Dispassion & Delight

In the sutta we chanted just now, the Buddha says that all fabrications are inconstant, all fabrications are stressful, all dhammas are not-self. This, he said, is always true. Whether there’s the arising of a Buddha or not, these things are true.

The question is, are these ideas always beneficial? The Buddha does have that passage where he talks about how things that are true may not be beneficial. And we can find suttas where he actually chides people for applying the perception of inconstancy or not-self in the wrong way, in the wrong context.

Usually it had to do with kamma. Ajaan Suwat pointed this out one time. He said the Buddha talks about the aggregates being not-self, the sense-spheres being not-self—and then there’s that passage we chant again and again: “I am the owner of my actions.” I’m responsible for these things. As the Buddha himself put it, if we say simply that all action leads to stress—because all actions lead to feelings, and feelings are stressful and not-self—what motivation would people have to do what is skillful? How could they follow the path?

There was a psychological study done years back of people in Sri Lanka who were said to be very into the Dhamma—contemplating the three characteristics all the time—and the psychologists came to the conclusion that these people were suffering from mild depression. That’s because they were applying the three characteristics in the wrong way.

One is seeing them as “characteristics.” The Buddha never uses that term when he talks about inconstancy, stress, and not-self. He calls them “perceptions.” And we know the nature of perceptions. As he says, they’re like mirages. A mirage gives, at best, only a partial view of what’s over the horizon—and a lot of wrong information, too, if you take it too literally. Perceptions are representations—sketches of something. We use them for purposes. We say it’s true enough for this or that purpose, but no perception can give you a one hundred percent replica of what it’s representing. As the Buddha pointed out, even those fabrications that are stressful can have their pleasant side. If they didn’t have their pleasant side, we wouldn’t fall for them.

So the perceptions may be true to a certain extent, but they may not be serving the right purpose at the right time. You have to watch out for this, because otherwise it can get depressing—especially if you turn the perception of not-self into a perception of no-self. Then you get the idea that there’s nobody there. You’re riding in a bus and you discover there’s nobody driving the bus, nobody making the choices. That gets depressing. You feel that you have no choice in your actions at all.

We have to remember that when the Buddha introduced the idea of these perceptions, it was to people who, one, had already gained stream entry, and two, had learned the four noble truths along with the duties appropriate to those noble truths.

It’s the noble truths, along with their duties that provide the context for these perceptions. A lot of the duties of the noble truths have to do with dispassion. You try to comprehend suffering, and comprehension means that you understand it to the point where there’s no passion, aversion or delusion around it. You try to abandon the cause of suffering, which means that you develop dispassion for the cause. The third noble truth is when you succeed at developing dispassion for the cause. But, then, with the fourth noble truth, the duty is to develop it—and developing requires passion.

The Buddha again and again about the fact that you need to have passion for the Dhamma, for the practice of developing the path. You need to be passionate about abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful qualities. You want to be passionate about developing seclusion, which can mean both physical seclusion and the seclusion of concentration. If you’re not passionate about these things, you can’t do them.

So the Buddha’s not telling you to just give up. He’s saying there are some things you have to do and get enthusiastic about. Then, in the context of completely that duty, you’ll eventually get to dispassion for the path and you can let go of all four of the noble truths. But before you get dispassion for the path, you have to develop it, to see how far it can take you.

So when you understand those duties as the context, then you understand when to apply the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self, and when to put them aside.

When you’re focusing on getting rid of your defilements, on getting rid of the hindrances that are standing in the way of your concentration—okay, you try to see that your sensual desire is focused on things that are stressful. Why do we have sensual desire to begin with? Because we’re looking for pleasure, looking for ease. But when you contemplate the things that you’re focused on, you find that the pursuit of them is stressful, and whatever you get out of them is really inconstant, i.e., it’s unreliable.

So the question is, “Is it worth identifying with, that desire?” Well, not really, because you’ve got something better, as you work on the concentration. There, you don’t apply the perception of inconstancy, stress, and not-self quite yet to the concentration—because you’re trying to develop it, to get it solid. As the Buddha said, you’re trying to master it to the point where you can enter and leave at will; and stay as long as you like.

To develop that kind of mastery, you have to really want to do this well. The Buddha’s instructions for concentration are there in his description of right mindfulness. One of the qualities of right mindfulness is ardency. Or, in Ajaan Fuang’s words, you have to be crazy about concentration. You have to be crazy about your meditation. Be the kind of person who wants to be with the breath at any spare moment. Have some passion for this skill that you’re working on. That’s how it develops. It’s not a tool just to give up.

The Buddha’s giving us a training, and the training requires mastering some skills and enjoying the process of mastery. There should be some joy in right effort, as you delight in abandoning unskillful qualities. You see that you used to go for lust, anger, and delusion of certain sorts, but now you realize that you don’t need that anymore. You’ve grown up. That’s what dispassion means: You grow up, and as you’re on the path, you want to delight in growing up. So dispassion is not depression. It’s maturity.

And until the path becomes mature, you have to be passionate about it. When it does become mature, you realize it’s going to take you to something even better than it is. The Buddha’s not asking you to give up things without providing you with something better in exchange.

So be passionate about the path. Realize you’ve got something really good here. You’ve got this opportunity that doesn’t come all the time. It’s not the case that the teachings on right view through right concentration are always available. The tradition says there are whole eons, whole universes, that never have a Buddha. Imagine that…

But we’re in a universe that has one. His teachings are still alive. So delight in the fact that we have a Dhamma like that.

Sometimes we’re told that the Dhamma is just a product of somebody who happened to live in another culture in another time. Therefore, it has to be changed to fit our culture and our time. That’s the opposite of delighting in the Dhamma.

To delight in the Dhamma is to realize there are some teachings that have stood the test of time. They don’t need to be changed, so you can take them as they are and use them to train yourself. You’ve got some reliable guides—so delight in that.

Delight when you’re able to let go of your defilements. Delight when you can get the mind to settle down and it stays. Delight in concentration—when the mind can be on its own and have a sense of well-being that’s totally sufficient inside. Delight in the fact that you’re on a path that leads to harmlessness, to an absence of conflict, to total peace with nothing lacking.

Let those thoughts encourage you. Be passionate about that goal. Then, when you’ve attained that goal, you look at everything else that you’ve been holding on to and you realize you don’t need that anymore. You can let that go as well. But in the meantime, be passionate about what you’re doing as you fulfill your duties on the path, because that’s how they get done.