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Happiness arises from the timely company of friends.
Happiness arises from having few needs.
Happiness arises from having accumulated virtue at life’s end.
Happiness arises from seeing beyond suffering.
Dhammapada, verse .331
In the practice of the Buddha’s teaching we regularly hear about going
for Refuge. When we first encountered Buddhism some of us might have had
the impression that going for Refuge was an interesting traditional way
of talking about believing in a teacher. Perhaps it was part of the way
one became a member of the religion – you went through a ritual called
‘going for Refuge’.
I know in my own case that it was not something I considered important
when I first discovered the Buddha’s teaching. I wanted to align myself
with a way of understanding the world that emphasised meditation. The
practice of going for refuge and precepts seemed rather secondary. It
took a good number of years before I began consciously to sense how
profoundly important it is to have a refuge; to have a sense of
something that one is committed to, something beyond getting what one
wants.
Of course, we are all committed to getting what we want to some degree,
and there is a certain type of pleasure – a feeling of gratification –
to be derived from it. If I get what I want, I generally feel more
comfortable than if I don’t get what I want. In our effort to cultivate
awareness, however, our perception of this usual state of affairs
changes. We begin to understand that the pleasure of getting what we
want has a hook on it; it gradually becomes apparent that there is more
going on in the process of wanting and getting than we ordinarily
suppose.
Assuming that you have to get what you want in order to be happy is very
limiting. If I’m addicted to getting what I want, I can’t help feeling
an embarrassing sense of dependency. The second line of verse 331 in the
Dhammapada reads ‘Happiness arises from having few needs.’ That is a
message one rarely hears – that there is a pleasure that comes from not
needing more than we already have. Usually we associate pleasure with
getting what we think we need or what we want, yet the Buddha wisely
pointed out that the very condition of clinging to wants and needs is
what stands in the way of a deeper happiness and contentment.
This verse from the Dhammapada is about the nature of real pleasure. In
each line there is a reference to the Pali word sukha which means
‘happiness’ or ‘pleasure’. This verse provides a pertinent contemplation
for us to consider the way we seek happiness. We are all interested in
happiness – we all value well-being – but if we don’t stop and consider
carefully then we can easily settle for a happiness that falls far short
of what wise beings have realised is possible.
The Buddha would sometimes use this word sukha when talking about
nibbana, for example, ‘nibbanam paramam sukham’. This is a line in a
stanza that we recite regularly, and it means ‘nibbana is ultimate
happiness’. People sometimes question this and say, ‘How can you use the
word ‘happiness’ when you talk about nibbana? Nibbana is supposed to be
about freedom from desire, and happiness is tied up with desire isn’t
it?’ Even a fully enlightened Buddha cannot say what nibbana is. It is
not possible to say what this state of enlightenment, liberation, or
total inner freedom that Buddhas have reached is like, because all words
and concepts about the experience are merely pointers to something
inconceivable and inexpressible. However, when asked what nibbana was
like, one of the ways the Buddha described it was as ultimate happiness.
What we want more than anything else is to experience this happiness is.
Valuing friendship
A fully enlightened human being will tell you that it is not true that
happiness only arises when we get what we want. When happiness arises,
in whatever manner, we are encouraged to look at what it is that we are
experiencing and calling ‘happiness’, and how we relate to it. An
example is the happiness of the first line of that stanza – ‘Happiness
arises from the timely company of friends.’
Over the last few weeks I have often reflected how fortunate our
community here is to have so many good friends, and how beneficial, how
truly wonderful it is to have such friends. This year we decided to have
a party. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve there was a children’s party,
and in the evening we had our own little party. We all sat round the
fire and, miraculously enough, good friends of the monastery turned up
with bottles of punch – non-alcoholic of course! So we spent the whole
evening together – just being together as a community. We weren’t
delving deep into the great mysteries of life, but were simply enjoying
each others’ company. There is a pleasure in being with people you feel
you can trust and a pleasure in being remembered by people that you have
shared something with.
Unfortunately, we can sometimes take each other for granted. Even though
we care for and value each other, we perhaps don’t express it – we never
mention it to each other. Perhaps some of us have suffered the
consequences of this in relationships in which there hasn’t been enough
expression of appreciation of friendship. There is a skill in expressing
appreciation that we have to work to develop. The Buddha himself
recognised the danger of not valuing friendship, and spoke a lot about
the qualities and the value of friendship, the great blessing that is
true spiritual companionship. When we find it, we experience happiness,
and there is an encouragement to allow oneself to be fully conscious of
our appreciation; to feel nourished by good company. In the recent issue
of our monastery newsletter I let it be known how much we appreciate all
the Christmas Cards that we get here. I know that if people stopped
coming here on Sunday evenings or on New Year’s Eve and there was just
the nine of us, life wouldn’t be the same! Having friends come and join
us in a shared reaffirmation of things that we respect and value is
something we treasure.
Seeing deeper
The second line of the verse says, ‘Happiness arises from having few
needs.’ It might be difficult to hear what is being said here if we
don’t engage ourselves in a meditation practice; if we haven’t
recognised for ourselves the possibility of inner quietness – a place
where we are not wanting anything in particular. Meditation provides the
means to observe that if there are ripples of wanting passing through
the mind we can see them just as they are – as ripples, movement.
There’s much more to us than what the active mind leads us to believe.
Sometimes we seem to be filled with a continuous stream of desire in our
minds and our hearts. Such activity is quite exhausting. If we don’t
choose to draw our attention inwards and enquire into the nature of this
active mind with its ideas and wantings then the way it appears to be is
who and what we feel ourselves to be. We believe, even feel convinced,
that the only way that we can be happy is by getting what we want.
Some time ago I was told a story about a meditation student who lived in
London and had a busy working life. Unlike many who live in London, she
had consciously decided to walk to work every day. Over a period of time
she began to realise that she had developed a problem. As she walked to
work she would pass a particular French patisserie, and was unable to
walk past without buying not just one but several pastries. The process
of buying and eating these pastries stemmed from some inner compulsion
rather than from any natural desire to satisfy hunger. Over a period of
time she became aware what was going on and yet, although she recognised
it, she could not stop buying the pastries! This was a humiliating
experience for her, because in many areas of practice she was quite
able. But when she came to walking past this pastry shop it all fell
apart. One day, after acutely feeling the absurdity and oppressiveness
of the situation, she simply decided to walk to work by another route.
She made a resolution, a strong determination, that she would not walk
past the pastry shop. She made a gesture of renunciation.
The student, feeling quite pleased about herself, reported all this to
her teacher, but the teacher said, “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood the
teaching – that isn’t the spirit of the practice at all. The choice you
have made to walk another way is a strategy to avoid what is really
going on. What you need to do is walk to work as normal but prepare
yourself beforehand, both in the evening and the morning before you
begin your walk. As you take your walk follow the process step-by-step
and watch what is going on in your body and mind.”
It is understood in our practice that disturbances of mind come to us
with differing degrees of intensity and that we need to respond
appropriately in each case. This particular phenomenon was of the sort
where what was called for was the need to prepare oneself beforehand.
What is necessary in such a situation is to slow down and to see what is
happening as it’s happening and just see it, just know it, not being
fooled by the way things appear to be, believing one won’t be happy
until one gets the pastry.
This student was fooled regularly by the thought, ‘I will not be happy
until I get a pastry.’ So, following her teacher’s advice she prepared
herself beforehand. The next morning she walked to work as normal,
taking the route past the patisserie. She approached the shop remaining
fully aware of her feelings and thoughts. Soon she was outside, standing
there, fully conscious and knowing, ‘I want to go in and get a pastry.’
It was quite clear she wasn’t kidding herself – she wasn’t trying to
convince herself that this was the case, she simply recognised with an
interested awareness that she wanted to go in and buy a pastry. As she
stood there it started to get a little easier to feel the wanting, until
she was just observing and knowing the raw energy of wanting. Soon
enough the wanting disappeared and she experienced a momentary ending of
suffering.
Because of her patience and right effort this student had an insight
into the truth that this second line of the verse points to. Getting
more, in her case, was diminishing the quality of her life, although
those pastries looked as though they would add quality to her life! We
often believe that we need such things when we’re fooled by the way
desire appears. Desire has that apparent nature to it. There is nothing
wrong with this appearance as long as we recognise it.
When desire arises there can appear to be some need. In relationships,
for example, the feeling can arise that there is something we really
need to tell the other person. It is not uncommon for someone to come to
see me to say, ‘I really need to tell you something.’ They get it off
their chest and feel better afterwards. I try to encourage people to
slow down; I ask them if they could try substituting ‘I really want to
tell you something.’ Then we can come to an agreement that if they want
to tell me something and I’m ready to hear it, we can enter into a
discussion. We have these ideas of what we need in all areas of our
life. There is an encouragement in our practice to investigate the
relationship we have with what we feel are our needs.
So what this teaching points out is that, often enough, when we have
less we actually have more. This is not to judge apparent needs or
desires when they arise, but to generate an interest in looking deeper
at how we are as we are. For example, over the last ten years, on two or
three occasions, the feeling has arisen in me, ‘I need to get out of
here!’ Thankfully, I have had whatever it takes to not follow such
impulses. In fact I’m very grateful that I didn’t follow them because
behind the apparent need there is generally something else. We cultivate
in ourselves an interest in what is taking place when we have strongly
felt needs arising in order to see beyond the way things appear. This is
because there is something to be seen beyond the way things appear to
be: reality or Dhamma. The way things appear to be is ‘the world’. The
way things actually are is Dhamma. To see beyond the way things appear
to be is a source of great happiness and pleasure.
Practice as preparation
The third line of this verse says, ‘Happiness arises from having
accumulated virtue at life’s end.’ That is something that would not
necessarily have occurred to me if I hadn’t read those words. It isn’t a
thought I would generally dwell on. But this is something the Buddha
spoke about often – not to waste our time, not to be heedless. We don’t
know when we’re going to die – it could be soon. He encouraged us to
prepare ourselves. A lot of what we are doing as spiritual practitioners
is, in fact, preparation. Ajahn Chah said that true practice is not
sitting on a cushion – that is preparation. The true practice happens
when the passions impact on the heart. If we can be there in the moment
of contact and stay there in the middle and not wobble, that is when we
are practising. But if we don’t prepare ourselves… Well, I’m sure you
all know from your own experiences what happens.
Even if we prepare ourselves it is not easy, when the passions flare up,
to stay there in the midst of the fire. It is much easier to go with
them, to get carried away by them and act them out physically. The other
common response is to go up into the head and rationalise or fantasise
our way through their manifestation – perhaps in scenarios of heavenly
sensuality, or in theatres of horrendous violence: our fantasies can
take us to the most extraordinary limits. If we get carried away by the
passions, we act on them and do things without due care, driven by wild
energy. So our task is to be able to stay there in the centre, when the
energy is raging, without repressing, without pushing down so we get a
stomach disorder or a heart attack. We neither indulge in fantasies, nor
act out passion, but follow a middle way of being sensitive, yet still
and centred, when the passions are in full flight – this is the means by
which we can gradually undo our habitual patterns of avoidance.
How is formal sitting preparation? When we sit on our cushion we are
encouraged to be still and not to move, even if we want to. As we sit we
just observe whatever is happening in body and mind without trying to
achieve anything special. We experience thoughts and fantasies and
different sorts of feelings and sensations. We allow things to be as
they are. The more we try to forcibly stop our imagination and internal
dialogue, the more vigorous our mental activity becomes. One skilful way
of working is to try seeing ourselves as being a host to visiting guests
– we treat them with kindness and courtesy and give them space to be
themselves. It is not our duty to get unnecessarily involved with them.
Sometimes our preoccupation with the momentum of our worldly activities
means that we do not attain any real peace. I have recently spent whole
meditation sessions designing the interior of our new retreat house! It
does not necessarily matter that we do not attain deep tranquillity. It
is more important to know that there is no obligation to be carried away
by our thoughts and reactions. The discipline of meditation is a way of
practising to be with reality as it is. This is what we are preparing
for – how to be with what is, fully present in body and mind, so that we
can learn from what is, instead of being caught up in ‘what if’ or ‘if
only’.
The ‘what if’ disorder is endemic: ‘What if that didn’t happen?’ ‘What
if this happened?’ The ‘if only’ disease is also a very painful and sad
condition which we all suffer from to varying degrees. Instead of
suffering the agony of being caught up in the ‘if only’ disease we could
be experiencing the pleasure of learning from what already is – the way
things naturally are. This takes training, however, and one of the ways
the Buddha encouraged us to become more focused in our efforts is to
think about our death and what’s it going to be like.
I have a very good friend who lives in a rest home in Newcastle. She was
independent until the age of ninety-seven, but in the past three years
has retired to a home where she receives nursing care. She was telling
me recently, “I really feel for the other people in this home. Most of
them haven’t prepared themselves for being here.” She sits in a room,
pretty much all day long, peacefully preparing for dying. Every time I
go to see her she says “I was preparing to die last night.” She
describes how on occasions she has woken around three in the morning
filled with a sense of awe associated with a perception of vast, free,
edgeless awareness. On starting to open her eyes, or on moving
physically, she observed a collapsing or a limiting of this awareness.
From this experience, she says, she has developed a practice of learning
how to inhibit this movement of contraction and to dissolve back into
edgelessness, which is how she imagines dying will be. We have often
talked about it in a calm and clear manner. She manifests a genuine
inner contentment. I could see that she felt real pity for the people
who distract themselves watching television all day long. She tends not
to get involved in the various activities that are arranged for people
living in the home. She feels that death is too important for her to be
distracting herself with such things. So most of the time she happily
stays in her room. She reads the Dhammapada and one or two other
Buddhist books. She meditates and contemplates dying. I find this a
great inspiration. When I read ‘Happiness arises from having accumulated
virtue by life’s end,’ I sometimes think what the alternative is – the
terrible sadness that arises when you realise your lot. The image the
Buddha gave for somebody who hasn’t spent their life developing virtue
is a scraggy old heron standing lonely at the edge of a dried up lake
without any fish in it. At the end of their life they haven’t
accumulated any virtue; all that remains is an inner sense of poverty.
Contrast that with the possibility of the real pleasure that can be
there if we come to the end our life knowing we’ve applied ourselves to
what really matters and is genuinely worthwhile.
Real refuge
This brings us to the last line of this stanza: ‘Happiness arises from
seeing beyond suffering.’ To be able to see through suffering is to have
a refuge. To have such a refuge is like having a compass. If you are
ever out on the ocean or in the wilderness and you have a compass, you
can find your bearings. In that sense a compass is very valuable. That’s
what I understand by refuge. It means skilfully enquiring into life and
finding out what is really worthy. In the Pali language the word for an
enlightened being is arahant, which literally means one who is worthy.
Such a person is worthy because they have understood what is truly
worthwhile from the perspective of reality. In the practice of the
Buddha-Dhamma one is gradually finding out what is really valuable in
life, and thus one gains a true orientation. This orientation is
synonymous with taking refuge in the Buddha.
And remember what ‘Buddha’ means. There is the historical Buddha, of
course, the human being who lived in India two and a half thousand years
ago. For his humanity, teaching and example we are humbly grateful. But
it wasn’t his person that he left behind. The reality of the Buddha here
and now in which we can go for refuge is a quality of mind that has the
integrity and wisdom to see through the appearance of suffering, not by
ignoring it, but by looking ever more fully and bravely at the reality
of it. The Buddha said, ‘If you want to see the Buddha, see the Dhamma.’
See the reality, see actuality. To come to see reality clearly, just as
it is, is to realise that it is the most valuable refuge that we could
have.
To take Refuge in the Buddha is to cultivate the potential that we all
have for living out of an awareness that isn’t limited by our reactions
to our experience. The historical Buddha was certainly a human being. He
sat and he ate; he walked and he bathed himself just as a normal person
does. He suffered the experience of ageing and would sit in the morning
sun to find relief from pains in his back. What was different about him
was that his awareness wasn’t limited. We, on the other hand, experience
limitations of awareness all the time. A clear example of this is when
we come up against the reaction of, ‘I can’t take it any more.’ Now,
whenever we experience this reaction, if we have developed awareness,
there is a part of us that knows that this feeling of being limited is
not the ultimate truth. We have all at times endured past the experience
of ‘I can’t take it any more’ and found that we can take it. Perhaps we
have been on retreat and begun to experience an excruciating pain; or
perhaps some fear or other emotion arose, and we felt unable to bear it.
Instead of simply giving up, inspired by faith we have been able to
breathe through these experiences, remaining focused on their reality,
and what we have discovered is that the pain dissolves or we experience
a release from the overwhelming emotion. We realise that the apparent
reality of ‘I can’t take it any more’ was just that – an appearance, an
apparition; it was the apparent reality. If we had been completely
fooled by the world, or by the way things appear to be, we would have
grasped at that apparent reality, believing it to be the real state of
things. Then we would have fixed that imposed limitation on awareness
and defined ourselves as just that, thereby suffering the consequences
of feeling inherently limited.
There are many other examples in our lives where we feel, ‘I must have…’
or ‘I cannot put up with that.’ The promise, the hope and the
inspiration that is offered us in the example of the Buddha and all his
enlightened disciples is the message that undefiled awareness is not
limited. It is inherently limitless. Appamano Buddho, appamano Dhammo,
appamano Sangha – ‘Limitless is the Buddha, limitless is the Truth,
limitless is the Sangha.’
Consider for yourself the possibility through your own investigation
that, when you feel limited, that is how it appears to be. Just consider
that – don’t simply believe it – then witness the experience of the
heart and mind expanding, and the resulting potential for living
increase, with more room, more possibility. If you learn something from
that, consider what happens if you keep going until there aren’t any
limitations any more, as you have let go completely. To quote Ajahn Chah
again, ‘If you let go a little you have a little peace, if you let go a
lot you have a lot of peace, if you let go completely you have complete
peace.’
We take these three jewels as our refuge: the Buddha, the Dhamma and the
Sangha. We consciously contemplate our true refuge and hold it up as of
supreme value. Suffering is inevitable when we impose limitations on our
hearts and minds. The Buddha was free from suffering because he had
freed himself from all such habits. For us there is suffering –
appropriately, accordingly. For us there is freedom only in small
moments.
When we learn to experience suffering so that we don’t believe in the
way it appears to be, and we endure in the way that we need to endure –
with here-and-now judgement-free awareness – sooner or later we will
experience a letting-go, bringing relief and joy. This is the happiness
that comes from seeing through suffering and this is the happiness that
strengthens our faith. Faith that is discovered like this doesn’t get us
into arguments or lead to contention. This is a personally verified form
of faith and is what can give us bearings in life. Even though at times
we might find ourselves without light or any outer signs that we are
heading in the right direction, we can feel secure in an inner sense of
trusting that comes from our heart’s orientation towards truth.
Thank you very much for your attention.
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© 2005 Aruna Publications |