The Freedeom to Suffer
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It can take a long time before we find out what the real point of Buddhist practice is. There are innumerable doctrines, beliefs and techniques in this Way, but none of them is an end in itself. All of them are included in an overall training which is called cittabhavana, or the training of the heart. The word citta is variously rendered in translation as heart, awareness, and sometimes as consciousness. Bhavana literally means to bring into being. So cittabhavana can also be translated as cultivation of awareness. This subject is obviously central both to what you are doing here as psychotherapists and to what we are doing in our monastic training, so I am glad that we have this opportunity to consider it together.
It is easy, as I said, for us to take quite some time before we get the core message that awareness itself is what we are working on. It is very important that we do come to see that all the different skilful means offered in Buddhism are in reference to this.
Back in the 1960s and 70s many of us were out in Asia looking for something that we hoped would fill up an emptiness we felt we had inside – an inner sense of lacking. In keeping with our expectations, we found a large variety of systems and substances, some more helpful than others. Buddhist monasteries and teachers were amongst what we came across. What we thought they were offering was this wonderful idea of enlightenment.
We were tremendously inspired and believed this meant that if at some time in the future we fully grasped this idea, then we would be free from any sense of lacking for ever more; we would be free from suffering altogether. We were tending to approach what we found there in the same way that we approached our everyday life, that is, as consumers: “How can I become enlightened? What must I do to get this freedom from suffering?”
I heard a story of a young Westerner traveling around Southeast Asia who was particularly concerned that he didnt join up with anything but the best tradition and so he proceeded to go from teacher to teacher conducting interviews with them. He asked each one in turn the question, “What was the Buddha doing under the Bodhi tree?” I imagine he planned to compare all the answers and then make his choice. Each teacher naturally replied from their own perspective. The first, a Japanese teacher living in Bodhgaya, said, “Oh, the Buddha was doing shikantaza.” Then another teacher said, “The Buddha was definitely practising anapanasati.” Another replied, “The Buddha was doing dzogchen.” And further, “The Buddha was sitting in vipassana meditation.” When this seeker visited Thailand and asked Ajahn Chah what the Buddha was doing under the Bodhi tree, Ajahn Chah replied: “Everywhere the Buddha went he was under the Bodhi tree. The Bodhi tree was a symbol for his Right View.”
Whenever I recall this story, I like what it does to me. There is a turning around of attention and a remembering of the essential point of our practice. I find myself returning to the heart of the matter, or to the only place where I can make the kind of effort that brings about a difference.
Of course it is understandable that we dont get it altogether right in the beginning and spend energy holding on to an initial idea about becoming enlightened. These ideas are the seeds which grow into a fuller way of practice. However, we do need to recognise that what is on offer in this Way is a complete training in awareness – not just an idea. We take up the training as we would take up an invitation; in this case an invitation to assume our own true place within our body/minds. The Buddhas path of training isnt a mere conditioning aimed at fitting us into anybody elses form or anybody elses understanding.
AWARENESS
Awareness as Capacity
The model I find helpful in contemplating our training is that of awareness as capacity. Our experiences are all received into awareness. How well or how freely we receive life is dependent on our hearts capacity; or, we could say, on the degree of awareness we are living as. With this model, we can examine exactly how, where and when we set the limitations on our capacity to receive experience, what the limitations we place on awareness are, and what this feels like.
One of the chants which we regularly recite in the monastery says: appamano Buddho, appamano Dhammo, appamano Sangho. The word appamana translates as without measure. So this verse means: “Limitless is the Buddha, limitless is the Dhamma, limitless is the Sangha.” One way of seeing what was unlimited about the Buddha is to look at his quality of awareness. The Buddhas heart capacity was boundless and accordingly he could accommodate unlimited experience without the slightest stress. He went beyond any compulsive tendency to set limitations on awareness and so was untroubled by anything that passed through his awareness. Hence we say, “I go for refuge to the Buddha”; or we orient all our conscious effort towards the possibility of limitless awareness.
We know we need to do this if we want to awaken out of the agonizing sense of limited being. It is because we come up against the humiliating experience of “This is just too much – I cant take any more” that we have to train ourselves. We must understand what this I is that finds it all too much. Our experience of the present moment is not too much for reality; reality is whats happening. The painful constriction we feel is the symptom of the limitations we place on awareness. This pain is the appropriate consequence of our habitual grasping.
Seeing it from this perspective, we realise that placing limitations is something we are responsible for doing. Our cramped hearts are not imposed on us. We come to see that we are not helpless victims of our conditioning. Im always surprised when people tell me, “This is just the way Im made,” as if its somebody elses fault for getting the design wrong. Working with a model of awareness as capacity, we discover (literally, un-cover) potential for change. With constant careful attention in this area there begins to dawn a quiet confidence in a way that we can cultivate.
Paying Attention
In the world of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations and mental impressions we have no choice but to receive sense-impingement. Regardless of our lifestyle, be it as monk or nun or psychotherapist or any other occupation, we are all touched by