Dhamma Roundtable Week 1 การฝึกในวิธีเจริญวิปัสสนา การพิจารณา ในสิ่งใดก็ให้เป็นไปในสัจธรรม และพิจารณาคาดหมายให้ถูกกับหลักความจริงเอาไว้ “The practice of cultivating Vipassana, requires that whatever you contemplate must be according to saccadhamma. We must assume as close to the truth as possible.” Crossing the stream (Thai): p26 By Phra Palat Anandapanyo The practice of vipassana basically means contemplation. As you contemplate it is important to think according to truths. Saccadhamma refers to undeniable universal truths. The most simplified version of this is the Three Common Characteristics of all things in the world. This consists of Suffering, Impermanence and Not Self. In contemplating the truth, it is usually because you are currently unaware or unable to accept the truth to begin with. In some cases, it is not possible to directly contemplate the truth, since we might not have access to it or awareness of it. Therefore, in order to arrive at the truth, we must make assume and deduce what the truth most likely is. In this case, we must assume as close to what we perceive as the truth as possible. What can we use to get us as close to the truth as possible? We can make wild assumptions and guesses as to what other people are like, what they think, what they might feel and what they might do. However, it is perilous because there is no way we can know for certain the thoughts, feelings and actions of others. Therefore, what do we have left? What we are left with are our own experiences. We have experienced numerous feelings and emotions which combine to define our perceptions and viewpoints. In dhamma terms, this is known as dassana (experience). These are things that we have real concrete experience in, in that we have the feelings, emotions and scars to show for it. These are things that actually happened to us and therefore this experience leads to firsthand knowledge and experience. In addition, we also have what is known in dhamma terms as ñana (learned knowledge). These are things that we have known of, learned or read. These things we might have read in a textbook, heard from teachers and friends, or known of from rumors and stories. However, we do not necessarily understand or have experienced these things. When ñana and dassana combine, we acquire true knowledge and experience. This is what it means to cultivate the practice of vipassana. This is the ultimate true knowledge. This is knowledge that is known, seen, understand and clear. There is no doubt to the knowledge you have since it is backed up by theory and experience. For example, when you hear people talk about the pain and suffering of losing a parent, most likely you will be unable to relate, if your parents are still alive. However, if you have lost a close loved one (pets, children, close relatives or friends) you will have a relatable experience. So when they talk about how painful it is to lose a parent, you can relate by how painful it was for you to lose a loved one. It might not be exactly the same as losing a parent, but it is relatively close enough for you to relate and understand. Hearing people talk about how they feel when losing a parent is acquiring ñana or knowledge. You learn about how other people feel when they lose parents. This is merely knowledge of the concept. When you recall your own experience in losing a loved one, this is acquiring dassana. Once you use your wisdom to combine the two, you now have not only experience of your own suffering, but also a comparative understanding of the suffering of others. Now when you see other people in pain from losing a loved one, you immediately have a frame of reference. This is true knowledge and experience combining to make vipassana. In the case where you cannot find comparable experience to compare to the knowledge you have, you must use the closest approximate experience you have. When you are contemplating someone cutting someone off, you might not have had this experience before. But most likely you have had a comparable experience. For instance, have you ever experienced being cut in line? Have you ever been interrupted while speaking? These things can be a substitute for you to use as your experience to try to understand the knowledge of getting cut off while driving. Or in the case where someone is complaining of a tooth ache, you might not have had that experience, but have you ever had a stomach ache? A head ache? A joint ache? These things can be used to generate a basis of comparison. There was a young man who shared this experience with us. For the last twenty years, he experienced his parents constantly arguing and fighting. In general, his mother would verbally berate and talk down to his father. His father seemed defeated, withdrawn and passive aggressive. He seemed unmotivated and uncaring. His mother was aggressive and demanding. This lead to twenty plus years of suffering for the entire family. Now the young man was in his late twenties and started to date a wonderful young woman. She was smart, attractive, well mannered, driven and motivated. One day, while still at his job, the young woman gave him a compliment while visiting him. She said that she was very proud of him and very excited to see and help him achieve his potential in the future. Instead of making him happy, this statement shook him to his very core. He realized immediately how his parent’s situation had originated. He recalled immediately in that moment that he had a similar personality type to his father and that this girl had a similar personality type to his mother. It was highly likely that their relationship was similar to how his parents’ relationship started. His father could have very probably been happy with how his life was, but since his mother was more driven and motivated, she pushed his father further than he was willing to go. This broke his father’s spirit and lead to an unhappy marriage and family. Upon realizing the resemblance of the young man’s relationship and his parents’ relationship, it shook him to his very core. This entire contemplation only took a split second. The reason is that his experience was readily available, and once he acquired knowledge of how his parents’ relationship could have possibly started, his knowledge and experience combined. He knew exactly how it felt to be part of that type of family and was unwilling to experience again. He ended up breaking up with the young woman. While it is not guaranteed that they would turn out in the same manner as his parents, the young man was unwilling to take that risk. As an example, I am unmarried. In order for me to know what it is like to be married, it almost seems like I would have to get married first in order to experience it. However, this would be wildly contrary to my goals as a Buddhist monk. Therefore, how else can I learn what it is like to be married and what suffering comes with it? I can make wild assumptions about what marriage is like, but they would not have any basis in the truth, therefore, they would hold very little weight of convincing me one way or the other. So what can I do? Well, for starters, there are numerous married couples that come to the temple. This is a perfect sample set for me to base my assumptions on. As I observe the married couples and their interactions, their happiness, their sadness, their suffering, their laughter and experiences, I get a good example of how it might be had I gotten married. As these people confide in me and share their experiences with me, I can put myself into their shoes and experience their situations with them as they tell me about it. I am concerned about what they are concerned about. I worry about what they worry about. I rejoice about what they rejoice about. This is one way to assume as close to the truth as possible in order to allow my contemplation (about marriage in this example) to be as close to the undeniable truth as possible. However, this is only an imagination of what marriage is like. I still would lack actual experience of it. Therefore, I would still not be able to swear off of it, since I still do not know what it would feel like, just what I think it would feel like. So in order for me to gain experience, without actually getting married, I would have to call upon comparable experiences I have to marriage. I would have to use examples that can be stand in for the thing you would like to contemplate. For example, living with other monks every day can be a suitable stand in for what it might be like to be married and have to live with the same person every day. Paying attention to the other monks, witnessing tempers and emotions, being blamed for things, being thanked for things, these are all things that we experience when living with someone and they should be similar albeit not exact to what it might be like to be married. There are days when I would like to be alone, but that might not be possible. There are days when I worry about the other monks. There are days when I am annoyed by them. Regardless, since we live together at the temple, I have no option of running away from this experience. There are days when I love being there, and there are days I wish I wasn’t. Having to care for other monks, to be responsible jointly for what they do, this can be similar to what it would be like to be married. It would be unreasonable and impractical for us to go out and kill people just to know how it feels, it might be better just to watch it on TV and observe how the killers get treated, how they get punished and the range of emotions they go through. We assume much of what they experience and feel. This is much more preferable than actually experiencing it ourselves. It would be unreasonable to have to have cancer in order to know how it feels to be gravely ill. It would be better to just extrapolate from how you feel when you are sick (common cold/flu) and multiply the gravity. If we feel this bad from just a common cold, how much worse would it be if it lasted the rest of our lives and was way more severe? We can assume based on one thing what another might be like. In Buddhism, this is knowing as eliminating future rebirths. We have future rebirths, because we have unfulfilled desires. Once we experience those desires, we are usually unsatisfied and move on to new desires. Thus, our desires fuel our multitude of rebirths. By using this technique, we are contemplating what is like to have the greener grass on the other side (from the saying, “The grass is always greener on the other side”). We learn what is like to have that greener grass and eliminate the desire of having it. Thus, we are no longer subject to a rebirth merely for greener grass. If we practice this method, we systematically are decreasing the necessity for future rebirths and extra lives and we get closer to the ultimate goal, to our ultimate goal, the total elimination of suffering - nirvana.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 04:50:19 +0000
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