Nibbana as “Escape from the Mind”
In Early Buddhism Overview (1) I proposed that most Buddhist teachings can be understood as elaborations on a complex of three ideas, Clinging-Impermanence-Dukkha. Inflexible Clinging to some Impermanent condition in the world makes a person vulnerable to deep Distress ( dukkha ) when this condition changes. Most examples I gave involved Impermanent conditions in the external material/social world.
The present essay introduces some very unique features of early Buddhist teaching which complicate this picture, by showing how the Pali suttas extend this basic idea of Clinging, Impermanence, and dukkha , to everything a person might become aware of in her own internal mental/emotional life as well.
That is, when in another essay I described tanha as a “reaching out for validation,” this can easily be understood as a reaching out to the external world, the material/social world existing outside the confines of my body and outside of the mental/emotional world “inside” me. This could then also easily be thought to invoke an idea commonly associated with the term “spirituality”: The idea that the practice of a spirituality involves a turning away from the material world outside, toward a spiritual world inside. One of the most unique features of early Buddhist spirituality is its rejection of this idea.
The main way this rejection is expressed in the Pali Suttas is the extension of the idea-complex involving Clinging-Impermanence- dukkha to everything a person could perceive and potentially Cling to in her own mental/emotional world.
For example, a “materialistic” person might Cling to external wealth or possessions, as a source of validation. But it is equally possible to Cling inflexibly to particular internal feelings or states of mind as sources for validation. A person can be proud of a self-image of herself as “an always happy person,” or “an always calm person,” or a person easily able to achieve at meditation a blank state of mind or a blissful state of mind. These too could become sources of validation.
It might be imagined that these internal sources of validation are more reliable sources of validation than conditions in the external world. But early Buddhism rejects this idea. Inflexible upādāna /Clinging to anything Impermanent as a source of validation makes a person vulnerable to dukkha , deep “Distress” when this source changes. And early Buudhism extends the principle of universal Impermanence everything a person might become aware of in her own mental/emotional life. Early Buddhism urges individuals to regard calm feelings, happy feelings, and all other particular mental/emotional states as all just as Impermanent and unreliable as are fickle material/social fortunes in the external world. This extends also to exalted spiritual bliss and mystical experiences. There is no reason to turn away from the world outside to a more reliable spiritual world inside because there is nothing inside that is less Impermanent and potentially dukkha -causing than anything outside.
Thus early Buddhist spirituality lacks any element of that kind of introspective mysticism common in contemporary strains of Hindu spirituality – if “introspective mysticism” indicates a focus on an introspective quest for certain spiritual experiences held to unite a person to some supernatural realities. (This aspect of Hindu spirituality is discussed in the essay The Pali Suttas and the Bhagavad Gita: Some Hindu/Buddhist Comparisons and Contrasts. Such a concept is completely lacking in early Buddhism.
“The six regions” constituting “the world.”
The clearest way the above ideas are expressed in the Pali suttas involves a commonly recurring numbered list called sal-ayatana , which I will translate “the six regions.” The six regions are six categories under which can be included everything a person could possibly ever become aware of. Each of the six “regions” is defined by one of six senses which are the sole means by which a person becomes aware of anything. (Sal-ayatana is more commonly translated “the six sense-bases,” but I think “region” follows better the general meaning of ayatana given in the Pali Text Society (PTS) dictionary p. 105. This six-item list occurs very frequently in the suttas, and gives its name to the entire fourth section of the Samyutta Nikaya [ suttas 35-44]).
For example, the world that I see out there, is a world that I perceive by means of the sense of sight. So my sense-of-sight, combined with everything in the world possible to see, constitutes one ayatana, the “region” defined by the sense of sight. My sense of hearing, combined with all sounds possible to hear, constitutes another “region,” and so on. The Pali suttas , then, divide the external world into five ayatana/regions, each defined by one of the familiar five external senses (sight, hearing, smelling, tasting touching). Since these five senses are the only means by which I can become aware of anything in the external world, everything that I perceive as “the world out there” can be classified as falling under one of these five regions.
But besides perceiving a world-out-there made up of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangible objects, I also perceive things happening in my own internal mental/emotional world – ideas, mental images, daydreams, feelings, moods, and so on. The suttas classify these as a sixth ayatana/region. This is a region perceived by one additional “ inner sense” called mano (one Pali word for “mind”). Dhammā, commonly translated in this context as “mind-objects,” is the main word used to refer to all mental/emotional phenomena perceived by introspective mano .
In order to achieve a clear, concrete understanding of early Buddhist teaching, it is important to think of all of this from a concrete first-person point of view. I am never in direct contact with the world. “The world” that I perceive out there, is a world given to me to be perceived by one of my five senses. More exactly, the external world I perceive out there is a world made up of a combination of the deliverances of several of these five external senses – a world made up of things visible, things audible, things touchable, etc. To emphasize this point, In these essays I will sometimes refer to “the world-perceived.”
My own bodily being is something I am also aware of through one of these five senses (seeing my hand, feeling bodily sensations through a sense of touch, etc.) But when it comes to my own being, I am also aware of feelings, moods, ideas, thought processes, planning, daydreams, and so on, happening in my own inner mental/emotional life. The suttas envision all these aspects of my own being (these “mind-objects”) as also part of “the world” that I live in, perceived by means of another “sense,” introspective mano . So if we include this entire region constituted by internal conditions and events I am aware of in my own inner life, then there is nothing that I could ever be aware of, or think of, or dream of, in the external or internal world that is not included in the six regions. “The six regions” is then identical with “the world” that I actually live in and navigate my way through on a daily basis. One sutta (SN 35:82) says that “the world ( loka ) is the six regions.”
To emphasize that this world that I actually live in is a world-perceived, given to me to perceived by one or more of six senses, I will often refer to this world below as “the world perceived.” “The six regions” and “the world perceived” is not different from what we all normally think of as “the world.” The six regions is just one way of dividing up the world of human experience, not into various kinds of things (as in animal, vegetable, mineral), but into six ways that human beings become aware of the world. Phrasing it this way just calls attention to the fact that what we think of as “the world” is a world made up of things-perceived by us, given to us to perceive by one or more of six senses.
So far as the function of the concept of the six regions goes, its main importance lies in its use as a universalizing device in the suttas . The six-region world includes everything a person might possibly ever perceive and also potentially Cling to.”) The constant refrain is that everything belonging to this six-region world is Impermanent, and dukkha-causing for anyone who Clings to anything belonging to this world.
But here we also meet a problem. Buddhist pessimism about the entirety of the perceivable world ultimately has a positive purpose: viewing the six-region world as only a source of dukkha should motivate a person to strive to “abandon” this six-region world, as one passage puts it, or “escape” from the six regions, that this specifically includes “escape from the mind” the sixth sense region (mano) which includes everything a person could become introspectively aware of in her own inner mental/emotional life. “Escape from the Mind” is then one definition of Nibbana, the ultimate goal.
So here the question arises “What escapes?” Or to put this another way: Nibbana must be some kind of change, but it cannot consist in a change in directly perceivable mental/emotional state, anything a person could become introspectively aware of in her own mental/emotional life, to which Buddhism applies the law of universal Impermanence. Nibbana happens when a person “escapes” from any dependence on anything belonging to the world-perceived, including anything perceivable inside one’s own being. This raises the problem, then, about how to describe the change which is Nibbana? What changes when Nibbana is achieved? What part of a person “escapes” not only from dependence o anything belonging to the external material/social world, but also “escapes from the mind.”
To resolve this problem I want introduce and make use in this book of the concept of an “enduring human subject.” That is, all human experience has a subject-object character, involving some perceiving human subject who perceives something that is an object-of-perception for this perceiving subject (as in “I see a tree” – “I” here representing me as a perceiving subject, and “tree” being an object-perceived by me-as-perceiving-subject.) The six-region world consists in objects-of-perception for me as a human “subject” who perceive this world (including my own inner world) by means of one or more of my six senses.
As one (Puggalavada) Buddhist protagonist puts it in a debate recorded in the a writing called the Kathavatthu (contained in the Abhidhamma section of the Pali Canon).
In every seeing
Some “he” [a human subject]
sees a certain “it” [something perceivable]
by a certain “means” [one of the six senses].
In other words, on this view, the six regions do include the entire world of possible perceivables. But it does not include everything really real. The very idea of “something perceived” necessarily includes the idea of some really existing human subject-who-perceives.
I can only Cling to things that I can perceive. So I argue that Buddhist teaching assumes the existence of a human perceiving subject – referred to by the word “I” – who can choose to Cling or not-Cling to Impermanent and potentially dukkha -causing conditions making up the world perceived. It is this subject who is capable of achieving freedom from this Clinging and from dukkha . Nibbana is thus a change taking place, not in the six-region world perceived, but in the human subject-who-perceives – a change in the way that this subject-who-perceives relates to this entire world perceived by this subject.
Readers familiar with current literature will recognize that many Buddhists as well as many scholars, will probably strenuously disagree with what I say here, since common opinion today holds that Buddhist teaching from earliest times denied the existence of the “self” as human subject whose existence I affirm here. I will just note here that the affirmative theory of the human subject that I argue for in these essays is nearly identical with the views of a very early group of “Puggalavada” Buddhists who argued as I do that the teachings of the Pali suttas implicitly assume the existence of a human subject.
Another essay, Two Versions of the An-Atta Teaching will explain further the view I take of this doctrine denying the existence of a self, including especially the difference between this doctrine and what I call the “identity version” of the An-Atta teaching. The practical implications of this identity version are explained in I and My Identity
In this context it is also important to note that what I am speaking of here has nothing to do with Hindu religious belief in an eternally existing Atman (described in The Pali Suttas and the Bhagavad Gita: Some Hindu/Buddhist Comparisons and Contrasts). Rather it is something implicitly taken for granted in the way all normal people perceive the world and lead their everyday lives. This commonsense realism regarding the existence of enduring human subjects is a minimum condition for human normalcy. Anyone who did not perceive the social world as populated by enduring human subjects is not someone with whom we could interact as a normal member of human society.
A subject side and an object side of Buddhist psychology.
The above discussion outlines some ideas about an enduring human subject or “I” that will frequently figure in this book in my attempts to bring greater analytical clarity to the basic teachings constituting early Buddhist transformative spirituality.
I noted earlier that the doctrine of the “six regions” described earlier above invites reflection on the subject-object character of all human experience.
Cast in these terms, Anicca “Impermanence” lies on the “object” side of Buddhist psychology. It applies to all possible objects of awareness, the entire world perceived. This applies not only to changeable thing-like objects such as houses and cars. It applies to everything I-as-subject could ever possibly be aware of, including all possible mental/emotional processes and conditions I could become aware of in my own being – which could become internal objects perceivable by me as a perceiving subject.
“The world perceived” is thus identical with the large collection of entities, conditions, and events that all of us perceive to be “the real world” that we all live in. The only thing that is not a perceivable is the perceiving subject which each of us is. (Part of my argument is that this subject, as subject, never appears among objects-perceived by ourselves-as-subjects. The “I” as perceiving subject is like a camera that never itself appears in the pictures it takes.)
Seen in this way, the main practical point of Buddhist doctrine about the six regions can be described by saying that, according to this doctrine, to be perceivable is to be Impermanent.
The Impermanence affecting all possible perceivables is a cause of Distress for “me” as perceiving subject, whenever “I” Cling inflexibly to some particular perceivable object. Universal Impermanence affecting everything in the world-perceived means that there are no safe perceivables to Cling to. This includes even what might be perceived or experienced in the most spiritually exalted “mystical experiences” (these count as perceivable dhammas perceived by introspective mano ).
So Impermanence is a universal characteristic of all perceivables, belonging to the “object” side of Buddhist psychology. “Thirst” and “Clinging” belong to the “subject” side of Buddhist psychology. They do not function here as things I can become aware of (not perceivable objects-of-awareness). They function rather as ways that “I” can relate to whatever I am aware of. They describe fundamental habitual attitudes I can take toward perceivables in general.
I can only Thirst for and Cling to something that I can become aware of, something that is an object-perceivable by me as perceiving subject. I can only suffer dukkha from some change that I am aware of, a change that also is an something percievable by me as subject.
Buddhism assumes that I as perceiving subject can exist in a state in which I have made some particular aspect of the perceivable world (e.g. my wealth, or calmness, or meditative bliss) an object-of-Clinging. But I can undergo a transition in time between this state and a state in which I am free of all such Clinging. In this case I would still be aware of and able to enjoy the wealth or the meditative bliss – these would still be objects-perceivable by me-as-perceiving subject. I would just now exist in a state free of Clinging to these or to any other Impermanent objects of Clinging. In this case I could become aware of changes in these former objects-of-Clinging without suffering dukkha , deep Distress, from these changes.
In this account, then, dukkha figures in Buddhist psychology as a description of one way that I-as-subject might be affected by changes in things perceivable that I might become aware of and Cling to. “The cessation of dukkha ,” one of the main descriptions of nibbana in the suttas , describes a idealized state in which no changes in the six-region world-perceived will ever cause me dukkha , because I have ceased to Cling inflexibly to anything in this world.
Atta and An-Atta
Something similar can be said regarding the present interpretation of an-atta. On this view, (contrary to Theravadin doctrine) when used in the suttas in sentences presenting the an-atta teaching, in most cases the terms atta and an-atta say nothing at all about a human subject. They belong to the object-side of early Buddhist psychology, describing characteristics of objects-perceivable as perceived by individuals at different stages on the Buddhist path. A normal person before setting out on the Buddhist path will “ regard wealth (or good looks, or calm feelings) as atta ,” essential-to-her-identity. One description of nibbana is that it is an ideal state in which the human subject , comes to perceive and experience everything in the six-region world of perceivables as an-atta , “ not essential to my identity.”
Above, I introduced the notion of “commonsense realism” regarding an I-as-subject as something needed to resolve some potential inconsistencies in Buddhist teachings regarding the six sense-bases. Here I want to pursue some similar thoughts, showing how this idea also helps resolve several other consistency problems in the teaching of the suttas.
The first problem concerns the nature of nibbana .
Nibbana must be a change of some kind. But if we define nibbana as the absence of inflexible desires or aversions for any particular Impermanent condition, and if “Impermanent conditions” extends to every psychological state a person could become introspectively aware of in her own being, then nibbana cannot itself belong to the world of internal perceivables that I as perceiving subject can be directly aware of. Nor can nibbana have an opposite among internal perceivables that I can be directly aware of. Cast in terms of sutta categories, nibbana cannot be a dhamma , a “mind-object” perceived by introspective mano . All particular mind-objects are Impermanent, and nibbana is the ability that I-as-subject might have, to remain unaffected by (never suffer deep Distress from) any possible change in perceivable objects, including mind-objects. This ability can also be a described as a state of not-Clinging to anything in the world of perceivables, external or internal.
This helps resolve a consistency problem that often occurs to students and commentators:
Nibbana is often defined as the absence of Craving and Clinging. But what about Craving nibbana and Clinging to nibbana ? This problem is potentially exacerbated by the fact that the suttas are not shy in urging Buddhist disciples to greatly desire nibbana , and be “ardent” in its pursuit. One sutta calls this a “noble craving.”
This I think is an important problem potentially affecting the practice of Buddhism. “Craving nibbana ” is indeed an obstacle to achieving the goals of Buddhist practice, if nibbana is conceived of as one more perceivable object among others, one thing perceivable that can be contrasted with other particular perceivables.
For example, if nibbana is conceived of as a very pleasant mental state that is incompatible with unpleasant mental states, then Craving or Clinging to nibbana would give a person an inflexible aversion to such unpleasant mental states. But nibbana is precisely liberation from all inflexible desires as well as inflexible aversions toward any such things perceivable. Being in the state of nibbana must be able to coexist with, and be compatible with, the entire range of human feelings that a person can be aware of.
So nibbana cannot itself be something that I can be directly aware of. If I have achieved nibbana , it is a state of my being as human subject , belonging then to the “subject” side of Buddhist psychology.
How then could a person ever measure progress toward nibbana , or know how closely she has come to achieving nibbana ? The answer I think is that nibbana is a state free of Craving. And Craving for example is not something that might occasionally occur, as when I might be aware of craving for chocolate ice-cream. Craving describes a fundamental and habitual way of being in the world of some human subject, an habitual reaching out for fulfillment through connection to some conditions in the world of objects-perceived. As something belonging to the “subject” side of Buddhist psychology, it is not itself directly perceivable, the way other things are directly perceptible. Although Nibbana as freedom from Craving is not directly perceptible, it is indirectly perceptible because my habitual way of being and the world indirectly manifests itself in the way I react to particular situations in life.
A number of examples illustrating this point were given at the end of the essay Early Buddhism Overview (2). Progress might show itself, for example, in increased ability to find satisfaction in silent solitude, in increased flexibility in fully accepting and adapting to unexpected and undesired changes in life-circumstances, in less self-referential and more other-centered ways of perceiving and relating to other people, and so on.
It may be important here to emphasize that these are indirect manifestations of nibbana , not nibbana itself. These manifestations will spontaneously show themselves if progress has been made toward the internal restructuring of a person’s internal psychological dynamics which is the essence of nibbana . But it does not work the other way around. One cannot make progress toward nibbana simply by acting in the way an Enlightened person would act.
What is dukkha ?
It was already noted in Early Buddhism Overview (1) that dukkha cannot refer to physical pain. So I proposed that dukkha is better translated as psychological “Distress.” But now we must also recognize that the desire to bring about “the cessation of dukkha ” cannot be a simple desire never to suffer “distress” of any kind, if we understand “distress” in the normal way to refer to some uncomfortable psychological state that I can be aware of. This might just amount to inflexible Clinging to a mental/emotional state free of such uncomfortable feelings, an inflexible aversion for perceivable feelings of unhappiness and upsetness, which is just the flip side of an inflexible preference for feeling happy or calm.
Again, as in the case of nibbana , “the cessation of dukkha ,” must be some kind of change taking place in time. But it cannot be a change from experiencing more unpleasant psychological states more often, to experiencing more pleasant psychological states more often.
This is one reason why I think it is important to go beyond purely psychological understandings of Buddhism that speak only of simple psychological feelings of happiness and unhappiness. The “happiness” Buddhism offers cannot consist in merely pleasant or euphoric feelings. Achieving nibbana is not just one more way of achieving the same kind of “happiness” that others strive to achieve by other means. Nibbana must consist in something deeper, which is perhaps best described positively today in terms of “existential fulfillment” – fulfillment of what existential psychotherapist Viktor Frankl calls “man’s quest for meaning.”
Conversely, the problem of Distress ( dukkha ) that Buddhism addresses is not simply a problem of unhappiness and unpleasant feelings. Thirst/Clinging makes a person inflexibly dependent on Impermanent conditions for a sense of self-worth and meaning in life. The dukkha felt when these conditions change is not just unpleasant. It is felt as a deep “existential” threat, depriving a person of what had come to be felt as an indispensable source of a sense of self-worth and meaning in life.
One passage in the suttas offers a helpful analogy here. Picture a soldier on a battlefield. He first gets hit with one arrow, then immediately gets hit with a second one. Applying this image: A person who achieved the Buddhist goal would always be vulnerable to single hits–single unpleasant or painful experiences. But this would not be followed by a second hit, deeper Distress due to a more deeply felt existential threat due to a loss of something that has become essential to the person’s sense of self-worth and meaning in life.
To put this somewhat more colloquially: An Enlightened person is not a person who never gets upset. She is a human subject who can experience being upset (first dart) without becoming additionally and more deeply upset about being upset (second dart). She would not be a person who never becomes depressed. She would be a person who is able to feel depressed (first arrow), without becoming additionally and more deeply depressed about being depressed (second arrow).
Alterable and unalterable aspects of reality.
So dukkha -causing power also belongs to the object-side of Buddhist psychology. It describes the power that changes in perceivable objects have, to deeply threaten an I-that-Clings to some particular object-of-awareness affected by such changes. The suttas urge me to regard anicca/Impermanence as an unalterable characteristic of all possible objects-of-awareness. But their dukkha -causing character is alterable.
This is because their dukkha -causing character is dependent on my subjective attitudes, namely tanha/ upādāna , Craving and Clinging. And the suttas offer practical techniques which in the ideal case will reduce if not eliminate Craving and Clinging. Consequently, the universal Impermanence that applies to all objects-perceived is not a cause of dukkha for the enlightened and the unenlightened alike. The enlightened person still lives in a world of Impermanent conditions, but the cessation of Craving and Clinging in the Enlightened human subject has robbed these Impermanent conditions of their dukkha -causing character.
The example of grief
I would like to close by giving another example illustrating more implications of the above understandings of early Buddhist teaching. This is the case of grief over the death of a family member or loved one. Is grief a case of Distress ( dukkha ), which Buddhism offers freedom from? Would an Enlightened person not grieve?
I think we have to begin here with the idea that dukkha is not just any kind of distress. It is only that kind of distress caused by Craving/Clinging. And Craving/Clinging are not just any kind of desire and attachment, but a deep Thirst for, and inflexible Clinging to, some particular basis for a sense of self-worth and meaning in life.
So the first question to ask then is not about grief in general, but about what specifically motivates grief in some particular case. Grief might sometimes be motivated by deeply felt threat to one’s own sense of self-worth and meaning in life. This might be the case, for example, if I had become dependent on the love and approval of person who has now died, or my close connection to this person had become an important basis for my sense of self-worth and meaning in life. To the extent that my grief is grieving for this kind of loss, my grief is a self-centered grief, grieving for a loss that is an “existential” threat to me. In this respect, Buddhist practice would ideally lead to lessening of deep dependence of this particular kind, and so would lessen the existential threat that I feel on the death of this person. This is not essentially different from the existential threat that I might feel on loss of a job, or cherished possessions, or status in a community.
But then the question is: Is all grief “self-centered” grief in this sense? I think it is not. There is what Aristotle calls “cathartic” grief upon witnessing “tragedy,” which modern moviegoers might experience at sad movies. Or there is the grief people might at the tragic death of some political or community leader of outstanding character. This seems to resemble the grief any individual might feel who has come to feel a deep connection to another, when this other person dies, especially if it is a “tragic” death of some kind.
Absence of personal dependence on these significant others would not necessarily lessen grief of this latter kind. In one sense, the practice of Buddhist spirituality should render a person more open to full experience of grief. For example, suppose a person resists letting herself fully feel her grief, the reason being that she finds these feelings extremely uncomfortable. In Buddhist terms, this resistance could be motivated by inflexible Clinging to more pleasant psychological states, narrowing the range of feeling-states that a person is comfortable with and willing to allow to happen if she can avoid them. In this context, progress on the Buddhist path would widen this range, bringing about a state in which a person would be more comfortable with and more accepting of, a wider range of feeling-states, including those like grief which she might have previously resisted accepting.
To put this in terms again of the “two arrows” analogy: An Enlightened Buddhist would always be vulnerable and open to being hit by a “first arrow,” open to feeling painful feelings everyone else might feel at the death of a loved one. She would not be hit by a “second arrow,” experiencing these painful feelings as a deep personal threat to her own sense of self-worth and meaning in life. This would mean allowing herself to be open to fully feeling these unpleasant feelings, rather than resisting them or seeking escape through alcohol, drugs, or distracting diversions. A motto again appropriate here: “No matter what happens (externally or internally), I can handle it.”
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