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Mindfulness of Breathing (61) Inconstancy of Experience

As I've said already, with the thirteenth step of mindfulness of breathing, we enter into the territory of insight, of vipassana^[1]. Before this, the meditation practice can be characterized by practicing mindfulness. After all, this is called mindfulness of breathing in and breathing out.

Mindfulness and vipassana are two different things, classically, in the early tradition. In the modern English scene, people will use the words vipassana and mindfulness synonymously, and sometimes the word vipassana refers to the Vipassana tradition or vipassana meditation, used as a general term. But in the teachings of the Buddha, the word vipassana doesn't refer to any kind of practice, but rather the results of practice. It's the result of doing mindfulness and concentration practice together, which is one of the benefits of mindfulness of breathing. As we stay with the breath all the time, there is a concentration factor that builds. But we're also practicing mindfulness, staying aware of what's going on where the mindfulness is present. When both become sufficiently strong—the mindfulness and concentration—then we start having insights. We start seeing and observing in ways that we don't usually observe in everyday life. We start observing in a deeper way, or with greater clarity, into the moment-to-moment experience, and that's when insights begin.

Two Kinds of Insight

The insights of the insight meditation practice are what I like to think of as insights with a capital "I." There are lots of insights with a small "i," all of which can be very significant. But the difference in my vocabulary, and why I'm using them now, is that the small "i" insights are the big "aha" moments where we see something about ourselves that's unique to ourselves. For example, we understand something about the conditions that led us to become who we are today. Or we see clearly our particular beliefs that we're operating under—maybe they were deluded or not really true—and then we put them down. Or we see something about ourselves that we never saw before and say, "Wow, that explains why I behave this way. Because, oh, there's that anxiety, or fear, or memory that I have that keeps filtering my experience." There are all kinds of very important personal insights that help us become freer and freer.

But the insight with a capital "I"—the insight of insight meditation—is really focusing on seeing things which are universal, common denominators of all experiences. It's true whether it's a personal experience unique to oneself, and it's true for everybody. Sometimes they're called universal characteristics of all experience. The Buddha called these perceptions—qualities or aspects of how we perceive all things that we take in. There is something universal, transpersonal, or more encompassing than anything we see personally. While the personal insights are important, going deeper down into the common denominator of all experiences—the common characteristics of all experiences—puts us at the deeper foundation from which we build the cathedrals and citadels of our conceptual world: the world of self, and self in the world of others. We build this world, philosophy, beliefs, and feelings based on things that have this foundation of these common characteristics, common ways of perceiving.

Epistemology vs. Ontology

The primary one that the Buddha emphasizes is a quality of all experiences called anicca^[2] in Pali. It is spelled a-n-i-c-c-a. It is commonly translated into English as impermanence. That is probably not the best translation, and I'll get to that in a few moments.

But I want to emphasize that what we're focusing on here is what can be called experience. In philosophical terms, Buddhism is epistemological, or this practice we're doing is epistemological. I think what that means is that it's the nature of how we know something, or the nature of the experience we have itself. This is as opposed to ontological, which is having some understanding, belief, or interpretation about the nature of reality. Many people want to assume or believe that insight practice brings us a deep insight into the nature of reality, and it can be very reassuring to feel like we have that kind of deep, powerful understanding.

The Buddha seemed very reluctant to make any ontological statements about the nature of reality. He was not an early physicist who understood the nuclear physics of what was really going on. He was a scientist of perception, of the nature of how we experience things, which is an interface, a meeting place of what's happening in the world out there and our perceptions—how the mind takes it in.

So it's the nature of experience. Now, this can feel a little complicated or discouraging because we want to have certainty about the world out there. But everything we know about the world happens through the filter, the avenue, of our experience. It's kind of like an hourglass. The broad cup of the hourglass is the expanded world outside of us, and the other expanded cone of the hourglass is the huge inner world that we have. But the neck of the hourglass is what we see through our eyes, what we hear through our ears, smell through our nose, taste through our tongue, feel through our body, and then what is known about what's happening in the mind—the knowing, the experience of recognizing what's happening in the mind one way or the other. Everything that we know has gone through those six hourglasses of perception.

With that, the inner world can make it complicated. We can invent new ideas, stories, connections, and all kinds of things. But we don't remember or don't recognize that it all had its genesis in that realm of hearing and seeing. For example, language, concepts, and words for things had to come through hearing someone speak those words or reading those words. The Buddha placed tremendous emphasis on this narrow neck of the hourglass where everything is coming in. Rather than seeing it as an hourglass, we see it as the foundation upon which everything is built inside, and sometimes outside as well.

Inconstancy as the Core Insight

So what is the common characteristic of experience? It's anicca. All experiences are coming and going, they're changing, they appear and they disappear. The details, the fingerprints of experience, appear and disappear moment by moment. Sometimes it's because what's out there is passing by really quickly, or not so quickly, but it clearly passes by. Here, I think some of you can hear the train whistles going by. They come and they go, and so it's pretty easy to notice that those come and go.

But also, as I said yesterday, we very rarely fixate attention in some solid, hard way, because if we do that it tends to be stressful. But very gently, the awareness is moving around and taking in different details. It's fascinating to do this with physical pain. From a distance, pain can feel solid, and we're really connected to it. But if we pay careful attention in this observing way, we see the experience of pain is a kaleidoscope of all kinds of sensations arising and passing.

This arising and passing is repetitive. Some things come, they go, and they return. That can lend a sense of continuity and even a sense of permanence, like they're not stopping, they're continuously there. But as we drop deeper into the deep subtleness of meditation and are able to observe intimately and closely without the mind making the leap of constructing the idea of continuity, then we just see the arising and passing of phenomena, and the repetitive, inconstant nature of it.

The word anicca comes from the root nicca, which can mean constant, continuous, and sometimes maybe permanent. The "a-" is a negative prefix, so: not constant, not continuous, not permanent. When we translate this as impermanent, as is done often in English, many people hear that as meaning it's not going to last, it's going to come to an end. To be constantly reminded everything's going to come to an end can maybe even be depressing, and it also kind of misses the boat. We then just expect and wait, and some things take a while to end. While it can be wise to understand and recognize that things will end, it's not the full story, or it's not really what the Buddha is pointing to as an insight.

The core insight of insight meditation is to see the inconstancy of experience moment by moment—how it arises and disappears. So anicca, as one of the core insights, is probably better translated as inconstancy—the inconstant arising and passing of a phenomenon. There might be a continuous, constant inconstancy. Things are constantly being inconstant, like a river is constant—it's continually flowing—but it's also never the same; there's inconstancy about it as well.

So, nice enough for now. We're entering into this deep world of insight now, and hopefully you'll begin appreciating the observation of inconstancy. Thank you.