Clear Vision Trust

The Texture of Reality

Reality is a very big word, but it is not really a Buddhist word. We have shunyata or emptiness, we have tathata or suchness, and we have dharmakaya, the 'truth-body', but there is no true semantic equivalent in traditional Buddhist terminology of the word 'reality'.

Reality is not only a big word; it is also an abstract word (which often means a vague word) and on the whole Buddhists have never been fond of abstract terminology. Tibetan Buddhism, for example, takes a very concrete, and even - if one wanted to be paradoxical - materialistic approach to the spiritual life. And Zen Buddhism goes even further: any indulgence in abstractions or vague generalities is met with a piercing shriek or thirty blows or some other such discommendation.

So when we use this word 'reality' in speaking about Buddhism, we use it in a makeshift and provisional sort of way. It isn't to be taken too literally. Certainly, the connotations that attach to it in general Western philosophical and religious usage cannot be said to apply in a Buddhist context.

It is for these reasons that - while the word 'reality' may be almost unavoidable for an English-speaking Buddhist - I am introducing the idea of its texture. This word is almost palpably concrete. Texture is felt, it is handled, it is experienced directly, by touch. Because we have so many nerve-endings in the tips of our fingers, we are able to make very subtle distinctions amongst an enormous range of different textures. We can distinguish between cotton, silk, and wool, or between granite, slate, and marble. And it is possible to discern far more subtle gradations of texture. Chinese experts on jade used to be able to distinguish between hundreds of kinds and qualities of jade - white, black, red, or green jade, 'mutton-fat jade' or 'dragon's-blood jade', or whatever it was - with their eyes closed, simply by feeling their texture under water.

Reality too, in Buddhism, is something to be felt, touched, even handled - because Buddhism is above all else practical. So, continuing to use the word in a provisional sense, we may say that reality in Buddhism is broadly speaking of two kinds: there is conditioned reality and Unconditioned reality - or more simply, there is the conditioned and the Unconditioned.

The two realities

'The Unconditioned' is the usual translation of the Sanskrit asamskrita. Sam means 'together', krita is 'made' or 'put', and a- is a negative prefix, so asamskrita literally means ' not put together' or 'uncompounded'. 'The conditioned' is therefore samskrita, which is a word of particular interest in Sanskrit as it is the name of the language itself - 'Sanskrit' being an Anglicized version of it. According to the Brahmin pundits it is so called because it is the language which has been properly put together, beautifully put together, perfected. It is so designated to set it in contradistinction to the rough, crude, and unpolished 'Prakrit' - including Pali - spoken by the common people (i.e. especially by the non-Brahmins). In modern Indian languages like Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi, samskriti means 'culture'. In this way the idea has developed that samskrita, the conditioned, is also the artificial, whereas asamskrita, the Unconditioned, is the natural, the simple, that which has not been artificially put together.

This connotation to the term 'Unconditioned' receives explicit recognition in Tantric Buddhism. The Tantrics have an interesting word for reality: sahaja. Saha is 'together', and ja is 'born' (as in jati, 'birth'); so the literal meaning of sahaja is 'born with' or 'co-nascent'. And so reality is said to be that with which one is born, that which is innate, that which does not have to be acquired.

The distinction between the conditioned and the Unconditioned, between the artificial and the natural, is fundamental to Buddhist thought, even though, as we shall see, there is some disagreement amongst various Buddhist schools as to whether it is an absolute distinction or not. And it would appear to go back a long way, even to predate the Buddha's own Enlightenment.

In the Majjhima-Nikaya, the medium-length discourses of the Pali Canon, there is one discourse that is of rather special interest on account of its autobiographical content. This is the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, in which the Buddha describes how he left home, how he became a wandering monk, how he strove for Enlightenment, and, as we have seen, how he deliberated about whether or not to try to teach the Dharma.

What surprises some readers of this sutta is that there is no mention in it of the famous 'four sights', of how Siddhartha Gautama, the future Buddha, sallied forth one fine morning in his chariot with his charioteer, and saw a sick man, and then - on successive occasions - an old man, a corpse, and finally a wandering ascetic; and thus came alive to the existence of sickness, old age, and death, and the possibility of becoming a truth-seeking wanderer.

Instead, this particular account gives a comparatively naturalistic, even humanistic, description of how Siddhartha came to the decision to give up the household life. It is, so far as this account is concerned, a purely internal process, not connected with anything in particular that he saw or heard. Here he is represented - in his own words - as simply reflecting.

The Buddha relates how one day he was sitting at home in the palace, reflecting alone. We should imagine him perhaps under a tree in the compound; it is probably the early evening, when a cool, calm quiet descends over the Indian scene. He is there simply reflecting, 'What am I? What am I doing with my life? I am mortal, subject to old age, sickness, and death. And yet, being such, what do I do? Being myself subject to birth, I pursue that which is also subject to birth. Being myself subject to old age I pursue that which likewise will grow old. Being myself subject to sickness, to decay, I pursue that which is subject to the same decay. And being myself subject to death, I pursue that which also must die.'(footnote 38)

Then - as the Buddha goes on to relate to his interlocutor in this sutta, who is a Jain ascetic - there arose in his mind a different, almost a contrary train of reflection. It occurred to him: 'Suppose now I were to do otherwise? Suppose now, being myself subject to birth, I were to go in search of that which is not subject to birth, which has no origin, which is timeless? Suppose, being myself subject to old age, I were to go in search of that which is immutable? Suppose, being myself subject to sickness, to decay, I were to go in search of that in whose perfection there is no diminution? Or suppose, finally, being myself subject to death, I were to go in search of the deathless, the everlasting, the eternal?'

As a result of these reflections, shortly afterwards he left home. There is no great drama in this sutta, no stealing out of the palace by moonlight on muffled hooves. It simply says that although his father and his foster-mother wept and wailed, he put on the yellow robe, shaved his head, cut off his beard, and went forth from home into the homeless life.

This is the story, in brief, of the Buddha's conversion - conversion in the literal sense of a 'turning round', though in Siddhartha's case it was not an external turning round, from one religion to another, but an internal one, from the conditioned to the Unconditioned. Siddhartha realized that he was a conditioned being, and that he was spending all his time and energy in pursuit of conditioned things - that is, in the anariyapariyesana or 'ignoble quest'. He realized, in other words, that he was binding himself to the endless round of existence, the wheel of life on which we all turn, passing from one life to the next indefinitely.

So he decided simply to turn round completely and go in search of the Unconditioned instead, to take up the ariyapariyesana, the 'noble quest'. In time, he would realize this quest as the spiral path leading from the endless round to the goal of Enlightenment or nirvana. But at this point he identified the course before him with this simple but strong, pre-Buddhistic expression, found in the oldest Upanishads: esana, urge, desire, will, search, aspiration, quest, pursuit. He could continue with the 'ignoble quest', or he could undertake the 'noble quest' instead.

The Buddha's conversion was not easy, we can be sure of that, because here and there, in other places in the scriptures, we get indications that a terrible struggle went on in his mind before he made his final decision. But stripped of all the legends and myths that have accumulated around it over the centuries, it was as simple - almost classically simple - as this. And it is in this most simple description of the first great insight of the Buddha-to-be that the essence of the spiritual life is to be found. Here we put our finger on the spring that works the whole mechanism.

This spring is the conditioned in pursuit of the Unconditioned, the mortal seeking the immortal: seeking, that is, not immortality of the self, but a self-transcending immortality. What Siddhartha was looking for was basically the answer to a question, one that we find asked (in the Majjhima-Nikaya) by a young monk, Govinda, who spends a rainy season retreat - i.e. of about three months - meditating on metta or universal loving kindness, and as a result has a vision of the 'eternal youth' Brahma Sanatkumara. The question Govinda asks Sanatkumara in this sutta is 'How may the mortal obtain the immortal Brahma world?'(footnote 39)

This is the essential religious question. How may the conditioned become the Unconditioned; how may the mortal become immortal? How may I conquer death? Now of course it all sounds very fine put like that, but if one is going to take seriously the question of how to leave the conditioned and go in search of the Unconditioned, one will want a further question answered. What exactly does one mean by the conditioned? How do we identify the conditioned?

According to Buddhist tradition, that which is conditioned invariably bears three characteristics, or lakshanas, by which it may be recognized as such. These three characteristics are sometimes called the 'three signs of being', but more properly this should be the 'three signs of becoming', as the nature of the conditioned is nothing as static as a 'state of being'.

The three lakshanas, the three inseparable characteristics of all conditioned existence, are: duhkha, the unsatisfactory, or painful; anitya, the impermanent; and anatman, the emptiness of self, of essential being.(footnote 40) All conditioned 'things' or 'beings' whatsoever in this universe possess all these three characteristics. They are all unsatisfactory, all impermanent, all devoid of self. Of these three lakshanas the first is in some ways the most difficult for most people to come to terms with, emotionally, so we shall look at it in rather more depth and detail than at the other two.

Suffering

The Sanskrit word here is duhkha, and the usual translation is 'suffering', but a better one - if a bit cumbersome - is 'unsatisfactoriness'. Best of all, perhaps, is to attend to its etymology: though the traditional account of the origin of the word duhkha is no longer universally accepted, it still leaves us with a true and precise image.

Duh- as a prefix means anything that is not good - bad, ill, wrong, or out of place; and kha, the main part of the word, is supposed to be connected with the Sanskrit chakra, meaning 'wheel'. So duhkha is said to have meant originally the ill-fitting wheel of a chariot, thus suggesting a bumpy, jarring ride, a journey on which one could never be comfortable, never at one's ease.

So much for a general picture of duhkha. As we look closer, though, we see that unease or suffering comes in many different forms - and the Buddha usually speaks of seven.(footnote 41) First, he says, birth is suffering: human life starts with suffering. In the more poetical words of Oscar Wilde, 'At the birth of a child or a star there is pain.' In whatever way it is expressed, this is a great spiritual truth; it is significant that our life begins with suffering.

Birth is certainly physically painful for the mother, and consequently it is often emotionally painful for the father, while for the infant it is, we are told, a traumatic experience. It is very unpleasant to be suddenly thrust forth from a world of total harmony in the womb out into a cold, strange world, to which one is very likely to be welcomed with a slap on the bottom.

Secondly, the Buddha says, old age is suffering. One of the discomforts of old age is physical weakness: you cannot get about in the relaxed, agile way you used to. Then there is loss of memory: you can't remember names, or where you put things; you are not as agile and flexible intellectually as you were. Where this degeneration becomes senility it is a tragic thing to observe, most especially in once eminent individuals. Perhaps most painful of all, when you are very old you are dependent upon others: you cannot do much for yourself, and you may even need constant looking after by a nurse or by your relations. Despite all modern comforts and amenities - and often as a result of modern advances in medicine - many of us will experience this suffering, especially if we survive to an extreme old age.

Thirdly, sickness is suffering. Whether it is a toothache or an incurable disease like cancer, no sickness is pleasant. It is not just the physical pain that is suffering: there is also the helplessness, the fear, and the frustration of it. Medical science may sometimes palliate the suffering of sickness, but there is no sign at all that we will ever banish it entirely. It seems that no sooner do we get rid of one disease than another comes along. As soon as one virus is defeated, a new, stronger strain of virus arises. And as soon as we feel physically quite healthy, we start to develop all sorts of mental ailments, more and more complex neuroses and mysterious syndromes, all of which involve suffering. Almost any sense of imperfection in our lives can develop into an illness of some sort: stress turns into heart attacks, fatigue turns into syndromes, habit turns into addictions. So it seems that sickness may change its appearance, but it doesn't go away.

Fourthly, death is suffering. We suffer when those dear to us die; we suffer as we watch the life ebbing from a physical body that we have long associated with the life of a loved one. We suffer in the knowledge that our loved ones will die, and we suffer in the knowledge of our own dissolution. Much of our suffering with regard to death, of course, is simply fear. Most of us will put up with a great deal of suffering before we will choose to die, such is our terror of the inevitable conclusion to our own existence:

The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.(footnote 42)

People do not always feel ready to die. They are sorry to leave the scene of their labours and pleasures and achievements. Even if they do want to go, even if they are quite happy to pass on to a new life, or into they know not what, there is still the pain involved in the physical process of dissolution. And with this goes, sometimes, a great deal of mental suffering. Sometimes on their death-beds, people are stricken with remorse: they remember terrible wrongs they have done, dreadful harm and pain they have visited on certain individuals; and they may have, in consequence, fears and apprehensions for the future. All this makes death a horrifying experience for many people, and one which, before it comes, they do their best not to think about.

Fifthly, contact with what one dislikes is suffering. We all know this. It may be that even in our own family there are people with whom we just don't get on. This is very tragic, especially when it is our own parents or children whom we dislike. Because the tie - even the attachment - of blood is there, well, we have to put up with a certain amount of contact, and this can be painful.

The work we do can also be a source of suffering, if we do it just because we need to earn a living and it is the only work we can get. Again, we may feel that we have to put up with what we dislike, and perhaps work with people we find uncongenial, for periods of time anyway, even though we would rather do something else.

There are, as well, all sorts of environmental conditions which are unpleasant: pollution, noise, weather. It is obviously not possible for everyone to go off and live in a Greek villa. So there seems to be no way of escape - certainly no way of escaping entirely. You just have to live with people, places, things, and conditions that you don't altogether like.

Sixthly, separation from what one likes is suffering. This can be a very harrowing form of suffering indeed. There are people we would like to be with, to meet more often - relations, friends - but circumstances interpose and it becomes simply impossible. This happens often in time of war, when families are broken up - men conscripted and taken to far-off battlefields, children sent away to places of safety, and people simply disappearing as refugees.

I myself can remember how, when I was in India during the war as a signals operator, many of my friends used to get letters from home regularly every week or so; and then a day might come when the letters would stop. They wouldn't know what had happened, but they would know that there were bombs falling in England, so after a while they would start suspecting the worst. Eventually, perhaps, they would get the news, either from another relation or officially, that their wife and children, or their parents, or their brothers and sisters, had been killed in an aerial bombardment. This is the most terrible suffering - permanent separation from those we love. Some people never get over such suffering, and brood over their loss for the rest of their lives.

Seventhly, not to get what one wants is suffering. There is little need to elaborate upon this. When you have set your heart on something (or someone) and you fail to achieve your goal, when the prize does not fall to you, then you feel disappointed and frustrated, even bitter. We have all known short-lived experiences of this kind, when we fail to get a job we particularly wanted, or fail to be selected for something, or find that someone else has got to something (or someone) before us.

Some people experience a lifetime of disappointment, frustration, and bitterness if they feel that life has short-changed them in some way - and of course the stronger the desire, the more the suffering. But even just in small ways, it is something with which we are acquainted almost every day, if not every hour - for example, when we find that all the cake has gone.

So these are the seven different aspects of duhkha identified by the Buddha. The Buddha once declared, 'One thing only do I teach - suffering and the cessation of suffering'(footnote 43) - and emancipation from the bondage of suffering is indeed the keynote of his teaching. In the Pali scriptures he compares himself to a physician who attempts to relieve his patient of a tormenting disease - the disease of conditioned existence with which we are all afflicted.(footnote 44) Of course, we are not always willing patients, as the Buddha clearly found. But on the many occasions when he spoke about suffering, and tried to get people to see it in perspective, he would apparently sum up his discourse by saying that existence as a whole is painful, that the totality of conditioned sentient experience, comprising form, feeling, perceptions, volitions, and consciousness, is unsatisfactory.

Now most people would say that this is going a bit far, that it is a pessimistic, if not morbid view of life. They would say that human existence can by no means be said to be unsatisfactory and painful all the way through. They will admit to birth being painful, they will agree that sickness, old age, and yes, death, are indeed painful. But at the same time they are reluctant to accept the conclusion which follows from all this, which is that conditioned existence itself is suffering. It is as though they admit all the individual digits in the sum, but they won't accept the total to which those digits add up. They say that yes, there is a certain amount of suffering in the world, but on the whole it's not such a bad place. Why be so negative? There's plenty to smile about. While there's life, there's hope.

And there is, of course. We have pleasant experiences as well as painful ones. But the Buddhist view is that even the pleasant experiences are at bottom painful. They are really only suffering concealed, glossed over, deferred - a whistling in the dark. And the extent to which we can see this, see the suffering behind the gilding of pleasure, 'the skull beneath the skin', depends on our spiritual maturity.

Edward Conze has identified four different aspects of concealed suffering.(footnote 45) Firstly, something that is pleasant for oneself may involve suffering for other people, for other beings. We don't tend to consider this, of course. If we are all right, if we're having a good time, we don't worry too much or too often about others: 'I'm all right, Jack' more or less sums up this attitude. The most common example of this is the frank enjoyment with which people eat the flesh of slaughtered animals. They go on merrily plying knife and fork without consciously thinking about the suffering of the animals.

But the unconscious mind is not so easily fooled. You can shut out some unpleasant fact from the conscious mind, but unconsciously you notice everything and you forget nothing. You may never be consciously aware of that unpleasant fact, but it will exert an influence on your mental state that is all the more powerful for being unseen. In this way we develop an 'irrational' feeling of guilt, because in the depths of ourselves we know that our own pleasure has been bought at the expense of the suffering of other living beings. This guilt is the source of a great deal of uneasiness and anxiety.

Conze gives the example of wealthy people, who are nearly always afraid of becoming poor. This is, he says, because unconsciously they feel that they don't deserve to have their money. Unconsciously they feel that it ought to be taken away from them, and consciously they worry that perhaps it will be taken away from them. By contrast, you notice that poor people who may not know where next week's food is coming from are rarely racked with anxiety over it. They are generally much more relaxed and cheerful than the rich.

Wealthy people may suffer from unconscious guilt feelings because they know, however much they may deny it consciously, that their wealth is 'tainted': its acquisition has brought suffering to other people, directly or indirectly. Consequently, they feel a constant need to justify themselves. They say, 'I earn my money, I contribute to the well-being of the community, I offer a service that people want, I provide employment....' Or else they say, 'Well, if I'm rich and other people are poor, it's because I work harder, I take risks - at least I don't ask to be spoon-fed....'

If the feeling of guilt gets too much then drastic measures are required to relieve it, and the most drastic measure of all is to give away some of that wealth - to the church, or to a hospital or whatever. Hospitals are a favourite option because you can compensate for the suffering you have caused in acquiring the wealth by giving some of it to alleviate suffering. It is called 'conscience money'. If one has anything to do with religious organizations, one soon learns to recognize this sort of donation. Sometimes it is just put through the letter box in an envelope inscribed 'from an anonymous donor'. Then you know that someone's conscience is really biting.

Conze's second kind of concealed suffering is a pleasant experience which has a flavour of anxiety to it because you are afraid of losing it. Political power is like this: it is a very sweet thing to exercise power over other people, but you always have to watch your back, not knowing if you can trust even your best friend, or the very guardsmen at your door. All the time you are afraid of losing that power, especially if you have seized it by force, and others are waiting for their own chance to get their hands on it. In such a position you do not sleep easily.

The traditional Buddhist illustration of this kind of experience is that of a hawk flying off with a piece of meat in its talons. What happens, of course, is that dozens of other hawks fly after it to try and seize that piece of meat for themselves, and the way they accomplish this is to tear and stab not at the meat itself but at the possessor of the meat, pecking at its body, its wings, its head, its eyes.(footnote 46) The highly competitive world of finance and business and entertainment is like this. Any pleasure that involves any element of power or status is contaminated by an element of anxiety, by the sense that others would like to be able to replace you at the top of your own particular dunghill.

The third concealed suffering indicated by Dr Conze is something which is pleasant but which binds us to something else that brings about suffering. The example he gives is the human body. Through it we experience all sorts of pleasurable sensations that make us very attached to it; but we experience all sorts of unpleasant sensations through it as well. So our attachment to that which provides us with pleasant sensations binds us also to that which provides us with unpleasant sensations. We can't have the one without the other.

Lastly, Conze suggests that concealed suffering is to be found in the fact that pleasures derived from the experience of conditioned things cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the heart. In each one of us there is something that is Unconditioned, something that is not of this world, something transcendental, the Buddha-nature - call it what you like. Whatever you call it, you can recognize it by the fact that it cannot be satisfied by anything conditioned. It can be satisfied only by the Unconditioned.

So whatever conditioned things you may enjoy there is always a lack, a void, which only the Unconditioned can fill. Ultimately, it is for this reason that - to come back to the Buddha's conclusion - all conditioned things, whether actually or potentially, are unsatisfactory, painful. It is in the light of the Unconditioned that suffering, duhkha, is clearly seen as characteristic of all forms of conditioned existence, and of sentient conditioned existence especially.

impermanence

The second fundamental characteristic of conditioned existence, anitya, is quite easily translated. Nitya is 'permanent', 'eternal', so with the addition of the negative prefix you get 'impermanent', 'non-eternal'. It is also quite easily understood - intellectually at least. It can hardly be denied that all conditioned things, all compounded things, are constantly changing. They are by definition made up of parts - that is, compounded. And that which is compounded, made up of parts, can also be uncompounded, can be reduced to its parts again - which is what happens, of course, all the time.

It should really be easier to understand this truth nowadays than it was in the Buddha's day. We now have the authority of science to assure us that there's no such thing as matter in the sense of actual lumps of hard solid matter scattered throughout space. We know that what we think of as matter is in reality only various forms of energy.

But the same great truth applies to the mind. There is nothing unchanging in our internal experience of ourselves, nothing permanent or immortal. There is only a constant succession of mental states, feelings, perceptions, volitions, acts of consciousness. In fact, the mind changes even more quickly than the physical body. We cannot usually see the physical body changing, but if we are observant we can see our mental states changing from moment to moment.

This is the reason for the Buddha's (at first sight) rather strange assertion that it is a bigger mistake to identify yourself (as a stable entity) with the mind than with the body.(footnote 47) But this is the Buddhist position. Belief in the reality of the 'self' is a bigger spiritual mistake than belief in the reality of the body. This is because the body at least possesses a certain relative stability; but there is no stability to the mind at all. It is constantly, perceptibly changing.

Broadly speaking, the lakshana of anitya points to the fact that the whole universe from top to bottom, in all its grandeur, in all its immensity, is just one vast congeries of processes of different types, taking place at different levels - and all interrelated. Nothing ever stands still, not even for an instant, not even for a fraction of a second.

We do not see this, though. When we look up we see the everlasting hills, and in the night sky we descry the same stars as were mapped by our ancestors at the dawn of history. Houses stand from generation to generation, and the old oak furniture within them seems to become more solid with the passing of the years. Even our own bodies seem much the same from one year to the next. It is only when the increments of change add up to something notable, when a great house is burnt down, when we realize that the star we are looking at is already extinct, or when we ourselves take to our deathbed, that we realize the truth of impermanence or non-eternity, that all conditioned things - from the minutest particles to the most massive stars - begin, continue, and then cease.

Emptiness of self

The third lakshana, anatman, encapsulates the truth that all conditioned things are devoid of a permanent, unchanging self. So what does this mean exactly? When the Buddha denied the reality of the idea of the atman, what was he actually denying? What was the belief or doctrine of atman held by the Buddha's contemporaries, the Hindus of his day?

Actually, in the Upanishads alone there are many different conceptions of atman mentioned.(footnote 48) In some it is said that the atman, the self - or the soul, if you like - is the physical body. Elsewhere the view is propounded that the atman is just as big as the thumb, is material, and abides in the heart. But the most common view in the Buddha's day, the one with which he appears to have been most concerned, asserted that the atman was individual - in the sense that I am I and you are you - incorporeal or immaterial, conscious, unchanging, blissful, and sovereign - in the sense of exercising complete control over its own destiny.

The Buddha maintained that there was no such entity - and he did so by appealing to experience. He said that if you look within, at yourself, at your own mental life, you can account for everything you observe under just five headings: form, feeling, perception, volitions, and acts of consciousness. Nothing discovered in these categories can be observed to be permanent. There is nothing sovereign or ultimately blissful amongst them. Everything in them arises in dependence on conditions, and is unsatisfactory in one way or another. These five categories or aggregates are anatman. They don't constitute any such self as the Hindus of the Buddha's day asserted. Such a self exists neither in them nor outside of them nor associated with them in any other way.

The three liberations

Seeing conditioned existence, seeing life, in this way, as invariably subject to suffering, to impermanence, to emptiness of self, is called vipashyana (Sanskrit) or vipassana (Pali), which translates into English as 'insight'.

Insight is not just intellectual understanding. It can be developed only on the basis of a controlled, purified, elevated, concentrated, integrated mind - in other words, through meditative practice. Insight is a direct intuitive perception that takes place in the depths of meditation when the ordinary mental processes have fallen into abeyance. A preliminary intellectual understanding of these three characteristics is certainly helpful, but ultimately, insight is something that transcends the intellectual workings of the mind.

So in meditation, through insight, you see that without exception everything you experience through the five senses and through the mind - everything you can feel and touch and smell and taste and see and think about - is conditioned, is subject to suffering, is impermanent, is empty of self. When you see things in this way then you experience what is technically called revulsion or disgust, and you turn away from the conditioned. It is important to note that this is a spiritual experience, not just a psychological reaction; you turn away not because you are personally repelled by things as such, but because you see that the conditioned is not, on its own terms, worth having. When that turning away from the conditioned to the Unconditioned takes place decisively, it is said that you enter the 'stream' leading to nirvana.

At this point we have to guard against a misunderstanding. Some schools of Buddhism think of the conditioned and the Unconditioned as though they were two quite different entities, two ultimate principles in a kind of philosophical dualism. But it isn't like that. It isn't that on the one hand you have the conditioned and on the other you have the Unconditioned, with a sort of vast gap between them. They are more like two poles. Some Buddhist schools even say that the Unconditioned is the conditioned itself when the conditioned is seen in its ultimate depths, or in a new, higher dimension, as it were.(footnote 49) The Unconditioned is reached by knowing the conditioned deeply enough, by going right to the bottom of the conditioned and coming out the other side (so to speak). In other words, the conditioned and the Unconditioned are, in a way, the two sides of the same coin.

This perspective, which is a very important one to take in, is brought into focus by a teaching - common to all schools - called the three vimokshas, or 'liberations'.(footnote 50) They are also sometimes called the three samadhis, or the three 'doors': the three doors through which we can approach Enlightenment.

The first of these liberations is apranihita, the 'unaiming' or 'unbiased'. It is a mental state without any inclination in any direction, without likes or dislikes, perfectly still, perfectly poised. Thus it is an 'approach' to the Unconditioned, but it's an approach which is by way of not going in any particular direction. You only want to go in a particular direction when you have a concept of that direction and a desire to go in it. If there's no particular direction in which you want to go, then you just, as it were, stay at rest. This state can be compared to a perfectly round sphere on a perfectly flat plane. Because the plane is absolutely level, the perfect sphere doesn't roll in any particular direction. The vimoksha of directionlessness is rather like this. It's a state of absolute equanimity in which one has no egoistic motive for doing - or not doing, even - anything. So this is an avenue of approach to reality, to Enlightenment.

The second liberation, the second door to the Unconditioned, is animitta, the 'signless'. Nimitta literally means a sign, but it can also mean a word or a concept; so the animitta is the approach to the Unconditioned by bypassing all words and all thoughts. This is a very distinctive experience. When you have it, you realize that all words, all concepts, are totally inadequate. Not that they're not very adequate, but that actually they don't mean anything at all. This is another door through which one approaches the absolute, the Unconditioned. The animitta is a state in which one prescinds all concepts of reality. In other words, one doesn't think about reality. I don't mean that one 'doesn't think about it' in the ordinary way in which one doesn't think about reality. After all, we could say that most of us, most of the time, don't give much thought to reality at all. But on the attainment of this vimoksha one has, as it were, reached the level of reality but one doesn't think about reality. One realizes that no words, no concepts, can possibly apply; indeed, one doesn't even have the concept of non-applicability. This is the vimoksha or samadhi of signlessness or imagelessness.

And the third liberation is shunyata, the voidness or emptiness. In this state you see that everything is, as it were, completely transparent. Nothing has any own-being, nothing has any self-identity. In the language of the Perfection of Wisdom, the 'Prajnaparamita', things are what they are because they are not what they are - one can only express it paradoxically. This is the vimoksha of emptiness.

The three liberations represent different aspects of the Unconditioned; that is, they show the Unconditioned from different points of view, which are also different ways of realizing it. You can penetrate into the Unconditioned through the unbiased, through the signless, and through voidness. However, as we have already said, you attain the Unconditioned by knowing the conditioned in its depths. Thus we can also say that you penetrate to the three liberations through attention to the three lakshanas. That is, each of the three liberations can be reached through understanding deeply enough its corresponding lakshana. In this way the three lakshanas themselves can be seen as doors to liberation.

If you look deeply enough at the essentially unsatisfactory nature of conditioned existence, then you will realize the Unconditioned as being without bias. This is because when you see the suffering inherent in conditioned things, you lose interest in the goals and aims and purposes of conditioned existence. You are quite still and poised, without inclination towards this or that, without any desire or direction for yourself. Hence when you go into the conditioned through the aspect of suffering you go into the Unconditioned through the aspect of the unbiased.

Alternatively, when you concentrate on the conditioned as being impermanent, transitory, without fixed identity, then going to the bottom of that - and coming out the other side, so to speak - you realize the Unconditioned as the signless. Your realization is of the emptiness of all concepts, you transcend all thought; you realize, if you like, 'the eternal' - though not the eternal that continues through time, but the eternal which transcends time.

And thirdly, if you concentrate on the conditioned as devoid of self, devoid of individuality, devoid of I, devoid of you, devoid of me, devoid of mine, then you approach, you realize, the Unconditioned as shunyata, as the voidness. What 'the voidness' is, we shall be going on to consider.

As for the present chapter, however, our aim has been to throw some light on the subject of the three lakshanas, the three characteristics of conditioned existence. They are of central importance not just in Buddhist philosophy but in the Buddhist spiritual life. According to the Buddha, we don't really see conditioned existence until we learn to see it in these terms. If we see anything else, that's just an illusion, just a projection. And once we start seeing the conditioned as essentially unsatisfactory, impermanent, and empty of self, then little by little we begin to get a glimpse of the Unconditioned, a glimpse that is our essential guide on the Buddhist path.

Notes

38: Nanamoli p.10 (Majjhima-Nikaya 26).
39: See Mahagovinda Sutta (Majjhima-Nikaya 19), verse 45.
40: The three lakshanas are enumerated in many places in the Pali Canon - see, for example, Samyutta-Nikaya xxxv.1; xxii.46; Udana iii.10; Anguttara-Nikaya iii.47. The locus classicus is Dhammapada 277-9.
41: See Nanamoli p.43 for a brief reference. Of the many canonical references, perhaps the reflections of the Buddha in section 18 of the Mahasatipatthana Sutta (Digha-Nikaya 22) are especially worth consulting.
42: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III.i.128-31.
43: Majjhima-Nikaya, i.135.
44: See, for example, Itivuttaka section 100.
45: See Edward Conze, Buddhism, Cassirer, Oxford 1957, pp.46-48.
46: See Vinaya Pitaka, Culavagga i.
47: Nanamoli p.230; Samyutta-Nikaya xii.61.
48: Of the many texts which bear the name Upanishad, there are thirteen principal ones. They originate from the period 8th to 4th century bce, and form the basis of the school of Hindu philosophy known as the Vedanta. The atman is one of their main themes.
49: The Tantra in particular sees things in this way, with its teaching of the sahaja or innate nature of reality; see page 54.
50: These three liberations are referred to in one of the texts of the Abhidhamma Pitaka of the Pali Canon, the Patisambhidhamagga ii.58. Buddhaghosa goes into them in some detail in his Visuddhimagga xxi.66-71.