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Mindfulness of Breathing (63) Breaking the Spell

The topic continues to be the thirteenth step of the mindfulness of breathing: observing. One trains oneself, "Observing inconstancy, I will breathe in. Observing inconstancy, I will breathe out." That is just how the instructions are.

This observing of inconstancy, usually translated as impermanence, is, as I said yesterday, the core insight of insight meditation. It is the core insight of the Buddha's teachings in the ancient texts. The definition the Buddha gave repeatedly for wisdom is the perception of arising and passing. Insight into the arising and disappearing of phenomena is noble and penetrating, and it leads to the ending of suffering. It is the experience, the perception of seeing things arise and pass, that leads to liberation, to awakening.

The way that inconstancy is understood here is defined by many different words in the ancient language that are equivalent to the English phrases "arising and passing," "appearing and disappearing," and things like that. It is hard to understand or appreciate how valuable it is to have this experience until one experiences it in a very deep, subtle, quiet place in meditation. That is really where this deep insight works, and it is very penetrating and awakening when the mind is ready to see it. If, in ordinary consciousness walking down the street, someone tells you just to notice the arising and passing of phenomena, it probably will not stick. There probably will not be any sense of continuity with resting in it, of just being open to it, because you have to take care of too many details walking on the street and figuring out what is going on.

But in deep meditation, to be really at rest and able to be centered in a receptive, open, observing way of the flow of experience in awareness—that is possible because we are not overlaying concepts and ideas on top of things. We are just there in the direct experience of phenomena, of perception, and sensations. We see the beginning of thoughts, and even emotions that might feel continuous in an ordinary street consciousness. When the mind is very quiet and still, we begin to feel and sense how they are momentarily, fleetingly coming into existence and going out of existence. There is a coming into awareness and going out of awareness; the mind picks it up and then doesn't pick it up. Generally, what happens is we sew all these different moments of arising and passing together into a feeling of constancy, into the idea that it is continuous. But when we don't have ideas anymore and are just in the direct experience, this arising and passing occurs.

This is supposed to be liberating. Partly, it is because when we see that things are constantly in flux, it doesn't make sense to cling to them or grasp onto them. It is like you are seeing a river flow by, clearly moving and in flux, and then you put your hand in there to grab the river and hold it. You grab a handful of the river, you pull it up, and by the time you open your hand to hold the river, all the water has squeezed out of your fingers and run off. You might have a few drops left on your hand, but you don't go to your friends on the shore and say, "Hey look, I have the river in my hand!" If you think you're holding the river because you have those few little drops, you know that is no longer the river. The river is partly defined by water that is flowing, and those drops are no longer in that flow.

The idea of picking something out of the flow of experience and holding onto it—if we are really centered in the flow, then we see we have actually left the flow. We are now holding an idea of something that is just a little drop. It turns out that so much of what we get attached to, cling to, or resist is not actually reality, but the idea, interpretation, or concept we have of reality. It is hard to explain that to people in ordinary consciousness, but when you are truly centered and quiet, and see the vibratory flow, the sparkling flow, the raindrop on the lake appearing and disappearing—the phenomena becomes glaringly obvious. It doesn't make sense to cling to it or resist it. Rather, the path is to open to it, allow it to move through, and just allow it to flow.

Generally, when that happens, our relationship to that experience changes dramatically. Even if it is physical pain, which is very hard to be with, when we have the ability to be concentrated and still and feel it all as a flowing sensation, the pain gets transformed into something else that doesn't really feel painful anymore. It becomes a flow of arising and passing sensations, which is a whole different way of experiencing it. But it requires the mind being very still, focused, present, and quiet to do that. This is the core insight: to see the appearing and disappearing of phenomena. In the guided meditation, I was focusing mostly on the arising. At some point, we will do a meditation just focusing on the passing away of phenomena, and then the arising and passing of phenomena occurring together.

Our relationship to things begins to shift. There is a wonderful verse in the Dhammapada^[1] that starts with the principle that all things are inconstant, so everything is arising and passing. Even things that, from ordinary consciousness, seem unchanging—in the mind's way of experiencing it, it is the experience that is arising and passing. We want to be a little bit careful we aren't getting too wrapped up in the thing that we're perceiving being inconstant; it is the nature of how experience happens that is inconstant. There is a momentary, pixelated nature of reality, a flow of experience that comes and goes. That is built into the very nature of how we are aware, how we experience things.

Here the Buddha says, "All created things are inconstant," and the word is sankhara^[2]. I would like to suggest that what we're talking about is all created experiences, all the ways in which the mind perceives, takes in, and constructs our reality. Everything like that is inconstant; it is in flux and moving. The verse continues: "Seeing this with insight, one becomes disenchanted with suffering." Whoever believes that they are enchanted with suffering—"enchanted" means enamored, it means caught in the spell of it somehow. If we hate our suffering, we are caught in its spell, we are entangled. There is something about seeing the inconstancy of experience that helps us to disentangle ourselves, to break that spell and not be so caught in it. "All created things are inconstant, all sankharas. Seeing this with insight, one becomes disenchanted with suffering. This is the path of purity."

It is a little problematic, this idea of purity, but just a few verses before, it is described this way: this is the path for purifying one's vision, purifying our awareness, how we see things. It is not necessarily becoming a saint in that kind of purity, but rather coming to a place where our capacity to be aware is purified of all the filters, thoughts, ideas, reactions, and emotions that prevent us from seeing clearly. To really see things as they are, we want to see the inconstancy of phenomena.

The verse goes on: "All created things are suffering. Seeing this with insight, one becomes disenchanted with suffering." Here we have the second of the Three Characteristics. The three are Inconstancy, Suffering, and Not-Self. These three characteristics are the core insights of insight meditation. It starts with arising and passing. Seeing that layer of our experience gives birth to a clear insight into what is here translated as suffering. The word is dukkha^[3], and for now it could be more usefully translated in this context as "stressful," but we will talk more about that on Monday.

Then the verse says, "All things are not-self. Seeing this with insight, one becomes disenchanted with suffering." We will continue this idea of the Three Characteristics, which are so phenomenally important for insight meditation that it is worth spending some time with. This movement of observing inconstancy has an impact on the meditator, and the impact is a process of disenchantment, of breaking the spell of how we are caught, entangled, clinging, or attached to things. The allure, the promise of attachment—the promise that grasping will somehow save us or do something for us—begins to be broken.

During this weekend, you might want to look a little bit at this idea of inconstancy and the arising and passing of phenomena, and see if somehow that casts any perspective on how you might be enchanted with suffering or caught in its spell.

Q&A

Q: "Inconstancy is not bad news." Aha! A: Nice.

Q: Are there transcripts of your talks? A: Yes, but they're not necessarily coming right away. There's a wonderful team of people who are transcribing these talks in the morning, and I think some of the earlier ones from early in the year or before are available now. If you go on AudioDharma, where the audio recordings appear, it will say if there's a transcription available, and they're likely edited. The person leading up that wonderful project of transcribing is Meg Gawler, who often says hello here in the morning. So thank you so much, Meg, and your team for this great work you're doing.

Q: Where does awareness go when we are caught in thinking? A: A lovely question. It depends what we mean by awareness. If there's knowing awareness, we know what we're aware of, we know what's coming into consciousness. There's a lot of things we know that are coming into awareness that we don't fully know. For example, just saying all this, I was aware that I have these studio lights on here. I was aware of this light, and then I knew, "Oh, the light is on." That knowing of it is different than just going about and not paying attention, not having any active formal recognition. When we're thinking, our consciousness—our awareness—gets hijacked and held hostage by our thinking. We get so glued to our thinking that that self-reflective awareness (knowing what's happening, what we're doing, and knowing that we're thinking) gets lost because we are so preoccupied. That's probably an inadequate answer, but we'll have to leave it at that for now.

Q: Can you say more about dealing with pain, especially for those with chronic illness? A: That's a huge topic, and a very, very important one. There are a lot of people who are managing their life with pain and chronic illness. I think one of the great benefits of mindfulness meditation in circumstances like that is to help us not add "second arrows" ^[4] to it. When we already have tremendous difficulty in working through our life with this, we learn not to add shame, self-incrimination, resentment, or anger, and not to get attached to thoughts like, "It should have been different," or "Why isn't it different?"

The practice helps us learn how to be simpler and simpler, and to allow ourselves to be ill and in pain in the simplest possible way, maybe even in an ordinary way. As if, "Oh yes, I'm sick, that's what's happening." And then, absolutely, take care of ourselves, try to be well, and do what we can to heal the pain or overcome the illness. This is not a passivity that we want to have about it. But when we can't do much, the practice can help us become very simple with it, breathe with it, and not add extra tension and stress to an already stressful situation.

As mindfulness gets stronger and more concentrated, it is possible to bring a careful, loving, compassionate attention deeply into the pain and the illness to really feel the direct experience of it. That sometimes allows for beneficial shifts. I don't want to say exactly what those beneficial shifts will look like—it is different for different people—and I don't want to set up the expectation that mindfulness can make the pain or the illness go completely away. It can be healing for the heart. The illness and the pain might not go away, but the heart is healed. That is the movement of liberation, and then we become whole in a certain way.

Q: Is closed captioning available for these talks? A: I believe they are through YouTube, but I haven't tracked all this so well. I believe there's a way, maybe down in the settings on YouTube. (Note: Meg Gawler adds in the chat: "Closed captioning equals the oral notes on AudioDharma. Also, closed captioning on YouTube is not available live, but seems to show up later on.")

Q: Are thoughts the central mechanism as to how we cling to these constant phenomena? A: I don't know if thoughts are the mechanism for clinging, but at least in my experience, what we cling to is mostly our thoughts and ideas. It's not so obvious until you really see how this works in a deep, quiet way. We don't really cling to physical pleasure itself; it's more like we cling to the thoughts and ideas we have about what this pleasure is doing for us.

Q: To get to the deepest levels of insight, it seems we have to let go of every to-do list in our life. How can we function in the world if we want to go to the deepest levels of insight? A: Great question. Yes, to get to the deepest level of freedom, you have to put aside or let go of all clinging. But we can still hold things without clinging. For example, I can be attached to this bell striker, and I can feel I'm attached to it. I might think I should therefore let go of it, and I can just drop it. But it's not the thing that we necessarily have to let go of—unless it's harmful, and the striker is not harmful in itself. It's the clinging we let go of. So I can hold it without any grasping.

In deep meditation, we want to put everything aside. So with a to-do list, you would put it on a piece of paper, leave it on your table, and just put it aside. Then later you come back to it. Look at it and hold all the things on the to-do list with an open hand and an open mind. Go through them and have the pleasure of checking them off, but don't get attached or cling to any of it. You're welcome to keep your to-do list! Hopefully, the deep letting go and deep wisdom of meditation helps you to look at that list and prioritize in a good way. Maybe a few of the things on the list are not necessary, or represent something you're unnecessarily attached to.

Q: There seems to be two kinds of inconstancy: how our awareness flickers and then perhaps wraps things up in a constant narrative, and the flickering inconstancy of phenomena itself. Is that correct? A: Yeah, that sounds nice. Things are not random. The inconstancy of what appears and disappears is not completely random; it arises because of preceding conditions. Nothing arises out of nothing. Conditions come together, and then things arise. In Dharma practice, we are actually putting in place the conditions so that we have more consistency, so that we grow in a certain direction, and certain kinds of arising tend to happen more often. For example, if you practice a lot of loving-kindness, that sets the conditions so that when you sit and feel pain, you're more ready to feel compassion and care for yourself than you are to be angry with yourself or angry with other people. So there is inconstancy, but we begin to shape that inconstancy so it tends in a beneficial direction.

Q: Would you please say more about how the Buddha never said "no self," or that he had a sense of self? A: Yes, so we'll talk about that next week when we get to not-self in this exploration of inconstancy.

Q: [A question in the chat mentions Tinnitus] A: I have tinnitus. The best thing for me is if no one brings up the word! Because then, if I'm reminded, I start hearing the ringing in my ears. There are times where I've been really troubled by this, the ringing in my ears driving me kind of batty. But no, I'm not troubled by it anymore, and it kind of recedes. Some people find it useful to make it the object of meditation; it has a kind of constancy that is grounding for some people. I've never found it particularly useful to pay attention to it. In fact, some teachers actually say this is one of the things in mindfulness practice you shouldn't pay attention to. The idea is to pay attention to everything in mindfulness, but not to pay attention to that. It all depends on the person and what's useful. These days, I mostly don't give it much attention. I've learned not to react to it, not to be for or against it, and just say, "Okay, there it is," and then I continue with my breathing and practice. I know for some people it's really bad; having some ambient sound around sometimes masks and hides it.

Q: It's a challenge to hold one's tongue and only observe. A: Yes, this is the advanced graduate school of mindfulness: to be mindful of speaking. There is so much attachment, so much force, power, and desires that come into play in speaking. It is so beneficial to bring mindfulness to talking—it's a window into, to use non-Buddhist terms, our soul. To really be mindful of our talking, what drives it, why we're going to say what we say, and the emotional motivation for our talking... it's a dramatic window into the depth of who we actually are. So it's certainly worthwhile to learn to do that.

Q: If things are inconstant, and clinging to them causes us to suffer, what does that mean for choices of the heart like marriage and career? A: Well, ideally, we would choose marriage or a career without any clinging. In the flow of things, we still make choices about the direction of our lives, the purpose and meaning of our lives, and what we want to really put our heart into. We don't have to just go randomly along with whatever happens. It's a beautiful thing for some people to have a career or a marriage that they devote themselves to, and other people make other choices that are just as good and valuable.

With something like marriage, and maybe with careers as well, if we wait until we have no clinging and no craving before we get married, perhaps most people wouldn't get married! In Buddhism, it's not a sin or a crime to be attached and to cling; it just means we're going to suffer somewhat because of it. One way to approach something like marriage and career, or any choice we make, is to enfold it into our mindfulness practice. Fold it into our careful attention and compassion. Marriage and family can be a great place to discover where we're attached, where our clinging and craving are deep—things we wouldn't see in ourselves unless we were in an intimate, committed relationship. Then we work through it and come to the other side. It can be folded in as a path of practice, as opposed to avoiding all these things because we're clinging. It's probably best not to choose to go into marriage just because you want to work out your clinging, however! Hopefully, that answers the question well enough.

Q: What chapter and verse from the Dhammapada did you cite? A: I think it's verse 277. It's in Chapter 20, "The Path." I'm reading from a translation that I did twenty years ago or so. It's a little bit fascinating, and a little bit embarrassing, or a little bit of regret, that my study of Pali was not what it is now, so I would translate some of this differently today. Also, regarding the use of gender pronouns, I tried to avoid them to become more gender-neutral. But sometimes, if there were two pairs of verses where the original was in the masculine pronoun, I would do one with "he" and the other with "she." At the time I thought that was good, but twenty years later I understood that we really want to try to be gender-neutral more fully, because of how many people don't fit into the binary of "he" and "she." So I regret that I left it like that, but I didn't know enough back then to make that choice.

Q: Are these deep insights only really possible with lengthy meditation retreats? Have you read the Harper's article about the possible dangers of this? A: It doesn't require deep insights, but for many people in our tradition, it's usually in meditation retreats that this really settles in and becomes digested, where we see it and are impacted in a very good way. But once we have a clear sense of it and a familiarity with it, then they kind of live in a delightful and wonderful way much more in our daily life as well. It doesn't require deep meditation anymore to really have it be part of the landscape.

I might have read the Harper's article, and I think I'm pretty familiar with the modern discussion about the dangers of deep insight meditation. Generally, people who want to go into the deeper meditation experiences should work with a teacher and stay closely connected so you can ask questions about how it's going. Some of it can be a little bit disorienting. But some of the real dangers happen due to the attitude and way in which people practice. People who really strive and push can have real psychological problems because they're overriding; there's not a relaxation or a broad unification, composure, or collectedness.

This anapanasati^[5] practice is a fantastic practice because it creates a really good foundation for these insights. I think some of the people who end up in a little bit of psychological trouble somehow leapfrog over creating the foundation of practice. They're in a hurry, they're gung-ho, and so they experience the deep experiences of inconstancy before they really have the psychological support, well-being, and stability to make good use of it. If they already have a little bit of psychological instability, it can make it more unstable. This is a known phenomenon. One of the reasons why having some connection to a teacher and meditation retreats is important is because you have that connection and support if something like that happens.

Thank you all very much for this morning and your questions. I appreciate them, and I'm sorry if I didn't answer all the questions, but I value them all. Thank you.