If the twentieth
century was the age when we incorporated motorised transport into human life,
the early twenty-first is the age of the screen, of the Internet and its social networks. They
have similar world-spanning, potentially mind-broadening, and yet disembodying,
effects. We’ve increased span; what about depth?
What is ‘depth’
anyway? To me, it refers to how fully one ‘knows’ – in terms of thoughts,
emotionally, or in your guts. It’s in the tough and testing times when one
hasn’t a clue and is emotionally confused, that gut knowledge provides the
balance that enables us to be wise. It tells us that we belong, that we’re whole and gives us
the basic faith to pass through crisis, life and death. The other two ways of
knowing just provide the details. It’s true that all kinds of marvellous discoveries have been revealed and communicated through intellectual
knowledge – to the point of information overload – but how fuller do we
feel, and are we less or more stable and integrated in our contexts than
centuries ago? In replying to that last
question, we appear less settled and integrated than earlier societies of very
limited span and beliefs, societies that we now see as (intellectually) archaic
and primitive. Yes, on the basis of increased head knowledge, human life has
benefitted immensely in terms of any span you care to name: life-span,
health-span, travel and information; but statistically we are more depressed,
more suicidal, addicted and tranquillized, and more a danger to the earth, than
ever before.
What brings around
depth is embodiment: a natural and full sense of being in your body. It sounds,
and is simple, but is a major task for many people these days. The average
‘developed’ person is a head on wheels, often connected to something electronic
for much of the day. It can take concerted attention and skill on a meditation
retreat to feel the body in more than a superficial way. As my language
suggests, the social context (‘wheels and wires’) plays a big part in this
disembodiment. When most people stayed in one locale and lived in an interactive
context, those they lived next to would directly mirror the results of their
actions. And when people did the once-a-year trip, or sailed on the three-year
trading mission, they did so as part of a group, conversing, stopping here and
there and being with others. Compared Chaucer’s chatty and interactive pilgrims
with the single person commuting daily in their car, sealed off from other
motorists who represent competition for road space, or whose dawdling make them
objects of road rage. Consider also the effect of the consequent highways that
slice through countryside, towns and neighbourhoods indifferent to all forms of
life, and that flatten local landscapes into the wallpaper behind service
stations and motels. ‘You are on a journey, you have a solitary purpose and a
destination; an arrival is promised so there’s no need to relate to where you
are’ is the subliminal message. And the daily immersion in a tangle of
vehicular others, with whom physical contact will assuredly cause damage and possibly
death – how does that mould the heart-mind? Are others ‘in the way’, or isn’t
relationship with others part of the Way?
When the screen is the
meeting place, an entry to a social network where one can meet one’s fellows –
where are our foundations? The kind of contact that comes through the screen is
sleek, instant and seemingly boundless; but it’s all surface. A person may grow
up making friends and establishing relationships through a screen – but
what kind of a relationship is formed through appearances on a screen? All
surface, and no depth; immediate yet unpluggable and of no long-term
consequence.
And in purely personal
perspective, self-presentation to a global audience, no matter what the
content, doesn’t deepen one’s felt presence. If most of the time is spent wheeling to and
from work through traffic; if the majority of Internet traffic is heading
towards pornography, buying and selling, sport and entertainment, there is no
inner deepening. Consequently humans are getting less adequate at
child-rearing, or managing death, and more prone to the raw realities of
anxiety, depression and stress. Self and other are both negatively affected
through disembodiment. We desperately need to know how to live on a planet with
other life-forms, instead of killing the earth; and that means experiencing the
earth as essentially alive and hence worthy of respect. We also need to learn about
the process of being born, being affected and responsive and passing on. And
that means learning down to the ends of your nerves; working on the gut reflexes
of 'fight, panic, grab and faint'. And without really working towards 'pause, find
grounded presence, soften and release' there is no way to the Deathless.
Contact shapes the
heart-mind. From our infancy on through our teens, we need clear and caring
contact to form a healthy heart-mind; without that, people develop attention
disorder, neuroses and sociopathic behaviour. So when one takes a notion like
‘non-attachment’ and imagines that means ‘no contact’ and ‘no reference to a
context or to another’, one is consigning a person to believing in their own
opinions, fantasies and phobias. Attachment to an unenlightened view of
non-attachment merely supports the isolationist self-view. It undermines the process of developing conscience and concern and opening the
heart towards others – as well as towards oneself.
Tellingly, the
principle means of Dhamma-transmission has always been to learn through contact
with wise people. Being one of the two essential supports for stream-entry, the
attention of a wise ‘other’ helps the heart-mind to grow beyond needs for
self-image and self-presentation, and also beyond the consequent self-judgement
and wish for self-annihilation.
When a bhikkhu has
good friends … it can be expected of him that he will be virtuous …will get to
hear at will, without trouble or difficulty, talk concerned with the spiritual
life that is conducive to opening up the heart … will arouse energy for
abandoning unwholesome qualities … will be wise, possessing the wisdom that …
leads to the complete destruction of suffering. (Numerical
Discourses 9.3)
For those who came to
train with Ajahn Chah, a very direct and human relationship was the norm. For
instance, a friend of mine, in his first interview with Ajahn Chah, described
(with some quiet pride) his practice of sweeping attention up and down the
sides of his body – to which Ajahn Chah’s response was to go down on all
fours on the floor and sniff himself like a dog. The non-verbal message was, ‘So
what. Just be aware of what the mind is doing at any moment and stay at that
point.’ It was also a vivid way of cutting through any claim to prowess; yet
the hilarity of it rendered the deflation free from judgement. On another occasion,
as part of the monastic training of being with and attending to a teacher, a
monk who’d been born in New York was bathing the Ajahn. (In rural N.E.Thailand
it’s done outside; the teacher wraps a cloth around his waist and the attendant
ladles water over him and rubs him down.) ‘Did you do this for your father?’
asked Ajahn Chah. ‘No, Luang Por, we don’t bathe our fathers in New York.’
‘That’s why you have so many problems,’ was Ajahn Chah’s response. Hm. Think
about it.
As for a hands-on
approach, there’s the story of a Westerner who, beset with doubts as to whether
he should stay as a monk or be of service as a lay practitioner, walked from
the International Forest Monastery over to Wat Pah Pong to see Ajahn Chah.
Ajahn Chah was sweeping around his kuti when the monk arrived, and seeing him
said: ‘Working is better than talking’ and threw him a broom. So they both
swept around the kuti for a while until the Westerner, noticing that the sun
was going down, thought he’d better abandon the question for now and head back
to his monastery. So he put the broom aside and went to pay respects to Ajahn
Chah. Ajahn Chah simply put a hand on each of the young man’s shoulders, looked
him straight in the eye and said: ‘Whatever you’re doing, just be with that.’
That’s wise fathering.
My final anecdote
about Ajahn Chah is of an occasion when someone gave him a magazine of pin-ups,
probably what would be classed nowadays as soft porn. Maybe they wanted to see
how he, a life-long celibate would react. Ajahn Chah skimmed briefly through the
mag. His only comment was: ‘Because of this, many men will become monks.’ He
wasn’t blown away, dazzled or even that disgusted by the semi-nudity and
posturing. Instead he put his finger right on the Dhamma: the world of surfaces
however glittering and seductive, has no fulfilling depth. And the realization
of that offers ‘disenchantment’ (nibbidā),
the kind of knowing that leads to awakening. Because, as the vacuity of the
surface is felt and acknowledged, the Path of awakening becomes the only valid
option. True enough, most of Ajahn Chah’s (Western) monks had ‘seen it all and
done most of it,’ but had no firm centre. Our last option was to go deeper. And
in that disillusionment, a wise and direct human being keeps you out of utter
despair.
Hence the Buddha set
up the relationship with a teacher to be one of living together: in fact the
Pali word for the disciple is ‘the one who shares one’s dwelling’. Going on
alms-round together, doing chores, talking and sitting together with the
teacher, one is calmed by their calm, sharpened by their immediacy,
strengthened by their firm and grounded presence. And reassured by their
ordinary earthiness.
Furthermore, in terms
of meditation, after experiencing the formless states of his early teachers,
the Buddha practised deep embodiment – really inhabiting his body, not sticking
on the surface at sense-contact, but going inwards through breathing to where
the subtle energy-channels of the body open, find their still centre and
suffuse the practitioner with happiness and ease. In contact with that, the
mind drops its wayward thinking, its sluggishness, agitation and passion and
gathers at one point. ‘Jhāna’ he
called it, ‘touching the Deathless with one’s body,’ ( Num. Discourses, 6.46) the meditative entry to
nibbāna. Note: not ‘witnessing’ or ‘watching’, but touching.
Whereas spanning the
world with cars, planes and social networks can help us to get out of parochial
attitudes, a deepening and direct touch abolishes the assumption that our awareness
is confined within separate bodies. When the blindfold of that view drops, the
boundaries of self and other, now and then, here and there, fall away, and there
is an opening to non-separation. And that way out of the ‘world’ is entered by
going into and clearing the body.
In this
fathom-long body with its perceptions and mind, I make known the world, its
arising, its ceasing and the Path leading to its ceasing. (Connected Discourses [I] 2.2)
True understanding is embodied, the rest is just words. We need to be in our bodies to clear the heart-mind and attune its sensitivity to the Deathless element. So why not deliberately unplug for a day, a morning or an evening per week? Walk nowhere special, just to feel where you are. And anyway, it’s time to switch off this blog, plant both feet on the floor and sit back in our own embodied presence.
