[Sarah
Doering has had a long association with the Insight Meditation Society and with
the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. On both boards for many years, she has
been a devoted practitioner of insight meditation, and has been teaching at IMS
for the past several years. Sarah is currently one of the resident teachers at
the newly opened Forest Refuge.]
For forty-five years after his enlightenment,
the Buddha wandered about northern India teaching. He spoke publicly as many as
ten thousand times. But he was not teaching in order to argue philosophical theories.
He was teaching for one purpose only: to bring to an end all the suffering which
he saw around him.
The assumption underlying all his teaching is that we don't
have to be the way we are-that all the sorrow and pain and grief and fear that
we all know is not necessary. It can be eliminated. New ways of being can be cultivated.
He taught so that we may know not suffering, but happiness and peace. These teachings
are trainings for a spiritual way of life. This means a way that is real and true,
and beneficial for all beings, both now and in times to come.
Tonight I want
to speak about five qualities of heart and mind which are known as the "five
spiritual powers." They've been called "five priceless jewels,"
because when they're well developed, the mind resists domination by the dark forces
of greed and hate and delusion. When the mind is no longer bound by those energies,
then understanding and love have no limits. These five powers are also called
the "controlling faculties." When they're strong and balanced, they
control the mind, and generate the power which leads to liberation. The five are
faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom.
When I first heard this
list, I was puzzled. I come from a Christian background. Faith seemed, of course,
exactly right to be there. Wisdom, too, belonged on the list. But the others-effort
and mindfulness and concentration-sounded very clinical and psychological and
dry. Where, I wondered, was love? I did not in any way understand then that the
cultivation of these five factors leads directly to love. They're all necessary.
They all work together and interweave very closely.
Faith-which here means
trust and confidence in the Dharma-inspires an outpouring of energy. When energy
is strong, then the effort to be alert and pay attention is easy. Mindfulness
prospers and becomes more and more continuous. The stronger the continuity of
mindfulness, the more focused and steady the mind. Concentration grows. As concentration
deepens, in the stillness of an attentive mind, wisdom emerges. It's the wisdom
of emptiness, whose only expression is love.
FAITH
The first of the five
faculties, faith, actually is a rather suspect word today. The most conspicuous
examples of faith are in the various extremes of religious fundamentalism, where
faith is often a coercive force, a force which is used to control insiders so
that they'll stay within the confines of the faith. It's also a force that's sometimes
imposed upon outsiders in order to encourage them to believe. But faith in the
sense that I want to speak of tonight has nothing to do with force. It has nothing
to do with conventional belief. It's an innocence of conviction, an open heart
that is not afraid to trust, and so can move beyond the known. It senses the possibility
of transcendence-that what seems to be, isn't all there is. It senses that there's
some profound human possibility to be realized, even though it's not immediately
apparent.
Such faith is born in experience. It can't be given. It arises spontaneously,
out of seeing and knowing for oneself. From it flow devotion and gratitude and
commitment. It's a natural self-giving. It stems from knowing the problematic
nature of life, from realizing that human existence is very imperfect. Because
of this one is sensitive to what else might be, to some other way of being. Faith
may arise from hearing the Buddha's words that say there's a cause for suffering,
a cause that can be removed so that suffering comes to an end. It may arise from
seeing someone whose presence, whose manner or words, are so compelling, that
they suggest possibilities not at all understood. It may come from reading something
that suddenly reveals a meaning that speaks to the heart. It may dawn through
music or art or, as happened to me, from a glimpse of something seen in nature.
Each
of us has our own story, which brought us here tonight. No one here is without
faith. You came in response to an attraction to some wordless possibility-some
possibility of discovery, of change, that's implicit in these long weeks of silence.
Faith is critical for a spiritual journey, for it's through faith that we move
from the known to the unknown. Without faith, not much is possible in any endeavor.
If there's no end goal which we particularly value, or if we lack faith in our
own strength and ability to get to it, we tend to stay in a rut. We don't go much
of anywhere.
When faith first dawns, the mind is filled with brightness and
love and devotion. But faith that's new is vulnerable. If it meets a skeptic who
doubts, and has many views and opinions, faith wants to run away and hide. At
least I did, in those years. Because the source of faith is outside ourselves,
we're very dependent on its not changing in any way at all. But gradually faith
is internalized. We see for ourselves that the teaching works. We discover that
we can sit with physical pain and not be overwhelmed. We begin to taste the happiness
of a concentrated mind. Faith deepens, and gives the courage to go beyond our
former limits. We begin to allow ourselves to feel more of what we're feeling.
So much of what we feel, we close off, because we fear the pain will be too much
to bear. But faith that's been tested in the crucible of experience comes to know
that even in the midst of suffering, there is calm.
When we meet difficulties,
faith gives the courage to go on. It's important to note, however, that faith
is very different from hope. Hope is for a specific outcome. Hope is associated
with expectation and desire. If hope is disappointed, sadness and fear or anger
are the result. Faith is different. It's trust in the ongoing process. It's confidence
that we can handle whatever comes-for in faith, we can. It's knowing that each
step we take is an unfolding of our life's journey, even if we don't know at all
where we're going.
Faith in the truth of the Dharma, by its very nature, implies
faith that we have the ability to realize that truth. The whole movement of deepening
faith is inward, toward more and more trust in ourselves, more and more trust
in the understanding and the love within our own hearts and our own minds. Faith
has a very great influence upon consciousness. That's why it's the first of these
spiritual powers. It removes the shadows of doubt that are so debilitating. It
gives a clarity to the mind, which is energizing
EFFORT
Energy, or effort,
is the second spiritual power. These two words are linked, but they're not quite
the same. Energy comes first, and effort channels it, and puts it to use. Nothing
happens without effort in any kind of endeavor, but especially, perhaps, in spiritual
practice. This practice isn't easy. The instructions are simple, but carrying
them out isn't simple. To be with the breath, feeling it, knowing it, and not
identifying with it; to be with an emotion, a mind-state, feeling it, knowing,
not identifying; to be with sensations, thoughts, the whole spectrum of experience,
seeing it clearly and dispassionately-such work is not child's play. A lot of
energy is expended here just to get out of the pull of habit, the kind of gravitational
pull of the mind that would get us and keep us in the grooves of habit that have
been worn over years of time. The mind is used to wandering, just erratically
wandering from one thing to the next, keeping itself busy with planning and hoping
and fantasizing, fearing, complaining, judging. It doesn't even know that anything
might lie outside of its own limited scope.
Right effort is the effort to be
mindful, and to bring the mind back when it wanders, so it knows what is happening
right now. To do this is really a very delicate balancing act. On the one hand,
hard work is needed, in the attempt to keep paying attention. On the other hand,
there's nothing to do, because awareness is already present. It's just that we've
been distracted. Right effort is not striving. Striving leads to clinging. It
reinforces the sense of self, and can be very painful. Right effort isn't trying
to get anything, for there's nothing to get. It's not trying to penetrate something
and go deeper and deeper. Rather, it's the effort to listen with greater sensitivity.
It's a soft receptivity. Just total surrender, receiving and welcoming whatever
is here.
When effort is balanced, without any strain, there's no sense of,
"I should do this." Rather, there's just a willingness to do. Out of
that willingness there comes a more and more constant flow of energy. This quality
of energy is bold and courageous. A Pali word describes it as "the state
of the heroic ones." It gives patience and perseverance in the face of difficulty.
If pain arises, the heat of the energy burns away fear, and makes it possible
to do what ordinarily is very difficult to do-to go right to the center of the
pain.
There are many levels of effort. Like the gears of a car, one level leads
to the next. But the key to them all is being willing to start fresh, to start
all over again. At the beginning of each day, at the beginning of each sitting,
at the beginning of each breath-to bring back the wandering mind and start fresh.
As we become more skilled, effort becomes smoother and steadier, and mindfulness
grows.
MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness is the third of the spiritual powers. It's
the one factor of mind of which we can never have too much. Mindfulness is the
observing power of the mind, the active aspect of awareness. Mindfulness means
not forgetting to pay attention, not forgetting to be aware of whatever is happening
within us, around us, from moment to moment to moment. It's a very subtle process.
When
first we notice something, there is a fleeting moment of pure awareness, before
the thinking mind jumps in. It's a moment that's nonverbal, pre-verbal. It has
in it no thought. It's a moment of seeing with very great clarity and no thought.
The thing noticed is not yet separated out, but is simply part of the whole flow
of the process of life. Perception then fixates on the thing, puts boundaries
around it and labels it. Then the thinking mind jumps in, and the mind is back
in its everyday mode.
Under ordinary circumstances, that first pristine moment
of awareness is very brief, and it goes unnoticed. What this practice of mindfulness
does is to prolong the moments of pre-verbal knowing. The effect of doing that,
over time, is profound. It's a kind of deep knowing which changes the way that
we understand the world.
When mindfulness is present, it's like an empty mirror.
It sees whatever appears before it with no distortion. Mindfulness has no likes
and no dislikes. There is no passion or prejudice to color what is seen. It knows
things in the round, as it were-in their totality, just as they are.
The question,
of course, is, "How can we come to such clarity?" "Interest"
is the answer. Get interested in what's going on. Krishnamurti once said that
the way to watch thoughts is the way that you would watch a lizard crawling on
the ceiling of a room. This seemed to me a very odd recommendation when first
I heard it. I had no connection with it at all, until a few years later. Then
I found myself on the island of Antigua, in the Caribbean. I had just arrived.
It was late at night and I was half-asleep, but too tired to go to bed. Suddenly,
out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something moving on the wall. Attention
woke up. It was galvanized. Now, what was moving was a lizard. It was a big one,
maybe between nine and ten inches long from the tip of its tail to its nose. It
was a dull, mottled brown. Nothing remarkable; it looked very ordinary. I sat,
attention just riveted, as it climbed the wall, slowly crawled across the ceiling,
down the other side, and then slithered out an open window.
The intensity of
that brief little moment was so great that I can see every detail in my mind's
eye right now. Interest was amazingly total. Awareness was complete. There wasn't
a thought, an emotion, to disturb what was seen. All that was there was the seeing
of each movement of this little creature from the moment it appeared to the moment
it disappeared. Krishnamurti's words came back into my mind then, and I knew exactly
what he had meant. Interest makes the difference. When interest is there, awareness
is total, and it's effortless.
Now, the breath may not have the same compelling
quality as seeing a lizard crawling on the ceiling, but the more careful attention
we pay to it, the more we get into the habit of paying attention. Interest grows.
Careful attention in itself creates interest, for it brings us close to experience-increasingly
close, so that we see the texture, the detail, the remarkable wonder of experience.
In the doing there comes a brightness and a vividness to things.
Emily Dickinson
knew this quality well. She lived a very quiet life, saw few people, and spent
most of her time alone in her room. Yet she was so attentive, and saw with such
sensitivity and precision, that she could only sum up her experience in this way:
"To live is so startling, there's little time for anything else."
Close
attention opens the heart. When there is interest, real interest, there's no judgment.
Whatever appears is welcome. Acceptance is unconditional. Awareness has a benevolent
quality, a friendly quality, about it, which leads to bodhicitta. This welcoming
acceptance allows whatever comes to reveal itself in its fullness. Ultimately,
mindfulness opens into the realm of the sacred. To speak of knowing things as
they are, as they really are-what is that but spiritual talk?
CONCENTRATION
Faith
effort
mindfulness
The fourth spiritual faculty is concentration. Concentration
arises naturally out of the effort to be mindful. It gives the power which makes
mindfulness so effective. Concentration is often defined as "one-pointed
attention." In the context of insight meditation, it is steady, one-pointed
attention upon a succession of changing objects. Concentration keeps attention
pinned down upon whatever object mindfulness is noticing. As mindfulness moves
from, say, the breath to a sound, concentration moves with it, and again keeps
attention focused and steady. In each case it lasts for just a moment, because
the mind moves so quickly. But it begins again in the next moment, with the same
intensity. This so-called "momentary concentration" provides the power
for the work of our practice.
The key to developing concentration is one word:
effort. It's the effort to pay close attention, to keep coming back. Usually the
energies of the mind are scattered in a thousand different directions. The mind
is all over the place, and its energy is simply frittered away in random thoughts
and desires, hopes, fears, feelings. All the huge potential power that it has
is wasted. But as the effort to be mindful becomes more consistent, these scattered
energies come together and converge around a single point, and the mind becomes
focused, like a lens. If parallel rays of light fall upon a piece of paper, they
won't do much more than warm the paper. But if the same amount of light is focused
through a lens, the paper will burst into flame. In the same way, concentration
focuses the energy of the mind, and gives it the power to cut through surface
appearance.
As concentration deepens, the mind becomes calm and centered. It's
less reactive. It comes into greater emotional balance. We can more easily let
go and let things be. The mind has a spaciousness which gives room for pain and
anger and fear all to arise and pass, without our being broken by them, or needing
to act them out.
Concentration is very powerful, but it's only a tool. Despite
its astonishing power, it cannot of itself lead to wisdom. When it's balanced
with mindfulness, the two together cut through conventional reality, and understanding
unfolds by itself.
WISDOM
Wisdom is the last of the spiritual qualities.
It is ongoing inspiration for the work of the other four, and also their fulfillment.
Wisdom is not knowledge. It cannot be learned from books, for it is intuitive
understanding that arises from close observation of experience. It is insight
into reality, into the nature of things as they are.
One aspect of wisdom is
seeing the omnipresence of anicca-impermanence. Wisdom knows that nothing in this
conditioned realm will last. It knows that everything that arises passes away.
It knows that change occurs at every level from the cosmic to the microscopic.
A star, a civilization, a tree, a thought-each arises, evolves through time, disintegrates
and disappears. Timetables differ of course, for every phenomenon and event. And
change can be so rapid-or so slow-that it is not ordinarily seen at all. But the
trajectory is always the same. Whatever is, will be was.
We may think we know
this truth, and perhaps we do. But is it living wisdom? For each of us, the mark
of impermanence reveals itself most intimately in our inescapable mortality. We
all are going to die. However unwelcome that thought may be, death is at the end
of every life. You and I are no exception. Everything that is born will die. But
because we do not live our lives from this place of understanding, we suffer.
There
is a constant clash between the nature of existence and our desires. In a world
of radical change, we want permanence and security and enduring happiness, and
they cannot be found. We live in an imaginary world, and grasp and cling to the
way things used to be, or how we want them to be, and find it hard to accept the
way they actually are. The result is dukkha-suffering, all the dissatisfactions
and sorrows of the human heart. Dukkha is the second truth, which wisdom more
and more deeply comes to know.
But the deepest lesson that wisdom has to teach
is the fact of anattà-the fact that nothing is inherently substantial and
real. We think that we are separate, solid entities, and struggle to protect and
satisfy and gratify our precious sense of self, not understanding that at the
closest level of examination, no permanent, unchanging self is ever to be found.
The constituents of mind and body are, in fact, in constant flux. Body, sensations,
thoughts, emotions, arise and disappear, arise and disappear, moment by moment
by moment. Keen observation reveals that mind and body are an ever changing process,
a moving energy field. There is no permanent being behind phenomena to whom it
all is happening. There is no one here to suffer. A Sri Lankan monk summed this
fact up very simply: "No self. No problem." Yet this truth is baffling,
and eludes us until the mind is purified.
The doors of perception are gradually
cleansed as the spiritual powers gather strength. Mindfulness sees ever more deeply,
and greed, hate and delusion diminish. Our endless likes and dislikes thin out
and fall away. The confusion that clouds perception begins to dissolve. We glimpse
the interweaving laws of impermanence, suffering and selflessness, and the knowledge
is transforming. The way that we understand ourselves and live our lives begins
to change.
We don't hold on so much, and make fewer demands upon existence.
We begin to relax, and ease more into the flow of things. We can delight in the
good things of life when they are present, and accept change without protest when
they end. The heart opens wider as it learns there is nothing to lose
The
sense of self lessens. We become less selfish, less self centered. As mindfulness
reveals our dukkha and we experience its pain, we begin to feel the suffering
of others. Boundaries disappear, and we turn to the needs of others as if they
were our own. Gradually the delicate art of loving without possessing becomes
apparent-the art of how to care, yet not to care. There is a growing sense of
similarity, of oneness, of communion with all-which more and more means that the
only possible response is concern and care for all.
Wisdom is very hard won.
It comes from facing our own suffering and learning the profound lessons that
suffering has to teach. The lessons are all about letting go. Not holding on to
desire, but letting it go. Wherever we hold, the sense of self is present together
with suffering. When we let go, self vanishes and suffering dissolves into lightness,
ease and peace.
It is in the deep understanding of suffering that compassion
comes to full bloom. For when the heart/mind no longer holds to anything, it is
fully open. There is no self-centeredness and so, no separation. No I, no you.
Love then is boundless, and ceaselessly responsive.