Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.
Forms of Ignorance -part 1
John D. Hughes
Recorded Teachings
Buddhist Discussion Centre
(Upwey) Ltd.
33 Brooking St
Upwey, Victoria
Australia 3158
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Phone: (03) 9754
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email: wbu@bdcu.org.au
Disclaimer
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of recording: 24/6/88
Transcribed by
Anita Hughes and Leanne Eames
Checked by Leanne Eames
CD Reference
24_06_88T1S1i
File Name: 24_06_88T1S1i_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
Recording Title: "Forms of Ignorance"
Overcoming Forms of Ignorance
So the main part of the Teachings are from Venerable Tsong Khapa; but we are going to look at the different forms of ignorance and how to overcome them.
So the target, or the ultimate target, is omniscience where you can basically know whatever you want to know, past, present or future, without too much trouble.
Now the problem is that if you, for example, very, very quickly attained Arahant fruit at say this instant, at that point you’d just go on until you die in this life and then you wouldn’t take rebirth. But since you haven't accumulated vast oceans of merit on the way before that, you probably wouldn’t be able to do very much to help other people, which is okay, but you wouldn’t be able to teach much or you wouldn’t be able to give them many blessings.
So although all Arahants are the same in attainment, insofar as they’ve attained Arahant fruit, and they will go into paranirvana at their death, unless they generate the five great unwholesome actions, but normally they would finish in paranirvana on that present enlightenment. But if you examine very carefully the Buddha's Teaching, you will see that, for example, one of the Buddha's monks, before he became a Buddhist monk, had killed about a thousand people and he’d chopped off a finger from each. He had a necklace of fingers, and the Pali word for his name means necklet or garland of fingers – (“How do you say his name Julie?” “Angulimala”.) Angulimala. Like ‘mala’ is like, you know ‘mala’? ‘Mantra beads’ or ‘mala’. ‘Anguli’ means ‘fingers’, so he had a ‘necklace of fingers’. When he became an Arahant he requested the Buddha could he go back to where he lived to teach the Dhamma. It’s in the sutra, you can read about it, but the Buddha asked him first of all what would happen if people were angry with him. He said his mind wouldn’t move. He said “What happens if they throw stones at you?” and he said his mind wouldn’t move or he wouldn’t react, and so on.
Anyway, he went back, and because everyone hated him because he’d killed a thousand people nearly, when he went back and they saw him at first they all ran away. They were scared of him. They thought he’d come back to murder some more. And then in time, they realised he was harmless, so they first of all started to call him names and he didn’t react, then they started to throw stones at him and he didn’t react, and in the end they beat him to death and he died because of the negative karma that he’d acquired with murder. But the problem is, not for him because he went to paranirvana, but for the villagers who killed him, because if you kill an Arahant, you’re born in Avicci, in one very deep hell. So therefore, it becomes very desirable for the sake of other beings if you didn’t get yourself into a situation like that.
There’s another story about one monk, and he was kidnapped by robbers, and they’d done some murdering, and they, because he’d been a witness to the murders, and although he was a monk (they had a bit of respect for monks) but then several of them, several of these robbers said “Let’s kill this monk”, and then the others, who had respect for monks some, even though they were murderers and robbers, were a bit dicey about it. So this monk sat himself in the lotus position on the path, and he suggested that, you know, maybe they could go away and come back and he wouldn’t run away. Like he was at their headquarters, or hideout, and then some of them thought, “Oh, he’s just saying that”. They didn’t know. So what he did he sat himself in the lotus position, and he said “I said I wouldn’t run away”, and he picked up a rock and he smashed, broke, both his kneecaps. At that point he became Arahant fruit. So of course then they got terrified, because like all murderers they were basically cowards, so they all ran away, but he just sat there with broken kneecaps, and died within a couple of days, because he was in a desolate place where there weren’t many people. So the karmic, although in that case of course they didn’t kill him, or they didn’t even harm him too much, they did create some negative kamma. So in a sense that, if you look at it from the viewpoint of the other people, that second one was, if you like, kammically kinder than the first one.
So you go through a whole parade of Arahants and you look at what their kamma is. The people who have developed enormous stores of merit over long, long, many lives, they become people like Sariputta, second to the Buddha, in the Vinaya, in the order of the monks, a great organiser, a great negotiator, and with well developed qualities, and able to manage the Sangha effectively after the Buddha passed into paranirvana. Or you have people like Maudgalyana who were great in siddhis, or magical powers, second to the Buddha in magical powers. So it would be very desirable if you practised in such a manner that before you became Arahant fruit, you had eradicated the kammic causes of negative dispositions down to a minimum or you had such a strong idea in your mind, or such mental power that you knew, basically through clairvoyancy, what would happen if you went there, and if you went there and someone was going to kill you, you’d avoid going there in most cases. So therefore, if you consider the training process that the Buddha gave those types of Arahants, that he taught them, because of his enormous teaching power, the Buddha was able to get them to Arahant starting from very dud people, so they didn’t have time to develop, to do long meditations on Bodhicitta, compassion or metta or whatever. They were very wise, they took the Buddha’s teaching to heart, they went the fastest, quickest way, but then there was this unfortunate possibility of not being a benefactor to the other human beings. Now even the Buddha himself, because one of his Monks tried to kill him, was not a benefactor to that particular Monk, who now resides in Avicci for his effort, because you can’t kill a Buddha, but he pushed a rock on him, the rock broke into splinters, and one little splinter just marked the Buddha’s ankle. And out of that kamma, that bad Monk was born in Avicci, which is long hell.
So you’ve got to realize that you see this is what your clouded mind says. Your clouded mind because you had fiction about other religions in many, many lifetimes, imagines that a supremely perfect being, which is like a Buddha or Arahant, can only bring benefits to beings, but it’s a double-edged sword. A perfectly enlightened being, depending on what the people do near him, will either attain great things, great happiness, or great sorrow. So therefore, it’d be, if you were kind, if you have a disposition, if you’ve got some sympathy for other human beings particularly, and you were of a kind disposition towards other human beings, if you’ve got that sort of feeling, then you would probably make sure your practice was such that the net result was that although you were alright, you wouldn’t put yourself in those sort of kammic situations. Remember, although the Arahant doesn’t make fresh kamma, there is still the residuals of the five groups to play out, or something like that. That’s one way of . . .
Now in view of that, that’s why Tsong Khapa explains that the ordinary types of practice, the ordinary types of practice where the Buddha brought his Arahants to, he calls attention to Chandrakirti who says “Buddhas are renowned in this world” meaning in human world “as regulating the activities of people”, meaning human beings, “by their nine modes of teaching”. There’s different layers of teaching, different types of teaching of the Buddha, based on the two realities. Now the two realities are in essence, if you like, the reality that there is an enlightened mind as exemplified by the Buddha, and the reality is there is a worldly mind as exemplified by the unenlightened human beings. So therefore, the text says, Chandrakirti says in his text, the key words “Teachings dispelling some negativity will not bring some other negativity to an end”. Teachings dispelling one negativity will dispel that negativity, but it will not bring another negativity to an end, so teachings dispelling whatever negativity will not conquer the other taints or other defilements. “Thus, because of this fact, these teachings are not all pervasive, and do not bear great import. The teachings dispelling delusion conquer all afflictions, for victors” they’re the ones who have attained and succeeded in the path, “declare that all afflictions truly depend on the delusion”. So therefore, if you can see at some level, you might argue, as the, some other texts argue, that the Buddha teaches conditional teachings to many, and then complete teachings to others.
So it’s like, so if you had a conditional teaching, you attain to become Arahant fruit and you wander around and you run into other beings who are kammically linked to you in some way and then, as a consequence of their unwholesome actions, they attain very great sadness, whereas if you had, if you can conquer completely all delusions in all areas, as the Buddha did, the Buddha is complete in all perfections, there is no, every perfection the Buddha has, there is no incompleteness about the Buddha, if you can see like that.
So that is one argument for working towards omniscient mind, removal of all delusions. So you could have another argument that the brighter your mind is, the more it can unearth your own defilements, and by unearthing your own defilements quickly, you can attain to higher levels quickly. So you can produce an array of arguments, you can produce a vast array of arguments on your mind, if you look in your mind. So in this basic teaching, it’s to generate, you have to do the work, you don’t just take concrete examples given by the Teacher. You look on your mind, and you might do a rating chart. If there’s fourteen unwholesome minds, to what extent have you got rid of their reappearance, and if there’s twenty-five wholesome cetasikas, to what extent, each time they appear, are they perfect, and so on. So you can look on an array of your minds and start to develop the knowledge, but if you could quickly, quickly, quickly become very, very good, not for the sake of name or fame or anything like that, not for worldly fame, it’d just be an expedient means to help more beings come out of suffering. So you have to generate a method where you can identify afflictional misknowledge, or afflictional ignorance that you have, so that it won’t interact with other sentient beings in the process.
Now there is a sutra that says that the king of all the wholesome minds is compassion, and the retinue of all the other wholesome minds, so the compassion is the king of all the good qualities you can have, compassion is the king, in the retinue are all the other mettas and loving-kindnesses and sympathetic joys and equanimities, the brahma world qualities.
So the argument is, that you develop the king of perfections, according to this sutra, and then, where the king goes, the retinue follows, so if you concentrate on the compassion aspect, and make that the great compassion, maha karuna, not ordinary karuna, then you will use that knowledge to help clean off the other things and hurry along.
So teachings dispelling delusion conquer all afflictions, all defilements. All victors, people who have, really became perfect in their attainment, declare that all afflictions, all negativities, all unwholesome minds, truly depend on delusion, so the root cause, the root cause of the delusion is ignorance, and the complete antithesis, the complete opposite if you like, of ignorance, which is not knowing what is what, is omniscience, knowing what is what in all things. So therefore, because of, driven by compassion for other beings, driven by your own need to become fully enlightened, driven by all these complex factors, if you tinker around a bit, with the intensity of one or the other, then you’ll drive into the samsara in a different manner to what you’re driving now, and then you’ll come to omniscience mind. So that being so, that the afflictions depend on delusion, the meditation on what is translated here as Suchness or Sunyata or sphere of nothingness third arupa jhana meditation. Sunyata is really the natural home of the Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattvas dwell in Suchness, they dwell in Sunyata, that is their normal state of being. So the meditation on seeing third arupa jhana knowledge, which is higher than the infinity of worldly knowledges, which is higher than the infinity of space, you have to come to realize the fully, the Sunyata. Now to translate it as nothingness is not, is one way of translating it, but it’s not nothing, it’s great mind, great path of mind, in Sunyata. So the meditation on Suchness is necessary as the medicine for the delusion, for the misknowledge. Delusion is a misknowledge or an unknowledge or an error if you like. So to call delusion misknowledge or wrong knowledge or non-knowledge, you have to generate in your mind plenty of synonyms and have a broad view. So the cultivation of the meditation on third arupa jhana, Suchness, Sunyata, is necessary as the medicine or the antidote or whatever you like to call it, for misknowledge, which is unknowledge, which is ignorance, and since one does not know how to cultivate the medicine, how to cultivate the medicine which is on the essence, without identifying the misknowledge itself, you must identify the misknowledge first, it is very important to identify misknowledge, or ignorance.
However, as you well know, many times you meditate, when you start to see your ignorance rule you, you get a bit afraid, so a requirement is you have no fear, you have great courage. So misknowledge is to be unearthed, your misknowledge, not the misknowledge of others, and since misknowledge is the opposite of knowledge, and the knowledge here we’re talking about should not be taken as whatever type of worldly knowledge or common knowledge, but we’re interested in the, to use the Pali word, lokuttara, super mundane or transcendental knowledge, or knowledge with wisdom, or wisdom of the knowledge of suchness, of selflessness, so the Anatta, the fact that you can see from nirvana view, low nirvana view, quite easily, that every feeling you ever have has no owner, if it had an owner, you could stay. It’s just psycho mind body phenomena that’s all driven by the kamma. There’s no self.
But then you’ve got to know, the next step is to know the emptiness of the no-self knowledge, and then you’ve got to have the wisdom concerning the emptiness of that knowledge, so that’s why, if you study the texts carefully, you’ll see there are eighteen levels of comprehension in third arupa jhana.
So the opposite of that again is not properly
understood as the mere absence of wisdom, of that wisdom concerning
Suchness or selflessness. So it’s not the mere absence of that wisdom or
there’s merely something else than it, but it’s the very antithesis, the
very opposite.
The next session of these Teachings is entitled 'Forms of Ignorance - part 2'.