MEDITATIONS: THE DHAMMAPADA, CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

tHE bHIKKHU

The bhikkhu, the monk, the mendicant, the renunciant—he is the archetype of Buddhistic virtue, but what virtues does he truly embody? “What are his values?” “What are his beliefs?” These are all perfectly valid questions, though they are likewise often answered badly.

While direct reference to philosophical or religeous texts can be useful, it can also sow confusion via misinterpretation. The pioneers of these deep and, for their time, novel ideas are rarely clear even in their original languages. Therefore, it is best to consider both the formal text as well as how that text is put into practice. After all, the Truth is the Path, not the lofty, idealized destination.

And for the bhikkhu, his application is restraint—self-denial and deferral of gratification, or else the relinquishing of gratification all together. That is why the monk is a monk, that being one who sequesters himself in a monastery. It is a place free from many of the temptations of life, a place in which he can practice self-control with the highest chances of success. Discipline, then, is a necessary and fundamental stepping-stone on the Eightfold Path:

Restraint of the eye is good,
Good is restraint of the ear.
Restraint of the nose is good,
Good is restraint of the tongue.
Restraint of the body is good,
Good is restraint of speech.
Restraint of the mind is good,
Good is restraint in all circumstances.
Restrained in all circumstances,
The bhikkhu is released from all suffering. (Buddha 87)

The value of self-restraint comes from its direct relationship with emotional attachment. These attachments are life-denying manifestations of unchecked desires and aversions. Why life denying? Because, when one wants differently than what is, and if it is not within his power to make what changes are necessary to bring that desire to fruition, then he becomes obsessed—consumed—by the idolized notion of what isn’t. He becomes captive to his preferences, deluded by Mara, lured into pursuing a goal which does not exist along a path which winds down to hell.

Attachment causes one to cling and grasp, to drag both himself and the object of his grasping down into the abyss. It is the panicked thrashing of a drowning man. How this kind of fear-fueled life-denial makes itself apparent is by way of envy, jealousy, avarice, and lust. One squeezes all the more tightly trying to keep possession of a thing which does not and never did belong to him—and it never will. His grasping is futile, but because he is so consumed, gratitude for the person or object’s visitation in his life becomes impossible. He can never feel satiated, never satisfied. He even comes to hate what he has as if in revenge for the fact that it will have to leave his possession eventually.

Not so the bhikkhu:

One shouldn’t scorn what one has received,
Nor envy others.
the mendicant who envies others
Doesn’t become concentrated.

The gods praise the mendicant
Who lives purely and untiringly
And who doesn’t scorn
What he or she receives,
Even if receiving just a little.

Anyone who doesn’t cherish as “mine”
Anything of body-and-mind
And who doesn’t grieve for that which doesn’t exist,
Is indeed called a bhikkhu. (88)

Though the vicious nature of attachment is clear, the question remains, “How does one cultivate virtuous self-discipline?” The answer is simple, though its simplicity does not make implementing it any less arduous. After all, we are rather attached to our attachments, such is the nature of being human. However, when one is ready to remove the self-imposed sources of his unnecessary and meaningless suffering, there are pathways open to him. One such path the Dhammapada describes thusly:

Cut off the five lower fetters;
Let go of the five higher fetters;
Above all, cultivate the five faculties.
A bhikkhu who surmounts five attachments
Is called “someone who has crossed the flood.” (89)

According to the translator’s notes:

The five lower fetters are (1) views pertaining to self or what belongs to self, (2) doubt, (3) grasping at precepts and practices, (4) sensual passion, and (5) ill will. The higher fetters are (1) attachment to phenomena of form, (2) attachment to the formless phenomena, (3) conceit, (4) restlessness, and (5) ignorance. The five faculties are faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom or insight. (133)

The lower fetters relate to base sensory and primitive emotional attachments. They are greed, anxiety, arrogance, lust and gluttony, and resentment. These are inevitable experiences for human beings, but they need not stir one into action. These kinds of feelings can integrated so as so pass over the individual like a visitor at ones doorstep. They can be acknowledged, greeted kindly, but nonetheless sent on their way without them occupying ones house and running amuck of the place.

The higher fetters are more abstract. They are the chains of the intellectual, he who possesses some level of self-mastery, enough to make him a worshipper of his own false notions. These manacles manifest as the fixation on material over the relational and sentimental, the worship of an idea or dogma as opposed to the thing-itself, Luciferian arrogance, excessive ambition, and the ignorance of the tyrant incapable of adaptation or learning. These æthereal fetters are like invisible stumbling blocks along the Path, for they were once virtues, enabling one to overcome the lower fetters. Yet these, too, must have their time to pass. They are attachments, no matter how abstracted away from they seem from the baser attachments.

Finally, there are the virtues which one ought to cultivate. These are one’s disposition toward life, one’s commitment to act with integrity in accord to that disposition, one’s willingness to be honest with oneself, ones mental conditioning to keep on this task, and finally the humility required to hear the wisdom which already occupies the depths of ones instincts. Cultivation of these virtues and the abandonment of the priorly mentioned vices are the Way to self-discipline—which is no different than self-love and protection.

Oneself, indeed, is one’s own protector.
One does, indeed, make one’s own destiny.
Therefore, control yourself
As a merchant does a fine horse. (91)

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. The Dhammapada; Teachings of the Buddha, translated by Gil Fronsdal, Shambala Publications Inc, 2008.