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The Roots (5 of 5) Delusion

Greetings, and so we come to the last and fifth talk of the roots, the roots of the wholesome and unwholesome, skillful and unskillful. It's the turn to talk about the last of the roots: delusion and non-delusion.

Sometimes it is said that this is the fundamental one, in the sense that without delusion, there would not be greed or hatred, and without non-delusion, there would not be non-hatred and non-greed. Sometimes it is considered to be maybe the most difficult one to understand because of the logic of the idea: if you're deluded, how can you see the delusion? Somehow that doesn't quite work together, but it is possible to see delusion.

That has a lot to do with the strength of mindfulness. Some of it might have to do with the choice to translate the Pali word moha^[1] as delusion. Some people translate it as ignorance, some people translate it as bewilderment, and sometimes we see the word confusion. In the classic ancient texts, all those words are used as synonyms or as explanations for what moha is.

The idea is that sometimes it means confusion, sometimes it means just ignorance, but it's considered unwholesome, unskillful. I've kind of been translating this word akusala^[2] as unethical. What's very interesting about this is that these three roots of unskillful behavior are more like impersonal forces within us. We don't have to take them personally in the sense of defining ourselves by them.

When human beings are born and grow up and just are, without any kind of practice, self-reflection, or self-awareness, these forces operate within us, and to some people in greater degrees than others. Life conditions—our society and all kinds of things—affect which ones are predominant, or which of the wholesome roots are predominant. As we go deeper and deeper into mindfulness, we are less inclined to see these as something we define ourselves by or identify ourselves by, but simply as the forces within the mind that arise and exist. Our role is not to judge ourselves for them or be angry at ourselves for them, but rather to choose how we relate to them.

Sometimes all we have to do is choose not to pick them up. For the unwholesome things, we can see the forces of greed, hate, and delusion arise in the mind, and we say, "No, thank you, I don't have to go there." Sometimes we develop the healthy conditions for the wholesome. That's part of the function of developing wholesome, skillful qualities: to create a whole inner landscape, an environment, an ecology where what tends to grow, the species that appear, are all wholesome as well. We are changing the conditions, the ecosystem of our inner landscape, so greed, hate, and delusion don't have a chance to really grow or predominate. Then, eventually, we can uproot them. They somehow get uprooted, but it helps if we don't take it too personally.

The Delusion of Happiness in Greed and Hatred

This weird idea is that delusion is the root of unskillful behavior, and delusion itself is unwholesome and unskillful. Sometimes it is ignorance, and what it is ignorant about in particular is what brings happiness. Whenever there is greed or hatred, it can be seen as a misunderstanding, a misdirected way of bringing welfare or happiness to ourselves. The delusion is that somehow being greedy, having, and wanting is going to make us happy. Certainly, greed can bring us pleasure, it can bring us a certain kind of delight, but it doesn't really bring lasting happiness.

The deep wellsprings of happiness that the Dharma is looking for are represented by this beautiful idea of a clear mountain lake. It has a spring, a fountain of water from the bottom of the lake, that flows up into the lake and flows out in all directions, equally refreshing the lake everywhere. This deep wellspring of happiness arises from within. It is not dependent on what we get from the world, how we're praised, or the relationships we have, but rather where we learn to settle and discover the wellsprings within.

The delusion is that other things are going to do it for us: "If I just have a better job, or more money, or better recreation opportunities, or a better relationship," or, "If I just have more power and can dominate more people," or, "If I can just express my anger more and get my way more, and feel like I'm an important person." All these ways are attempts to try to be happy, but they are all unskillful and unwholesome. They are a kind of delusion.

To be ignorant about what really brings happiness has a lot to do with this third root. Sometimes we ignore the fact that things are not going to provide us with what we're hoping they will. Sometimes we don't see the dissatisfaction, or the unsatisfactory nature of things, so we get confused about where happiness is. Sometimes we are looking in the wrong direction for our well-being. If we're looking for the surge of good feelings that comes with being praised, I don't know if that is necessarily a good place to rely on for happiness. Sometimes praise is nice, and we can feel delight and joy if it's appropriate, but to depend on that for our happiness and keep searching for more of it is a kind of delusion.

The Delusion of Self

The other kind of delusion that the Buddhist tradition emphasizes a lot—and there are all kinds of delusions, confusions, or bewilderments—is this fabrication^[3], this projection onto experience that there is a "self" there. Relegating to the philosophy of self, we do a tremendous amount of projecting. We have these ideas of who we're supposed to be, the "shoulds," the interpretations of how it should or shouldn't be. Sometimes more painfully, we have projections about the self out there in others.

So this delusion also has to do with the prejudice and bias that we have, and also infatuation with other people. With all these judgments we have of others, the tendency to judge them, or to have this bias or infatuation with people, we are kind of solidifying who they are as a self and projecting this view, this idea onto them. That is also delusion; it creates bewilderment. And we also do that towards ourselves.

This can be seen, and this is part of what mindfulness can help to do. If mindfulness is strong, and you're living an unhurried life... Rushing and hurrying, doing things fast—it's not necessarily "hurried" in my vocabulary. Doing things fast, you can sometimes stay very present. Hurried means you're kind of ahead of yourself; you're thinking in the future. You're not really here for this experience because you're going into the next thing. When we're hurried, there's very little mindfulness.

But if we can be unhurried and aware, it's possible to watch thoughts, interpretations, and judgments arise in the mind. That's when you have a chance to really pop the bubble of delusion. We can see something arise, and we see that the mind has an interpretation, an idea, a thought, a reaction, a judgment. Because we see a thought so clearly, then we can question it.

But if we're hurried, caught up, or if the mind is just filled with prejudice, for example, and we have no awareness of it, then it fills all the space and it becomes our reality. It becomes what is true, and we see through that lens. But when we can be mindful, we can watch those thoughts arise, and then we can question: "Is that really true?" We can give it a second look: "Is that person really that way? Am I really that way? Maybe there's another way, or maybe that's partial, or maybe that's not really accurate."

This delusion around self has a lot to do with the projections onto us of all these ideas of self that can be quite debilitating. If awareness is the medicine, the healing, then the ways we glom onto or hold onto projections of self for ourselves and others is a little bit the illness that we're trying to heal.

The Delusion of Permanence

Finally, the other delusion that the tradition emphasizes a lot is that of permanence. The idea that anything is fixed in any kind of way for more than even just a short while tends to trip us up. It tends to create an unhealthy relationship that, sooner or later, is going to cause suffering.

But if we can really understand and experience how much life is a river, how much it is a stream and a flow, not only do we see more accurately and become more fluid, but we're not projecting permanence onto experience and trying to hold it a certain way while it is actually changing. We are actually allowing the healing forces of our own psycho-physical body to flow. That healing force of our own body is flowing; it is a current, almost like a change within us. As soon as we freeze up, hold tight, or seize up, some kind of healing flow or current begins to quiet and becomes unavailable to us. Delusion, if not an illness itself, actually gets in the way of the natural, healing, liberating momentum, forces, and processes that exist inside of us.

Freeing ourselves from the illusion of these projections of self, permanence, and inappropriate ideas of what will bring happiness is to liberate. It is to allow the natural liberating forces inside of us to unfold and to open. Our system, our hearts, do not want to be caught in greed, hate, and delusion. If we allow ourselves to flow, it allows the healing, liberating forces within, and then our hearts will sing. Our hearts will feel the happiness in this deep wellspring of care, of love, of happiness that awaits us. We'll be available for the world as well.

I hope that what's really good in you—and all of you have a tremendous goodness; if you don't know it yet, it is there—is allowed to come forth, and that you share it with the world. In this way, this practice we do is really understood as a direct way of bringing benefit to the whole world. May all beings be free of greed, hatred, and delusion.