12. Aspects of Dispassion

In describing the end of suffering, the Buddha not only includes dispassion in the list of events leading up to the realization of unbinding. He also, in one passage, uses the word “dispassion” to cover the whole range of those events. In this way, he shows that the act of developing dispassion carries with it many implications, both in the mind and in the world of the senses dependent on the mind’s activities. This, of course, is in line with the principle we noted above: that the mind is the forerunner of all experience. Changes from within the mind will have to have an impact not only within you, but also on your experience of the world at large.

Here’s the passage:

We can take this passage apart word by word, focusing on the crucial terms.

First, phenomena (dhamma): This term denotes any object of the mind. Because the consciousness of nibbāna itself has no object, it’s said to be the end of phenomena (AN 10:58), which is why this list of terms coming under dispassion goes only as far as the realization of unbinding, and doesn’t include unbinding itself.

Unfabricated: The above passage in AN 4:34 is followed by a statement that the supreme fabricated dhamma is the noble eightfold path. This implies that dispassion, the highest of all dhammas, whether fabricated or not, is both unfabricated and the highest of all possible objects of awareness. This presents a paradox. Ordinarily, all objects of awareness are conditioned by the factors of dependent co-arising, starting with intention and fabrication fueled by desire and ignorance. When these factors cease—in terms of kamma, this would mean that there is no present-moment intention—experience at the six senses has to cease as well. This would suggest that dispassion should not be both unfabricated and a dhamma at the same time. The way out of this paradox is to note that the “object” of awareness resulting from dispassion is the act of watching all the processes of dependent co-arising collapse as there are no longer any underlying conditions to support them.

Here it’s important to note that this collapse can’t come about by simply intending for fabrications to stop, because that intention would count as another form of fabrication, and so it would keep the process of dependent co-arising going. Instead, the mind has to be totally devoid of intention in the present moment for fabrications to cease.

The Canon illustrates the paradoxical nature of this event—in which the mind has no intention either to fabricate or to not fabricate—with a simile. A deva once asked the Buddha how he crossed the stream—the image implying that he got over to awakening on the other side—and he responded that he crossed the stream neither by pushing forward nor by staying in place (SN 1:1). Now, within space and time, staying in place and going someplace else are our only options at any given moment. The Buddha crossed over by not choosing either. In a similar way, dispassion doesn’t choose either to fabricate or not to fabricate. That’s how the unfabricated is experienced.

The sobering of intoxication: The Canon lists three types of intoxication that foster unskillful actions and qualities of the mind: intoxication with youth, with health, and with life (AN 3:39; AN 5:57). When you’re intoxicated with these things, you feel that aging, illness, and death are far away, so there’s no need to prepare for them anytime soon. You tend to act as you like without fear of the consequences. This heedlessness is what makes it easy to act in harmful and thoughtless ways. The fact that dispassion subdues these sorts of intoxication means that realizing the cessation of suffering has an ethical dimension: It removes the heedlessness that would create the conditions for unskillful behavior. This is why even the lowest level of awakening—the first glimpse of the deathless—is said to perfect your training in virtue (AN 3:87). There’s no room in the Buddha’s teaching for the idea that awakening puts you above ethical norms.

The Pali word for intoxication, mada, can also mean infatuation, as when you’re infatuated with pride or childish games. In this sense, the subduing of intoxication would mean not only sobering up, but also growing up. You outgrow your childish pursuits and become an adult.

The subduing of thirst: Although this phrase uses another word for thirst—pipāsa—it means the same thing as the ending of craving/thirst: taṇhā.

The uprooting of attachment: The word for attachment here, ālaya, can also mean “home.” This relates, of course, to the house-building analogy. The mind no longer feels the need to build any more homes in the form of future lives, because its “dwelling” is unfabricated and so cannot change. At the same time, the word ālaya also carries connotations of nostalgia, in which case it means you feel no nostalgia for any of your “homes” of the past.

The breaking of the round: This refers to the round of rebirth. Dispassion puts an end to becoming—the process of taking on an identity in a world of experience—and because this internal process is the prerequisite for taking birth in any outside world, it puts an end to the wandering-on from birth to birth, as stated above in Dhp 153–154. Full awakening doesn’t necessarily bring with it knowledge of your previous lives, but the act of stepping out of space and time brings with it the knowledge that the round of birth and rebirth has been going on for a long, long time.

The destruction of craving: This doesn’t mean the simple ending of an individual act of craving. It means the end of all cravings.

Dispassion: The Pali word for dispassion, virāga, can also mean the fading of a color. But because there’s no darkness in the deathless dimension (Ud 1:10), the “fading” here is not fading into darkness. It’s more like the fading of colors when a picture is overexposed: They fade into pure light.

Cessation: When there’s no passion for fabrications in the present moment, there’s nothing to keep them going, so they cease. However, awakening doesn’t erase your past kamma. This means that if there’s still past kamma that has to be worked out, the awakened person returns to experience the six senses, but his/her relationship to those senses is now different. The Canon says repeatedly that awakened people experience the senses, the aggregates, and even the objects of meditation “disjoined” from them (MN 140; SN 47:4). In simple terms, because they’re no longer trying to feed off them, they don’t take them in. That’s how they’re disjoined.

The realization of unbinding: In ordinary Pali usage, the term, “unbinding,” (nibbāna) was used to describe the extinguishing of a fire. To understand the implications of this image, though, we have to understand how the Buddha described the physics of how fire worked.

Individual fires, he said, were caused by provoking the fire property, which existed, to a greater or lesser degree, in a calm latent state in all things. When you provoked it—say, by using a fire-starter—it would grab hold and cling to the fuel that would sustain it. (Here, for fuel, the Buddha used the word upādāna, the same word for clinging/feeding that he used in the definition of suffering in the first noble truth.) As long as the fire burned, it was trapped in a state of heat and agitation. When it went out, it let go of its fuel, grew calm, and was released.

The Buddha used the term “unbinding” for the goal both to indicate that it was a state of freedom and calm, and also to suggest how to get there. Just as fuel doesn’t cling to the fire, it’s not the case that the aggregates cling to you. You’re the one clinging to them. You gain freedom by letting them go, just as a fire goes out and is released when it lets go of its fuel.

The main difference between the nibbāna of the fire and the nibbāna experienced by the mind is that the fire property can be provoked repeatedly and so give rise to other fires. The full release of the mind, though, is said to be unprovoked (MN 29). Because this release is uncaused, there’s no reason for it to end. At the same time, nothing can provoke the mind into clinging to anything ever again.

The Buddha also uses the metaphor of an extinguished fire to make the point that the person who has gained release can’t be described. Just as a fire, when it goes out, can’t be described as going east, west, north, or south, in the same way, a person fully released can’t be described as existing, not existing, both, or neither (MN 72; SN 44:1). That’s because people are measured and defined as beings in terms of their attachments (SN 22:36). When they have no more attachments, they can’t be defined, and so can’t be properly described.

This means that when you no longer define yourself as a being through desire and passion, you’re not bringing about annihilation. Instead, you’re no longer limited by your desires and passions. The simile here is of the ocean: Just as no one can truly measure the amount of water in the ocean because it’s so vast, no one can measure the person who’s fully awakened (MN 72; SN 44:1; AN 3:116).