Insight and Ethics

Posted By Mahabodhi on Apr 26, 2024 | 0 comments

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…

2 minute read

This excerpt is from Chapter 10 and follows on from Insight and the Spiral Path.

Some Buddhists posit an experiential disconnect between the samatha practices of ethics (sila) and meditation (samadhi), and wisdom or insight, making statements like:

‘The attitudes, worldviews, motivations and teachings that best support sila and samadhi are not the best for approaching prajna (wisdom). When taken at face value, some teachings helpful for insight practice may contradict teachings oriented to ethics and concentration. This can be a barrier to insight practice.’

But I wonder if such statements are not based upon the misreading of anatta as ‘no self’ (i.e., no agent) instead of as ‘non-self’ (i.e., part agent), as evidenced by a passage in the same document; ‘there is no question of getting rid of a self, because there has never been one there to begin with.’ If there was a shift from (part) agency at the level of ethics and meditation to no agency at the level of insight that would be a problem, but I do not think that is the case; (part) agency carries all the way through ethics, mediation and wisdom, like the lettering in a stick of rock.

Rather than the Buddhist path culminating in a still state at the bottom of a ‘spiritual well’ the path is more dynamic than that; in a Buddhist scripture called the Atthakanagara Sutta[1] a householder called Dasama asks the Buddha’s cousin Ananda a question:

“Venerable sir, is there a single quality declared by the Blessed One (the Buddha)—the one who knows, the one who sees, worthy & rightly self-awakened—where the unreleased mind of a monk who dwells there heedful, ardent, and resolute becomes released, or his un-ended fermentations go to their total ending, or he attains the unexcelled security from the yoke that he had not attained before?”

In other words, a single quality, that mindfully dwelt upon, leads to Nirvana. Ananda replies that there is, but he then goes on to describe not one but eleven elevated meditative states, each of which he describes as that single quality, that mindfully dwelt upon, leads to Nirvana. The eleven states are:

the four dhyanas of form[2]
the first three formless dhyanas
the state of mind called ‘liberation of mind through loving kindness’[3]
the state of mind called ‘liberation of mind through compassion’[4]
the state of mind called ‘liberation of mind through sympathetic joy’[5]
the state of mind called ‘liberation of mind through equanimity’[6]

And, crucially, when the meditator has attained one or another of those states, he or she reflects upon it in this way:

‘This (e.g., first dhyana) is conditioned and volitionally produced.[7] Now whatever is conditioned and volitionally produced is impermanent[8] and subject to cessation.’ Staying right there, he reaches the ending of the mental fermentations. Or, if not, then—through this very Dhamma-passion, this Dhamma-delight, and from the total wasting away of the first five fetters[9]—he is due to be reborn [in the Pure Abodes],[10] there to be totally unbound,[11] never again to return from that world.’ (My emphasis)

The chapter goes on to explore Nirvana as Perpetual Self-Transcendence.

[1] Atthakanagara Sutta. MN52

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.052.than.html

[2] Rupa dhyanas

[3] Mettacetovimutti

[4] Karunacetovimutti

[5] Muditacetovimutti

[6] Upekkhacetovimutti

[7] Adapted from Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation; I use ‘conditioned and volitionally produced’ rather than ‘fabricated & intended.’

[8] I use ‘impermanent’ rather than ‘inconstant.’

[9] Indicative of a state called ‘stream entry’, where one’s momentum is such that Nirvana is guaranteed.

[10] Sukhavati; the ‘happy land’ of Pure Land Buddhism, which provides ideal conditions to attain Nirvana.

[11] Attain Nirvana.

Insight and Ethics