> # The Link in Dependent Origination We Keep Ignoring

> Homage to the Triple Gem. So, there's a Sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya, which is called the Further Shore, the Parāyana Sutta. And in this Sutta, there's a number of monks who gather, and they discuss a statement that was made by the Buddha in The Way to the Further Shore and the Questions of Mettaeya in the Sutta Nipata. And the phrase that the Buddha said in that particular Sutta was, "Whoever a thinker, knowing both sides, doesn't adhere in between, he I call a great person. He here has gone past the seamstress." So, the monks gather together, and they discuss amongst themselves what the Buddha meant by the first side, what the Buddha meant by the end, and what the Buddha meant by essentially the middle. And the very first monk, he says, "Contact, friends, is the first side. The origination of contact, the second side. And the cessation of contact is in between. Craving is the seamstress, for craving stitches one to the production of this or that very becoming." So, the various monks discuss their understanding of what the statement means, and at the end, they all go to the Buddha, and the Buddha confirms that the first monk's statement was the best spoken, although he says that all of the other monks spoke well in their interpretations of the Dhamma. > > There's an interesting phenomena in that people sometimes, when they're looking for the causes of their suffering, chase after things that are the most blatant while ignoring things that are the actual origin. So, I was discussing with somebody just the other day, uh yesterday, believe, about uh a discussion we'd had previously on the channel in a talk called To the Source. And when I was a young man, I started in Korean Zen, and the teacher at the Korean Zen Temple Zen Temple would give this simile of uh throwing stones at a tiger versus throwing stones at a dog. And he said, "If you throw stones at a dog, then the dog chases after the stones. But if you throw stones at the tiger, then the tiger goes straight for the person who's throwing the stones." And so when we look for the cause of our suffering, often times what we feel as the cause, the felt sense is that it's a feeling that arises, that comes up and blows us away, whether it's anxiety or whether it's anger or whether it's sadness, whether the negative feelings that people feel. When these things come up, it's kind of like a storm that whips up and pulls them to and fro. And a person has to find a way to weather that storm so they don't get thrown about by the feelings into this or that bad action or this or that bad way of speaking or this or that bad way of thinking, even ideally. > > And so the Buddhist teaching here on contact is interesting because people often ignore a further up cause of suffering than feelings. And feelings are the most obvious one, they're the ones that are bringing all the pain. But nobody stops to think about whether or not contact has a role in causing suffering and whether or not suffering can be stopped at contact. It's very rarely thought about. So I remember listening to a talk a few years ago actually and it was by a monk who's known to have been very successful in his practice. And he was recommending to contemplate at contact rather than to contemplate at feelings. And one of the things that we tend to notice with the way that suffering arises in the mind is that it often arises from things that seem innocuous and yet are behind are the source and are the origin actually of a great mass of suffering. > > So contact in dependent co-arising comes before feeling and it essentially means the point at which two things connect, where the eye connects with forms, where the ear connects with sounds, where the body connects with tactile sensations, where the tongue connects with flavors, etc. And it's at that point of contact that there's actually desire. There can be a desire to have a contact. You can notice this when people go on retreats, meditation retreats, and they're sitting for long periods of time with their eyes closed, or in a place where there's very stimulant very little stimulation. There's a desire just to have a contact. And yet this contact is generally seen in a positive light and not as something which is the origin or the starting point of what later turns into a storm. > > I was reading I think a while back about this theory behind the way that weather patterns and complex systems operate. There's kind of almost a metaphor in these weather pat -- that if a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere far away, like say Montana, then it can cause a tornado in Florida through this unknown chain of causes and effects. And so often times we see the storm, but we don't see the butterfly flapping its wings as the cause. We don't see the desire to have contact as the cause, the desire for something to touch the eye or the nose or the ears or the body, and think that this could be the cause of suffering. But when we come to contemplate this, what we can really see or one can really see is that stopping the desire there can be like cutting off a stream that's farther up its source. Doesn't have to go down and become a bunch of different world pools and waterfalls and cascades. You can cut it off at the source where it starts out small. Kind of divert it there and bring it to destruction there. And what comes after that won't originate. It won't start. > > So the Buddhist teachings on dependent co-arising are given not as something which is to be used to deconstruct all the reality so that we can know exactly why we're thinking what we're thinking when we're thinking it, etc. But it's to give us a pattern so that we can deconstruct our suffering. And one of the best links, one of the greatest ones we can look at if we want to stop feelings from overwhelming the mind, stop feelings from causing us harm, the good ones that pull us up and the bad ones that pull us down, is to become dispassionate for anything that might contact the body, the mind, the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue. There's these two different paths that the Buddha lays out. They're kind of different in a way, but overlapping. One is the sukha paṭipadā, path of pleasant uh practice. And this is a path that generally proceeds mostly through concentration. Then you have another path, which is the dukkha patipadā. And this is a path that Buddha calls the suffering or the painful path. And this is a path that mainly proceeds through contemplation, although both of these paths have to overlap. In that the sukha patipadā will definitely at some point have to contemplate things in a negative light. And the dukkha patipadā practitioner will have to develop concentration, which means they'll have to be able to unify their mind at a certain point, and to be able to bring this kind of brightness and positivity into their practice. But in any event, in order to become dispassionate, it requires this dukkha patipadā, the willingness to see something negative in something that one cherishes. > > Because one of the ironies of suffering is not that the most strong, the most insidious, the most powerful forms of suffering are things that are like demons, very scary, big horns, making a lot of noise. And that's where people tend to look, kind of the anger, the worry, or the fear, or the sadness, that seem like these enormous demons. The boss that's behind them seems much more innocuous, a little butterfly flapping its wings. But if a person puts a stop to that, then they stop as well. And the irony of it is that we protect it. Is that we actually protect the things that cause us to suffer. > > So, we learn to turn our minds to contemplate contact in this way, not as something that is to be desired, is to be sought after for the sake of having a pleasant contact at the eye or the ear, but as something that's a danger. Because when one exposes the mind to contact anywhere, a pleasant contact, at the same time one's exposing it to one that's negative. At the same time one is joining it to whatever it is that comes externally, like a storm. And can push the mind left, can push it right, can push it up, can push it down, push it to the side, so long as there's that conjoinment, so long as there's that attachment, and that attachment comes through desire. So, in order to take up these contemplations, it isn't just something in which one sits there and thinks, "Contact's impermanent." Kind of thinks that a couple times. One can develop that as a frame of reference, where anytime something contacts the mind, one looks at it in terms of contact rather than feeling. One looks at it in terms of the way that it touches, and one starts to feel these touches as something that's painful. Okay, that can come through investigation. > > The downstream effects of whatever it is that one grabs onto, where does it lead? What does that happiness end in? How does it go? Does it lead to something that's truly satisfying? One investigates this enough, and then one feels like every time one sends the mind out to search for happiness, one can end in something that's dangerous. Because it's something that has the potential to change, to switch into something that one didn't expect. Happy feelings can turn negative, negative feelings can turn happy, and this is something unsafe. > > So, the Buddha in the suttas recommends to regard contact like a flayed cow. It's a very strong image. A cow which has been hit with a whip so many times that its skin is raw. And wherever that cow goes and stands, if it stands near a wall, then the bugs in the wall eat it. If it sits on the ground, then the worms in the ground, the bugs in the ground eat it. And if it stands in the air, then the bugs in the air eat it. And the Buddha says contact is to be regarded in this way. It's to be regarded as a danger, and something that is painful, that's not desirable. And this comes about through investigation. Through watching the chain of causes and effects that cascade down from contact into feeling, and into craving, and into clinging, and into becoming, and then into ideally birth and aging and sickness and death. And it's just this. It's in this way that the whole mass of suffering can flow out from these various points in dependent co-arising. > > So, wherever it is that dispassion sets in in relationship to one of the factors of dependent co-arising, and especially in this case in relationship to contact, it's there that the chain can be broken. And the chain doesn't break through an act of concentration where one sees the world as more and more beautiful. It breaks through an act of dispassion, through an act of discernment that cuts the chain, that separates the mind from the things that it used to cling to. And this is why the Buddha said that craving is the seamstress. It's the seamstress that sews this and that state of becoming together, essentially. You have contact as the first, the origination of contact as the second, and the cessation of contact is the end. And so long as one is clinging to contact, one is caught up with origination and cessation, with contact, and with feeling, and with craving, and with clinging, and with becoming. But if one contemplates correctly and stops the desire there, stops it such that one sees contact the way that a flayed cow would see insects biting it, then one's mind can incline away from the world towards something that's truly safe. > > So, the beauty of the world is not to be confused with the ugliness of the world. The happiness of the world is not to be confused with its pain. And both of these things are emotions, both of them are feeling, and they're joined together by the seamstress that sews together this production or that production of being. So, it's enough for us to become dispassionate. It's enough for us to observe what it is that makes us happy and what it is that causes us to suffer. Where does it really start from? Is it the feeling that we get rid of it will make us happy? Or is it something further up the line that one didn't want to look at and one is actually protecting? Stop protecting it and start trying to separate the mind from it and see what happens to the suffering that comes afterwards. Suffering that comes from feeling and clinging and becoming can't happen if one cuts it off at contact. So, the Buddha says it's a great man who transcends the seamstress. Gives us these teachings to know how our world is stitched together and how to take it apart to find something that's stable and to find a happiness that lasts beyond the world. And the people who can do this, the Buddha calls a great man. Somebody who's reached the end of the goal and has put down suffering and stress.

> # Deconstruction > > Ajaan Fuang wasn't the sort of person who liked to discuss controversial issues. If people brought up controversies of the day, especially in areas of the Dhamma, he'd tell them "Close your eyes, meditate, focus on your breath." But there were a couple of issues that he would bring up himself. One was the idea that the path is all about letting go, letting go. He'd say, that's not the case. You have to do some developing first before you can totally let go. You let go in stages. But as you let go, you have to have something good to hold onto. Otherwise you're lost, you're set adrift. "Kaat loy" was the Thai phrase he would use. > > And unfortunately that attitude, that it's all about just letting go, is still around, you find it in different guises. It usually comes from the idea that the path, the fruit should be visible here and now, so there should be something right here, right now. Don't think about developing a path that will take time or having a goal in the future. Everything should be right here, immediately, it's just letting how to recognize it. That's making discernment do all the work. You tell yourself that you've got to let go, so whatever comes up you just let it go, let it go. You say you don't want to pass judgment. Passing judgment is going to involve some craving, clinging to what's good and what's bad. > > But think about it, the Buddha said the main internal factor for gaining awakening, especially the first level of awakening, is appropriate attention. Appropriate attention makes distinctions. It's basically seeing things in terms of the Four Noble Truths. Suffering is to be comprehended, and not just witnessed or acknowledged. You have to understand, what is it? The Buddha is very precise: clinging to the aggregates. Form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness. The clinging is in the delight and passion you have for those things, the desire and passion you have for those things. And the clinging aggregates altogether, think of this as an image of feeding. You're hungry, that's the craving, that's the desire and passion. You find something you want to eat, so you latch onto it and hold onto it as you eat it. That's the clinging aggregates. That's the suffering. Which is really counter-intuitive. > > We tend to think that we find our happiness in feeding. Of course here the Buddha is talking about not only physical feeding but also mental and emotional feeding. But these are areas where we tend to find our happiness, and yet he says that's where we suffer. Because it's all very unstable. As you're eating things, you're using them up, which means you're destroying the things you're going to need to feed on into the future, which means you have to keep on looking. It's a very precarious state to be in. You want to comprehend that. And you don't comprehend it by just telling yourself to "Let go, let go." You have to let go precisely, because as the Buddha said, you don't let go of the aggregates, you let go of the clinging and the desire and passion. > > Now the second noble truth, craving, that's desire and passion, and that's to be abandoned. The third noble truth is the total abandoning of that. "Asesa-virāga-nirodho", total dispassion, without any trace at all. We're not talking about temporary rest from a particular desire. And it's something that's neither here nor there[?] Ordinarily when you let go of one desire, and if there's no new desire immediately following it, there's a sense of nothing. And some people claim that that's it, that's the cessation of suffering. But they also admit that it's boring, it's not interesting. The earth didn't quake before because the Buddha found something that was boring and uninteresting. He found the absolute end of passion and desire. That's to be realized, and it can be realized only by developing the path. > > And the path takes work. You've got eight factors. Now they all come together as you get better and better at them, but in the beginning it does take some strategic thinking. It is a path, it's going to take time. It is a goal that you have in the future. You focus on doing what you have to do right now, but you know you're headed in the right direction. Whether the path is long or short is not the issue. The issue is doing it, and doing it all. So when concentration comes up, you don't just let it go, let it go. When mindfulness comes up, you don't let it go. Everything has to be developed in the path. That takes work. > > Which is why when the Buddha was talking about breath meditation one time, there was a monk named Arittha who said, "I do breath meditation." And the Buddha asked him, "What kind of breath meditation do you do?" And Arittha said, "I don't hanker after things in the future, I don't have nostalgia for things in the past. And mindfully in the present moment I breathe in, breathe out, putting aside any passion in the present moment." The Buddha said, "Well, there is that kind of breath meditation, but it doesn't give the best results. The best results is the sixteen steps that he recommends. And they involve learning how to breathe in and out conscious of the whole body, calming bodily fabrication. In other words, allowing the breath to calm down. Breathing in and out, training yourself to breathe in and out sensitive to rapture, sensitive to pleasure, sensitive to mental fabrication, calming mental fabrication. Breathing in and out gladdening the mind, concentrating the mind, releasing the mind. There's a lot of constructive work that you have to do. > > So you're not just settling in and being really quiet. Because that's the other extreme about letting go. Some people say, "Well, who cares about discernment, just reject everything." The mind rejects, rejects, rejects, and goes into a very dull, dark, heavy kind of concentration where you're totally oblivious to your body, oblivious to the world outside. And you can determine ahead of time how long you want to stay. And you come out. And you can tell yourself that you gained discernment as you came out. There's no discernment in that concentration. It's just brutally beating the mind down. And people get addicted to this. Because they like the quietude. And they don't like going back to breath meditation because it requires work, it's not as quiet. > > But the Buddha is teaching his sixteen steps for breath meditation because he wants you to develop discernment at the same time you develop concentration. And as you calm bodily fabrication, calm mental fabrication, you're going to be engaged in his five-step program. Seeing the origination of things, seeing how they pass away. Seeing their allure, why you go for them, why you want to feed on them. And then seeing the drawbacks, comparing the drawbacks with the allure and seeing that the drawbacks way outweigh the allure. That's when you can develop dispassion and gain your escape. So the concentration can't do this all for you. You have to contemplate these things. And where do you contemplate them? In the course of doing the construction, constructing concentration. You learn by building. > > The Buddha gives the image of a house. You've been building houses for who knows how many aeons. Now he says, "Focus careful attention on how you build this house." When you understand how you build this house, then you can start taking it apart, and that way you can take apart all other forms of house building. So there's work to develop, there's work to be done, not just letting go. > > This relates to the second issue that Ajaan Fuang would talk about. There was a teacher in Thailand who said that Nibbana is nothing other than the mind when it has no sense of me or mine. He called it temporary Nibbana. And as Ajaan Fuang said, "Temporary Nibbana? How can Nibbana be temporary? It's permanent, it's unconditioned." That temporary state is just a state of quietude. This relates back to those people who say that the third noble truth is just any moment the mind free from desire. That boring freedom from desire. Nibbana is something extraordinary. As the Buddha said, it's the ultimate happiness. He didn't say it's the ultimate boredom. He didn't compare it to oatmeal and porridge. All of his images are extraordinary. > > Because what happens is you've learned to see how you construct things. All things that you construct. You work on the aggregates in their best form, i.e. the form of the mind in solid concentration, which you've observed carefully how you put things together. Then you start taking it apart. And you can take it apart precisely because you've been the one who put it together. And when you see that even the best aggregates have their limitations, the mind generally is inclined to something that is totally deathless, something unfabricated. Because even those moments of quiet between one desire and the next, there's fabrication going on. The consciousness of those moments, that's a fabricated thing, as the Buddha said it's dependently co-arisen. It depends on conditions. And you see these conditions because you've been using them as your building blocks. > > So you let go not just by telling yourself to let go. You let go through careful deconstruction. After having done the work of constructing. So you know really well where the pipes are, where the air conditioning ducts are. Like the hall here in the ordination hall. I was there every day, every day when things were put together. I know where everything is. If I had to take it apart, I would know where to go. That's when you can really let go. Because when you've been carefully watching yourself as you construct, you deconstruct not just through the power of stilling the mind. You deconstruct not just by telling yourself to let go. You deconstruct because you've been thoroughly aware of how you construct things, where the limitations are, and why you would want to deconstruct. That's when you find an Nibbana that's not temporary at all. You find the real thing. So I can see why Ajaan Fuang would focus on these issues, because they really are important. They make the difference between people who simply tell themselves that they've seen the Dhamma. And those who actually seen it, and gained the full benefits of seeing it in their hearts.