Perceptions, Not Characteristics
Recently I met with members of a community-led vipassanā group who wanted to start a Dhamma school for their children. They asked for some advice on the curriculum. They said they already had the first part of the curriculum set out, which was to teach the kids the three characteristics. After all, this is the Buddha’s basic teaching about the facts of reality, and they wanted to start the kids with basic facts.
I told them that would be a very bad place to start, that teaching the kids about inconstancy, stress, and not self as the basic nature of reality would make them depressed and lazy, because it doesn’t come in context. It would be better to start with a larger context: the question that the Buddha said lies at the beginning of wisdom, which is, “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness? What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term harm and suffering?” In the context of that question, you can teach generosity, virtue, meditation on goodwill, along with the other perfections.
Unfortunately, they seemed disinclined to adopt my suggestions. You can’t blame them, though, for thinking that the Buddha’s basic teaching was the three characteristics. This is what the commentaries have said for a long time. It has influenced a lot of Theravada practice.
But the Buddha himself never said that. For one, he said his basic teaching was suffering and the end of suffering. He expanded it in the four noble truths. As for the three characteristics, he never called them characteristics. Inconstancy, stress, not-self, he said, were perceptions.
It’s good to think about why that makes an important difference. If you’re talking about characteristics of things out there, your basic interest is in the nature of reality out there. But here the Buddha is talking about one particular problem, the problem of suffering, what you do to create suffering, and what you can do to put an end to suffering. The problem and its solution center on things you do.
When you think of the three perceptions as perceptions, you realize that these, too, are things you do. A perception is something you fabricate. You’re acting on an intention and you have a purpose in doing it. The question is, what is the intention, what is the purpose? And what are the actual consequences? In terms of the three perceptions, in what way, when you use them, can you cause long-term suffering? In what way, when you use them, can you cause long-term welfare and happiness? By calling these things perceptions, the Buddha is asking you to notice what you’re doing, to reflect on it, and to see what the consequences are.
This falls into the pattern that he says nourishes the Dhamma, which is that you commit to doing a practice and then reflect.
First, reflect on why. What’s the purpose of these perceptions? What’s your purpose in these perceptions? How do they fit into the things you’re doing that are causing suffering? How do they fit into the factors of the path?
This is particularly important when you realize that the Buddha also said that perceptions are not just actions or fabrications. He also said they’re like mirages. A mirage can be totally distorting, or it can give you a true but partial view of something beyond the horizon. Of course, the Buddha teaches these three perceptions as true regardless of whether he points them out, but he does admit that their truth is partial. These perceptions don’t tell you everything about the five aggregates. After all, as he said, if the aggregates didn’t have their pleasant side, we wouldn’t fall for them. So they’re not totally stressful. And if they were totally out of your control, you couldn’t use them to make a path. But that’s exactly what you do. You have to use them to make the path.
As in the practice of concentration: As Ajaan Lee points out, we’re taking things that are said to be inconstant, stressful, not-self, and we’re trying to make them more constant. You’re trying to make your breath more constant. You don’t want to chop the in-breath away from the out-breath. You try to see the in-breath flowing into the out-breath, and the out-breath flowing into the in-breath. You’re doing this to give yourself a good constant place to stay so that the mind can stay constantly focused and find pleasure in doing so. In this way, you’re taking things that are stressful and making them pleasant. And you’re trying to get the mind under your control so that you can do this.
This is why the Buddha says there are times when you need to develop a skillful perception of self to make progress on the path. You want a perception of self as competent, as someone who can do this, as someone who will benefit from doing it, as someone who can watch what you’re doing, see the results, and make suggestions: In other words, you’ve got the self as producer, the self as consumer, the self as observer, the self as commentator and judge.
You need all this because you have to do the concentration. It’s not going to do itself. It’s not a mushroom that sprouts on its own in the forest. It’s a skill you have to develop. As you do so, you apply the perception of not-self only to things that are going to pull you away from the path: things like the pleasures that come from distractions and the hindrances. You want to see them as inconstant, stressful, not-self—in other words, not worth the effort that goes into them.
When you choose to do something, the deciding question always is, “Is it worth it?” The perception of self is something you do. The perception of not-self is something you do, along with all the other perceptions here. Now, at that point in the path, it’s really worthwhile to do the concentration, because you can’t see the mind clearly, and you can’t see the aggregates clearly, until the mind has gotten into good concentration.
As the Buddha said, what does a concentrated mind see? It sees: Such is form, such is feeling, etc., down through the aggregates. Such is their origin, and such is their disappearance. You’ve got to get the mind concentrated to do this properly.
And where are you going to see the aggregates? You’re going to see them in the act of doing the concentration.
You’ve got the form of the breath here, the form of the body. You’ve got the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to create. You’ve got the perception that holds the mind with the breath, its picture of what the breath can do and what it is doing. Fabrication is your intention to stay here—plus, in the beginning, the directed thought and evaluation that hold you here, that adjust things so that the breath feels pleasant and refreshing, the mind feels right, and they fit nicely together. And then you’ve got consciousness, which is aware of all these things.
As the Buddha said, when you finally master concentration, then it’s time to start analyzing it in these terms. This is when it becomes right to use the perceptions of not-self, inconstancy, and stress in an all-around way for the purpose of developing dispassion.
Why do you want dispassion? Because of the duties of the four noble truths. The duty with regard to suffering is to develop dispassion for it through comprehending it. The duty with regard to the cause of suffering is to abandon it through dispassion. The third noble truth is dispassion itself. And the fourth noble truth, even though you have to exercise passion in order to construct it, does reach a point where you begin to reflect on it and realize that it, too, is inconstant. It can’t be the goal. It, too, is stressful. It, too, is not-self. You’re trying to come to that value of judgment at that point in the path, so that you can feel dispassion for it as well.
Why? Because you’ve heard of that third noble truth. Without the third noble truth—that there is a total cessation of suffering—you’d just say, “Well, this is as good as it gets, so I’m going to hold on to it.” But the Buddha wants you to let go completely. He wants you to let go even of the path, even of these perceptions of not-self, etc., so that you can experience something even better.
This is why he says that all dhammas are unworthy of adherence. You use this idea to let go of all other dhammas—phenomena, teachings, and actions—and then you realize that this idea, too, is a dhamma. It, too, is unworthy of adherence at that stage. The fact that this teaching can be turned on itself and tells you to let go of it is what makes it right—part of the noble eightfold path that acts as the kamma that puts an end to kamma. It’s a view that puts an end to holding to views, itself included. The Buddha teaches in this way because he wants to make sure that you let go totally, all around, so that you can be totally free.
This touches on another common misconception about the teaching on not-self, which is that it applies only to the idea of a permanent self. But that would mean that people who didn’t believe in a permanent self but who did have other ideas about who they were wouldn’t be engaged in clinging.
But if you think of your self as impermanent, that it depends on certain conditions being a certain way, you’re going to really cling, trying to make those conditions the way you want them to be so that you can keep on surviving. The Buddha, though, is trying to get you to let go of all notions of self so that you can let go of all forms of clinging.
It’s in this way that seeing the three perceptions as perceptions helps you all around. You’re reminded that teachings are actions, and that ultimately you have to let go of them. Even all the teachings that tell you to let go, you have to let go of those, too. We’re not here to arrive at a clear view of what reality is. We’re concerned with reality only insofar as it helps us understand the problem, which is the clinging that is suffering and what we’re going to do to put an end to that clinging. Views about reality, no matter how accurate they are, are things that you can cling to.
Focusing on the fact that these views are perceptions helps get you some distance from them, realizing that these are things you have to commit yourself to for the time being, and then you reflect on them to see how far they can take you. When they can’t take you any further, you’ve got to let them go.
The Buddha’s understanding of the path is subtle, sensitive, and circumspect, which is why commitment has to be paired with all-around reflection. Be circumspect in the original meaning of the term: Look around. Look back on your actions and their results. Learn from them. Keep them up when you’re getting good results. Stop doing them when you don’t need to do them any more.
This principle starts from the very beginning of the practice, and of any attempt to understand the Dhamma. When you’re going to teach kids about what, when they do it, will lead to long-term welfare and happiness, you give them some basic principles, but you also have to teach them how to look in the areas where those principles are not clear, or where the kids might wonder if they really apply. The overarching principle is this: You have to look at what you’re doing to see where you’re causing harm and what you can do to stop causing that harm.
That’s why the Buddha taught this principle to his son right off the bat. But it carries all the way through the practice to the very end: Commit, reflect, and let go of anything unskillful. Seeing the three perceptions as perceptions allows us to treat them in that light, as actions we commit to doing, and then we reflect on the consequences. That way, we can get the most use out of them but without burdening ourselves with them. We use them when they’re needed; we let them go when they’re not.
The image they use in the forest tradition is that you’re like a carpenter making a chair. You have tools. You pick them up and put them down as you need to, but you don’t carry them around all the time. You simply have them at hand while you’re working on the chair. Then, when the chair is done, you let them go. You put them down for good. Then you can enjoy the chair as you like.
The Buddha is concerned that we not cling to anything unnecessary. We cling to only the things that are helpful when they are helpful. We let them go when we don’t need them anymore. That’s how we put an end to suffering. And this is how these three perceptions, when we see them as perceptions, can help in that direction.
