Books / Philosophical and Buddhologist Books / Introduction to the Study of Buddhist Philosophy / Seminar five

 

INTRODUCTION TO THE  STUDY OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

 

SEMINAR FIVE

 

Text V. On the Pairs of Insights[1]

 

Thus have I heard. Once the Lord was staying in the Eastern Park of Migaramatu estate of Shravasti. One evening on a full-moon day he was sitting in the open air with all the monks gathered round him. He saw that they were silent and so he spoke to them. “Monks”, he said, “it sometimes happens that some questions are asked about wholesome dharmas[2] which are noble, leading out of the world, towards the full awakening. You, monks, may be asked the same questions, and then you should answer them in this way. If, for instance, you are asked about the knowledge of various pairs of dharmas as they are[3] and about what are these two dharmas in a given pair, – then answer that question thus:

1[1] The first twofold insight is that “this is suffering and that is origination of suffering”. The second twofold insight is that “this is non-origination of suffering and that is how to get there”. The monk who holds to this pair of twofold insights –he lives attentive, energetic and resolute – may expect to gain two fruits:[4] he will either gain the fruit of liberation by wisdom,[5] or even if some dharmas of worldly existence[6] are still left in him, he will be a non-returner.[7] This said the Lord. Having said this the Teacher continued:

“There are those who do not understand suffering. Nor do they know its origin or how to annihilate it entirely. And they do not know the way of annihilation of suffering. So, without liberation of mind or liberation through wisdom, they are unable to put an end to becoming and linger on and on becoming and getting old.

There are also those who understand suffering and its origin and who know how to annihilate it totally. And they know the way of exterminators of suffering and got liberation of mind and liberation through wisdom. They are able to put an end to becoming , and they don not linger on and on becoming born and getting old again.”

[2] This is the right twofold insight, but you, monks, may be asked to describe it in another way. One insight is that grasping is the condition of all suffering. The other insight is that by complete dispassionate stopping of the arising of grasping the origination of suffering is stopped.

“It is the nidåna of grasping that produces suffering in its various forms in this world. But a man who does not know, acts with grasping; again and again, he, indolent and slothful, goes from one misery to another. Do cognize, in your insight, how grasping is creates suffering.”

[3] There is, however, another way of describing this twofold insight. One insight is that ignorance is the condition of all suffering, is that what engenders all forms of suffering. The other is that by complete dispassionate stopping of the arising of ignorance the origination of suffering is stopped. That is what the Teacher said:

“Those who are wandering in the worlds of birth and death again and again, now in one form of becoming, now in another – that is what ignorance produces, it is by this ignorance, by the great delusion that the people, muddled and confused, continue to become. Only the wise persons discontinue to be reborn again.”

[2] There is another way of describing this twofold insight: that it is connecting factors from which all suffering originates. And it is by their complete dispassionate stopping that there will be no arising of suffering. The Teacher said:

“Suffering of whatever kind is conditioned by connecting factors. With their stopping no suffering is produced. By equalising[8] all connecting factors and by breaking up all perception[9] there will be annulement of suffering.[10]

The wise ones knowers with the right views and right knowledge[11] cast off the yoke of Mara. They no longer go to rebirths.”

[3] (…) There is another way of describing this twofold insight: one insight is that consciousness is that from which any suffering originates. The other is that by dispassionate stopping of consciousness there will be no origination of suffering.

[4] One insight is that contact is the basis of suffering. For some people the meeting of sense with its object is enthrilling. And so they are washed away by the tide of becoming, drifting an empty, pointless road. But others come to understand their sense activity, they see just the futility of all contacts. Then their craving ends and they delight in complete quietness.

[5] One insight is that sensations are the basis of all suffering. The other is that by cooling  and subduying all sensations suffering will be stopped. So, whether a sensation is pleasurable or unpleasurable, or neutral, external or internal, one should know it. The monk should detach himself from all sensations. By eliminating them he becomes free from craving.

[6] One insight is that craving is the basis of suffering. The other is that by cessation of craving no more suffering arises. When a man walks with the thirst of craving, he will wander from birth to birth, now here, now there, with no end insight. But when the monk knows this consequence of craving the thirst will be dissolved in his knowledge. His clinging will cease, too, and mindful he will freely wander.

[7-8] One insight is that clinging is the basis of suffering. The other is that by elimination of clinging, suffering will be stopped. Becoming is dependent on clinging. When one becomes one comes to suffering . A person who is born, also dies. This is how suffering is produced. The wise ones eliminate all clinging. They know how to stop the forces of becoming, and are not going to be born again.

2 [1] There is another way of describing this twofold insight. One inisght is that whichever suffering is arising, it is conditioned by effort.[12] The other is that by dispassionate stopping of effort there will be no more origination of suffering. Knowing this the knower abandons all his efforts mental and physical, and, effortless, becomes liberated. For a monk whose craving for becoming is cut off and whose mind is calmed, there will be neither birth, nor rebirth, for he has already overcome the phenomenal world of samsara.

[2] There is another way of describing this twofold insight. One insight is that food[13] is the condition of all suffering. The other is that by thorough understanding of all foods and by complete cessation of thinking about them, and by eradicating any attachment to them, suffering ceases to arise.

[3] By his complete understanding of what is healthy the wise man does away with mental influxes.[14] Firm in the Dharma, he stands defying naming and designation.

[4] There is another way of describing this twofold insight. One insight is that mental agitation[15] is the condition of whichever suffering there arises. The other is that by complete destruction of all mental agitations no more suffering will arise. The monk free from mentaln agitations, faultless, unattached and mindful, he is a true wanderer.

That is what the Teacher said then.

[5] There is another way of describing this twofold insight. One insight is that there is trembling for one who dependent.[16] The other is that the independent man does not tremble and does not get confused. The dependent one is dependent on that which is one or another form of suffering. Therefore, he cannot escape from new rebirths. Youn must know the great danger in being dependent. But the independent monk, unattached and mindful, wanders free of fear.

  1. One insight os that there is more calm in the formless[17] than in that which possesses form. The other is that cessation is calmer than the formless.

Then the Teacher said:

“Beings inapprehensive of cessation, whether they abide in the formless or in the form, will be coming back to be reborn.

But beings who, having understood the form, are well established in the formless and liberated themselves in cessation, they have left death behind them.”

One insight is: what the whole world together with its monks, gods, Maras, wandering ascetics, brahmans, and men considers to be truth, the noble ones by their perfect wisdom seeing it as it is – consider it to be false. The second insight is: what the whole world (..) considers to be false, the noble ones (..) consider to be truth.

Then the Teacher said:

“The whole world sees substance in what is unsubstantial. Fixed in ­name-and-form (consciousness-and-body), “O, this is truth” – they think.

But whatever they think about as real turns out to be transitory and thereby a false phenomenon.[18]

Nirvana alone is non-false, that is how the noble ones know it. For with their perfect realisation of the truth[19] all their attachments, inclinations, and desires are exhausted.”

There is another way of describing this twofold insight: one insight is, what the whole world considers to be pleasure, the noble ones consider to be suffering. The other insight is: what the whole world considers to be suffering, the noble ones clearly see as blissful.

Then the Teacher said:

“Whatever there is about which it is said “it exists – the things visible, hearable, smellable, tasteable, touchable, thinkable, and all other phenomena – it is thought of by the whole world as pleasurable. In your world these things are considered pleasure, yet when they disappear, you call it suffering.

“O, it is bliss”, say the noble ones when the individual[20] is to disappear. “O, it is terrible” – so it is seen by the whole world. Thus, what generally is called “pleasure”, is called “suffering” by the noble ones. And what is generally called “suffering”, is called “bliss” by the noble ones. This contradiction is difficult to understand, look, how confused by it are the ignorant. Wrapped in darkness, they are blind to the light, opened to the mindful.[21]

For those who are overcome by passion of becoming, who follow the stream of becoming,[22] and are under sway of Mara[23] – they won’t understand this Dharma.[24]

Only the Noble Ones are worthy to understand the state,[25] they alone, with exhausted life-energies, and freed from mental influxes.

This is what the Lord said on that occasion. The monks, with their minds elated, greatly rejoiced in the words of the Lord. Some sixty monks got rid of all their clinging and attachments, and without mental influxes, they became entirely freed in their thoughts.[26]

 

SEMINAR V: All this is twin; the double composition of the world – can we escape being one or another?

 

The basic thought underlying the whole philosophy in the text V is simple: each phenomenon – that is, each conditioned dharma (unconditioned dharmas, Nirvana and Space, are not phenomenal) – exists only as a pair of dharmas. One dharma is that which is being conditioned by another conditioned dharma, while the other dharma is the same but existing without being conditioned by another dharma. So we may say then every phenomenon at each given moment exists as both conditioned and unconditioned or, in other words, as existing and non-existing.

This “twinness” of dharmas – we may even imagine every dharma as the pair dharma+anti-dharma – finds its yogic application in an especial meditative device or instrument, for the lack of a better word called “insight” by means of which various pairs of dharmas are investigated and described.

The first part of the text V is a recapitulation of the text of Interdependent Conditioned Origination (see text IV). But here all nidånas are mused upon in their tw-aspectedness of “arising / stopping”, “origination / non-origination”, that is, from the point of view of an insight into “pairness”, “twinness” of all dharmas (note that the order of nidånas is different from what we see in text IV). The second part is devoted to a description of the five factors complementary to nidånas in relation to the suffering and becoming.

The third part establishes the great divide which, for all intents and purposes cuts the whole population of the world into two unequal parts. Now it is not the divide between householders and renouncers, nor between arhats and non-arhats, nor even between the Noble Ones and those who are ignoble, base, and vulgar. The divide is between the Noble Ones and “the rest of the world” or rather “the whole world”. The ground for this twofold division is that these two classes are diametrically opposite to one another in their relation to the same world. There are several definitions of a Noble Person (P. ariyapuggala, skr. åryapudgala) as a term of Buddhist nomenclature, but in this text the Noble Person represents a special philosophical position marked by a special positive knowledge. Furthermore, this knowledge about the world is absolute because it is grounded in a non-worldly, supramundane (P. and skr. lokuttara) knowledge. Therefore, when everybody says about the world: “it is real”, and a Noble Person says: “it is a sheer illusion”, it is not difference of opinions, but the fundamental difference between the doxatic, empirical knowledge of the former and the transcendental (based on the higher stages of meditative expxerience) knowledge of the latter.

At the same time, it would be an excessive simplification to regard the difference between these two classes of beings as purely espistemological. There is far more to it. So we read in the concluding lines: “who else but the Noble Person deserves to understand the state [of Nirvana]?” It would be possible to make to conjectures regarding this question. The first is that only those who had already achieved the supramundane knowledge though still remaining in the world, that is, the Noble Persons, are worthy of the highest knowledge of Nirvana. The second conjecturte could be that there must be something else in the Noble Persons that entitles them to understand Nirvana, something which had already singled the out and separated them from the rest of the world. This, in its turn, may suggest that in some not yet explained manner, the state reached by a given Noble Person at the given moment is not conditioned by any other state. In other words, that not being conditioned is immanent to him.

The whole text implies a peculiar brand of dualist ontology or rather of qualified dualism. The dualism of becoming and non-becoming which, however, are asymmetrical. So, as a phenomenon, a conditioned dharma, becoming is one with ots own negation (see here n. 1), that is with non-becoming of the state of Nirvana. But the latter is not one with its opposite, because it is only what it is and cannot be anything else neither at any given time nor in eternity (only becoming is subject to temporal characterisation). Likewise, a lay-disciple of the Buddha, taken at this moment as a lay-disciple, is at this very moment a Noble Person. But the last is not his dharmic counterpart, that is, he is not that lay-disciple who has become him, for a Noble person is by definition not subject to becoming and he is not, did not and never will become anything other than he is at this moment. The notion of Noble Person makes the idea of man in Buddhist philosophy very ambiguous and renders impossible a Buddhist anthropology. In the light of that notion the concept of “human conditions” – central in any modern (or post-modern) anthropological philosophy – becomes redundant, if not altogether senseless, because man at the same time is and is not conditinioned in Buddhist philosophy.

 


[1] Dvayatånupassanasutta of the Sutta-Nipåta (Khudaka-nikåya, XIV of the Sutta-pitaka in the Pali canon) in: Sutta-Nipåta, ed. by Dines Anderson and Helmer Smith, London, 1965 [1913], pp. 139-149. The translation consulted: The Sutta-Nipåta, tr. by H. Saddhatissa, Curzon Press, London, 1985, pp. 83-90.

“Insight” here is a technical term (P. anupassanå) denoting a special form or yogic concentration which leads to realisation of all things “as they are”, and therewith – various stages of yogic trance (P. jhåna, Skr. dhyåna).

[2] Let us be reminded that all dharmas are divided into wholesome, unwholesome and indifferent.

[3] About “as it is” and “as they are” see above in text I, n. 36.

[4] “Fruit” or “result” (P. and Skr. phala) usually means an advantage on the path to Nirvana.

[5] Generally, as in text I, n. 42, in which sense it is synonymous with wisdom. More specifically, it is, rather, liberation of thought (or mind).

[6] Literally “seen” (P. dittha, Skr. drsta) dharmas, that is, dharmas belonging to the sensually perceivable, phenomenal world.

[7] “Non-returner” (P. and Skr. anågåmin) is a being that after his death will not return to the sphere of sensuality, but will be reborn in the highest heaven, where he will obtain arhatship. Before his death he freed himself from the bonds of craving but not yet from the bonds of existence.

[8] That is by the yogic practice of making equal all factors acting on one’s consciousness (P. samatha, Skr. ßamatha). It also means neutralisation of all reactions to external and internal stimuli.

[9] This presupposes, in the first place, stopping the construction of ideas and words that correspond to sensations produced by the sense organs.

[10] “Annulment of suffering” (P. dukkha-khaya, Skr. duhkha-ksaya) is not synonymous with “stopping of the arising of suffering”.

[11] See above, text I, nn. 13 and 20.

[12] Also “beginning of an action”, “initiative” (P. and Skr. årambha). The term connotes energy and display of energy.

[13] As a technical term of Buddhist philosophy, “food” (P. and Skr. åhåra) is extremely complicated both in its literal and figurative meanings. On the one hand, all that lives subsists on food. In other words, we deal here with the universal process of assimilation where not only the life-continuum, but also the continuum of consciousness is sustained by various forms of physical and non-physical food. It is in this sense that the contact of senses with their objects can be seen as the food on which consciousness subsists. On the other hand, food can be seen as a general condition in the chain of interdependent origination.

[14] See above in text III, n. 15.

[15] Also “vacillations” (P. injita) usually caused by desired (or hated) objects of sense.

[16] The idea of opposition dependent / independent (P. hissita / anissita) here is not an ethical one. For dependence here means an objective need of support, a longing for a prop.

[17] A general technical term (P. and Skr. arüpa) denoting all that is devoid of matter and corporeality and all that has no visible form, figure, and experience. The formless comprises four (of the five) aggregated of individual existence (see text I, n. 25): feeling, perceptions, mental connective energies, and consciousness. At the same time, the term is applied to certain higher stages of yogic concentration of consciousness and, respectively, denotes the spheres (P. and Skr. avacara or dhåtu) and worlds (P. and Skr. loka) where yogis, practising such concentrations of consciousness, may become reborn.

[18] Literally, a “false dharma” (P. mosadhamma).

[19] The main two meanings of the term (P. and Skr. abhisa-maya) are: the complete understanding of the fundamental truths (such as the Four Noble Truths and Interdependent Origination), and the perfect method of yogic meditation applied to achieve such understanding.

[20] Literally, “One with (his) body” (P. and Skr. sakkåya). Sometimes it means individuality in the sense of the five aggregates of individual existence (see text I, n. 25).

[21] This is yogic term (P. sata, Skr. smrta) denoting those who are skilful in the special practice of memorisation (P. sati, Skr. smrti).

[22] That is, who follow the normal cycle of births, deaths, and rebirths called “stream” (P. sota, Skr. srotas). In other words, those who are as “the rest of the world”.

[23] That is, they cling to sensual pleasures.

[24] Here dharma means “truth”, “true teaching” and not “a phenomenon”.

[25] That is, “the state (P. and Skr. pada) of Nirvana”.

[26] See, in text I, n. 42 and here, above n. 5.

Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies.