Health Food for the Mind

Tonight I’d like to start looking at how we create a sense of self that can lead to long-term welfare and happiness, focusing first on the question of why we would need to do this.

We know that the Buddha often talked about not-self, but he also talked positively about self. He said that the self should be its own mainstay, that it should observe itself and reprimand itself when it’s gone astray, and that there’s a need to learn not to harm oneself. Here are some passages from the Dhammapada that speak positively of the role of self on the path.

These passages show that a sense of self is an important part of the practice—especially a sense of self that encourages responsibility, heedfulness, and care. The question is: Why would it be necessary to create this skillful sense of self? If ultimately you’re going to develop the perception of not-self, why spend time developing a perception of self?

The short answer is that the path is a skill, and, as with many other skills, there are many different stages in mastering it. Sometimes you have to do one thing at one stage, and turn around and erase it at another. It’s like making a chair. At one stage you have to mark the wood with a pencil so that you can cut it properly, but when you’re ready to apply the final finish, you have to sand the pencil marks away.

The long answer begins with a fact that I mentioned last night: that the path to the unconditioned is conditioned. In the Buddha’s terminology, it’s fabricated. The fact that it’s a fabricated path leading to an unfabricated goal means that you have to develop some fabricated qualities along the way that you’ll have to let go when you arrive at the goal. Too often we focus on the goal without paying attention to the path, but it’s only through focusing on the path that you can arrive at the goal. If you focus all your attention off in the distance, you won’t see where you’re actually stepping. You may trip and fall.

So when you focus on the fact that the path is fabricated, the first thing you have to notice is that it’s something you have to put together through your own voluntary efforts. The path involves actively developing good qualities and letting go of bad qualities, and you have to will yourself to do this. To motivate your will, you need a healthy sense of self, realizing that you’ll benefit from fabricating the path and that you have within you the capabilities that the path requires. Only at the end of the path, when you no longer need these forms of motivation, can you let go of every possible sense of self.

Also, the act of fabricating the path requires strength, and a healthy sense of self helps to nourish that strength. The Buddha’s strategy here draws on an analogy he uses for explaining the process of suffering.

In his first noble truth, he identifies suffering as the five clinging-aggregates. The word “clinging” here is the important part of the compound. The five aggregates are burdensome to the mind because we cling to them. Without the clinging, they would not be a burden. Now, the word for clinging, upādāna, also refers to the act of taking sustenance or food. The aggregates are things that we feed on, feeding both in the physical sense and in the mental sense. For example we find mental nourishment in feelings and perceptions and fabrications. So the Buddha’s basic analogy for the process of suffering is the act of feeding.

He says that we feed on the aggregates in four ways. The first way is through passion for sensuality. Here “sensuality” means your obsession with sensual resolves and intentions. In other words, you cling to thoughts about sensual pleasures. You can think for hours about a sensual pleasure and how to get it—as when you plan to go out for an excellent meal—even though the actual pleasure of the meal itself may last for only a short time. The obsession with thinking about sensuality is what constitutes the clinging.

The second way that we cling to and feed on the aggregates is through our views about them—our opinions, our theories about how the world works and what issues are important to hold opinions on. The most extreme form of clinging through views believes that simply holding a view can take you to heaven or whatever, but the act of clinging to and feeding on views works in subtler ways as well.

The third way we feed on the aggregates is through our attachment to certain habits and practices. We believe that things have to be done in certain ways in order to be right. The extreme form of this clinging is ritual: The idea that simply performing an action properly, regardless of your motivation, carries a certain magical power that bends the world to your will or makes you better than other people.

To lighten the mood, I’d like to tell you a story that illustrates this particular form of attachment. It concerns a goose.

There was once a biologist in Austria who raised a baby goose whose mother had died. The baby goose fixated on the biologist and followed him everywhere. Throughout the summer, as long as the biologist was outside, the goose would follow him around the yard of the house. When autumn came, however, the biologist knew he would have to take the goose inside. So one evening, at the time when he would normally feed the goose, he didn’t feed the goose but instead walked into his house, leaving the door open behind him. The goose followed him in. Now the entryway to the house was a long hallway that led from the door to a window on the other side of the house, and halfway down the hall on the right was a stairway that led up to the second floor, which was where the biologist lived. The goose, on entering the house, immediately freaked out because it had never been inside before. It went running to the window to escape, but then discovered that it couldn’t get out the window. Meanwhile, the biologist climbed the stairs and called the goose. So the goose turned around and followed him up the stairs, which is where the biologist fed him.

From that point on, every time the goose entered the house, it would go first to the window; then it would turn around and go up the stairs. As time passed, the trip to the window got shorter and shorter until finally it was simply a matter of the goose’s going to the far side of the stairway and shaking its foot at the window. Then it would climb the stairs.

One evening the biologist was late coming home from work. The goose was very hungry, so as soon as the biologist opened the door it ran up the stairs. Halfway up the stairs, though, it stopped and started shaking all over. Then very deliberately it walked down the stairs, walked over to the window, turned around, and then went back up the stairs.

Sound familiar? That’s clinging to habits and practices, the third way in which we feed on the aggregates. When we stay stuck on our habits and practices, we’re listening to our inner goose.

The fourth way of feeding on the aggregates is through our ideas about what the self is and whether it exists or not. As we saw last night, when we cling to ideas of what we are, we get entangled in all sorts of complications.

Now, even though these four ways of clinging cause suffering, they do provide some nourishment, some strength to the mind. Otherwise, we wouldn’t bother feeding in this way. We see that the energy put into clinging is repaid by the strength we get from these activities. But as is the case with physical food, mental food can be either good or bad for you. Even though unhealthy food can give you some strength, it can also cause you health problems over the long term. The same principle applies to the mind.

One way we can think of the path is as health food for the mind. We need this nourishment to give the mind strength, for otherwise we wouldn’t be able to engage in the fabrication needed for the path. Ultimately, the path will bring the mind to a level of strength where it no longer needs to feed. But in the meantime, we need mental food to develop the strength and stamina needed to bring us to that point.

So the Buddha’s strategy is to use some of these forms of clinging in a skillful way as steps on the path. We have to hold to right views. We have to hold to the precepts, which are habits, and the practice of jhāna, right concentration, which counts as a practice [§22]. We also need to develop a healthy sense of self, which is self-reliant, responsible, and heedful. So we need to feed in these three ways. As for clinging to sensuality: This is the one type of clinging that has no role on the path, but we do require external conditions conducive to training the mind. We need a certain amount of sensory pleasure provided by food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and the pleasures of a peaceful, quiet place to meditate. We’re advised not to obsess over these things, but if we haven’t yet gotten to the point where we can maintain our mental center everywhere, we have to hold to the principle of searching out surroundings conducive for the practice whenever we can.

To wean the mind off its usual habit of feeding on sensuality, we have to train it to enjoy the genuine health food provided by the other means of skillful clinging. This is one of the main reasons why we have to feed it with concentration. The pleasure and rapture of jhāna help provide the sense of well-being we need in the here and now to be willing to change our diet [§§21-22]. And the practice of jhāna, in turn, needs to be well fed with right views and the healthy sense of self-esteem that comes from the habits of generosity and virtue. Otherwise we won’t be able to endure the difficulties inherent in getting the mind to settle down and stay there.

At the same time, as concentration develops, it provides an even greater sense of self-esteem, which ensures that when you finally do apply the perception of not-self to all phenomena in an all-around way, you don’t do it with neurotic self-hatred. This is an important point because sometimes the teaching on not-self is used as an excuse for self-hatred. In other words, “I don’t like myself, so I’ll deny that my self exists.” This is not healthy. But when you develop a healthy strength of concentration, you understand that you’ve taken your healthy sense of self as far as it can go. At that point you’re ready for the next step in spiritual maturity. You let go for the sake of greater health. It’s only then that you no longer need to feed.

But as long as the mind is on the path, it needs to feed in a discerning way on views, habits, practices, and a healthy sense of self. And as I already mentioned, the five aggregates are what we feed on. This means that we have to learn to feed on the aggregates in such a way that they become factors of the path. For instance, the second form of skillful feeding, the practice of right concentration, involves all five aggregates, as we noted last night. The first form of skillful feeding, the development of discernment in right view and right resolve, requires the aggregates of perception and fabrication. So in this way we use the clinging-aggregates as steps on the path.

The purpose of this is to develop five strengths in the mind: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are the inner strengths that will bring the mind to the point where it no longer needs to feed.

As we develop a healthy sense of self to feed these strengths, we gain practical insight into how we create our sense of self. We also gain insight into our intentions. The Buddha is especially interested in having us understand the role of our sense of self as the agent that exerts control over our actions. This relates to his teaching on the role of kamma in the present moment. Our experience of the present moment is composed of three sorts of things: the results of past actions, present actions, and the results of present actions. We have no control over the results of past actions, but we do have some freedom—some element of control—in our choice of our present actions. The question of exactly how much control and how much freedom is something that we can discover only by trying to act as skillfully as we can with each moment. This is why the topic of skillful action is one of the Buddha’s most basic teachings.

We focus on learning more and more about the potentials and limitations of the freedom we have in the present moment because that is the area of awareness where the opening to ultimate freedom will be found. Now, ultimate freedom is not the same as freedom of choice. It’s a freedom from suffering that’s totally unconditioned, totally beyond space and time, and so has nothing to do with questions of control or no control. It’s just there. But you can find it only by exploring what freedom you have to act skillfully.

This is why the Buddha doesn’t encourage thoughts about essential nature: about what you are or aren’t, and whether that’s good or bad. He’s more interested in having you see the level of freedom you can exercise around your choices in the present moment. In other words, he’s not interested in having you speculate about what the self is or isn’t; he’s interested instead in having you watch how you define yourself with each action in the present. That’s because the line between self and not-self is determined by what you can and cannot control. The more precisely you see that line, the closer you are to finding the true freedom where questions of control or no control no longer matter.

This is another reason why the Buddha has us develop mindfulness and concentration together, because you need both of these strengths acting together to observe the action of creating a sense of self or not-self around that line between control and non-control. Mindfulness is what keeps remembering where to stay focused and what to keep doing: to abandon what’s unskillful and to develop what’s skillful [§22]. Concentration is what maintains the steadiness of your gaze.

So it’s only through clinging to the practice of the path that you can find the line between control and non-control, and can observe it closely. It’s only through healthy clinging that you reach the point where you can really let go and be free.

It’s as if you’re a bird in a cage. One wall of the cage is a door. If you cling to the other walls, you stay stuck in the cage. But if you cling to the door, then when the door is open, you can fly away.

In the same way, you cling to the path. When the path comes together, it leads to the opening where you gain freedom. The door swings open and you’re free to fly wherever you want. In the words of the Dhammapada, when you’ve reached that point, your path—like that of birds through space—can’t be traced [§23]. You’re so free that you leave no footprints in the sky.