Entangelements

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Entanglements. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 04, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Entangelements

Good evening. Because there aren't so many, do you guys want to come a little bit closer? You can move wherever you want, but maybe bring a chair in a little bit closer. Actually, it's better if you're not on top of this blue line right here, so you can be on either side of it.

Maybe I'll begin by apologizing about last week. Some of you on YouTube or some of you here know I had to cancel at the last minute. I had laryngitis, and I'm hoping that my voice holds up. I still have it a little bit a week later, so apologies for having to cancel at the last minute last Monday.

Today I'd like to continue on this theme that I've been doing, talking about what the Dharma is. We have this expression, "the Dharma," and I think we all have a sense of what it is, but I've been poking around a little bit to see what the Buddha says explicitly when he says, "This is the Dharma," or "I'm going to proclaim the Dharma."

I have been looking at this through stories in some earlier talks. A few weeks ago, I shared the story of Kisagotami^[1] talking about the Dharma. Tonight I had intended to use another story, but as I was really working with it, I realized it doesn't make any sense. So I think I'm going to abbreviate a part of it and really emphasize the part where the Buddha is talking about the Dharma. I'll abbreviate the part of how it gets to this person asking.

Part of the reason why I feel okay about doing this is because this story is from the last section of the Pārāyanavagga^[2]. This is a part of the suttas that scholars think is the oldest part of the Buddhist literature. For some people, this is really meaningful because if it's the oldest, that means it's the closest to the time of the Buddha. Not everybody thinks it's that meaningful, but some people do. The reason they think it's the oldest is because elsewhere in the Pali Canon, they talk about what's said in the Pārāyanavagga. Sometimes the Buddha asks Ananda or other people, "Do you know about this verse that's in the Pārāyanavagga?" So we know it's old because it's referred to then.

There's a part of this story that comes at the beginning that has a completely different flavor. The Pali is a little bit different, and everybody thinks this is its own little standalone story that got tacked onto the beginning. That's the part that I think I'll abbreviate here a little bit. But one thing that's interesting—and why I chose to do this Pārāyanavagga, which I'll translate as the "Chapter on the Way to the Beyond"—is this idea of how you get somewhere else other than here. The Beyond being Nibbāna^[3], complete freedom. I'll say a little bit that this is my own rendition; I've done a little bit of tweaking, looking at the Pali, looking at what different translators have done, as well as wanting to make it accessible.

The Story of Bavari

It starts with a Brahmin named Bavari. At the earlier time of the Buddha, the dominant religious tradition was the Brahmins. You can think of it as proto-Hinduism. They had a real emphasis on rituals. You could please the gods by doing rituals, and if things weren't going your way, it was because either you hadn't done the right rituals or there was a mistake in them. The rituals were done by the Brahmins, the priestly caste. People would ask the priests to do rituals for something. Then the Buddha comes along, and his teaching is something very different than rituals—this belief that certain movements or certain words are what's needed to make the world go correctly or end suffering. It's a really different emphasis.

There is this one Brahmin named Bavari, and he has a hermitage. He wants to do a ritual, and he spends all his money to do this ritual. I don't know all the details of what's required, but everything he has, he puts towards this. Maybe he's believing that then his life is going to go okay.

After he does this, he goes back to his hermitage, and this other person shows up there that looks a little unkempt. They talk about how his feet are dirty and messed up, his hair is dirty and messed up, and his teeth are messed up. This visiting Brahmin—he's never given a name—approaches Bavari and says, "Give me 500 coins." This is kind of the way he introduces or asks himself. Bavari says, "I can't, I don't have anything. I just gave it all to this sacrifice." The visiting Brahmin says, "Well, either you give me these 500 coins, or I'm going to place this curse on you that in seven days your head will split open." Maybe this is part of the Brahminical thinking, I'm not sure. Then the visiting Brahmin leaves.

Bavari is very worried. He's afraid, thinking, "Maybe my head's going to split open. Maybe there's some truth to this." This is a story, right? We don't have to take this literally. But a deva^[4]—which is a disembodied entity, and as a reminder, devas are just like humans in the sense that they are not free, they are not awakened—comes to Bavari and tells him, "That visitor is actually a charlatan, and actually he doesn't really know anything about heads and head-splitting."

Bavari is still worried, so he asks, "Well, if he doesn't know about head-splitting, maybe you do?" The deva says, "I don't know either." Bavari asks, "Well, who knows about head-splitting?" Bavari is really nervous and anxious about this. The deva says, "Well, there's this person, they call him the Buddha, and he's way on this other part of India."

Bavari says, "I'm too old, I can't travel there. But I have these students, I'll send them." So he sends sixteen of his students to go find the Buddha and ask about head-splitting. These students have followers of their own, so this whole entourage goes all the way across India. They get to the Buddha, and they check to make sure if he is really the awakened one. They have these little tests that I won't go into, and the Buddha passes the tests.

Then the most senior of the students, Ajita, asks the Buddha about head-splitting, and it goes like this: Ajita says to the Buddha, "Bavari asks about the head and the splitting of the head. Explain this, Blessed One, and remove our doubt."

And the Buddha says: "Ignorance is the head, and non-ignorance, when combined with faith, mindfulness, concentration, zest, and energy, is the splitting of the head."

Thereupon the Brahmin student, uplifted by great exhilaration, arranged his cloak over one shoulder, fell with his head at the Buddha's feet, and bowed. He says, "The Brahmin Bavari, together with his students, exultant and mind joyful, worships your feet, O one with vision."

So this is a story, right? The Buddha just says one sentence, and there is all this exaltation. The way that I'm holding it is that they were ritualists. They were used to this idea that you have to appease the gods and behave perfectly to do these rituals. But instead, they realized, "Oh no, this is about what one does in terms of practice: mindfulness, faith, concentration, zest, and energy." We hear about all these things in the Buddhist practice.

Ajita is very excited, thanks the Buddha, and bows. I'll confess it's not clear to me why the head is ignorance and non-ignorance is the splitting of the head. We could say splitting of the head is like having an open mind, but I think that would be more of a modern interpretation. I'm not sure they had that back then. But we could say, well, then this curse definitely came true because they had some knowledge, so their heads got split open.

The Questions of Metagu

That's the preamble to the story, and maybe it sets the tone a little bit about what happens next. The Buddha says, "I'm glad I answered your question, but all of you, all sixteen of you, are welcome to ask me any question you like, and I'll answer it." This makes sense in the context of knowledge and non-ignorance.

So one of the students, Metagu, goes up to the Buddha and asks him. We can translate Metagu's name as "master of mettā,"^[5] somebody who has a lot of loving-kindness. He goes up to the Buddha and says: "I ask you, O Blessed One, for I think you are a knowledge master and well-cultivated. Tell me this: from where has all this dukkha^[6] and its countless forms in the world come from?"

I think this is a great question. Dukkha represents this big range of experiences, from just a mild irritation or the sense of things not being right, to just horrifying, terrifying pain. Dukkha has this wide range, often translated as suffering, but maybe even stress or unsatisfactoriness, or really painful things. Where has all this pain come from?

The Buddha answers—and maybe I should say that this is all in verse: "Of dukkha you ask me the origin. As one who understands, I will tell you. Dependent on appropriation, this dukkha and its countless forms in the world has sprung."

Appropriation. We don't hear this word as much. It's a translation of the word upadhi^[7]. I like this word "appropriation" because upadhi has two related meanings for what is the origin of suffering. One form of upadhi is our acquisitions, our belongings, our possessions—we might say our baggage. The second form is the attachment to these acquisitions, this inner sense of ownership.

So the Buddha is saying appropriations are a source of dukkha. The sense of acquiring things and making them "mine," this attachment to them. And not only objects, but creating an identity, like, "I'm the one that has this." Even if it's not an exact object, we could even say, "I'm the one who doesn't meditate well," or, "I'm the one that meditates great, look at me." Appropriating the meditation experience and making it mine, making an identity out of it. Or even, "I'm the one that needs to get it together," or, "I'm the one that's stressed." Whatever we take as something that defines us as a part of our identity.

Or it can be this sense of ownership, like, "This is my meditation period. Why is everybody else making noise? Don't they know that this is a precious time and I'm trying to concentrate and get settled?" You can notice in all these things I'm describing that there's a sense of "me" versus the world, or "us" versus "them." When there's a strong sense of identity, there's a real strong separation. And then there has to be all this protection. We have to protect this "me" that gets created, or we have to bolster it up and make sure it looks good for everybody.

Upadhi is both the things one owns and this internal claim of ownership. One way that I like to think about this is that if we modify the language we use for ourselves—and that language is clunky, we probably wouldn't do this in regular life or conversation, but it's a way to help understand this point. Instead of saying, "I'm frustrated," which feels like it defines me and there's nothing else happening, we could say, "Feeling frustrated with meditation has arisen." It has a different flavor. Like saying, "Feeling lost is happening," instead of, "I'm lost and I'm the one that has to get it together." It reminds us that these things arise and pass away. They're not always there and they don't define us; they're just experiences that we're having.

The Buddha says: "You ask me the origin. As one who understands, I will tell you. Dependent on appropriation, this dukkha and its countless forms in the world has sprung. An ignorant person unknowingly appropriates, and again and again encounters dukkha. One who understands does not appropriate, seeing it as the genesis and origin of dukkha."

Recognizing that accumulating, whether it's objects or identification, leads to suffering. It leads to dukkha. Maybe the suffering is really subtle, but there's a way in which it's the opposite of letting go. It's the opposite of having freedom. It's more this pulling towards and getting stuck.

Then Metagu responds, "What I asked, you've explained." He feels very happy. "But I ask you another question, please tell me: how do the wise cross the flood of rebirth, old age, sorrow, and lamentation? Please, Sage, answer me clearly, for truly you are one who has discovered the Dharma."

How do the wise cross the flood? Maybe Metagu is like, "Okay, you talked about the origin of dukkha, but how do I not have dukkha? How do the wise cross the flood?" If we think about ancient India, which has monsoon seasons in the plains of the Ganges where a lot of the Buddha's teachings took place, crossing the flood was a real concern. There were times of the year when you simply could not get from one location to another; you had to wait for the waters to subside.

Probably many of you have heard this well-known simile where the Buddha talks about crossing the flood: getting from this shore where there's dukkha to the other shore, which is awakening. And how do you get there? With a raft. The Dharma is the raft. In this simile, the Buddha says that just as you take the raft across the water to get to the other shore, the way to the Beyond, you don't pick up the raft, put it on your head, and start walking with it once you're on the other shore. No, you leave it. It was helpful to get over the shore, but it's not helpful when you're already on land. The Buddha is pointing to the fact that we don't even grab or hold onto the Dharma, the raft.

The Buddha answers this question: "I shall proclaim the Dharma to you, seen in this very life, not involving hearsay, knowing which one may, faring mindfully, cross over entanglement with the world."

I appreciate that the Buddha is saying, "I proclaim the Dharma that is seen in this very life, not on hearsay." He's not making metaphysical claims. He's not saying, "Oh, you just have to believe stuff." He's saying, "No, this is something that you can experience right now. This is something that everybody can see in this life, in whatever life it is that you have now." We don't have to depend on somebody who told somebody who once knew something. No, you can see this for yourself.

"Knowing which one may, faring mindfully, cross over entanglement with the world."

I like this word "entanglement." It's a translation of the word visattikā^[8], which is not a common word. It's related to being interlaced with, or somehow complicated, or being in tangles—like something that's impeding us from where we want to go. Disentanglement is another way of talking about not appropriating, not making things "mine." When we make things "mine," that's the way we get tangled up with them. We're not saying we have to get rid of everything; we're not saying we can't have both objects and identities. What's being pointed to is not getting tangled up in them in a way that there's no freedom.

The Buddha is not saying, "Don't own anything" or "Don't get involved with the world." But just notice how you are with the world. Is there a way that you can pick up and engage with what needs to be engaged with—play, work, love, discipline—and then put them down when they're not needed or when it's not appropriate? Come up when it's needed and appropriate, and put them down. Sometimes we get entangled, and we just can't put them down; we're just stuck. Sometimes when I imagine entanglement, I'm imagining a spiderweb or something sticky.

"I shall proclaim the Dharma to you, seen in this very life, not involving hearsay, knowing which one may, faring mindfully, cross over entanglement with the world. Expel relishing and dogmatism regarding everything you are aware of—above, below, all around, between—and consciousness should not take a stance in becoming."

Expel relishing and dogmatism. This is kind of unpacking what entanglement means. Dogmatism we can imagine as this distinct sense of "me, I'm right, and you're wrong. We are right, they are wrong." This fundamentalism, this tendency to lay down these principles that "this is incontrovertibly true, this is just the way it is." Associated dogmatism is, of course, associated with intolerance and arrogance. In some ways, we might even say it's a certain amount of stuckness, entanglement.

And then this way to expel relishing. I think relishing in this way is taking too much pleasure in things. Maybe there's a sense of gluttony or just rolling around in it in a way that's not helpful. To be sure, pleasure is a part of our life and is part of the path, and joy is too. But there's a way that we could just get entangled and be pursuing pleasure after pleasure after pleasure, and our whole life we're just all tangled up with this. Certainly, addictions are a sense of entanglement.

"Expel relishing and dogmatism regarding everything you are aware of—above, below, all around, between." And then this last sentence: "Consciousness should not take a stance in becoming."

I'm using Thanissaro Bhikkhu's^[9] translation here because the Pali is a little bit weird, but we could relate this idea of "becoming" with this idea of "me," or this idea of selfing. When there's a "me" that gets related to, there's a sense of "mine." So we can see how all these ideas are related. "Consciousness not taking a stance in becoming" means not making an identity. "Here is a 'me'. I'm going to become this identity: the one that has problems, the one that has to meditate," or whatever it is.

So maybe instead of this becoming this "me," what's being pointed to is our visceral embodied experience. What's actually happening without us having this conceptual idea or conceptual analysis? Not a theory or abstraction, but what's being experienced? Sounds. Movement in the body as it breathes. Maybe there's a sense of tightness or openness. The activity of thinking. Maybe a little bit of discomfort in the body. I'm trying to simplify here. It turns out that our life can unfold in a way that works fine if we stay with this simplicity of our experience. When problems need to be solved, the mind just naturally comes together and works on them, and then puts them down when they're no longer needed. So instead of getting entangled or making things more complicated, what's being pointed to is keeping it simple. Not being a simpleton necessarily, but recognizing what our senses are telling us to stay there, rather than always being in the head or in the mind.

The Buddha continues, saying: "A person dwelling thus mindful, heedful, having given up taking things as mine right here, such a wise one abandons dukkha, abandons birth, old age, sorrow, and lamentation." Sometimes dukkha gets translated that way.

Upon hearing this, Metagu says: "I rejoice in the words of Gautama, the great seer. Well proclaimed was the teaching of not appropriating. Clearly, you, the Blessed One, have abandoned dukkha, and this Dharma is known to you. And surely those you regularly teach could also abandon dukkha. Therefore, having met you, I bow to you, O spiritual giant. Perhaps the Blessed One may regularly teach me."

So he asks to become a student, and then later in another setting, we learn that he becomes awakened.

I appreciate this teaching. We hear in other settings about what is the source of dukkha. Often it's said that taṇhā^[10] is clinging or craving, but this is pointing to another way, like what clinging is associated with, or maybe it fleshes out this idea of clinging. A big part of it goes under the radar. Working with the clinging that's creating an identity is definitely more subtle, but it's really where so much dukkha is.

The Buddha points to these powerful teachings that the ending of dukkha is possible. That's quite something to think about. It's just about our relationship to our experiences and what we're having in the world. Are we grabbing onto them, appropriating them? Are we getting entangled with them? Or are we allowing them to arise and pass away as they do? Are we allowing the experiences to come and go without placing some big conceptual framework on top of them, deciding that "because this experience happened, it means X, Y, or Z, and everything else is wrong"?

Instead, it could be, "Well, because this experience is there, my current understanding is that it's X, Y, and Z. It makes sense to me that it's X, Y, and Z. I wonder if it is X, Y, and Z? It seems like it might be." You can see how that's very different than saying, "It is X, Y, and Z," and then saying, "I'm the one that knows it's X, Y, and Z." Then we've set up all these barriers and separation that have to be defended, upheld, and propagated. There are all these subtle ways in which dukkha shows up.

So that is the story of Metagu talking to the Buddha. He was there talking to the Buddha because Bavari was afraid that his head was going to get split open, and so he sent some of his students, including Metagu.

I'll end there and open it up if there are any questions or comments. Thank you.

Q&A

Speaker 1: So what is the Dharma? What he is saying here is about not getting entangled. And in how many ways do we get entangled? It's countless ways. That's the countless ways that dukkha shows up. We have a very large catalog of Dharma talks—hundreds, many hundreds, I would say thousands.

Diana Clark: Let's use a different microphone. There's this quite public canon and teachers give lots of Dharma talks, but because there's many ways that our minds get entangled, what would you say?

Speaker 2 (Bill): I'm not going to say it, because just lately I've been wondering, "What is the Dharma?" I'm rethinking a lot. I like that question I asked a few weeks ago. It's hard to remember all the suttas I've read. I listen to the expositions in our groups. I try to internalize all this, but there's a lot to remember.

Diana Clark: I like that. That's part of what he seems to be saying: the Dharma that is seen here and now, and it's not hearsay. He's really pointing to experience. Getting entangled is more like an experience, right? It's not just wisdom sayings that we've heard. There's a way in which we feel that getting entangled leads to dukkha, a way in which sometimes we feel stuck a little bit, or we don't feel free or open.

Speaker 2 (Bill): And what you said a few weeks ago when I asked the question was, well, Gil's been teaching present experience. So it's like a theme. When we were going through the Majjhima Nikaya^[11], we kept on pointing to the importance of experience as opposed to philosophy. The Buddha in early Buddhism is definitely about one's experience; he's not a metaphysicist. I guess the conclusion I've come to after many years is that the Buddha's teaching basically was understanding suffering, the source of suffering, and release from suffering. Maybe some coarse teachings, maybe some subtle teachings. And maybe how we get entangled is the same as that, but I'm still turning it over in my mind.

Diana Clark: Nice, nice. I love it that you're still turning it over. That's perfect.

Speaker 3: Can you tell us where to find this sutta?

Diana Clark: Yeah, it's in the Sutta Nipata^[12], which is in the Khuddaka Nikaya^[13]. It's the last chapter. "The Questions of Metagu." It's not in the Book of Eights. The Sutta Nipata is big. The Book of Eights (Atthakavagga) is the fourth chapter; the Pārāyanavagga is the fifth chapter. It's after the Book of Eights.

Speaker 3: I can find it now. Thank you very much.

Speaker 4: Earlier I heard you talk about fundamental kind of thinking and whatnot. I was thinking to myself, "Would we ever be able to all be on the same team or something like that?" And I thought, probably no, impossible. It made me think of a philosopher—I forget who it was—but he pretty much talked about our past experiences kind of influencing the way we interpret stimuli and things coming in in life. I was just thinking we all are headed in different directions or have different experiences and interpret things differently. As we go through life, something that may have been important at one point may totally be foreign later on in life, or vice versa. But it was interesting to hear you talk about fundamental thinking or interpretation.

Diana Clark: Yeah, and I think what's been important too is this idea of holding on and thinking, "This is the truth and everything else is wrong." Saying "This makes sense to me" is different. It's that second step, "and everything else is wrong," that gets us into trouble. Because I think you're right, all of us, of course, are not going to have the same understandings at the same time. But it's the way that we make other people or other ideas wrong, I guess, is what's being pointed to here. Dogmatism, fundamentalism. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 5 (Jim): So during part of that discussion, you mentioned specifically getting entangled with objects, meaning both physical objects but also mental constructions. I think that you implied—and maybe you said directly—that the sign that this is happening, the entanglement, is an "I" statement. "I," "me," or "mine" is the beginning. So if you will, this is the signpost that you're heading into entanglement. I guess that's also the signpost for the other direction, which is not-self. To not be entangled means not being tied up with "I," "me," "mine."

Diana Clark: Exactly. That's pretty much the nugget there. Entanglement, selfing, and dukkha—we could even say these are synonyms. The selfing shows up when we're—of course we use "I," "me," "mine" in language, it would be really awkward and odd if we didn't—but we could use that language without creating this entity that's separate and distinct from everything else. Thank you.

Okay, so we're at the end. Did you want to say something quickly? No, Jim, I thought somehow you did. Okay, so thank you all for your attention, and I wish you all a wonderful rest of the evening, and a happy and safe Fourth of July tomorrow. Thank you. And if you'd like, you're welcome to come up and talk to me now afterwards.