do have to judge. There are skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind—that’s the beginning of discernment and the seven factors for awakening: seeing that distinction.

Then you work with it. You try to develop what’s skillful, abandon what’s not. How do you know what to abandon and what to develop? You see where these things fit in with the four noble truths: “This quality of mind I have here right now—is it part of the cause of suffering, or is it part of the path to the end of suffering?”

We know that the causes of suffering are certain types of desire, but the path to the end of suffering also includes desire—the desire that’s part of right effort, that gives you some guidance. You can’t say, “If I have any desire for anything to change in my mind at all, that must be bad.” If that’s your attitude, you’re going to be stuck in suffering for a long time to come.

But when you know that there are four noble truths, not just one, or not just three, and that desire can play a role as part of the path—the things you’re doing to get to the end of suffering—then you become more discerning. That lamp that clears the darkness gets brighter, and you see subtler things inside that you wouldn’t have seen before because you didn’t know where to look. You didn’t see the outlines that would let you know what’s skillful and what’s not.

So learn to get some joy out of those lists. Have a sense of what they’re for. They’re there to name the monsters in the mind but also to name your friends and allies in the mind. You can put all those different lists within the right frameworks, in terms of the duties of the four noble truths, to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation, and develop the path to its cessation. Then you know what to do. When you know what to do, you’re more in control. You can take responsibility for your state of mind. You can do some of your own clearing up of the darkness inside.

So don’t see the lists as an imposition or as being too dry. They’re there to help you get out of states of mind that you’re immersed in.

For example, think about the three stages of dealing with grief:

1) recognizing that everybody has to go through loss, so you can turn your grief into compassion;

2) allowing yourself, when you think it will be helpful, to express your love for the person who passed, your gratitude for the goodness they’ve done; and then

3) realizing that you’ve still got work to do in this lifetime. The person who died didn’t take the good things of life away.

When you know that list, it helps pull you out of your grief when you’re ready to get pulled out. The Buddha doesn’t kick you out of your grief, but he does say, “Here’s a handle.” When you’re ready and willing to step out of these things, the names are there to help you.

That’s probably one of the main functions of having these names: They allow you to step back from what’s going on in your mind and not be totally immersed in these various states of becoming.

The act of stepping back and looking at the processes: When you see the processes, it’s easier to let go of the things that are unskillful, to not go back into those worlds that would make you suffer. As long as you’re going to be creating the world of concentration, the world of mindfulness, as part of the path, you can immerse in that particular world. But you know that that world has a purpose that goes beyond it. When you know these things, then you’re more in a position of power.

So see the lists as lists for empowerment. See that the framework for passing judgment on things in the mind is for passing judgment in your favor. The judgment may be negative about things you used to identify with, but it helps you pull yourself out and say, “No, I don’t need those things anymore.” That’s how you free yourself.

So take some delight in these lists. Use them as a lamp in the dark. Then you’ll understand why people in the past delighted in them when the Buddha taught them. They should still be a source of delight now.