13. Possible, Desirable, Objectively True

Although, strictly speaking, unbinding can’t properly be described, the Buddha still had to talk about it in order to convince his listeners that it was a possible goal, desirable and objectively true. In other words, he had to get them to want to follow the path going there. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be motivated to subdue their other desires and passions in order to attain it.

Now, in speaking about unbinding, the Buddha couldn’t offer proof for what he was saying. Proof for his claims would come only when his listeners followed his instructions and found for themselves that, yes, the path of training he taught did lead to total freedom from suffering (MN 27).

In the meantime, the Buddha’s task was simply to be reasonable in his explanations and inspiring in the force of his personal example.

Here we’ll talk about his explanations.

To make the point that unbinding was possible—that a fabricated path could lead to an unfabricated experience—the Buddha relied on his explanation of causality. If everything you experienced in the present moment were totally determined by a creator god or by your past actions, you wouldn’t be free to practice a path that would lead to the end of suffering. If everything happened without cause, there would be no way to follow a pattern of cause and effect to arrive at any goal at all.

However, given the principles of this/that conditionality, there is a pattern to causes and effects that can be mastered, while there’s also freedom within that pattern to direct those causes toward goals of your choosing, and in particular, to a goal that goes beyond the pattern.

Now, those causes can’t produce the unfabricated—whatever they produced would have to be fabricated—but they can lead to the threshold where intentions cancel one another out and all fabricated things fall away. This is why the Buddha used the image of the path to describe the practices that lead to unbinding. A path doesn’t cause its goal, but following it can take you to the goal. In the same way, the path of the triple training doesn’t cause unbinding, but following it can take you there.

Two of the characteristics that the Buddha noted about the mind explain how it can take advantage of the potential for the qualified freedom available within this/that conditionality here and now.

One of them we’ve already noted: The mind can change direction more quickly than anything else imaginable. This tendency can cause trouble if you’re already on the path, but if you’ve fallen off the path—or haven’t even gotten onto it yet—you can take advantage of the mind’s ability to change quickly to get yourself on.

The second point the Buddha notes is that the mind is luminous, and because it’s luminous, it can be developed (AN 1:53). Some people have interpreted this statement as meaning that the mind is already pure by nature, but the context of the statement shows that it means something else. The important word in the context is “developed.” If the mind were already pure, it wouldn’t need to be developed. So, taken in context, the statement means that the mind can observe its actions and their results, and that, because of this ability, it can see when it’s causing suffering and when it’s not. It can then take advantage of that knowledge and of its own changeability to develop skillful qualities and act in new ways that no longer lead to suffering. In fact, the most fundamental approach the Buddha recommends for training yourself—commitment and reflection (AN 10:73)—depends on the mind’s ability to choose a direction, to stick with it, and to reflect on that commitment and its results to see, step by step, what changes in course need to be made.

Even though these observations about causality and the mind don’t provide definite proof that unbinding is possible, they do leave that possibility open. That’s all that any statement can do. The actual proof comes from following the path to unbinding until you’ve arrived.

Here the Buddha provided an analogy. A skilled elephant hunter goes into a forest to find a bull elephant. He sees large elephant footprints, but because he’s skilled, he doesn’t jump to the conclusion that they’re the footprints of the bull elephant he wants. Why? Because there are dwarf female elephants with big feet. The footprints might be theirs. But the footprints look promising, so he follows them. He comes across slash marks high in the trees, but because he’s skilled, he doesn’t jump to the conclusion that they’re the marks of the elephant he wants. Why? Because there are tall female elephants with tusks. The slash marks might be theirs. But the marks look promising, so he continues following them until he actually sees a large bull elephant in a clearing or at the foot of a tree. That’s when he knows that he’s found the elephant he wants.

In the same way, you can hear the Dhamma and even practice the Dhamma, through the various levels of meditation and supernormal knowledges that can come from concentration, but those attainments count only as footprints and slash marks. Only when you’ve seen the deathless at the first stage of awakening do you know the Buddha was right. And only when you’ve gained the freedom of full awakening do you fully arrive at the goal you’ve been looking for (MN 27).

To make the point that the truth of unbinding—along with all the realizations that follow on realizing unbinding—is objective, the Buddha noted that it’s not experienced through the six senses (MN 49). As we’ve learned from dependent co-arising, all things known through the six senses are conditioned by fabrications and intentions, and in particular by past actions, given that the six senses themselves are to be viewed as the results of past actions. This means that ordinary sensory knowledge is colored by desire and passion. It can’t provide a grounding for any knowledge that’s fully objective. Even when the Buddha told some of his listeners to judge a teaching by the results that come when putting it into practice, he didn’t say that they could arrive at fully objective conclusions until they had had their first glimpse of awakening. Only a knowledge totally free from past conditioning, such as the Buddha’s full awakening, could qualify as objectively true.

This is why the Buddha called unbinding the highest noble truth (MN 140). It’s also why he used a special verb to describe knowledge of unbinding: A person who’s had a direct experience of unbinding doesn’t simply know it (jānāti). He or she directly knows it (abhijānāti) without having to depend on any intermediaries or conditioning factors.

As for pointing out how desirable unbinding was, the Buddha primarily made use of similes. One of his most graphic similes described a hypothetical deal by which you would have to undergo extreme pain and torture but would be guaranteed a realization of the four noble truths—one of his expressions for gaining your first glimpse of the deathless. As he said, if such a deal were possible and it were offered to you, you’d be well advised to take it.

Given that the happiness of just a glimpse of awakening could obliterate the memory of that amount of pain and torture, imagine how great the happiness of total awakening to unbinding, free from desire and passion, could be.