1.8. The Practice of Bojjhaṅga

These seven qualities of mindfulness, investigation of the Dhamma, effort, joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity, when developed to perfection, form what are called constituents of enlightenment. As enlightenment itself is defined as the harmony of these seven constituent states (dhammasāmaggi) and as being opposed to the various perils of mental contraction and destruction (līnuddhacca), fixity and restlessness (patiṭṭhānāyūhana), indulgence in sensual pleasures and devotion to self-modification (kāmasukhattakilamathānuyoga) and addiction to the speculations of nihilism and eternalism (uccheda sassatābhinivesa).^[1] It is this harmony of states, at the moment when transcendental state arises (lokuttara maggakkhaṇe) that is called Bodhis upreme wisdom or enlightenment–which implies a arising from the slumber of continuum of lower nature, or the penetra-tion of the noble truths or the realization of nibbāna.^[2]

The practice of bojjhaṅga, as taught by the Buddha, leads to removal of three unwholesome roots–craving, aversion and delusion that derive from defense of the false, ephemeral self. In the light of anicca which is an aspect of dhammavicaya the enlightenment factor, the false notion of self is utterly eradicated. The dissolution of self in the experience of impermanence or anicca is neither a rejection of mundane obligations nor running away from interpersonal responsibility in life. It is a perspective that embraces and validates these aspects of routine existence, but places them in proportional importance within a comprehensive context. The virtues and qualities open up due to experienced insight. There is nothing in the experience of anicca to make one abandon the responsibilities of one’s social or professional existence, for the experience is neither an excitement nor intoxication. It points to a sense of liveliness that is marked by a tenacious steady effort both in the meditative and non-meditative spheres. Through the experience of anicca, equanimity becomes sweeter than pleasure and thrill. Death is no less welcome than life because realization of anicca leads to a sense of mental equipoise beyond the polarity of pleasure and pain. Hence, by developing factors of enlightenment along the path of practice, one’s individual personality is seasoned and matured because understanding of impermanence (anicca) leads to maturation but not eradication of personality. Through a gradual emergence of enlightenment factors, one may grow in human capacities.^[3]

As practice develops the understanding of impermanence deepens. One comes to deep understanding that the whole complex world is alone made up of changing sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touch, and thoughts and feelings. Change is synonymous with life. Under a constant mindfulness (sati) and powerful concentration (samādhi) that keeps focusing on the present moment life dissolves into fleeting moments of sense perceptions changing every instant. It brings into vision each momentary arising and passing of experience at the sense doors, so that what has ordinarily appeared as solidity of oneself and the world around literally breaks asunder under the investigation of states (dhammavicaya).

The realization of impermanence is a deep insight into oneself and the world around. From the experiential realization that all things ate impermanence, comes the deepest empathy possible; a feeling of kinship with all beings who suffer alike from the pain aroused by the illusion of separate self; a feeling of fellowship with all beings who yearn for liberation from the agony of unwelcome union, pain of separation, dissolution and death. The experience of anicca through the process of insight meditation leads to the transformation of selfishness into selfishness vanity into modesty. One comes to understand that cooperation is greater than competition that self-sacrifice is more fulfilling than self-aggrandizement, and that true welfare is to be achieved through harmony and good will rather than by exploiting and dominating others. Hence, anicca is a signpost which indicates the trail that other noble ones have blazed.

Penetration of anicca is involved in the loss of individual image of self-with which one has hopelessly infatuated, and which one wants to preserve and defend in vain by the exercise of craving, conceit and wrong-view, This is because one seeks security and satisfaction in life through a projected sense of the idealized self as one imagines it to be lasting forever. Instead of trying to deny the flow of change and living in conflict, one can understand it deeply and live in harmony with the changing seasons of life. Instead of creating solid things, solid relations, a solid, unchanging world to try to hold onto, one can let go and open to the actual truth of each changing moment. There is no pretending, no complacency, and no desolate grasping and groping for some secure thing that will not go away.

At the very deepest level one sees that one’s identification with and grasping at any of the five processes of life body, feelings, perception, reaction, consciousness-is the source of suffering. It is a directly experienced judgment that there is no lasting happiness, because of the eternal truth that nothing lasts. Only when one stops running away and chasing after and accepts life with all its dance of change, joys and sorrows, with its inherent suffering, only then can one find peace and wisdom. With the deepened knowledge of impermanence, the practitioner comes to realize that one’s sense of self is created by one’s thought process and by the habit of grasping in the mind. If one is not caught up in all thoughts about one’s experience, there is simply–experience in each moment: just seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. It is all emptiness, all emptiness, all without self. It is not that one has to get rid of thoughts to experience emptiness, because thoughts are empty in themselves, thoughts are merely a process, words and pictures in mind, conditioned by certain causes and composed of constituent elements. One does not have to make things empty of self because emptiness is their true nature. One has only to experience each moment directly; each moment is a manifestation of the empty, unpossessable nature of reality.

The realization at the center of this practice is the experience that none of the five aggregates of clinging-or the five processes which make up life-the body, the feelings, the perceptions, the reactions, the consciousness itself-none of them is enduring or possessable. Every process in the six sense doors comes into operation impersonally and conditionally moment to moment; the sequence goes on strictly as a matter of cause and effect with no room for any “I” to explain the continual rise and fall of nāma-rūpa.

In this way, the growth of enlightenment factors brings about the deepening realization of the basic truths of life; impermanence, suffering and non-self. The penetration of these characteristics can undermine all grasping and can guide one to act according to the truth (dhammānudhammapaṭipatti) in all experiences of both meditative and no-meditative spheres. Each of them becomes a gateway to liberation (vimokkhamukha), if one can understand and fully accept it. At the very deepest level of meditation, a moment of full acceptance at one of these gates and of full letting go brings one to what is beyond it, the unconditioned, to nibbāna.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Vism, p. 281

[2]:

Expositor II, p. 294

[3]:

DN II, p. 231