Moving
to more faithful representations of the original terminology utilized within
the earliest records of Buddhism, we find the two terms bodhi and nirvana. The
oldest texts we have available within Buddhism are in either Pali or Sanskrit
and our first word, whose form is identical in both languages, is bodhi.
This term’s primary meaning is to awaken, or to know. Interestingly, as
it was translated into other Asian languages when Buddhism migrated,
differences in meaning emerged, so that in Japanese we have kak, which means ‘to be aware’ and in
Tibetan we have byang chub, which means
‘purified and perfected’ and as usual
the Tibetans are prone to hyperbole. We can continue by taking awakened as a more
accurate alternative to enlightenment, we then have something that is
immediately more tangible and also more faithful to its root meaning. To awaken
exists as a verb as well as a noun and relates to everyday experience as well
as more generally with awareness – we can wake up literally from physical
sleep, we can wake up metaphorically from ignorance. You can become awake to
confusion and patterned habits and behaviour at an internal level and to the
interconnected networks of relationships in society that lead and encourage
people to be asleep to the conditions in which they live and exist. The same obviously
applies to knowing. You can come to know how things are within you and without.
You can explore different fields of knowledge and come to gain knowledge
firsthand. In both cases there are tangible, replicable processes taking place
that can be understood by the individual and spoken of.
Like
the majority of key reoccurring terms within Buddhism, bodhi is subject to a variety of uses. Its meaning is not fixed
into a cast iron conceptual box, but serves different purposes within different
contexts. It does get used synonymously with nirvana, our second term, but is perhaps best understood as either
the experience or process of awakening, or the emergent processes that lead to
nirvana (to be discussed below). Awakening then could be the first half of a
two-part phenomenon and as such describes the process of becoming, or of
awakening into, the nature of nirvana. From this simple definition there is a
clear sense of a process rather than a fixed
goal.
Although
historically and contemporarily there are cases of both gradual and so-called
instant awakening, the latter may actually be a smoke screen of sorts with
claims being precocious at best and delusional at worst. The whole
idea of final vague ends, achieved instantly in a flash of spiritual wonder is
problematic for obvious reasons and seems to ignore the complexity of the
conditioned nature of the self and the dependency of our identity on our
relationship with the world around us. The idea that you could disband all such
webbing in a single moment seems delusional. Finality is problematic when
discussing such highly subjective phenomenon, lending itself to abstraction and
running counter to impermanence that is so central within Buddhism and which
speaks to the constantly changing and shifting nature of physical reality. A
sympathetic approach may also consider some forms of self-claimed awakening as
partial in the best of cases, or possibly complete within a very narrow set of
parameters.
Dukkha
Dukkha is another key Buddhist
term that requires explanation before going any further with bodhi as the two are intimately related.
This term has traditionally been translated as suffering, which is not a bad
term, but does leave out some of the primary elements of what was intended by dukkha, which really would be best
considered an umbrella term for a variety of human experiences. Some attempts
have been made to find a single worded translation that better fits the
originally intended meaning. Dissatisfaction is perhaps the most well-known
alternative, but if you prefer, there is another provided by the well-known Secular
Buddhist Stephen Batchelor, who opted for anguish in his Buddhism without Beliefs. These attempts at simplification leave
out important elements and although it is cumbersome to do so, indicating the
range of afflictions that are encompassed within the term dukkha is vitally important, especially as it is the starting place
of most Buddhisms through the teaching of the Four Truths. It is also vital to
understanding the nature of meditative practices to have a more complete sense
of what one is confronting in the meditative and contemplative act. Dukkha as an umbrella term includes, as
a minimum, the following: emotional and psychological pain and discomfort,
confusion, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, the feeling or sensation of being
incomplete, of being separate from experience and others, the loss of what you
have or the separation from what you desire, frustration, depression, anxiety.
Further nuances could be added but this list points to not just pain, but deep
confusion about what and how we exist and how we relate to the world and that
perennial sense of things not being quite right. For convenience sake, I shall
use the term ‘the suffering-self’ to capture all of the above forms of dukkha, but please do not consider this
self to be only the individual’s affliction. It is helpful to consider these faces
of suffering as shared realities that are a feature of our interwebedness,
rather than referents to an isolated me. Suffering is taken to be very personal
by most of us and Buddhists are certainly no different but it is more accurate,
and healthier, to see it as something we very much share.
Returning
to bodhi. The Buddha apparently said
that he taught only one thing: dukkha
and the end of dukkha. That is to
say, what the suffering-self is based on, and how to dismantle the its
foundations, and awaken out of its blinding and binding affect. Taking this as
a leap off point, a simplified overview of bodhi
could entail the following:
-
Gain
firsthand knowledge of the experience of being free of the suffering-self.
-
Awaken
from identification with and participation in the causes of the suffering-self.
-
Leave
behind the internal hooks onto which the suffering-self attaches: no longer
sustaining the basis for the suffering-self.
We
might refer to these as the progressive and accumulative acts of awakening, rather
than a moment of achieving some final breakthrough that expand to encompass the
increasing complexity and vastness of the human predicament. Immediately
something tangible and seemingly possible emerges from this simplification. We
can come to know directly the internal causes of mental and emotional
discomfort, dissatisfaction and pain, we can come to understand the structure
and form of these experiences, we can come to know the means for moving out of
these patterns of experience and we can come to awaken from our confusion about
our existence and our relationship with the world. Awakening then may be the exploration
and actualisation of these acts, rather than a divorced final prize or gasp of
realization that separates you from the human sphere. It may be best considered
not as a self-generated experience that is isolated from the process of
engaging in and developing through a particular meditative practice, in depth questioning
and ongoing enquiry, and a radical shift in our approach to experience. Awakening
in this way could be understood as a developmental process filled with an
ongoing confrontation, or friction with the boundaries that we establish to
avoid experiencing what is unknown and that function to hold together the leaky-self.
It may seem a very tall order for those who recognise how deep our embeddedness
in an atomised self runs, though perhaps it is possible to get some sense of
progress on the way, of meaningful breakthroughs that indicate a person is
moving in the right direction and not simply caught in escapism of sorts or allegiances
to new alliances that undermine the project of loosening and dismantling the
suffering-self.
Buddhism
has a range of elaborate schemes for determining the qualities of an
enlightened individual such as the thirty seven factors of enlightenment and
maps of the theoretical path such as the twelve bhumis, but perhaps they are best understood as a guide to what is
possible, or desirable, rather than a definition of what is guaranteed along
the way or that which must be achieved before the good stuff happens. If many
of the maps and criteria in Buddhism are taken literally, then indeed waking up
would be impossible because the effort required to become perfect in the manner
indicated in these teachings is beyond any mere mortal.
If
awakening is based initially on gaining firsthand knowledge of the experience
of being free from suffering, it is a process that has some potential stages
that, although not fixed in stone, may provide a sense of direction - a sign
post of sorts. In my opinion, the Four Stages of Awakening provides such a
model and may just be pragmatic and workable enough as a basis for outlining
steps that are available to any serious and dedicated individual. But, before
exploring a reconfiguration of this model, we need to examine the third term
for getting at the thing, namely nirvana.
(Suffer - Burning Spear)
Nirvana
This
third and final word has actually entered
the English language and is typically used to refer to paradise, or some
perfect escape. With its association through popular usage with pleasure and heavenly
domains of experience, the term is likely to mislead curious individuals into
believing there is that promised reward of happy-ever-after lingering at the
end of a life of meditative practice. Although nirvana may render the idea of
perfect, blissful being, it is not attributed such renderings in early Buddhist
texts. It commonly implies instead the end or completion of practise through extinguishing
the self, that is to say, removing the fuel that sustains its existence. This
appears to imply the annihilation of the self as the basis from which we exist,
but which self is lost exactly? The loss of an atomistic-self implies that we remain,
but as a creature that knows itself only as part of an ongoing collective
existence. We would function as a player who is free from the networks of the
suffering-self as they exist within that collective, but would continue as an
integral part of that collective all the same. Since we still continue to exist
as a human being, that is to say we are embodied, we have to be able to
function in relationship to the world and the living animate and inanimate
objects that inhabit it. For sure this post-freedom state is sometimes reified,
yet perhaps it is not as grand as all that, perhaps the fireworks do not
ignite, the goddesses and gods do not sing our praises and we are left with
nothing but infinite’s gaze. This gaze may represent a gap for Mahayana
Buddhists, one that is best filled with compassion, or as I prefer to define
it: active, encompassing care.
Nirvana
implies the shedding of that which causes us to suffer first and foremost, but
this sets up a conflict with the body. Taken to its logical end, the body is
the final piece to leave behind because it is always susceptible to
unpredictable bouts of pain from the common cold to a broken bones to
debilitating illness. As the body is not supernatural, but made of flesh and
bone, it is subject to the processes of erosion and decay that afflict all
physical matter and so therefore exists in-between that dichotomy of pleasure
and pain. Continuing to set aside supernatural abilities, the body cannot be
excluded from the natural order and therefore will eventually fall apart. Physical
suffering will always be an inevitable aspect of physical existence, so the
suffering that can feasibly be eliminated completely remains as emotional and psychological.
To awaken from the suffering-self then has to be focused on a discussion of the
psychological and emotional dimensions of being.
Death
is revered in Buddhism and often signifies the completion of the path and the
opportunity to embrace liberation, or final release, but is that a release into
non-existence? Turning off the light, seems to mean just that when nirvana’s
original meaning is explored. What comes after is open to speculation, but what
it certainly is not, is the opportunity to keep our favourite toys and say:
wow, I did it. Although an honest reading of nirvana’s significance may lend
itself to eventual nihilism, I am personally agnostic. I try to remain so
without hedging my bets. That is to say, I have absolutely no idea what will
happen at the moment of death to consciousness, but wish to avoid holding out
any hope either way because it appears to me dishonest to do so and seems
simply to act as a sort of cushion from the fear of being ultimately inconsequential
and of turning to dust.
We
are not isolated however and as we inhabit an organic form in an organic
environment, this means that all of our acts are participatory and it is in
that participation that something meaningful may occur with the brief life we
have. If nirvana implies the extinguishing of the I, the phantom-self, then it
has to be deconstructed through careful examination of its multiplicity of
forms. This implies an enormous undertaking: a deconditioning of the absorbed
self making process received from family, education, society, ethnocentric
concerns and a distortion of emotional and sexual expression.
To
remove the conditioning that we receive from external sources is to gain increasing
clarity on aspects of the phantom-I that are embedded in identification with
the inter-personal and relational aspect of being, and experiencing, handed
down through the collective me-making process. Nirvana implies turning off the
influence of those insipid forces, gaining clear insight into their structure,
functionality and attraction and making sharp choices on how to proceed. The
idea of nirvana is that by revealing such forms and seeing clearly and fully
into their mechanisms they begin to falter and appear as vacuous. We become
able to pierce through the illusion that surrounds the phantom I and eventually
we knock over the house of cards and it falters and ceases to take centre
stage, eventually dissolving, whilst remaining as a convention of sorts.
Part.4 to follow.
Part. 1
Part. 2
Part.4 to follow.
Part. 1
Part. 2
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