In the Context of the Deathless

by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

The first thing the Buddha said after deciding that he would teach was, “Open are the doors to the deathless. Let those with ears show forth their conviction.” The first thing he said when he met with his first disciples was, “The deathless has been attained. I will instruct you. I will teach you the Dhamma. Practicing as instructed, you will reach and remain in the supreme goal of the holy life” (MN 26).

It’s hard to overstate how positive these first messages were. The spiritual quest in India had long been a search for the deathless. The ancient Vedas and the Upaniṣads had framed their quest in terms of a search for a deathless happiness sustained by an unending source of physical or mental food. Centuries later, this quest was still very much alive in the Buddha’s time. He himself had framed his search in terms of a deathless that transcended all things negative:

And he wasn’t the only one. Sāriputta and Moggallāna, before meeting with the Buddha, had expressed their spiritual yearning in the same terms, associating it, like the Buddha-to-be, in terms of a deathless happiness:

After Sāriputta had reached the first stage of awakening while hearing a synopsis of the Buddha’s teaching, he sought out Moggallāna:

Of course, the desire for an undying happiness was not peculiar to ancient India. It’s universal. In effect, when announcing that he would teach the deathless, the Buddha was announcing something thrilling and truly earth-shaking: that he had solved the problem of death.

When he attained the deathless, he knew that his release from birth, aging, and death was total. That was his total awakening (MN 26). As he discovered, genuine deathlessness is a state totally unlimited. It’s a consciousness “without surface,” which means that, unlike ordinary consciousness, it’s not known through the six senses, so it’s not restricted to the confines of past, present, or future (MN 49). It has none of the activities that characterize time and space: no coming, no going, no staying in place (Ud 8:1). Independent of time, it’s permanent (SN 43). Independent of space, it’s not limited to “here, there, or between the two” (Ud 8:4). It’s the ultimate bliss (Dhp 204), a bliss beyond feelings of bliss, which means that it’s totally unconditioned (MN 59)—neither conditioned by other things nor acting as a condition for anything else (MN 1). And because it’s unconditioned, it has no need for sustenance. That’s why it’s truly deathless. As the Buddha said, it would be a mistake to think that there would be anything negative about this experience at all (DN 9). No wonder, then, that he termed the path to the deathless “unexcelled victory in battle” (SN 45:4) and his teaching “the roar of a lion” (MN 12; AN 4:33).

Given the extremely positive nature of this message—victory over death—it’s ironic that generations of people in the West have viewed the Buddha as a pessimist. That’s because they’ve focused on his negative judgments of the things that people most cherish in life, such as family, wealth, and possessions.

But these negative judgments have to be understood in context. As the Buddha saw, people trap themselves in birth, aging, and death because of their cravings and clingings. He wanted them to see the negative side of the things they cling to, so that they would meet with the freedom that comes from letting go.

In particular, he saw that they crave and cling to five activities, called aggregates: form, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and sensory consciousness. It’s from these activities that they fashion the things they think give solid meaning to life: their sensual fantasies, their views about the world, their sense of what should and shouldn’t be done, even their sense of who they are.

Because these clingings go deep, very deep, he had to provide strong medicine to counteract them. His prime medicine was this: He would point out first that the things they were attached to were composed of aggregates—even their experience of themselves and of the world was fashioned through aggregates—and then that anything composed of these activities couldn’t constitute a lasting or reliable happiness.

This is why the Buddha taught that his listeners would benefit from seeing the aggregates in terms of three perceptions that focus on (1) the fact that all aggregates are fleeting and inconstant, (2) the fact that inconstant things, if you try to find happiness in them, are stressful, and (3) the fact that things that are inconstant and stressful, when viewed in the light of a deathless alternative, don’t deserve to be clung to as “me, my self, or what I am.” When these perceptions go to the heart, they induce a feeling of dispassion for the aggregates, allowing the mind to let them go.

Because the path to the end of suffering makes use of skillful versions of the aggregates—both to develop discernment and to provide nourishing pleasures along the way—these three perceptions have to be applied in stages. In the first stage, they’re applied to anything that would pull the mind off the path. In the second, they’re applied to the path itself, so that the mind can become totally free.

So even though these perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self focus on the negative side of the aggregates, their purpose, when viewed in context, is positive: to induce a thoroughgoing dispassion that would free the mind from the attachments that keep it enslaved to craving, coming back again and again to aging, illness, and death. In that way, these perceptions allow the mind to open instead to the limitless happiness of the deathless.

The problem is that many people who identify as Buddhist or even Buddhist teachers get the context backwards. Instead of viewing the desire for a deathless happiness as the context, and the three perceptions as strategies whose purpose lies in serving that context, these people turn it around. They take the three perceptions as the context, defining the nature of reality, and assert that the desire for happiness, to be realistic, has to accept that context: The best that can be hoped for in an inconstant world is an inconstant happiness, inherently stressful, one that’s not really you or yours.

When these perceptions—now termed, in line with the ancient commentaries, three “characteristics”—form the context, they reframe the problem of death. Death is no longer seen as the problem. Instead, the problem is the desire to escape from death to find an unchanging happiness. Clinging to that desire is now seen as the cause of suffering. True wisdom lies in accepting death, letting go of the desire for an unchanging happiness, and finding peace and contentment instead in embracing and letting go of the pleasures of the world as they come and go in the present moment.

This attitude is sometimes termed the practice of “embracing impermanence.” In this practice, the inconstancy of the aggregates is no longer seen as a reason for wanting to let go of them once and for all. Instead, it’s even more reason to cherish them before they pass away. A flower is said to be beautiful because it withers; a sunset is moving because it fades; each moment is infinitely valuable because it’s fleeting, passing away even as it arises.

The appeal of this line of thinking is easy to see, in that it makes awakening accessible: near to hand and requiring no heroic effort. At the same time, it counsels the wisdom of contentment, resilience, and appreciation, all of which are good Buddhist virtues. But it does so at a price. It rejects the Buddha’s teaching on the unchanging bliss to be found in a dimension freed from the confines of space, time, and the present moment. In its place, it contents itself with the meek and anemic pleasures that fall within those confines, confines that constantly take away whatever they offer. Compared to the deathless, the doctrine of embracing impermanence is like one of Dante’s visions of hell, in which lovers try to embrace but are repeatedly torn from one another’s arms by a whirlwind that never stops.

It’s possible to see this attitude simply as an excuse for being reluctant to take on the challenges of the path to the genuine deathless. And there’s nothing new with that reluctance. Even in the Buddha’s time, many of his followers weren’t ready for the noble path. They contented themselves instead with the path to a happiness within this lifetime and the hope of a good future rebirth. It’s sad that they were reluctant, but at least they honored the Buddha and those of his disciples who were willing to commit themselves to the noble path.

The modern attitude of embracing impermanence, though, is not simply one of reluctance. Its basic premise denies the possibility of the Buddha’s victory. His desire for a deathless happiness, it implies, was misguided; his claims to have succeeded in finding the deathless, deluded. In this way, it denies the possibility of victory not only to the Buddha but also to all living beings. The Buddha’s message, in its hands, has nothing to offer to those whose worlds are falling apart and whose sufferings are extreme.

So, for the Buddha’s sake and for the sake of all of us who are suffering, we’d do better to get the context right. When he decided to teach, he didn’t announce that he was opening the door to reduced expectations. When he approached his first disciples, he didn’t murmur that he had found the wisdom of appreciating the fast-fading beauty of the flowers of the field. He roared because he had attained something infinitely more grand. He was opening the doors to the deathless, the highest happiness that anyone could desire. That was the context. The three perceptions functioned within that context, as strategies for freeing his listeners from their clinging attachments so that they, too, could attain the happiness of the deathless themselves.