I found reading and sharing last week’s teaching on Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma* inspiring - for a number of reasons. The teaching is deep and wide - encompassing the fundamentals of the path the new Buddha had understood - the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eight-Fold Path. *Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta SN 56.11
The young Buddha, newly enlightened, was uncertain that he could impart to anyone else what he finally understood to be true. This teaching culminates by one of his previous cohort of ascetics understanding. "And while this discourse was being spoken, there arose in the Venerable Kondañña the dust-free, stainless vision of the Dhamma: 'Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.’”
The Buddha’s joy at this is expressed in the final words of the Sutta, "Then the Blessed One uttered this inspired utterance: 'Koṇḍañña has indeed understood! Koṇḍañña has indeed understood!' In this way the Venerable Koṇḍañña acquired the name 'Añña Koṇḍañña—Koṇḍañña Who Has Understood.’"
It was over a year ago that I realized how greatly I wanted to teach meditation grounded in the teachings of the Buddha from which it arose. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the program many of you took and which inspired your practice of meditation, is firmly grounded in the Buddha’s principles of meditation. It is not a system of belief as much as practice and the way things are - the way the world is as it meets the way our minds and hearts truly are. I have often said the Buddha was the first behaviorist. But he came to all his realizations from his subjective point of view - from intense study of his own mind and heart as they met experiential phenomena. And this understanding is accessible to all of us.
As I wondered how I would begin to teach from the Buddha’s teachings, I too wondered if anyone would understand what I might impart other than those who had heard it from other teachers. And I too looked around for people with less dust in their eyes and was moved to bring the teachings to this group of MBSR grads and others drawn to meditation through their own paths. This may sound a bit over reaching on my part - to compare myself to the Buddha. But I don’t think the Buddha would feel that. It is simply a reflection that these teachings can be heard, learned, and practiced by anyone with a sincere heart and mind, that the Buddha was a human being with all the human vulnerabilities and foibles human beings have, that he shared the human story of suddenly understanding deeply the truth of aging, sickness and death, that he was determined to find “an answer,” and that, having understood what he understood, he wanted to share it and worried that it might not be understood.
My understanding of the teachings is more humble than the Buddha's, my path with many more steps to go and includes the vast uncertainty of achieving the Buddha’s level of understanding in this lifetime. Nevertheless, the path can continue to be traveled and it can be shared at different levels of understanding. And as there is time and opportunity to practice, we practice and move along the path as we will until we no longer can.
But I can also see that this is the path many, many teachers and practitioners have also traveled and will travel. As we gain understanding and a little bit of freedom, the wish arises to share that understanding with others. And simultaneously, the question arises who in our acquaintance might be open and receptive to these teachings and this understanding.
The Buddha shared the teachings out of compassion for the suffering in the world. And that is where the Four Noble Truths begins. There is suffering.
As I read this powerful teaching, I realized the teaching on the First Noble Truth was deeper and more comprehensive than I remembered.
“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”
Sometimes the Buddha’s teachings can seem archaic. And the last line “the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering” is one of those occasions. We encountered this teaching as one of the list of teachings in the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of the Dharmas or the Way things are. The five aggregates are one of the Buddha’s many models for engaging his listeners and explaining the way things are. In the Buddha’s day as in our own, aggregates refer to discrete items of stuff that are stuck together but do not dissolve into each other, do not blend like milk and water might. They refer to our entire experiential selves which are made up of our physical body, our feelings positive, negative, or neutral, our perceptions, our volitional formations (which refer to habits, to our formation of wishes and intents), and our consciousness. The Buddha used this model so that his followers could begin to understand that wanting, craving, greed, grasping could arise in any one of these areas. As we encounter an experiential phenomenon, our consciousness does the encountering, our perceptions do the identifying, our feeling tone kicks in in response to those perceptions, desire or craving arises in our bodies, and our volitional formations produce the will or intent to reach out for the desired object. The opposite process occurs with undesirable objects.
And since this reference to the aggregates of clinging appears in this, most seminal teaching, I wanted to highlight it and underscore that even though a teaching may sound archaic to our ears, it nevertheless refers to a fundamental understanding of the way things are.
I want to share some clarity I gained about volitional formation - the fourth aggregate - from my teacher Guy Armstrong. I had read that Ajahn Chah considered volitional formations to be habits. Guy clarified this process this way: he said, out of our experiences, thoughts arise which can harden into intent which can become habits which form character. This character, these habits often direct our actions with some degree of automaticity. Mindfulness brings this tendencies, habits, character to light and adds choice.
I also discovered that Guy Armstrong read this important teaching aloud where it can be found on YouTube. I hope you will access Guy Armstrong reading of “Setting the Wheel of the Dhamma in Motion”, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta SN 56.11. I found this hearing deepened by appreciation for the teaching. I hope it will deepen yours.