To Free You from Clinging

One time, a group of thirty monks—all wilderness dwellers—came to see the Buddha. After they’d sat down, the Buddha said to himself, “How can I teach them the Dhamma in such a way that their hearts will be released from clinging as they’re sitting here?” So he brought up the issue of samsāra—how it comes from an inconceivable beginning. And he asked them, “Which do you think is greater, the water in the oceans or the amount of blood you’ve lost through having your heads cut off in that long, long time?” They gave the right answer: the amount of blood.

Then he went into detail about the various ways they could have had their heads cut off: When they were cows, they had their cow heads cut off; when they were water buffaloes, they had their water buffalo heads cut off; when they were goats, they had their goat heads cut off; when they were sheep, they had their sheep heads cut off; when they were human beings, they had their heads cut off because they were highway robbers, village robbers, or adulterers. In each category, when they had their heads cut off, the loss of blood was greater than the water in all the oceans. The monks developed a strong sense of samvega, dispassion, and were released from clinging.

Notice that the Buddha never mentioned the word “not-self” there. There are many cases in the Canon where people gained awakening while listening to a Dhamma talk, and the issue of self and not-self just doesn’t come up.

When Sariputta became a stream-enterer, all he’d learned was, “Whatever arises from a cause: its cause and its cessation.” From that, he was able to intuit enough of the Dhamma to see the deathless.

Later on, when the Buddha was teaching Dighanakha, a wanderer, he talked about the issue of feelings and how they’re dependently co-arisen—and again, there was no mention of self or not-self. Ven. Sariputta—by that time a monk—was fanning the Buddha. He followed along with the talk, looked directly into his own mind, looked at his relationship to feelings, and was fully released through the lack of clinging.

So the issue of self is not always the issue that stands in the way of awakening. It’s not the case that you have to have a right view about the self and not-self in order to gain awakening. You simply have to see the things that you’ve been holding on to as not worth it.

In the case of the thirty monks, that image of all that blood and all the lowly births they’d had in samsara was enough to make them realize that it just wasn’t worth it. It’s a value judgment that the Buddha is asking you to make. Clinging itself is a value judgment. Whatever difficulties there may be in clinging, you feel it’s worth it. His purpose in teaching is to make you see that it’s not worth it. Whatever techniques you could use in terms of concepts, in terms of images, similes, whatever would work in getting you to change your value judgment, you would use.

This principle applies to the teaching on not-self as well. When it works, when it’s effective and it’s useful, you use it. But it’s not the case that he would have you arrive at the conclusion that there is no self. It’s simply that your construction of a self comes from the aggregates, comes from the sense media. You take them as raw materials, you latch onto them, and that creates a being, creates your sense of self, because you think it’s worth it, because there are pleasures that come from the aggregates.

The Buddha does have you look at the aggregates as being stressful and inconstant, but he doesn’t deny that they have their pleasures. The question simply is: Are the pleasures worth it? Is it worth holding on?

Now, in some cases, in the course of following the path where it is useful to have a good, healthy sense of self as being responsible for the path, capable of taking it on, you use it. The idea that the self is going to benefit, the self can observe what you’re doing, and the self can judge whether the results are good or not, what needs to be done in order to change the path further and further along: Those ideas about yourself are useful. But there comes a point where you don’t need them anymore. In fact, they’re getting in the way of higher attainments. That’s when the Buddha has you apply the perception of not-self.

Some people say that awakening is seeing that there is no self. But for a lot of people, the question of self was not the issue in their awakening. And it’s hard to see what kind of experience would guarantee the truth that there is or is not a self. Just because you see your sense of self disappearing doesn’t mean there’s no self. It just means that whatever you saw disappear wasn’t you.

So learn to use the not-self teaching as a tool to pry away your identification with things that are really not worth it. But remember, we’re not here to come to the truth of no-self. Many times people say that that’s a sign of stream-entry. They try to make themselves see that there is no self and then end up claiming to have seen that there was no self, based on some pretty shaky evidence.

But think about the group of five monks: The Buddha didn’t teach them not-self until they already were stream-enters. If stream-entry had involved seeing that there was no self, there would have been no need to teach that. What need there was, was that in gaining stream-entry, they’d let go of the idea that “I am this” with regard to the aggregates because they saw that the aggregates were not worth holding on to. But they still had a subtle “I am,” which is called conceit, a sense of their existing as beings, which hovered around the aggregates.

One of the images in the Canon is of the scent of a lotus. It’s not the same thing as the petals, it’s not the same thing as the stamens, but it’s just there around the lotus. Another image was that it was like the smell of a cleaning agent around some cloth that’s been washed.

So, in order to get rid of that sense of “I am,” the Buddha then taught them the teaching on not-self with regard to the aggregates, to look very, very carefully to see if there’s any trace of clinging, because that’s what the teachings are all about.

The purpose of the teachings is to get you to end clinging. You do have to cling to the path to a certain point in order to get to the point where you can totally let go. But remember that all the Buddha’s teachings—whether they’re concepts or images or arguments or reasoned, step-by-step analyses—are all for the purpose of getting you beyond clinging. And because clinging is a value judgment, they’re basically designed to make you reverse your value judgment, to see that the things you liked, the things that you held on to, were not worth it, were actually working against you, even as you clung to them.

There was a time when Ven. Sāriputta was teaching Ven. Yamaka. This was after Yamaka had become a stream-enterer. When you’re a stream-enterer, it means there’s still some lingering clinging. The question is, “Where is it?” In his case, Sariputta goes back to the five aggregates and he calls them murderers. He tells a story: There’s a man who wants to kill a king. He realizes the king is hard to approach, so he applies for the king’s service, gets accepted, gets closer and closer to the king, acts as a trusted servant, gets up in the morning before the king, goes to bed at night after the king, does whatever the king tells him to do. Then finally, when he gets to the king one-on-one, he kills him. As Sariputta says, that murderer was actually already a murderer even as he was being loyal to the king. That was his plan.

Now, think about that in terms of the five-step program, which is probably one of the Buddha’s most important and least appreciated teachings. It’s not a list of terms. It’s stages in a process: You see the origination of something, you see its passing away, you see its allure, you see its drawbacks. When you can compare the allure with the drawbacks and see that the drawbacks way outweigh the allure, then your escape is through dispassion.

In this case, the drawbacks of that murderer were that he was planning to kill the king, but he was already a murderer, planning murder, as he was being loyal to the king and doing what the king told him to do.

In the same way, the aggregates, even though they have their allure, still, within their allure—that they provide you with pleasure—are the drawbacks. When you see that—however you see it—whether it’s in seeing that they’re inconstant, unreliable, stressful, a burden, not-self—you can change your valuation of them. In other words, you realize you’ve taken things that don’t really belong to you and you’ve assembled a sense of you and yours out of them, but then they’re all going to fall apart because they haven’t been part of that pact with you. You made the pact with yourself, but they didn’t have anything to do with it. In fact, they were already murdering you. They provided you with pleasures but they also kept disappointing you, they kept giving you stress and pain.

This teaching was enough to turn Ven. Yamaka into an arahant as he contemplated it.

So realize that the purpose of the teachings is for the sake of release through lack of clinging. They’re meant to be strategies—all of them. In some cases, their truth is true and beneficial all the time, like the basic teaching on abandoning unskillful actions and developing skillful ones; or the four noble truths and their duties to comprehend suffering, to abandon its cause, to realize its cessation, and to develop the path. These things are true and beneficial all the time.

The teaching on not-self is true all the time—those things that you claim to as yours, are not really yours. But whether it’s beneficial to see them in that light or to continue to see them as self will depend on the time and the stage you are in the practice. You hold on to a sense of self as you’re developing concentration: the self that’s responsible for doing the path, the self that says, “I will do this,” the self that says, “I will give rise to what’s skillful and then I’ll maintain what’s skillful,”—these are all the Buddha’s own words—you hold on to that sense of self because it’s useful and because you can use it to exercise some control. So there’s a certain truth to that. Your act of claiming these things does give you some power over the aggregates.

But then there comes a point where the power you exercise over them is the one thing getting in the way, the one attachment, the one type of clinging that’s getting in the way of total release. That’s when you’ve got to drop them.

So realize that all the Buddha’s teachings are strategies for the sake of lack of clinging. The Buddha knew how to use them that way, and we can benefit most from them by learning to use them that way as well. This is one of the reasons why it’s good to read the suttas, and not just the Abhidhamma. The Abhidhamma is just lists of terms. There’s nothing about the lists that’s necessarily liberating, that tells you what to do with the items on the lists. It’s in the suttas that you see that the Buddha gave this teaching to this person who had this background and these questions, and that person got these results. He gave that teaching to that person who had a different background and different questions, but still got the same results.

It’s like learning about medicine. You can learn the names of various medicines, even what they’re good for, but to learn how you actually use the medicines as part of a treatment, it’s good to see a master doctor as he treats his patients. That’s what the suttas provide. That’s what the stories of the ajaans teaching their students provide.

So remember, the Dhamma is a living process. It’s not just lists of words, lists of definitions. It’s words with a purpose, directed thoughts and evaluations, types of fabrication, done with knowledge. The Buddha used them with knowledge. We have to learn how to use them with knowledge as well. That’s when we can realize their purpose and benefit from it.