Buddhism takes a familiar American principle—the pursuit of
happiness—and inserts two important qualifiers. The happiness it aims
at is true: ultimate, unchanging, and undeceitful. Its pursuit of that
happiness is serious, not in a grim sense, but dedicated, disciplined,
and willing to make intelligent sacrifices.
What sorts of sacrifices are intelligent? The Buddhist answer to this
question resonates with another American principle: an intelligent
sacrifice is any in which you gain a greater happiness by letting go
of a lesser one, in the same way you’d give up a bag of candy if
offered a pound of gold in exchange. In other words, an intelligent
sacrifice is like a profitable trade. This analogy is an ancient one
in the Buddhist tradition. “I’ll make a trade,” one of the Buddha’s
disciples once said, “aging for the ageless, burning for the unbound:
the highest peace, the unexcelled safety from bondage. (Thag 1:32)”
There’s something in all of us that would rather not give things up.
We’d prefer to keep the candy and get the gold. But maturity teaches
us that we can’t have everything, that to indulge in one pleasure
often involves denying ourselves another, perhaps better, one. So we
need to establish clear priorities for investing our limited time and
energies where they’ll give the most lasting returns.
That means giving top priority to the mind. Material things and social
relationships are unstable and easily affected by forces beyond our
control, so the happiness they offer is fleeting and undependable. But
the well-being of a well-trained mind can survive even aging, illness,
and death. To train the mind, though, requires time and energy. This
is one reason why the pursuit of true happiness demands that we
sacrifice some of our external pleasures.
Sacrificing external pleasures also frees us of the mental burdens
that holding onto them often entails. A famous story in the Canon (Ud
2:10) tells of a former king who, after becoming a monk, sat down at
the foot of a tree and exclaimed, “What bliss! What bliss!” His fellow
monks thought he was pining for the pleasures he had enjoyed as king,
but he later explained to the Buddha exactly what bliss he had in
mind:
“Before … I had guards posted within and without the royal apartments,
within and without the city, within and without the countryside. But
even though I was thus guarded, thus protected, I dwelled in
fear—agitated, distrustful, and afraid. But now, on going alone to a
forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty dwelling, I dwell
without fear, unagitated, confident, and unafraid—unconcerned,
unruffled, living on the gifts of others, with my mind like a wild
deer.”
A third reason for sacrificing external pleasures is that in pursuing
some pleasures—such as our addictions to eye-candy, ear-candy, nose-,
tongue-, and body-candy—we foster qualities of greed, anger, and
delusion that actively block the qualities needed for inner peace.
Even if we had all the time and energy in the world, the pursuit of
these pleasures would lead us further and further away from the goal.
Pleasures of this sort are spelled out in the path factor called right
resolve: the resolve to forego any pleasures involving sensual
passion, ill will, and harmfulness. “Sensual passion” covers not only
sexual desire, but also any hankering for the pleasures of the senses
that disrupts the peace of the mind. “Ill will” covers any wish for
suffering, either for yourself or for others. And “harmfulness” is any
activity that would bring that suffering about.
Of these three categories, the last two are the easiest to see as
worth abandoning. They’re not always easy to abandon, perhaps, but the
resolve to abandon them is obviously a good thing. The first resolve,
though—to renounce sensual passion—is difficult even to make, to say
nothing of following it through.
Part of our resistance to this resolve is universally human. People
everywhere relish their passions. Even the Buddha admitted to his
disciples that, when he set out on the path of practice, his heart
didn’t leap at the idea of renouncing sensual passion, didn’t see it
as offering peace. But an added part of our resistance to renunciation
is peculiar to Western culture. Modern pop psychology teaches that the
only alternative to a healthy indulgence of our sensual passions is an
unhealthy, fearful repression. Yet both of these alternatives are
based on fear: repression, on a fear of what the passion might do when
expressed or even allowed into consciousness; indulgence, on a fear of
deprivation and of the under-the-bed monster the passion might become
if resisted and driven underground. Both alternatives place serious
limitations on the mind.
The Buddha, aware of the drawbacks of both, had the imagination to
find a third alternative: a fearless, skillful approach that avoids
the dangers of either side.
To understand his approach, though, we have to see how right resolve
relates to other parts of the Buddhist path, in particular right view
and right concentration. In the formal analysis of the path, right
resolve builds on right view. In its most skillful manifestation, it
functions as the directed thought and evaluation that bring the mind
to right concentration. Right view provides a skillful understanding
of sensual pleasures and passions, so that our approach to the problem
doesn’t go off-target. Right concentration provides an inner stability
and bliss so that we can clearly see the roots of passion and, at the
same time, not fear deprivation at the prospect of pulling them out.
There are two levels to right view, focusing (1) on the results of our
actions in the narrative of our lives and (2) on the issues of stress
and its cessation within the mind. The first level points out the
drawbacks of sensual passion: sensual pleasures are fleeting,
unstable, and stressful; passion for them lies at the root of many of
the ills of life, ranging from the hardships of gaining and
maintaining wealth, to quarrels within families and wars between
nations. This level of right view prepares us to see the indulgence of
sensual passion as a problem. The second level—viewing things in terms
of the four noble truths—shows us how to solve this problem in our
approach to the present moment. It points out that the root of the
problem lies not in the pleasures but in the passion, because passion
involves attachment, and any attachment for pleasures based on
conditions leads inevitably to stress and suffering, in that all
conditioned phenomena are subject to change. In fact, our attachment
to sensual passion tends to be stronger and more constant than our
attachments to particular pleasures. This attachment is what has to be
renounced.
How is this done? By bringing it out into the open. Both sides of
sensual attachment—as habitual patterns from the past and our
willingness to give into them again in the present—are based on
misunderstanding and fear. As the Buddha pointed out, sensual passion
depends on aberrant perceptions: We project notions of constancy,
ease, beauty, and self onto things that are actually inconstant,
stressful, unattractive, and not-self. These misperceptions apply both
to our passions and to their objects. We perceive the expression of
our sensuality as something appealing, a deep expression of our
self-identity offering lasting pleasure. We see the objects of our
passion as enduring and alluring enough, as lying enough under our
control, to provide us with a satisfaction that won’t turn into its
opposite.
Actually, none of this is the case, and yet we blindly believe our
projections because the power of our passionate attachments has us too
intimidated to look them straight in the eye. Their special effects,
as a result, keep us dazzled and deceived. As long as we deal only in
indulgence and repression, attachment can continue operating freely in
the dark of the sub-conscious. But when we consciously resist it, it
has to come to the surface, articulating its threats, demands, and
rationalizations. So even though sensual pleasures aren’t evil, we
have to systematically forego them as a way of drawing the agendas of
attachment out into the open. This is how skillful renunciation serves
as a learning tool, unearthing latent agendas that both indulgence and
repression tend to keep underground.
At the same time, we need to provide the mind with strategies to
withstand those agendas and to cut through them once they appear. This
is where right concentration comes in. As a skillful form of
indulgence, right concentration suffuses the body with a non-sensual
rapture and pleasure that can help counteract any sense of deprivation
in resisting sensual passions. In other words, it provides higher
pleasures—more lasting and refined—as a reward for abandoning
attachment to lower ones. At the same time, it gives us the stable
basis we need so as not to be blown away by the assaults of our
thwarted attachments. This stability also steadies the mindfulness and
alertness we need to see through the misperceptions and delusions that
underlie sensual passion. And once the mind can see through the
processes of projection, perception, and misperception to the greater
sense of freedom that comes when they’re transcended, the basis for
sensual passion is gone.
At this stage, we can then turn to analyze our attachment to the
pleasures of right concentration. When our understanding is complete,
we abandon all need for attachment of any sort, and so meet with the
pure gold of a freedom so total that it can’t be described.
The question remains: How does this strategy of skillful renunciation
and skillful indulgence translate into everyday practice? People who
ordain as monastics take vows of celibacy and are expected to work
constantly at renouncing sensual passion, but for many people, this is
not a viable option. So the Buddha recommended that his lay followers
observe day-long periods of temporary renunciation. Four days out of
each month—traditionally on the new-, full-, and half-moon days—they
can take the eight precepts, which add the following observances to
the standard five: celibacy, no food after noon, no watching of shows,
no listening to music, no use of perfumes and cosmetics, and no use of
luxurious seats and beds. The purpose of these added precepts is to
place reasonable restraints on all five of the senses. The day is then
devoted to listening to the Dhamma, to clarify right view; and to
practicing meditation, to strengthen right concentration. Although the
modern workweek can make the lunar scheduling of these day-long
retreats impractical, there are ways they can be integrated into
weekends or other days off from work. In this way, anyone interested
can, at regular intervals, trade the cares and complexities of
everyday life for the chance to master renunciation as a skill
integral to the serious pursuit of happiness in the truest sense of
the word.
And isn’t that an intelligent trade?
