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4  |  The Mirror of Insight

The mental quality that accurately sees the fact of fabrication and judges its true value is called insight. The Pali term, vipassanā, literally means “clear-seeing.” The suttas often pair it with tranquility, or samatha, stating that these two qualities ideally function together. The function of tranquility is to put an end to passion; the function of insight, to put an end to ignorance (AN 2:29). MN 6 states that both qualities are prerequisites for progress in all aspects and levels of the path, starting with such basic endeavors as being pleasing to one’s fellow monks, through the jhānas and psychic powers, all the way to full awakening.

With regard to attaining the highest goal, AN 4:170 notes that insight can develop before, after, or in tandem with tranquility. Nowhere do the suttas state that insight can lead to awakening on its own.

To develop insight, AN 4:94 recommends visiting someone skilled in insight and asking, “How should fabrications be regarded? How should they be investigated? How should they be seen with insight?” A way of understanding these terms in line with other passages in the suttas would be to say that regarding here has to do with noting the various ways of analyzing fabrications as to type, such as dividing them into the five aggregates or the three fabrications. Investigating refers to trying to understand their workings both in the course of ordinary sense experience and in the practice of meditation. Seeing refers to judging their value to the point of developing dispassion for them and letting them go for the sake of release.

We’ve already discussed some of the ways in which the texts recommend regarding fabrications in the preceding section. Here we can look in more detail at how they recommend investigating and seeing them in meditation.

Investigating. The Buddha’s instructions in mindfulness of breathing, the meditation method he taught most often and in the greatest detail, provide an example for how insight and tranquility can be developed in tandem. These instructions come in sixteen steps, divided into four sets, called tetrads because they have four steps each. The Buddha apparently did not mean for these steps to be followed in strict numerical order. Rather, the tetrads—or at least, the first three of them—can be developed simultaneously, because each emphasizes an aspect of breath mindfulness that’s present from the very beginning of the practice of focusing on the breath: the breath, feelings, and mind states.

Notice that the tetrads dealing with the breath and feelings explicitly mention being sensitive to bodily fabrication and mental fabrication. Investigating this sensitivity allows you to develop insight into how fabrication goes into shaping concentration. This emphasizes the fact of fabrication.

These steps also encourage you to calm these fabrications to bring the mind to deeper and deeper states of tranquility and concentration. For instance, as AN 10:20 points out, calming bodily fabrication leads ultimately to the fourth jhāna, where in-and-out breathing ceases.

Read in conjunction with SN 36:11, this passage would imply a parallel interpretation of step 8 in the breath meditation instructions—calming mental fabrication: It could potentially carry you all the way to the highest formless attainment, the cessation of perception and feeling, for that is where the mental fabrications of perception and feeling are totally calmed.

At the same time, the steps dealing with the mind show that you don’t simply observe the mind passively. You actively try to gladden a constricted mind, steady a restless mind, and release a burdened mind. And with what can you do that? With the bodily and mental fabrications explicitly mentioned in the first two tetrads, along with the verbal fabrications that, implicitly, constitute the mind’s directions to itself as it engages in the Buddha’s sixteen steps.

All of these exercises promote insight in the form of a value judgment: that the calmer fabrications can become, the more solid the sense of well-being they provide, and the more fully they enable you to follow through with the duties of the four noble truths.

This insight helps you use the calm of concentration to peel away any defilements that would pull you out of concentration. For instance, as the Buddha notes, without having access to and an appreciation of the calmer pleasures of jhāna, you wouldn’t be able to abandon passion for sensuality regardless of how much insight you had otherwise developed into sensuality’s drawbacks.

Seeing. However, regardless of how subtle the calm of concentration, and how superior it is to other fabrications, it’s still fabricated. It’s still not the goal, because it’s a form of becoming.

This is where, if we want to find the unfabricated, we have to adopt the Buddha’s strategy for avoiding both craving for becoming and craving for non-becoming. In other words, we have to see fabrications in a way that develops dispassion for them before they can turn into states of becoming.

The Buddha recommends a five-step approach in developing this dispassion: seeing the origination of fabrications, their disappearance, their allure, their drawbacks, and the escape from them, which is dispassion (SN 22:26). The first two steps focus on gaining further sensitivity to the fact of fabrication; the remaining ones, on rendering a more radical judgment of their value.

The Buddha details the first two steps of this approach in SN 22:5.

He begins by establishing his reasons for basing the approach on having developed the mind in concentration:

In other words, in a concentrated mind it is possible to observe the five aggregates clearly “as they have come to be” (Iti 49) before they are fabricated into states of becoming.

Then the Buddha analyzes the origination and disappearance of the five aggregates. The explanation is the same for all five, so we can focus on one, the aggregate of fabrications.

Notice three things. One, the term “origination” here doesn’t apply to the simple arising of fabrications, but to the causal factors that bring their arising about.

Two, notice that the causal series in both cases—the origination and the disappearance of fabrications—is initiated by your own intentional actions. This point is meant to focus your attention inside, at the genuine cause of suffering, to see why you choose the unskillful courses of action that lead to unintended consequences, such as pain, distress, and despair. This approach of inward reflection calls to mind the Buddha’s remarks to Rāhula: that to purify his mind, he would have to reflect on his actions in the same way that he would reflect on his face in a mirror. It’s through seeing your mind clearly in the mirror of what you’re doing that you can identify its blemishes and clean them away.

The third point to notice here is that the language of the analysis, for both the origination and the disappearance, changes in mid-course. It starts by talking about what one—an individual—does. In other words, the explanation is expressed in personal terms, in terms of becoming: an individual interacting with a world of experience. Then, with the arising or non-arising of delight, the terms of the discussion become more impersonal: events in a causal chain, with no reference to an individual doing or experiencing them or to a world in which they occur. This way of viewing these events is precisely what enables the mind to escape the terms of becoming.

But that doesn’t negate the usefulness of starting the discussion in terms of becoming. When a mind engaged in becoming sees how its actions lead to suffering, it’s motivated to change its ways: to learn and adopt the mode of explanation that avoids becoming and leads to the end of suffering. It’s for precisely this reason that although the Buddha wants to get his listeners to view fabrications in impersonal terms before they get shaped into becoming, he also has to express his teachings in personal terms so that his listeners will feel motivated to adopt the impersonal perspective to begin with.

The impersonal mode of explanation that the Buddha uses here is called dependent co-arising. It’s a way of viewing events directly experienced influencing other events directly experienced, without reference to the question of whether there is or isn’t anyone experiencing them, a world in which they are happening, or other hidden causal factors acting behind the scenes. In fact, instead of happening in the framework of a world, a self, or a being, dependent co-arising in its most complete form provides the framework for understanding how notions of “world,” “a self, ” or “a being” arise and become objects of clinging in the first place.

To maintain the framework of dependent co-arising, the Buddha was careful never to answer any questions about who or what was doing the events listed in the framework. For instance, in SN 12:12, he refuses to answer such questions as “Who feels?” “Who craves?” “Who clings?” In SN 12:35, he refuses to answer such questions as “Which is the consciousness, and whose is the consciousness?” “Which are the fabrications, and whose are the fabrications?” The reasons he offers for refusing this last set of questions are the same in each case, and can be illustrated with his response to the question about fabrications:

In all these cases, the questions and their resulting views come from thinking in terms of becoming, whereas the Buddha is intentionally trying to get his listeners to not think in those terms if they are to gain release. This is one of the reasons why, in MN 2, he states that such questions as, “Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound?” are all unfit for attention. He wants his listeners to get themselves out of the mental framework that forces them to choose between becoming and non-becoming, resulting in further becoming—and further suffering—in either case.

So the purpose of the first two steps in the Buddha’s five-step approach to dispassion is to provide a framework, and a sensitivity, that allows for the escape from that double jeopardy.

The next three steps in the five-step approach are detailed in SN 22:26. Here again, the explanation is the same for all five aggregates, so we can learn about all five by focusing on the discussion of the aggregate of fabrications.

Here the discussion switches from seeing the fact of fabrication to judging, in a clear-sighted way, its value. As the Buddha notes in SN 22:60, all of the five aggregates do provide pleasure. If they didn’t, beings wouldn’t be infatuated with them or defiled by them. But it’s because the aggregates are also stressful that beings can become disenchanted with them, dispassionate toward them, and—through dispassion—reach the higher well-being of purity. So these three steps focus first on the pleasures of the aggregates, to see exactly how the mind falls for them; then on the drawbacks, to see the suffering that comes with clinging to the aggregates, so as to arrive at a liberating value judgment: The suffering far outweighs the pleasures of the allure. This judgment is what leads to disenchantment and dispassion. With dispassion, the motivating force driving acts of fabrication ceases, so the fabrications themselves cease, and the mind is released.

To induce the value judgment leading to this release, the Buddha recommends cultivating several sets of perceptions and applying them to fabrications of every sort. The most prominent of these perceptions are the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self. The logic with which they lead to disenchantment can be illustrated by the following questionnaire, which is applied to all five aggregates. Because all five are treated in the same way, we can focus how it’s applied to the aggregate of fabrications:

Notice that, in the last question of the questionnaire, the Buddha is not asking the monks to come to the conclusion that there is no self. He’s simply getting them to make a value judgment: Given the drawbacks of fabrications, is it fitting to cling to them as “me” or “mine”? No. That judgment, in and of itself, when it goes deeper than any allure of fabrications, is enough to bring the mind to release.

Now, the Buddha is not simply presenting these perceptions as an exercise in the abstract. Instead, they are to be applied to your real-time actions in shaping fabrications. Here again, the image of the mirror—the reflective nature of the practice—comes to mind. You advance in the practice by looking carefully at what you’re doing.

And a prime example of this reflective contemplation is the way in which the Buddha has you apply it to the practice of concentration. In other words, you don’t reflect only on everyday, defiled actions. You also reflect on the fabricated skills you are mastering as you develop the path. This is because the practice of concentration has helped to loosen attachments to activities outside of the path, and the mind’s main attachments now are to the fabrication of concentration itself. When these subtler attachments are removed, the only remaining possible object of attachment is the act of insight.

There are several passages, such as MN 52 and MN 140, that illustrate how to focus on the drawbacks of concentration. AN 9:36, however, goes into the most detail on the stages by which concentration can be analyzed and its drawbacks brought to light for the sake of release:

First, the jhāna itself is analyzed in terms of the five aggregates that go into it. Then any of eleven perceptions can be applied to see the drawbacks of those aggregates. The perceptions listed here can all be subsumed under the three main perceptions: “Inconstant” and “disintegration” come under inconstancy; “stressful,” “disease,” “cancer,” “arrow,” “painful,” and “affliction” under stress; and “alien,” “emptiness,” and “not-self” under not-self.

Several mental acts then follow. First, an act of judgment: The mind turns away from the aggregates and develops a verbal fabrication that inclines it to the deathless. And then it stops. In some cases, this stopping of the mind is enough to lead to full awakening. In others, there remains a subtle clinging—expressed as passion and delight (SN 22:121). The word “dhamma” applied to this clinging can either mean the dhamma—the phenomenon—of the judgment inclining the mind to the deathless, or to the experience of the deathless itself, seen as an object of the mind (another meaning of dhamma). This subtle level of attachment prevents full awakening, but it nevertheless allows the mind to reach the penultimate level of awakening, called non-return. The difference between these two outcomes appears to lie in how thoroughly all-around the meditator reflects on the aggregates as activities: If he or she neglects to notice the attachment that remains to the activity of discernment, the awakening will not be complete.

This means that, for the sake of release, you have to abandon attachment not only to the practice of concentration, but also to the activity of insight. After all, most of the work of insight consists of developing strategic perceptions, but even at their most perceptive, perceptions are still fabrications. SN 22:95 goes so far as to compare them to mirages—empty, void, without substance. The goal of release, however, is the substance of the whole practice (AN 10:58), so perceptions must not be confused with the goal. This means that, on reaching this stage, the mirror of insight has to reflect back on itself in a way that allows the mind to abandon it if release is to be total.

There are very few explicit discussions of this point in the Canon, although it is implicit in several passages. For example, it’s implicit in the fact that right view is listed as a factor of the path—which is fabricated—and not as a feature of the goal, which is not (Iti 90). It’s implicit in the simile of the raft, in which the raft is to be abandoned on reaching the further shore (MN 22; SN 35:197). And it’s implicit in the simile of the relay chariots, in which the chariots are not to be confused with the palace to which they lead (MN 24).

AN 4:194 makes the same point a little more explicitly. After developing the elements of the path leading to release—virtue, concentration, and discernment—the meditator makes the mind dispassionate toward all phenomena conducive to passion, and then releases the mind from the factors conducive to release:

In other words, the final step toward release requires gaining release from the phenomena that lead in its direction.

Two discourses show that you can do this by applying to all the factors of the path the same five-step approach that was applied to fabrications in general so as to gain release from them: seeing them in terms of origination, disappearance, allure, drawbacks, and escape.

Here it’s worth noting that even the stream-enterer—one who has attained the lowest of the four levels of awakening—has seen the drawbacks of discernment and the escape from discernment. It’s simply that such a person has not followed that insight all the way to the end of the defilements.

However, the passage that shows most clearly how the mirror of insight is applied to insight itself for the sake of going beyond it is AN 10:93. In it, Anāthapiṇḍika the householder—a stream-enterer—is engaged in a discussion with a number of sectarians concerning their views about the cosmos, the self, and the fate of a fully awakened person. Anāthapiṇḍika applies the following analysis to each view, showing that in holding to the view, the sectarians are holding to stress. In other words, he focuses on the view, not in terms of its content, but in terms of its status as a mental fabrication that’s an object of clinging and thus an instance of stress. Or to put it another way, he looks at the view, not in terms of what it describes, but in terms of its performance: what it leads the person holding it to do. Take, for instance, the view that the cosmos is eternal:

The sectarians then question Anāthapiṇḍika as to his own view, and he responds:

The sectarians think that they can catch Anāthapiṇḍika in his own trap, but he shows that he is already far ahead of their game:

What this shows is that Anāthapiṇḍika has taken his insight into the fact and value of fabrications, viewed as actions, and used it to find the escape from any attachment even to the act of fabricating right view itself.

One way to understand Anāthapiṇḍika’s strategy here is to view it as an example of what is meant in the four steps of the fourth tetrad in breath meditation:

The step of focusing on inconstancy starts with applying the perception of inconstancy—and its companion perceptions, stress and not-self—to fabrications, both inside and outside the meditation. The step of dispassion comes as a result, when the allure of fabrications is seen with insight to be no match for their drawbacks. Because passion is what drives the act of continuing to fabricate fabrications, dispassion brings that fabrication to an end, and fabrications cease on their own. The step of relinquishment is when the analysis then focuses on the fabrication of insight itself, and that fabrication, too, is abandoned.

These steps help to explain the Buddha’s strategic approach to framing his teachings, and our need to approach those teachings strategically, too. He had to employ teachings expressed in personal terms, showing the drawbacks of becoming, for people to be willing to apply the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self to their most ingrained habit: repeatedly creating identities as beings in worlds of experience as means for gaining the pleasures they’ve been accustomed to feeding on. He had to use teachings expressed in impersonal terms for this listeners to reflect on their actions in the proper way to bypass the dilemma posed by the need to avoid both craving for becoming and craving for non-becoming. That way, through dispassion, they could allow the processes leading to becoming to cease. And he had to remind his listeners that they had to reflect on the fact that even their insights framed in impersonal terms ultimately had to be relinquished so as to realize unfabricated release.

It’s in this way that the mind is totally freed from attachment to fabrications of every sort—the five aggregates, as well as bodily, verbal, and mental fabrications in all their meritorious, demeritorious, and imperturbable forms. The reflective strategy employed here follows the Buddha’s solutions to both of the dilemmas that faced him before his awakening: It focuses on viewing fabrications so as to avoid issues of becoming and non-becoming. And it enables you to use fabrications to allow fabrications to cease, arriving at the threshold of the unfabricated, and then to abandon even the fabrications you used for this purpose, as the final step across the flood.

The main problem facing anyone who wishes to attempt this last step is to know when the mind is ready for it. If you attempt it too soon, you fall off the raft and get washed away by the current. If you wait too long, the raft floats near the shore but never arrives. A large part of the discernment exercised in following the path lies in being acutely observant as well as reflective, learning to read the needs of the mind in real time.

The Buddha concludes one of his discussions of insight with the simile of the swift pair of messengers:

Notice that the messengers of tranquility and insight deliver the message of unbinding, and not the message of jhāna or the three perceptions. In other words, they themselves are not the message. They arrive at the central square of the fortress simply to serve their attha, their purpose, which is release. Notice, too, that they leave the fortress after delivering their message. The commander of the fortress doesn’t seize hold of them or make them stay.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that they’re not welcome to return later to serve the commander in other ways and on another footing. After emerging from the experience of full awakening, arahants can continue making use of right view, right mindfulness, and right concentration for other purposes: The texts mention that although there is no further task for the arahants to perform, they engage in these path factors for the sake of mindfulness and alertness and for a pleasant abiding (MN 107, SN 22:122; SN 47:4). And the many suttas in which the Buddha and his arahant students teach others show that they maintain their full range of mental capabilities to help others along the path. But as SN 47:4 makes clear, their relationship to the factors of the path is no longer the same. They experience them “disjoined” from them. In other words, they no longer need them for the purpose of putting an end to suffering and stress, so they no longer have any need to feed on them or cling to them.

But as for the messengers’ original role in your own practice now, your ability to take a reflective approach to all levels of the practice—from your actions in general, through the act of concentrating the mind, through the act of developing dispassion for all fabrications by developing and then abandoning the perceptions of insight—is what enables you not to mistake the messengers for the message, and you can leave them free to return by the way they came.