The Elephant in the Clearing

I received an envelope a while back, and on it was stamped, “Don’t believe anything but your own sense of right and wrong—The Buddha,” which I guess was an attempt to quote from the Kālāma Sutta.

When the Buddha comes to see the Kālāmas, they tell him, “We’ve had many teachers coming through here, and we don’t know who to believe. They say so many contradictory things.” The Buddha advises them, “Don’t go by authority. Don’t go by texts. Don’t go by the idea, ‘This is my teacher.’ Don’t go by logic or analogies. But when you see for yourself that something you put into practice leads to good results, is harmless, and is praised by the wise, then follow that. If you see that something when put into practice gives bad results and is condemned by the wise, don’t follow that.”

So you have to take two things into consideration: your own experience in testing the teachings and the counsel of the wise. Of course, how are you going to know who’s wise? How much can you trust your own experience? The Buddha is actually saying, “If you can’t put your stamp of approval on something until you’ve proven it, what’s involved in proving it?”

Think of the story of the elephant footprint. A brahman comes to see the Buddha, talks to him, is impressed, goes back, and tells a friend, “I just talked to that Buddha. He’s really awakened, you know.”

The friend says, “How do you know?”

The brahman replies, “I see people coming to argue with him, and before they know it, they’ve become converted to his Dhamma. It’s like seeing the footprint of an elephant in the woods. You look at the footprint and you know that’s the footprint of a large, powerful bull elephant.”

So the friend says, “I want to meet the Buddha someday.” So he goes to visit the Buddha. He tells him what the brahman had said, and the Buddha says, “You know, that’s not the right use of the elephant footprint simile. Do you want to know the right use?”

The friend says, “Yes.”

So the Buddha says, “Suppose an experienced elephant hunter goes into the woods and sees a large footprint of an elephant. He doesn’t jump immediately to the conclusion that that’s the footprint of a bull elephant. Why? Because there are dwarf females with big feet. It might be the footprints of one of those. But it looks likely, and the elephant hunter does want a big bull elephant to do some work so he follows the footprints.

“He sees some scratch marks up in the trees. He doesn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that those are the scratch marks made by a big bull elephant. Why is that? Because there are tall females with tusks. The marks might be theirs. But still the footprints look likely, so he follows them.

“Finally. he comes to a clearing, and there it is: the big bull elephant. He sees him directly. That’s when he knows that he’s got this big bull elephant”

In the same way, when you’re practicing, you get into different levels of concentration. Those are footprints. They’re not proof, but they’re likely. You continue practicing and you gain psychic knowledges. Those are scratch marks. Still not proof. It’s when you’ve gained the Dhamma eye, when you’ve actually seen the deathless in your practice, that’s when you know the Buddha really is awakened.

That’s what’s involved in really knowing the Dhamma, which means you can’t just sit around and talk about it and read about it and think about it and say, “Hmm, I think that’s right.” If you really want to know, you have to commit. The question is, how much do you want to commit?

It’s like the elephant hunter. How much does the elephant hunter want the big bull elephant? Going through the forest is not an easy thing. There has to be something that drives the elephant hunter to want that bull elephant. In the same way, there has to be something that drives you to want to practice.

This is why the Buddha said that conviction comes from suffering. He has that sequence of teachings on the causes of suffering called dependent co-arising. But there’s one version that doesn’t stop with suffering. It goes on from suffering as a requisite condition, and there comes conviction. From conviction there comes joy. From joy there comes gladness; from gladness there comes concentration, so on up through the levels of the practice to knowledge and vision of release.

There’s a lot you have to do in order to prove the Dhamma true. And the desire to want to prove the Dhamma true comes from the amount of suffering you’ve gone through.

There are a lot of people for whom life is basically okay. They don’t want to commit too much because they feel they’re already okay, which is why we get easygoing Dhamma—the Dhamma that says, “Hey, don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.” Or the teachings saying, “Well, what you do doesn’t really make any difference anyhow, so lay back. Take it easy.” Or, “There’s nobody who really knows what anything means. So don’t be so grim, don’t be so serious about your actions. Relax.” That’s for people who haven’t suffered enough.

When you have doubts about the Buddha, doubts about the Dhamma, the Sangha, you can basically have two kinds of doubt. There’s the doubt that wants to know but has run into an obstacle, and there’s the doubt that really doesn’t want to know. You look at what’s involved in the practice, and it just seems so much. Again, that’s a case where you haven’t suffered enough. The doubt that wants to know comes from suffering. It’s trying to figure things out and runs into an obstacle. Sometimes the obstacle is in places where the Dhamma doesn’t seem to make sense. But then you have to ask yourself, “Is that the real Dhamma?”

Like those people who say, “Because of causes and conditions, you have no free will. Your choices are really not choices. But to make yourself feel good, you have to tell yourself that you are making choices. Try to do a good job.” But if you have the freedom to decide whether or not you’re going to see your choices as real or not, it shows that things are not totally conditioned by the past. That kind of teaching doesn’t make sense.

Fortunately, that’s not what the Buddha taught. It’s not the case that events in the past totally determine the present moment. In fact, the Buddha said that’s an evil view. It makes the path of practice, the path to the end of suffering, an impossibility.

So if there are things in the teaching that seem to be contradictory, ask yourself: Are these really reliable records of what the Buddha taught? Or are these beliefs that you’re being asked to take on as working hypotheses things you can’t know?

That’s the way it is in the world. Teaching about karma and rebirth, the Buddha didn’t say he could prove it to you. The real proof comes with the Dhamma eye. In other words, you find the big elephant in the clearing. Before that, you’ve got to go through the forest.

So in the meantime, the Buddha says you take his teachings on as right views. Notice he doesn’t say, “right knowledge.” You don’t start with right knowledge. You end up with right knowledge. You start with right opinions. In other words, you take these things as working hypotheses and you notice that they make you responsible. If there really is rebirth, if it really is determined by your actions, then you have to be careful about how you act. Sweat the small stuff sometimes. Pay careful attention.

But at the same time, realize it’s not all sweat. After all, what are we doing as we get the mind in concentration? Rapture and pleasure are born of seclusion: That’s your energy along the path. That’s your food along the path. And you’ve got some footprints that lead you to look for more.

In other words, to prove the Dhamma true, you have to be true. The test for what’s genuine Dhamma requires that you actually do the Dhamma. This is why the Buddha said that this is how you get past your doubts: You look in the mind and see what kind of qualities are there. When you follow this particular mental quality, what happens? When you follow that one, what happens? You see that unskillful qualities like greed, aversion, and delusion do lead to suffering. Skillful qualities lift you from that suffering.

But you have to be a reliable witness, which means you have to learn how to be honest and observant. That’s what the Buddha said what he was looking for in a student: someone who was honest and observant. His instructions to Rāhula about looking at your intentions, looking at your actions, looking at the results of your actions: Those are basic instructions on how to develop your honesty, develop your powers of observation where they’re most useful.

The good thing about the Dhamma is that, in putting it to a fair test in trying to prove it true or false, you become a better person.

So if you really do want to put an end to suffering, if you really want to know if there is such a thing as an end to suffering, this is what you’ve got to do.

Now, some people resent the fact that there’s something you’ve got to do. You feel forced into something. Well, again, the Buddha doesn’t force you. The fact of suffering forces you. Some people resent that, too, and say that “I didn’t sign on for this.” Well, you did sign on for it. You chose to be born. You’re here, but if you’re going to say, “Well, I’ll suffer some more,” that’s up to you. That’s the kind of doubt that really doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to be bothered. But you have to ask yourself, “How much more suffering do you want?”

The Dhamma does demand quite a lot, but it offers an awful lot as well. As the Buddha said, when you gain the Dhamma eye, the amount of suffering left for you is like the dirt under a fingernail, as opposed to all the dirt in all the world, which would be the suffering left for you if you hadn’t attained the Dhamma eye. It makes that amount a difference, a huge amount of difference.

And it’s a huge relief, because at that point you do know there is such a thing as the deathless. The Buddha was right. Your conviction is confirmed. Your confidence in the Buddha is verified, as is your confidence in the Dhamma and the Sangha. There’s an immense certitude that comes with that. Otherwise, you’re whirling and swimming around in birth and death, as the Thais say. That’s their poetic translation of saṃsāra: whirling and swimming, dying and being reborn in that ocean of tears that’s larger than the oceans of the world.

So ask yourself, when you have your doubts and the doubts are getting in the way, are they doubts that come from an obstacle that you want to get past? Or are they doubts that come from just not wanting to know, not wanting to be bothered? The first kind of doubts can be discussed; they can be worked with. The second kind of doubt is something you’ve got to work with on your own. But don’t let yourself get waylaid by your laziness or by your resentment of the fact that there’s work that has to be done. Whichever way you look, there’s work that has to be done.

So do you want to go with the people who say, “Well, it doesn’t matter what you do, because you make no real choices, but you still have to do the work”? Or do you want to go with someone who says, “You do the work, and there’s a definite reward”?