examining the buddha's teachings one word at a time

Prelude.

Gotama is Socrates, an opaque enigma; he is Thoreau.

The Buddha is Us, as transparent as a Hollywood star; he is People.

Gotama is a man whose life we have barely begun to imagine or investigate.

The Buddha is a literary figure imagined and fashioned by anonymous compilers of the canonical literature over two millennia ago, and embraced by countless faithful ever since.

Gotama wraps himself in cloth collected from a dung heap or cremation ground. He stinks. He is earthy, precise, specific, adamant.

The Buddha fancies tiaras and golden robes. He exudes the fragrance of sandalwood and lotus. He is cosmically complex.

Explanation.

Why do I call him “Gotama” (or, in Sanskrit, “Gotama”) rather than “the Buddha.” The short answer is that I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson that our life-guides “must be related to us, and our life receive from [them] some promise of explanation.” Gotama fulfills this basic requirement. The Buddha does not.

I have given up on the Buddha. That is to say, I have given up on the Enlightened One, the Blessed One, the omniscient Lord of people and gods who works miracles, knows unknowable things, and continues to exert his power from beyond. When I ask Buddhists to explain why I should accept their revered sage as a modern-day life-adviser, I am typically offered only articles of faith (claims to be believed in or rejected) and rarely good (that is, examinable and testable) reasons.

I imagine that some readers are like me in this regard: we have been inoculated from the religious bug. We are no longer willing, or indeed even able, to acquiesce to the inscrutable sureness of the religious authorities’ advice concerning the most important matters of life and death. Like the Kalamas in ancient India, living at a crossroads of competing religious-philosophic commerce, we have eyes only for what lies in full view. And what lies in view is the merit of a claim, not its sacred origins in some cosmic or cognitive transcendence, such as “enlightenment.”

But along the way, something unexpected happened. I met one of the world’s most gifted teachers. He is Gotama, the human figure behind the fanciful facade of the Buddha. Like the Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists in ancient Greece and Rome, Gotama instructed in the manner of a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. He taught and modeled a viable way to human flourishing, and did so rooted firmly in everyday life. With precision, care, and intelligence, Gotama articulated for us the categories and practices through which we may clearly understand our lives and, doing so, know for ourselves the simple happiness of existing, in difficult as well as trouble-free times. And all of his advice on these matters stands in full view—conspicuous, open to scrutiny, testable.

khandha. “The five components of grasping” is the Buddha’s shorthand for what we commonly refer to as “person, self, identity, soul.” The Buddha said that he looked everywhere in vain for the kind of stable, integral entity that is implied by such terms. You, too, can look. But where will you look? In your nose? ears? chest cavity? stomach? Perhaps your self can be found in your memories, thoughts, sense of identity. The more we “look,” the more absurd appears the commonly held notion of my being (having?) a self. For the Buddha, this persistent sense that I have of being a “person” is the result of erroneously imputing an object where there is really only process. This process, moreover, is perceptual in nature, having to do, as it does, with human being. Although this process, like any other, is a seamless flow devoid of stops, it can, on analysis, be said to have innumerable aspects. The Buddha called these aspects khandha, meaning “clusters,” “clumps,” or “aggregates,” and found it beneficial to identify five of them as possessing particular importance. These five are: materiality, feeling, perception, conceptual fabrication, and cognizance. To get a view on this five-fold process of being, it might be useful to try an experiment. First of all, read the following explanation of the five components (a). This will give you some theoretical grounding in the process to which these five point. Then analyze a perceptual act in terms of the components (b). This exercise should give you some practical insight into the process. Finally, consider the Buddha’s pithy remarks concerning the fundamental nature of this process (c).

(a)        1. Materiality (rūpa) is the “givenness” of matter, which consists of the four elements: earth (solidity), water (coherence), fire (energy), and wind (distention). In terms of the “person,” rūpa is the body. Note that the Buddha is not concerned with the origin or end of the material world. The world just is — when you open your eyes, there it is. You must deal with it just as it is, regardless of how it came to be and how it might cease to be. Hence, the first instance that the Buddha marks out as a khandha is this primary givenness of the world that stands before our own material givenness. (In order to counter the idea that there is a pure, undefiled world out there that is corrupted by the khandha-process, it is important to note that both the world and our experience of it are marked by conditionality from the outset of the khandha-process. That is, my eyes are conditioned by numerous factors [genes, diet, experience or karma] as is the painting with which they come into contact [constructed from parts, creative choices of the artist, intensity of light].)

2. Feeling (vedanā) is the qualitative continuum from the raw, unprocessed feeling that arises when a sense faculty comes into contact with a sense object to the emotional response conditioned by that sensation. For example, when the nose meets a scent, the scent may be experienced in varying registers of pleasantness, unpleasantness, or neutrality; and this experience triggers memories and emotions. It is important to note here that sensation concerns the quality of visceral friction and the feelings conditioned by that friction, and is not a matter of discriminating judgment or opinion.

3. Perception (saññā) is the processing of the object of sense as such and such: the sensation on the ear is “a dog’s bark,” on the skin is “a rain drop,” on the tongue is “a chocolate cookie.” Unformed materiality (vibrating waves hitting the ear, and so on) settles into specific form. Perception, saññā, thus connotes a degree of sharpened focus, of something’s coming into view as a particular kind of object.

4. Conceptual Fabrications (saṅkhāra) arise as the closer discernment concerning the (perceived) qualities of the object. The important point here is that this discernment is, to a great extent, based on personal proclivities, which in turn are products of conditioning (via family, culture, genes, experience). This term is often translated as “volition” since it is understood as an exercise of the will to fashion the perceived object in a particular way. But really the Sanskrit verbal formation from which the Pāli is derived simply denotes “putting together, forming, embellishing.” In the Buddhist view, these terms describe precisely what we do whenever we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, or cognize an object. Namely, we co-construct the object by coloring our perceptions with qualities, judgments, and narratives deriving largely from our side, and not from the side of the object itself. Because we react to the world as it is fashioned by us, rather than to some world “in-itself,” saṅkhāra is an acutely important Buddhist technical term.

5. Cognizance (viññāṇa) can be understood as being simultaneously the mirror and the appearance reflected in the mirror. It is both our objectless awareness, which is standing always already present, on the one hand, and the awareness of the fully formed object (formed, of course, via the previous four khandhas), on the other. I think that viññāṇa functions in both of these senses within the khandha-process. The English term “cognizance” nicely captures this double meaning since it connotes both “awareness itself,” and “thinking about” that which is given in that awareness. So, to give a specific example in terms of the khandha-process: As a sentient being, I am aware. Sound waves hit my ears (rūpa). These waves are experienced as pleasant (vedanā). The perception forms that the waves are birdsong (saññā). As if automatically, particular memories, notions, and interpretations regarding the birdsong proliferate (saṅkhāra). I discursively think about these memories, respond to those memories, then think about those responses, and on and on (viññāṇa). Because of these intentional acts of thinking, viññāṇa is sometimes referred to as “karmic consciousness.” That is, such thinking is itself a conditioned action that gives rise to further mental, verbal, and bodily activity. Finally, it is important to note that cognizance is understood by the Buddha as being manifest through a particular mode of perception — eye-cognizance, ear-cognizance — and not as some kind of pervasive, ghost-like “consciousness.” (It is for this reason that I chose not to render viññāṇa in its usual manner as “consciousness.”)

(b) Now, having gained some theoretical understanding of the khandhas, identify each element in an actual act of each of the six modes of apprehension (seeing, hearing, tasting, bodily feeling, smelling, thinking). Here’s an example. Observe the arising of a sound.

(1)   Note, first of all, the very presence of your ear and of the physical world. What you are noticing is, of course, the givenness of materiality (rūpa).

(2)   Simply and directly notice the next sound that arises. Note the bare sensation (vedanā) engendered by the friction from the interaction of that sound and your ear. Does this contact produce a sensation that is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? How does this sensation condition how you feel mentally, physically, emotionally?

(3)   Notice that seemingly simultaneous with contact comes a particular perception (saññā) concerning the nature of the sound object. It is a passing car; it is the chirping of a bird; it is your daughter’s voice; it is someone coughing, and so forth.

(4)  Carefully observe what you did (saṅkhāra) with that perception. Did you start to weave some sort of story concerning the sound? Did you color it with names, views, opinions, value judgments? In short, did you engage, to any degree, in manipulation and contrivance of the sound? Can you, in this manner, discern to what extent you played a role in co-creating the sound?

(5) Notice the reflective, mirror-like quality of simply being aware of sound. (Glass, perhaps, is a more suitable metaphor than a mirror, since glass is both transparent and reflective.) Notice that “within” this spacious awareness a particular object of sound-awareness stands fully formed. Can you just be aware of this entire unfolding. This “just,” you may notice, requires simply leaving “it” alone. (“It” is the raw sound together with your fashioning of the sound. How could you possibly separate each of these out from the another? How can you discern where “you” end and “it” begins?).

(c) Finally, what do you make of the Buddha’s characterization of this entire process? Was (is) what he says here clarified in your own experience?

Form is like a lump of foam,

feeling like a water bubble;

perception is like a mirage,

conceptual fabrications like a plantain tree,*

and cognizance like an illusion.

However one may ponder the self

and carefully investigate it,

it appears hollow and void

when one views it carefully. (Majjhimanikāya 3.22.95.)

*[That is, it consists of endless layers, like an onion, with, finally, no core.]

An abundance of questions might arise out of this exercise. Many of these questions are of a potentially revolutionary and transformative nature because of the real-life consequences they engender. For example, is it necessary to posit a stable, integral self, soul, or identity in order to account for your moment to moment experience?  What might be the source, role, and function of the persistent feeling of “I, me, mine” that runs throughout our experience? Doesn’t this exercise in the khandhas strongly suggest that all that we can honestly claim for moment to moment existence is that there is a continual unfolding of a process, physical and psychological in nature? If so, what challenges does this view (insight?) have for the theistic framework for living held dear, I imagine, by so many readers?

From Glenn Wallis, Basic Teachings of the Buddha (New York: Random House, 2007).

tanhā. What is the origin of the unease we experience in our lives? The Buddha’s answer is, “the fact that you demand too much from the world.” We ask—entreat, implore, intensely desire— that the world’s objects yield abiding pleasure, satisfaction, and security. But how can they? Their fundamental nature is impermanent, non-substantial, and unreliable. “Asking too much” is an old-fashioned meaning of the verb “to crave” (from Anglo Saxon crafian). The Pāli term behind this translation is tanhā, from Sanskrit tṛṣṇā, meaning “thirst.” So, what is the origin of human unease? It is the perpetual demands that we make on the world, and the parched state of being that arises from an apparently unquenchable thirst for sensory pleasure.

From Glenn Wallis, Basic Teachings of the Buddha (New York: Random House, 2007).

There seems to be no better place to begin than with the word sabba.

Sabba is the Abraham Lincoln of the Pali lexicon. A word could hardly hail from more humble origins or rise to such giddy heights. Sabba is homespun yet eloquent: it speaks the matter-of-fact and it insinuates the sublime. Sabba realized is the Great Emancipator: “Without directly knowing and fully realizing sabba,” says Gotama, “you will not be able to eliminate distress (dukkha) (Saṃyuttanikāya 35.26).

Sabba means “all.” That’s all. It belongs to the lowly class of linguistic laborers known as pronominal adjectives. That is, when it stands in for a noun or a noun phrase (like “it” just substituted for “the word sabba”), it’s working as a pronoun; but, when it further explains, or modifies, a subsequent word (like “subsequent” just did), then it is clocking in as an adjective. All was lost in the flood.

All, alas, is never as simple as it appears, is it? As each of us knows, all is everywhere. All is entire, whole, complete in itself. It is total and, well, all-encompassing. “The whole,” as Aristotle reminds, “is something besides its parts … a unity” (Metaphysics 8.5.1045a). And so we have the Presidential All: the One, the Absolute, the Ever-Present and All-Knowing, the Summum, the Sublime, the Cosmic Father, and the Universal Mother. All, by definition, knows no bounds — particularly when it transmutes into a noun. The German word for “universe” is “das All.”

But Gotama was a farmer, not an astronomer. Although he, too, posited an “all,” what he had in mind was something closer to the earth than dirt. Let’s listen in on Gotama’s succinct teaching on sabba.

I will teach you the all (sabba). Listen to what I say. What is the all? The eye and forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and scents, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mind and thoughts. This is called the all. Someone might say, “I reject this all, I will declare another all.” But because that is simply a groundless assertion, such a person, when asked about it, would not be able to explain, and would, moreover, meet with distress. What is the reason for that distress? Because that all is not within his or her sensorium. (Sabba Sutta; Saṃyuttanikāya 4.25.2.)

If we keep in mind that Gotama’s project as a teacher is to show us a way to overcome dukkha, existential unease, then sabba becomes the answer to one of the most crucial questions we can pose ourselves: where do I begin the project of knowing —directly, immediately, for myself — the source of my dissatisfaction? To answer, as Gotama does, “by realizing sabba,” is to claim that the knowledge we require for gaining precious insight into our unhappiness is literally right in front of our noses (and eyes, and ears, and so on); the knowledge we require is, namely, full and present in the very act of perception. In Gotama’s teaching, an act of perception involves (i) the givenness of the world (forms, sounds, scents, etc.), (ii) sensory reception (the eye, the ear, etc.), and (iii) response (passion, craving, grasping/dispassion, equanimity, unbinding, etc.). (For this latter aspect, you can further explore Saṃyuttanikāya 35.26.)  “The all,” sabba, is Gotama’s way of referring to this starkest, barest, most stripped down, calculus of human being: phenomena + reception / response = lived experience.

It is important to make clear that sabba is the sum total of our actual, rather than imagined, fantasized, or otherwise deluded, reality. In this regard, sabba can be understood as Gotama’s periodic table of the elements. In its first instance, something is one of the following: a visible form, a sound, a scent, a taste, a bodily sensation, or a thought. To “declare another all,” like Gotama’s imaginary interlocutor, is to be confused about the basic categories of being.

If we want to engage in the project of overcoming dukkha, then we have to become intimately familiar with, at home in, our sensorium, sabba, the all. Through meditation practice, we become better able to pay attention is to whatever is unfolding there. Attending in this manner, we can become deeply knowledgeable about the quality, processes, and nature of our lived experience moment by moment. So in this view, your experience is your reality. And your experience is your reality. If that experience is pervaded by persistent dissatisfaction and unease, as Gotama predicts it is, don’t you want to know not about big things like “reality” but about the nature of experience?

An insidious idea of reality is that it is something that stands apart from individual — my, your, his, her — experience. But if you ask people about this, they will deny it — just look; isn’t reality out there?! In his teachings on sabba, Gotama assumes a view that is thus counter-intuitive to our commonsensical view. He assumes, namely, that most of us are ignorant of the fact that the perceptual apparatus (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind) is precisely that mechanism whereby the raw material “out there” is cooked up as my, your, his, her experience. This view is easily verifiable. Imagine that you and I are standing next to each other. A scent wafts across my nose, now your nose. I gag and cough; you breathe deeply and sigh in pleasure. Was the scent the same or different? Where was the locus of this difference? In his teaching on sabba,Gotama asks us to consider the possibility that all of our experience is just as in this example.

(First published in Buddhadharma Magazine, Winter 2008.)