Featured Talk by SMD Teacher Phil Jones
My talk tonight is on the distinction between learning versus directly or experientially knowing. But as part of that I'm also touching on Right View and Right Intention, the first two steps in the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path. But I want to begin with learning.
I think we're blessed to live in a community that values education, that values learning. We can see an example of this valuing by looking at the far wall, the eastern wall of this room, at our Show Me Dharma lending library. — So many books. So many voices one can learn from.
I love learning about the Dharma. Early on, in the "ancient" days when there weren't so many Dharma books, I read everything I became aware of dealing with Insight Meditation. I also read a number of Zen Buddhist books and a few Tibetan Buddhist books. This whole new world of Dharma was opening up for me and I really ate it up. Nowadays, my reading is more focused on the Early Buddhist discourses, the suttas, and some practice approaches deeply grounded in them.
Throughout the years my reading has mostly had to do with questions like:
"What does this tell me about how to practice?";
"Does this explain the doctrine or theory in a way that makes sense of my own experience?";
"Does what this describes fit with my own experience?"; and
"Is this something that can help me with my practice?"
Learning can be so beneficial. It can be a source of joy too. But, like most things in life we have to be careful how we handle this "knowledge" or information, how we relate to it.
There's some questions that the Buddha posed that I find quite helpful with guiding how we look at most of the things we do and experience. But tonight, I find them helpful in exploring how we relate to learning.
The questions are in the sutta or discourse called the Mahādukkhakkhandasutta, which might be translated as "The Greater Discourse on the Mass of Unsatisfactoriness and Suffering". It's sutta number 13 in the collection called the Majjhima-nikāya or The Middle Length Discourses. In this discourse the Buddha teaches three important questions
that we should understand regarding our sense experiences.
The questions are:
What is the gratification in this experience?
What is the danger in this experience?
And, what is the escape?
The sutta does not explicitly address the experience of learning. And, we might not think of learning from books, recordings, or in-person talks as a sensual experience. But it involves information coming in at our eye-door, our ear-door, and our mind-door, and sometimes at other sense faculties as well. So I think these question apply to our learnings too.
So what are some of the gratifications in learning more about the Dharma? — I'm going to mention a few here, though you might think of more.
Sometimes there's a quality of satisfaction in finding something that explains how our minds and hearts work or how we come to get caught in things that aren't helpful. At other times there's a pleasure in finding an explanation about Buddhist doctrine that makes sense to us. And, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes there's an experience of joy associated with learning.
For a Dhamma practitioner, what are some of the dangers in learning?
There's a danger in spending so much time studying, that we fail to apply and test in our own lives what we've learned. It's information that we know, but it doesn't become experiential or direct knowledge. So this is something that requires balance.
We need to learn about practice and about the doctrines and perspective of the Dhamma in order to practice effectively. But learning can just be another sensual pleasure, something else to fill our time, if we don't apply what we learn towards the goal of practice:
Becoming free from the various ways that greed, hatred, and delusion manifest in our own mind and heart, so that we live with greater ease, with goodwill, compassion, joy for others' good fortune, and with equanimity.
There's also the danger of identification, of "I know this!," or even "I know so much" and "Let me show you how much I know". In this case the danger is not in the knowing. The danger is in the knowing being used to build up and maintain one's sense of self. The danger is in the knowledge not being used to see through our construction of a self and how that is at the center of our experience of dukkha.
In a sense, the dangers are there because one's efforts to learn aren't sufficiently based on Right View and Right Intention. So I want to talk a little about them now.
Right View, samma-diṭṭhi in the Pāli, (sometimes translated as Right Understanding but samma-diṭṭhi is literally right view) is most basically the understanding that all of our actions— actions of body, speech, and mind (the thoughts we think) — have consequences. They affect our lives and the lives of those around us. This is sometimes called the law of karma (or kamma in the Pāli language).
The Buddha made clear that not everything that happens to us is a fruit of our actions. We don't control all of the conditions that affect our lives. But what we can do is train our minds and hearts to control our own actions so that they are in accord with the Four Noble Truths.
The Four Noble Truths are based on this understanding of karma and they are also repeatedly listed in the discourses as the core of Right View. The Four Noble Truths are:
First, the recognition that we're experiencing dukkha.
Second, that what underlies and causes that dukkha is craving — wanting things to be different than they are in this moment.
Third, that it is possible for the dukkha to cease, to come to an end. This means it may cease for moments of our lives and in relation to specific experiences, but it also can cease permanently in regard to this specific pattern of experiences or towards all things. Dukkha ceased permanently in the Buddha's own life and in the lives of other fully awakened ones, called arahants in the discourses.
And fourth, that there is a way, a path of practice that leads to the ending of dukkha. This way or path is called the Noble Eightfold Path.
Right Intention, samma-saṅkappa, follows from Right View. It is:
the intention of renunciation of pleasures that ultimately lead to more craving and dukkha;
the intention of good will or friendliness towards all beings; and
the intention of harmlessness or non-cruelty towards all beings.
Bhikkhu Bodhi, in his marvelous little book The Noble Eightfold Path, (which can be found as a pdf for free on the internet,) said:
When we see how our own lives are pervaded by dukkha, and how this dukkha derives from craving, the mind inclines to renunciation — to abandoning craving and the objects to which it binds us.
Then, when we apply the truth in an analogous way to other living beings, the contemplation nurtures the growth of goodwill and harmlessness. We see that, like ourselves, all other living beings want to be happy, and again that like ourselves they are subject to suffering.
The consideration that all beings seek happiness causes thoughts of goodwill to arise — the loving wish that they be well, happy, and peaceful. The consideration that beings are exposed to suffering causes thoughts of harmlessness to arise — the compassionate wish that they be free from suffering.
So, what about the escape from the danger, but also from clinging to the gratification?
The escape is by practicing the middle way between gratification and danger. Escape comes when we have direct or experiential knowledge that is in line with Right View and Right Intention.
Escape comes when we mindfully investigate how we are relating to the thing that we learn: Knowing this may feel good, but am I using it to inflate my ego? Am I in some way clinging to what I've learned as if it were the right view rather than a view?
Escape comes when we're speaking from and about our direct experience. Yet, even here, without any kind of identification in which we're building up a self.
