Disenchantment

April 29, 2007 One of the traditional principles of the teaching is that when the mind gains concentration, its able to see things as they are. Actually the Pali term means seeing things as theyve come to be. Theres an interesting passage where the uddha ma!es a distinction between bhava and bhuta. Bhava means a state of being, becoming, the process of becoming, which is a combination of past !arma plus our present !arma. ut then bhuta means things as theyve come to be" the raw material that comes in from the past before weve added our hype, added our salt#and#pepper and mustard and !etchup to ma!e it what we want. The tric! is in learning how to see things as theyve come to be before you dress them up, so that you can move on to the ne$t step, which is disenchantment. ecause as long as all you see are the things that youve dressed up and put all your condiments on, youre going to want to eat them. ut if you see the raw material before its been dressed up, before its been %$ed up, you lose your taste for it. &ts li!e that 'ar (ide cartoon. A group of cows is out in the pasture. One of them lifts up her head and spits out the grass and says" )ait a minute. This is grass* )eve been eating grass* &ts the same with us human beings. )eve been eating form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness. This is a lot of what clinging means. &t means feeding and ta!ing our sustenance o+ these things. ut if you loo! at the raw materials and you thin! of what !ind of happiness youre trying to build out of them, you reali,e youve set yourself up for a fall. The raw material simply cant provide it. One of the biggest issues in life of course is lust. &f you actually loo! at whats involved in the se$ual act, its pretty disgusting. And so people spend a lot of time dressing it up. This last wee! & heard a group of people complaining when they heard about the whole idea of disenchantment and dispassion" -ant we still have se$. &n other words, if & get to the point where & dont want it any more, can & still have it. This is the !ind of thin!ing that comes from focusing entirely on how you can dress things up, ta!ing pleasure in the dressing up without really loo!ing at the raw materials that youre dressing up. &f you loo! carefully at /ust whats there, without all the hype, without all the added condiments, you really lose your taste. And its very di+icult for people to loo! at whats already there, because theres so much involved in the adding on. 0oo! at dependent co#arising. &ts interesting to note that the uddha doesnt start everything out with sensory contact, because contact comes at least one third of the way through all the factors. A lot of other things come even before youve had your %rst contact at the senses. There are all these attitudes, these intentions, ways of paying attention, and all the di+erent forms of fabrication" These already color the way youre going to approach sensory contact. And these are the factors that ma!e all the di+erence between whether its going to cause stress and su+ering or whether its not. (o normally we bring this huge parcel of attitudes to apply to the present moment, to shape the present moment. And one of the main purposes of concentration is to learn how to pare that down, so at the very least you !now

what youre bringing. 1ou loo! at fabrication. The bodily fabrication is breath. 2erbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation. 3ental fabrication is feeling and perception. These are the basic elements the uddha has us focus on as we concentrate. 'irst, of course, we learn how to dress them up in a new way. &n other words, bring the directed thought and evaluation to the breath, to create feelings of comfort. 1ou use your perceptions to maintain that sense of comfort. (o these elements4the fabrication and intention that we normally bring out of ignorance" )ere now shaping them with !nowledge, with awareness, so at the very least we can be clear about what were doing. &ts only when were clear about what were doing that we can begin to pare away the uns!illful things in what were doing" the intentions that lie to us, the mental verbali,ations that lie to us. )e begin to see right through them. O!ay, this is a lie. This is not the way things actually are. This isnt how the way things wor!. )e begin dropping those things, dropping those things. )ere loo!ing at the nuts and bolts. )ere loo!ing at the processes that we bring to the present moment, that we bring to sensory contact. And as we loo! more directly at the processes, we begin to see how false and arti%cial they are. This is what helps to bring about yatha-bhuta-ana#dassana4 the !nowledge and visions of things as theyve come to be. (o you loo! at the raw materials and you reali,e youve been eating grass. 1ou thought it was something really special, but its /ust grass or even worse. And when you can let yourself loo! at that consistently enough, thats when !nowledge leads to disenchantment. The word nibbida sometimes can be translated as disgust" the !ind of disgust that comes not because things in and of themselves are disgusting, but simply because we were trying to feed on them. )e havent really been paying careful attention to what weve been feeding on. )e begin to see that the things weve been drawing nourishment from really dont have the nourishment we thought they provided. As A/aan 0ee once said, its as if most of the 5avor comes from our own saliva, li!e a dog chewing on a bone. The only 5avor the bone has to o+er is the dogs own saliva. Thats what weve been bringing to it. 1ou see that its a futile process, and seeing that is what leads to dispassion. The reason why dispassion ma!es such a di+erence is because weve been so involved in the activity of dressing things up and ma!ing them into something that theyre not. )hen you develop dispassion for that process, you dont want to get involved in that ma!eup, ma!e#believe dressing up !ind of activity. And so your own e$perience of whats actually going on really changes. 1ou see things from a totally new light, and the whole thing /ust stops because youre no longer !eeping it going. &ts not that youve been watching a T2 show and you decide you dont li!e it, and so you turn it o+. &ts more li!e reali,ing youve been in an interactive game and youve been playing it really poorly. The game itself doesnt have that much at all to o+er anyhow. (o you lose interest in the game. And the game stops. (o the reason were concentrating the mind here is to get more sensitive to what were bringing into the present moment, seeing all the hype that we add to the raw material that our past !amma has created for us. )e reali,e no matter how great we are in hyping things, the raw material simply cannot provide what were loo!ing for. 6o matter how s!illfully we try to ma!e it into something thats lasting and reliable, the materials are ready to fall apart all the time, all the time.

One of the reasons why we dont stop it is that were afraid that there would be nothing, life would be pabulum, it would be porridge without any condiments. Thats what our fear is. This is why we are so loath to let go. ut the uddhas great discovery is that when you stop dressing things up you open up to something that doesnt re7uire any dressing up at all. &ts much better to begin with. And all this e+ort to ma!e things delicious was getting in the way of the happiness you actually wanted. This is when things open up, this is where dispassion leads to release. And its a release that you can !now. &ts not li!e youre blan!ing out. &f thats all it was, if we /ust blan!ed out totally, what would you !now. 6othing. ut the happiness of release is something you can !now. 1ou can !now this freedom. &t comes from ta!ing all these processes apart. (o this is why we meditate. This is why we bring the mind to concentration. 6ot so that we can /ust hang out here and have a good time, but so we can see the processes of the mind" how they try to create happiness out of raw materials that simply cant provide it, or at least not in the really lasting reliable way that we want. The uddhas advice is to use them in a new way, to create a path. After all, what else are you going to wor! with. 8ow would you create a path unless you too! those aggregates that you were using for one purpose and use them for another. 3editation is a di+erent way of dressing up the present moment using form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness as tools. 1ou dress them in a di+erent way. ut in the process of dressing them in a di+erent way, you get to see processing as its happening. 1ou come to reali,e that this !ind of happiness that you create by following the path is much greater than what you had before. 9ltimately it will ta!e you to a point where you even let the path go. As A/aan 0ee said, thats where it gets really good.