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The Burden of Mistaken Views
SO FAR WE HAVE SEEN how two of the prerequisites for pure tantric practice, renunciation and bodhichitta, help create space for us to discover our essential nature. Renunciation loosens our habitual grasping at pleasure and reliance upon externals for satisfaction, while bodhichitta opposes the self-cherishing attitude with which we focus upon our own welfare to the neglect of others. Now we will consider the third basic prerequisite: cultivation of the correct view.
In this context the correct view means the wisdom that clearly realizes the actual way in which we and all other phenomena exist. This wisdom is the direct antidote to all the mistaken conceptions we have about who we are and what the world is truly like. As long as we are burdened by these misconceptions, we remain trapped in the world of our own projections, condemned to wander forever in the circle of dissatisfaction we have created for ourselves. But if we can uproot these wrong views and banish them completely, we will experience the freedom, space, and effortless happiness we presently deny ourselves.
Realizing the correct view of reality is not something mysterious. It is not a matter of staring up into space and praying for a glimpse of the truth. It is not that the wrong view is down here on the ground while the right view is somewhere up in the sky. Nor should we think that the wrong view dwells in the polluted cities of the West while the right view is to be found in the pure air of the Himalayas. It is nothing like that. The right view is available anywhere and everywhere, at all times. The beautiful face of reality exists within all phenomena, right here and how. It is only a matter of removing the layers of our own projections obscuring the pure vision of reality. The fault is ours, and the solution is ours.
Whenever we fix upon the idea that we exist in a certain specific way, we are hallucinating. Every time we look at ourselves in a mirror we have such a fixed idea — “How do I look today? I don’t want people to see me looking like that!” — although, in reality, we are changing all the time. We are different from one moment to the next, but still we feel we have some sort of permanent, unchanging nature.
Our view of the external world is just as deluded. Our sense organs habitually perceive things dualistically; that is, every sensory object that appears to us seems to exist from its own side as something concrete and self-contained. We think that merely because we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch these objects they must be real and true, existing solidly out there in their own right, just as we perceive them. But this concrete conception we have about how they exist is also a hallucination and has nothing whatsoever to do with their reality.
It takes time, training, and clear-minded investigation to cut through these deeply ingrained wrong views and discover the actual way in which things exist. But we can begin this process right now merely by being a bit skeptical about what appears to our mind. For example, as soon as we realize that we are holding on to a solid view of ourselves — “I am like this,” “I should be like that” — we should remember that this view is nothing but a fantasy, a momentary projection of our mind. Nor should we passively accept that external phenomena exist in the concrete self-contained way they appear to us. It is better to be slightly suspicious of what our senses and ordinary conceptions tell us, like the wise shopper who, when buying a used car, does not immediately believe everything the salesman claims about it.
If we want to understand how we are ordinarily misled by our false projections and how we can begin to break free from their influence, it is helpful to think of the analogy of our dream experiences. When we wake up in the morning, where are all the people we were just dreaming about? Where did they come from? And where did they go? Are they real or not? Of course not. These dream people and their dream experiences all arose from our sleeping, dreaming mind; they were mere appearances to that mind. They were real only as long as we remained in the dream-state; to the waking mind of the next morning they are only an insubstantial memory. While we were asleep they seemed so true, as if they were really out there, having a concrete existence quite apart from ourselves. But when we wake up we realize that they were only the projections of our dreaming mind. Despite how real they seemed, these people in fact lack even an atom of self-existence. Completely empty of any objective existence whatsoever, they were only the hallucination of our dream experience.
In a very similar way, everything we experience while we are awake, including our strong sense of self, is also empty of true existence. Despite their concrete appearance of existing out there somehow, these phenomena do not in fact exist from their own side at all. Only as long as our ordinary, conventional mind is functioning, or switched on, do these relative phenomena exist for us. If this ordinary mind were to be switched off, these ordinary phenomena would cease to appear to our mind.
The point is that the people and things that make up our sensory world do not exist in the solid, objective way that they now appear to us. These appearances are nothing but the manifestations of our ordinary consciousness; they are merely apprehended or labeled by our superstitious mind. However, our basic problem is not that things appear to be self-existent, but that we accept this appearance as if it were true.
Our habit of believing in, or holding on to, merely conventional appearances as if they were most true and ultimately real has been with us since beginningless time; it is not a newly learned philosophical view. For this reason it is not easy to overcome. However, we can begin uprooting this mistaken habit merely by realizing that the ordinary way in which we view our reality is deluded, that our instinctive belief in the self-existence of things is an invalid concept having nothing whatsoever to do with the actual way in which things exist. Understanding even this much will begin to free us from our superstitious habits. Then we can begin to wake up.
Ego-Grasping and Insecurity
Not only are the things outside ourselves empty of the solid, objective reality we project onto them, the same is true for our inner sense of self. We instinctively feel that we exist as something very real, definite, and substantial. We have no doubt about this real me and it seems absurd to think of it as just another hallucination. Yet if we take the trouble to search for this supposedly concrete “I” or “me” we will discover that we cannot find it anywhere. Neither our head, our arm, our leg, nor any other part of our body is our “I.” The same is true of our mind: none of the countless thoughts or feelings that continuously arise and disappear is the real me. And, of course, this solid sense of self is not to be found somewhere outside this body-mind combination. Yet despite the fact that we cannot discover an independent, self-existent “I” anywhere, either within or outside our body and mind, we still hold on to it tightly in the very depths of our heart as if it were most real. This innate belief in something that is not true, this fundamental source of all our problems, can be called “ego-grasping.” We did not have to learn this mistaken belief; it has been with us intuitively since birth. In fact, it was ego-grasping itself that propelled us to take birth as we did in the first place.
In what way does ego-grasping hold on to its wrong view? We can get a general idea by looking at our thoughts from moment to moment: “How is my mind interpreting reality? Who does it believe that I am?” If our investigation is sharp enough, we will discover that we carry around with us a certain preconceived, concrete notion about ourselves — “This is exactly who I am” — and that this notion has nothing whatsoever to do with reality.
Our ordinary ego-conception thinks, “I definitely exist somewhere, I am real.” Not for a moment do we consider that what or who we are is only the result of giving a name or a label to a group of ever-changing mental and physical parts. Our ego-grasping mind, so intent on establishing and maintaining a solid and secure sense of identity, would never accept that the self is just an imputation, a mere name or designation. It asserts instead, “I exist from my own side, inherently. I am not something merely conjured up by superstition.” But this assertion is completely mistaken. It is the wrong view that lies at the root of all our difficulties.
We are so familiar with the apparently concrete appearance of things, including ourselves, that it is not easy to switch suddenly and adopt a looser, more relaxed vision. Our ego — in this context, the neurotic mind that grasps on to a solid sense of self-identity for support — is extremely powerful and will fight against any view that threatens its security. It is deeply disturbed by the suggestion that the “I,” like everything else, is something merely designated by conceptual thought. Therefore we should expect a lot of resistance when we meditate on the non-self-existence of the “I.” This is natural; it is only our deeply ingrained ego struggling against annihilation.
Identifying the Inner Enemy
As long as our ego-grasping continues to project its solid, restrictive vision of reality, there will be no space in our mind to experience the expansive vision of totality that we all inwardly desire. Therefore, in order to reach beyond our false concepts and projections, first it is necessary to eliminate all the wrong ideas we have about ourselves. We need to gain as clear a picture as possible of the way we presently conceptualize ourselves, how we hold on to the false sense of ego, because there is no way of generating a correct view until we understand clearly what our habitual wrong view is like.
The great meditation masters of the past have stressed the importance of identifying as exactly as possible the conceptual nonsense of our mind. There is no benefit in using powerful techniques of insight meditation to overcome a vague or merely theoretical wrong view of self. This will not help us at all. We have to identify the root of our difficulties by looking deeply into our own mind for its characteristic misconceptions. Only then will it be possible for us to attack the fundamental cause of our problems. Otherwise it is as if our enemy were approaching from the east and we were pointing our weapons toward the west.
This point is worth emphasizing: one of the main reasons why we continue to experience the various miseries of cyclic existence, repeatedly moving from one unsatisfactory situation to another, is our inability to recognize where our problems are coming from. Even when we overcome the common mistake of thinking that our difficulties are caused externally, we still often fail to identify the inner enemy correctly. We may mistakenly conclude, for example, that the source of our dissatisfaction and frustration is a particular intellectual view or opinion that we hold and that all we have to do to correct the situation is adopt a higher, more respectable philosophical position. But such a superficial approach never strikes at the root of our difficulties.
Our basic problem is not an intellectual one. We may start out by subscribing to a particular analysis of who and what we are and then later change our mind and adopt an opposing view. While such a change may be intellectually satisfying, it does not solve our basic, organic problem of ego. In fact, although we may take pride in our new level of intellectual understanding, all we have done is substitute one set of superstitions for another. Instead of weakening our ego-grasping, we have merely given it something else to hold on to.
Loosening the Grip of Misconception
We must understand that we cannot banish our habitual, concrete view of ego immediately. It takes time for this solid appearance to be overcome completely. But we can attack the grosser levels of misconception now by loosening our tight grip on what we think reality is. Then, even though the concrete appearance of things still remains, we are not so readily led astray by it.
The traditional Buddhist texts illustrate this point with the analogy of a magician and his audience. By reciting hypnotic spells over pieces of wood or stone, a skilled magician can trick people into seeing horses, for example. The people affected by these spells not only see these illusory animals, they believe them to be real. They are entranced by the magician’s powers and taken in by his illusions. Owing to the power of the spells, the magician also sees the horses but of course does not believe in them; he knows they are illusory because he himself conjured them up. Thus while the audience can be dazzled by the performance, the magician himself remains unmoved and unaffected.
Ordinarily, we are like that audience. We believe everything that our dualistic conceptions conjure up. If something seems to be attractive, we are immediately taken in by this superficial appearance and run after it. If its appearance changes to something not so attractive, we immediately want to run away from it, not stopping to consider how these changing appearances are a reflection of our own mind and have little or nothing to do with the object itself. As a result we are continuously led from one unsatisfactory state of existence to another, vainly seeking support for an illusory ego-identity by running after, or away from, illusory objects. In this way our life becomes an absurd drama filled with emotional conflict, frustration, and disappointment.
But it is possible for us to let go of these ignorant beliefs. Like the magician, even when concrete appearances of this and that arise, we need not be swayed by them. Eventually, when our mind has become completely cleansed of all distorted views, even these dualistic appearances will cease. But we do not need to wait until then to be liberated from our conflicting emotions. The moment we start loosening our concrete conceptions we will experience a taste of this freedom.
Cultivating the Middle Way
With all this talk of non-self-existence and the illusory nature of phenomena we might conclude that ourselves, others, the world, and enlightenment are totally nonexistent. Such a conclusion is nihilistic and too extreme. Phenomena do exist. It is their apparently concrete and independent manner of existence that is mistaken and must be rejected.
Take the example of a rainbow. Does it exist or not? Of course it does, but how? As something arising from the interplay of droplets of water in the sky, sunlight, and our own point of observation. A rainbow, then, is an interdependent phenomenon, and if we investigate we can discover its various causes and conditions. But when we gaze at this rainbow we may be so moved by its beauty that we try to reach out and touch it. Yet as we advance, the rainbow appears to retreat. No matter how fast or how far we run, we can never catch up with anything solid to grasp on to. A rainbow is by nature intangible and we have to be content with the realization that this beautiful phenomenon is an appearance that we can neither hold nor possess.
In a similar way, all existent phenomena are mere appearances to the mind; lacking concrete self-existence, they come into being from the interplay of various causes and conditions. They arise, abide, and disappear, all the while constantly changing. This is true of ourselves as well. No matter what our innate sense of ego-grasping may believe, there is no solid, inherent self to be found anywhere inside or outside our ever-changing mental and physical components. We and all other phenomena without exception are empty of even the smallest atom of self-existence, and it is this emptiness (shunyata) that is the ultimate nature of everything that exists.
The discourses in which Shakyamuni Buddha set forth his most profound teachings on emptiness are the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras (a text of which is symbolically held in the left hand of Manjushri, the embodiment of fully awakened wisdom). And the Indian commentator who clarified and spread these teachings was Nagarjuna who, in addition to being a profound philosopher, was a great tantric adept, a mahasiddha, as well.
Nagarjuna’s system of philosophical analysis is known as the Middle Way, or Madhyamaka, for it avoids the extreme views of self-existence and nonexistence, of eternalism and nihilism, of over-estimation and underestimation. According to Nagarjuna, all the ordinary concepts we have of this and that are mistaken. Why? Because we habitually superimpose onto the objects of our experience qualities of concreteness, independence, and self-existence — which they in fact lack. In other words, our ordinary, ignorant view of reality — both our inward sense of self and the external appearance of other phenomena such as sights, sounds, and so forth — is superstitious and dualistic.
As we have discussed before, we continually project a false image onto whatever we are dealing with and then believe that the false image is the object itself. When we gain some idea of how habitually false our dualistic vision of reality is, we may overreact and deny the existence of everything. This is the nihilistic extreme and is not only completely mistaken but dangerous as well. What we have to understand is that things do exist, but not in the concrete way we habitually suppose. The challenge in cultivating the correct view of emptiness is to refute completely all notions of independent self-existence without denying valid interdependent existence.
When we try to apply logical reasoning to prove to ourselves that something is empty — that it lacks inherent, concrete self-existence — it may sometimes feel that we are pushing too hard. “This is empty for this reason… or that reason… or that reason.” Somehow it feels uncomfortable. This can definitely happen; strenuous application of logic can often harm our understanding rather than help it. At such times it is a good idea to relax the force of our logical investigation and merely observe how the thing we are examining functions, how it works, where it came from, and so forth.
For instance, if we are examining something to discover if it is as self-existent as it appears, we can remember: “This item was put together by people in a factory; then it was shipped to the market to be sold; then I came along and bought it; and now I am using it.” Looked at in this way, the non-self-existent nature of the thing becomes a bit clearer. We see it as something that grew out of causes, that depends on many things for its existence, that functions this way and that; this understanding will soften the general impression we have that it is something independent and concrete, existing out there as a solid, self-contained object. This approach to understanding interdependence and non-self-existence, or emptiness, is comfortable and direct. Once we are familiar with it we will easily see why many great masters of the past have claimed that interdependence, or dependent arising, is the king of logical reasoning and the best way of understanding the actual condition of things.
From Nagarjuna’s point of view, there are no exceptions to the assertion that all things lack true, independent self-existence. The mind is not an exception; Buddha is not an exception. We cannot say that some unworthy object, like a garbage bin, is empty and non-self-existent, while a highly respected object, such as Shakyamuni Buddha himself, is absolute and truly self-existent. This is not so. From the point of view of their being empty and nondualistic, the ultimate reality of Buddha and the ultimate reality of the garbage bin are identical.
The practical conclusion of all this is to refrain from immediately accepting all our dualistic appearances — this and that, good and bad, and so on — as being ultimately true, and also to refrain from denying them completely. Instead, we should remain a bit loose, a bit skeptical. We should be aware that because objects now appear to us so concretely as this and that, they have the power to lead us into conflict and confusion. If we are clearly aware of this, we will not allow ourselves to fall so readily under their spell. And if we then train ourselves to contemplate the basic clarity of the mind in which these appearances arise, we will be able to enter an experience of nonduality in which all conflict and confusion ultimately subside.