Audio Recording:
Written Talk:
This is the last segment of our provisional developmental model for conditionality—the teaching of conditionality. In starting the talk this morning, I wanted to go into a talk that I had heard early on in my training and learning Buddhist teachings.
This was stated pretty clearly up front, and the teacher talked about the Buddha mentioning erroneous views—wrong views. I don’t know about you, but when I hear something labeled as a “wrong view”, I’m going to immediately try to get away from that view, and rearrange my thinking so that I can get on to the “right view.” But these views are so large, there’s really no way you can do that.
The Buddha put out these erroneous views: the view of “self”, the view of “other”, the view of “self and other”, and the view of “fate” or “destiny”. So that’s how I came into the Buddhist teachings. And how I’m thinking about it now—it’s very interesting to think back on what we heard when we were youngsters, so to speak, and what we’re thinking about now with the teachings. And I have found that these views, rather than saying they’re erroneous, I really see them as putting us into a quagmire.
I kind of like that archaic word. It means a soft, boggy area of land that gives way underfoot. So it’s very experiential to me, that when I fall into these views, the soft boggy land takes me down. I feel like, even the sense of “going along” in life, where these views are not really problematic, they’re not affecting me in ways that are causing suffering, or causing suffering on a larger scale. But then suddenly we’re in this kind of awkward, complex, maybe even hazardous situation, and knowing that we are. What can we do when that happens?
And that’s really, for me, what the teaching of conditionality does. It gives me that lens, to look through my experience when I’m in a quagmire. When suddenly things have gotten awkward, complex, hazardous. So, this teaching, we talk about it as a lens. And you know, as I’m wearing glasses, I was thinking, “Yes, it’s like a lens that we’re wearing, to look at our experience through conditionality.” Saying, “When do we need a new pair of glasses? When do we need to wear glasses? When do we need surgery? When do we need to choose a different pair? Put on sunglasses? Buy a pair of rose-colored glasses?” You can see that I can go very far down this train.
But yesterday we talked about conditionality as starting to get into being kinder with our pain. And this is one of the last bullet points: that we become kinder with our pain, with these lenses on. Of our own pain and that of others, because we know the pain is deeply embedded in a myriad of conditions.
So, the last one, that I’m going to jump to and talk about this morning, is learning to follow the conditions. Learning when action is possible, or not possible, or impossible, given the specific conditions that we’re in. And being able to discern skillful actions, given the conditions. So, in this bullet point, I’d like to consider what kind of “following” are we talking about, if we’re going to follow the conditions. And all these images came up for me when I thought about following. Like I remember as a kid following the leader — that you just mimic what somebody else is doing. Or you mimic the teacher. Or you trust another person. Another person is a condition in our lives. Sometimes we really need to learn from others. Other times we need to separate from others and learn from our own mistakes. But that mimicking and parroting, that’s a really important part of following. As well as the separating and individuating from people who are the conditions in our lives.
Another one we used early on in our training was following the breadcrumbs. And this is an interesting one, of following little bits that you can see, and just seeing more bread crumbs emerge in different situations. Now, Hansel and Gretel followed the bread crumbs to their Grandma’s house, which wasn’t so great for them. So, it’s not like the bread crumbs are always going to lead you into this idyllic place. But sometimes all we can see is just a little bit of crumb on the ground, and these emerge as we go forward. And we start to trust that we’re going to get some crumbs. That something’s going to come that we can follow. Also, it can have the sense of feeling like we’re being led. And that’s one of the reasons I like following the breadcrumbs. It feels like I’m not so in charge of something. That I’m following something that’s a little bit outside of myself, or outside of the “self and other” view.
Another kind of following is “following our nose”, following our senses. And as our senses become more refined, and more defined, and more understood, we can start to trust them, even though we know they’re not always accurate. But we might be able to pick up a smell that we know that’s not the direction that we want to go. Or an impression, or an intuitive sense, or even trusting our mind. And I think this practice, with allowing our minds to be as they are in the meditation sitting, helps us start to trust some of our habits of mind, and actually see some of them develop and refine. And that we can actually follow that.
“Following your heart” is another one. And this is one that I think most of us are inclined to do. And our heart, in a sense, is going to help us set limits, like knowing that I can’t go in a certain direction. That I have a certain feeling, or vedana, a sense about something—or a love or affection. Following your heart is a really important part of the path, and it’s something that we develop.
And I’m going to make a little plug for following blindly. We always say that we don’t want to follow something blindly, and I would agree with that. But there are also times when we’re in the dark, and we really don’t know what to follow, and we’re blind for a while. And that kind of following is also part of the path. Until a bread crumb emerges, or until the conditions change, or until something becomes more clear or apparent.
So within all these kinds of following, I really think there’s a learning curve, and that we start to trust the ways we follow. With that, again, seeing what’s possible and impossible, skillful or wholesome. And that we’re not always in a quagmire, that the “self and other” and “fate” even operate smoothly at times. They’re not really problems. And we know periods of refuge and freedom from them as problems. And we know kindness and respect. These are the kind of lenses that we’re developing here, that we really want to wear in our practice, and in our life.
