Determined on Freedom

To review some of the points from last night: A large part of the solution of the problem of desire is to bring some order to them. You focus on the best possible thing to desire, and then bring everything else in line with that, including your sense of who you are and what you’re capable of doing. This approach also involves establishing a firm set of values, so that your judgments of specific desires can all refer to the same set of standards. If this overriding desire is to stay in control, you need a firm determination that you’ve clearly articulated to yourself. Otherwise, new desires will wash it away.

The best possible thing to be determined on is total liberation from suffering and from constraints of every kind. And you want a happiness that’s totally harmless. So when you take on the Buddha’s path, you make freedom and harmlessness your highest values.

The Buddha stresses the importance of freedom in the simile he most often uses as the name of his goal: nibbāna or unbinding.

The image of nibbāna, the extinguishing of a fire, has to be understood in light of how the workings of fire were understood at the time. They thought that the fire element existed in a latent form in all things. When you provoked it, as when using a fire stick, it would cling to a piece of fuel and burst into flame. Notice: It latched on to the fuel. The fuel didn’t cling to it. When the fire went out, it let go of the fuel and was released. When it was released, it couldn’t be located as having gone east, west, north or south.

In the same way, the mind is trapped, not by the things it clings to, but by its own act of clinging. When it lets go of its clingings, it’s released and cannot be classified as existing, non-existing, both, or neither. So to be determined on nibbāna means to be determined on total freedom, even from space and time.

This determination involves four mental qualities: discernment, truth, relinquishment, and calm. These mental qualities, pertain both to the goal and to the way to the goal. In other words, the goal is the highest expression of these four, and the way to the goal requires that you develop all four in your practice.

When they’re defined in terms of the goal:

Notice that even on the level of the goal, there is a hierarchy among these four qualities. Discernment and relinquishment, working together, are the last steps leading to the goal. Truth and calm are attributes of the goal itself.

When these determinations are defined as qualities to develop along the path, they’re expressed as imperatives:

Let’s take these one by one.

• First: Don’t neglect discernment. Usually we think of Buddhist wisdom as being abstract and paradoxical, focused on concepts like emptiness and not-self, but it starts out with three very simple propositions.

a) The first is the question, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” The wisdom here lies in seeing that your happiness has to come from your actions; long-term happiness is possible; and it’s preferable to short-term.

This question also establishes the framework for later parts of the path. As you practice and start getting results from your actions, you have to ask yourself if the results are good enough to be identified as the goal. When the Buddha talked about the secrets of how he gained awakening, one was that he didn’t rest content with skillful qualities—to say, nothing of unskillful qualities. As long as there was still some suffering left in his mind, he wouldn’t rest until he could get rid of it.

Here he taught three perceptions as kind of a litmus test for testing if something qualifies as the goal.

You may have heard of these three perceptions: the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self. They correspond to the terms of the original question: In other words, if something is inconstant, it’s not happy. If it’s inconstant, it’s not long-term. And if it’s neither happy nor long-term, it’s not worth claiming as you or yours. That’s how you use those three perceptions: to test whether something you attain is really worth being satisfied with.

That’s the first principle of wisdom: We’re acting for our long-term welfare and happiness.

Now, if this sounds selfish, remember that if your happiness depends on harming others, they won’t stand to see that happiness last. This means that the notion of your long-term welfare and happiness has to include goodwill and compassion for others. The emphasis on long-term happiness also means that genuine discernment, instead of focusing exclusively on the present moment, takes the future into consideration as well, as you keep in mind the long-term consequences of what you’re doing in the present moment.

This fact is reflected in the passages where the Buddha talks about focusing on what needs to be done right now, here in the present moment. He never says that the present moment has any independent value. It’s not wonderful in and of itself. In every case, the passages that extol focusing on the present come in the context of his discussions of mindfulness of death. Given that you could die at any moment, you should do what you can right now to master the skills you’ll need to handle death well.

That’s the first principle of discernment.

b) The second principle is a corollary of the first. If long-term happiness requires abandoning your short-term happiness, you’re willing to abandon the short-term. It’s a basic principle that if you’re going to win at chess, you have to be willing to lose some of your pieces. This means that discernment involves relinquishment. That’s why these two determinations go together. You have to be discerning enough to let go of anything that gets in the way of true happiness.

c) The third principle for wisdom or discernment focuses on four types of actions. Two of them are no-brainers: The first is an action you like to do and gives good results. The second is an action you don’t like to do and gives bad results. Those are easy. Things you like to do and give good results, you do them. Things you don’t like to do and give bad results, you’re not going to do them.

The difficult ones are the next two: the actions you like to do but will give bad long-term results, and then the actions you don’t like to do but will give good long-term results. These two options require some psychological insight. You have to know how to make yourself want to do what’s in your long-term welfare and happiness, and to want not to do the things that will lead to long-term harm. In other words, you have to know how to psych yourself out.

To talk yourself into doing things you ordinarily don’t like to do but you know will be for your benefit, your discernment has to be pragmatic. It also has to know how to be persuasive, in other words, teaching the members of your inner committee to want to do what’s in their best interest. This is where having a strong sense of values is an important part of the path. This will involve all three types of fabrication that we discussed on the first night, especially verbal fabrication, which is how you talk to yourself. We’ll focus more on this topic tomorrow evening.

To be negligent of discernment would be to say, “I don’t care about the long-term results of my actions. I’ll just go for what I want right now.” Suppose you tell yourself, “If you drink tonight, you’re going to have a hangover tomorrow.” Neglecting discernment would mean responding, “I don’t care.” Not neglecting discernment means caring about the long-term consequences of what you do. It’s not focused just on your awareness of the present moment. It’s sensitive to the fact that the present moment is something you’re actively shaping, and the way you shape it will have long-term consequences, so you want to shape it well.

That’s the first of the determinations.

• The second determination, guarding the truth, means being very clear about what you base your opinions about the truth on: things like hearsay, tradition, reasoning, logic, or direct experience. Of the possible bases for your opinions, the Buddha says that only direct experience is reliable, and your direct experience is reliable only when you yourself become a reliable person. So truth is a matter not only of intellectual honesty but also of personal integrity. Intellectual honesty means basically reporting the truth. Integrity means you’re really honest with yourself about what you’re doing and what the results are, and you try to act responsibly.

Guarding the truth means that if you know that your opinions are not based on direct experience, you have to keep your mind open to learning new things in your practice. It also means you should be scrupulous in examining the beliefs you already hold on to, or that you’re thinking of adopting. That’s the second determination.

• The third determination is being committed to relinquishment. This means finding joy in abandoning any attachments that weigh down the mind and—once you’ve abandoned them—finding joy in letting them go for good. This element of joy is an important part of the practice. One of the topics later on in the retreat will be the types of delight the Buddha advises you to foster as you’re practicing.

This is the kind of joy that comes from mastering a skill. On the outer level, relinquishment means being generous with your material possessions, your energy, your knowledge, your time, and your forgiveness. On the inner level, it means learning to stop identifying with any members of your inner committee that will resist following the path. This joy is what gives you energy as you practice.

• The fourth determination is training only for calm. This means abandoning anything within or without that disturbs the mind. This doesn’t mean that you abandon your responsibilities, but it does mean that you don’t take on any unnecessary burdens. As the Buddha said, if you’re wise, you know which duties fall to you, and you fulfill those duties. You also know which duties don’t fall to you, and so you don’t take them on.

In the beginning stages of the practice, you focus on eliminating disturbances within or without that would pull you off the path. As the path develops, you begin to focus on disturbances within the path itself, and you let them go progressively, as you don’t need them.

That’s the fourth determination.

It’s worth noting that on this level of development of the four determinations, as qualities strengthened through practice, three of them—discernment, truthfulness, and relinquishment—function as means. Calm, even here, is a quality for whose sake you train. That’s because inner calm is totally safe. No one else can take it from you, and no one even has to know that you have it.

All four of these determinations are covered by discernment. You see the long-term benefits that come from guarding the truth, being committed to relinquishment, and training for calm. You make a point of learning the lessons on how to get better and better at developing these qualities, and then you apply those lessons to further your practice.

By developing these four qualities in these ways, you can overcome desires that are ignorant, deceptive, grasping, or agitated. In other words, you do your best to overcome:

one, desires that aim primarily at immediate gratification, that are complacent, or that ignore long-term consequences;

two, desires that lie to you—in other words, that promise results they can’t fulfill.

The third type of desire that you overcome are those that aim at acquiring more wealth and power over others, or that always want to make a profit over other people. Instead of seeing the value of relinquishment, you want more and more and more—like some politicians.

The fourth type of desires that you overcome are those that aim at gaining things that you would have to fight to protect. In other words, things that would make you fearful that you would lose what you’ve got, as when you work to acquire wealth and then have to hire armed guards to protect the wealth and yourself.

At the same time as you’re developing these four determinations, you’re also going against many of the common habits that the world at large uses in pursuing its desires, such as the habit of going for quick results without thought for the long-run consequences—like the American approach to business.

The second habit would be the habit of using deceit when you can’t get what you want through honest means.

The third would be the habit of accumulating as much as you can.

And then the determination on calm overcomes the habit of looking for happiness in variety, excitement, and change for the sake of change.

In an image that’s frequently used in the Canon, when you take on the practice, you stop flowing along with the passions of the world. Instead, you go against the stream, even when it’s hard. It’s hard because the desires that go against the four determinations don’t give in easily. After all, they’ve been in charge of your mind for who knows how many eons. And just because these desires are ignorant doesn’t mean they’re not clever. They can easily have you fooled, and they have had you fooled for a long, long time.

They can even quote the Dhamma to their own purposes when they want to. For example, they’ll tell you that by fighting them, you strengthen them, so you should just avoid challenging them. Or they might tell you that because contentment is a virtue, it’s best to accept them and be at peace with them. Or they may tell you that because the goal is without effort or desire, you can get there by exerting no effort or desire. All these ideas are a fake Dhamma, and they’re especially dangerous because they’re so attractive.

The Buddha, however, never shied away from the fact that the practice will involve an internal battle. This is why he used so many martial analogies to rouse the monks to be up for the fight, to help them find joy in their struggle to master the skills of the path.

For example, he compares the practice to a fortress on a frontier. Mindfulness is like a gatekeeper who knows how to recognize the enemies—in other words, your unskillful mental qualities—and how to keep them from entering the fortress. Your persistence is like the soldiers who defend the fortress. Learning the Dhamma is like providing the soldiers with weapons. There’s an important parallel between a meditator and a soldier. Because the mind changes directions so quickly, especially when it meets with internal resistance, you need to be trained to stick with the path and to see it all the way through, just as a soldier needs to be trained to stay in the battle despite the hardships involved.

The training the Buddha offers in this direction is two-fold, from without and from within.

Because you’re starting from ignorance, you need training from other people, those who are already more advanced in the path than you are. These people are not only capable of giving you instruction when you need it, but they can also rouse, urge, and encourage you when you don’t feel up for the fight. These in fact are precisely the verbs that the Canon uses to describe how the Buddha teaches his students and how his students teach their students.

Unlike the other schools of the time that taught the powerlessness of human action, the Buddha, in teaching the power of human action, can provide a complete course of training. He would inform his students of the possibility and desirability of taking on the training, and also fire their hearts to exercise the power of their own actions as far as possible.

That’s the training from without.

You also need training from within, because the actual battle is inside your own heart and mind. It’s a battle that only you can fight. This means that you have to be alert to what’s happening in your mind from moment to moment, to see how and where the battle lines have shifted. To deal effectively with your inner battles, you can’t simply internalize general lessons from outside. You also need to develop your own powers of observation and your own ingenuity to generate specific solutions to specific internal problems on time.

This aspect of the training requires a strong sense of self, one that is both responsible and capable. You need this strong healthy sense of self because you’re fighting off the defilements that you’ve identified with in the past. You need a new “you” to resist the habits of your old “you’s.” As you get more and more adept at developing a skillful sense of yourself, it fades more and more into the background, so that you can focus specifically on the actions and skills you’re training in.

There are times in the practice when you’re like an athlete who feels “in the zone.” Everything goes as you want it to, so there’s no sense of any obstruction. And when there’s no sense of obstruction, there’s no sense of self. This, by the way, is not the goal, although it’s an important part of the path leading to the goal.

That’s the training from within.

Both sides of the training rely on the first two determinations: discernment and truth, in their more rudimentary forms of being observant and honest. In receiving training from others, you have to observe clearly what’s going on in your mind and in your behavior in general, so that you can report honestly to those who are training you. That way, those who train you can trust you and can be genuinely helpful in giving advice. In training yourself, you have to be observant and honest about what you’re doing and the results you’re getting from your actions. In particular, you have to pay attention to what’s working and what’s not working in abandoning unskillful desires. In that way, you can solve problems quickly. At the same time, you can keep your own unskillful desires from pulling the wool over your eyes.

When you become truthful and discerning in these ways, you have a good foundation for developing the other two determinations: relinquishment and calm. That’s why the Buddha didn’t teach only people who were peaceful and unburdened already. But it’s also why he noted clearly that not everyone could be trained. As the chant of his virtues says, he was the tamer of those fit to be tamed. Only if someone were honest and observant would he be willing to take that person on as a student to be trained. Here it’s important to keep in mind, though, that regardless of your past, you can make yourself into that person, through being as honest and observant as you can.

This morning for some variety, we’re going to have a guided bone meditation. But first, there were two questions that came in late yesterday afternoon: Two people having problems with what happens to their bodies when they focus too intensely on their body. I’d like to address those problems first. In one case, when they focused on the body, they would get bad headaches. The other person would have an intense feeling of heat. Now, these sensations can come from different things. For those who have those problems, I’d like to recommend one technique first to see if that helps. Often this kind of problem comes when your focus is too intense and tight around the spot where you’re focused, so you have to develop a more relaxed focus. In other words, wherever you’re focused in the body, try to release any tension you feel in that part of the body. Any tension that appears, think of it scattering or dispersing, especially from the spot where you’re focused.

If you still have this problem with heat or headaches, there are other ways of dealing with them, but try this one first.