Twenty-five years ago, one of my teachers, Ajaan Suwat, led a meditation retreat in Massachusetts for which I served as translator. During a group interview session one afternoon, a retreatant new to Buddhism quipped, “You guys would have a good religion here if only you had a God. That way people would have some sense of support in their practice when things aren’t going well.”
Ajaan Suwat’s gentle reply has stayed with me ever since: “If there were a god who could arrange that by my taking a mouthful of food all the beings in the world would become full, I’d bow down to that god. But I haven’t found anyone like that yet.”
There are two main reasons these words have continued to resonate with me. One is that they’re such an elegant argument against the existence of an all-powerful, all-merciful Creator. Look at the way life survives: by feeding on other life. The need to eat entails unavoidable suffering not only for those who are eaten but also for those who feed, because we are never free of the need to feed. Wouldn’t an all-powerful, all-merciful Creator have come up with a better design for life than this?
The other reason is that Ajaan Suwat indirectly addressed an idea often, but wrongly, attributed to the Buddha: that we are all One, and that our organic Oneness is something to celebrate. If we really were One, wouldn’t our stomachs interconnect so that the nourishment of one person nourished everyone else? As it is, my act of feeding can often deprive someone else of food. My need to keep feeding requires that other living beings keep working hard to produce food. In many cases, when one being feeds, others die in the process. Oneness, for most beings, means not sharing a stomach but winding up in someone else’s stomach and being absorbed into that someone else’s bloodstream. Hardly cause for celebration.
The Buddha himself never taught that we are all One. A brahman once asked him, “Is everything a Oneness? Is everything a Plurality?” The Buddha replied that both views are extremes to be avoided (Samyutta Nikaya 12.48). He didn’t explain to the brahman why we should avoid the extreme view that all is Oneness. But three other passages in the Pali canon suggest the reasons for his position.
In Anguttara Nikaya 10.29, the Buddha says that the highest nondual state a meditator can master is to experience consciousness as an unlimited, nondual totality. Everything seems One with your awareness in that experience, yet even in that state there is still change and inconstancy. In other words, that experience doesn’t end suffering. Like everything else conditioned and fabricated, it has to be viewed with dispassion and, ultimately, abandoned.
In Samyutta Nikaya 35.80, he states that in order to relinquish ignorance and give rise to clear knowing, one has to see all things—all the senses and their objects—as something other or separate; as not-self. To see all things as One would thus block the knowledge leading to awakening.
We’re related not by what we inherently are but by what we choose to do.
And in Majjhima Nikaya 22, he singles out the view that the self is identical with the cosmos as particularly foolish. If the cosmos is your true self, he reasoned, then the workings of the cosmos would be yours to control. But how much control do you have over your immediate surroundings, let alone the whole cosmos? As Ajaan Lee [1907–1961] once said, “Try cutting down your neighbor’s tree and see whether there’s going to be trouble.”
Taken together, these three passages suggest that the Buddha wanted to avoid the view that everything is a Oneness because it doesn’t put an end to suffering, because seeing all things as One gets in the way of awakening, and because the idea of Oneness simply doesn’t square with the way things actually are.
While the Buddha didn’t tell the brahman why he avoided the extreme of Oneness, he did tell him how to avoid it: by adopting the teaching on dependent co-arising, his explanation of the causal interactions that lead to suffering.
Ironically, dependent co-arising is often interpreted in modern Buddhist circles as the Buddha’s affirmation of Oneness and the interconnectedness of all beings. But this interpretation doesn’t take into account the Buddha’s own dismissal of Oneness, and it blurs two important distinctions.
The first distinction is between the notions of Oneness and interconnectedness. That we live in an interconnected system, dependent on one another, doesn’t mean that we’re One. To be One, in a positive sense, the whole system would have to be working toward the good of every member in the system. But in nature’s grand ecosystem, one member survives only by feeding—physically and mentally—on other members. It’s hard, even heartless, to say that nature works for the common good of all.
The Buddha pointed to this fact in a short series of questions aimed at introducing dharma to newcomers (Khuddaka- patha 4). The questions follow the pattern “What is one? What is two?” all the way to “What is ten?” Most of the answers are unsurprising: four, for example, is the four noble truths; eight, the noble eightfold path. The surprise lies in the answer to “What is one?”—“All beings subsist on food.” The Buddha does not say that all beings are One. Instead, this answer focuses on something that all beings have in common yet which underscores our lack of Oneness: We all need to feed—and we feed on one another. In fact, this is the Buddha’s basic image for introducing the topic of interdependent causality. Causal relationships are feeding relationships. To be interdependent is to “inter-eat.”
Related: The Buddha’s Original Teachings on Mindfulness
This is not cause for celebration, in the Buddha’s view. On the contrary, as he states in the Anguttara Nikaya 10.27, the proper response to all this inter-eating is one of disenchantment and dispassion, leading the mind to gain release from the need to feed.
The second distinction that gets blurred when dependent co-arising is portrayed as the Buddha’s affirmation of Oneness is the distinction between what might be called outer connections and inner ones: the connections among living beings on the one hand, and those among the events within each being’s awareness on the other. When you look at the series of events actually listed in dependent co-arising, you see that it deals with the interior causes of interconnection. None of the causal connections are concerned with how beings are dependent on one another. Instead, every connection describes the interrelationship among events immediately present to your inner awareness—your sense of your body and mind “from the inside,” the intimate part of your awareness that you can’t share with anyone else. These connections include such things as the dependence of consciousness on mental fabrication, of feelings on sensory contact, and of clinging on craving.
The interdependence here is not between you and other beings. It’s between all the experiences exclusively inside you. Just as I can’t enter your visual awareness to see if your sense of “blue” looks like my sense of “blue,” I can’t directly experience your experience of any of the factors of dependent co-arising. Likewise, you can’t directly experience mine. Even when I’m feeling a sense of Oneness with all beings, you—despite the fact that you’re one of those beings—can’t directly feel how that feeling feels to me.
In other words, instead of describing a shared area of experience, dependent co-arising deals precisely with what none of us holds in common. Even when the Buddha describes dependent co-arising as an explanation of the “origination of the world” (SN 12.44), we have to remember that “world” for him means the world of your experience at the six senses (SN 35.82). The factors of dependent co-arising all have to do with your experience as sensed from within.
The main message here is that suffering, which is something you experience directly from within, is caused by other factors that you experience from within—as long as you approach them unskillfully. But that same suffering can also be cured if you learn how to approach those factors with skill. Indeed, suffering can only be resolved from within. My lack of skill is something that only I can overcome through practice. This is why each of us has to find awakening for ourselves and experience it for ourselves—the Buddha’s term for this is paccattam. This is also why no one, even with the most compassionate intentions, can gain awakening for anyone else. The best any buddha can do is to point the way, in hopes that we’ll be willing to listen to his advice and act on it.
This is not to say, however, that the Buddha didn’t recognize our connections with one another. But he described them in another context: his teaching on karma.
Karma isn’t radically separate from dependent co-arising—the Buddha defined karma as intention, and intention is one of the subfactors in the causal chain. But karma does have two sides. When you give rise to an intention, no one else can experience how that intention feels to you: That’s the inner side of the intention, the side in the context of dependent co-arising. But when your intention leads you to act in word and deed, that’s its outer side, the side that ripples out into the world. This outer side of intention is what the Buddha was referring to when he said that we are kamma-bandhu: related through our actions (AN 5.57). My relation to you is determined by the things that I have done to you and that you have done to me. We’re related not by what we inherently are but by what we choose to do.
Of course, given the wide range of things that people choose to do to and for one another, from very loving to very cruel, this picture of interconnectedness is not very reassuring. Because we’re always hungry, the need to feed can often trump the desire to relate to one another well. At the same time, interconnectedness through action places more demands on individual people. It requires us to be very careful, at the very least, not to create bad interconnections through breaking the precepts under any conditions. The vision of interconnectedness through Oneness, in contrast, is much less specific in the duties it places on people, and often implies that as long as you believe in Oneness, your feelings can be trusted as to what is right or wrong, and that ultimately the vastness of Oneness will set aright any mistakes we make.
No one has ever fracked his way to nirvana.
Because interconnectedness through karma is not very reassuring on the one hand, and very demanding on the other, it’s easy to see the appeal of a notion of a Oneness that takes care of us all in spite of our actions. Interconnectedness through Oneness is often viewed as a more compassionate teaching than interconnectedness through action in that it provides a more comforting vision of the world and is more forgiving around the precepts. But the principle of interconnectedness through our actions demonstrates profound compassion to the people to whom it’s taught and gives them better reasons to act toward others in compassionate ways.
To begin with, interconnectedness through karma allows for freedom of choice, whereas Oneness does not. If we were really all parts of a larger organic Oneness, how could any of us determine what role we would play within that Oneness? It would be like a stomach suddenly deciding to switch jobs with the liver or to go on strike: The organism would die. At most, the stomach is free simply to act in line with its inner drives as a stomach. But even then, given the constant back and forth among all parts of an organic Oneness, no part of a larger whole can lay independent claim even to its drives. When a stomach starts secreting digestive juices, the signal comes from somewhere else. So it’s not really free.
For the Buddha, any teaching that denies the possibility of freedom of choice contradicts itself and negates the possibility of an end to suffering. If people aren’t free to choose their actions, to develop skillful actions and abandon unskillful ones, then why teach them? (AN 2.19) How could they choose to follow a path to the end of suffering?
Related: The Buddha’s Baggage
At the same time, if you tell people that what they experience in the present is independent of what they choose to do in the present, you leave them defenseless in the face of their own desires and the desires of others (AN 3.62). Karma, however, despite the common misperception that it teaches fatalism, actually teaches freedom of choice—in particular, our freedom to choose our actions right here and now. It’s because of this freedom that the Buddha found the path to awakening and saw benefits in teaching that path to others.
The notion of Oneness precludes not only everyday freedom of choice but also the larger freedom to gain total release from the system of inter-eating. This is why some teachings on Oneness aim at making you feel more comfortable about staying within the system and banishing any thought of leaving it. If what you are is defined in terms of your role in the system, there’s no way you could ever leave it. It may require that you sleep in the middle of a road clogged with the traffic of aging, illness, and death. But with a few pillows and blankets and friendly companions, you won’t feel so lonely.
But the Buddha didn’t start with a definition of what people are. He began by exploring what we can do. And he found, through his own efforts, that human effort can lead to true happiness outside of the system by following a course of action, the noble eightfold path, that leads to the end of action—in other words, to release from the need to feed and be fed on.
Because each of us is trapped in the system of interconnectedness by our own actions, only we, as individuals, can break out by acting in increasingly skillful ways. The Buddha and members of the noble sangha can show us the way, but actual skillfulness is something we have to develop on our own. If they find us trying to sleep in the middle of the road, they won’t persuade us to stay there. And they won’t try to make us feel ashamed for wanting to get out of the road to find a happiness that’s harmless and safe. They’ll kindly point the way out.
To teach people interconnectedness through karma is an act of compassion. And it gives them better reasons to be compassionate themselves. On the surface, Oneness would seem to offer good incentives for compassion: You should be kind to others because they’re no less you than your lungs or your legs. But when you realize the implications of Oneness—that it doesn’t plumb the facts of how interconnectedness works and offers no room for freedom of choice—you see that it gives you poor guidance as to which acts would have a compassionate effect on the system, and denies your ability to choose whether to act compassionately in the first place.
The teaching on karma, though, makes compassion very specific. It gives a realistic picture of how interconnectedness works; it affirms both your freedom to choose your actions and your ability to influence the world through your intentions; and it gives clear guidelines as to which actions are compassionate and which are not.
Its primary message is that the most compassionate course of action is to practice for your own awakening. Some writers worry that this message devalues the world, making people more likely to mistreat the environment. But no one has ever fracked his way to nirvana. The path to awakening involves generosity, virtue, and the skills of meditation, which include developing attitudes of unlimited goodwill and compassion. You can’t leave the system of inter-eating by abusing it. In fact, the more you abuse it, the more it sucks you in. To free yourself, you have to treat it well, and part of treating it well means learning how to develop your own inner sources of food: concentration and discernment. When these have been developed to the full, the mind will gain access to a further dimension, outside of the food chain. In that way, you remove your mouth from the feeding frenzy, and show others that they can, too.
From the Buddha’s perspective, the path to awakening will involve many lifetimes—another reason to treat the world well. If we’re in this for the long term, we have to eat with good manners, so that we’ll be able to eat well for however long it takes. If we mistreat others, we’ll be reborn into a world where we’re mistreated. If we’re wasteful of the world’s resources, we’ll be reborn into a wasted world. Because we’ll be returning to the world we leave behind, we should leave it in good shape.
In the meantime, by following the path, we’re taking care of business inside—and this, too, is an act of compassion to others. One of the most heartrending things in the world to witness is a person deeply in pain who can’t be reached: a young baby, crying inconsolably; an ill person on her deathbed, delirious and distraught. You want to reach into their hearts and take out a share of the pain so as to lessen it, but you can’t. Their pain is precisely at the level of their experience defined by dependent co-arising—the area of awareness that they can’t share with anyone else, and that no one else can enter to change. This is why seeing their pain hurts us so: we’re helpless in the face of the chasm between us—glaring proof that we are not One.
Someday, of course, we’ll be in their position. If we can take responsibility now for ourselves on the inner level—learning how not to be overcome by pleasure or pain, and not deceived by our cravings and perceptions—we won’t suffer then, even during the pain leading up to death. As a result, we won’t tear unnecessarily at the feelings of the people around us. This means that even though we can’t transfer the food in our mouths to fill their stomachs, we’ll at least not burden their hearts.
And in mastering that skill, we give a gift both to others and to ourselves.
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Thank you Ajaan Geoff for your penetrating and compassionate wisdom. I appreciate the practical Dhamma you interpret for all of us. Your combined scholarly and practitioner approach to Buddha’s Dhamma is truly a gift to westerners, like me, who need access to authentic teachings.
Please keep tempering our tendency to romanticize and water down our behavior through the evergrowing influence of rock star like teachers, who seemingly package “cotton candy” happiness solutions.
Though I’ve read this article several times it leaves me wondering if an argument re dependent coarising is really beneficial? Is it not just semantics? Would “not two” be more appropriate?
I have found the talks, essays and translations of Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu immensely valuable in my practice and am grateful for the treasures he offers at no cost. But the wording of “feeding on” each other which is used repeatedly, bothers me to the extent that I notice I have an aversion to it, especially along with such graphic illustrations.
I think if we can consider “feeding” as synonymous with “clinging”, then perhaps we can see the cause of our insistent aversion to stress and suffering.
great teaching, to be re-read often, thank you.
Beautiful Beautiful pictures! In many ways like those of Hieronymus Bosch, they shine a penetrating shrill light into the reality of life. These pictures however are surreal and as such even more reflective of both our inner lives and the society we by our mortal ‘coil’ are bound to live in. That is why the call to compassion is so radical, that is why the Christian call to actually suffer for others is so radical. Both compassion and sacrifice goes against the natural way of life. It is our discriminating capability brought to bear on a will for compassion executed in the particular that makes us human. The rest is semantics: I have now heard from equally eminent and authoritative people quite opposite and contradictory accounts of dependent co-arising, enlightenment, karma, unity, rebirth, and other fundamental concepts; and we all seem to become lost in the terminology and complexities of the practice. Quite frankly unless we realise our viciousness and the viciousness of life and nature, do not shirk from it and then are able to temper our responses with compassion or indeed sacrifice, then we loose our right to be called human, let alone enlightened. This is a very good article – thank you for it. Beautiful Beautiful pictures; an essay could be written on them alone.
Well said, thank you.
This is another brilliant article by Thanissaro Bhikkhu that clearly shows the confusion that arises by interpreting the Buddha’s direct teachings to fit individual and cultural influences. The Buddha awakened to Dependent Origination which clearly shows that from a very specific “ignorance” through twelve observable causative links all manner of delusion and suffering arose. This very specific ignorance is ignorance of The Four Noble Truths.
The Buddha’s very first discourse was the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the sutta setting the wheel of these truths in motion describing the results of this specific ignorance and the path developing the cessation of ignorance and bringing a life of lasting peace and happiness.
It is the misunderstanding, or direct misapplication of Dependent Origination, or Dependent Co-Arising, that has led to the contradictory and antagonistic (to the Buddha’s direct teachings) notions of interdependence, interconnectedness and inter-being. Much of modern Buddhism insists that the Buddha’s Dhamma is a non-dual, all-things-are-one, teaching when in fact the Buddha’s teachings rejected the non-dual teachings prevalent in his time (as taught in the Vedas).
The Buddha would spend the final forty-five years of his life teaching that all phenomena is impermanent and without self and that by clinging to impermanent objects, events, views, and ideas all manner of confusion, delusion, and suffering (dukkha) arise.
It is by courageously recognizing the separate and discrete impermanence inherent in all things that awakening as described by the Buddha is achieved. The Buddha consistently described an awakened human being as “unbound” or “released” as in unbound or released from all self-referential views, including the self-referential view that all is one (one universal clinging organism) or that we are all interdependent or that we inter-be.
In the Samyutta Nikaya 5.8 the Buddha teaches that “with regards to all things seen, heard, sensed, and cognized, there is the dispelling of craving and clinging and the unending state of unbinding. Those who are mindful, fully unbound here and now are forever calmed and have left the entanglements (interdependence, interconnectedness, inter-being) of the world.“
Thanissaro Bikkhu concludes this remarkable piece by showing the true gift we can bring to all by abandoning the drama created by the modern non-dual we-are-all-0ne notions: “As a result, we won’t tear unnecessarily at the feelings of the people around us. This means that even though we can’t transfer the food in our mouths to fill their stomachs, we’ll at least not burden their hearts. And in mastering that skill, we give a gift both to others and to ourselves.”
Thank You Thanissaro.
John Haspel
http://CrossRiverMeditation.com
http://MindfulnessBasedRecovery.com
http://Shamatha-Vipassana.com
Notions, concepts, ideas…. with different interpretations of the Buddha’s teaching. I think we have to use notions, concepts and ideas, different for each of us, in order to let go and abandon them
Dear Ven. Thanissaro Bhikku, I honor your life. I do not resonate with the constant reduction of us as only bodies feeding on each other. To me, we are One in our divine energy within. I have learned much from Buddhism. I will take what I can use and leave the rest. Inter Beingness makes me want to help others because we are One. Love and Compassion are all there is.
Namaste’
These words are the single most enlightening I have read in a long time. To be kept and read again and again. Much gratitude.
Exactly so for me as well.
Letter to the Editor, posted with permission:
We are many ones
Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s excellent article, “We are not one,” reminds me of an Indiana farmer’s response to my question asking for directions. He looked at me with a slight smile, “Well son, you can’t get there from here.” Sometime later it hit me that I could get almost anywhere “from here.” Unfortunately, Thanissaro Bhikku’s article is stuck directionless asking, “What does one mean?”
We are one or we are not one is a distinction without a difference. No matter which way the dharma coin flips we face the wonderful task of helping others. A hungry child is not overly concerned with the scholarly inquiry regarding the “highest nondual state a meditator can master.” The child and I share food and the interconnectedness IS reassuring. When we function from our true nature there is no other choice but to help. That is how compassion works; without concern for what we think about the one or the many.
My wife and I participate in an adaptive yoga class. Our fellow learners fill the spectrum of human physical abilities from wheelchair to using a walking stick for balance. The majority of participants are brain injured. Each one comes for varied reasons, with different expectations. We become one in the innate joy of moving our bodies in infinite space. At the end of each session we can be heard laughing with strength, not frailty, because we are the many ones.
The end of suffering is not dependent on “many lifetimes” of treating the world well. To leave the world well because I will be returning is disturbing at best. This life isn’t about me. It isn’t about reaching everyone’s heart. When someone is in pain look within and find the best way to connect. Breathe with them and become one with their situation by completely letting go in openness and compassion. Unfortunately, the false belief that we are not one hinders the ability to get from here to there.
Anton Somlai
Minneapolis, MN
very sweet thank you for this Dharma gift! 🙂
>>” A brahman once asked him, “Is everything a Oneness? Is everything a Plurality?” The Buddha replied that both views are extremes to be avoided ” Yes, exactly! It’s the fixation on either that seems to be problematic in terms of realization. “Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is Form”…one and the same, a mind-boggling paradox, a loop that will not be pinned down by the Mind . The One and the Many; the species and the individual. Although this was a very informative teaching by Thanissaro Bhikkhu , in my experience there are motivations other than “fear of suffering” or freedom from “the pain leading up to death” or disgust with the “food body” that seem to underlie my practice. . There is something depressing and sad about seeing “a good rebirth” as the “right motivation” for us to act with compassion and kindness towards other sentient beings. Do we really need this goad? I loved seeing Walton Ford’s watercolors. thank you.
I found this article difficult to follow and a bit disconnected. Making the assumption that the need to eat entails unavoidable suffering — not just for the dinner, but also for the diner and even those who produced the food — is a distinction that I’m not sure what to do with, even after rereading. Nonetheless, Thanissaro Bhikkhu raises an interesting topic and addresses the middle way (not oneness nor plurality), fueling an equally interesting discussion. Thank you.
As I understand it the teaching of “no-self”, anatta, implicates non-dualism, a monistic worldview. It is the idea that we have a separate self, an “ego”, that creates dualism and feelings of alienation, suffering.
Also I see no reason why this “oneness with the whole” can not go perfectly well together with the teachings on the eightfold path or karma or dependent origination. No need to create unnecessary problems.
This oneness is i.m.o. the ultimate goal and essence of all religions. It is a state beyond time and space, beyond all duality, beyond good and bad, life and death and so also beyond the problem of eating to stay alive or being eaten.
Near the beginning of his article, Ajahn Thanissaro writes ‘The Buddha himself never taught that we are all One. A brahman once asked him, “Is everything a Oneness? Is everything a Plurality?” The Buddha replied that both views are extremes to be avoided (Samyutta Nikaya 12.48).’ Interestingly, however, virtually all of the arguments in the rest of the article are resolutely pluralistic.
We are not one or many!
The body can be ‘seen’ as a system of many interacting parts that function as a single whole. Are we many beings – the individual cells – working together or, are we one ‘entity’ among many others? The idea of one or many depends on the way we look at things – they are not mutually exclusive. Dharma teachings are also a way of looking at things. They are a raft – a skilful means – to help us cross to the other shore . They are not the truth which liberates!
We don’t share the food we have eaten but we do share the air we breathe with all breathing beings. Through identifying with the body/mind there arises an ‘idea’ of who and what we are! We end at our skin and the world is out there – something other! This (view) about who we are is based on selective attention. We are not radically separate entities among others’. The body/mind is a process that has a relational existence. It is not separated from the spheres it exists within – ecological, economic etc. There would be no need for ‘right livelihood’ in the eightfold path if we were truly separate beings?
Attention throws light on a limited area and everything else is lost in the shadows. In the light of what we know and are capable of seeing we may appear good or bad! It depends on what we consider and what we ignore! We may be successes or failures, one or many – its all a trick of the light!
From above: “In Samyutta Nikaya 35.80, he [the Buddha] states that in order to relinquish ignorance and give rise to clear knowing, one has to see all things—all the senses and their objects—as something other or separate; as not-self.” Its difficult to think of ‘separate’ – something other – without reference to something else?
Sometimes there is a sense of separation – not always? The sense of separation or unity arises in the flow of experience – not from somewhere else! Its possible to lay claim to – or disown – the body/mind. There is the notion of being in control! I can take it or leave it! It depends on how you (look) at it and (who) you take yourself to be?
“Sentient beings are composed of the five aggregates, or skandhas: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha is recorded as saying that “just as the word ‘chariot’ exists on the basis of the aggregation of parts, even so the concept of ‘being’ exists when the five aggregates are available.” – Wikipedia
We are relational entities without inherent existence! We are not residing ‘within’ the aggregates – the ghost in the machine! There is no one who is separate from or, outside the body/mind – the experienced. Concepts like being/nonbeing exist when the aggregates are available! There is no substantive subject or object to be found anywhere! Existence is an evanescent display – arising, ceasing, rise and fall… The limitations of our senses and mind gives the appearance of constancy in the midst of change.
Subjective experience happens as long as there is an object to be aware of – when emptiness is all that is found the subject has nothing to know itself – over and against. The complete disappearance of so-called objects – apparent, subtle and, sublime – happens in natural stillness. It happens by itself through careful and unbroken attention that is calm and clear. When we are at peace and want for nothing objective experience discontinues. With neither subject or object there is the ending of the world – full stop. When perception is in abeyance there is no number! No conjuror saying here I am or, where/who am I – in relation to? No seeker or ‘knower’ and nothing found.
“But neither do I say, friend, that without having reached the end of the world there could be an ending of ill. It is in this very fathom-long physical frame with its perceptions and mind, that, I declare, lies the world, and the arising of the world, and the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world.” – Rohitassa Sutta
“When in the seen will be only what is seen, in the heard only what is heard, in the sensed only what is sensed, in the known only what is known, you will not be by that; when you are not by that, you will not be therein; when you are not therein, you will be neither here, nor there, nor in between. This is the end of dukkha.” – Bahiya Sutta
“For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.” – Friedrich Schiller
Who eats who?
I found this essay to be meandering and reinforcing the criticisms of Thervada as being focused soley And selfishly on one’s own nirvana. With all due respect I find the author’s essay to be a mixed and confusing message of compassion and dispassion ; a fatalistic view of karma despite his denial of fatalism, with ideas culled from ancient teachings to only reinforce a pre-modern cosmology and world view .
“Like everything else conditioned and fabricated, it has to be viewed with dispassion and, ultimately, abandoned.”
Doesn’t this dispassion lead us to ignore the suffering of other sentient beings , particularly the pain and suffering of sentient animals consumed for food? Really? let’s just focus on our own “rebirth ” into a better place?
Sorry, as a secular Buddhist, I see these teachings as rooted in the cosmology and beliefs of 2,500 years ago. Mahayana , with its emphasis on compassion beyond one’s self, the Bodnisattva model, If you will, tried to be a corrective to the dispassionate self-centered focus on ones’s own dispassion , nirvana, and focus on the next life. But it too, taken at face value in the 21st century has it’s own issues and shortcomings.
As a previous writer responded , I also take from the teachings that which is useful. As an atheist, however, not a Christian, I discard those which don’t square with 21st century science and knowledge.
Stephen Batchleor has done excellent work in teasing out of the vast written record of Buddhist teachings the pith or core teachings which make sense to a post-modern world. Personally, I have his found teachings to be more comforting and logical than those offered in this essay.
Blessings on all or one
I truly enjoyed this article and the illustrations. I also enjoyed the comments. I would add only this we are here to only learn to love our results betray our intentions. Our most authentic self is our most compassionate self let us skillfully just be
Blessings on all or one
I truly enjoyed this article and the illustrations. I also enjoyed the comments. I would add only this we are here to only learn to love our results betray our intentions. Our most authentic self is our most compassionate self let us skillfully just be
Greetings, I’m enjoying the article a great deal but one important question I have is, who is it that’s proposing this idea “that we are all One?” What groups or individuals are you referring to? Do they have specific doctrines, beliefs and practices around this idea of Oneness? And are you representing them accurately? Being specific in this way seems important because right now your presentation of Oneness seems a bit cliche or stereotypical. In other words, if you are not more specific about who holds this view of Oneness and if you don’t articulate this position at least somewhat accurately, then your presentation of Oneness seems more like a caricature, a straw-man, that you can then punch down.
Sincerely
M
This short piece seems to have missed the meaning of oneness altogether. Matthew’s points are well taken. To make the concept of oneness into a concrete example, a bodily function no less, seems a bit silly. When I have read about the topic, it has always been a magnification of the concept: we are all essentially the same, reflections of one another coupled with the butterfly effect; every action we take affects us all. When I look at you, I can see you and I can also see myself standing where you stand.
we are both – one and many – in a way that goes beyond conceiving!
Could we be one, many and, a bunch of nobodies – simultaneously? The universe is one expanding event that we are an expression of! We are ‘seemingly’ separate from the worlds we inhabit – but human-induced global warming could lead us to a different conclusion!
Truth – liberating insight!
Actuality – empirically determined!
Reality – relative to the individual!
Could we be one, many and, a bunch of nobodies – simultaneously? The universe is one expanding event that we are an expression of! We are ‘seemingly’ separate from the worlds we inhabit – but human-induced global warming may lead us to a different conclusion!
Confusion arises through the failure to see the difference between these three areas of inquiry:
Truth – liberating insight!
Actuality – empirically determined!
Reality – relative to the individual!
“The central truths of Buddhism, pertaining to its theory of reality and ethics are asserted in the the form of “The Four Noble Truths” (cattari ariyasaccani). Nirvana is claimed to be “The Truth”(sacca) being the supreme truth (parama sacca).” – Jayatilleke
The question is: when we reflect on our ontological status as ‘being one or many’ are we asking about the ‘truth’ of the matter or are we talking about something that does not pertain to truth at all? Truth is not negotiable – it is that which liberates! If we are talking about ‘ways of looking’ – perspectives on nature that can be seen from other perspectives that are equally valid – it means we are not speaking the ‘truth’! Truth can be pointed to but it always remains unsaid – ‘inconceivable’ (achintya). It is not a unit of information – a body of teachings from any tradition!
Could we be one, many and, a bunch of ‘nobodies’ (not-self) – simultaneously? We are an expression of the universe that is one expanding event! We are ‘seemingly’ separate from the worlds we inhabit – but human-induced climate change may lead us to a different conclusion?
Confusion arises through the failure to see the difference between these three areas of inquiry:
Truth – liberating insight!
Actuality – empirically determined!
Reality – relative to the individual!
“The central truths of Buddhism, pertaining to its theory of reality and ethics are asserted in the the form of “The Four Noble Truths” (cattari ariyasaccani). Nirvana is claimed to be “The Truth” (sacca) being the supreme truth (parama sacca).” – Jayatilleke
The question is: when we reflect on our ontological status as being ‘one or many’ are we asking about the ‘truth’ of the matter? Truth is not negotiable – it is that which liberates! If we are talking about ‘ways of looking’ – perspectives on nature that can be seen from other perspectives that are equally valid – it means we are not speaking the truth! We may be taking a perspective designed to produce a particular outcome – skilful or unskilful?
Truth can be pointed to but it always remains unsaid – ‘inconceivable’ (achintya). It is not a unit of information – a body of teachings from any tradition! ‘Empirical inquiry’ (science) does not provide us with the truth – either! It provides us with evidence that supports or negates what is already known – within the scientific community! It builds on previous findings and occasionally undergoes a paradigm shift. It is the living Dharma that sets us free – where all paradigms cease – freedom from the known!
“Here, Ananda, the Bhikkhu considers it all like this: This is the supreme peace, this is sublime calm: The stilling of all formations, the silencing of all mental construction, the relinquishing of all substrata fuelling existence, the fading away of all craving, detachment, release, ceasing, Nibbāna… In this way, Ananda, the Bhikkhu may enter a mental absorption in which there is no notion of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, no attacks of conceiving any internal consciousness or any external objects and wherein he is both mentally released and fully liberated through understanding this all… In this silenced and wholly stilled state there is no inclination to “I” and “mine-making”, and no more attacks of conceit by latent tendencies to identification, egotism, and narcissism!”- Anguttara Nikāya 3:32
If we were limited to only being a human body, then this would make sense. But is that truly all we are? In my experience no. Unlike my human body, I cannot find where I end nor where I begin. I cannot find myself located in space or time. In this experience of what I am, beyond the limitations of body or mind, I see this same, whatever we want to call it as no name really fits, in everyone and everything I see. Everything in form changes. This is indisputable. But what about what is not in form? What always appears to remain unchanged no matter what happens to body and mind. In Zen, we sometimes refer to this as Suchness. What is the one thing that is pure and clear and not dependent on life or death? Is there a different Suchness in the snake or bird or different Suchness in human or mountain or drop of rain or computer screen? I have never found such difference. In this experience I might call this oneness, if I wanted to use such a word. But no word can really describe this. This is only my experience as best as I can put it into words, which unfortunately will always remain a rather clumsy and incomplete form of communication when it comes to such matters. But I have no doubt at all that what has written this and what reads it is none other than this exact same Suchness. Bodies come and go. They are changing all the time. I have experienced many. Why should this one be so important. It is useful for a while, like a car. I maintain it and enjoy it and it serves a purpose, just as all the others did. If that’s all there was to me, I would have very short and inconsequential life. Not saying I don’t. But if it were limited to this body, wow. It’s over in the blink of an eye. Nothing to get too worked up about. While it’s here, I love it. It’s awesome. But all bodies end. I’m far more interested in something else. What that is I cannot say or describe. I don’t even bother trying anymore, which you should be grateful for. But if feels far more real than this constantly changing forms and appearances, delightful as they are.
This is the way I understand things…
If I were to give speech powers to the chicken that I’m going to cook
for dinner next week, and if it were able to reason with me – to present
an argument as to why I should not feel entitled to eat it, I imagine
it saying, “I’m you. You will suffer all the suffering you subject me
to because your mind will eventually land on the experience I currently
call ‘mine’.” How many lifetimes do we get? What limits them? What
started them?
The mind exists. If there were nothing else, the mind alone could create it all. It is the creator and the heir to its creation. The mind streams from one life to another in much the same way as day follows night follows day. The experiences unfold in what appears to be unison – indeed it is unison, but our minds traverse the experience as a pathway from one experience to another to another, lifetime by lifetime.
What happens when you die? You become me. Or someone else. But in these subsequent lives, you will meet your current self over and over again. You will experience the perspectives of all those you disagree with, and what seems irrational to you now will be (or has been) rational to you at some point. In short, this universe is your experience and you will experience it all (ALL) in a slow, plodding, linear way.
The probability that we would exist right now at this moment in the context of endless time is statistically zero. It is tantamount to my tossing a grain of sand into an undisclosed location on earth, and you picking it up in 100 years saying, “This is the grain.”, out of the incredible number of sand grains on the earth. But its even smaller than that. A virtually zero percent chance to exist.
If we have infinite lifetimes, there’s a 100% chance to exist right now. Even in the context of infinite time. So, you are all of us. And we’re all you. You will be all of us eventually. Every insect. Every chicken. Every human being. You will win every Pulitzer prize, every gold medal, and you will start every war, and commit every atrocity. You will experience all suffering and all great pleasures. In the end, it is zero sum. Karma is balanced and the context of good is only meaningful as it relates to what is bad, so both must exist in equal measures. We must weight the pleasures we want to experience against the suffering with which we are willing to pay.
My personal belief is that the Buddha decided it wasn’t worth it – that suffering is too great a price to pay for any experience. It is better to make the mind calm and experience nothing.
imo this “god” of whatev is called earth, mama earth has a mouthfull of food and is trying to feed the entire world, but we have a middle man for some reason and all these rules man made “precede” before the laws of mama. so sad we continue to look for invisible things, people and places and don’t see our “oneness” with this body/realm/place/dimension of earth and those who occupy it. it is so s i m p l e