Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

by Daniel M. Ingram

Let's say you tapped twice per syllable. That would already be up to at least twelve things you perceived in a second, the four syllables and the eight taps. That actually isn't that hard to do. You are already fast enough to really bust out some insight practices. Great job! Investigate reality that fast and you will learn some seriously cool things. Add in noticing the intentions to tap each of those taps and the mental impressions of all of ...

Once you get the hang of it, the faster and slower vibrations are no big deal. Alternately, depending on how you practice, conceiving of this as like a shower of raindrops, an animated pointillist painting, or 3D TV snow might help. Reality is quite rich and complex, and thus the frequencies of the pulses of reality can be somewhat chaotic, but they tend to be more regular than you might expect. Also, there are not any “magic frequencies”. Whatever frequency or pulse or whatever you are experiencing at that moment is the truth of that moment. However, in the beginning you should go for faster vibrations over slower ones and then later try for broader and more inclusive ones over those that are narrower.

I will relate four of the many little exercises that I have found useful for jump-starting and developing insight into impermanence. They will demonstrate how we can be creative in exploring our reality precisely, but please don't think of them in some dogmatic way. These objects and postures are not that important, but understanding impermanence directly is.

It is essential to try to perceive how you experience thoughts at a sensate level, otherwise you will likely flounder in their content. What do thoughts feel like? Where do they occur? How big are they? What do they look like, smell like, taste like, sound like, feel like? How long do they last? Where are their edges? Only take on this practice if you are willing to try to work at the level of trying to discern what thoughts actually are rather than what they mean, represent, or imply. If we begin to explore carefully, we will realize that thoughts are made of many types of sensations, sounds, sights, physical feelings, even tastes and smells, but they will often, though not always, be associated with one predominant sense door.

Hopefully these exercises will give you some idea about how we might practice understanding impermanence. Impermanence is a quality whose clear perception leads to wisdom, so just understanding this again and again can be enough to drum it into our thick heads, debunk the illusion of continuity, and once this is drummed into our thick heads we are freer.

Once you have some mental stability, you can even examine the bare experience of the sensations that make up the stories that spin in your mind and see how unsatisfactory and unsettling it is to try to pretend they are a self or the property of some imagined self. If we continue to habituate ourselves to this understanding moment to moment we may get it into our thick heads and finally awaken.

My favorite exercise for examining dukkha is to sit quietly in a quiet place with eyes closed and examine the physical sensations that make up any sort of desire, be it desire to get something (attraction), get away from something (aversion), or just check out or go to sleep (ignorance). At a rate of one to ten times per second, try to experience exactly how you know that you wish to do something other than simply face your current experience as it is. Moment to moment, try to discern every little uncomfortable shift, urge, impulse, and tension that prods your mind into fantasizing about the past or future or stopping the meditation entirely.

Even the most pleasant sensations have a tinge of misery to them, not only because they end, but also due to the strange way we hold our minds to create a sense of a stable self in a changing world, so look for it at the level of bare experience.

Emptiness, for all its mysterious-sounding connotations, means that reality is empty of, devoid of, or lacking a permanent, separate, independent, acausal, autonomous self. It doesn't mean that reality is not there, but that reality is not there in the way it may appear to us to be.

There also seems to be something frequently called “the watcher”, or “witness”, which seems to be observing all this, and perhaps this watcher is really the “I” in question. Strangely, the watcher cannot be found, can it? It seems to sometimes be our eyes, but sometimes not, or it seems to be images in our head or something that is separate from them and yet watching the images in our head. Sometimes it seems to be our body, but sometimes it seems to be watching our body. Isn't it strange how we are so used to this constant redefining of ourselves that we never stop to question it? So question it!

One of my teachers wisely said, “If you are observing it, then by definition it isn't you.” Notice that all of what we call “reality” seems to be something we can observe.

There are absolutely no sensations that can observe other sensations. (Notice that your experiential reality is made up entirely of sensations.) There are no special sensations that are uniquely in control of other sensations. There are no sensations that are fundamentally split off or separable from other sensations occurring at that moment.

Another very important, related thing: the creation of the sense of an ultimate, permanent, continuous, stable self is a process of identification, not a stable entity in and of itself. It is like a bad habit, in this case a habitual misperception, but it doesn't exist as something that can be found beyond a shifting pattern of mere sensations and causality.

The big, practical trick to understanding no-self when doing insight practices is to tune in to the fact that sensations arise on their own in a natural, causal fashion, even the intentions to do things. This is a formal practice instruction.

There is much advice available on this point, but in terms of insight meditation practice I would say that if, when meditating, you can perceive the arising and passing of phenomena clearly and consistently, that is enough effort, so allow this to show itself naturally and surrender to it. If not, or if you are lost in stories, then some teachings in subsequent chapters of this book may help. Part of your job is to figure out how gentle you can be while still perceiving things extremely clearly. This takes fine-tuning and usually in the beginning requires some overshooting, but remember that this efficiency and delicacy, this subtlety, are part of your goal.

A useful teaching is conceptualizing reality as six sense doors: touch, taste, seeing, hearing, smelling, and thought. It may seem odd to consider thought as a sense door, but this is much more reasonable than the assumption that thoughts are a “me” or “mine” or in complete control. Just treat thoughts as more sensations coming in which must be understood to be impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self. In this strangely useful framework, there are not even ears, eyes, skin, nose, tongue, or mind. There are just sensations with various qualities, some of which may imply these different sense doors for an instant.

One more little carrot: it is rightly said that to deeply understand any two of the characteristics simultaneously is to understand the third, and this understanding is enough to cause immediate first awakening.

When faith and wisdom are in balance there is a heartfelt steadiness, a quality of balanced and genuine inquiry, an ability to persevere, and with these an unmistakable humility.

With insufficient energy, there is sloth, torpor, dullness, and tiredness. When there is excess energy, the mind and body may be restless, agitated, jumpy, strained, tense, and irritable. With excess energy, we may be completely unable to focus at all because we are overemphasizing effort at the expense of focusing on the object of meditation. With insufficient concentration, the mind won't stay with its chosen meditation object and tends to get lost in thought or snagged by stories.

Mindfulness is in a category all by itself, as it can potentially balance and perfect the remaining four spiritual faculties.

It is aptly said that when balanced and perfected, the five spiritual faculties as they apply to insight training are a sufficient cause for awakening.

So, with mindfulness we sort out what is somatic, what is visual, what is mental, what is auditory, what is pleasant, what is unpleasant, what is neutral, etc. We can know what is a mental sensation and what is a related physical feeling. We can know what specific mental and physical sensations make up our emotions and where they occur. We can know each physical sensation and the mental impression that follows it. We can know a sight and the mental impression that follows it, a physical sensation that follows it, even a thought and the mental impression that follows it. We can know the intentions that precede physical and mental actions. We can know the sensations that imply mind-states, knowing a clear mind as a clear mind, a dull mind as a dull mind, an agitated mind as an agitated mind, a focused mind as a focused mind, an expansive mind as an expansive mind, etc., as each of those mind-states and mental qualities are implied by various aspects of the myriad sensations that arise. We can know where sensations are in relation to each other. We can know exactly when they occur and how they change during their very brief stay. We can and should sort these out as best we can. Be patient and precise. Become fluent in all the sensations and patterns that make up your reality. Increasing our direct sensate clarity through repeated attention to doing so is the point of mindfulness in this context. We are wiring the machine of our brain to be able to be more present to exactly w...

The practice is this: make a quiet, mental one-word note of whatever you experience in each moment. Try to stay with the sensations of breathing, which may occur in many places, noting these quickly as “rising” (as many times as the sensations of the breath rising are experienced) and then “falling” in the same way. These are the fundamental insight practice instructions. When the mind wanders, notes might include “thinking”, “feeling”, “pressure”, “tension”, “wandering”, “anticipating”, “seeing”, “hearing”, “cold”, “hot”, “pain”, “pleasure”, etc. Note these sensations one by one as they occur and then return to the sensations of breathing.

The details of this practice can be found in such books as Practical Insight Meditation, by Mahasi Sayadaw, which I highly recommend, available free online in various places and in book form. This is my all-time favorite dharma book. It is short and to the point. Its instructions work and the promised effects are reproducible. The first forty-two pages are total gold. There is no need for me to repeat much of the useful information found there, as it is pithy and now readily available online.

The trick is to get to know our reality as it is, and what techniques we use to do this do not matter much so long as they work and bring results. What is meant by “results” will be clearly spelled out in The Progress of Insight in Part Four.

The crucial difference between insight practices and concentration practices is that insight practices also stress precise, rapid investigation of the three characteristics, whereas more “pure” concentration practices emphasize stabilizing in the illusion of solidity and continuity of those things we are mindful of while ignoring the fact that the sensations that make up this experience are all impermanent, etc.

Texts on meditation generally go into detail about the hindrances to meditation. Here I will mention them only briefly. The hindrances are an extremely important topic, but they can easily begin to seem more ominous than they really are. The hindrances are formally listed as: sensory desire ill will or malice sloth/torpor restlessness/worry doubt Each of these states of mind will inhibit meditative progress if we are not aware of them as sensate objects for investigation as they arise.

Further, the speed, precision, and playful attitude required for video games is exactly like the feel of well-done insight practice.

We diligently investigate the ultimate truth of our experience, and this can be invigorating once we get into it. Just as playing video games can be very exciting, we have lots of sensations coming in all the time that are just screaming to be understood. When we rise to this challenge, things can really begin to jump. Once we have sorted out what is mind and what is body and have begun to see a bit of the three characteristics, this can produce lots of energy, the third of the seven factors. This can be a bit scary until we get used to how quick and powerful our minds can be. As mentioned in the five spiritual faculties, energy is a good thing, as it obviously fuels and invigorates our practice. We can almost always call up just a bit more energy when we need it, and this is a good thing to realize. However, being mindful and investigating diligently can also increase energy, so now you have more than one way to go about this. Thank you, seven factors of awakening!

One of the keys to mobilizing energy is motivation, so if energy is lacking, try to remember why you are doing all of this. I personally can think of lots of reasons, but will focus on the major ones: Because you are suffering, dissatisfied, or miserable and want to put a stop to the aspects of suffering that can be ended by skillful mental and perceptual development. Because you are curious about how the mind works, who you are and are not, what you can learn to do with your mind, and the like. Because you want to help others and so wish to transform yourself, your understanding, and your abilities for the better to make service to the world easier. Because challenges inspire you, as in, Q: “Why did you climb that mountain?” A: “Because it was there!” Because you can see how much better things could be if you were to transform your mind in specific ways related to practice—the flipside of the suffering coin. Because you want to finish what you have already started. Because waking up is just so totally cool! All the above may figure into your reasons for mobilizing energy in practice, and reconnecting with them when the energy is low can help.

The vast intricacy of what happens in each moment is truly remarkable. When you sit, sit with amazement at what is going on, like a vast, complex, rich work of moving, fluxing art.

See equanimity at the end of this list, as well as the expertly written chapter nine of A Path with Heart, by Jack Kornfield, whose whole book is well worth reading.

I have realized since receiving feedback on the first edition of MCTB that, when I wrote this book, I had access to many written and living examples of softer styles of practice and very skillful yet non-gung-ho perspectives. Some examples are Achaan Chah's A Still Forest Pool, and Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, as well as the gentle, settling, heart-centered, down-to-earth, and non-map-based styles of meditation teachers Sharda Rogell and Yvonne Weier. If you don't have the opportunity to sit with them, you can find their talks (and many other great meditation talks) for free on www.dharmaseed.org and on YouTube.

Ayya Tathaaloka,

From a pure insight practice point of view, you can't ever fundamentally “let go” of anything, so I sometimes wish the popularity of this misleading and apathy-producing admonition would decline, or at least be properly explained or challenged. However, if you simply investigate the truth of the three characteristics of the sensations that seem to be solid, you will come to the wondrous realization that reality is continually “letting go” of itself. Thus, “Let it go” means, “Don't artificially solidify a bunch of transient sensations.” It does not mean, “Stop feeling or caring,” nor does it mean, “Pretend that the noise in your mind is not there.” If people start with “just open to it” yet don't develop both strong mindfulness and careful investigation into the three characteristics to gain deep insights, their practice may be less like meditation and more like psychotherapy, day dreaming, cultivated passivity, denial, or even self-absorbed, spiritually-rationalized, neurotic indulgence in mind noise. Noticing again and again the prevalence of this activity and the pervasive and absurd notion that there is no point in trying to get awakened has largely demolished my vision of being a happy meditation teacher in some mainstream meditation center.

On the other hand, even if you gain all kinds of strong concentration, look deeply into impermanence, suffering, and no-self, but can't open to these things, can't let them be, can't accept the seemingly absurd and frightening truths of your experience, then you will likely be stuck in hell until you can, particularly in some of the higher stages of insight practices.

The order here is important. Start with good technique, mindfulness, investigation, etc., and work on the others along the way. In summary, you must have both insights and acceptance, and each perspective can and should help the other along the way. They are actually one and the same, but getting to that understanding generally benefits from a whole lot of good practice. In other words, if you are getting nowhere and not much is happening, you probably need more of the first three.

To balance and perfect the seven factors of awakening is sufficient cause for awakening. Thus, checking in from time to time with this list and seeing how you are doing and what might need improvement is a good idea. Just having this list in the back of your mind can be helpful. Furthermore, the seven factors of awakening make for great meditation description and categorization that guides the process of self-correction. For example, we might say, “That last sit was characterized by a moderate degree of mindfulness, a pretty high degree of investigation, moderate energy, not very good rapture, poor tranquility, moderately good concentration, and a pretty low degree of equanimity.” Being able to use this list to assess sits, meditation events, and various stages of practice will give us a sense of what we need to work on to round out our practice, as well as possibly to identify the phase of practice, as we shall see in a bit when we get to the maps, as each stage has its characteristic pattern of qualities, strengths, and weaknesses.

The common denominator of the concentration attainments is that we learn to get ourselves into states of consciousness that are some mixture of blissful and peaceful, as well as increasingly spacious and removed from our ordinary experience. These can be a source of happiness that is far more intense and predictable than the happiness found in the ordinary world, though these states, too, obviously end. Being able to access as much happiness and peace as we wish when we wish reduces our anger at the everyday world for not providing us with these, making us less needy and greedy.

“Craving”, “attachment”, and “desire” are some of the most dangerous words that can be used to describe something that is much more fundamental than these terms seem to indicate. The Buddha did talk about these conventional forms of suffering, but he also talked about the fundamental suffering that comes from some deep longing for a refuge that involves a separate or permanent identity.

There is a close relationship between suffering, desire, and compassion. This is heavy but good stuff and worth investigating.

Remember that the only thing that will fundamentally help is to understand the three characteristics to the degree that makes the difference, and the three characteristics are manifesting right here.

Do you remember reading above that suffering motivates everything we do? We could also say that everything we do is motivated by compassion, which is part of the fundamentally empty nature of reality. That doesn't mean that everything we do is skillful; that is a whole different issue.

Remember the simplicity of the training in morality, which boils down to: if you can't help, at least do no harm. Train in kindness, generosity, honesty, and clarity, and gain balance and wisdom from the other two trainings as you go.

I recommend Sharon Salzberg's Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness for instructions on basic practices designed to help us connect to the heart side of practice.

For those taking a more structured approach, some of the axes we can move along are the degree to which we include physical or mental sensations in meditation, whether we focus narrowly or use a more open field of attention, and whether we move the attention around or keep it in roughly the same place, and what we do with that attention when objects arise and vanish.

The best time to meditate is any time you can. The best place to meditate is wherever you can, and the best duration is for as long as possible or necessary for you to get what you wish out of it. This may seem obvious, but people can sometimes get it into their heads that certain times are better than others and thus not meditate when that seemingly sacrosanct period is unavailable or interrupted. They may feel that special places or special circumstances (special cushions, special noise levels, special surroundings, special props, special garments, etc.) are oh-so-necessary, and if these are not available then they may feel frustrated and unable to practice. They may feel that a certain minimal amount of meditation time is necessary, and thus find themselves unable to make use of whatever time they do happen to have. A more immediate answer is that you should meditate now, where you are, and make your life your meditation in all its aspects.

I began Buddhist meditation practice with a nine-day intensive retreat and I am glad I did, as it taught me a lot and saved me much wasted effort.

Be mindful every friggin’ second from the moment you get up to the moment you go to sleep and in all transition periods—getting up off the cushion, brushing your teeth, walking to the meditation hall, eating, bathing, peeing, dressing, etc.—those who make use of every moment and every context will make vastly more progress, on average, than those who don't, even if those other people are still doing the same walking and sitting sessions. When applying this sort of advice, be sure to keep the seven factors in mind and balance them skillfully.

Some of my favorite places to go on retreat are: The Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts; Bhavana Society in High View, West Virginia; the Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Centre (MBMC) in Penang, Malaysia (teachers vary there: check before going); and Gaia House near Totnes, England. Worth mentioning are the Mahasi centers in Burma (Myanmar), such as Panditarama in Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon), and particularly Panditarama Lumbini in Nepal, to which I haven't been but know many people who have. All these are easy to find on the internet. For those who are really into Mahasi Sayadaw style practice, as I am, the three-month retreat at IMS, or a few weeks to months at a place such as Panditarama, Lumbini, or some of the Thai or other Asian Mahasi centers, are highly recommended. There is also Tathagatha in San Jose, California.