Is "True Nature" helpful? yes and no, but mostly no

Old me would have been angry when people talked about Nirvana or awareness as our "true nature". I'd have an attitude: Dammit! That's a distortion of Buddhism.

Even older me would have romanticized true nature and tried to merge with it, like a love affair or sex. Like as escape from my present situation.

Today's me asks a much different question that right or wrong. It asks, what is the helpful way to approach True Nature?

A recent quote from a Tricycle magazine newsletter is typical

"By looking inward and working with our own minds, we can liberate ourselves from the causes of suffering and learn to access the peaceful, open-hearted state of awareness that is our true nature. "

The general aim of looking inward (as opposed to outward) and working with our minds (rather than our wealth, health, or our friendships) is the right direction. (No big quarrels there, though there could be debates about avoid complete self-involvement.) The next part about causes of suffering is straight from the 4 Noble Truths. But the last part about true nature is dangerous, I would say. Dangerous because it is helpful sometimes and unhelpful in a way that can ruin one's path.

Let's start with helpful. True Nature is related to a concept that it is innate to us. A related idea is human nature. Somehow, we are hard wired to sweat when it's hot and to like sweet things. That's human nature. So the true nature of open awareness is, accordingly, something innate. But, in a twist, it is something innate that was lost and we have to develop.

I find it confusing that something could be innate, in our "nature" and yet be lost. Which is it?

To be generous, true nature might be pointing to two ideas. First, all humans have access to it. There is no special talent that one needs to start this path. There were beggars and idiots as well as rich people and kings that achieved arahatship. So, it is available to every social class. Second, there are no special outside tools or conditions that are needed. You don't need money, or a secret orb, or the permission of some elders, or to speak a certain language. If someone teaches you (including someone dead via books) the path, and you develop the path, you can achieve it. Just like learning an instrument, it just takes practice. And, in general, diligent practice is a bigger factor than some innate talent.

These are two things that I think are common in most presentations of Buddhism, especially by acknowledged masters. And, in a world where there are so many gatekeepers, it is downright inspiring that everyone has the same access and potential. The difficulty isn't the same for everyone, but the path and potential (you can make it if you try) IS THE SAME.

The dangers of "true nature" is that is can lead to misleading, often romanticized, notions of what Buddhism and release from suffering is. There is a notion, somewhat narcissistic, that our true nature is what is "naturally" there when we strip away all of our attachments. The narcissism is that this attitude can be counterproductive. We start regarding the "outside things" as the attachments we have to strip away. This is a good start, but not complete. We do have to strip away obsessions about money, about sex, about fairness, about social standing, about respect. But once we become separated from the world (unperturbable?) that's not the end. We have to look at our own notions of who we are, the 9 kinds of conceit/comparison. And there, I have found that I cannot skip the step of UNDERSTANDING those attachments. Too often, I have wanted to avoid the attachment, which is like trimming the plant but not cutting it off by the root. And then, further along, in both a Zen and Thai Forest tradition, we have to also cut off self-identification that is unhelpful; we have to cut off this idea of "look at me and all this peacefulness I have attained by being aware and unattached". Because all fabricated things, have that tension. So we have to, in a sense, break through the tension of having no tension. Or, maybe, to have tension without tension: that is having some release and discipline without the tension of clinging.

Another danger of true nature is that is invites using it as an excuse. As one develops a strong level of awareness and open heartedness, can this be misused by our Kilesas or Mara (or Loki, the clever trickster) to convince ourselves we are justified to favor certain things? In psychology, there is a notion of a "flow" state, where there is intense concentration. Like basketball players in the NBA finals. That "flow" state feels natural, and it can be easy to confuse the flow as our true nature. When I am in a flow state and aware, it can feel open hearted, effortless, natural. It feels like my true nature. But, if I look carefully, I can still see greed, aversion, and wishful thinking. In fact, wishful thinking is especially prominent, because I want to stay in that flow.  Romantic love (obsession, eros) can have similarities to that flow. Full or awareness, but with blind spots. It can lead us to do stupid things. It can feel so natural. And, if our training is to look for awareness + pleasantness + effortlessness, that can admit a lot of GAD. And if we further think that the "true nature" is our endpoint, we set our goal as a place with a lot of GAD. At a minimum, proponents of "true nature" should teach checks like looking for Greed, Anger, and Delusion (lobha, dosa, moha). And, along the path, it's okay to see some GAD. But we should be honest when we see it. And we should (hopefully) have decreasing levels of each. But, as we dig deeper into our mind, we should be prepared that we may find a big mother lode of GAD that was hidden. That's okay. Our first step is to look carefully at what is.

So, True Nature, misused, can cause us to NOT look carefully at what is. I've met some dear people, very kind and loving, who are so convinced they understand their "true nature", that all sorts of GAD leak out unawares to them.

More sharply to the point: I'm wary of Buddhist reductionism and aware how easy it is to want to believe in the shortcut. The reductionism is to simplify the path: take the 4 Noble Truths and dropping it to 1. Or the eightfold path and taking some out.

At best, the true nature of awareness is only 1 or 2 steps of the 8fold path. It is tied up with right knowledge (samma ditthi), which is often presented as awareness of karma, awareness of causes and consequences. Not "isn't it all so nice" awareness. It is also tied up with right mindfulness (samma sati). But the 4 foundations talks about looking "without greed and distress for the world", which I will edit as "without preferences for or against the world". If your mindfulness (awareness) is happy and only sees the good side (like open heartedness, and peace), that's probably wrong mindfulness. 

But I know how easy it is to wish we could keep our sacred happy bits and have a shortcut. Like "awareness + what we like". But it leaves out renunciation. It leaves out right speech and right action. It leaves out right concentration and right effort.

Now, I'm strongly saying "awareness as true nature" is misleading and problematic, but it isn't worthless. Note that I'm not saying it's not alluring or an acceptable choice. It isn't the complete Buddhist path (as I understand it) and it doesn't develop the right mix of tools or have the right map. But it can clean up a lot of reactivity. It can clean up a lot of misery from being unaware, narrow-minded, needing things to be a certain way. So, if you have the True Nature map, it might take you a quarter of the way. But that's legit. If you just want to go 1/4, do it. May it be of benefit. Just don't tell people it's the whole way. And, secondly, if you correctly advertise it as 1/4 of the way, people who get that far can be imbued with a sense of exploration. "Wow, I got all these results going 1/4 of the way. I wonder what else there is?" Or, I have this awareness tool. When is it useful? When doesn't it help? What other tools are out there?

And that inquiry can take you all the way. At least, that is what I have heard and what I am working on.

Avoid politics

One of the best pieces of advice I've gotten is to avoid politics when one is following the Buddhist path. 

This is not a popular piece of advice, even amongst Buddhists. There are strong factions within the Buddhist Community who see political striving for peace and justice to be a Buddhist pillar. I think the label that's been used is Engaged Buddhism. That we develop some Buddhist principles, and then we apply them to the world, as if the world is a person. So we have metta towards the world. We have metta towards the struggles of an underclass or oppressed class.

As I've touched on in other posts, link1 link2 link3, this could be beneficial. If it is helpful in us understanding our blind spots, we should go for it. There's nothing wrong with generosity, and nothing wrong with some a kinship to help homeless people or the environment; it is helpful to the world. But is it helpful for the mind? Or is it hallucinating, bordering on increasing inflexibility and tension.

 To be specific, it is most dramatically and obviously helpful if someone who has been disgusted by homeless people, learns about homeless people and then changes their mind. And in whatever way, which could be just donating to a food pantry, or direct advocacy and relief work, that person loosens the previous yuck instinct.

For environmentalism, it is helpful when someone doesn't care about the environment at all and doesn't see the impact of their actions. In some way, this is someone who is very consumerist oriented and very selfish. But then they realize how much their use of fossil fuels or land development is causing damage to the world and its environment. Maybe it's a local issue where there's an animal sanctuary that developers want to tear down so they can build more housing and shopping. And this person becomes inspired to think beyond their own benefits, and to look at the broader benefits.

But the environmental story can get dogmatic and become an unhelpful one. We can become a stereotypical Eco crusader, who sees things in stark black and white. You're either with us or against us. There is a moral imperative to save the whales. And if you are hurting the whales, I have some justification to hurt you.

When things get political, it gets very easy to think in terms of right and wrong. Even if we move towards a more nuanced approach, where there are better choices and worst choices. The key mistaken thought construct is that we assign some universality to the ranking of choices. Keeping a park is always better than building a shopping plaza. And furthermore, the rationalization where we amplify and spin the benefits of a park versus the detriment of a shopping plaza. Essentially assigning an affect of yuck to the shopping plaza, and glorifying the benefits of the park. In a Buddhist approach, there is deep listening in deep seeing in deep observation. We can see the myriad benefits of the shopping plaza, and the myriad problems. We can also see the myriad benefits of the park and it's myriad problems. And furthermore we can look at our own brain's functioning of how it wants to glorify or simplify or what not around each. Essentially the stories we tell ourselves. And the stories we have deeply ingrained that give us our perspective. So for me, when things get political, it's very helpful for me to start applying analysis of qualities, and to start looking at the features that I'm not that used to seeing. Especially how I am seeing. And also looking at how my brain has impulses towards right and wrong, towards making good choices.

And this is further complexifies (moving away from black and white) because there might actually be a better choice. Buddhism isn't there to say that there are worse and better choices, full stop, universal, follow the dogma. Where there is a choice that leads to less harm to others, that leaves less harm to myself, and one that promotes this idea of there being enough, I have enough and I don't need things to be exactly the way I want them... that can be beneficial. And having a sense of care, even if there is some harm to some groups, to acknowledge the harm to those groups, and to acknowledge and include them in a process of figuring out how to mitigate those harms. That can be beneficial. 

And one shouldn't be surprised if the people who want the harm mitigated are never satisfied. Or the people who want to deny the harms don't want to include the other side. If politics is done in an observational way (like Alien visitors, trying to figure out how things work), that can be okay. Better than the black-white version of political spin. But even that is potentially distracting from internal assurance and refuge, which is the goal of a Buddhist trying to reach nirvana.

The Buddha himself faced this issue in a dramatic way. His cousin tried to kill him. There were other religious groups at the time who said that harming any other creature was very very bad, and one needed to make every effort to avoid killing other creatures. The example I hear given most is the Jains. They sweep the floor in front of them so that they don't kill any insects. The Buddha didn't reject this, but he didn't embrace it. He put a lot of weights on the idea of intention. That it isn't just the results or output, but it is the input and the thinking process that leads one towards a decision. So, if one takes the right path but for the wrong reasons, it won't be helpful to one's own mind. And if one takes the wrong path for the right reasons, it will be helpful to one's own mind. Especially since when one realizes the mistake, they very easily shift the path.

In the Buddha's situation, it was Devadatta and his intentions of usurping control of the Sangha. D had an approach to creating  a schism based on vegetarianism. He criticized the Buddha for eating meats. And he said that the monk should adopt the rule to be vegetarians. This is an interesting story even for today's age. The Buddha didn't disregard this idea. He said it could be beneficial and a monk could choose to be vegetarian and to refuse to eat meat, but he said that monks could maintain meat eating if they wanted to. It was, in a sense, a part of the training. In fact, the Vinaya, it talks about food a lot. The monks have to live based on alms and beggings. And they take what they can get. This approach allows or forces them to develop flexibility about what they eat. See and eat what's given. There is a modern phrase for little kids: we get what we get and we don't get upset. Or we get what we get and we don't throw a fit. I think there's a lot of wisdom to this rule about alms food, it shows that the Buddha took care in these rules. One has to remember that some villagers might have more meat, and want to share that meat. Or some villagers might want to give an extravagant gift, and they might extremely value their meat, so the act of sharing their meat is actually an expression of their generosity and their opening to the dhamma. On the monk side, there are good mental and verbal fabrications around the idea that even vegetarian food is not without cost. It doesn't cost an animal's direct life. But there are all the insects that go into the growing of the food. The weeding of certain plants. The eating of fruits means depriving the seeds of being able to become potential new plants. Not to mention the labors of the farmers who have to work in toil to produce those foods. So these are perspectives where we can start seeing that all food is (in the worldly sense) tainted with death and exploitation and oppression. It isn't all sunshine and rainbows.

I'm not sure if this was in the Buddha's mind when he faced Devadatta. But what is recorded is that the Buddha said I will not make that a rule of forced vegetarianism. And there was a schism. Devadatta was able to persuade several hundred monks to come with him with this stricter discipline. Apparently there was a one-upsmanship in the Buddhist time about who could be more sacrificing and more pious by being more poor. There were austerities around starving or restrictive in food that were praised, and to be fair they had positive effects for many, but it was not a complete path like many people talked about.

And that's just the thing about politics and Buddhism, or environmentalism or engaged Buddhism or vegetarianism. It can be part of the path but it's not the complete path. And the biggest danger for someone further along in the path is what an Engaged Buddhism leaves out. And it leaves out a lot of the analysis of qualities especially around samsara and dispassion and the insufficiency of the world. The world meaning the outside world. It is a slave to craving; it is insufficient insatiable. Uno loco atitto tanha daso.  Craving, a slave to it. That is the danger of identifying with worldly outcomes. Remember, everybody dies, ages, gets sick. Separation is normal, unavoidable.

 So don't identify with the politics without seeing that there is a slaving to craving that one accepts when one dabbles too much in politics. It comes a bit back to that book of Dhamma questions (I think of Buddhadasa), the five ways to approach all things. To see it's components to see it's origination to see the allure and the danger. And finally to have the skillful view of it to be able to use it without being used by it. And the using it is using it for one's own mental development, not to use it for accumulation of wealth or status.

So I am thankful to our Ajahn Geoff and Ajahn Dick Silarantano. Because their discussion of politics and activism has really re-centered and reframed what I thought were black and white universals. And I feel more squarely on the path.

fear vs danger

At both Wat Metta and Forest Dhamma Monastery, the Khanda Paritta is chanted as a Group Protection.

https://www.nku.edu/~kenneyr/Buddhism/lib/misc/chanting/blessings.html#khandha

If memory serves me correct, this is what the Buddha taught when the monks were scared of all the dangers in the forest.

It's very instructive. Here, we use a verbal/mental fabrication to combat fear. The tool used was to have metta. To develop metta to all the sources of danger and fear. And to extend that Metta to snakes and bears. And, I can personally attest, metta is an antidote to fear.

Yesterday my bike was stolen from my back yard. I just happened to see the person stealing it, at least in the hazy darkness. I did get afraid, and my brain went into papanca overdrive. I was able to notice my mind originating and passing away all these thoughts. At the same time that I was *IN* those thoughts, meaning I felt the emotions coursing through me, and I felt the chemicals of adrenaline acting, there was a part of me (Citta?) that wasn't *IN*, that was just watching. And this control tower could reason with me. Explain that I wasn't in actual danger. That this bike was one I got from the bike shop. That I had enough. I recalled and reflected on all the Buddha had given up (as a prince) and all the hardships he had to face. And, though it wasn't consciously directed, in reflecting on last night, I did notice that I kept metta with me. Just as one is instructed with the more extreme "Simile of the Saw". (I also listened to audiobooks to distract, to ride out the adrenaline induced papanca).

But metta isn't an antidote to danger. As the SGI Buddhist taught me in college, being a Buddhist doesn't mean being a sap. One doesn't see a deadly snake, walk up to it, and practice metta. We avoid the dangers where we can. I know that I've heard the the Buddha had a boulder rolled at him by devadatta and the Buddha dodged it, but still got a painful rock splinter on his foot. The thing I'm highlighting right now is that the Buddha dodged. He didn't just sit, resigned at the danger coming. I also imagine that the Buddha would leave places/towns that were dangerous, where the vibe was bad. But he didn't do it just because it was uncomfortable. If the town was adherents of another religion and very dogmatic, why contribute to the strife and discord? There is also the Ajaan Lee story I heard at Wat Metta, where some primitive natives put poisonous food in his begging bowl. Ajaan Lee confronted them. He wasn't a sap that just ate it. At the same time, Cunda and the Buddha's last meal... He did eat the food he knew was poisonous. He accepted that impact on his skin suit body. The lesson there is that one doesn't have to be attached to life, even. (But it isn't all or nothing. It's situational and many-pathed. Or, to quote a jazz standard: it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.)

Summary:

Fear, with avoidable danger --> maybe avoid it.

Fear, feeding on fear --> subdue it with Metta. Then choose a wise course of action.

(I'm okay with the bike theft. But I'll be better with locking my bike.)

Interconnectedness: when is it helpful vs unhelpful?

 Interconnectedness (and interbeing and interconnectedness) are concepts often used in Mahayana traditions, which have the Bodhisatva ideal. The Dalai Lama, to whom I am indebted for many powerful teachings, praises and teaches interbeing.

On the other hand, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Ajaan Geoff), another teacher I am indebted to, shines caution on the concepts of interbeing. He links it to "Buddhist Romanticism" ( link to his talks, audio), the idea that suffering comes from separateness; something introduced circa 1700-1800's.  

So how do we square these disparate views?

I want to share my experience with it.

TLDR version: 

Interconnectedness in the outside world is pervasive and usually inescapable. It is skillful and important to notice. Interconnectedness in the inside (mental) world is pervasive and is escapable.

 

It's not easy to escape, hence the idea that the Buddhist path is "against the grain". It is a dead end (and a dangerous dead end) to consider interconnectedness in the inside world to be inescapable, which is a pitfall of Mahayana as I have seen it practiced. But, as a step on the path, getting to know (very intricately) our inside/internal interconnectedness is a useful and necessary step. So, we do want to listen to the internal interconnectedness, to become a connoisseur of our neuroses.  But not to be caught up in it. It's a tool, not the goal.

==== 

Recently, in a Tricycle newsletter, it said

At the heart of the Buddha’s teachings is the truth of interdependence—the interconnectivity of all living beings. Our joys and sorrows, happiness and suffering, are shared. (March 17, 2022, newsletter)

 The idea of interdependence as foundational (here stated as "the heart of Buddha's teaching") is appealing, and has support in observations in the world. One person's actions affect another's. Especially anger or greed, or unvirtuous actions like stealing and killing.  So, I think Thanissaro Bhikkhu would even agree that the law of Karma (action) suggests that things in the world are connected to other beings.

The key phrase I highlight is in the world. It's a good start, since most of us are super-enamored of our being / our mind. We believe that what we see, smell, taste, touch, hear, and think... that those are true and important and essential. Especially the last one: that our thoughts help define us.

This isn't terrible. Kids (like at school) use their minds to find patterns. Not just about reading and numbers. Patterns about how the teacher treats them and how other kids treat them. And what actions lead to what results. But the obsession in the mind is about the outside world. It's about ordering the outside world. That's an important initial task related to survival (in both a food and a social order way).

But the task of Buddhism isn't about the outside world, at least not in the Thai Forest tradition. The mind is focused inward, at the mind itself. At how the mind makes (crazy, varied, numerous) determinations and interpretations that shape how our mind itself works. And when we can start looking at the mind as a process, we start getting a bit more at how reality is perceived. And that gives us freedom.

That freedom is a freedom away from interbeing. We see that being in the world involves a lot of interbeing, a lot of mental activity related to these external phenomenon. But all those thoughts go through the mind/perception/machine. So, if we can be able to flip those switches in the mind, we can start exercising some control and expertise over our reactions. We aren't bound, like so many animals are, to want to attack when we are attacked. Or to flee when we are scared. Those "instincts" get reprogrammed, in a sense. In my own view (and in the preface to Emotions Revealed by Ekman), the first thought can't be fully controlled, even by expert meditators. That is a "biological"-based thought. But there are ways to moderate it, through very strong goodwill practices or very strong preparation (in the Boy Scout sense). If we have prepped for an injury, we don't have to panic when the injury prepares. In that way, we get the freedom of not being bewildered or thrown off by life. We get very good at preparation. Either by deliberately visiting situations like fear or pride. Or, just through the natural vicissitudes of life, we get plenty of practice facing fear, facing pride. And then, we have freedom by seeing, "oh, this is a thought (or bio-thought-reflex)". And then we learn that we don't have to be entangled.

But first, we have to get very familiar with that entangling. We don't get past entangling by wishing that we never get into situations of entangling. That is a poor training. Like a pilot who trains only to fly in good weather. We need to get good at bad weather. And we need to get good at noticing how we, metaphorically, go and seek out bad weather. How we feed our anger, impatience, greed, wishful thinking, delusion. And an exploration of interbeing in our mind is precisely a great way of exploring GAD and mind states. How they arise. How they pass away. Mahayana-ists, to the extent they do mindfulness-satipatthana and calm abiding meditation, they do get to see the arising of things and the passing away. They do get  to be very familiar. And then they start to see the endless chain, the thoughts that span other thoughts, the feeding that spans other feeding.

So, in that way, to be encouraged to look at interbeing is powerful. We get very good at looking into the mind. But the dangerous element is that we start thinking the whole path is to generate wholesome interbeing. This is akin to what Thanissaro Bhikkhu calls people who have tried to take the 4 Noble Truths and turn it into the 1-fold path of metta. It fits the trend: the idea that kindness is all that is needed to take you all the way. (like in a sports show: he... could... go... all... the... ... ... WAY; it is exciting). But here, the middle way is important, to not go to the extreme of getting enamored and entangled in kindness itself. Certainly, when one must make a choice to act in the world, having an attitude of helpfulness is wonderful. But for every action in the world, I think there are a few million actions in the mind, many unseen or hard to see. But it is possible to see more when we look closer. A photo has a few million points, and we can never encode all the millions of points: but we can look more carefully and see not just the foreground or the background, but to see the "hidden indians" (old kids puzzle), and to see the grain of the film itself.

I think it was stuff related to Walter Benjamin (who I haven't read directly, but I have heard allusions to), who talked about perception. And, it might be said, it's impossible to conclude which perspective is the "true" one. We each see with some angle. We each have some hidden features, and some not. Even if you have the sharp tele-photographic lens, if everyone else has a blurry view, that is, in some way "the truth". To Benjamin, I think it was said that it is harder to see the glasses we look than the glasses sitting on the counter.

Buddhism is about "seeing". Seeing things that are hard to see, that we just don't see because they are so much in the background. Things like clinging and feeding and craving. Things like interconnectedness. 

Or, maybe it should be said that Buddhism is about "listening". Closing our eyes and tuning in to those things that are hard to hear. The crickets. The hum of a fan. The beating of our own heart. The wind in our lungs.

So, this interconnectedness and interbeing; those are things that definitely are to be seen. But they aren't to be glorified. They are to be cleaned up. But our cleaning up should aim to not create more entanglements.

If your form of Buddhism is to be a socially-engaged Buddhist, then the interconnectedness is a good foundation to match the two things. But the Buddha wasn't a crusader or persuader. He was reported to have said that there are very few with little dust in their eyes. And, accordingly, it's not his job to try to wipe dust out of eyes that don't want that dust wiped away. In fact, a lot of us like the dust in our eyes. (I know I have my attachments that I haven't appreciated the drawbacks of enough to not be entangled by them.)

UUDR.

Shorty: Deprivation can backfire

 

Many people have been surprised by the strength of their desire after a period of deprivation.

- Gil Fronsdal, from the IRC newsletter, Summer-Fall 2022, on the topic of Renunciation

From

https://mailchi.mp/insightretreatcenter.org/93l4yxvksu-8987842?e=5266e119f6

or 

 https://insightretreatcenter.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4617ba61346c1677e4a4215b4&id=74f4c83d3f&e=5266e119f6