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How Did You Cross the Flood?

Thank you and good evening again. Tonight I'd like to talk a little bit about this short, tiny little conversation between the Buddha and somebody else that's preserved in the Pali Canon in the Buddhist scriptures. It's the very first sutta, the very first discourse in the Samyutta Nikaya^[1], which is the connected discourses—a collection of discourses that are about similar topics. In this sutta, somebody asks the Buddha, "How did you cross the flood?"

Generally, we can understand that a person who crosses the flood is somebody who is considered to be awakened or enlightened. So it makes sense that somebody would ask the Buddha, "How did you do it?" presumably because they wanted to practice in a similar way. But what does this mean, this idea of crossing the flood? In the suttas, there are a number of different interpretations about this, but I think there are several ways we can interpret it and make it relevant to our lives.

What is the Flood?

One interpretation is that a flood is something that feels like it's overwhelming us. We feel like it's about to overwhelm us, or maybe it is starting to, and we are afraid we might drown under it. When I think about floods, I think about how they're also unexpected. Maybe they're not 100 percent unexpected when there's big rain or tsunamis, but usually, as opposed to when the tide goes up and down, a flood is big and the water is going where we do not expect it to go. That's one way we can understand a flood: something that's overwhelming us and maybe was unanticipated. To cross over is to not fall under the water, not get pulled under by it.

Another way we might understand the flood is as that which sweeps us away from where we want to be. It has a certain amount of current and movement that we're not able to resist or avoid being pulled away with. It has a certain direction in which we're being thrown off balance.

A third way we might understand the flood is as an obstacle, something that impedes where we want to go and gets in the way. Often, crossing over the flood implies that you're on a dry spot and you want to go to another dry spot, and there's this flood in the middle. It's an obstacle, a hindrance. Perhaps literally in the Buddhist sense of a hindrance, but also just in the more general sense of something that's preventing or hindering you from getting to where you want to go.

So this question of "How did you cross the flood?" is really asking: How did you not get too overwhelmed by life? How did you go where you wanted to go and not get inhibited from where you wanted to be?

The Buddha's Response

In response to this question, the Buddha responds by saying, "By not halting, and by not straining." By not stopping, and not struggling or working too hard.

When he was queried further, the person asks the Buddha, "What do you mean? You just talked about these two opposites, by not stopping and not straining. How does that help you cross the flood?"

The Buddha responds by saying, "When I came to a standstill, I sank. When I struggled, I got swept away. It is in this way, by not halting and by not straining, I crossed the flood."

So, not halting and not straining. The Pali words for these are obscure words that aren't so common in the Pali Canon, and they're a little bit difficult to translate. For those of you who care about these things, the words are appatiṭṭhaṁ and anāyūhaṁ^[2]. We might look at what some other translators have done with this, or we might just think about it for ourselves.

I'll start off with what some other translators have done. They have said, somewhat poetically, "Without tarrying, and without hurrying." To tarry is the opposite of hurry; it's to just take your time, while to hurry is to maybe be a little bit negligent or in a rush. Another translator says, "Without staying in place, nor pushing forward." It's the similar idea of not standing, yet not pushing forward. There might still be some movement, but there isn't pushing.

The last translation I'll mention is, "Neither standing nor swimming." I kind of like this one. We don't hear about swimming that much in a Buddhist teaching, and I love swimming. They're saying, "I crossed the flood by not standing and not swimming." We can see how they're talking about what it isn't. But what was it that the Buddha actually did to cross the flood? What might we do to cross the flood?

Exploring the Third Way

This is the end of the conversation in the sutta—it is very short. But there are a few ways we can unpack this and use it to support us in our practice and with the floods that we might find ourselves in.

One thing that I really appreciate about his statement—"When I came to a standstill, I sank, and when I struggled, I got swept away"—is that it points to trial and error. It points to experimentation and exploration. Nobody told the Buddha, "Do exactly this." He had to figure it out on his own. It wasn't that he just had to follow exactly what his teacher said, or adopt some particular belief and then everything would be fine. He had to find out: "What happens if I stand still here? Oh, I'm sinking. Okay, that's not the right thing to do. What happens if I struggle? Oh, I'm getting swept away. Okay, that isn't the right thing to do."

This spirit of exploration points to direct experience. Maybe we can learn by seeing others standing still and noticing how they sink, but for many of us, we need to have this experience ourselves.

He doesn't say exactly what he did, but he points to avoiding the extremes. Not one extreme or the other, but doing something else. The Buddhist teachings are filled with these types of things. For example, rather than grasping and holding onto something really tightly—"I want this, I need this, I have to have this in order to find lasting happiness"—or pushing things away with a sense of aversion—"Get this away from me"—you can find a third way.

That third way is equanimity. Equanimity is an uprightness and a balance. It is not disinterest and not disconnectedness, but rather not leaning too far forward and not leaning too far back. Instead, you have some balance and centeredness.

That centeredness can come from seeing the bigger picture, and it can also come from experience. Many of you who have retreat experience might be familiar with this. The first few days of a retreat often unfold in a particular way. Sometimes it's uncomfortable; the body is not used to sitting, and the mind wants to be doing whatever it was doing before. But many people know, "I just know the first day I feel tired, and the second day my body is bothering me, but usually by day four I feel fine." Because they know this from experience, it's easier to be equanimous about feeling tired on day one or having an uncomfortable body on day two. This familiarity allows us to have acceptance with what's happening, without falling into passivity.

Finding Balance Between Extremes

Another third way could be found between the extremes of restlessness and sluggishness. With restlessness, there's a lot of energy. You feel like, "There's no way I can stay sitting here during this meditation period. I have to jump up and do something." I have certainly experienced this. I remember in the beginning of my practice, sitting to meditate at home and thinking, "Oh no, it's really important that I finish that thing," or "I forgot about that email," and just jumping up to do it.

The opposite extreme is not being able to stay awake and falling asleep. Might there be a third way between too much energy and not enough energy? That third way might simply be mindfulness. It might be to just notice the restlessness and feel the energy bouncing around while the mind is spinning. Or what might it be like to just notice the drowsiness, the fogginess in the mind, and the lack of crispness with experiences?

You might say, "Well, maybe there was a third way, but maybe there's also a middle way." For those of you who have been around the Dharma, you are probably familiar with the story of the Buddha's path to awakening. Tradition holds that he grew up as a prince and had a very sheltered life in a palace, experiencing essentially nothing but pleasure and sequestered from anything unpleasant. When he was young, he became restless and left the palace. He went out for a chariot ride and discovered an old person, a sick person, and a dead person. Under the impact of seeing old age, sickness, and death for the first time, he became determined to find a solution to suffering and dukkha^[3].

He left the palace, became a mendicant, and eventually took up with five ascetics^[4]. He practiced extreme asceticism and self-mortification, starving himself or holding his breath. There are gruesome descriptions of these practices, which he did believing they would end suffering.

Again, we see the Buddha trying things out. The life of total pleasure didn't end suffering. Practicing extreme asceticism didn't end suffering either. He went from the extreme of pursuing pleasure to the extreme of eschewing pleasure—and even pursuing pain—and it wasn't until he had abandoned both of these that he was able to become awakened. It is not surprising, then, that the first teaching he gave was about the middle way.

What is the middle way? It's the Eightfold Path between self-indulgence and self-mortification. The Eightfold Path has eight elements, but we can summarize it with three categories: practicing with ethics, practicing with the mind, and cultivating wisdom—sīla, samādhi, paññā^[5]. The Buddha discovered that this cultivation was the path to awakening.

This idea of a middle way is perhaps most explicit when we talk about effort. Many of you are familiar with the teaching the Buddha gave to a musician with a stringed instrument^[6]. The instruction was to apply just the right amount of effort, in the same way that the strings on an instrument cannot be too tight or too loose.

Practice as a Spectrum

Notice that sometimes we go to extremes, whether with our behavior, our views, or how we approach things. The middle way highlights that most of our experiences are on a spectrum. We can move away from the binary of "this or that" or "the lights are on or off." Our practice happens along a spectrum.

For example, we might sometimes say, "I wasn't concentrated at all." But can we see how a meditation period might just be a movement towards more settledness, or perhaps a movement towards distraction? We're never completely 100% at the extremes. Practice is about recognizing that we are moving in one direction or the other.

The risk of grabbing onto binary thinking is that it can be discouraging. We tell ourselves, "I'm not mindful at all, I'm completely distracted." If we instead ask, "Where am I on the spectrum?" it helps us not grab onto a rigid idea of what's happening. Instead, we can feel into the experience. "Okay, I'm not so collected here, but I can see that maybe the body has some collectedness even if the mind doesn't. Or maybe the mind isn't so distracted, but the body feels really restless and wants to move." Letting go of the extremes highlights how our experiences are a spectrum, and this helps us feel into what is actually happening.

I talked about distracted versus concentrated. Another experience is to be filled with ill will versus goodwill, or hatred versus love. We can use a number of different words for these ends of the spectrum. Something that Gil Fronsdal^[7] has been talking about lately is care. Care implies a certain amount of connectedness and attentiveness. Moving towards care is exactly what the practice is about: exploring and experimenting with our experiences.

Softening the Sense of Self

Another advantage of letting go of extremes is that whenever we're at an extreme—really holding on tight or really pushing away—there is always a strong sense of self involved. This sense of "I need to do this, I must do this," or a strong sense of "I am over here, and everybody else is over there." When we hold onto extremes, there's a rigid sense of "me" as opposed to a relaxed, soft view where we aren't trying to defend a particular version of ourselves.

That softening is how we cross the flood. We cross the flood by sensing what's happening and exploring what makes sense for us. We have the Buddhist teachings as guidelines, and we use them to soften, loosen, and let go of the strong sense of self and the tightness of clinging. Instead of panicking and thinking, "Oh no, I'm going to drown," can there be a relaxation? Can we ask, "What needs to be done here? What's the right next thing to do?"

In this way, by not halting and by not straining, we can cross the flood. And then we can help others cross the flood, either by being an example or by sharing what we've learned through working with our own difficulties when we felt overwhelmed.

May our practice together this evening be of benefit to us and to all beings everywhere. Thank you.