5  Transcendental Dependent Arising: Unsatisfactoriness

         STEP 1

THE TEACHING OF DEPENDENT ARISING is the centerpiece of the Buddha’s Dhamma and shows us the causes and effects that exist within and outside of us. There are two separate and distinct teachings of dependent arising. The one that is more widely known is called the worldly dependent arising (lokiya paticca samuppāda). It concerns the wheel of birth and death, which starts out with ignorance and goes through the cycle of three lives—past, present, and future—from ignorance to renewed birth and death. Within that cycle there is one doorway through which we can step out, namely, the space between feeling and craving. All the other steps of dependent arising are automatic causes and effects. Unless we learn to live with unpleasant and pleasant feelings, without wanting to get rid of the one or keeping and renewing the other, we don’t have access to that doorway—we continue to circle around the wheel of birth and death over and over again. Our training leads us to equanimity as the pinnacle of all emotions, so that our feelings no longer get the better of us. As long as we are victims of our feelings and our emotions, we are not really free. The Buddha’s teaching directs us to freedom, which includes being independent. Within our thought processes we generate our karma, so we have to watch our thoughts and not take them for granted.

Meditation is all about becoming master of the mind, so that the mind will no longer play games with us. As long as we have no control over its formations, our karma will always be a mixture of wholesome and unwholesome. Because craving will enter our mind innumerable times, we will again and again experience unsatisfactoriness, which the Buddha expounded as the first and second noble truths, namely, “There is unsatisfactoriness” and “It has only one cause—craving.” Unsatisfactoriness makes our lives unfulfilled, which causes us to search for some transcending reality.

Therefore the Buddha showed us the chain of cause and effect of transcendental dependent arising (lokuttara paticca samuppāda), which does not move in a circle. Instead, it operates in a straight line from our present state to the enlightened state. Dependent arising drawn in a circular manner shows us quite clearly that we are caught in a net of karmic resultants.

In transcendental dependent arising, the Buddha explains in a succession of twelve steps how to get from this worldly existence to liberation. The whole of the Buddha’s teaching, and the sole purpose of meditation in the Buddha’s dispensation, is elevating our worldly, everyday, consciousness to liberation. Liberation is a state of mind, available to all of us (otherwise we need not practice), but covered over and hidden by our desires. In our tradition, the candles we put on a shrine are the symbol for enlightened mind.

If we didn’t have that potential within us, forty-five years of teaching by the Buddha would have been in vain. After his enlightenment under the bodhi tree,5 the Buddha first enjoyed the bliss of liberation by himself. After a month he considered spreading this news to others, but it occurred to him that people would not be able to grasp the profundity of this absolute truth, and that would be a vexation to him. Tradition tells us that the highest brahma of the god realms, named Sahampati, came to beg the Buddha to teach for the benefit of gods and humans. The Buddha applied his divine vision and saw that there were some people who had little dust in their eyes, in their inner perception, and therefore decided to teach.

There are and always have been those who can use the Buddha’s words to reach liberation. We have today the same problems, the same potential and solidity, that people have always had. Everything that we do in the Buddha’s dispensation has liberation as its goal, its purpose. We need to keep in mind that we must constantly let go of all that covers our enlightened mind. Transcendental dependent arising begins where worldly dependent arising ends, namely with suffering.

Suffering does not just mean tragedy, or necessarily pain, or even being unhappy. It encompasses all of that, yet it is more far reaching. That is why this Pali word can hardly be properly translated; it contains far too many possibilities. The fundamental meaning of unsatisfactoriness is our inability to find total satisfaction anywhere within existence. Only when we have understood that will we no longer suffer.

While we are still searching for satisfaction within worldly existence—from other people’s appreciation or kindness, from good situations, from our knowledge, or our own goodness—we will eventually be disappointed, for the simple reason of impermanence. Impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and corelessness (anattā) are the three characteristics of the whole of existence. As long as we have the idea that there is something to be found in the world that can make us permanently and totally happy, we leave ourselves wide open to unhappiness. Since it cannot be found, we have a valid reason for not being happy. We look here and there, move from one place to another, change our partner, our diet, our religion, our method of meditation, our exercises, and what happens? Usually nothing but dissatisfaction again. In Pali, this search is called papañca, which means proliferation. Nature itself contains enormous variety. Think of the number of species of trees, birds, flowers, and insects, the different colors to be found everywhere, the variability in people. None of us look alike and yet we are all human beings.

Nature proliferates, and as long as we go along with that, we are looking for something other than what we have. This alone is unsatisfactoriness. It means that there is an emptiness within that wants to be filled. Unless we see this quite clearly, we will always try to fill this void from outside, through our sense contacts. But it can’t be done that way; only when we realize we must fulfill ourselves from within can we begin to take the spiritual path.

As long as we have not seen this clearly, suffering will cause us to react in one of the many popular ways available to us. The first one is often to blame someone else. This is very popular and appears to be an easy way out of any problem. It doesn’t work at all, however, because that particular suffering not having been dealt with, it will arise again and again. Our whole sojourn in this life is like an adult education class, and if we don’t manage to pass the exams, we have to go through the same class again, just as in any school. The suffering we have not conquered will confront us as another exam.

Another popular way to respond to suffering is to run away from it. We don’t even have to physically remove ourselves, although that, too, is common. We can use books, radio, television, movies, or discussions to drown any self-perception.

Another reaction to suffering is self-pity, which is fairly widespread but quite useless and counterproductive, since it generates more unhappiness. Once self-pity has set in, the next step is near at hand, namely, depression. Some people actually hang on to their suffering and want to keep it. Any advice on how to eliminate it is not well received, and why is that? Because people feel alive with their suffering; they own it, which produces a sense of emotional plenitude, even though negatively.

Suffering is our best teacher. It will not be persuaded by any pleading of misery to let go of us. If we say to a human teacher, “I don’t feel well,” “My back aches,” “I can’t get up in the morning,” “I’d rather go home,” the teacher may reply, “I am very sorry, but if you want to go home, then you must go.” If we say to suffering, “Look, I don’t feel well,” “My back aches,” “I want to go home,” suffering says, “That’s fine, but I am coming along.” There is no way to say goodbye to it unless and until we have transcended our reactions. This means that we have looked suffering squarely in the eye and have seen it for what it is—a universal characteristic of existence and nothing else. The reason we are fooled is that because this life contains so many pleasant occasions and sense contacts, we think if we could just keep this pleasantness going suffering would never come again. We try over and over again to make this happen, until in the end we finally see that the pleasantness cannot continue because the law of impermanence intervenes. Yet the whole of human society is built on just that concept—that it must be possible to perpetuate pleasantness. So we continue our search for something new, because everybody else is doing it, too.

We forget that pleasantness is due to sense contact and therefore has to be impermanent; otherwise, it will become most unpleasant, whether it is taste, touch, sight, sound, smell, or thought. Some contacts last a little longer, but all of them have to end before they become utter misery. Yet we rely on these contacts to make our lives pleasant and happy. After having tried this so many times, it must finally come to our attention that not only are the sense contacts impermanent, but even when most pleasant, they leave something to be desired. There is no total satisfaction to be found in them, and that is unsatisfactoriness.

This practice may bring us to the point where we think we may be able to find fulfillment on the spiritual path. But even that may go astray if we don’t accept that there, too, suffering is experienced until the point at which we have transcended it all. The Buddha said there were four kinds of people on a spiritual path. One group has a lot of suffering and it takes them a long time to achieve any results. Another group has a lot of suffering, but they can achieve results very quickly. Another group has a lot of pleasant feelings, and it takes them a long time to achieve results. There is one group of people who have a lot of pleasant feelings and who achieve quick results, but if we don’t belong to that group, we have to expect and tolerate unsatisfactory conditions arising in this existence.

Liberation goes beyond personal existence, but within personal existence, unsatisfactoriness is. If we accept that fully, we don’t have to suffer. This is the most important aspect of understanding unsatisfactoriness. Once that insight has penetrated our lives, we are able to forge ahead and experience much happiness on the spiritual path. That unsatisfactoriness exists physically is a well-known fact. Even the Buddha had physical pain. Bodily pain is a given, but we react with the mind, so that when the body hurts, the mind hurts with it. Even enlightened ones cannot stop the body’s pains, but the mind’s reaction can be stopped. The body is so fragile and so prone to decay, disease, and death that there is always something wrong with it, whether it is old age or just a cold, backache, or toothache. We have to constantly look after the body, but the mind does not have to be affected by that at all.

In the realm of unsatisfactoriness we also need to accept that our bodies will never quite give satisfaction. Older people find that easy to accept. It is more difficult for the young. The Buddha called that the “intoxication with youth,” and Bernard Shaw said that “Youth is wasted on the young.”

The body needs constant care and attention because it is always falling apart. Once we see that as part of this whole suffering existence, we may get an inkling that it might be better not to be reborn in such a body. When that inkling happens, urgency (saṃvega) follows, namely the urgency to practice. The body has to have food, which means having to eat, digest, and excrete constantly. It has to be looked after with regard to cleanliness, rest, the neat appearance of nails, hair, skin, and teeth, and it must be provided with medicine when needed. There is a constant bother about the body. It is hardly possible to say that this body gives pleasure.

When one is very young, this is difficult to see because the body is still very strong, without aches and pains. But imagine for just one minute that you were sitting in meditation without a body. Wouldn’t that be far easier? Maybe that brings the idea home how difficult it is to have a human body.

However, the Buddha said that the human realm is the best realm in which to gain enlightenment, because we have plenty of pain—particularly with the body—to spur us on. Yet we also have pleasure, creating a balance that makes it possible for us to practice. In the realms lower than human, the pain is so great that practice is almost impossible. In the realms above us, pleasure is so prevalent that the urgency to practice disappears. There are always devas around who are practicing, but they are a minority. Of course, with humans it is likewise; those that meditate and practice a spiritual path are also a minority.

With the body reminding us constantly that something should be done, we then need to realize that it is actually the reaction in the mind that brings about the suffering. Referring once more to the unpleasant feelings that arise when sitting in meditation, we need only see that if we have no reaction to them, we have no suffering. This is a very important practice point, which can be recognized here and now. We don’t have to hope to get rid of pain in the future; we have the opportunity now. We learn without great difficulty that unpleasant feelings are only painful if we reject them and want them to be otherwise. If we accept things as they are, an unpleasant feeling is just a feeling, and no suffering arises.

That unsatisfactoriness stands at the apex of transcendental dependent arising is clear, because it also stands at the apex of the Buddha’s explanation of his enlightenment. The very first thing he said was, “There is the noble truth of unsatisfactoriness.” This is often misunderstood to mean that the Buddha’s teaching is pessimistic, or that it stresses only the suffering, pain, and unhappiness that are inherent in us. But it is just the opposite. His teaching shows us realistically what is unsatisfactory and how to overcome it.

It is often thought that the Buddha’s doctrine teaches us that suffering will disappear if one has meditated long enough, or if one sees everything differently. It is not that at all. Suffering isn’t going to go away; the one who suffers is going to go away. That is the way of transcendental dependent arising.

The Buddha said, “There is the deed but no doer; there is suffering but no sufferer, there is the path but no one to enter, there is liberation but no one to attain it.” If “I” want liberation, it is out of reach. The saying may sound like a Zen-inspired paradox, but it will become quite clear as we go along.

All of us experience the reality of the unsatisfactoriness of existence, since we are rarely totally satisfied with our life. We have all experienced occasions in the past that we would rather not have happened. There are others that we have wanted to come about but didn’t. The best way to look at unsatisfactoriness is with gratitude, that it is happening in order to teach us some very important lesson. It is useless to want unsatisfactoriness to go away. It is impermanent, it will go away anyway, but if we don’t learn the lesson that it is trying to teach us, it will come back in exactly the same manner. If we learn one particular lesson, unsatisfactoriness will return in a different form, until we see it for what it is, namely universal existence, nothing else. None of us has a monopoly on suffering. None of us is picked out to have a particular suffering. It just is.

The acceptance of “it just is” is the first step toward realizing this path. Unsatisfactoriness is. There are people who live very pleasant lives yet who can still realize it. There are others who live very unpleasant lives and don’t realize it at all, but blame circumstances. They blame the government, or sometimes the atom bomb, or at other times the economy. People have all sorts of ideas about what can be blamed. Yet they could see in their own lives that there is a need to learn and grow. Every day we have an opportunity to learn, as there is hardly a human being without some daily suffering.

Pain need not necessarily be physical, although that aspect in particular helps us to see the connection between the first and second noble truth, so that one may actually practice within these guidelines. The connection is the wanting, the desire either to have or to eliminate. In all our experiences of unpleasantness, that is the underlying cause. Once we are aware of the cause, we can investigate what it is that compels us either to want this or not want that. We can learn to drop these responses, and this will help our lives to flow with far more ease, and will set much latent energy free for the practice of this path. While we are still using our mental capacities to want certain things and reject others, we are not free to use our energy to practice with great determination.

I once gave a meditation course to some young teenagers, and I wanted them to have a personal experience of getting rid of unsatisfactoriness. I asked them to undertake an experiment. They were to investigate whether anything in particular was making them feel dissatisfied or unhappy; then, for just one moment, they were to drop the wish of either having or not having, and find out whether unsatisfactoriness would disappear.

The next day I asked whether they had tried the experiment. One girl said she had, so I asked her to describe it. She said that since coming to the meditation course she had been coveting my little bell with its colorful cushion and tassel; in fact, she’d been pondering how to make one like that and where she could get the materials, or how she could find out where to purchase one. After I had told them about unsatisfactoriness, she realized that this thought process was making her very unhappy and agitated. So she determined to forget about bell, cushion, and tassel, and now she felt happy.

I might recommend the same kind of experiment to you. Of course, our material needs are well taken care of in the West, but we can still look inside ourselves and find out what makes us dissatisfied, or what has some kind of hold on us that gives us anxiety or worry. Is it the future? What particular aspect of it? For a moment, then, we can drop the whole of this thought process. When we let go, the relief becomes apparent. After having done this for one moment, maybe we can do the same again many times, for many moments. It is a worthwhile experiment, especially when we find something within that has repeatedly been giving us pain, a recurring pain agitator. It’s always the experience that counts, not the concept.

We can compare this with the taste of the mango. If we try to tell somebody what a mango tastes like, all we can say is, “It tastes very nice; it’s sweet and delicious, very juicy and soft.” But does the person know what a mango tastes like? We have to bite into it, and only then do we know. It’s not a peach, it’s not an apricot, and it’s a mango, different and distinctive. The same goes for everything taught by the Buddha: we must experience it ourselves. We have his guidelines, clear and uncompromising, which are of the utmost importance. When we use these instructions without injecting our own views, we can understand our experiences and thereby gain insight. That is why the words of the Buddha are of such importance to us—but only when we use them. To know them is the first step, to remember them the second, and the third is actually to work with that transmission in order to realize the truth for ourselves. These three steps encourage wisdom to arise.

QUESTIONS

STUDENT: I would like to explore how the pain of existence becomes the path and no longer perpetuates itself. I know you’ve been talking about this, but I want to make sure that I understand it, because it is so easy to forget. For instance, when I feel bodily pain it is often easy to say, “This is just the body, which is impermanent, and I am getting older and will die.” But when it comes to mental pain, I say to myself, “I really should practice, because this feels terrible.” But then sometimes practice goes the wrong way. It just makes things worse. That’s the point I want to explore further.

AYYA KHEMA: Let me ask you this first: when you say “practice,” do you mean you want to sit down and meditate?

S: Yes.

AK: Meditation is not all there is to practice. There’s more than that.

S: Whatever aspect you would like to enlarge on would be a help.

AK: When there is mental pain, it would be very surprising if you could sit down and meditate. It would be unusual for the mind to be able to focus on a subject of meditation.

S: Well, I attempt to sit down and meditate but I am really just sitting down experiencing pain.

AK: That is correct. What you could do at such a time would be contemplation. Sit down where nobody will disturb you, and focus on the pain to find out its cause, why it should have arisen. Do not be satisfied with an answer such as “Because so-and-so said something”—that’s only the superficial cause of it. That would have been the trigger, but there’s no cause for mental pain unless there’s something inside oneself that is reacting to that trigger. It is useful first to find the outer trigger, which is probably well known to you. It could be a sense of futility, anxiety about the future—any kind of trigger is possible. Then you need to find in yourself the reason for the reaction creating pain. The reason has to be “I don’t want it the way it is.” There can be no other. But why don’t we like it the way it is? Usually the answer is “Because my ego is not supported.” The bottom line of the whole inquiry is always “ego,” but it’s useless to say, “I know it is my ego” and then continue to have the pain. It is useful, however, to go through the whole process of the trigger, the personal reaction, the inquiry into the cause of the reaction, and then the understanding that the reaction is our suffering and not the trigger.

I have a formula: “Don’t blame the trigger.” Never let the mind stay with the trigger; always investigate what and who is reacting. Unless we find the reaction to the trigger in ourselves, we are going to repeat the same performance with the same result over and over again, like a preprogrammed computer printout. Press the same buttons and the same printout appears, until we finally realize that it is nothing but a button being pressed, and that we don’t have to have the same printout. We are in a position to be able to stop ourselves. In the beginning that may be painful because we have to look at ourselves in a new way. We need not have this exaggerated idea of our own worth, nor do we need an exaggerated idea of our nonworth. We can learn just to accept the way things are. Sitting on the pillow at such a time is very good, but trying to meditate is often useless; contemplate instead. The subject of the contemplation is to be: “The cause of the mental pain.”

S: It is well explained that mental pain is a reaction, and I can understand the ego’s defenses, but at that point it doesn’t seem to be enough simply to consider that, because it does come up again. In fact, the next time it comes up, I have the extra irritation of knowing that it was going to happen again and that I won’t be able to stop myself.

AK: Do you mean that after having gone through the whole inquiry, and having realized that it is just the ego reacting, you will react again? This is very natural. What we know and what we can do are miles apart. It will have to happen several times before you are able to say, “Let go, it doesn’t matter.” It takes time. We know so many things that we can’t do yet, but knowing is our only hope of ever being able to act, otherwise we can’t even begin. If we realize that it is only the ego wanting support and appreciation, we can eventually shed the compulsion to get recognition from outside sources. We are then able to go inside and find out whether there really is an ego, other than in our consciousness, and in our own perception. One day we will realize that there isn’t anything. At that time, of course, there’s no longer a need for support from outside.

Even while we are still working on this, we will find that our own inner support system will have grown through the meditative practice, and that we no longer have to search so constantly for outer support. One of the problems people often have in their lives is that they look for an emotional support system and are unable to find a suitable one. Our inner acceptance and reduced desires take care of that problem through enhanced meditation practice.

As we keep on practicing meditation, introspection, and contemplation, we are slowly, gently forming different views, and the flow of life changes. How quickly that will happen and how far the changes will reach is impossible to say. It depends on one’s own determination and on having a state of mind unimpaired by too many viewpoints, which are very detrimental to one’s progress.

S: I believe you mentioned the aggregates. At what point in the aggregates6 can we step out of the wheel of birth and death?

AK: That explanation belongs to a further step along dependent arising. “Seeing things as they really are” is an insight arising out of practice. From a practical standpoint, when an unpleasant feeling arises, whether as a physical condition or as a mental state, we can realize that this is just a feeling, that it isn’t “me” or “mine.” We haven’t asked it to come, it came by itself, so why do we think it belongs to “me”? Where does this consciousness of “me” and “mine” come into it? Eventually we realize that we are thinking of “me” and “mine” from habit, and that we can change that consciousness, but it naturally takes time and practice. Feeling, for instance, is a very strong aspect to work with.

Nobody likes to be sick, and yet the body does become sick. How then can there be this ownership of the body, if it does things it isn’t supposed to do? If we really own something, we should be able to do what we like with it—throw it away, use it, give it away as a present, whatever we please—since it’s ours. But what about this body? It does things we don’t like and still we think we own it. These are very important contemplative aspects that we can use in the meditative procedure. For instance, in meditation we can look at one aspect of the aggregates, or several of them, and observe when and how they arise and cease. We can feel the body in the sitting position, and it may be generating unpleasant feelings; then we can inquire, “Is that mine? Does it belong to me? Is it really me? Why am I saying it’s me? Where am I getting this idea from?” This is one way of working with the aggregates. The aggregates are the linchpin of ego delusion because all of our ego concept revolves around those five.

Another thing we can do is to investigate whether there’s anything else to be found within ourselves other than the five aggregates. Once we are sure there is nothing else, we can ask, “Where is this ‘me’ that proclaims that all this is mine?” These are contemplations and can be done as a meditation. Does that answer the question?

S: Yes. What really caught my interest was when you said that we could step out of the twelve steps of causation at the point between feeling and craving. I wondered whether it wouldn’t be simpler if I could just find that little spot in the aggregates and do the same thing, since there are only five aggregates and there are twelve steps of causation.

AK: Yes, of course. The other eleven steps are automatic results of causes. There is nothing we can do about them. Once the ignorance is there, the ego delusion has only one doorway out, namely, between feeling and craving.

As far as the five aggregates are concerned feeling is the one we live by. Therefore working with our feelings can be our most important growth process. When we get an unpleasant feeling, we learn to see that it doesn’t belong to us, and therefore we don’t have to react. But not because of indifference or suppression. That also presents a danger, since we can suppress feelings quite easily by putting our mind to something else. That would mean we are not acknowledging our feelings. Equanimity can only arise through accepting feelings with nonreaction, when we realize that although there is a feeling, it isn’t “mine.”

That point of departure, between feeling and craving, is exactly what we need to practice. We want the painful feelings to go away, but if they simply arise and we can let go again, then there is no hurt, no unsatisfactoriness. There are many approaches to lead us out of delusion where the ego can be seen for what it is—an impostor, public enemy number one.

S: On the same subject: I am wondering how vipassanā helps in this process of separating the reaction from the feeling. You’ve mentioned contemplation.

AK: You are asking about methods, are you? Feelings and reactions constantly come up in our daily lives, so the practice of mindfulness is necessary. The word vipassanā means insight, clear-seeing. It doesn’t actually denote any particular method. It’s the goal and the purpose of the whole practice path, and one of the two ways of using the meditative procedure, but the word doesn’t denote any particular approach.

Insight can arise from introspection or contemplation, but not necessarily, and not for everyone. The Buddha compared Dhamma to a snake. He said if you pick a snake up by the tail, it will undoubtedly bite you; you have to pick it up behind the head to be safe. We have to pick up the Dhamma in the correct way, so that it doesn’t hurt us. Introspection, which means mindfulness and attention to one’s own inner world, can bring us an understanding of what a human being is.

So far I have only mentioned mindfulness of the body. The second step is mindfulness of feeling (vedanânupassanā), and I will teach you a method for that. Of course the method itself cannot suffice to bring wisdom, just as loving-kindness meditation is not sufficient to guarantee lovingness in our hearts. Methods are very helpful on our path, but internal mindfulness is essential—attention to oneself, to one’s own reactions, to feelings both physical and emotional; a realization that the ego is the actor, and lastly, an inquiry as to whether that is necessary or not. It involves being attentive the whole day long. Contemplating the five aggregates as not “me,” or the body as impermanent, are steps on the way, but the most important aspect is mindfulness in daily living.

S: It seems that we all have perceptions, and then we have the reactions. Would the reactions be the ego part? There’s no way we can get rid of perceptions. I am not sure whether feeling is actually part of that perception or whether it is part of the reaction.

AK: Neither. It works like this. First there is the sense contact, and from the sense contact arises a feeling. After the feeling comes perception, and perception brings about the mental formation, which is the reaction. When we sit with our legs crossed, we first have the touch contact of sitting; following that an unpleasant feeling may develop; then perception, which says, “This is pain”; and then the reaction: “I don’t like it, my blood circulation is going to stop; I am sure this is not necessary; I should have sat on a chair”—or whatever thoughts the mind may produce. We run the whole gamut of reaction. Between thinking “This is painful” and “I want to get rid of it” is the point of departure. Does this explain it? It is important to watch just this in the sitting position in meditation because here we have a good opportunity to experience our reactions.

S: I think we are saying the same thing. Mindfulness would get you in touch with the pain and what is actually happening, and then, because you are mindful, you’re right there with it, and you don’t have to take the next step of wanting to leave.

AK: Yes. Mindfulness acts like a brake on a car. If we drive a car without brakes, it’s potential suicide. If we have brakes on a car, when coming to a dangerous corner we step on those brakes; slow the car down to the point where we can turn the steering wheel in a different direction and escape the danger. With mindfulness we experience exactly the same thing. When we step on the brake of mindfulness, we slow down and take time to consider what’s happening. We don’t have to say, “I can’t stand you, I am leaving.” We just slow down, realize that this is a dangerous corner, and change our direction. Mindfulness slows us down to the point where we can look inside and see ourselves clearly. That doesn’t mean that we are able to handle all situations yet. The Buddha often advised his followers to associate with wise people, those who help one on this path. He mentioned this fact many times; we can infer, therefore, that it is natural not to be immune to some difficult situations, but at least we do not react impulsively and instinctively, which usually causes grief for both sides.

S: I am interested in the notion of birth and what it is that’s born from the viewpoint of enlightenment. What can be said about birth?

AK: I think that the two traditions of Theravāda and Mahāyāna differ here. I can only answer you from the Theravāda tradition, to which I belong. In transcendental dependent arising we find ignorance (avijja), followed by karma, or mental formations (sankhāra), resulting in rebirth consciousness (viññāna). Rebirth consciousness is due to the “craving to be.” The craving incorporates karmic residue found in that particular mind. What we are seeing as a rebirth, or as a birth, is the “craving to be here” joined with karmic residue and karmic resultants. We cannot say from an absolute standpoint that a person is being reborn; it just appears like that. From the relative standpoint, an individual is born. From the absolute standpoint, nothing is reborn except the karmic residue. I think in the Mahāyāna tradition there seems to be an idea of voluntary rebirth. The Theravāda tradition does not speak of that.

S: The karmic formations cause birth; through meditation we would discover the insubstantial quality of mind and body, so that actually not having to be reborn would be simply discovering that nothing was ever born. Something like that?

AK: Not quite. We are born. What we discover through this process of insight is that there is nothing worthwhile to be here for, and when we are able to go beyond existence, nothing is born, and so nothing dies. The person who is now here, who has been born, discovers that this “craving to be” here is totally unnecessary. In fact, it is an aberration of the mind, a fatal mistake, which always ends in a fatality.

LOVING-KINDNESS MEDITATION

Before starting, concentrate on the breath for just a moment.

Now think of yourself as your own best friend, and extend to yourself the care and concern, the love and attention, that you would give a best friend. Embrace yourself as your own best friend.

Think of the person sitting nearest you. Be that person’s best friend, extending your love and compassion, your care, and concern, to him or her.

Think of yourself as the best friend of everyone who is present, and extend your love and compassion, friendship, care, and concern to everyone with you. Fill everyone and embrace everyone with your friendship.

Now think of yourself as your parents’ best friend. Fill them with your love and concern, and embrace them with your friendship, letting them know how much you care.

Think of your nearest and dearest people, and be their best friend. Fill them with your care, your concern, and your love, embracing them with your friendship.

Now think of all your good friends. Let them feel that you are their best friend. Fill them with love, embrace them in friendship.

Think of anyone whom you find difficult to get along with or hard to love. Become that person’s best friend, thereby removing all obstacles in your own heart. Embrace him or her with love and compassion.

Open your heart as wide as you can to as many people as possible, near and far. Let the feeling of care and concern, of love and compassion, reach out into the distance to as many beings as you can imagine, embracing them all in friendship.

Bring your attention back to yourself. Feel the happiness that comes from being your own best friend. The ease and harmony that you can feel comes from accepting yourself, caring for yourself, enjoying your own company, just like a best friend would.

May all beings be friends with each other.