Suññata and the Four Elements - Intro

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on Suññata and the Four Elements. Suññata translated into English most often as emptiness, and sometimes voidness.

Transcript

So in the Buddha was one of his more famous discourses was to the Kalamas and there's the discourses called the Kalamas Dilemma and that's the one where they ask him since they'd heard so many of these sages coming through town doing their shtik over this last period of time he said,

Well why should we believe you more than anybody else?

He said,

Well you shouldn't.

You know that things need to be verified by your own experience.

What really feels to you like it's true?

What can you verify with your own experience?

While he was there he was faced with some of these kind of perennial questions and the one of the ones that popped up in the discourse,

I mean it's actually one of the litmus tests that the Kalamas used to kind of gauge whether they had,

Somebody was on to something or a spiritual ringer and so the question was what happens when you die?

And well the Buddha said to the questioner,

If there were nothing after death how would you live your life in the moment?

And he said well knowing that this is my only life to live I would seek to live it to the fullest,

I would seek to act in ways that were above reproach,

I would seek to be generous,

I would seek to live with integrity so that I might be remembered well.

And then he asked the questioner very well,

If there is an afterlife and you were to be reborn and you would be experiencing the consequences of your words and deeds in this life how would you live?

And he said well I would seek to live with integrity,

I would seek to behave in ways that were above reproach,

I would seek to live in ways that I might be remembered well.

And the Buddha said just so.

So there it is.

Is there a life after death?

What does it matter?

Because here we are now.

Very well.

So there is this adage in teaching circles,

Academic as well as karma,

The effect that we teach what we need to learn.

And so now that my academic teaching days are behind me actually and I've started to turn my attention more toward my relationship to the Dharma and my years as a student and in some of the teachings and the practices that have really had meaning for me over the years,

I came to the conclusion that for me it was really time to try to refresh and renew my relationship to some teachings that have really had meaning for me over the years.

In part because they helped to ground my environmental activism and environmental advocacy and ancient roots so that I could maintain some sense of integrity and connection and at least to some extent a non-dual relationship to this work.

And so reflecting back on these teachings that have really had meaning for me that I thought would be good to re-explore,

There were actually these two related teachings.

Oftentimes I won't just take up one teaching or one set of practices in of a self but also to investigate how it relates to another pretty closely linked Buddha's teaching as well.

So that's what inspired me to put together this four-part series that we're embarking on this evening on Shunyata and the Four Elements.

What we did as we were sitting tonight was one version of the Four Elements practice as the Buddha taught in the Greater Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness.

So first I'd like for us to reflect a little bit and share to the extent that we feel comfortable doing so what was the nature of our experience doing the Four Elements practice this evening.

How was it for you?

Please.

It was great.

Two percent of the thinking I know of and it just felt sort of opening.

Yes,

Thank you.

Just as 70% of our individual bodies are made up of water,

Fluid,

70% of our body mass,

That's roughly the same percentage of the Earth's surface that's covered with water.

So we exist in the same approximate relationship to the Earth of which we're a part.

So those connections are quite real.

We're drawing the mind's attention toward them but it's not just make believe,

It really is that of which we're made.

Thank you.

Please.

I was thinking about it very vulnerable thinking about the fact that you're just this collection of atoms that's sort of floating around and we're exchanging atoms and there's not really a separation when it comes down to it between any of us and that sense of self just dissipates and that's a little bit scary.

Yes,

Thank you.

You're actually stepping on my future lines.

We're going to be investigating the Four Elements practice a little bit this evening and then we're going to be taking up its relationship with the concept of Shunata or voidness.

Practice in the language of the Dharma you find a lot of discussion both in the discourses themselves but also among commentators and whatnot,

These discussions of the mundane and the supra-mundane and by that it's not meant that one is better than the other necessarily but the one is more grounded in the material plane and the other in the non-material plane.

And so in doing the Four Elements practice at the mundane level essentially what we're doing is seeking to redirect the mind's energy away from the I-making and me-making project that's kind of the default option and exploring simply the experiencing of these processes of which this compounded phenomenon is made.

As the mind becomes more calm and clear and more deeply involved in that practice the insights such as the one that you just spoke of can begin to arise and all of a sudden the ego is saying well you know this really isn't so much fun anymore.

It's all nice to do these chants and stuff and think about the air and the blood and damn,

Let's not get carried away with this.

And so that's the point at which the fear can begin to arise and in fact for people who are deeply involved in practice long-term retreats or something like that when the mind is getting super concentrated and those insights begin to arise here also arises what are called in the text the insight knowledges.

And one of the insight knowledges is becoming mindful of the arising and passing of all phenomena.

Everything is arising and passing,

Dissolving before your eyes and whatnot.

Another insight knowledges is knowledge of the appearance of the arising terror and that's what that one's about.

It's say okay well I've heard these teachings up here at the cognitive level about not self and whatnot but there's something about sitting and having the mind become so calm and clear and steady that you can begin to watch the disaggregation of self.

That can be profoundly disturbing.

Absolutely it can.

Thank you.

Other things that may have arisen for people?

I was aware of flow.

The flow of air,

The flow of liquids,

The flow of the blood throughout.

It's a little harder to make the earth flow but otherwise it was kind of a pleasant feeling,

Kind of a nice feeling.

Yeah,

Right.

There can be that relief in the letting go of the solidity.

This kind of acknowledging where your body is literally feeling which is that there is this continuous exchange,

The air moving in and the air moving out that if you were able to sense your pulse either in your neck or in your fingers or whatever that the circulatory system is like a great round river flowing outward from the heart to all the very furthest reaches of the body and then flowing back in again,

Being pumped by the heart through the lungs and then the whole thing is just this ceaseless process for as long as we're alive.

Yeah,

And then the body through the vessel within which it all happens.

And then of course the subatomic physicists are telling,

Well that's an illusion too because some say the body is nothing but kind of a basket of light,

You know,

Ultimately.

Looks solid but not really.

Okay,

Thank you.

So in the Majjhima Nikaya,

The Middle East Discourses of the Buddha,

Number 22 is a sutta called Two Ways of Thinking,

Two Modes of Thought.

And so what the Buddha was saying in that teaching was that,

And it's from that teaching that this phrase of the Buddha comes forth,

You know,

As the mind is directed so shall it be inclined.

And it's one of those things that on the one hand feels kind of self-evident,

You know,

Like why low and sell high.

But if you really stop and think a little bit about,

You know,

The literal meaning of those words,

You know,

As the mind is directed so shall it be inclined.

Sometimes the Buddha would liken it to,

You know,

If going from point A to point B you always take the same trail over and over and over again.

After a while the trail begins to be a little wedded,

Right,

And your freedom of motion,

Your degrees of motion one way or the other become kind of constrained because you're constantly going down the same path and digging the roots,

Digging the ruts a little bit deeper.

But in doing the inside meditation practice what begins to happen is that instead of always just going down the same path,

The same rut,

Okay,

When you become mindful of what's going on in the moment you become mindful of the fact that you're not just down the rut,

But in fact what you're doing is standing in a crossroads.

And one fork in the road,

Okay,

This is the familiar one,

The rutted one.

So what inside meditation practice gives us the opportunity to do is on occasion to realize that that's the case and to not take that road,

But to take a road less traveled instead.

And the ruts,

The default option,

Is what the Buddha called I-making and me-making,

The self-construction project.

That's the way our normal waking consciousness usually functions.

That's just what we do without even realizing that we're doing it.

This trudging along,

The I-making and me-making path,

That all sensory input is interpreted in a self-referential way.

It's all about what I like and what I don't like and what I don't care about.

Me is the center of these things.

That's how the mind normally functions.

And what the Buddha said was part of the process of waking up,

Becoming a meru,

Is to see that that's where the mental energy is going and that's where the consciousness is going.

And that it may be very useful to seek to divert the consciousness down a different path instead.

And that's exactly what the four elements practice does.

Instead of the mental flow just being down the rutted path of I-making and me-making,

What that practice invites us to do is to go,

Hang on a minute,

Instead of using that mental energy and that attention in that way,

How about instead simply exploring the experience of being a sentient being in the earth.

So instead of doing,

Planning,

Remembering,

That kind of discursive mental activity,

Let's experiment with taking that energy and devoting it to simply being in the moment,

To fully and consciously inhabiting the body,

And to inhabiting the body in a way that allows us to really get in touch with what we share in common with all existence,

What we share in common with all our sentient beings,

What we share in common with all existence.

Because basically we are all existence,

We're not separate from that.

So the common path,

The I-making and me-making,

Views each other,

Views other sentient beings,

And viewing the environment itself exclusively from the standpoint of our own individual needs.

Like it,

Don't like it,

Don't care.

And just following the ego's prime directive,

Seek pleasure,

Avoid pain,

Live forever.

That's the rule,

Right?

That's the default option.

That's what we do,

That's what we're kind of hard-wired to do.

And of course,

The environment is really nothing more than kind of a supermarket to meet our needs,

Right?

What we need,

Hell with the rest of it,

Or the consequences of taking what we need.

Problem with that of course,

Says the Buddha,

Is that in terms of seek pleasure,

Avoid pain,

Live forever,

That prime directive kind of runs afoul of nature's way.

Because that which we want to be solid and substantial and permanent is in fact without substance.

And that's what's happening to us from this other view,

Instead of there being a permanent and abiding self,

The understanding from the Buddha's point of view is that what we think of as self,

Me,

The indestructible I,

Is nothing more than a rapidly occurring sequence of mental processes that we undertake by default and out of habit.

And that when the mind is stable and calm and clear enough,

We can actually cease to do.

Ananta,

Experience not self.

Experience absence of substance.

So that which we want to be permanent and solid and fixed in fact is not simplex.

That which we do not want to change,

Changes.

Anicca,

Because that which we wish to remain solid and substantial and permanent is not and that which we wish to be unchanging is not,

We experience dissatisfaction.

Or dukkha,

The three marks of existence,

Anicca and atma.

One of the most painful aspects of the I-making and me-making as the Buddha talks about it,

One of the aspects that creates the greatest sense of dissatisfaction,

Is the fact that it is so isolating.

When we construct the self,

It's like we're creating this cocoon,

This self-protective cocoon to shield ourselves from harm.

And that in so doing,

When we think about I and thou or I and it,

As far as taking from the environment to meet our needs,

It has the effect of kind of cutting us off in a way.

Because we're always then living in some state of anxiety about maybe not getting everything we need or having that which we cherish.

Remember the five,

Buddha's five daily recollections?

See now,

I'm of a nature of age,

But I've not got beyond age.

I'm subject to illness and infirmity,

I've not got beyond illness and infirmity.

I'm of a nature to die,

I've not got beyond death.

All that is mine,

Dear and delightful,

Will change and vanish.

So these sources of dukkha,

These sources of unsatisfactoriness,

Of suffering,

All of which are brought about by the construction of the singular and isolated self.

So the reason the Buddha placed so much emphasis on the harmful or painful aspects of I-making and me-making is so that we can identify what's actually going on in the process.

And then once we've done so,

When we can really clearly see the nature of that mental activity,

We can gradually begin to diminish the energy we put into it.

We can clearly see the rutted path and we can see where it leads,

Which is only to more dissatisfaction.

It's just like I've been down that road a lot of times before and I know Adam ends up in it,

It's never any better than the time before.

I always fall in some hole or stub my toe or fall in some pungy stakes or some damn thing.

It's never good.

I keep doing it anyway.

So this practice is all about,

There really are alternatives.

One of being the four elements of practice,

Let's go down,

Try that for a while.

And when you are doing that practice,

When you're diverting the mind's energy toward these concentration practices,

Deep samadhi,

Every once in a while it really catches on.

And the mental energy is sufficiently diverted away from the rut that for just a little while maybe,

This I-making and me-making comes to a halt.

And when that happens,

What is experienced is voidness of self.

I'm not talking absence of self.

When the mind becomes really,

Really,

Really calm,

And we can see the body,

This as nothing more than this ephemeral,

Temporary collection of flows and processes and flux,

Then we can also,

As we look around,

See that the same is true of all that we see.

That all creation is likewise empty,

Void of substance.

And when we kind of intuitively take in that knowledge,

That's the experience of Sushumyata.

Or,

It's usually translated in the Pali as voidness or absence of.

Experiencing the world itself as void of substance,

Void of substantiality,

Void of permanence.

And,

As you said,

When the mind is let go into the fullness and the intensity and the entirety of that experience,

It can be profoundly liberating.

It can be a real sense of belief and some degree of joy and just the joy of letting go.

And the realization that that's which we have resisted or that which we have feared need not be.

And that we are in fact not separate at all,

But rather a seamless part of all that is around us.

It's what Kala Rinpoche was trying to get at when he wrote that famous poem,

You know,

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.

He's talking about the self-referential perception of the world.

And he says,

There is a reality and you are that reality,

But you do not know it.

So we live in this illusion of separateness,

Right?

When you realize that this is true,

He said,

You will see that you are nothing.

He wasn't being dismissive.

He was talking about the experience of Sushumyata,

You know.

You will see that you are nothing,

That all is nothing or all is empty.

And that being nothing,

Voiding the word of self,

You are everything,

Because you're not separate from that which is around you.

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.

There is a reality.

You are that reality,

But you do not know it.

When you realize that this is so,

You will see that you are nothing,

And that being nothing,

You are everything.

That is all.

That's the poem.

American poet,

Brabecon Jeffers,

Put it a little differently.

Integrity is wholeness.

The greatest beauty is organic wholeness.

The wholeness of life and things.

The divine beauty of the universe.

Love that,

Not man apart from that.

Or else you will share man's pitiful confusions.

Or drown in despair when his days darken.

Integrity is wholeness.

The greatest beauty is organic wholeness.

The wholeness of life and things.

The divine beauty of the universe.

Love that,

Not man apart from that.

Or else you will share man's pitiful confusions.

Or drown in despair when his days darken.

Same thing coming at it from a slightly different view,

But certainly the realization of the same underlying truth.

I was just going to say,

It seems a little like kind of a paradox that when you let go,

When you stop following the same lot,

But instead choose to be with reality,

Lean into pain,

You find yourself,

Your true self.

At least that seems to be my experience.

I hear everything you're saying,

But it also seems like a little bit of a paradox.

The more I stop falling into the same negative rock,

And decide to choose to be with reality in the moment,

The more I seem to find who I really am.

If that makes any sense.

It certainly does.

It makes it possible to see the world from a slightly different point of view.

One of the things I'm taking up in retirement is serving as a volunteer naturalist and environmental historian at Bar Lake State Park in Dallas,

Working out there too,

As a wildlife preserve about 25 miles northeast of Denver.

As part of their training,

They've been bringing in these different animals for us to check out.

A lot of raptors,

They've been bringing in falcons and hawks.

There's a resident pair of eagles out there that's been coming back now for the better part of 20 years,

And they're raising a couple of kids right now.

So look at individually,

The American bird is the bald eagle,

Even though Benjamin Franklin really wanted it to be the turkey.

He's a provider.

It gives sustenance to the people.

He said,

Eagles,

They're real scumbags when you stop looking at them.

They're scavengers,

They steal food from other raptors,

And they make their living in really unpleasant ways.

So when we would be getting these trainings about how these birds made their living,

The falcons for the most part,

They make their living by eating other birds.

They're flying around up there and they're waiting for some kind of vegetarian bird,

And they taste better,

And they see one,

And all of a sudden they dive out of the sky at 270 miles an hour,

And they nail it with their talons as they're flying back to the nest to feed their kids.

And the hawks out there,

They make their living mostly off the prairie dogs,

And so they tool around cruising for burgers,

And then they see one,

And down they go.

And there's dinner.

So our tendency is to identify,

Right?

The nation has identified with the bald eagle,

This thief,

This mugger,

This blip.

There's a really interesting life cam of some bald eagles.

I saw it recently on National Geographic or maybe it was Audubon.

It's the heart.

Yeah,

Right.

The life cam was footage of these eagles feeding a dead cat that are young.

Right,

You're kidding me.

And so the trick is for us,

If we find ourselves identifying with the falcon,

We find ourselves identifying with the hawk instead of the prairie dog,

Identifying with the eagle instead of the cute little kitten,

Then we have,

In the words of the verses in the Faith Wine,

The things in the mainstream,

We've made a distinction.

If you have a preference for being a hawk instead of a prairie dog,

You've made a distinction.

From the view of Chinyatá,

There is no difference.

We are all eagles.

We are the hawk and prairie dog.

We are the eagle and the kitten.

We are the falcon and the pigeon.

There's no distinction.

There's no difference.

So it comes from identifying with that we find ourselves sort of on the one side or the other.

Yes?

So in that poem by Thich Nhat Hanh,

I am the pirate,

I am the little girl who's raped by the pirates,

I am the parent of the little girl,

I am,

You know,

All of that.

That's where he's coming from.

I wondered if you could help me with something here.

One of my favorite people in the whole world was a theologian named Carl Reiner.

Do you know who he is?

Good,

You're shaking your head yes.

And he had this wonderful expression which supposedly was on his office wall that every human being is an irreducible,

Irreplaceable creation of God.

So I'm wondering how to reconcile that with this.

No self,

Everybody,

It's all illusion.

So I was hoping maybe you could help me with some of this.

It's a different view.

Maybe it's not reconcilable,

Maybe it's a difference between Christianity and Buddhism,

But I was hoping it would be.

Yeah,

And we're speaking at the conceptual level.

Anathas,

Sunyata,

Those are concepts.

Irreducible self,

God,

Those are concepts.

It's like Lily Tomlin,

Her definition of reality is a collective hunch.

We all get together and guess about how things may be.

Different cultures guess in different ways.

We use the scientific method to aid our guessing,

Some others not so much.

But we try to make sense of this chaos around us and we come to different conclusions.

Oh please,

Yes.

So how do these concepts relate to being presented on the moral activities that you've already noticed?

Believe me,

I'm not reading here.

The question is how these ethereal concepts relate to how we morally inform ourselves when it comes to things like environmental action,

For instance.

So before getting to that one,

I'd like to spend a little time complementing this view of sunyata as voidness of,

Absence of,

With a more Mahayana concept of emptiness,

Sunyata,

The Sanskrit.

Some of the doctrinal fussing that happens a little bit between the Theravadins and the Mahayanas has got to be the reason that the Theravadins prefer words like voidness and absence of.

This is like nothing there,

Right?

This space.

Whereas for them,

The word emptiness connotes some kind of vessel that is empty,

A being so there can be a non-being.

And the way the Mahayanas tend to respond is that being and non-being is the eternal dance of the universe.

Now you see it,

Now you don't.

And the consciousness itself can be the vessel or the means of experiencing non-being.

So one of the ways they teach this is with the use of the bell,

The singing bowl.

The traditional Tibetan singing bowls are made up of seven metals,

Representing earth,

Forged under fire until it becomes liquid,

Then it becomes solid.

So,

You know,

Reflective of the elements.

If this bowl,

The same mass and whatnot,

Were simply a big lump of seven smelted ores,

And you struck it,

It wouldn't sound like this.

What makes the sound?

The emptiness.

Something,

Sound,

Coming out of nothing.

The manifestation at the ear,

Sound emptiness.

So it's both.

This sense of non-being,

In some ways has to be felt to be understood,

But this,

Just the sound,

Is one way of beginning to apprehend the meaning of emptiness in that way,

The emptiness within substance.

If this were a lump of metal and nothing more,

It would not make the sound.

But it has the form of emptiness,

Which makes the sound possible.

In that way,

It's the emptiness within us that makes it possible for us to be who we are in a non-self-referential way.

So it's that emptiness within.

One of the seminal or originating texts that formed that maya of you was what happened when,

In one of the mixtures of very early Buddha Dharma with the spiritual teachings already extant in China,

Taoism.

It was this admixture of a certain form of Buddha's teachings with the emphasis on deep samadhi combined with Taoism that resulted in Shuan Buddhism,

Which when it made its way to Japan,

As it calls in,

One of those contributory texts is the Tao Ching from Apsa.

It's a contemporary of the Buddha,

Although there's no anthropological record of there having been any contact between the two civilizations these several hundred years before the common era.

But the language and the teachings are so remarkably similar.

We join spokes together in a wheel,

But it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

But it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,

But it is the inner space that makes it livable.

We work with being,

But non-being is what we use.

This inner clay,

Being and non-being,

You know,

Substance,

Avoidance of self,

Avoidance of substance.

So finally,

How does all this kind of relate to how we are as sentient beings in the world and taking responsibility?

So one of the things that we've kind of touched upon or gotten a little flavored for this evening is that we in the air are not separate.

Air is us.

It's as if we all share this vast sea of air through which we draw what we need and give back what we don't.

But happily enough,

It comes in handy for the green plants of the world,

Which then give us back what we need in the form of fresh,

Oxygenated air.

But industrial civilization,

Of course,

Has this very long history of treating air as if it were a thing apart.

It's like a vast lake into which we could throw our airborne sewage without realizing that this same source is critical to our own survival.

And history has been,

That history has also been to inflict the greatest environmental suffering in terms of air pollution on those who are least able to defend themselves from its effect.

There is an adage in geography and political geography and planning that says,

When planning a highway,

Highways and transportation infrastructure like that tends to follow the geographic path of political least resistance.

So these dangerous,

Poisonous kind of infrastructures tend to go where those who are least able to defend themselves from their effects reside.

Since retiring from the university,

I've been able to become considerably more forthright in my environmental activism than I used to be,

Including some environmental justice litigation.

And the case that I am mostly involved with right now has to do with the people living in the Globeville,

Eleria and Swansea neighborhood of Northeast Denver where the by-70 viaduct is now.

And so there's quite a political controversy that's arisen now about whether to carry on the viaduct,

Double the width of the freeway and put it subgrade and a little kind of basically extra wide bridge between the two halves of the neighborhood and condemn a lot of houses in the process.

Those neighborhoods right now experience a 40% higher rate of childhood asthma emergency room visits than any other neighborhood in the city.

And that's controlling for socioeconomic status.

There's a 70% higher rate of congestive heart disease and heart failure.

Both of those conditions are very closely associated with micro particulate pollution.

Pollutants less than a millionth of a meter in diameter.

The principal cause of particulate pollution there is diesel truck exhaust.

So right now those neighborhoods are teetering on the edge of being out of compliance with the Clean Air Act.

If you're out of compliance with the Clean Air Act,

The Federal Highway Department,

The Department of Transportation cannot give federal highway tax dollars to the construction of the project.

So we have this real kind of row going on now about whether or not this project ought to be allowed to go forward or if instead the harms that are being suffered by those communities is in fact too great a price to pay for this particular project to go forward.

I'm not here to advocate a point of view.

I'm basically explaining how these teachings have begun to inform and influence the way that I'm acting in the world.

The trick is to remember this stuff going forward.

It's so important,

So easy to think about the Colorado Department of Transportation or the Denver Mayor and City Council or the Hawks or the Eagles or whatever,

Right?

And to be able to look at the entirety of the situation from what we,

How we as a greater community benefit from the suffering being inflicted on those people and what some alternatives to it might be.

For instance,

Anymore I don't drive the viaduct anymore.

Once I found out how bad off the people there are,

How much they're suffering,

But Richard,

Am I using that freeway even though I'm not driving it being a diesel truck?

I go on 76 and 270 instead.

It's a bypass that is mostly warehouses and open space and doesn't provide the same kind of harm to the community.

But,

You know,

And in fact there's a lot of advocacy on some people's parts now instead of even widening the freeway of just tearing down the viaduct and rerouting all the traffic over,

But there's low income people living there too.

About 80% fewer,

But they're there,

You know.

And so unless some means can be found to make them whole so that they're not suffering as well,

Then we've simply swapped out one injustice for another.

But at any rate,

Coming at it from the perspective of these teachings makes it possible to see we are not different from them.

We may not be the same color or speak the same language as the people who live in the global or swan sea or a little area.

You know,

Our financial well-being may look somewhat different.

But their breathing air,

They are because of the way that all of us live.

And when we can begin to see those connections in a somewhat more clear way and take responsibility for the suffering that's being experienced by some for the well-being of others,

Then we can begin to,

I believe,

Thinking about this air belonging to all of us.

That more from the standpoint of the bodhisattva vow,

You know,

The alleviation of suffering,

There are things to be done out there for the sake of our air and for the sake of each other.

So the air development has no meaning at that level.

We are not different from that.

We are all literally in this together.

Let's take just a moment to sit for one more time.