Grokking the Dharma

[Nintendao]

Hi Buddha Bums,

I wrote this one hundred percent from memory and in my own words. Mostly is a distillation from The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh. It was a fun exercise that i hope will illuminate a new facet or two of these familiar gems. Did i get it right? What are some additional examples?

 

Four Foundational Perceptions

1. Experiential suffering (a.k.a. attachment) is inherent to physical existence. At the very least, we are all literally going to die. In the meantime there will be widely varying degrees of hunger, thirst, tiredness, striving, decay, and grief. Even the positive counterparts to these have some potential  to be problematic if overindulged.
2. Discernment of root causes of suffering and ensnarement. The first truth may seem a bit of doom and gloom but it is only a call to attention of how interdependently arising all these phenomena really are. By positioning the awareness outside of the ever re-balancing cycles of cause and effect, it becomes possible to not take things too personally.
3. Disentanglement of attachment is possible. From our new vantage point, we begin to notice what patterns perpetuate various outcomes. There should  be a way to nudge our own tangled thread of fate out of tumultuous regions, and into more harmonious currents. 
4. A way to achieve liberation is to learn and embody the eight virtues taught by the Buddha.

 

Eight Virtuous Ways

1. Right View - what influences are we taking in?
2. Right Thought - how are those influences being processed?
3. Right Speech - what influence are we putting back out?
4. Right Action - might any of our endeavors cause harm to self or others?
5. Right Livelihood - do we stand to profit by harming or exploiting others, even if indirectly?
6. Right Diligence - are we willing to work on improving the situation?
7. Right Focus - is our energy being channeled effectively?
8. Right Mindfulness - where do we fit into the bigger picture?

Edited November 15, 2023 by Nintendao

[Mark Foote]

7 hours ago, Nintendao said:

Hi Buddha Bums,

I wrote this one hundred percent from memory and in my own words. Mostly is a distillation from The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh. It was a fun exercise that i hope will illuminate a new facet or two of these familiar gems. Did i get it right? What are some additional examples?

 

Four Foundational Perceptions

 

4. A way to achieve liberation is to learn and embody the eight virtues taught by the Buddha.

 

Eight Virtuous Ways

1. Right View - what influences are we taking in?
2. Right Thought - how are those influences being processed?
3. Right Speech - what influence are we putting back out?
4. Right Action - might any of our endeavors cause harm to self or others?
5. Right Livelihood - do we stand to profit by harming or exploiting others, even if indirectly?
6. Right Diligence - are we willing to work on improving the situation?
7. Right Focus - is our energy being channeled effectively?
8. Right Mindfulness - where do we fit into the bigger picture?
    

As I've said before, I take the four truths to be prescription, not philosophy.  If suffering exists, then there is a cause of suffering, with the cessation of that cause there is an end of suffering, and there is a path leading to that end of suffering.  If I'm not experiencing suffering, I don't need the prescription.  

Here's the founding teacher of the S. F. Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki, talking about the practice of zazen:

 

To enjoy our life-- complicated life, difficult life-- without ignoring it, and without being caught by it. Without suffer from it. That is actually what will happen to us after you practice zazen.

(“To Actually Practice Selflessness”, August Sesshin Lecture Wednesday, August 6, 1969, San Francisco; “fell” corrected to “fall”; transcript from shunryusuzuki.com)

 

 

So of course, he's putting forward the possibility that life doesn't have to be suffering.

As to the eightfold path.  It's complicated.  First up, here's a definition of right concentration, which Gautama gave in terms of the other seven elements of the path:
 

 

“Right view, right purpose, right speech, right action, right mode of livelihood, right endeavor, right mindfulness. Whatever one-pointedness of mind… is accompanied by these seven components, this is called the [noble] right concentration with the causal associations and the accompaniments.”
 

(MN III 71, Vol III p 114; SN V 17, Vol V p 19; emphasis added)

How to find "one-pointedness of mind"?  

 

Herein… the (noble) disciple, making self-surrender the object of (their) thought, lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness.  (The disciple), aloof from sensuality, aloof from evil conditions, enters on the first trance, which is accompanied by thought directed and sustained, which is born of solitude, easeful and zestful, and abides therein.
 

(SN v 198, Pali Text Society vol V p 174; parenthetical material paraphrases original; “directed” also rendered as “initial” MN III p 78 and as “applied” PTS AN III p 18-19)

 

From my latest post, on my own site:

 

When necessity places attention, and a presence of mind is retained as the placement shifts and moves, then in Gautama’s words, “[one] lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness”... 

 

As I’ve written previously, there’s an opportunity to make self-surrender the object of thought and to lay hold of “one-pointedness” just before falling asleep:
 

… Just before I fall asleep, my awareness can move very readily, and my sense of where I am tends to move with it. This is also true when I am waking up, although it can be harder to recognize (I tend to live through my eyes in the daytime, and associate my sense of place with them).
 

… when I realize my physical sense of location in space, and realize it as it occurs from one moment to the next, then I wake up or fall asleep as appropriate.
 

(Waking Up and Falling Asleep)
 

When a presence of mind is retained as the placement of attention shifts, then the natural tendency toward the free placement of attention can draw out thought initial and sustained, and bring on the stages of concentration:
 

… there is no need to depend on teaching. But the most important thing is to practice and realize our true nature… [laughs]. This is, you know, Zen.
 

(Shunryu Suzuki, Tassajara 68-07-24 transcript from shunryusuzuki.com)
 

 

If you really want to get into the eight-fold path, then be aware:
 

The definition of right view depends in part on the definition of wrong view; the definition of wrong view was given as follows:
 

“There is no (result of) gift … no (result of) offering … no (result of) sacrifice; there is no fruit or ripening of deeds well done or ill done; there is not this world, there is not a world beyond; there is no (benefit from serving) mother and father; there are no beings of spontaneous uprising; there are not in the world recluses and brahmans… who are faring rightly, proceeding rightly, and who proclaim this world and the world beyond having realized them by their own super-knowledge.”
 

(MN III 71-78, Vol III pg 113-121)

 

“Beings of spontaneous uprising” appears to be a reference to fairy-like beings that spring into existence without parents (several classes of fairy-like beings were believed to exist in Vedic folklore; see notes, SN III 249, Vol III pg 197).
 

Right view, said Gautama, is twofold. First, there is the right view which is exactly the opposite of wrong view; this, however, is the view “that has cankers, that is on the side of merit, that ripens unto cleaving (to new birth)”. The right view which is “[noble], supermundane, cankerless and a component of the way” is:
 

“Whatever … is wisdom, the cardinal faculty of wisdom, the power of wisdom, the component of enlightenment which is investigation into things, the right view that is a component of the Way in one who, by developing the [noble] Way, is of [noble] thought, conversant with the [noble] Way–this… is a right view that is [noble], cankerless, supermundane, a component of the Way.”
 

(Ibid)

 

(Making Sense of the Pali Canon: the Wheel of the Sayings)

 

 

Alternatively:

 

(Anyone)…knowing and seeing eye as it really is, knowing and seeing material shapes… visual consciousness… impact on the eye as it really is, and knowing, seeing as it really is the experience, whether pleasant, painful, or neither painful nor pleasant, that arises conditioned by impact on the eye, is not attached to the eye nor to material shapes nor to visual consciousness nor to impact on the eye; and that experience, whether pleasant, painful, or neither painful nor pleasant, that arises conditioned by impact on the eye—neither to that is (such a one) attached. …(Such a one’s) physical anxieties decrease, and mental anxieties decrease, and bodily torments… and mental torments… and bodily fevers decrease, and mental fevers decrease. (Such a one) experiences happiness of body and happiness of mind. (repeated for ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind).

 

Whatever is the view of what really is, that for (such a one) is right view; whatever is aspiration for what really is, that for (such a one) is right aspiration; whatever is endeavour for what really is, that is for (such a one) right endeavour; whatever is mindfulness of what really is, that is for (such a one) right mindfulness; whatever is concentration on what really is, that is for (such a one) right concentration. And (such a one’s) past acts of body, acts of speech, and mode of livelihood have been well purified.

 

(Majjhima-Nikaya, Pali Text Society vol III p 337-338)

 

 

Find the seat and put on the robe, and afterward see for yourself.
 

("Zen Letters, Teachings of Yuanwu", tr J.C. Cleary &Thomas Cleary p 65)


 

Edited November 16, 2023 by Mark Foote

[Taoist Texts]

7 hours ago, Mark Foote said:

If suffering exists, then there is a cause of suffering, with the cessation of that cause

ehhm but how to "cessate" it?

[doc benway]

15 hours ago, Nintendao said:

Hi Buddha Bums,

I wrote this one hundred percent from memory and in my own words. Mostly is a distillation from The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh. It was a fun exercise that i hope will illuminate a new facet or two of these familiar gems. Did i get it right? What are some additional examples?

 

Four Foundational Perceptions

1. Experiential suffering (a.k.a. attachment) is inherent to physical existence. At the very least, we are all literally going to die. In the meantime there will be widely varying degrees of hunger, thirst, tiredness, striving, decay, and grief. Even the positive counterparts to these have some potential  to be problematic if overindulged.
2. Discernment of root causes of suffering and ensnarement. The first truth may seem a bit of doom and gloom but it is only a call to attention of how interdependently arising all these phenomena really are. By positioning the awareness outside of the ever re-balancing cycles of cause and effect, it becomes possible to not take things too personally.
3. Disentanglement of attachment is possible. From our new vantage point, we begin to notice what patterns perpetuate various outcomes. There should  be a way to nudge our own tangled thread of fate out of tumultuous regions, and into more harmonious currents. 
4. A way to achieve liberation is to learn and embody the eight virtues taught by the Buddha.

 

Eight Virtuous Ways

1. Right View - what influences are we taking in?
2. Right Thought - how are those influences being processed?
3. Right Speech - what influence are we putting back out?
4. Right Action - might any of our endeavors cause harm to self or others?
5. Right Livelihood - do we stand to profit by harming or exploiting others, even if indirectly?
6. Right Diligence - are we willing to work on improving the situation?
7. Right Focus - is our energy being channeled effectively?
8. Right Mindfulness - where do we fit into the bigger picture?

 

I appreciate you sharing your process and understanding. 

It's been a while since I read the book, it was one of my earliest exposures to Buddhism, and you seem to capture the intent well.

Mark's comments are also insightful and much appreciated.

 

What I would like to add is that it was valuable for me at some point to begin investigating "who" is all of this referring to?

Who is taking in influences? Who is doing the processing? Who is putting something  back out?

What does it mean to refer to energy as "mine?"

How does this "who" relate to the bigger picture?

 

These questions are not meant to be discursive and the answer is experiential rather than conceptual, hence the koan tradition.

I don't recall where this fits in to Thay's method but such questions do naturally arise within the context of meditation once the inner chatter and endless fascination with the mind's content begins to settle and clear a bit.

For me this investigation was a critical component of my own process. 

 

 

 

[Sahaja]

I think there is a lot more to the mindfulness item. It’s hinted at in the statements “positioning the awareness” and “new vantage point”. In a different tradition they say tatah dvandah anabhigatah - no longer disturbed by the pairs of opposites. 

[Maddie]

7 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

ehhm but how to "cessate" it?

 

To let go of what is causing it which is attachment and desire. 

We let go by seeing it as it actually is.

We see it as it actually is with mindfulness.

[Taoist Texts]

8 hours ago, Maddie said:

with mindfulness

so whoever is mindful does not feel physical pain?

[oak]

5 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

so whoever is mindful does not feel physical pain?

 

May not...Jack didn't

 

[Taoist Texts]

2 hours ago, oak said:

May not...Jack didn't

he may not be  buddhist. he may be an entertainer.  or he may be this

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170426-the-people-who-never-feel-any-pain

or this

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3048074/no-pain-how-extreme-body-piercing-thaipusam-hindu-festival

be what he may so far i do not understand by what mechanism or  how exactly mindfulness can switch off the moral or physical pain.  normally what people say boils down to 'it just does'. meaning they do not know.

 

[Maddie]

8 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

so whoever is mindful does not feel physical pain?

 

Where did you get that from?

 

There's pain, and there's suffering. They are not the same. Mindfulness helps one to realize this.

 

The Buddha taught how to end suffering.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Maddie

[oak]

9 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

he may not be  buddhist. he may be an entertainer.  or he may be this

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170426-the-people-who-never-feel-any-pain

or this

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3048074/no-pain-how-extreme-body-piercing-thaipusam-hindu-festival

be what he may so far i do not understand by what mechanism or  how exactly mindfulness can switch off the moral or physical pain.  normally what people say boils down to 'it just does'. meaning they do not know.

 

 

He was neither of those. He was someone that found he had the capability of detaching from physical pain while being tortured by the nazi in WW II.

I do have the experience of stopping extreme physical pain with mindfulness. Unfortunately it's not something that I've mastered or be able to reproduce. That's the reason for my interest in Jack Schwarz.

 

[Nintendao]

Good stuff, all 🤗 

Mindfulness of the bigger picture is a deliciously vague and pervasive concept. For me it may be as practical as maintaining situational awareness so as to not trip over the cat when walking accross the room. Then depending on how big the picture gets, or how small, or how interdimensional, consciousness itself as an elemental force. Anywhere from a single cell pulsing in sync with the Om vibration of the universe, to everything in between. Governance of our own internal landscape, to participation in society as a whole. Constant interplay between all virtues. For instance it takes right diligence in learning about all this, even if ultimately to shed it like a cocoon. 

[Daniel]

1 hour ago, Maddie said:

 

Where did you get that from?

 

There's pain, and there's suffering. They are not the same. Mindfulness helps one to realize this.

 

The Buddha taught how to end suffering.

 

Ah!  There it is!  Yes, I just commented in another thread about the disttinction between pain and suffering.  I look forward to reading your reply.

 

Oh!  There's the notification. 

[Nintendao]

 

4 hours ago, Maddie said:

 

Where did you get that from?

 

There's pain, and there's suffering. They are not the same. Mindfulness helps one to realize this.

 

The Buddha taught how to end suffering.

 

Let’s also not to forget Bodhidharma’s contribution! Physical conditioning to withstand injury goes a long way, and often carries over to helping with psychological and emotional strength too. If done mindfully. 

 

The right action may well include “emptying minds and filling bellies, weakening ambitions and toughening bones”

 

Speaking of, i’ll see you beautiful bodhisattvas later. i’m on my way to the skate park, to hopefully not get smeared across the concrete too many times 😅

 

per ardua ad astra

[Maddie]

2 minutes ago, Nintendao said:

 

 

Let’s also not to forget Bodhidharma’s contribution! Physical conditioning to withstand injury goes a long way, and often carries over to helping with psychological and emotional strength too. If done mindfully. 

 

The right action may well include “emptying minds and filling bellies, weakening ambitions and toughening bones”

 

Speaking of, i’ll see you beautiful bodhisattvas later. i’m on my way to the skate park, to hopefully not get smeared across the concrete too many times 😅

 

per ardua ad astra

 

Suffering is why I'm a Buddhist

 

Pain is why I'm an acupuncturist. 

[Apech]

20 hours ago, Maddie said:

 

Suffering is why I'm a Buddhist

 

Pain is why I'm an acupuncturist. 

 

 

Suffering i.e. dukkha has three forms.

 

Suffering of suffering i.e. pain or discomfort

Suffering of the ephemerality of phenomena (nothing lasts)

Suffering of conditionality (even if the first two are absent your mind is still conditioned by ignorance of reality).

 

'Suffering' is a bad translation of dukkha - which originally meant a defective axel hole on a wheel.  The wheel doesn't turn properly and wobbles shaking the cart.  So dukkha could be better translated as unsatisfactoriness. 

 

 

[Maddie]

39 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

 

Suffering i.e. dukkha has three forms.

 

Suffering of suffering i.e. pain or discomfort

Suffering of the ephemerality of phenomena (nothing lasts)

Suffering of conditionality (even if the first two are absent your mind is still conditioned by ignorance of reality).

 

'Suffering' is a bad translation of dukkha - which originally meant a defective axel hole on a wheel.  The wheel doesn't turn properly and wobbles shaking the cart.  So dukkha could be better translated as unsatisfactoriness. 

 

 

 

Suffering really is an inadequate translation.

 

This reminds me one time when I was in college I was telling a friend a little bit about Buddhism and she's like well what's the point of Buddhism? And I said it's to end suffering. And she's like I don't suffer! And then went on to tell me how stressed she was about her day. 🫠

[Taoist Texts]

43 minutes ago, Apech said:

Suffering of suffering i.e. pain

aint that a fact

 

On 11/17/2023 at 4:19 PM, Maddie said:

There's pain, and there's suffering. They are not the same

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

[Taoist Texts]

3 hours ago, Apech said:

'Suffering' is a bad translation of dukkha

thats true, pretty bad. there are a couple of amateurish etymologies for dukkha encrusted in the interwebs, including the risible 'standing badly' or 'bad hole' but as any native indo-european speaker knows dukha is simply bitterness

Quote

 

https://hinative.com/questions/3512863

bitterness- kadavahat, katuta, kadvapan, dukh,

 

the same root as in say dour

the opposite of dukkha in buddhism is sukkha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukha

which is of course simply sweetness, the same root as in sugar or sweet

(note the same hilarious made up etymologies of axle, hole, and what not, hehe)

 

[stirling]

3 hours ago, Maddie said:

Suffering really is an inadequate translation.

 

This reminds me one time when I was in college I was telling a friend a little bit about Buddhism and she's like well what's the point of Buddhism? And I said it's to end suffering. And she's like I don't suffer! And then went on to tell me how stressed she was about her day. 🫠

 

Buddhist translator and author Ken McLeod recommends the term "struggle" instead of suffering. This is a much better translation, since it captures the larger point that the problem isn't with the world as it is, the problem is our STRUGGLE with the world as it is, expressed and clinging and aversion (imagined stories about how things were, are, or will be) to past, present, and imagined future events. 

 

The struggle and karma are OURS. We can stop generating both once we change our perspective about how things are, and the results are obvious quickly. 

[ChiDragon]

First of all, I like the word grokking used in the title. I had used it in my translation of Chapter one of the Tao Te Ching.

 

Anyway，I am not a Buddist, but I have paid close attention to its philosophy. The pain and suffering that they are referring to is mental pain instead of physical pian.

[Apech]

1 hour ago, Taoist Texts said:

thats true, pretty bad. there are a couple of amateurish etymologies for dukkha encrusted in the interwebs, including the risible 'standing badly' or 'bad hole' but as any native indo-european speaker knows dukha is simply bitterness

 

the same root as in say dour

the opposite of dukkha in buddhism is sukkha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukha

which is of course simply sweetness, the same root as in sugar or sweet

(note the same hilarious made up etymologies of axle, hole, and what not, hehe)

 

 

You have constructed an etymology from a derived language (Hindi) - maybe you are right but also your second link gives the other derivation so ... but sweet and sour/bitter is helpful I think.

 

 

 

 

[Mark Foote]

On 11/16/2023 at 3:25 AM, Taoist Texts said:

ehhm but how to "cessate" it?
 

 

 

Gautama’s teaching revolved around action, around one specific kind of action:
 

…I say that determinate thought is action. When one determines, one acts by deed, word, or thought.
 

(AN III 415, Pali Text Society Vol III p 294)

 

“When one determines”—when a person exercises volition, or choice, action of “deed, word, or thought” follows.

Gautama also spoke of “the activities”.  The activities are the actions that take place as a consequence of the exercise of volition:
 

And what are the activities?  These are the three activities:–those of deed, speech and mind.  These are activities.
 

(SN II 3, Pali Text Society vol II p 4)

 

Gautama claimed that a ceasing of “action” is possible:
 

And what… is the ceasing of action? That ceasing of action by body, speech, and mind, by which one contacts freedom,–that is called ‘the ceasing of action’.
 

(SN IV 145, Pali Text Society Vol IV p 85)

 

He spoke in detail about how “the activities” come to cease:
 

…I have seen that the ceasing of the activities is gradual. When one has attained the first trance, speech has ceased. When one has attained the second trance, thought initial and sustained has ceased. When one has attained the third trance, zest has ceased. When one has attained the fourth trance, inbreathing and outbreathing have ceased… Both perception and feeling have ceased when one has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.
 

(SN IV 217, Pali Text Society vol IV p 146)

 

 

(A Way of Living)

[Cobie]

On 18/11/2023 at 9:47 PM, Mark Foote said:

… When …  inbreathing and outbreathing have ceased…

then he’s dead. 

 

 

Edited July 19 by Cobie

[Mark Foote]

On 11/16/2023 at 7:48 PM, Taoist Texts said:

so whoever is mindful does not feel physical pain?
 

That's interesting.  There are a couple of sermons in the Pali collections where some member of the order or of the lay community is dying a painful death, and a senior member of the order drops by to encourage them to bear up, in light of the dhamma.

I'm remembering two such sermons, at the conclusion of each of which, the afflicted person took the knife (committed suicide).

Oh well!

 

But as Maddie said, Gautama regarded suffering as something added to the experience of a sensation:

 

“When [one] has seen a material shape through the eye, [one] does not feel attraction for agreeable material shapes, [one] does not feel repugnance for disagreeable material shapes; and (one] dwells with mindfulness aroused as to the body… [One] who has thus got rid of compliance and antipathy, whatever feeling [that person] feels-pleasant or painful or neither painful nor pleasant [one] does not delight in that feeling, does not welcome it or persist in cleaving to it. From not delighting in that feeling … , from not welcoming it, from not persisting in cleaving to it, whatever was delight in those feelings is stopped. From the stopping of [one’s] delight is the stopping of grasping; from the stopping of grasping is the stopping of becoming; from the stopping of becoming is the stopping of birth; from the stopping of birth, old age and dying, grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation and despair are stopped. Such is the stopping of this entire mass of anguish [similarly for sound/the ear, scent/the nose, savor/the tongue, touch/the body, mental object/the mind].”
 

(MN 1270, Vol I pg 323-324)

Ok, hard to imagine delighting in a painful feeling.  Here's another angle:

 

 

Birth is anguish, old age and decay, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, woe, lamentation, and despair are anguish. Not to get what one desires is anguish. In short, the five groups based on grasping are anguish.
 

(AN I 176, Vol I p 160; Pali “dukkha”: “anguish” in MN, “Ill” in AN original above; emphasis added)

 

 

The trick is, ya gotta have "perfect wisdom", to see through the five groups and shed "latent conceits that ‘I am the doer, mine is the doer’ in regard to this consciousness-informed body":

 

Whatever … is material shape, past, future or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, or whatever is far or near, [a person], thinking of all this material shape as ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self’, sees it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. Whatever is feeling … perception… the habitual tendencies… whatever is consciousness, past, future or present… [that person], thinking of all this consciousness as ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self’, sees it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. [For one] knowing thus, seeing thus, there are no latent conceits that ‘I am the doer, mine is the doer’ in regard to this consciousness-informed body.
 

(MN III 18-19, Vol III p 68)

 

 

My version of "perfect wisdom":

 

When “doing something” has ceased, and there is “not one particle of the body” that cannot receive the placement of attention, then the placement of attention is free to shift as necessary in the movement of breath.

... The difficulty is that most people will lose consciousness before they cede activity to the location of attention–they lose the presence of mind with the placement of attention, because they can’t believe that action in the body is possible without “doing something”:
 

It’s impossible to teach the meaning of sitting. You won’t believe it. Not because I say something wrong, but until you experience it and confirm it by yourself, you cannot believe it.
 

(Kobun Chino Otogawa, “Embracing Mind”, edited by Cosgrove & Hall, pg 48)

 

 

(Shunryu Suzuki on Shikantaza and the Theravadin Stages)