Audacious & Undaunted
May 15, 2022

Tonight is Visakha Puja, the full moon in May. The tradition is that the Buddha was born on the full moon in May; thirty-five years after that, he gained awakening on the full moon in May; and forty-five years after that, he passed away in total nibbana on the full moon in May. So we’re celebrating three events at once.

What we did just now is called amisa puja. We were paying homage with material things—flowers, candles, incense. Now it’s time for patipatti puja, paying homage through the practice. On the night of his passing away, the Buddha said that this was the true way to pay homage to him. The devas were sprinkling flowers down from heaven—according to the texts—playing music, sprinkling incense. The Buddha told the monks, “This is not how you appropriately pay respect to the Tathagata. You pay respect by practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma,” which elsewhere he explains as meaning practicing for the sake of disenchantment, from disenchantment practicing for dispassion, and from dispassion, practicing for release.

Of the three events, the awakening is the one that’s easiest to relate to. It’s the one that’s told in most detail, and is told from the Buddha’s own point of view. The passing away, of course, is told by what other people remember. His birth is told in very short terms, what he remembered of it. He was mindful and alert as he entered his mother’s womb; mindful and alert when he was born. But the really interesting and useful things have to do with his awakening. This is why when they say that you have conviction in the Buddha, it’s conviction in his awakening, because this is the event that’s most relevant to the problem we’re facing. As he said when he first went out into the wilderness, he saw that he was subject to aging, illness, and death. He wanted to find something that was not subject to aging, illness, and death. That’s pretty audacious. Most people say, “Well, you have to accept the fact that aging is going to come, illness will come, death will,” but he didn’t accept that. He said, “These things will come, but there must be something that doesn’t age, doesn’t grow ill, doesn’t die.”

This means two things. One, when you find this, then when aging, illness, and death come, there’s no suffering. And after your final death, you experience an unchanging dimension that’s free from these things. You’ll never have to experience them again. So it’s because of his desire for what goes beyond death that we have the Dhamma.

Think about that: someone who desired something that radical and was able to find it.

They say that on the night of his awakening, there was an earthquake—and it does quake the earth when you start thinking about the fact there is something that doesn’t age, grow ill, and die, and it can be found through human effort. This is why conviction in the Buddha’s awakening is relevant to the practice. It leads to persistence, it leads to mindfulness, concentration, discernment. This is relevant to us, because the Buddha’s message was that he found it and we can find it too.

On the night of his awakening, he learned some important insights. After getting the mind into solid concentration, he turned the power of that concentration to the question, “Is death the end, or does something happen after death?” At that point, there were a lot of people with lots of different ideas on this issue. Some said that death was a total wipeout. Others said that you died but you stayed the same. You came back in the same status. You’ve been a Brahman before, you’re going to be a Brahman again. You’ve been a dog before, you’re going to be a dog again. Others said that you changed.

The Buddha, as he turned his mind to this question, began to remember his many previous lifetimes, stretching way back many, many eons. He saw that he had changed radically again and again. Sometimes he’d been in hell, sometimes he’d been up in the highest heavens, but wherever he went, it was impermanent. It wouldn’t last. You’d die and you’d be reborn again.

Then the question was, “Why so many different levels? Was there a pattern?” So on the second watch of the night, he turned the power of his concentration to that question. He saw beings all over the cosmos dying and being reborn in line with their actions. Their actions were their intentions. Their intentions were informed by their views, and their views were informed by the people they listened to, the people they respected. This is why, in his later teachings, he put so much emphasis on finding admirable friends, people who have right view, because they will influence the course of your life.

But then he looked further. As he said, his memory of past lifetimes went back much further than anybody else’s. There had been people who’d remembered previous lifetimes, but because their memory was limited, they came to some wrong views. Some saw people doing unskillful things and then going to hell in the next lifetime, doing skillful things and then going to heaven in the next lifetime, so they concluded that what you did totally determined where you’re going to go. You do something bad, you’re going to go down. You do something good, you’re going to go up. Other people saw cases where people did something unskillful but then went to heaven. Other people did things that were skillful but went to hell. So those people said, “Your actions had no bearing at all on your next rebirth.”

Then the Buddha looked into the issue and he saw that things were not as simple as all that. Both sides were too simplistic. He saw there were cases where people did skillful things and went to heaven. It wasn’t just because of one or two skillful things; it was because of what they did afterwards as well, and also the state of mind at death. They held on to right view.

There were cases where people did unskillful things and then more unskillful things after that and, at the moment of death, held on to wrong view, and that pulled them down. But there were cases where people did skillful things in this life, but then their minds switched. As the Buddha once said, “The mind is very quick to reverse itself.” Either they did unskillful things or they developed wrong view at the moment of death, and that pulled them down. Other people who had done unskillful things, but then later on they changed: At the moment of death, they developed right view, and that pulled them up. Now, the results of their unskillful actions were not totally wiped out. It simply meant that they were delayed. But in the delay, these people had the opportunity to develop more skill in the next lifetime and come to the point where they could weaken greatly the bad results of the previous actions.

The lesson he learned here was that the power of the present moment, that the moment of death could totally change the course of your future life, depending on the views you had at that point.

This is why, when we meditate, we’re focusing on the present moment, what we’re doing right here right now—not because the present moment is a wonderful place to hang out, but because the present moment has power. If you’re alert, mindful, and ardent in what you’re doing in the present moment, you can have an impact right now on the amount of suffering or lack of suffering you have here and now and on into the future. This is how the Buddha’s awakening is relevant to us, because from there he went on to look into his own mind in the present moment.

The third knowledge, which he gained when looking there, was what ended the effluents, in other words, the outflows of the mind that keep the mind going in this process of death and rebirth and re-death and rebirth. He saw that if he understood things in terms of four noble truths and followed the duties appropriate to each of those truths, he could go beyond birth and aging and illness and death entirely.

The first noble truth was the truth of suffering. He saw that suffering isn’t just pain. It’s clinging. We cling to the form of the body. We cling to our feelings. We cling to our perceptions, our thought constructs, our consciousness. And in that clinging is the suffering.

Why do we cling? We cling because of craving. If you can comprehend the suffering to the point where you go beyond any passion, aversion, and delusion around it, and if you can abandon the craving, that’s the end of suffering. That was the third noble truth. The fourth noble truth is what you do. Everything from right view to right concentration boils down to virtue, concentration, and discernment. These are the qualities that allow you to abandon your cravings if you do them right.

You practice virtue to get some control over your cravings, and also to get sensitive to what the mind is thinking, what its intentions are when it acts. Because the precepts can be broken only intentionally, they focus your attention on your intentions.

All too many people go through life without paying careful attention to their intentions. They just go on their urges. If you ask them, “Why did you do that?” sometimes they can’t say. But when you practice virtue, you have to be very clear about what your intentions are, because those make the difference between whether you’re maintaining the precepts or not.

Concentration again is a way of getting some control over the mind. Focus it on one object and try to find a sense of ease and well-being with that object. Like the breath: Breathe in ways that give rise to pleasure, give rise to rapture. Breathe in ways that you can be aware of the whole body as you breathe in, breathe out, and spread that sense of pleasure and rapture throughout the whole body. Then you can calm the effect of that pleasure and rapture. You can even calm the breath until it grows still.

When the body gets really quiet like this, you can see the mind a lot more clearly. You begin to see that this is how an intention forms, this is how a craving forms, and this is how the mind is in collusion with its unskillful states. This is how you can get it so that it doesn’t want to fall into unskillful states again. That’s how concentration leads to discernment, as your actions come more and more in line with the duties of the four noble truths.

The Buddha said completing those duties was what brought about his awakening. In other words, he saw the regularity of the Dhamma, and then beyond that is something called nibbana, or unbinding. That’s the dimension where there is no aging, no illness, no death. That’s when the earth quaked. The Buddha up to that point had been a bodhisattva, but he was now the Buddha. He was now the awakened one.

The story continues that he stayed in the area around the tree under which he had attained awakening, the Bodhi tree, for seven weeks, experiencing the bliss of release, before he started teaching. We are fortunate that he decided to teach. Once he’d gained awakening, he was indebted to no one. He could have not taught if he had made that choice. In fact, he was even thinking of not teaching. The story goes that Sahampati Brahma got upset at seeing what was going on in the Buddha’s mind. He came down from his heaven, knelt down on one knee, and said, “Please teach. There are those with little dust in their eyes. They will understand the Dhamma.” The Buddha reflected on that and realized it was true, that it would be worthwhile to teach. So we’re fortunate that he did, otherwise we would never have known what had happened that night. But he did teach. He taught the four noble truths. He taught all the things we need to know.

He showed that it is possible to go beyond this big issue in life, the fact that we’re all going to die. Most people don’t want to think about it, or their attitude is, “Well, if we’re going to die, let’s grab as much fun, grab as much power, grab as much whatever as we can before we go.” But then it’s all going to be torn from our grasp. It’s a miserable attitude to have.

He showed, one, that death is not annihilation. It’s followed by rebirth, dependent on your craving. But craving is not reliable. As he said, you could live a good life and then have a sudden switch at the moment of death, developing wrong view, and it’d pull you down. So you really need to train the mind to the point where it knows that it will not be pulled down. When you’ve had your first glimpse of the deathless, you know that what the Buddha taught was true. He really did know what he was talking about. The deathless exists, and it’s something outside of space, outside of time, so nothing can touch it. Once you’ve seen that, the Buddha says, the amount of suffering left to you is much less than it was before.

Once he reached down and picked up a little dirt under his fingernail and asked the monks, “Which is greater, the amount of dirt in the earth or the amount of dirt under my fingernail?” The monks said, “Of course, the amount of dirt in the earth is much greater.” The Buddha said, “In the same way, for someone who has seen the deathless, the amount of suffering left over is the dirt under the fingernail. If you haven’t seen the deathless, the possibility of suffering is as great as the earth.”

So these are things we should think about as we think about the Buddha’s awakening, what he’s shown about the truths of birth and death, the truths of what is beyond birth and beyond death, and the possibility that we, too, can find the deathless. It was all because of the audacity of his desire and the fact that he remained undaunted. He tried many different ways that didn’t work, didn’t work, didn’t work. He tried formless states, hanging out there, realizing that was not the answer. He tried self-torture, and that was not the answer. Six years of self-torture. Imagine his dedication. That was not the answer. Yet he didn’t give up. It’s because he was audacious and undaunted: That’s why we have the Dhamma.

Think about all the trouble he went through to find that, and have a sense of its value, of how precious it is. After all, it’s not the case that the Dhamma is always available for people to listen to and to practice. During times when the Buddha’s teachings have been forgotten, other people have to find it all on their own and go through all those difficulties. So here the Dhamma is available. It shows that there is a way out. This is what it means to have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. We’re convinced in the Buddha, we’re convinced in the Dhamma that he taught, but as he says, conviction is really true only when you act on it. This is why we practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma: the Dhamma as it’s taught, the Dhamma for the sake of disenchantment, dispassion, release. That’s how we pay homage to the Buddha. We pay homage to our own desire for true happiness.

Most people go through life, and their desire for happiness gets beaten down, beaten down. They say, “I’ve got to learn how to accept this limitation, and I’ve got to learn how to accept that limitation.” But the Buddha again was defiant, “No, there must be something that doesn’t die.” His desire to find that is a gift of the Dhamma, and he’s encouraging us to have the same desire. We hear so much that the Buddha was against craving, and it’s true, as he said, that three types of craving—craving for sensuality, for becoming, and non-becoming—cause suffering. But the desire to be skillful, which is the desire that drove him on his path all the way to the deathless, is part of the path. So try to nurture that, focus it on the causes—virtue concentration, discernment—and the result, which is release, can be yours.