Abundant Theory and Lack of Endurance

a summarized transcription

by Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero

[video] [audio]

Q: In terms of anatta—a regular person acknowledges their mortality and realizes that they don’t have full control over their body. However, they still take things personally and view their body as their own, even though they know they will die.

Ajahn Nyanamoli: Why is that?

Q: It’s because of their behavior. Their actions reflect the belief that they have control.

Nm: Exactly. You can have all the right ideas, but if your behavior doesn’t align with those ideas, you’re reinforcing incorrect assumptions. So, even though you understand in theory the nature of existence, your habits and carelessness lead you towards sensuality, resisting discomfort, overindulging in food, and in general failing to restrain your senses. That’s where your wrong views are being sustained. Your actions are in line with a sense of entitlement, control, and the idea that you will live forever, despite your beliefs being different. So, you need to act on your right ideas. You need to start purifying your behavior to mirror those ideas.

There were, as it states in the Suttas, sāmanas, and brahmins outside of the Buddha’s teaching who also had some right ideas that they cultivated, for example:

They realized that things are quite circumstantial, including the sense of control. It can end at any moment. And the Buddha said that that is the foremost of the outsiders’ views. The point was that, if you do not just think that view once a month, but start, whenever you want to act towards the world, towards him, her, or this, or that, you put that view first: “I am not anything belonging to anyone anywhere, nor is there anything belonging to me in anyone anywhere, or ‘I might not be and it might not be mine; I shall not be, and it will not be mine.’” And by doing so you would not be able to engage in passion, aversion, or distraction.

Q: For example, I might logically reason that feelings are not mine because they’re subject to change. I can see that and it kind of mirrors that right view in theory. I understand in theory that it’s impermanent, or inaccessible to my control. And now, as I feel pain, what do I do?

Nm: Are you trying to get rid of it or are you unmoved by it? Inevitably, you’ll be trying to get rid of it by using those ideas of anicca etc. But, if you then really start to understand those ideas, you realize, thinking about the Dhamma does not mean that’s the Dhamma. So you can have all the right ideas, but if you’re not applying them rightly, there is no Dhamma there. And that’s important to recognize because otherwise, you can easily slip into a view of ‘Well, as long as I think about the Dhamma, I am on the path’. But you’re not. You’re on the path when you become a sotāpanna. That’s the beginning of the path. If you don’t see the Dhamma, it means you don’t see the path. How can you be on the path if you don’t see the path? And you will not become a sotāpanna just on account of such ideas. You need to start applying them, and enduring things on the right level.

Q: So you could say feelings are not mine…

Nm: Great, in theory, you’ve got it. So what do you do? Let’s say there is a prospect of pleasure. What do you do in the face of the prospect of pleasure?

Q: I don’t delight in it.

Nm: And what else? Do you act towards it? Follow it?

Q: No, I endure it.

Nm: For how long?

Q: Forever.

Nm: Exactly. So, if those are the truths that you understood, that you accepted, that you intellectually verified as correct, now you start doing it. This feeling is not mine…It’s not in my control, it’s a trap, it’s suffering…

Q: But say in the beginning, I am faced with feeling, a feeling is pressuring me, it’s touching me, it seems like mine. But I have the outside view of the Buddha saying that it’s not- mine…

Nm: It seems like yours, but there is an option there. Do you accept the pressure as yours or as not-mine ? It is presented as yours, as for you, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept that at face value. It’s similar to how a fisherman casts a baited hook, tempting the fish to bite. The bait is presented as something beneficial for the fish to take, but ultimately it’s meant to hook and trap it. You might not see that trap immediately, but at least you know, as long as I don’t take this, I won’t be hooked.

Overall it’s important to recognize that Dhamma begins with sotāpatti, not with the ideas of Dhamma, and even the clarity you might have. Because if you do, you will be creating that discrepancy between your ideas that you’re convinced are putting you on the path of Dhamma, and your behavior that is still not matching it. Your lack of endurance, your lack of recognition on that right level, lack of restraint regarding the need to manage discomfort and unpleasant things. But if you don’t have such a view, and you recognize ‘Yes, these ideas, as clear and as pleasing as they are, they might be very right, and I might verify later on that I was spot on right from the start. But the only way I’ll do that is not through holding these views about the ideas and so on, and feeling safe on account of it. No, let me now apply those views in regard to sensuality, aversion, and distraction.’ Only three things. You don’t need to seek verification anywhere else.

Q: That’s the only way you will ever be able to verify the Dhamma. Because I can have a view, and you can agree with my view. We can both agree that feelings are not self…

Nm: … and we can write scholarly papers on it, dissertations, and pages and pages of references, and create a whole network of information. But that’s not the Dhamma. That’s the information about the Dhamma. Dhamma is when things are endured on the right level.

Q: So, I understand that feelings are not my own. They don’t belong to me. They just come and go.

Nm: Great. Now, when things come and go, let them come and go without acting out of them, without trying to get rid of them, without delighting in them, without welcoming them.

Q: And keep doing that.

Nm: For as long as it takes. And it might take forever.

Q: The verification that it has worked, is the fact that feelings no longer pressure you.

Nm: Eventually, yes. The pressure felt will diminish. There will be no pressure in the end. That’s why phassa - pressure, can not pressure the groundless one when there is no ground to apply that pressure. An Arahant is unable to experience pressure of any kind anymore, mentally. He’s beyond pressure, nothing can pressure him.