7

Poison, Fuel, or Medicine? The Sense Pleasures

BHANTE PIYĀNANDA      SOJUN MEL WEITSMAN, ROSHI

REGINALD RAY      MIRANDA SHAW

 

Bhante Piyānanda, in your book Saffron Days In L.A., you quote this verse from the Dhammapada:

       From lust arises grief,

       From lust arises fear.

       For him who is free from lust

       There is no grief, much less fear.

This describes the desire for sense pleasures as a central cause of our suffering. How central is the problem of lust to Buddhist philosophy?

BHANTE PIYĀNANDA: In his first sermon, called the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha explained the middle path. He said the search for happiness through sense pleasure is low, common, and unprofitable—the way of ordinary people. He said we cannot understand things as they are through indulging in sense pleasure. On the other hand, Buddha said, the search for happiness through self-mortification is not good either. Buddha avoided these two extremes and followed the middle path.

SOJUN MEL WEITSMAN, ROSHI: The ideal is to find the middle way, and then there’s the actual playing out of Dharma in our lives. We are all, every one of us, sensual beings. We have five senses, and we have the mind sense and the ego sense and various levels of consciousness that look for satisfaction. We need to take into consideration the world in which we find ourselves and look at how we deal with this problem of attachment. That’s especially true nowadays, when sensuality is being sold to us without limit.

Where does attachment to the sense pleasures come in the process of the twelve nidānas, the chain of dependent origination?

BHANTE PIYĀNANDA: In terms of dependent origination, we start with ignorance (avijjā) as a cause. Then we have three roads, greed (lobha), hatred (dosa), and ignorance (moha). It is due to these three that all of our suffering started, and if we can begin to remove our greed, hatred, and ignorance, we can begin to end our suffering. It all begins with ignorance, though. We have traveled continually in samsara due to this basic ignorance.

REGINALD RAY: Sometimes attachment is confused with experience. It’s interesting that attachment really only arises at the eighth nidāna—it comes along very late in the evolution of our experience. This helps us to see that sense experience itself is not considered a problem in Buddhism. The problem is the attitude we have toward it. Attachment—embodied in passion, aggression, and ignorance—represents attitude and that evolves pretty late in the chain.

The whole problem of ego is that we attempt to maintain a continuous monologue that confirms our identity and security. We use sense experience to reinforce our sense of ourselves. Rather than taking sense experience in and of itself and appreciating its possibilities, we try to co-opt it.

MIRANDA SHAW: From the beginning Buddhism has balanced two seemingly opposing tendencies. First, we have the need for detachment—the need to renounce our greed and dependence on sense experience as a source of happiness. At the same time, there’s a profound impulse to affirm the world and a sense that the goal of the practice is not to escape it. The most popular way of representing the Buddha is in the earth-touching gesture, in which his hand is held to the ground. This portrays the idea that enlightenment is not something that is going to remove you from the world of sense experience. Instead, it involves a profound groundedness in reality and on Earth—an enlightened participation in life. The paradox is that we detach from our attachments but not from the world itself.

Is the challenge just our attachment to the sense pleasures, or do we simultaneously have to work with our aversion to pain?

SOJUN MEL WEITSMAN, ROSHI: Pleasure and pain are pretty subjective. Within pain there’s pleasure, and within pleasure there’s pain. Pain is a natural element of living in this world. We can’t avoid pain, but pain is not necessarily suffering. Pain can either liberate us or bite us, depending on how we approach it.

Pleasure may be the same. It is not necessarily something bad or good. Pleasure is simply pleasure. The problem is with our attitude and how we become caught by something. It is about liking and disliking. We habituate ourselves to something we like and avert something we dislike. As we investigate this, we come to the question, What is really the source of the problem? The problem is maybe not with objects of pleasure or pain but with our attitudes and attachment.

BHANTE PIYĀNANDA: At the same time we have to ask, How does it come to be? How does it die away? Just as we can see that the leaves fall from the trees in autumn, wise ones must understand that everything is subject to change. If we understand impermanence, then we will be able to handle pain as well as pleasures. That is how to develop the habit of renunciation.

If we look at things as impermanent, we can release our grasping. For instance, if I have a lustful character that I cannot control, I must practice meditation on death or impurity. When I do that meditation on death and understand its nature, then gradually I’ll be able to remove my desire. It is a tool to get rid of attachment.

REGINALD RAY: If we have an intellectual understanding of impermanence, it does undermine our tendency to grasp after sense experience. If you actually see the sense experience arise and disappear within your body, there’s nothing to hang on to. Attachment doesn’t really come up as an issue, because there’s such a sense of movement and groundlessness that the mind simply doesn’t go there.

MIRANDA SHAW: One of the key differences between the Theravāda and tantric approaches came up in Bhante’s comment that when one understands the impermanent nature of things one will automatically detach from them. In tantra a different conclusion is derived. When one understands the essential nature of phenomena as empty of intrinsic reality, the appropriate response is to go to the heart of experience—to immerse oneself in experience and find there the treasury of wisdom and bliss that each experience holds.

The tantrikas called themselves heroes and heroines because they saw themselves as fearlessly diving into the ocean of the passions in order to gain the pearls of enlightenment. For them, turning away from sense experience contained a danger that one may be inadvertently repressing or avoiding experience. Therefore, one should place oneself in situations that will arouse all kinds of attachments. Instead of withdrawing, perhaps one would immerse oneself in relationships, which can arouse our most profound attachments and fears and passions, and use them as a stepping-stone.

What are they a stepping-stone toward?

MIRANDA SHAW: To discovering that sense experiences are intrinsically pure and blissful. The description of reality-as-it-is shifts somewhat. On the one hand, it is empty of intrinsic reality, but it is also inherently blissful.

The way to realize the intrinsic pleasure of being is to immerse ourselves in experiences and not get caught up in our ego-oriented interpretations. Instead, the sense experiences themselves become the objects of our most focused and fearless attention. Attention to music, dance, yoga, to bodily disciplines generally, could all be ways to gain access to the inherent blissfulness of embodiment. Tantrikas are careful to distinguish between ordinary pleasure and this kind of transcendent pleasure.

Is there a specific way of working with sense pleasures in Zen?

SOJUN MEL WEITSMAN, ROSHI: Desire is the key word in this regard. Desire is not necessarily good or bad. It is a life force working in the world. We have our necessary desires—getting enough sleep, getting enough food, maintaining ourselves. But that’s not what we mean by desire here. Desire in this case is something extra, something more than what’s needed.

Instead of using desire for self-gratification, we could turn desire in another direction. When desire is turned toward practice it’s called “way-thinking mind.” Desire is still there, because it’s the desire to seek the way. When the desire to seek the way becomes pleasurable, the desire for gratification through other pleasures can diminish. One can work with the tension between self-gratification and the desire for freedom within the Dharma. The Dharma is pleasurable for us.

We have a chant we sometimes use when we have an informal meal: “We venerate the three treasures and are thankful. Now as I take food and drink, I vow with all beings to partake in the pleasure of Zen and fully enjoy the Dharma.” This means we have pleasure and enjoyment in the Dharma. This is where enjoyment comes from. The more we seek pleasure and enjoyment from practicing the Dharma, the less interesting sensual pleasures from outside sources become.

REGINALD RAY: We think there’s only one kind of pleasure and pain: pleasure that feels good and pain that doesn’t. But there’s a kind of pain and pleasure that operates outside of the five skandhas and the nidānas. That kind of pain and pleasure is what the Vajrayāna is dealing with, and nobody likes that kind of pain and pleasure because it’s undomesticated and it destabilizes the ego.

The Vajrayāna picked up on the fact that, in rejecting pleasure, many of the more conventional Buddhist schools were throwing out the transcendent pleasure of great bliss along with the pain. They realized that there is an implicit fear involved in an approach that throws out both ego pleasure and transcendent pleasure. They felt that somehow the people who were taking that more conventional view had not really achieved liberation, because there was still this underlying antipathy to pleasure in all forms, including those that operate beyond ego. The Vajrayāna took the notion of transcendent pleasure as a final stepping-stone toward complete liberation.

Bhante, do you recognize any distinction between conventional pleasure and transcendent pleasure?

BHANTE PIYĀNANDA: Pleasure, conventionally or in any form, is pleasure. However, we do have a desire to practice meditation and a desire to attain nibbāna. In the Rathavinīta Sutta, Sāriputta asks, “Is it for the sake of purification of virtue that the holy life is lived under the blessed one?” The answer is no. Virtue is only the means to a higher end. If we’re clinging to any desires, we may not be able to attain enlightenment. We could even cling to something good. If I have too much faith, I may not be able to meditate well unless I balance it with wisdom. If I have a lot of energy without concentration, I might not achieve a good result. We have to balance, rather than cling; that’s the most important thing.

REGINALD RAY: This might be an interesting difference in the way the traditions speak. In the Vajrayāna it would not be said that we need to cut clinging, but rather that we need to take it as an object of meditation. In Mahāmudrā practice, the more disgusting and dirty the kleśa is, the more appropriate it is for meditation. For example, if we feel a tremendous amount of clinging toward a certain person or a certain experience, rather than reject the clinging we make it the object of meditation. Through penetrating and understanding it, not only does its emptiness become a matter of experience but the energy of the clinging is transformed into great bliss and compassion. It becomes fuel for the journey and for relating to other people.

MIRANDA SHAW: This points to a genuine shift in the terminology of the tradition. Whereas in the earlier Theravāda tradition attachment and desire are genuinely regarded as a danger, in tantra the emphasis shifts and passion is seen as a great treasure. It becomes our guide to wisdom, because each of us has deep sensitivities and places where we’re very open, where we’re vulnerable to the depth of experience and reality. Instead of turning away from those places, they become the focus of our meditation and the fuel for our practice.

BHANTE PIYĀNANDA: I think all Buddhist traditions accept what the Buddha said in the Kālama Sutta: When you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, give them up. When you know that certain things are wholesome, follow them. Some desires are wholesome, and those we can accept for the progress of meditation and enlightenment. But whatever is unwholesome, whatever is harmful to us and society, we must give up. I think all of Buddhism agrees on that basic doctrine.

SOJUN MEL WEITSMAN, ROSHI: All of our passions, all of our drives, are meaningful. It’s not a matter of getting rid of this or getting rid of that. It’s a matter of balancing, so that everything works together harmoniously. Harmony is the key, in the mind, in the heart—and in the ego. We think we can get rid of ego, so we won’t have any more problems, but ego is not something that we can get rid of, really. In the hierarchy of consciousness, ego has a function. Ego is the sense of self, and the sense of self seems to be the problem. When the self arises, there’s clinging and attachment. When there’s no clinging and no attachment, we can say there’s no real self there. Nevertheless, ego has a function, and when the ego is functioning in a harmonious way with the head and the heart and the emotions and the senses, it’s much easier to sort out what is attachment, what is worth taking up and what is worth letting go.

Theravāda and Vajrayāna offer very different, even opposed, methods of working with attachment. Does Zen offer some middle ground on this?

SOJUN MEL WEITSMAN, ROSHI: I could approach that with an example from the life of my teacher, Suzuki Roshi. In general, he didn’t smoke and didn’t drink; he took care of himself. When he went to a party, however, he allowed himself to have one drink. He would take one drink of champagne or whatever was offered, but he would say no thank you for the rest of the night. He would participate and be with people, but he would participate only to the point where he was not given over to attachment or indulgence.

Learning how to participate, how to flow with things, how to move with society, how to move with the people around you, without being attached to it, is the method. But I would rather talk about it as attitude rather than method, because it’s the attitude that makes the difference. We keep precepts through our attitude, not simply by following them by rote.

We have looked at the sense pleasures from the point of view of the path. How would someone who is enlightened handle sense pleasures?

MIRANDA SHAW: I’d like to echo Sahajayoginīcintā, an important Indian female Vajrayāna teacher, who said that for one who has attained buddhahood, all the sense pleasures and all activities become like jewels in the palm of their hand.

An enlightened being can use all situations to liberate sentient beings, and that is done artfully and mindfully but with tremendous flexibility. In tantra, there’s no one type of display, or no one way of working with the sensory world, that will be liberating for all sentient beings. Some people may be inspired by the example of someone who is very restrained and modest and detached. Others may be inspired by the example of someone who commands vast resources and uses them in ways that nourish, nurture, heal, and inspire others. Some people need to be liberated by the example of someone who is in no way intimidated by the whole of the senses, someone who can freely enjoy and engage all sense pleasures and yet retain a mind that is untrammeled and free. Such a person could be very outrageous or appear to be a self-indulgent sybarite.

There is no limit to the possibilities. There is no one way. Enlightenment involves the artistry of devising means that will liberate all sentient beings.

REGINALD RAY: We would call this seeing the sacredness of experience. We could talk about each experience—however it may be judged by conventional standards—as empty of inherent essence, and luminous, splendid, striking in its appearance. But there’s also a kind of unfolding quality to experience, which is something the Vajrayāna also attends to. It sees that our experience, as it unfolds in our lives in accordance with the laws of karma, is actually the unfolding of wisdom and compassion.

An enlightened person has a tremendous amount of trust in what happens in his or her life and in the world. Such a person sees that each occurrence is an opportunity to connect with other people and help them. At the same time, each thing that happens is a moment of awakening to ourselves as practitioners. The enlightened person exhibits an ultimate trust in life and in what occurs. But it’s not a blind trust—it’s a trust that emerges out of direct insight into how things really are at the deepest level.

SOJUN MEL WEITSMAN, ROSHI: I definitely agree with the importance of trust—to have intrinsic trust in our practice and in the fact that the practice supports us when we support the practice. I’ve seen that trust work over and over again. There are two tracks. One is how we deal with ourselves, how we take care of ourselves and practice for our own enlightenment. The other is how we take care of others.

These two go hand in hand. To try to understand people is the best way we can let go of our clinging and our attachments to desires, anger, and ill will. We see what is behind it all; it gives us space and nonattachment to whatever comes up. This is basic Buddhist meditation: simply to notice how things arise and how they cease to arise, and to be with them when they’re there. When we allow this process to unfold, we gain some freedom.

Sometimes we also have to step into a situation where there’s some attachment and we have to be able to accept that as well. Sometimes that’s the skillful means for helping people. There are many ways in the Dharma and I can’t criticize any way of the Dharma. I think each school and each discipline has its own approach and each approach is wonderful and interesting and works.