Householder pain, pleasure and equanimity to renunciate pain, pleasure and equanimity

"In another sutta — Majjhima 137 — the Buddha talks about different ways of relating to pain, pleasure, and equanimity. There’s the pain, pleasure, and equanimity of a householder on the one side, and the pain, pleasure, and equanimity of a renunciate on the other. The pain of a householder is not getting what you want in terms of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and mental events. That’s householder pain. The pleasure of a householder is getting what you want in terms of the six senses. The equanimity of a householder is being determined that your mind will not be affected by any of the input of the six senses. Now, for most of us when we encounter householder pain, we try to find householder pleasures. But the Buddha said that a more skillful way of dealing with householder pain when you meet with it, is to go for renunciate pain, which is what I mentioned before: the desire to reach the goal, which at the moment is painful because you’re not there yet.

The same with householder equanimity: In the sutta, this is described as being nonreactive to all six senses. This would also apply to the practice of simply letting things go without reacting to them and trying to find a sense of peace there. Now, if you just stop there, you’re still staying on the householder level. In order to go beyond that level to renunciate pleasure and equanimity, you have to realize that you can’t just stop with non-reactivity, for even though it carries a subtle sense of wellbeing, it’s still on the level of fabricated experience. It’s not going to last. If you want to find something more lasting, you have to understand how the mind fabricates that experience and be able to take that apart totally. Only then can you find the greater pleasure and equanimity of nibbāna.

This means that, even when feeling that state of non-reactive equanimity, you have to develop renunciate pain: the sense of having a goal that lies beyond where you are right now. The purpose of this is to motivate us to do the practice. When we do the practice, we can reach the pleasure of the renunciate, which is the pleasure that comes from reaching the goal. Even though renunciate pain is a kind of pain, it’s like the tension in the string of a bow. Only when there’s tension in the bowstring can the arrow fly a long distance. Otherwise, if we just stay with householder pain and householder pleasure, we don’t go anywhere. It’s like a bow whose string is slack. It may be relaxed, but it doesn’t accomplish anything.

So, when the Buddha’s talking about feelings as a frame of reference for establishing mindfulness, he wants us to see where our pleasures and pains are, where they come from — in particular, what present actions they come from — and where they go. Then we can use that understanding to develop the pleasures and pains that will actually lead to awakening. This is the role of ardency when dealing with feelings."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Karma of Mindfulness: The Buddha's Teachings on Sati and Kamma"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha talks about dispassion, disenchantment, equanimity — and to us it sounds cold. But everything in the Buddha’s teachings is put in the service of freedom.

"About a year after I returned to America, I was teaching meditation to a group up in Orange County and I gave my first interviews. One of the people in the retreat started her interview out by saying, “Buddhism: It’s all about love isn’t it?” I was taken aback. I said, “Well, no, it’s all about freedom.” She was taken aback. We come from a culture in which love is very highly valued — not only as a social virtue, but also as a religious one. So it’s a little shocking when we come to another tradition where it’s not valued so highly. The Buddha talks about dispassion, disenchantment, equanimity — and to us it sounds cold. But everything in the Buddha’s teachings is put in the service of freedom. As the Buddha once said, all of his teachings have a single taste: the taste of release. This means that all of his teachings on goodwill on the one hand, and equanimity, dispassion, disenchantment on the other, are all put in the service of freedom — realizing, on the one ha...
Read more

Develop some equanimity around the fact that injustice is universal, and then see what you can do most effectively in response to this particular instance of it.

"Human history is filled with people doing disagreeable things. So drop the perception that you or your loved ones are being especially victimized. Mistreatment is a common thing, and anger is not going to help you deal with it effectively. You’ve got to clear your head if you want your response to injustice to have a good effect. So try to develop some equanimity around the fact that injustice is universal, and then see what you can do most effectively in response to this particular instance of it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"
Read more

If you were to wait for the world to be happy and peaceful, with everybody behaving nicely, and only then you would meditate, or then you would be able to get your mind to settle down, you would die first.

"So for the sake of your own freedom, you’ve got to let go of any ill will based on the horrible things that people have done. You remind yourself that it’s for your own true well-being that you’re developing these thoughts [of mettā]. You want to be able to trust yourself so that you don’t do or say or think unskillful things around people who are difficult. After all, you live in a world where almost everybody is difficult one way or another. If you were to wait for the world to be happy and peaceful, with everybody behaving nicely, and only then you would meditate, or then you would be able to get your mind to settle down, you would die first." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "A Heart Set on Goodwill"
Read more