Buddhist Spectrum
Untangling the present
The role of appropriate attention:
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
If the ways of the mind were simple, its problems would be simple and
easy to solve. The Buddha, in showing how to put an end to its problems,
could have kept his instructions simple and short — a single, blanket
approach to whatever happens in the present, a noble one-fold path: just
mindfulness, just concentration, or just non-reactive awareness. Or he
might not have bothered to teach much at all, knowing that people could
easily solve their problems on their own. “Trust,” he might have said,
“your innate nature, your innate understanding,” and left it at that.
But that's not how the mind works, and that's not how he taught.
Even just a few minutes spent observing the ways of the mind can show
how complex and convoluted they are. And this means that its problems
are complex as well. In particular, the problem of suffering: As the
Buddha noted, the causes of suffering are knotted and tangled like a
bird's nest, like the thread in a tangled skein.
Identifying the problem
As anyone who has solved a complex problem knows, the trick to
finding its solution lies in how you frame the issue: identifying the
problem and sorting out the pattern of factors related to it. Seeing the
pattern, you can decide which factors to focus on as crucial to its
solution, and which ones you have to ignore so as not to get led down
blind alleys. Framing the issue also means deciding how to approach each
of the crucial factors so that instead of maintaining or exacerbating
the problem, they aid with its solution. What this boils down to is,
when faced with a problem, knowing which questions are helpful to ask
about it, and which questions aren't.
If, for example, you're a doctor in an emergency room faced with a
patient complaining of chest pains, you have many quick decisions to
make. You have to decide which tests to conduct, which questions to ask
the patient, and which physical symptoms to look for, before you can
diagnose the pains as a sign of indigestion, an incipient heart attack,
or something else entirely. You also have to decide which questions not
to ask, so as not to get waylaid by extraneous information. If you focus
on the wrong symptoms, the patient might die — or might spend a needless
night in the intensive care unit, depriving a patient with a genuine
heart attack of a bed. Once you've made your diagnosis, you have to
decide which course of treatment to follow and how to keep tabs on that
treatment to see if it's really working. If you frame the symptoms in
the wrong light, you can do more harm than good. If you frame them in
the right light, you can save lives.
The same principle applies in solving the problem of suffering, which
is why the Buddha gave prime importance to the ability to frame the
issue of suffering in the proper way. He called this ability yoniso
manasikara — appropriate attention — and taught that no other inner
quality was more helpful for untangling suffering and gaining release
(Iti 16).
In giving his most detailed explanation of appropriate attention (MN
2), he starts with examples of inappropriate attention, which center on
questions of identity and existence: “Do I exist?” “Do I not?” “What am
I?” “Did I exist in the past?” “Will I exist in the future?” These
questions are inappropriate because they lead to “a wilderness of views,
a thicket of views” such as “I have a self,” or “I have no self,” all of
which lead to entanglement, and none to the end of suffering.
In contrast, the Buddha then depicts appropriate attention as the
ability to identify that “This is suffering (the Pali word dukkha here
covers stress and pain as well),” “This is the origination of
suffering,” “This is the cessation of suffering,” and “This is the path
of practice leading to the cessation of suffering.” These are the four
categories that the Buddha, in his first discourse, called the four
noble truths. The ability to frame the issue of suffering in line with
these categories is what enables you ultimately to put an end to the
problem of suffering once and for all. This is why they're appropriate.
The most obvious lesson to be drawn from this way of distinguishing
inappropriate from appropriate attention is that inappropriate attention
frames the issues of the mind in terms of abstract categories, whereas
appropriate attention frames them in terms of things that can be
directly pointed to in immediate experience as “This... This... This...
This.” Ideas of identity and existence are basic to abstract thinking,
and many philosophers have maintained that they lie at the basis of any
spiritual quest. The Buddha, however, noted that the thought, “I am the
thinker” lies at the root of all the categories and labels of conceptual
proliferation, the type of thinking that can turn and attack the person
employing it. These categories are notoriously hard to pin down, often
dissolving into arbitrary semantics. “Do I exist?” — It depends on what
you mean by “exist.” “Do I have a self?” — It depends on what you mean
by “self.” Thinking driven by definitions like these often falls prey to
the hidden motives or agendas behind the definitions, which means that
it's unreliable.
However, suffering is something directly knowable: preverbal,
private, but universal. In framing the issues of the mind around
suffering, the Buddha bases his teachings on an intention totally
trustworthy — the desire for his listeners to put an end to all their
suffering — and focuses on something not dependent on definitions. In
fact, he never offers a formal definition of the term “suffering” at
all. Instead, he illustrates it with examples — such as the suffering of
birth, aging, illness, and death — and then points out the functional
element that all forms of mental suffering share: clinging to the five
aggregates of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and
consciousness. The clinging is not the totality of the suffering, but
it's the aspect of suffering most useful to focus on for the purpose of
bringing the suffering to an end.
Although there is a passage where the Buddha defines clinging as
desire-passion (SN 22.121), he never describes precisely what
desire-passion is. In what is apparently the oldest part of the Canon,
the Atthaka Vagga (Sn 4), he fills a long discussion of clinging with
puns and word play, a style that discourages attempts at systematic, set
definitions and the conceptual proliferation they can foster. What this
means is that if you want to refine your understanding of clinging,
desire-passion, and suffering, you can't cling to words or texts. You
have to look deeper into your present experience.
In pointing repeatedly to direct experience, however, the Buddha
doesn't discourage all thought and concepts. The ability to distinguish
the four categories of appropriate attention requires thought and
analysis — the type of thought that questions past understandings and
misunderstandings, and ponders what's happening in the present; the type
of analysis that can ferret out connections between actions and their
results and can evaluate them as to whether they're helpful or not.
There are desires, for instance, that act as a cause of suffering, and
other desires that can form part of the path leading to its end.
Although the Buddha gives a general outline to tell which kind of desire
functions in which way, you have to learn how to watch your own desires
carefully and honestly to tell which kind of desire they are.
As you keep analyzing the present under the framework of these four
categories, you're tracing the Buddha's steps as he approached
Awakening. Having focused on clinging as the functional handle on
suffering, he looked for the conditions that formed its basis and found
them in three types of craving or thirst: sensual craving, craving for
states of being, and craving to destroy states of being. Then he
identified the cessation of suffering as total dispassion for, cessation
of, and release from those forms of craving. And he identified the
mental qualities and practices that would lead to that cessation — right
view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right
effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration — all of which, in
potential form, can be found in the present moment.
Four significant things
So instead of simply throwing the present moment at you as a
monolithic whole, the Buddha points your attention to four significant
things you might find there. This is because there's a pattern to the
changes we experience from moment to moment. Change is never so random
or radical that knowledge gained from the past is useless in the
present. Concepts still serve an important purpose even though they may
lack the freshness of the immediate here and now. When you stick your
finger into fire, it's bound to burn. If you spit into the wind, it's
bound to come back at you. Lessons like these are good to keep in mind.
Although the patterns underlying suffering may be more tangled than
those underlying fire and wind, still they are patterns. They can be
learned and mastered, and the four categories of appropriate attention
are crucial for getting a handle on those patterns and directing them to
suffering's end.
Different categories
In practical terms, distinguishing among categories is worthwhile
only if you have to treat each of the different categories in a
different way. A doctor who formulates a theory of sixteen types of
headaches only to treat them all with aspirin, for example, is wasting
her time. But one who, noting that different types of headaches respond
to different types of medications, devises an accurate test to
differentiate among the headaches, makes a genuine contribution to
medical science. The same principle applies to the categories of
appropriate attention. As the Buddha stated in his first account of his
Awakening, once he had identified each of the four categories, he saw
that each had to be treated in a different way. Suffering had to be
comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path
to its cessation fully developed.
What this means is that, as a meditator, you can't treat everything
in the present moment in the same way. You can't simply stay
non-reactive, or simply accept everything that comes. If moments of
stillness and ease arise in the mind, you can't just note them and let
them pass. You should learn to develop them into jhana — the full-body
pleasure and rapture of right concentration that forms the heart of the
path. When mental suffering arises, you can't just let it go. You should
focus whatever powers of concentration and discernment you have to try
to comprehend the clinging that lies at its heart.
The Buddha and his disciples expand on this point in discourses where
they show how appropriate attention should be applied to various aspects
of the present. Applied to the five aggregates of form, feeling, and so
forth, appropriate attention means viewing them in such a way as to
induce a sense of dispassion that will help alleviate clinging (SN
22.122). Applied to perceptions of beauty or irritation, it means
viewing them in such a way as to keep them from fostering obstacles to
right concentration, such as sensual desire or ill will. When applied to
feelings of serenity or the potential for rapture, it means viewing them
in such a way that helps develop them into factors for Awakening (SN
46.51).
Even within a particular category, there's no one approach that works
in all cases. In one of his discourses the Buddha observes that some
unskillful mental states wither away if you simply watch them with
equanimity, while others require an active effort to take them apart (MN
101). In another discourse he expands on this observation by
recommending five ways of dealing with distracting thoughts: replacing
them with more skillful thoughts, focusing on their drawbacks,
consciously ignoring them, relaxing the tension that goes into
maintaining them, and forcefully suppressing them (MN 20). In neither
discourse, though, does he give hard and fast rules for telling which
type of thought will respond to which approach. You have to find out for
yourself by sharpening your discernment through trial and error as to
what works and what doesn't in any given situation.
The same principle applies to skillful mental states. The Buddha's
final summary of his teachings, the wings to Awakening, lists seven ways
of conceiving the path to the end of suffering — in terms of four
establishings of mindfulness, four bases for success, four right
exertions, five strengths, five faculties, seven factors for Awakening,
and the noble eightfold path. And again, it's up to you to learn through
trial and error which way of conceiving the path is most useful at any
particular time in your practice.
Appropriate attention
This means that applying appropriate attention to skillful and
unskillful mental states is not a one-shot affair. The tasks connected
with each of the four categories of appropriate attention all have to be
tested through trial and error, and mastered as skills. To borrow an
analogy from the Canon, full Awakening is not a matter of picking up a
bow and arrow and hoping for a fluke bull's eye. The insight of
Awakening comes in the course of practicing on a straw man until you're
able “to shoot long distances, to fire accurate shots in rapid
succession, and to pierce great masses.” (AN 9.36)
As the Buddha noted in his first discourse, he didn't claim to be
awakened until he had fully mastered the tasks appropriate to all four
categories. In fully developing the factors of the path, he fully
comprehended the five clinging aggregates to the point of abandoning all
passion and craving for them. That was when he fully realized the end of
suffering. With that, the categories of appropriate attention had done
their work in solving the problem of suffering, but even then they still
had their uses. As Ven. Sariputta stated, even a fully awakened arahant
would still apply them to experience to provide a pleasant dwelling for
the mind in the here and now (SN 22.121).
In all of these cases, appropriate attention means seeing things in
terms of their function — what they can do — while the act of
appropriate attention is itself a type of doing, adopted for what it can
do for the mind. And the test for appropriate attention is that it
actually works in helping to put an end to suffering. When we contrast
this with the Buddha's examples of inappropriate attention, we see that
attention is inappropriate when it frames things in terms of being and
identity, and appropriate when framing them in terms of actions and
their results. In fact, appropriate attention looks at being itself as
an action, with each act of being or assuming an identity to be
evaluated by the pleasure or pain it produces. When we look at ourselves
with appropriate attention, we focus not on what we are, but on what
we're doing — and in particular on whether what we're doing is
unskillful — leading to suffering — or skillful, leading to its end.
Criticisms
This point is important to bear in mind when we reflect on the two
criticisms often leveled against the four categories of appropriate
attention. The first criticism is that they provide a limited view of
the fullness and variety of life, that they don't encompass the
virtually infinite number of skillful ways of approaching experience.
When formulating a theory of being, you could argue that the more
variety it can contain, the better. But when choosing a doctor, you
wouldn't want one who insists on exploring an infinite variety of
approaches to your disease. You want one who focuses on the approaches
most likely to work. The same holds true with appropriate attention. The
four categories, with their attendant tasks, are meant not to encompass
reality but to focus your attention at the right factors for curing the
most basic problem in experience. The Buddha limits his discussion to
these four categories because he doesn't want you to get distracted from
the problem at hand.
The second criticism is that the four categories are dualistic and
thus inferior to a non-dualistic view of the world. Again, when
formulating a theory of being, you could argue that a non-dualistic
theory would be superior to a dualistic one, on the grounds that a
non-dual concept of being is more encompassing than a dualistic one,
yielding a more unified theory. But appropriate attention is not a
theory of being.
It's a guide to what to do in the present moment. Because the present
moment is so tangled and complex, the multiple categories offered by
appropriate attention are a strength rather than a weakness. Instead of
limiting you to one way of understanding and approaching events in the
present, they provide you with a more discerning understanding and a
wide variety of options for dealing with the tangles and complexities of
suffering.
When offering options for solving a problem, no particular number of
options is, on principle, superior to any other. What matters is that
the options are enough to be adequate for the problem, but not so many
as to obscure its solution and become a tangle themselves.
In other words, the options are to be judged, not against abstract
principles, but by what they enable you to do. Although the Buddha
describes his path to the end of suffering as the one form of doing that
ultimately puts an end to doing, as long as you're still doing something
in the present moment, appropriate attention ensures that what you're
doing stays on the path: You know which strands in the knot of suffering
to pull in which way, and which to leave alone. And once you can
untangle the problem of suffering, everything else gets untangled as
well.
Dharmadutha mission
Ven. Dikwelle Seelasumana Thera, Deputy Chief monk of the Buduraja
Maha Vihara, Wevuru – kannala, Dikwella left for Germany on December 27,
2012 to engage in Dharmaduta work as the second resident monk of the
Berlin Vihara (also known as Das Buddhistische Haus).
He joins Ven. Kongaspitiye Santharakkhitha Thera who is currently
resident at the Vihara since June 2010. Ven. Seelasumana’s visit is
being sponsored by the German Dharmaduta Society founded by Asoka
Weeraratna in 1952.
Ven. Seelasumana Thera is a member of the Amarapura Siri
Saddhammawansa Maha Nikaya. He obtained higher ordination (Upasampada)
in 1976. He has a B.A. (Peradeniya), M.A. (Kelaniya), and a post –
graduate Diploma in Education (University of Colombo). Fifty – six –year
old Ven. Seelasumana Thera, has served as a Principal of a Dhamma school
and as a lecturer at the Vidyatunga Pirivena in Dickwella. He also
conducts meditation classes at his Temple.
This is Ven. Seelasumana’s second spell at the Berlin Vihara.
He has earlier served as a resident monk at the Vihara for a two year
period from 2007 – 2009,and is familiar with the German language.
Since 1957, Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka and other countries have
resided at the Berlin Vihara to propagate the Dhamma in Germany and
other Western countries.
Das Buddhistiche Haus, prior to it being converted into a Vihara with
resident monks, was purchased by Asoka Weeraratna in the name and on
behalf of the Trustees of the German Dharmaduta Society in 1957 from the
heirs of Dr. Paul Dahlke, a prolific writer and pioneer of Buddhism in
Germany, who built and went into occupation of Das Buddhistische Haus in
1924. It is now a National Heritage site in Germany. |