Meditation on Perception by Henepola Gunaratana

Author:Henepola Gunaratana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

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PERCEPTION OF DISPASSION

“And what, Ananda, is the perception of dispassion? Here, having gone to the forest, to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut, a bhikkhu reflects thus: ‘This is peaceful, this is sublime, that is, the stilling of all activities, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the destruction of craving, dispassion, nibbāna.’ This is called the perception of dispassion.” (tr. Bhikkhu Bodhi)

DISPASSION IS the opposite of craving. As the realization dawns that attachment to impermanent things causes suffering, we become disenchanted with the desire to glue ourselves to pleasant feelings. Similarly, we recognize that our tendency to push away unpleasant feelings is also craving—craving for conditions to be different than they actually are. Since conditions are always in flux, we understand that feelings of aversion are also impermanent and become disenchanted with them as well. Each time the mind tries to cling to one thing and reject another, we discover that it is actually impossible to cling to anything, because everything is changing all the time. Craving, we realize, is like trying to balance a mustard seed on the tip of a moving needle.

In one of his early discourses, the Buddha explained why ending craving is so important. Several months after attaining enlightenment, the Buddha was living at Gaya. On one occasion, he spoke to an audience of one thousand ascetic monks who had been practicing fire worship. To convey his message skillfully to this audience, he used the metaphor of fire. This teaching, known as “The Fire Sermon,” explains the meaning of dispassion and why clinging of any kind must be ended. The only way to escape the fires that devour us, the Buddha said, is to extinguish them at their source. That source is perception itself. As the Buddha told the monks:

Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what, bhikkhus, is the all that is burning? The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, and whatever feeling arises with eye-contact as condition—whether pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant—that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of delusion; burning with birth, aging, and death; with sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair, I say. (tr. Bhikkhu Bodhi)

The same is true, the Buddha continued, of the ear and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile sensations, and the mind and thoughts. In short, all six senses and their perceptual objects burn us with the fires of attachment, hatred, and delusion and lead to the repeated sufferings of birth, aging, illness, and death. Recognizing this truth:

Seeing thus, bhikkhus, the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion toward the eye, toward forms, toward eye-consciousness, toward eye-contact, toward whatever feeling arises with eye-contact as condition—whether pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant [. . .] experiencing revulsion, he becomes dispassionate. (tr. Bhikkhu Bodhi)

In this same way, we become disenchanted with all experiences of a sensual nature.

When a visual object appears, the mind rejects it with as little effort as closing our eyes or looking away from an object we don’t want to see.

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