During this season, that
of the three-months ‘Rains Retreat’ (Vassa), we study the Vinaya at Cittaviveka. Vinaya is the section of the Buddha’s
teachings that often gets overlooked in Dhamma circles – it gives instructions
on the samana’s (i.e. a monk or nun) way of life. But is it just for monks and
nuns? Well, the Buddha felt, quite reasonably, that he could only lay down a
detailed training for those who went forth under him and had no other
commitments. So in a way this is true. But the nature of the Vinaya is that by
supervising how the samana community behaves in relationship to the lay
community, its effects are felt by all, and it offers occasions for lay people
to compose and collect their energies around the (ideal) quietness and
simplicity of a well-trained samana. In brief, by setting up a relationship of
alms-mendicancy – the samanas can’t have or use money, can’t grow or store food,
can’t manipulate what people should offer – Vinaya establishes the
Dhamma-culture of generosity/sharing, virtue/integrity and
renunciation/simplicity. These overarching norms can then transfer into the
society at large, dependent on the skill and energy of the lay community.
At this time especially,
I think that it is only through adopting and practising these norms that human
beings will be able to navigate out of the consumer and credit-based economy that
is exhausting this planet. We have to live with less waste, and we can best do
this if we share resources. Sharing/generosity becomes natural when you trust
people, and you can only really trust people of integrity. If you have
integrity, you value the life that has been given to all creatures and you don’t
want to contribute to the abuse and pollution of the planet. In support of
this, renunciation lowers the consumption of commodities and hence the exploitation
of the Earth’s resources – and reducing consumption becomes practical when
people are prepared to share what they have.
Meanwhile, renunciation is no great sacrifice when one feels enriched by
one’s own heart-mind (the only innate resource that humans have): and that’s
what Dhamma practice is about. So in this culture, Dhamma feeds the heart and Vinaya
builds the structures.
So although the Vinaya
topic is ethics, it broadens that concept. For example, a samana is only
allowed one set of robes (renunciation); cannot recommend killing, even euthanasia
(value of life); and is enjoined to share the very food he/she has received
today with fellow-samanas (sharing). Then there are observances – such as
the Vassa itself – that greatly outnumber what would be regarded as ‘morality’.
For example, by requiring samanas to stay in one place for at least three
months of the year, Vinaya observance catalyzes the sense of community: the
local villagers will naturally come round and check the samanas out; they’ll
look to them for teachings and examples – and so that will support their own
practice and be conducive to them offering food on a regular basis. Another
observance establishes a relationship of respect dependent on how long one has
been in the Order: and that curtails jockeying for position – the senior is not
necessarily the most-attained, or the most gifted, just more long-standing. As
a counterbalance, seniority by itself doesn’t bring authority: the Sangha is
administered by elected officers. Moreover a newcomer picks which teacher
he/she would like to study under and to whom he/she will offer allegiance and
service.
A lot of Vinaya is just
about deportment: ‘I shall go with downcast/moderated gaze in public places’;
‘I shall go with little sound in public places’; ‘I shall go well-covered [with
robes] in public places.’ The effect of this training is both personal – it
keeps you mindful within your body and not drawn out into sights and shops –
and public – a bhikkhu walking in a quiet and composed way can change the
energy of a street. I remember one occasion (of several similar) when
travelling: sitting down to wait for a flight in an airport, I tucked my legs
up in lotus position on the seat to pass the time in meditation. Just before I
closed my eyes, I noticed a woman sitting in a seat a little way away and
facing mine: she was leafing through a magazine. When I opened my eyes a
half-hour later, I noticed that now she too was sitting cross-legged with eyes
closed.
These and many, many,
others make up the ‘samana norm’, a living presentation of the Way that the
Buddha felt was a vital aspect of his teaching. So much so, that he said that
in the case of previous Awakened Ones who hadn’t laid down a training, their
teaching had died out shortly after their own deaths. And yet … he refused to
lay down any rules until a need arose. Every rule is built around an occasion
when someone lost touch with a norm that the Buddha felt was natural for a
‘gone-forth’ person, or an instance where lay people were upset by the conduct
of a samana. So Vinaya came around through direct experience; it wasn’t laid
out as a system, it doesn’t lead out to abstract principles, but was built up
with rulings adjusted by exemption clauses and moderating circumstances
throughout the Buddha’s life. And after …? He thought of that too, and
established the ‘great standards’ for future guidance. These state that if
something occurs or is available now that wasn’t around at the time of the
Buddha – the Sangha has to decide whether that is like, or has the same effect
as, something that the Buddha allowed, or forbade, and act accordingly. So Vinaya has to be kept alive by the wise
integrity of the Sangha, and if the Sangha declines in that, then the Vinaya
declines – and vice versa. Well, one
could say a lot about that decline, but not now.
Instead, I’d like to
reflect around the abstraction of the ethical sense into Good and Evil; and as
a contrast, the awareness of present intention
that is the norm for awakening. Good and
Evil are the most fundamental abstractions, going right back to Adam and Eve.
The serpent is bound up with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and
presents its forbidden fruit to Eve. Then God shows up and the judgements
begin. As a child I could never understand why knowing the difference between
Good and Evil would get you thrown out of Eden. But I think I get it now. When you
define human behaviour in terms of abstract principles, you lose the direct
awareness of what’s happening now, and of your intention – the most common
moderating factor in the Vinaya. Without that clear awareness what you are
left with is ideals and judgements. And so the judging God arises. And He can
do what He likes to you (witness Job). To return from the mythic to the
psychological: this abstraction means that assessment is removed from your own
intelligence and given to a remote and inscrutable entity, or your own Inner
Tyrant. Obedience is obligatory.
The immediate effect of replacing
your own direct awareness with passive obedience is to empower fear and guilt,
and allow a dumbing-down of your moral intelligence. You never really understand why some actions are good or
bad; in fact sometimes it’s not even actions that are good or bad – it’s
people. My tribe, unsurprisingly, are the Good. If you belong to the Good then,
like God, you can do whatever you like to the Evil Ones. Hence the security
forces of the Free World can hijack, assassinate, deal in drugs, and imprison
without trial. Nor is this just a present-day phenomenon: Khmer Rouge, Nazis, colonial
powers, medieval kings, the Papacy, the jihad – wherever the good, the pure or
the holy is abstracted it offers ideological conviction, or a mystic
empowerment and a God-given right. Then it is appropriated by a group, an
organisation or a political entity and is used to justify their actions. The
polarization of the Good creates the Evil Ones – who you can’t trust an inch – and
who are controlled by the mystic or ideological force of Evil. So the further
result of that is mistrust, prejudice on the political level, and repression
and sublimation in terms of the psyche. The non-Good, the misfit or the
irrational, is not an abstraction, so you can’t disprove it – all you can do is
chain it down and suppress it. So any energy, feeling and inclination that
doesn’t fit the Code of the Good is to be denied, feared and squashed. Except
that it doesn’t squash that easily, or for that long – because it’s alive.
However once you turn to
the direct experience of Dhamma-cultivation, the abstracts lose their grip, and
the suppressed and sublimated comes to the surface. Then, as we are frequently
instructed, the practice is to let the judgements float, and instead be
directly aware; to not react but investigate and be steadily patient with one’s
inner misfits, rebels and demons. To learn to listen inwardly and feel
mind-states and what they produce; whether this thought or that mood takes you
to a good place or not. What you discover is how grudges and deceit feel bad and cause agitation; and how compassion and honesty feel good. Through this
wise handling comes vitality, empathy and earthy wisdom. You get to know, not
Good and Evil, but what is skilful, beneficial, and conducive to welfare – and
what causes suffering and stress. And that good thoughts and bad thoughts all
have the nature to pass; while the awareness of all this gets palpably bright. Moral
intelligence dawns as the precursor of full awakening.
The understanding of
good and evil was the Buddha’s second great insight of the three that led to
his awakening. Actually, the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ aren’t in this account; instead
we have ‘well-conducted’ versus ‘ill-conducted’, ‘right in their views’ versus
‘wrong in their views’, and ‘giving effect to right/wrong views in their
actions’; and further, ‘I saw how beings pass on according to their actions.’
(See M4 or M36). There’s moral responsibility there, but it’s related to
actions and inclinations, not to abstract forces. Both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ lead
on to further birth, and in the third great insight, the Buddha saw how he
could get beyond that. This doesn’t negate moral consequences (heavenly/fortunate
and hellish/unfortunate are still there in terms of results), but it places
these experiences within the context of the process of awakening. By studying
these intentions, it becomes clear that both right and wrong are subject to attachment. That
is, if you cling to right as an absolute, you’re working from an assumption of
being some ongoing entity or self, in a world of ongoing substantial things out
there. Well, that’s going to take you to a corresponding destination – as an ongoing identity who has to keep juggling, ducking and holding on; while you and your fellows move on towards ageing, sickness and death.
Nevertheless right is
right (though not Right) through being engaged with conscience and concern, empathy
and an awareness of cause and effect; it encourages wise moderation. So as you
come to witness and handle the mind, you step back from and investigate
intention and inclination; and that lessens the power of reckless impulses. You gain some open space. As you get steadier in that witnessing space, the
mind moves into integrity and ‘to others as to myself’: it comes out of
short-term self-interest into right view and finally into selfless open
clarity. You go from bad to good to clear; but you have to go through the good.
Awakening then is the end of a process that successively opens the mind out of
self and into wholeness, out of entities and into relationships, out of winning
and losing and into release.
Conversely, whenever the
mind grabs and claims ‘I am’, the opening process reverses – into self and
others and winners and losers. Selfhood gets formed out of the good and makes
it the Good, and so Evil is born – as in any fundamentalist view.
So you have to study
this, in yourself and in others. What is appropriate, now; what is skilful,
now; what is beautiful to do – now? Reflecting on good and bad wisely enhances one's moral intelligence. And there are some great lessons both in
the Vinaya and in the Suttas. Take the Buddha’s cousin Devadatta, for example,
a bhikkhu, and a zealot who wanted to impose stricter standards on the Sangha,
and who yet tried to have the Buddha assassinated on seven occasions. Ooops,
well no need to guess where he was headed … And yet, the Buddha’s comment was
that after a period in hell, he’d get through that, get back to the earthly
level, and even become a Buddha himself in some future age. So – the mind is a
process, and has no final destinations. Which is just as well for Angulimāla,
the serial killer who murdered 999 people before coming across the Buddha. Awed
and finally trained by the Buddha, he became an arahant – though
apparently people still threw rocks at him. This fellow needs to be up there on
the shrines of meditators: you think you’re a lost cause because you were wild
in your youth, or you went to jail ten years ago – well, reflect on Angulimāla.
You can turn your process around. But on the other hand, Sāti, the bhikkhu who
proclaimed that consciousness transmigrates from one life to the next is
roundly castigated by the Buddha as one of ‘pernicious view’ without even a
‘spark of wisdom’ who by ‘wrong grasp’ has ‘injured yourself and stored up much
demerit; for this will lead to your harm and suffering for a long time.’ (M.
38) What was I saying about who I used to be and how I think I’ll end up? Gulp.
So despite his awareness
of the transitory nature of heaven and hell, the Buddha is not Mr. Easy Going.
Instead, he broadens what most of us would consider good and bad to refer to:
if it leads or supports views and actions that keep the mind stuck in any kind
of entity – even consciousness as a lasting immaterial essence – then that’s a
contraction that goes against the stream of awakening. Sooner or later it will
take us into Good and Evil. So do you believe that you are somebody who has a
future, or can be measured against another person, or has a past to atone for? That
you have a destiny, or need to work out your kamma? That’s a crime against
clarity! Thirty blows!
