23. Virtue as Attitudes (3)

Another discourse in the Canon—AN 8:30—lists eight qualities that, when you develop them, make you worthy of the Dhamma. Three of the qualities correspond to the training in heightened mind, or concentration, and two to the training in heightened discernment. We’ll discuss them when we get to those parts of the training.

The three remaining qualities are part of the training in heightened virtue: being reclusive rather than entangled; being modest rather than self-aggrandizing; and being content rather than discontent.

These three qualities appear as a set in many other lists of qualities that the Buddha encouraged as well, probably because they’re mutually supportive. Being reclusive—seeking solitude—is the quality most prized as a prerequisite for developing concentration and discernment. The other two qualities serve to support solitude, but the support goes the other way as well. Living in solitude means that your material needs are less than they would be if you had a family, so you can be content with less. It also makes it easier to be modest.

But in addition to supporting solitude, contentment and modesty also perform other functions, too. In training yourself to be modest, you learn to curb your sense of self. In training yourself to be content with few material possessions, you make yourself less of a burden on others, which is an expression of compassion.

All three of these qualities are expressions of two determinations: relinquishment and calm. In this way, they prepare the mind for concentration practice.

The Buddha notes that not all his disciples are ready to go find seclusion in the forest. Only when they’ve received proper training can they handle the hardships of seclusion. This is why a new monk has to live for at least five years under the guidance of a mentor, in order to take advantage of the benefits that can come from admirable friendship. Even the Rhinoceros Sutta, the Canon’s strongest statement of the values of seclusion, praises admirable friendship:

If you gain an astute companion,
a fellow traveler, right-living, enlightened,
overcoming all troubles,
	go with him, gratified,
	mindful.  — Sn 1:3

The duty of a mentor is not only to teach the new monk the Dhamma, but also to train him in the qualities needed to make the most of seclusion. Without that training, a new monk could “sink to the bottom or float away”:

This fact presents a practical problem: As we’ll see, the ability to progress in concentration requires that you have some time in seclusion, and yet here the Buddha is saying that living in a forest can plunder the state of your mind if you haven’t already gained concentration. This would seem to create an impasse, but there are three ways around the impasse.

1) A young monk, even when living in dependence on his mentor, is encouraged to spend temporary periods alone in the forest, to grow accustomed to the challenges presented by that environment. As long as his meditation is going well, he’s allowed to stay there alone.

2) There are other ways of finding seclusion beside going into the forest. The texts mention living in an empty dwelling as an alternative that allows you to be alone but without having to face the dangers of forest life.

3) One of the main challenges in staying in the forest is the tendency for your inner conversation to run wild. We’ve already noted that training in restraint of the senses is one way to gain some control over the ways in which you talk to yourself. As we’ll see, training in contentment and modesty offer good training in this area as well.

Contentment is defined as follows:

The Buddha’s standards for what counts as adequate food, clothing, and shelter for a monk are quite bare. Every new monk is told, at the end of his ordination ceremony, that his supports in the holy life will be almsfood, robes made from thrown-away cloth, the roots of a tree as his dwelling, and smelly urine medicine for treating disease. There’s a lot of disagreement as to what that last support is, but what’s obvious in all four cases is that the monk should learn to be happy with the barest minimum in terms of material requisites. Anything finer than that is to be regarded a superfluous luxury.

However, the Buddha was wise enough to know that desires related to greed are not the only defilements you have to deal with when trying to be content with little. As you get used to living with the bare minimum, you can also give rise to desires related to pride and conceit over the fact that you have greater powers of endurance than those who live more luxuriously. The dangers of pride and conceit are that they can make you heedless, blinding you to subtler defilements inside. That’s why he encouraged his monks to adopt a noble attitude toward their contentment:

Contentment requires equanimity.

When gaining food & drink,
		staples & cloth,
	he should not make a hoard.
Nor should he be upset
when receiving no gains.  — Sn 4:14

Contentment also requires developing powers of endurance.

An enlightened monk,
	living circumscribed,
	mindful,
shouldn’t fear the five fears:
of horseflies, mosquitoes, snakes,
human contact, four-footed beings…

	Touched
	by the touch
of disease, hunger,
he should endure cold
& inordinate heat.
He with no home,
in many ways touched by these things,
striving, should make firm his persistence.  — Sn 4:16

All of the Buddha’s teachings, and the poems in particular, count as advice on how to train your inner conversation. But it’s particularly interesting to see him give specific advice on how to talk to yourself to strengthen your contentment—an example of how to use skillful verbal fabrication on the path:

Deferring 		to discernment
enraptured 	with what’s admirable,
he should overcome these dangers,
should conquer 	discontent
			in his isolated spot,
should conquer 	these four
			thoughts of lament:

	“What will I eat,
	or where will I eat?
	How badly I slept.
	Tonight where will I sleep?”

These lamenting thoughts
he should subdue—
one under training,
wandering without home.  — Sn 4:16

Having gone to the village,
the sage shouldn’t go
forcing his way among families.
Cutting off chatter,
he shouldn’t utter a scheming word.
	“I got something.
	That’s fine.
	I got nothing.
	That, too, is good.”  — Sn 3:11

Here it’s important to note that the Buddha encouraged contentment only for material things. As long as you hadn’t gained full awakening, he did not encourage contentment with the state of your mind. This can be seen in the fact that his description of the original traditions of the noble ones ends, not with instructions on how to be content with medicine, the fourth requisite, but on how to find delight in developing and abandoning—i.e., developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones. Even more strongly, he attributed his own awakening to the fact that he didn’t let himself rest content with the level of skill he had attained prior to his total release.

This means that the Buddha taught contentment, not as a blanket denial of your desires, but as a way of establishing priorities among them. You curb your desires for unnecessary material comforts so that they don’t get in the way of your most important desire and determination: to attain awakening.

Modesty is defined as not wanting people to know of the good qualities you’ve developed. It’s an antidote to the desires that come from vanity and conceit.

Whoever boasts to others, unasked,
of his practices, habits,
is, say the skilled,
ignoble by nature—
	he who speaks of himself
	of his own accord.

But a monk at peace,
	fully unbound in himself,
	not boasting of his habits,
	”That’s how I am”:
He, say the skilled,
is noble by nature—
	he with no vanity
	anywhere in the world. — Sn 4:3

Modesty is also a way of making yourself content when you receive meager gifts from others.

Wandering with his bowl in hand
	—not dumb,
	but seemingly dumb—
he shouldn’t despise a piddling gift
nor disparage the giver. — Sn 3:11

Modesty also allows you to avoid needless arguments and debates. When you feel no need to show off your knowledge, you free yourself from entanglements of that sort. In this way, your modesty helps you to maintain seclusion and to avoid the conceit that motivates, and is aggravated by, a desire to shine in debate.

These debates have arisen among contemplatives.
	In them are 	elation,
				dejection.
Seeing this, one should abstain from debates,
	for they have no other goal
	than the gaining of praise.
While he who is praised there
	for expounding his doctrine
	in the midst of the assembly,
laughs on that account & grows haughty,
	attaining his heart’s desire.
That haughtiness will be grounds for his damage,
	for he’ll speak in pride & conceit.
Seeing this, one should abstain from debates.
	No purity is attained by them, say the skilled.  — Sn 4:8

Above all, modesty is a sign of honor and integrity. You practice goodness for its own sake, and not to look good in the eyes of others. You can keep reminding yourself that the good things in the practice are so good that there’s no point in telling anyone else that you have them.

Know from the rivers
in clefts & in crevices:
Those in small channels flow
			noisily,
	the great
	flow silent.
Whatever’s deficient
	makes noise.
Whatever is full
	is quiet.
The fool is like a half-empty pot;
one who is wise, a full lake.
A contemplative who speaks a great deal
	endowed with meaning:
	Knowing, he teaches the Dhamma;
	knowing, he speaks a great deal.
But he who,
	knowing, is restrained,
	knowing, doesn’t speak a great deal:
He is a sage
	worthy of sagehood.
He is a sage,
	his sagehood attained.  — Sn 3:11

For the monk who has left
	all kamma 	
		behind,
shaking off the dust of the past,
	steady, unpossessive,
		Such:
There’s no point in telling
		anyone else.  — Ud 3:1

Being reclusive doesn’t mean that you totally avoid human contact. After all, a monk has to go for alms every day if he wants to eat, and he should teach Dhamma to those who request it. Still, he should teach them, not with the aim of forming friendships or networks of supporters, but with the aim of giving them satisfactory answers to their questions and then letting them go.

Because desire and passion for loving relationships is the biggest enemy to seclusion, the Canon tells many stories of the sufferings that come from having partners, families, and intimate friends. For instance, after seeing a married wanderer suffering greatly in trying to care for his pregnant wife, the Buddha exclaimed:

How blissful it is, for one who has nothing.
	Attainers-of-wisdom
	are people with nothing.
See him suffering, one who has something,
	a person bound in mind
	with people.  — Ud 2:6

Once, Lady Visākhā, one of the Buddha’s most prominent supporters, came to see him after she had lost a grandchild. He asked her if she wanted more grandchildren—as many as there were people in the city of Sāvatthī—and she at first said, “Yes.” Then he reminded her that a day didn’t pass without a death in Sāvatthī. If she had that many grandchildren, a day wouldn’t pass without her going to a funeral.

She agreed that her original wish was foolish, so he exclaimed:

The sorrows, lamentations,
the many kinds of suffering in the world,
exist dependent on something dear.
	They don’t exist
	when there’s nothing dear.
And thus blissful & sorrowless
are those for whom nothing
in the world is anywhere dear.
So one who aspires
to the stainless & sorrowless
shouldn’t make anything
	dear
in the world
	anywhere.  — Ud 8:8

This attitude may sound heartless, but we should remember that the monk is also enjoined to develop an attitude of goodwill for all. Instead of keeping his heart narrow, partial to some and indifferent to others, he must broaden his heart to wish for the happiness of all beings.

Another challenge when living alone, especially in the wilderness, is having to deal with fear. The Buddha advises you, when living in the forest, to console yourself with the knowledge that if your mind is well-trained, there’s no reason to give in to unskillful fears. He provides a checklist of qualities that can provide you with confidence. The list includes: purity of virtue in terms of your thoughts, words, and deeds; purity in terms of your livelihood; being free of sensual passion and the other hindrances; being modest and content; being persistent, mindful, alert, concentrated, and discerning. The Buddha also gives encouragement by discussing how he himself dealt with fear and terror when living in the wilderness prior to his awakening:

The positive virtue of reclusiveness and seclusion is that they allow you to devote full time to training the mind.

“There’s no way
that one delighting in company
can touch even momentary release.”
Heeding the words
of the Kinsman of the Sun [the Buddha],
wander alone
like a rhinoceros.…

At the right time consorting
with the release through goodwill,
			compassion,
			empathetic joy,
			equanimity,
unobstructed by all the world,
		any world,
wander alone
like a rhinoceros.  — Sn 1:3

Turning your back on pleasure & pain,
as earlier with sorrow & joy,
attaining pure	equanimity,
			tranquility,
wander alone
like a rhinoceros.

With persistence aroused
for the highest goal’s attainment,
with mind unsmeared, not lazy in action,
firm in effort, with steadfastness & strength arisen,
wander alone
like a rhinoceros.

Not neglecting seclusion, jhāna,
constantly living the Dhamma
	in line with the Dhamma,
comprehending the danger
in states of becoming,
wander alone
like a rhinoceros.  — Sn 1:3

	Solitude
	is called
	sagacity.
Alone, you truly delight
	& shine in the ten directions.  — Sn 3:11

The delight you can find in getting the mind concentrated while in seclusion can more than compensate for the hardships that come from living alone.