First Tuesday at Berkeley: April 2008

Thinking About Nibbana Is Not the Path

Arthur Robinson

April 10, 2008

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With the conclusion of the Abhayagiri monastics’ three-month winter retreat on March 31, the April 1 edition of the Sanghapala First Tuesday Gathering in Berkeley welcomed the return of Ajahn Amaro, accompanied by Anagarika Michael, for tea, chanting, meditation, taking the refuges and precepts, and a Dhamma talk. For the occasion, Ajahn focused on Nibbana, the subject of a forthcoming book (The Island) on which he and Ajahn Pasanno have been collaborating for about a decade.

At tea, we heard the good news that Ajahn Pasanno, who last December suffered what was initially diagnosed as a minor stroke while traveling in Thailand on the way to India, was back at Abhayagiri and doing well, while the stroke diagnosis is now thought to be incorrect. If his energy level is still a bit lower than usual for him, he nonetheless manages daily treks around the 2.5-mile loop trail at the monastery that winds up and down the mountainside.

From there, the conversation drifted to the new book, expected to be available in print and online by this fall (although nothing is for certain). Readings from the book constituted part of the practice at the just-completed winter retreat, while also providing an opportunity for a last round of proofreading and a chance to gauge the book’s value by the discussion it engendered among the monastics. Ajahn Amaro proclaimed he and Ajahn Pasanno were much relieved, both by how it sounded when read out loud and by the reception it received. The book consists of a collection of teachings on Nibbana arranged into chapters within overarching broad categories and accompanied by commentary from the Ajahns.

The last part of the book includes a special emphasis on stream entry as a key turning point in practice that, while not yet the full liberation of arahantship, can be both a less daunting undertaking and, if achieved, a guarantee of ultimate success for all of us, lay as well as monastic. At this point, a question about the value (or lack of it) of meditation for gaining stream entry gave Ajahn Page 2 of 4

Amaro an opening to point out that meditation done with a sense of “me doing” (I am meditating to realize stream entry) may indeed be problematic because the “me-ness” gets in the way.

In his Dhamma talk, Ajahn Amaro began by reminding us that when Buddhists speak of Nibbana, they mean something both subtler and more rewarding than some kind of fantasy blissful state that lasts forever. Unfortunately for our curiosity, subtlety means that easy descriptions of Nibbana are hard to come by. Ajahn suggested thinking in terms of cooling down (or in today’s language, chilling out) and the resultant qualities of calm, non-agitation, and freedom from stress. He suggested that the image of cooling down, besides reflecting the Buddha’s own experience, was probably deliberately chosen at least in part to catch attention when the dominant practice metaphor among the yogis of the time was that of developing spiritual heat and the resultant power to achieve spiritual feats.

Coolness also contrasts with the practice of the Brahmins, who were entrusted with the duty to keep the sacred fires stoked, whereas at the core of cooling down is letting the fires of greed, hate, and delusion go out or, equivalently, reaching a state of non-grasping devoid of any trace of the conceit “I am.” But adopting coolness as an image of the goal was not just a PR trick, it actually pointed to how radically new and different the Buddha’s understanding was.

Ajahn Amaro devoted some time to the concept of “becoming” (bhava) which brought to my mind the refrain in the Majjhima Nikaya (Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha) that was repeated whenever the Buddha recounted his own or an arahant’s awakening: “Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.” Ajahn pointed out that “becoming” may be as subtle a concept as Nibbana: who is becoming what? In daily life, becoming manifests as the urge that arises to get on to the next thing because, however Page 3 of 4

much we looked forward to it, the present moment always appears to us to be imperfect and incomplete.

It is a fiendish trap! Unsatisfied with what is so now, we constantly look to the future for fulfillment, thereby sowing the seeds of future disappointment. It sounded to me like the twelve links of dependent origination crammed into a few short moments. Moreover, there is another downside; the temptation after enough rounds of disappointment may be to just “check out.” The craving for existence (bhava-tanha) is replaced by the craving for non-existence (vibhava-tanha). So, we resort to various mind-numbing strategies ranging from distractions and entertainments to alcohol and drugs. Ajahn noted Hamlet’s dilemma, here paraphrased as “existence or non-existence; that is the question.” The problem for Hamlet and for us is that either answer results in suffering.

Perhaps paradoxically, the poison can also be part of the cure. Ajahn Amaro noted his own experience that carefully chewing a bit of poison oak leaf (abundant at Abhayagiri) can over time confer a protective immunity that saves one from an itchy skin irritation. So, in our meditation practice, we can draw on bhava in an analogous way by working with things as they are rather than judging them by how we wanted them to be. In each moment, there is the potential to respond in a way that is in accord with the ways of nature, that steers us toward greater clarity of mind. Such choosing requires energy and engagement, so it is not at all a passive “checking out.” The result is appropriate action that arises out of wisdom rather than from trying to get somewhere. I imagined that this is just another example of the “middle way,” this time between bhava-tanha and vibhava-tanha.

The notion that the poison can be the start of a cure arose again in the question period after the conclusion of the Dhamma talk, when someone asked about working with doubt (one of the hindrances). Here, said Ajahn, the confusion often is based around a sense of self. For example, “I” have