All early Buddhist teachings related to transformative practice can be understood as elaborations on just three basic and interconnected concepts: Attachment (upadana), Impermanence (anicca), and Distress (dukkha).
The basic teaching is that: In a world where all conditions are Impermanent and liable to change, inflexible Attachment to any particular set of circumstances makes a person vulnerable to deep Distress when changes occur in those circumstances.
This is the basic problem to which early Buddhism offers a solution. The solution it offers is to reduce and gradually eliminate Attachments, which if completely eliminated, would also completely free a person from Distress due to unexpected and unwanted changes in the world.
The most common description of Nibbana (Nirvana), the goal of Buddhist transformative practice, is that it is “the cessation of Distress” brought about by “the cessation of Attachment.”
The story of Kisa Gotami.
This complex set of ideas, Craving/Clinging, Impermanence, and Distress, understood in relation to each other, is very well illustrated in the following story from later Buddhist tradition, the story of Kisa Gotami, a young woman born into a poor family who married into a more wealthy one.
[She was born] at Savatthi in a poor household, and she was called Gotami. But she was so lean and frail that they called her Kisa Gotami, “Frail Gotami.” When she entered her husband’s home they scornfully called her “daughter of a lowly house”; but then when a son was born to her they started respecting and honoring her. But when her son was of an age to run up and down, while playing one day he fell and died: then great sorrow came upon her. And she said to herself: “Formerly I was scorned: but when I got a son I was honored. But now these folk will want to take my son and throw his body away.” So in her great sorrow she took the dead body on her hip and roamed the town, going from door to door and asking “ Give medicine for my boy .” But people mocked her and asked “ Of what use is medicine?”
Then a certain wise man said to her “Good woman, go to the fully Enlightened One, and ask of Him a medicine for your child.” So she went to the Master and said: “Lord, give me a medicine for my child.” The Master, replied: “ Go to the town, enter into every house, and beg a little mustard seed in from a house where no one has ever died.”
“Yes, Lord” she replied with joy. Entering the town she went to the very first house and said: “I need a little mustard seed as medicine for my child. If in this house no one has died, give me a little mustard seed.” But they answered: “Who can count the number of all the people who have died here in this house.” And so she went to the second and third house asking the same thing, and was unable to get what she asked for.
Finally she came to the realization, “In all this town this must be the way of things. This the Buddha must have seen out of compassion for me.” So her sorrow was greatly lessened, and she was finally able to go and lay the body of her son in the village burial field.
She then sang this verse:
This is no law for village or for town,
No law for any single family.
Through all the world of gods and of men This law holds good:
All is impermanent.
So saying she came back to the Master, who said to her: “Have you found the mustard seed, Gotami?” “Done is the business of the mustard seed, Lord,” she said, and asked to be ordained a nun. Then she went away to where the Sisters lived, was ordained, and not long after… became famous in the practice of the homeless life. — (From Buddhist Stories, translated by F.L. Woodward, Adyar, India, 1925 (1994), p. 32-36.)
This story illustrates very well the complex of ideas described above.
First, it shows how and why a person’s mind can become inflexibly locked in to a need for the world to be a certain way. When Gotami became mother of a son, this gained her respect from her in-laws that they had previously denied her, this fulfilled a deep psychological need she had for sources of self-esteem, a cure for obvious feelings of insecurity she would feel without external social support. She then became so inflexibly Attached to this particular way of fulfilling this need that the Distress she suffered caused her to refuse to even acknowledge reality of the turn of events that robbed her of this way of fulfilling it.
The image of Gotami carrying around the dead corpse of her son asking for medicine to bring him back serves as a very extreme example dramatizing a complex of ideas connected with Distress.
A Contrastive mentality
“Contrastive mentality” here refers to a mindset that does not fully see, accept, and adapt to actually existing circumstances for what they are. This mentality only sees the contrast between circumstances that actually exist, and different circumstances a person expects to exist, and needs to exist, because she has become inflexibly dependent on them to fulfill a deep need she has.
The Gotami story illustrates such a contrastive mentality in a very extreme form. Gotami’s desperate need to maintain the status that being mother-of-a-son provided her, caused her to lapse into unreality, refusing to accept the finality of her son’s death, now inescapably thrust upon her.
“Wasted emotional energy resisting uncontrollable change,” is another phrase helpful in describing the reaction of a person in the grip of such a contrastive mentality due to Attachment.
That is, the Buddhist ideal is not pure passivity in the face of all difficult life-circumstances. In some circumstances it lies within a person’s power to resolve difficult problems that have arisen, and in this case, Buddhism should not prevent a person from actively seeking such a resolution. But sometimes, inflexible Clinging will cause a person to continue to focus all her attention on, and obsess about, the frustrating character of a situation. Since nothing can actually be done in the situation, such obsessive preoccupation serves no positive purpose. This is what I mean by “wasted emotional energy resisting uncontrollable change.”
Finally, Attachment typically issues in a futile attempt to stop or control the flow of change in the world. This happens when, because a person has become inflexibly dependent on some particular condition of the world, she wants to stop this particular condition from passing out of existence and being replaced by some other condition. This again is dramatically illustrated in the story of Gotami, who wanted so desperately to maintain her status as mother-of-a-son and prevent this status from ceasing to exist due to her son’s death.
I speak here of a “deep psychological need” a person might have, that might cause her to Cling to some particular condition of the world that fills that need. This need can take several forms, but the Gotami story illustrates one of its main forms that I will focus on in these essays, which might be called the need for external validation. This is a need for something in the world to serve as a basis for self-esteem and a sense of meaning in life–a sense that one is a worthwhile person deserving of respect and leading a meaningful life.
Attachment, Impermanence, and Distress as an interrelated complex.
I capitalize these terms because they bear special meanings, understood properly only when they are understood as an interrelated complex of ideas.
Distress (dukkha) does not refer to just any kind of “suffering,” but only that kind of emotional distress due to inflexible Attachments to particular conditions in the world, typically accompanied by the complex of reactions illustrated in the Gotami story (a “contrastive mentality,” and so on).
The English word “attachment” can have many meanings, but here it represents only those kinds of inflexible Attachments to particular conditions in the world that prevent a person from moving forward when circumstances change depriving them of something they were deeply Attached to.
This understanding of Attachment determines the particular significance that Impermanence has in early Buddhist teaching. That is, Clinging gives rise to inflexible emotional expectations of enduring sameness or predictability, lack of change, in those particular conditions a person has become dependent on for her sense of self-worth and meaning in life.
The universal Impermanence of all conditions in the world is what makes these expectations unrealistic. To the extent that a person has developed inflexible emotional expectations that these conditions can be relied on not to change, to this extent this person lives in an emotionally “illusory” world. This is not an intellectual illusion – nearly everyone intellectually realizes that conditions in the world are subject to change. It is an emotional illusion in that people develop deep emotional expectations of enduring and reliable sameness in those conditions they have become deeply dependent on.
This point is illustrated in the Gotami story by the fact that the Buddha did not just teach her a doctrine about Impermanence for her intellectual acceptance. He gave her an exercise allowing the truth of Impermanence to emotionally sink in. She had to “real-ize” and internalize the truth about Impermanence, make it a real and effective part of her worldview, changing also her fundamental way of relating to the world. That is, the more normal way of creating a satisfying life for oneself is either to try to find some satisfying set of conditions that can be relied on not to change, or else to try to control important conditions so as to prevent them from changing. This means that, in the more normal case, people relate to the world on the basis of a rather optimistic and hopeful attitude, optimistic that some conditions can be found in the world, or created and controlled in the world, that will provide enduring satisfaction.
Early Buddhist pessimism.
This practical understanding of universal Impermanence, affecting everything a person might Cling to, determines also the significance of early Buddhist emphasis on the Distress-causing character of the world out there. Here we come to the extremely pessimistic attitude toward the world out there that is undeniably central to the early Buddhist worldview. Early Buddhist writings urge aspiring Buddhists to regard its Distress-causing character as the most significant feature of the world out there. When you look at the world out there, do not think positive thoughts–that there is something out there on which you can rely to fulfill your need for sources of self-esteem and meaning in life.
Instead, when you look at the world out there, think Impermanence and think Distress. The world as normally experienced is a trap and a lure, always promising more than it can actually deliver. One sutta passage (SN 47. 7. [148]; Bodhi 2000, 1633-34; kindle 29872) offers a helpful image here. Imagine a troop of monkeys living in some region of a mountain forest so dense and remote that it is inaccessible to hunters who might want to trap and kill the monkeys. This is home-territory for the monkeys, and they are safe so long as they do not range out of their home territory. But sometimes the monkeys are tempted to range out of their home range, and venture into less dense forest regions more accessible to hunters, and thus much more dangerous for the monkeys.
The message: You might find the outside world an alluring place, and be tempted to try to find satisfaction and meaning in life by some particular involvements in or connections to this world. But everything in the world out there is Impermanent, and potentially Distress-causing for anyone who pins their hopes on the world in this way. It is a dangerous place. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into this dangerous territory.
This seems obviously and deliberately intended as a direct affront and a challenge to the more optimistic view of the world that probably comes more naturally to most people. Most people probably regard this optimism as a healthy, good and admirable attitude to take to the world. But the early Buddhist radical critique of this normally positive and optimistic attitude toward the world is an essential part of the challenge it obviously intends to present, a challenge to fundamentally change one’s way of being in the world and relating to the world. Softening it, in the interest of making it more acceptable, would also amount to lessening the challenge that early Buddhism intends to present, inviting a person to strive for fundamental internal change in their fundamental attitudes and fundamental way of relating to the world.
Life in the world as a transformed person.
On the other hand, a person who has fully achieved the Buddhist transformative ideal still lives in the world, and has to interact with the world in some way that will be meaningful. Unfortunately for us, early Buddhist writings are entirely focused on how to achieve this internal transformation and the obstacles that need to be overcome to achieve it. They say the result will be living a life without Distress, but otherwise have very little to offer in the way of positive descriptions of how a person would lead a meaningful life afterwards. Here is one of my suggestions on this issue, surrounding the idea of self-confidcnce.
Normally, a person’s self-confidence has a basis in something in the world that serves to bolster their self-confidence–wealth, the approval of others, success in school or in a career, status in society, and so on. So long as these sources of self-confidence persist, a person can move forward confidently in life. But some conditions are such essential sources of self-confidence that when they change, one feels the world as a threat, completely undermining one’s feeling of having the resources to respond in a creative and meaningful way, and one becomes taken over by feelings of resistance to being in the situation. This again is very well illustrated in story of Kisa Gotami.
But everyone needs some source of self-confidence in this kind of situation. My suggestion: Let us suppose that the ability to rise to any occasion–every occasion whatsoever–is an innate capacity in the being of every human being. Inflexible Attachment to particular conditions has the negative effect of limiting this capacity. A lessening of inflexible Attachments to particular conditions would have the positive effect of increasing the range of circumstances in which one feels confident in having the inner resources to move forward, creatively focusing attention on figuring out the most meaningful way of responding to the situation. One’s self-confidence would no longer be based on feeling supported by some particular (unreliable) conditions in the world. It would be based on the consciousness that “no matter what happens I can handle it.”
