Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: What is the Buddha's awakening secret?

Friday, May 17, 2024

What is the Buddha's awakening secret?

I'd like to connect with Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal. I have a BIG question.

Never mind her. I have a fast question first.

Q: What was the Buddha's secret, you know, to be able to wake up when he did? I want to awaken now, to experience enlightenment. I'm ready.

A: Your question, if you reflect, carries an assumption. Would you like to reword it?

Q: No, there's no assumption. I'm completely open to his secret. What is it?

WQ: Ah, then, in that case, which one?

Q: Which one what?

WQ: Which secret?

Q: There's more than one?

Stop wasting time. I just want the secret!

WQ: Did you assume there was only one, that you had everything but that one thing? We understood that you were "completely open," not closedminded to the Truth he made known. Moreover, what if we were to give it just like that, you really think you could bite it off in one chunk, chew it, digest it? Nearly everyone else needed a process, but you [like Bahiya of the Barkcloth] are ready to just get it and assimilate it with no practice beyond a moment's reflection?

I prefer to work with koan-riddles.

Q: Uh. I just want the shortcut, the Teaching in brief, a koan maybe.

WQ: Oh, why didn't you say so? In that case, if we understand you correctly, you want THE answer to life, the universe, and everything?

Q: Yes, that's it!

WQ: "It" again, like there's just one thing, in that case here is the answer. Are you ready?

Q: YES!

WQ: 42.

Q: Forty-two what?

C'mon, tell me! I'm in a hurry.

WQ: Well, may we suggest you begin with the Five Precepts. Then, once you're settled into that and have made it a basic mode of living, without deviating, without wobbling or wavering, take up the 37 Requisites of Enlightenment.

Q: What are those?

WQ: Which?

Q: Those 37!

WQ: You mean you aren't going to ask about the first five?

Q: Which 5?

WQ: The basic five that when added to the other 37 (add up to 42 and) produce enlightenment, bodhi, awakening here and now, in this very life, of course.

Q: No, I want the secret.

WQ: And when given the secret, "42," you ignore the first portion, the foremost, the most basic division, and just want the juicier part?

I'm not a blank slate, you know? I'm smart.

Q: No, I want it all!

WQ: Ah, now we understand. You're like a Zen student, too eager. You know what they do to someone in Zen who comes asking?

Q: What?

WQ: So you don't know?

Q: No.

WQ: It would be helpful if you answered the questions we ask as asked and not change or reword them. They're asked with precision. We know where we're going with them. You, as yet, do not.

Q: I just want The Secret!

WQ: You keep saying THE secret, but when it is given, you fail to ask about the first part of it, and you fail to answer when asked a follow-up question.

Q: What question?

WQ: What happens to a Zen student wishing to learn?

Q: I don't know, what?

WQ: She is told no, and the door of the temple is slammed in her face. And if she persists and doesn't go away, she is made to sweep. Now, why do you suppose that is?

Q: I don't know. The Buddha wouldn't do that, would he?

WQ: No, he wasn't Zen. In his original way of teaching, the Buddha would give a gradual instruction -- assuming the recipient were ready to hear it, respectful, sitting, attentive, open, evincing a good heart and not holding an agenda or ulterior motive.

Is this Zen? Why are you avoiding my question?

Q: Gimme the gradual instruction!!!

WQ: Did you ever hear of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes?

Q: What the heck's that?

WQ: A punk band.

Q: Huh? A punk koan?

WQ: No, punk band. No, you aren't ready. And we aren't the Buddha. But just look at this dusty floor!

Q: Floor? What does the floor have to do with anything?

WQ: We can't imagine. Have you seen the porch? It's really nice.

Q: What?

WQ: Would you mind helping us test the door lock?

Q: I'm not a locksmith!

WQ: No, you needn't be. Just stand on that side and see if it opens.

Q: See if what opens?

WQ: The lock keeping the door closed.

Q: Which, the door or lock?

Hey! C'mon, I asked nicely.

WQ: Either. You've been given the secret. Develop it (both parts) and come back, maybe with a softened, malleable, pliable attitude that wants to know and will do whatever it takes to be handed wisdom.

Q: I am willing to do whatever it takes.

WQ: What if what it takes is to calm down?

Q: I'm in a hurry.

WQ: We can see that. We hate to keep you. We handed you the secret. Develop confidence (conviction, faith, saddha) in a teacher so that when that teacher speaks, his or her words will not be wasted on a skeptic, a spiritual shopper going around collecting doctrines, or a moody junior psychic seeing who or what strikes her fancy.

Q: Just convince me.

WQ: It isn't the job of a teacher to make the Path to Awakening more enticing than it already is, only to make it known, or to remind others that it is available for now. There are aeons when it is not available, when it is lost to history, when the human world wonders in darkness until no one can explain, and no one knows what to practice at all.

Q: Oh, I get it!

WQ: You do?

Q: Yeah, you want me to sweep!

WQ: No, we want you to be amenable to instruction. You ask for someone else's hard-won wisdom. If you had a sensible follow-up question, we would explain. But you only want "a secret," the whole thing. When given it, you fumble. That's not a surprise. Most people would. But when asked to pick it up, not change it, and follow it step by step, you over-eagerly leap ahead. You ignore the most basic component, those first 5 things and grasp only at the 37.

Q: OK, OK, OK, what are the five?

WQ: Is that any way to ask? You've already been told, and you were even told what the other 37 are. You have it all. There's the secret to life, the universe, and everything.

Q: Wait, that's it? I want the answer not the map to finding the answer. I don't want to have to go look!

The Gateless Gate? The temple door

WQ: Exactly. We still need help with the door lock.

Q: I'll help. Just don't lock me out.

WQ: What else is a door lock for?

Q: To lock things in?

WQ: Ah, then, the latch wouldn't be on the inside, would it?

Ananda: Okay, she's gone now. What are the first five things?

WQ: Good question, Ananda. They are the very foundation of Buddhist practice. The Buddha taught a path-and-practice, a Dhamma-Vinaya (Doctrine and Discipline) that leads to awakening for those who practice it.

Ananda: Did he give a shortcut?

Venerable sir. - Yes, Ananda?

WQ: Yes, as for a "shortcut," this is the shortcut. We don't need to reinvent the (Dharma-) wheel, because supreme buddhas make it known. We only need to learn the Dharma of a Supremely Awakened Buddha, usually from the Noble (Awakened) Sangha, the collective of enlightened disciple practitioners, who are not always in robes. It's easier to find them in robes, but from the time of the Buddha, most were not in robes. Many awakened when he taught, almost every time he gave a sutra. For those who did not immediately awaken and gain the "eye of the Dharma" at the end of it, his words stayed in their hearts and came to fruition later. It was not lost, except that they lost time and the opportunity to advance to the tipping point right then and there. When they entered the stream, not all of them abandoned the lay life to join the monastic community.

Ananda: Why not?

WQ: It's not clear. Maybe they had already done that and so could hear and benefit from the Teaching or had other obstructing karma to work through.

Ananda: I see. So one begins with basic morality to still the mind and heart, right?

WQ: Yes, right. The first 5 are the Five Precepts, the foundation of a Buddhist pyramid we are going to build. Central to it is to refrain from killing. The four other corners of the foundation are to abstain from stealing, sexual misconduct, deception, and intoxicants that occasion the breaking of these five.

Ananda: Aren't there more precepts?

WQ: Yes, they're wrapped up in these basic five. Avoid intoxicants.

Ananda: Even good intoxicants, like medicines?

WQ: Avoid the bad ones that do harm to oneself and others. Imagine a substance that when used, what one would not do sober, one might do intoxicated. Avoid that kind. Alcohol is that kind.

Ananda: But in a tincture sometimes there's alcohol as a preservative or solvent.

WQ: And taking it, will are you likely to do what you wouldn't do sober?

Ananda: No, it's just a trivial amount to get at the medicine.

WQ: So as long as you aren't fooling yourself and behaving foolishly, heedlessly, recklessly. View intoxication as possibly worse than all the other unskillful deeds. Look at intoxicated people around you. Is that any way to be? Some say lying is the worst of these five, worse than killing, because a person who readily lies and cover up unskillful deeds, what wouldn't that person do?

Ananda: It seems like commonsense.

WQ: Yes but, you know, commonsense has become uncommon now. These were just commonsense. After a while, they become commonsense again. Just do unto others as you wish others to do unto you. It's a common golden rule, fundamental, an ABC lesson. The Buddha said there was nothing about these five that he was saying new. They are agreed on from way back, spoken of by many wise people and traditions. With these established, we need the second layer before crowning our internal-monument with liberating-insight.

Ananda: That sounds like the good part, the unknown part that only the Buddha taught.

WQ: The teaching that all things are impersonal (anatta) is the unique teaching of buddhas. No other teacher was teaching the other 37 Requisites or "things pertaining to enlightenment" (bodhi-pakkhiya-dhammā).

The Buddha spoke of them in seven clusters to make them easier to digest as seven sets of factors. They comprise all of the important doctrines the Buddha taught for what it might take to wake up. (I say might because I have never seen a sutra or case where anyone systematically developed all of them then woke up. That might happen in good monastic training, as with Pa Auk Sayadaw, but even then, I do not imagine it would be explicit. It could be though).

One successful American student of the Sayadaw, who became a once-returner without being a monastic in this life, told me about stacks of notes that had to be studied and memorized overnight. What exactly these notes said or why there would be 50 pages of them I was not told in detail. The person said a book would have to be written about it and that would come later. So far as I know that book still has not come and is less likely as time passes. The point in being told this as I pried to understand what "work" was being done that took so much time or effort in doing. How could one have to hurry up to finish if the "doing" was enjoying the absorptions (jhanas). What else did this sayadaw teacher, after all? He teaches so much more. The image of him as teaching the jhanas is wrong; he doesn't really teach even the first one. The first one happens with practice as stated in the sutras (particularly the Maha Satipatthana Sutta). When the first one happens to a person, which is how they will report it rather than saying they "did" it, then the Sayadaw has much to teach to develop it and move on to the next seven or eight (depending how one is counting them, by the sutra method or the Abhidhamma commentarial method). Let's stick with the sutras and say there are eight because the ninth is a technicality of factors present; they're present either way. The point was that it's impossible to memorize 50 pages of notes in a day. Except it isn't -- it becomes possible due to strong mindfulness (Pali sati, Sanskrit smirti = "memory").

Even I noticed in my retreat practice that I could put my mind on a question to bring something up that I knew long ago, and it would come. I hadn't been able to remember in years. But asking a memory question and then leaving it, it would come. How? Not by force, I think it was due to the cleansing of the mind that practice produces. As the mind calms and gains coherence, it puts itself in order, then we regain our memory like Ven. Ananda had all the time, if just for a moment.

Here are the 37 in seven sets:

The 4 Foundations of Mindfulness (satipatthāna)
The 4 Right Efforts (see padhāna),
The 4 Roads to Power (iddhi-pāda),
The 5 Spiritual Faculties (indriya, see bala),
The 5 Spiritual Powers (bala),
The 7 Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhanga)
The 8 Ennobling Path Factors (see magga).

According to German Theravada scholar-monk Ven. Nyanatiloka (Buddhist Dictionary via palikanon.com), in MN 77 all 37 of them are enumerated and explained though not called by this name.

A detailed explanation of these factors is given in The Path of Purification (Vis.M. XXII). In S.XLVII, 51, 67, only the Five Spiritual Faculties (indriya) are calle bodhi-pakkhiya-dhammā and in the Jhāna-Vibhanga, only the Seven Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhanga).