After a few months pursuing business interests with only intermittent attention my spiritual practice, I awoke at 4:00am on the morning of October 30 to rekindle my spiritual pursuit with a period of meditation. It is not that I had ceased all practices, as I did maintain my formal meditation periods at the monastery, but my attachment to business priorities and their related outcomes had put my personal meditation practice down the priority list.
As it turned out in that early morning period, it was a deep and concentrated meditation where a focus on The Path, from which I had divergent, developed by which my efforts, successes and disappointments, were place back into context through a re-affirmation of Śūnyatā and the importance of working with the principles of causality.
Immediately after concluding my meditation I documented what I could recall as follows:
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Wisdom lies in the realization of Śūnyatā in all things. The truth of sunyata is evident in the inter-dependent nature of all things. That is, nothing in ones physical existence has any enduring, independent reality. Being void of intrinsic reality, all things are subject to causality, that is, the causes and conditions that make up the inter-dependencies that govern their existence.
Causality infers that the entire creation is subject to dependent origination, that things exist solely due to the causes and conditions that give rise to and support their existence. When conditions become unsupportive and are no longer sustaining all things eventually cease existing, breaking down to the component elements as fuel for causes and conditions that give rise to future creations. This leads to the observation of the 5 stages of existence; birth, growth, abiding, decay and death.
With the realization that all things are void of any independent existence and will eventually decay and die, the Truth of Suffering is understood.
1. The Truth of Suffering
By living in expectation, hope or desire for things one is ultimately disappointed as all such things are impermanent and pass away. Through this disappointment everyone suffers in varying levels according to the degree of their attachment. From the desire for the latest device to the attachment to material life itself, happiness and satisfaction is only ever temporary while the reality impermanence is ignored.
2. The Truth of the Cause of Suffering
Therefore, attachment to objects, physical or conceptual, mistakenly believed to be enduring, is the cause of one's suffering. Attachments that breed desires that are fueled by one's ignorance of Śūnyatā, causing one to seek one thing after another in an endless cycle of insatiable demand and related disappointments throughout the course of their life.
3. The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
As the cause of suffering is this fundamental ignorance of reality and the conditions that support suffering are one's attachments, through cultivating the wisdom to perceive the transient and interdependent nature (Śūnyatā) in all things and by eradicating the fertile field of attachment within which suffering occurs, the cessation of suffering should be possible. By displacing ignorant expectations with implicit acceptance and self-centred volatility with the equanimity of loving-kindness and compassion, opportunities for suffering are eliminated.
4. The Truth of the Path to the Cessation of Suffering
Just as all things are subject to the causes and conditions that give rise to and support their existence, all things are subject to destruction through the eradication of those supportive causes and conditions. This principle of causality demonstrates a two-fold path to the cessation of suffering.
- Through cultivating transcendental wisdom, ignorance is eliminated and the cause of suffering reduced; and
- by cultivating the conditions that support equanimity and eradicating the conditions that promote self-centred volatility, greed and anger are replaced with a sense of loving kindness and compassion and the conditions for suffering to occur are diminished.
In meditation this morning, apart from a re-iteration of the principles of the Four Noble Truths, the insight gained was that progression along The Path was one of incremental refinement as one's perception of reality sharpened as one's practice is matured. This iterative refinement of one's perceptive awareness as one progresses along the path to Perfect Wisdom supports the idea that Wisdom is a spectrum and I intuit as I write this that that spectrum is grouped in bands or levels of awareness. And just as frequency bands of visible light define the primary colours of our visual experience, so too these levels of awareness define the levels of awareness through which one discerns the character of one's experience.
Of course, not cultivating the causes and conditions for transcendent wisdom removes one from The Path, leaving one to sink back into the mire of ignorance. The proof of one being off The Path is the loss of equanimity, the resurgence of the three poisons (of ignorance, anger and greed) and the re-emergence of various experiences in suffering that were thought to be vanquished.
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Only a few days after this meditation and having written the above, I was confronted most dramatically by a resurgence in anger over matters of money. I recall the sense of anger at the time was as a volcano erupting and my rage flowed until it was finished. I have spent the past few days coming to terms with this event and what it means and find that I have a sense of disappointment in myself for not having the awareness to perceive the truth of the issue being Śūnyatā and the result of other factors, and indulging in a selfish expression of anger.
Re-reading my meditation notes now, this incident of anger and rage demonstrates unequivocally how, by not maintaining the causes or conditions that support my progress along the path to enlightenment, I have allowed ignorance and selfishness to overwhelm me once more. Which again recalls to my mind the biblical quote from the Book of Matthew:
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Develop the means to recognize and release attachment wherever it occurs, including releasing attachment to one's self-identity. This naturally establishes a sense of sympathy and loving-kindness toward others as personal desires are eradicated, the interconnectedness of one's existence is appreciated and compassion for all sentient beings is established. Continual practice is iteratively refining and progress is made through existence along The Path.
