Awakening and Nirvāṇa

Introduction

For the first 20 years of my practice, I thought Awakening was like this cartoon. Practice Method One was to sit and sit and sit, and after a while a miracle would occur. Practice Method Two was to watch "whatever arises" - to just "be with it" - and a miracle would occur. No one connected the dots for me. How do you go from a breath awareness practice to opening to the deathless dimension? "Opening to the deathless" sounds ominous, and I felt like I was trying to build a house without any construction skills or a blueprint.

Fortunately the Buddha gives us good instructions on how to Awaken. Admittedly the instruction manual is pretty long, but everything you need is there.

What is Nirvāṇa?

The word “nirvāṇa” literally means “to extinguish”. The “Three Poisons” in early Buddhism were also called “The Three Fires”. [Richard F. Gombrich, How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings] Thus one definition of nirvāṇa is "extinguishing the fires of greed, hatred and delusion". Once the mind extinguishes the fires, it does not create any new karma. It is incapable of greed, hatred and delusion, and is only motivated by generosity, love, compassion and wisdom.

The Buddha focused on the process whereby the mind attains this experience. Thus the word “nirvāṇa” is more a verb than a noun. It is not a state of mind in which one exists. It is an experience, after which the mind is free from suffering and the rounds of rebirth. To use the often quoted phrase, the mind is “nirvāṇa-ed”, or “nirvāṇized”. There is still old karma to work out, but no new karma is created, and when the body dies, it is no longer subject to the rounds of rebirth. One enters the realm of the “unconditioned,” distinguishing it from the rest of the cosmology where all the realms are conditioned:

Now we are dealing with the transcendent. It is beyond any conventional experience of time and space. Our normal frames of reference do not apply. In the "Aggivacchagotta Sutta: To Vacchagotta on Fire" [MN 72] the Buddha uses the simile of fire to make this point: 

The Buddha famously refused to answer certain philosophical questions. We have already seen that he refused to answer the question of whether the self exists. The nature of an Arahant (or "Tathāgata", as in the quote) after death is another such issue. These questions are called - rather simply - "The Unanswered Questions", or "The Unfathomable Questions" (Sanskrit avyākṛta, Pali: avyākata - "unfathomable, unexpounded"). The Buddha goes even further to say that holding a view - an opinion - on these questions will actually keep us from Awakening.  In the "Nivāpa Sutta: The Bait" [MN 25] he compares anyone who holds such views to a deer that is trapped by hunters, where the views are the bait:

Thus, the Buddha tells us to remain focused on solving the problem of suffering, and warns against trying to characterize the un-characterizable. It's a waste of time (and space), and a showstopper for our goal. Nonetheless, even during his lifetime monks tried to anyway, and he reprimanded them for doing so. [SN 22.85, SN 22.86] So of course speculation on the unconditioned has continued to the present day. You can lead a horse to water, as the saying goes.

The more important questions are a) do I want it and b) how do I get there?

As to the first question, the Buddha assures us in the strongest possible terms that the answer is “yes”:

So it must be pretty darned good.

As to the latter question, the answer is the eightfold noble path.

We also discussed another way to define nirvāṇa, and that is in terms of the 10 fetters. And still another way to understand it is “cessation”, as in the Third Noble Truth:

“Cessation” here means “the cessation of craving”. The chain of dependent co-arising is broken. One who is fully Awakened does not feed the chain of causation. This is because ignorance - which is at the root of the chain of dependent co-arising - is cut off. The ignorance is replaced by direct, clear, knowledge:

While the word "knowledge" is used here, a more appropriate term is "knowing". "Knowledge" is something you spit back on a test. It is a piece of information. "Knowing" is something that you experience directly. "Knowledge" is when the Battle of Hastings was fought. "Knowing" is how you felt when you got your driver's license.

The Buddha also defines the end of the path as the destruction of the “taints”:

The taints are 1) sense desire, 2) becoming and 3) ignorance.

Thus there are a number of ways by which the end of the path is understood:

1. The extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion.
2. The destruction of the fetters.
3. The cessation of craving.
4. The destruction of the taints.

The realm is variously called “the deathless”, “the unconditioned”, the "unborn, unageing, unailing", etc. The attainment is called "enlightenment", "liberation", "release" and "Awakening". The term "enlightenment" fell out of favor in the West because it is confused with the Age of Enlightenment. But you hear all of these terms, and they all have some justification for their use. I generally use the term "Awakening" to describe the experience.  You Awaken to transcendent understanding, direct, clear knowing. And I tend to use “the unconditioned” to define the realm. But the preferred terms are somewhat a case of tomayto, tomahto.

Misconceptions About Awakening

There are a some common misconceptions about Awakening that are worth addressing.

As noted, attaining the first stage of Awakening - stream-entry - causes a fundamental change in the mind. This is why a stream-enterer attains a full Awakening in no more than seven lifetimes. Even the uncertainties of rebirth do not cause the mind to lose its positive, karmic momentum. The change is permanent.

There is a popular book that suggests that stream-entry is no big deal, that after you attain an Awakening, you just go back to the mundane activities of life. This is not correct. You are never the same after attaining stream-entry, and that is a very good thing.

You also see the quote that a "moment of mindfulness is a moment of Awakening". This "is something the Buddha would never say, because mindfulness is conditioned and nirvāṇa is not". [Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, "Mindfulness Defined"] Stream-entry is somewhat trivialized in the West. Attaining stream-entry is not easy, and when it happens to you, it is a pivotal moment in your existence.

But even if you do not attain stream-entry in this lifetime, it is important to set it as a goal. Even the aspiration for stream-entry makes you a member of the noble Saṅgha:

And, of course, a stream-enterer is incapable of breaking the precepts:

The phrase "fulfills virtuous behavior" is sometimes translated as "accomplished in the precepts". So if you know anyone who claims to be a stream-enter, and they lie, steal, manipulate, commit acts of sexual misconduct, or any other breach of ethical conduct, you know that they are not.

Personality and Temperament

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu tells a story about a woman who read the Buddha’s teachings on non-self, and when she visited the monastery she was disappointed to find out that the monks have personalities.

In fact, our true personalities don’t have a chance to shine through because they are obscured by greed, aversion and delusion. If you are angry a lot of the time, the shyer aspects of your personality do not manifest. Negative mind states are powerful, and they overwhelm the positive ones.

We all have different temperaments and different karmas. This means that our paths to Awakening and how Awakening manifests in each one of us is unique. In the sutta "Foremost" [AN 1.188-267], there are seven chapters, four devoted to monks, and one each to nuns, lay men and lay women. In each chapter the Buddha lists who among that group is foremost in a particular quality:

(And so on for three more chapters.)

(Interesting little fun fact: Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī was the Buddha's stepmother, the one who raised him.)

The sutta continues with lay people.

Thus we all come to the Dharma in a different way, and the Dharma expresses itself in each of us in a different way.

Ajahn Chah once said, “We are all the same. But we are all different. But we are all the same.”

We have the same disease, and it works the same way in all of us. But we all have unique temperaments, unique strengths and weaknesses, unique personalities. The precise door that we use to end our suffering will not be the same. The Buddha’s two chief disciples were Moggalana and Sariputta, and while they were best friends, they were also quite different. As you can see in the sutta, Sariputta was foremost in wisdom. Sariputta would have made a great organic chemist or quantum physicist. Mogallana was foremost in psychic powers. He would have been a great fortuneteller or magician, maybe a fantastic stockbroker.

One of the things that happens as you practice is that you stop self-identifying with your temperament. Whatever your temperament is, some people will like it, some people won’t like it, and some people won’t care. It isn’t who you are, it is just how you are constructed in this lifetime. On the path to Awakening, you get to know it better, you learn how to make it work for you, and you stop worrying about whether it is good or bad or right or wrong.

(I heard this story about a Zen Master and one of his students. The Zen Master had this dynamic personality, and the student was rather shy and retiring. One day the student asked his teacher,  "If I become enlightened, will I be like you?" "No," the Master replied. "I was just born this way.")

If you have bricks, you build a brick house. If you have wood, you build a wooden house.

Your path to Awakening will not follow a precise formula. On the other hand, the end game is the same, and that is to end the process of fabrication. There is a map, but the map cannot tell you what your trip will be like, or the precise route you will take.

Dispassion

We start in the world of sense desire, and the Buddha tells us something that seems to go beyond all reason. It is something counter-intuitive. He tells us that sense desire is at the heart of the problem.

As our practice evolves, we replace sense desire with the desire born of seclusion, jhāna. Jhāna is peaceful, calm, serene, uncomplicated, and it does not have the dangers inherent in sense desire.

That is one of the things that the Buddha tells us about sense desire, that there are dangers involved:

Now we have something better, much better. And as we get better at practicing jhāna, we see for ourselves the danger in sense desire.

This evolves as your practice matures. When you see the danger in sense desire, you develop dispassion.

We tend to think of "passion" as a good thing. The things about which we care the most are the things for which we have a passion. We may even think that we are passionate about the Dharma.

The dispassion about which the Buddha is speaking here is passion for sense desire and becoming: "becoming" both in the sense of self-identification as well as continued existence. Dispassion is akin to "losing interest". As you see the problems in sense desire, and as you become more proficient in the superior pleasure of jhāna, they lose their appeal. You become bored with them. Likewise, as you see the risks and dangers in rebirth, you lose interest in becoming.

Again, this is something that will evolve in your practice. You will be sitting - perhaps in jhāna - and a thought about sense desire will arise. That will be followed by the thought, "Why would I want that?" There may be an aversion to it. The aversion may be quite strong. The Buddha sometimes used the word "revulsion". The Pāli word is "nibbiddā". It is also rendered as "disenchantment" (as in the above quote) or "disgust". "Revulsion" may sound too strong. However, when you experience it in your meditation, it may feel just like that.

The Many Moving Parts

It is easy to get consumed by one part of the practice, and to make that the whole of your practice. But this is a multifaceted practice with a lot of moving parts. We start with our conduct: virtue, ethics, morality. We put our good conduct on a ground of generosity. We follow the lay precepts. Monks have over 200 precepts; nuns have over 300. We examine the results of our actions, and try to do only what is skillful, what is of benefit to ourselves and others now and in the future. We work on our intention, because skillful intention is the heart of good karma. In the eightfold noble path, parts 3, 4 and 5 are about right conduct.

Then we meditate. We have three major parts to meditation, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Breathing, and jhāna. We weave them together like three different colors of yarn into a whole tapestry. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness show us the lay of the land. Mindfulness of Breathing takes us all the way to an Awakening in the fourth tetrad. And jhāna starts as a challenging goal to attain, and then becomes the springboard to stream-entry. In the eightfold noble path, parts 6, 7 and 8 are about meditation.

Right Understanding starts out as mundane right view: the Four Noble Truths, dependent co-arising, the law of karma, the Three Marks of Existence. As our practice grows we see them for ourselves. We see how our minds work in unskillful ways. As our practice progresses, mundane right view becomes transcendent right understanding. In the eightfold noble path, parts 1 and 2 are right view.

These are the pieces of the puzzle, and we develop them together. I once saw this stage act where a man started with a bunch of sticks and a stack of plates. One by one he picked up a stick and a plate, and started the plate spinning on the end of the stick. He then took the stick with the spinning plate and inserted it into a holder on a table. After a while he got about fifteen of these spinning plates on the table.

Eventually one of the plates would start to wobble and he gave it another spin to keep it going. With 15 of them going he had to keep a watchful eye on them, and when one started to wobble he had to run over to that one and give it a whirl.

Practice is like that. One part of your practice is going well, and then you find yourself engaged in wrong speech. Then you do something kind and generous, but you can't concentrate. You try to understand dependent co-arising and you can't make any sense of it, but your sitting is calm and relaxed.

So you keep a watchful eye on it all, and when one of the plates starts to wobble, you give it some extra attention; you give it a whirl. In this way you keep all the moving parts going.

The danger in not developing the whole path is that you lose site of the main objective. You go from creating mischief of the old sort to creating mischief of a new sort. There is a well-known meditation center where every year they hold a retreat for people whose sole practice is trying to attain the deathless. They just sit all day long trying to go from A to Z, skipping those nuisances B through Y. They do not practice the whole of the gradual path, the noble eightfold path. And according to the people who work at the retreat center, they are insufferable.

So develop your practice as a whole. It is like going 55 mph on the highway. If the car speeds up, you back off of the gas. If the car slows down, give it more gas. You really can't go 90 in this practice. Your mind won't tolerate it. That may even slow you down. This is about developing in an optimal way, not a maximal one. If you go 55 you will get there safely, without wasting any energy, and in good time.

Barriers to Stream-entry

In brief, the Buddha's path to Awakening is that a) we replace sense pleasure with the pleasure of jhāna, and then b) we become disenchanted with jhāna and let go of that as well. Jhāna, as we have been saying, for all of its wonders, is still conditioned, inconstant, and unreliable. When we see that, and we get frustrated with the limits of jhāna, we look for something better. But you can't rush this. You have to really get addicted to jhāna first, otherwise you will never get tired of it. It is an extremely pleasant form of aversion therapy.

There are a number of traps that can keep us from entering the stream. The first is that - as just discussed - we do not develop our practice in a balanced way. I know someone who is a master at jhāna. He can go back and forth, up and down through jhānas 1-8 like he is playing a video game. And he has been trying for years, with enormous effort, to become a stream-enterer, and he cannot.

When he talks about the Dharma I can see why. He does not understand the teaching on non-self and he holds many wrong views. He has a somewhat abrasive personality. He is opinionated. He seems pretty impressed with himself. Any one of these would be a barrier to stream-entry.

Another possibility is that you get stuck in jhāna. If you do not understand the whole path, you can end your meditation career at the mastery of jhāna.

This is especially true if you develop any of the supernormal powers. This is one of the more esoteric parts of the practice. Once you master the jhānas, It is possible that one of the supernormal (i.e., "psychic") powers may manifest:

Supernormal powers are a recurring topic in the Pāli canon.

I do not have any direct experience with supernormal powers. However,  it is commonly known that some monks can read minds.

We have already discussed at least one monk who saw into his previous 6 lives.

The psychic power that is most popularly known is the ability to walk through walls. (Watch "Kung Fu".) So imagine that you are able to hold your mind in the realm of infinite space. We know that all physical objects are almost entirely of space. We know that only 4% of the universe is material, that the rest is dark matter. Imagine that you can hold that image of space in your mind.

Some people have an affinity for both the formless attainments and one or more supernormal powers. Mahāmoggallāna - who was one of the Buddha's two chief disciples - was "foremost among those with psychic potency". [AN 1.190] However, Mahāmoggallāna was an Arahant, so he had already attained a full Awakening. This also happens sometimes. After someone becomes an Arahant, they develop one of these powers. (The Buddha could do all of them.) However, if someone develops supernormal powers before Awakening, they may get so wrapped up in them they never progress beyond that point.

So, in summary, a) make sure you develop the whole path in a balanced way, b) don't get stuck at jhāna, and c) don't get seduced by it if you can fly or walk through walls or read someone's mind. Supernormal powers are akin to carnival tricks, interesting, but not necessarily of much value.