Ch.16 - Three Paths Out of Suffering

You Don’t Know What you are Going to Get Until you Let Go

The Path of Raja Yoga

The Path of Devotion

The Path of Karma Yoga

It is the Experience we Need, Not Just Understanding

[This chapter investigates the different approaches to spiritual practice that ultimately lead to a the experience beyond self.]

You Don’t Know What you are Going to Get Until you Let Go

Meditation might not be for everybody but it does help us reach a certain place of understanding and realisation that is helpful to us. It is therefore important to reflect on what other ways there might be to get there.

In some ways meditation might be for those really stubborn folk who will not let go until they absolutely know what they are going to get. Of course there is not a lot of faith in such an approach.

The point is, you are never going to know what you are going to get when you let go the ego and its clinging to self until you let go. There is no insight that is going to utterly convince you. You are a bit stuck if you are going to stand on insight alone. Sooner or later you have just got to let go, and you are not ever really going to know what comes next until you do. So faith or trust, sooner or later, will have to play a part in your journey. Wisdom alone will not free you.

In the same way that the Buddha said we need to balance serenity with energy so as not to fall into over- or under-exertion, so too we need to balance faith and wisdom. He did not say we need a lot of wisdom and a little faith, or a lot of faith and a little wisdom. He said we needed both in equal measure. He said this so many times and yet, as is typical of our intellectual approach to almost everything now, we have chosen with regard to the Dharma to come down in favour of trying to develop insight, while not making much effort to overcome our unwillingness to find faith.

The fact that we feel the need to dilute these teachings which for centuries have served countless beings in freeing themselves from suffering, the fact that before allowing them to make their way into mainstream consciousness we feel we need to prove scientifically their effectiveness, is a sign of our lack of faith. The problem is that the bit that we can quantifiably and scientifically verify in no way represents the pith or essence of the path and practice. The real transformation that brings us out of suffering most often goes on at a level that we may not fully understand even when it has happened to us.

It is a shame that we have taken mindfulness in isolation in our search of a spiritual solution to the problem of the increasing sense of despondency and depression that we see in our modern societies. Taking what is only the most preliminary approach to it, we seem to have put forward the idea that mindfulness practice is the essence of what the Buddha was teaching us.

As I have already said, mindfulness itself is not in the Buddha's list of Paramis or qualities of character to be developed by one who hoped for swift and painless progress upon the path out of suffering. Perhaps this is because mindfulness itself is morally neutral and could be taken in isolation from the rest of the Dharma, avoiding the necessity to frame it within the wider context of the Buddha's teachings.

But what if the same efforts and resources had been put into studying the helpful benefits of any of the other aspects of training, be it virtue, generosity, patience, determination or energy, for example. Perhaps if we had been encouraged as vocally to practise and develop virtue or loving kindness in our schools and workplaces, we may have felt that we were being preached to. Perhaps it is because we are able to start to develop mindfulness without having to make any concessions or give up any of the things that might be at the root of our suffering.

It is true that mindfulness was indeed highly encouraged by the Buddha, but so too were concentration and harmlessness, discipline and moral conduct. The practice of mindfulness does not ask us to make many concessions with regard to the pursuit of our desires and this is probably why we are willing to accept it as a new panacea to our modern predicament. In fact, far from being taught as a catalyst for deep-rooted change, mindfulness is rather taught as a way to cope better with the life we are leading. The problem with this is that it is like telling someone who is out in the desert that their feet are burning, when they are equally about to fall over from dehydration. A panacea may not quite be enough. Sooner or later we may have to acknowledge that the most effective of medicines are rarely sweet tasting.

For years I have tried to teach western lay people the path of Dharma through the development of insight, but sooner or later we have to understand that it is not our mind that is going to experience freedom. The freedom we experience when it comes upon us is the freedom from our mind. The problem is, because we cannot see what we might be left with when we do let go our idea of ourself, we find it inordinately difficult to let go even when the evidence in favour of it is extremely compelling.

Raja Yoga

So the path that I am teaching is what I suppose traditionally would have been called Raja yoga. It is the yoga by which one reaches a state of union through the cultivation of one’s mind. Through the practice of concentration and the refinement of character we eventually reach an experience that is beyond self, and that experience itself puts us in front of something so complete that it dismantles the remaining aspects of ego for us in stages.

But of course many people still fall short, for all their efforts to remove the obstacles from that experience - even when they have removed almost all the obstacles - because they still failed to glimpse what might remain. They are still trying to anticipate what the experience might be in their mind, so they still hold on because they are not sure yet. Such a person gets stuck half way, not on account of lack of insight and understanding, but because of a lack of faith.

You have done all that work to try to understand, and it is almost understood, but you are not going to get the last bit of the jigsaw that is going to finally convince you to let go until you do let go. Because it is in the letting go that you get the last piece of the jigsaw. It is the ultimate Catch 22. So sooner or later, no matter how far you go to try to convince yourself, you are always going to come to a point that requires an act of faith.

The Path of Devotion

In contrast to this approach where wisdom leads the way and faith follows, there is another way. This is the path of devotion, where faith blazes the trail and our insight emerges in stages on the back of that. The path of devotion involves putting your heart towards something that you do not understand fully but that you feel moved by, even if it starts out as just an idea.

It is a path that starts when something in your heart recognises the possibility of something sublime and taintless and beyond suffering, and you just open your heart to the idea of it and you get close to it simply by opening to it. This is what we mean by surrender. This is the path of devotion to the sacred, or what is called Bhakti Yoga, and there comes a point with all of my students where I introduce them to this as in integral part of the path.

One of the key points I am making throughout this book is that one of the reasons that so many people feel life to be so dry these days and why we have become so intoxicated with the pursuit of pleasure is because we have started to lose the feeling of being connected to something sacred. Life itself is all too often reduced to its constituent parts, broken down and analysed, and then seen as nothing more than an expression of materiality becoming conscious. And it is often not seen as sacred, let alone divine. And this is one of the reasons we are so willing to disrespect life in the pursuit of what we want.

Of course, for the path of devotion to point the way out of suffering we have to have the discernment to open our heart in the right direction, and this is where insight plays its part. We have to be willing to make sufficient reflection to see that what we are doing might be for our welfare and not our detriment. But once we do open our heart, we might often find we arrive at our goal even before we get all the pieces of the jigsaw.

That is what faith is, it is trust. It is a willingness to let go in spite of the fact that you have not fully understood yet. It gets you to a point beyond yourself even though you did not know where that would land you. The path of devotion understands that we do not even understand until we have let go. So that is another way that we can get beyond ourself to an experience that is free of suffering.

I am teaching most people through the insight route, because we have so little faith. Nobody believes anything any more, they are just not willing to. So I try really hard to point the path out to you in such a way that you are convinced enough by your own reflection. But in your need to be convinced, your need to be convinced is still in your way. In your need to be convinced you do not let go until you are convinced, and that may leave you standing on the fence a lot longer than you need.

So the other way, which is what I do on retreat from time to time when the students have reached a point of receptivity and clarity of mind, is to simply show, to point out the experience through transmission, to give the student a direct experience for themselves, and leave folk to make their own sense of it. But you have to be receptive to the experience to receive the transmission, and that takes an open heart.

So for the mind that is strong in insight but weak in faith, where the mind that is still waiting to understand completely before it will let go its grip, the heart does not open enough to the experience to the point where it is fully moved, the point where it really knows what has happened, even when it is present when the transmission is given. Without faith you have to walk all the way to the end of the path and hope then that you will be convinced enough to let go.

The Buddha used to say that those whose insight was excessive and faith lacking tended towards cunning, and believing that they could work it all out for themselves, thinking they could make up their own way to suit them. To such people he pointed out that the mind will always seek to attach to views that uphold its position and reject the ones that challenge it. The path to awakening requires humility to acknowledge that we do not know it all and that it is OK. That is the point at which faith can start to carry us forward.

The Path of Karma Yoga

The third way to approach the path is through service, or Karma Yoga. We get beyond the ego, get beyond ourself through service to others, and slowly, through the doing of things for others, one’s personal sense of needs fade and one reaches a state of selflessness, and in that way one finds grace. One comes to the experience of unification through the heart opening that is born of service.

People often ask me why do I teach such a fortunate group of humans? Well partly because that is the group in front of me, but also I choose to teach such a group of people because I believe and hope that being so fortunate they might be able to make a difference to those around them, when they do get beyond their needs and realise they have so much to offer to others.

Most of those I teach are strong in intellect. They do not struggle to understand the principles behind the Dharma, yet they are still not free from suffering. It is because they do not have enough faith and have not embraced service into their lives sufficiently to overcome the hindrances that still need to be overcome. Many of the Paramis are more swiftly developed through service and devotion than through meditation and study. So service is the third path or way that we might dismantle the ego and open to the experience that is beyond sense of self.

I dare say if we spend as much time doing things for others as we spend worrying what others think of us, or whether we are seen the way we want to be seen, we may well be quite close to home by now. But as they say, vanity has got the best of us, and this is something that service and devotion helps us to overcome.

But whichever way it is, whether it is insight and the cultivation of your mind, or whether it is through devotion and the opening of your heart, or whether it is through service and the reaching of a state of humility and grace - all of these require you to surrender at some point your need, or perceived need, to feel in control of your world, and your perceived need to be seen.

Now on another level it could be argued that we are not the most fortunate people in the world, not if our perceived need to understand is so great that there is almost no faith, or if our personal needs are so great that we do not feel able to do things for others. Anybody, at any time, regardless of their position or predicament, could find grace, could surrender to what is in front of them and accept that that is how it is, and open up, and in doing so see something that lies beyond that which would free them.

Remember this when you are putting the pieces of the jigsaw together, trying to figure it out. Remember this when you are trying to decide for yourself whether it is OK to let go, whether it will be all right. When you are struggling with your unwillingness to let go, try to mix a little faith with that sharp, intelligent mind of yours. Find some trust. Because it is that faith, I think, that we have almost reasoned out of existence. And it is in that way that we make our world a dry and barren place to be. That is the nature of faith, is it not? It would not be faith if you knew what you are going to get.

In truth, this life is far more extraordinary than you think it is and you are not going to figure it out by sitting there thinking about it, or looking at it under a microscope. Folk have been doing that since the beginning of time.

And you do not learn by bending it to your will and insisting that you get your way. So let's stop putting terms on it. See what role just opening your heart to it and trusting it will play in freeing you from the bondage that you feel entangled with.

It is the Experience we Need, Not Just Understanding

We must have over 1,000 hours of discourses, plus a manual on the Mechanics of Meditation, Mental Training and the Progression of Insight in Three Volumes, but none of those discourses equate to seeing, coming to know, being touched in the same way that sitting with the teacher and coming to our own direct experience touches us. It is the experience we need, not just the understanding.

But it is all right to let go. When I look out there, when I tune into it, it feels almost as if the world is holding its breath, desperately hoping, waiting, for all of us to let go. It feels as though it is waiting for us to get over ourselves. To get over the idea that we are the creators. To get over our intoxication with the idea of ourselves as the creator, so we can start to recognise the creative process we are a part of.

Please, when you are meditating, meditate from your heart and not your head. And stop trying to figure it all out. If you really meditate from your heart and allow things to be what they are, one day you will see there is no need to figure it out.

So at this point I am going to stop feeding you insight. You have got enough, I have explained enough, I am not going to explain the last little bits to try and convince you that it is worth doing. Your heart, something in your heart, already knows that it is worth doing. So maybe you should start listening to it.

Ask your heart if what you think your needs are really are your needs. See what you actually could give up, let go or share with others and still be fine, even better than you are now, far better.

Then you might start asking what you can do for others with all that extraordinary good fortune, and in doing so there might a chance that with this life you renew the merit that you came in here with. And that would be a very fine thing.

Over the years we have had upwards of three thousand people come on these retreats to learn meditation and insight. I see how much their lives have improved and how much healing has gone on but I am not so sure how much real letting go there has been. So what does it take? It takes more than your meditation and mindfulness practice. It takes a commitment to your virtue and it takes an act of faith.

When I ask you to tune in to the stillness of the room, do you not think perhaps that there might be something a little more in that stillness than you have yet imagined?

Jesus called it 'the peace that passes all understanding.' The Buddha was so moved by it that he devoted the remaining forty-five years of his life to teaching others the way to it. It most certainly was not just the stillness of the room, or the forest, or whatever that we touch when we let go.

Whatever you personally choose to call it, when you touch it for yourselves you will know you have touched it and you will not need me to convince you any more. That is when you will understand that in that equanimity, in that stillness, is the highest experience of love that you will ever, ever experience. That is when you will understand that this world and everything in it is not just appearing randomly out of emptiness, but that the basis for it all is love, and if it fails to express itself as that, it is only on account of what we have put in the way.