What
is Awakening on the path to Enlightenment?
I just found
this lovely elaboration on Awakening by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso
Rinpoche. The only part that I respectfully disagree with is the
notion that seeing through the self takes a long time. With the most
effective instructions like the Two-Part Formula
(www.twopartformula.com)
and the proper determination, Awakening can be achieved within days
or weeks. - Ugi
»Although
this is called the Sravaka stage because it represents the heart of
the Sravaka vehicle, one should not assume that it is unimportant in
the other vehicles of Buddhism. Milarepa, the great Vajrayana master,
taught his disciple, the shepherd boy, the Sravaka meditation on
not-self after the boy had shown signs of having great natural
meditation ability. It is said that on being told to meditate on a
small image of the Buddha he went straight into meditative absorbtion
(samadhi) for a week without noticing the time. When he came out of
samadhi it seemed to him he had only been meditating a few seconds.
At
this stage one does not consider the emptiness of all phenomena but
only the emptiness or lack of self in the person. The importance of
this is that it is the clinging to the idea that one has a single,
permanent, independent, truly existing self that is the root cause of
all one's suffering. One does not need to have an explicit or clearly
formulated idea of self in order to act as if one had one. 'Self here
means the implied self which might also be regarded as implied in the
behaviour of animals. Animals, just like us, identify themselves with
their bodies and minds and are constantly seeking physical and mental
comfort as they try to avoid discomfort and assuage pain. Both
animals and humans act as if they have a self to protect and preserve
and one regards this behaviour as automatic and instinctive as well
as normal. When pain or discomfort arise the automatic response is to
try to remove it. It is extraneous to the self and the implication is
that the self would naturally be happy if all pain and suffering were
removed.
Strangely,
however, when we try to analyse our behaviour in relation to this
self, we realize that we are very unclear as to what this self really
is. Non-Buddhist thinkers have defined the self variously as resting
in the brain, blood or heart and having such qualities as true or
transcendental existence in or outside of the mind or body. To have
any meaning such a self has to be lasting, for if it perished every
moment one would not be so concerned about what was going to happen
to it the next moment; it would not be one's 'self anymore. Again it
has to be single. If one had no separate identity why should one
worry about what happened to one's 'self any more than one worried
about anyone else's. It has to be independent or there would be no
sense in saying 'I did this' or 'I have that'. If one had no
independent existence there would be no-one to claim the actions and
experiences as its own.
We
all act as if we had lasting, separate, independent selves that it is
our constant pre-occupation to protect and foster. It is an
unthinking habit that most of us would normally be most unlikely to
question or explain. However, all our suffering is associated with
this pre-occupation. All loss and gain, pleasure and pain arise
because we identify so closely with this vague feeling of selfness
that we have. We are so emotionally involved with and attached to
this 'self that we take it for granted.
The
meditator does not speculate about this 'self. He does not have
theories about whether it does or does not exist. Instead he just
trains himself to watch dispassionately how his mind clings to the
idea of self and 'mine' and how all his sufferings arise from this
attachment. At the same time he looks carefully for that self. He
tries to isolate it from all his other experiences. Since it is the
culprit as far as all his suffering is concerned, he wants to find it
and identify it. The irony is that however much he tries, he does not
find anything that corresponds to the self.
Westerners
often confuse self in this context with person, ego or personality.
They argue that they do not think of the person, ego or personality
as a lasting, single, independent entity. This is to miss the point.
The person, personality or ego as such are not a problem. One can
analyse them quite rationally into their constituent parts. The
Western tradition has all sorts of ways of doing this. The Buddhist
way is to talk of the five skandhas, the eighteen dhatus or the
twelve gates of consciousness. The question is not whether or not the
person, personality or ego is a changing, composite train of events
conditioned by many complex factors. Any rational analysis shows us
that this is the case. The question is why then do we behave
emotionally as if it were lasting, single and independent. Thus, when
looking for the self it is very important to remember it is an
emotional response that one is examining. When one responds to events
as if one had a self, for example when one feels very hurt or
offended, one should ask oneself who or what exactly is feeling hurt
or offended.
If
you are not convinced that you behave emotionally as if you had a
lasting, single and independent self, then it is important to address
yourself to this issue before moving on to consider the doctrine of
not-self. Think carefully about pain and suffering and ask yourself
who or what it is that is suffering. Who is afraid of what will
happen; who feels bad about what has happened; why does death seem
such a threat when the present disappears every moment, scarcely
having had a chance to arise? You will find that your thinking is
full of contradictions, inconsistencies and irresolvable paradoxes.
This is normal. Everyone (exce'pt, perhaps, the insane) have a common
sense notion of what or who they are which works (more or less) and
enables them to function as normal human beings.
However,
when the meditator addresses himself to what or who this self is, he
cannot find it. Then gradually, very gradually, it dawns on him that
the reason he cannot find it is that it is not there and never was.
There is tremendous emotional resistance to this realization so it
takes a long time to break through, but when it does there is an
immediate release of tension and suffering. The cause of it has gone.
The cause of it was a mental attachment to something that was not
there.
Sometimes
the resistance to the realization takes the form of irritation. One
is used to being able to explain things to oneself rationally.
Experience of the 'self is so direct and in a sense so obvious, there
seems to be no reason to include it in one's rational explanation of
things. On the other hand, when one does try to explain it to
oneself, the whole thing is so irritatingly subjective it seems one
could never reach any satisfactory conclusion. Instead of letting the
mind rest in the actual experience of that paradox, one gets
frustrated and irritated at not being able to form a water-tight
explanation of what the 'self is. It is important to notice that and
be aware of it. If one tries to just push that irritation out of
one's mind, one will never have a deep realization of not-self.
Clinging
to the idea o( self is like clinging to the idea that a piece of rope
in the dark is a snake. When the light is turned on and one sees that
there is no snake there, one's fear and suffering that arose from
clinging to it as real dissolve. The snake never existed in the·
first place, so it was simply one's clinging to that idea that caused
the suffering and nothing "else. The wisdom that realizes
not-self is like the light that revealed the rope was not a snake.
Clearly,
in order to end one's own suffering, there is nothing more important
than to realize that when one acts as if the body and mind
constituted a lasting, separate, independent self, one unthinkingly
attributes to them qualities which they simply do not have.
Nothing
in the whole stream of mental and physical phenomena that constitute
one's experience of body and mind has the quality of separate,
independent, lasting existence. It is all change and impermanence,
moment by moment and so none of it can be 'self and it is one's
persistent effort to treat it as if it were, that makes it a constant
stream of suffering (duhkha).
Realizing
not-self is the first step to realizing the empty nature of all
phenomena. That is why the first teachings of the Buddha concern the
Three Marks of Existence i.e. suffering, impermanence, and not-self.
THE
DREAM EXAMPLE
The
Buddha often used the example of a dream to illustrate his teachings
on emptiness and this example can be applied with increasing subtlety
at each stage of the meditation progression on Emptiness. It is a
good example for showing how the two truths, relative and absolute,
work together. In a dream there is a sense of being a person with a
body and mind living in a world of things to which one feels
attracted or averse depending on how they appear. As long as one does
not realize it is just a dream, one takes all these things as real
and one feels happy or"sad on account of them.
For
example, one may dream of being eaten by a tiger or being burnt in a
fire. In the absolute truth no-one is being eaten or burnt, but still
in terms of the dream one might really suffer as if one had been. The
suffering arises simply by virtue of the fact that one identifies
oneself with the person in the dream. As soon as one becomes aware
that it is only a dream, even if the dream does not stop, one is
nonetheless free to think, 'It does not matter; it is only a dream.
It is not really happening to me.' The person that was suffering in
the dream only arose as a temporary manifestation dependent on the
condition of one's not being aware that it was only a dream. It had
no separate, independent, lasting 'self of its own.
Understanding
this intellectually is not enough to free oneself from the strongly
ingrained habit of clinging to one's mind and body as a separate,
independent, lasting self. One has to examine the stream of one's
mental and physical experience again and again, reflecting on what
one does or does not find until one reaches total conviction and
certainty. Having become convinced of what is the case, one then has
to meditate, resting the mind in this new-found knowledge until the
veils caused by one's habitual patterns of thought have finally
dissolved. At this point direct, unmistakable realization of not-self
arises and it is this genuine experience that actually liberates one
from suffering.«
-Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso
Rinpoche
