Conditions (part II)
Monday March 20, 2006
Thanks to Gareth and Dharmasattva for:
a) their patient reading of my last post on Conditions, which was somewhat lengthy, and,
b) their own developments of the topic: visit their blogs to have a read.
I wanted to say a bit more about conditions, in part inspired by Dharmasattva and Gareth’s comments – and I absolutely promise that this post won’t be nearly as exhaustive (or exhausting!) as my previous one on the subject.
When it comes to insight into conditionality, it seems that there are two aspects:
- Insight into the fact that things are conditioned
- Insight into how things are conditioned.
A thoroughgoing understanding of 1) seems to be essential to practice. Whatever arises, whatever occurs in experience, the first move is to recognise that this is conditioned: it comes about through a unique and particular coming-together of conditions.
In terms of 2), however, it seems that we can no longer have a thoroughgoing understanding of conditionality. If the conditions that lead to any particular arising are innumerable, then we could exhaust ourselves attempting to get a full account of them. So the problem is this: we know that things are conditioned, but we cannot fully know how they are conditioned. This doesn’t, alas, get us off the hook, because we still need to act, and it is clear that some acts are more skilfully performed than others.
Dharmasattva points out that an attempt to understand the full set of conditions would induce paralysis, and that mindfulness might well be the key here in determining which conditions are of the most importance. She tells us that it is:
a reasonable use of my limited mental and emotional resources to focus my mindfulness on those conditions that are most proximate to me.
Here is the crux, I think. We need to practice a kind of mindful discernment to see which conditions are both proximate and also have the greatest urgency. It is like the famous parable of the man with the poison arrow in his eye. The man is dying. And the conditions that have led to this terrible situation are innumerable. As a way of understanding the conditions at play, the historican could trace the enmities between clan A and clan B back hundreds of years, and it would certainly be interesting. Similarly the biochemist could explore the composition of the poison and attempt to understand it’s effects upon the nervous system. The psychologist could explore what it is that makes men fire arrows into the air in the direction of their enemies. All these might be useful conditions to know about. But – given the immediacy and the urgency of the situation – these are not the most proximate conditions. There is suffering, and it requires a response. The arrow must be removed. An antidote must be found. Thus the baldness of the forumulation of the four noble truths: sufferings – causes – cessations – paths, and the demand to see what, in our experience, is a suffering, a cause, a cessation, a path… “moment by mindful moment”, as Dharmasattva puts it.
It is not that these other kinds of knowledge – those of the historian, the biochemist, and so on – are not of value; it is only that they are not, here and now, in this very situation, of the greatest weight and importance. In giving pride-of-place to the four noble truths, as the most important expression of conditionality, the Buddha is only putting into words what we all know anyway: that, for us, what are most proximate are sufferings, their causes, their cessation, and the paths leading to their cessation.
The objects of knowledge are inexhaustible. We may know many wonderful and useful things. And it may be good to know these things (the Bodhisattva, it is said, should master the arts and the sciences). But awakening, it seems, is not omniscience. Those things that we need to know can be held in a single hand: the knowledge that all things are conditioned; the humility to recognise that we cannot ever fully comprehend this web of conditions; the mindfulness to see that a discerning knowledge of those things most proximate – sufferings, causes, cessations, paths – is sufficient.
#5 · Jayarava
26 March 2006
Something seems to be missing from this analysis and I’m not quite sure what it is. The thing about focussing on conditionality is that the traditional meditation subjects – such as the nidana chain reflection – suggest that we focus on a single cause. I’ve not done a lot of this practice, but what I have done suggests that actually this reflection on a single cause can be rather… ‘interesting’ shall we say.
I’m grasping here, but doesn’t this point to something about the nature of Buddhist doctrine vs Buddhist practice? That it doesn’t particularly matter how you look at conditionality, or where you look for it, the important thing is that you pay attention to it. The fact that it can be fruitful to consider a massively over-simplified model which has only one cause for each effect (and vice versa), suggests that it is possible (or even necessary?) to take a fairly abstract approach to the question. It’s as though this is not actually a doctrine at all, but simply a skilful means to draw us closer to the actual experience. We call it conditionality, or cause and effect, or whatever, and we speculate about the nature of it, but in the end the Buddha was trying to draw us into an experiential situation where we do not need to speculate.
And you get very different models of conditionality throughout the Buddhist tradition – sometimes they are contradictory even. Maybe it’s all just saying that we need to pay attention to things arising and passing away, and that any theories we have about how it works, or what to pay attention to are less important than the fact of it. If we look close by, or far away; at the overview or the details; inwards or outwards; then what we see is things arising and passing away.
I have flashing into my mind the image of a fractal pattern that shows similar patterns at whatever magnification that you use to look at it. No matter how deep you go there is still detail to be discovered and it has a similar character to the detail visible at other levels. The phenomenal world has a kind of fractal dimension when it comes to conditionality. Everywhere you look, at what ever level, there is arising and passing away.
Reality is infinitely complex, but we generally operate in a fairly narrow band of experience – hence Buddhist practice draws our attention to what is most obvious in our experience – the breath, the experience of our body, emotions and thoughts, the data of our senses. If that experience is conditioned by even one thing, then we know that it is contingent, and that condition is also dependent, and so on and it draws us into the experience of something…
#6 · Will
27 March 2006
Thanks for your comments folks. I’m pretty much in agreement with everything above, including the suggestion that this analysis misses something. Given the nature of what we are talking about, every analysis necessarily must miss something.
I agree about the value of reflecting upon single causes (or a narrow band of causes: e.g. the 12 mutually conditioning causes in the nidana “chain”) And whilst the nidana chain is a model that I don’t find personally helpful – largely due to its being anchored in a particular conception of rebirth that I struggle with – the thing about models is that you can be pragmatic in relation to them, and you don’t have to dismiss one just because you find another more useful…)
My final point about the things we need to know being very few I think relates to this question of single causes. Amid the complexity there are some broad patterns – for which we can draw different maps – and which are particularly worthy of reflection.
What I think I was suggesting – or at least what I am suggesting now – is that using the four noble truths not as assertions about the nature of reality as such, but as a map of those conditions that are crucial to practice can be valuable.
( Crikey, this text box is small. I’ll have to make it a bit wider, as it’s hard to write mini-theses in a box only about 20 characters wide )
W
#7 · Jayarava
2 April 2006
Hi Will,
Yes… I was trying to think of a polite way of telling you that you’re text box is a little on the small side :-)
Re the Nidana chain… there is an intrepretation of it which involves it all happening in the moment. Dhivan did a little talk on it on our ordination course – there does seem to be a strong case for suggesting that the 3 lifetimes interpretation is a later one that isn’t present in the canon. It comes from Buddhaghosha I think. If you think of it all happening in each moment, a bit like Trungpa’s interpretation of the Bardos, then there is no requirement for belief in rebirth at all.
If you look at, for instance, the Mahanidana Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, then the chain is slightly shorter, and no lifetimes are implied in the model. There was a book about it apparently – I can get refs from Dhivan if you are interested.
#1 · Gareth
20 March 2006
Nice post, thanks.
The relationship between the four noble truths, and understanding conditions is interesting – one I need to ponder a little more I think.
I liked your comment that awakening is not omniscience, and I’m pretty sure that I agree …for now at least ;)
I’ve quoted that in my post this morning on escaping karma – which pretty much agrees with what you say her and Dharmasattva said earlier.
Best Wishes