For a long time, I refused to ever use the word “spiritual.” I could not articulate a precise definition, so I discarded it as a useless term. I still don’t have a precise definition, but now I find it useful for pointing to things that can happen in the heart and mind at a deep level, resulting in profound transformations in the way we exist in the world. They are things that go beyond the work we might do in a therapist’s office, but not wholly disconnected from that, either; when we untie the knots of our traumas, we clear out avenues for spiritual expression.

There isn’t a word in the Indian languages the Buddha taught in that could be translated exactly as “spiritual.” The closest is nirāmisa, which literally means “not flesh” or “not raw meat.” In a narrow sense, we might restrict the idea of a Buddhist “spiritual” path to nothing other than that which the Buddha taught as the highest aspiration: complete liberation from suffering, and from the great Wandering (the literal definition of saṃsāra). But, since we really don’t have a precise definition for the word, can there be other options? I’d like to step back and consider.

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If you spend much time reading the works of Buddhist masters, you might come across rather shocking ideas: Liking and disliking things is harmful, and the practice of Dhamma leads to their end. What?! We may hear about equanimity, and how it is one of the most important mental states the Buddha told us to cultivate. If we misunderstand it, it sounds like apathetic indifference. It sounds like leaving behind the greatest things in life and reducing existence to a constant gray blah.

But then we meet one of those masters. We watch a video from an Ajahn, or meet a monastic who has been in robes for more than a decade. We see how happy they are. They don't look like their lives are a constant gray blah! They smile, they laugh, and they are warm and kind. Maybe their writings sound a bit harsh at times, but in person they radiate a simple joy. They may even look happier than we've ever imagined possible.

Freedom from liking and disliking is the secret.

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"Refuge" is a word that I had never connected with until about six months ago. We have this jargon, sometimes called "Buddhist Hybrid English" as a tongue-in-cheek reference to "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit," a form of nonstandard (some would say mangled) Sanskrit used to write many Buddhist texts. Paul Griffiths introduces his article coining the term with the sardonic sentences, "Buddhist thought has a strange, and in many respects deplorable, effect upon language...and is now in the process of wreaking its havoc upon the English language, creating a dialect comprehensible only to the initiate...." English words used to translate Buddhist concepts from Pali a century ago have stuck with us, and they often require an entire essay to even begin to explain. "Refuge" was always one of those words for me.

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The Buddha spoke of four progressive stages of enlightenment. The final stage is that of the arahant, who has completely eradicated all causes of suffering, and is unfettered by craving and ignorance. Long before that, though, one must reach that first stage, which is commonly referred to as "entering the stream." This stage is marked by the arising of right view, and it marks the true entry onto the noble eightfold path. Until the breakthrough of stream entry, the student doesn't really understand what the path is about.

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Yogācāra interests me. It seems like a development in Buddhist philosophy that was inevitable as soon as Abhidharma became more about reifying than an aid for teaching and understanding, which needed to pass through the Madhyamaka phase (which then also became more about reifying, but reifying absence rather than presence as Derrida might have it) and come out the other end as Yogācāra. I really mean just the earlier Yogācāra material, too, not the later studies that reified it as an idealist position. My sources for this are the excellent work of William Waldron (The Buddhist Unconscious and Making Sense of Mind Only), as well as the work of Tagawa Shun'ei (Living Yogācāra) and Ben Connelly's Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara (the latter two I found less satisfying but still worth reading). I have also been reading over translations of the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra and other translations of Vasubandhu's Thirty Verses. The former I find more puzzling and seems to be referring to Mahāyāna philosophical concepts which I am unfamiliar with, but the latter seems concise and clear and even inspiring.

I should add that I don't think any of this philosophical apparatus is really all that necessary if you just stick close to the practice as outlined in the EBTs. But once speculations and theorizing and highly technical elaborating on the basic doctrines therein begins, you almost need Mahāyāna philosophy.

So I have a few thoughts. First, the "basis consciousness", more popularly known as the "storehouse consciousness". The monastics at the Hillside Hermitage teach about what they call the "periphery" and how to discern the periphery. This comes through clearly on their teachings on mindfulness of body, wherein they point out that a sense can never sense itself, for example, the eye cannot see itself, therefore the body-sense can't sense the body, but instead senses bodily sensations. The two are to be distinguished, and the body is fundamentally unknowable. But we can know its effects on our experience...the arising of lust and craving, for example. We can feel the pressure it exerts on us when we engage in renunciation and restraint (especially for those of us for whom desire is our dominant affliction!). This idea suffuses their teachings on yoniso manasikāra and satipaṭṭhāna, as well. My take on this is that this peripheral thing that influences our experience, even giving rise to the objects and features of our experience, is the same thing as what the storehouse consciousness is referring to. It is fundamentally unknowable directly, and we can only know it by the effects it has on our conscious experience. It is a repository of all of our habitual structures, our cognitive scheme, the physiology of our perceptual systems, everything that shapes our experience that is not directly part of the experience. As such it is not a thing itself, but a process, a continuous transformation, and "storehouse consciousness" is just a convenient way to label it.

Then there's the I-maker, the me-maker, the part that does the grasping and identifying, that relates everything to a self, either by identifying with it or by appropriating it as a possession (i.e., takes a percept as "my" percept, one that belongs to a perceiving self that is separate from the percept). This seems quite straightforwardly to me as the manas.

And finally there's the realm of sense-consciousness itself (by which I mean all six senses, so both physical and mental things). For a nonenlightened person such as myself, anything that makes it to my actual sensual experience has first been transformed by the storehouse consciousness, given various determinations and limitations because of that, then gets processed by the I-maker and related to a self in some capacity, and then finally becomes something I actually experience.

I am not entirely clear on what "reversal of the basis" is, other than it's something that happens when you do objectless meditation (such as animitta cetosamādhi, which is my central meditation practice) and has something to do with clearing out or purifying the storehouse consciousness. This is not a thing that makes sense to me. I also admit a very weak grasp on the "three realities" teaching, although that one I find somewhat more intriguing.

When eradicating a harmful behavior, I find I have to work from two directions. First I need to recognize the causes, then I need to work on actually changing the behavior.

Any behavior has causes. These causes may be surface-level desires or fears, or they may be rooted in deep unconscious structures and traumas. Many times we do something harmful to ourselves or others without fully understanding why we're doing it. So it's important to unearth these causes, and understand why we do what we do. If we do not understand and address these subtle or deep causes, we will never be successful at changing a behavior we want to change. As long as the causes remain, the impulse to behave in that way will continue.

But I find this often isn't enough. I have seen some assert that all one needs to do is become aware of one's own behavior, and its causes and consequences, and that person will naturally let go. And sometimes this works, but often for me it is not enough. Perhaps I haven't penetrated with enough wisdom, but in any case I often find more work is needed. These behaviors are usually ones that have been repeated and reinforced over our whole lives (possibly even more, if we do indeed have multiple lives). Even if we understand the motivations and reasons for our harmful decisions, the force of habit will still pull us in that direction. So in every moment, we need to realize we have a choice: To follow-through on harmful behaviors, or to take deliberate and helpful actions--even if that action is merely restraint. The more we make the better choices, the easier they will become to make in the future, until that itself becomes a habit.

A quick aside: I do not want to be misinterpreted here as "you choose your reality" or "you choose your moods" or something. I don't want to end up on r/thanksimcured! As someone with a severe mental illness rooted in my physiology and genetics, which thus requires medication, I would say that while it's arguable that everything is a choice, it might not be within our capabilities to make that choice. This will be a topic for a future post, but I would say that part of the practice of the Dhamma and mindfulness is to strengthen our ability to broaden our control over more of our minds and lives, but there are some things we may not ever be able to control. In any event, acceptance of where you're at is necessary, even if you want to make a change afterwards.

I'm nearing the completion of my intro-level Pāli lessons (on the last chapter of New Course in Reading Pali), and I've begun translating suttas in my spare time. I've had a few thoughts on translation.

There's this tendency to want to use one and only one English word to gloss a Pāli word. This, I think, is misguided. First off, the same word can have different meanings in different contexts, just like many English words. Second off, there's often subtleties and nuances to the Pāli word that quite simply cannot be captured by a single English word--one which will carry its own subtleties and nuances in many cases. This is especially true for those words of interest to the practice.

So, some new translations I'm trying out:

Sīla. Heretofore I have been simply rendering that as "ethics". But I was just alerted to the fact that it can also more broadly mean "behavior" or "habit". I think that's important. First, it encompasses both ethical training but also renunciant practices. It also highlights the fact that we're trying to change our behavior, to restructure our habits to be healthier and more beneficial to ourselves and others, which we do by making healthy, beneficial, and wise choices in every moment. So I think "behavior" works pretty well for this, and I can modify it when appropriate for the context.

Upekkhā. That's typically translated as "equanimity". I'm thinking of two major contexts where it appears: As one of the bramhavihāras and one of the seven factors of awakening. In the former, I think "loving acceptance" might actually fit the bill better. The point is to regard someone's faults and virtues with the same loving heart. In the context of the seven factors, I think "serenity" might do better. I do have a previous post on this, and I've come around to this notion. "Equipose" is also a good gloss. One friend points out that there is a certain connation of close observation to this word. I'm not entirely sure how to integrate that into my thinking around the translation (he likes "serene observation"), and at this point it doesn't seem like one of the more important features of this quality. But, my thoughts on these topics are ever-changing so who knows what the future holds.

Dukkha. In contexts where this is normally translated as "suffering", that's recently been regarded as a poor rendering. Ajahn Thanissaro uses "stress and suffering", which does a better job of conveying the scope. Many will use "dis-ease", which highlights that really, at the heart of it, it's a lack of ease (a great rendering for sukha), and has a connection with disease (and thus the idea of the Buddhist path as one of healing). However, I find neologisms like that awkward. An aesthetic choice, I suppose. I was wanting a word that is the opposite of "ease". "Unease" is the wrong flavor of word. "Difficulty", however, seems to work, so for now I'm using that and seeing how it gfeels.

Kusala and akusala. This is one of those words that loses meaning when given only one English word to translate it. My desire is to get across both the sense of "wholesome" or "ethical" and the sense of "skill". So for now I am trying out "ethically skilled" and "ethically inept", respectively.

An underappreciated aspect of Buddhist practice is that of beauty. I have really only heard one teacher, Gil Fronsdal, expound on this topic.

So, there's this word kalyāṇa. To my knowledge, it is used in two main ways. One is in the phrase kalyāṇa kamma, usually translated as "good actions", "good deeds", or "good karma". The other is in the phrase kalyāṇa mitta, usually translated as "spiritual friends" or "admirable friends". But here's the thing. The first definition of kalyāṇa is "beautiful". Good deeds are beautiful deeds. Good friends, the friends who help us in our lives and our spiritual practice, are beautiful friends.

Doing good, and supporting each other, are acts of beauty. They create beauty. And because our lives are shaped by our actions, doing good and helping each other fashions a life of beauty.

I think that's, well, beautiful.

An unparalleled development in the history of Buddhism has been its integration as an international entity. A few hundred years ago, if you wanted to be a more devoted or intense practitioner, you had few options for teachers; basically you had to go to whoever was close to you. But now, a multitude of teachers from all traditions have made their teachings available in print and online. While a teacher is still invaluable for progress, a good teacher will not insist their teaching is the only option, and will learn from others and encourage their students to learn from others. This has led to an unprecedented cross-pollination between very different strands of Buddhist thought and practice; a Theravādin can now learn from Zen or Dzogchen which will enrich their own practice, as a personal example.

But the array of teachings available can be overwhelming, especially to newcomers. How do you pick what among the diverse teachings are valid ones?

First off, the Buddha gives us guidelines for that in the famous Kālāma Sutta. While often mistakenly taken as some sort of free rein to believe whatever a person wants--which is most definitely not what it says!--it does give us the guideline that the validity of any spiritual practice, including the ones taught by the Buddha, only derive from witnessing the results of putting them into practice. If they reduce greed, hate, and delusion, they are valid.

So this should be our first clue.

Overall, though, we still need to make some kind of decision what to try in the first place. Probably the best thing to do is to review a variety of teachings and find what best resonates. Some presentation of the Dhamma will seem more "right" for the individual than others. This can form a first pass at deciding what teachings to try out. And what seems "right" for one person may not be for another...this is why we are at such an advantage for having such variety. Once this is done, it's generally best to narrow down to a limited set of teachings, a particular tradition, and give that five or six years of dedication before evaluating whether or not to change it up.

That said, there is a huge danger in this. First off, the student is almost guaranteed to go down some blind alleys. I mean, the Buddha himself did this before discovering the Dhamma! Some things will be tried, perhaps even for an extended period of time, and will just never work. Some things might even be detrimental, and this is where honesty and an accurate self-perception (as well as advice from a teacher who knows you well) are vital. It is essential to be able to tell when a teaching is not working for you, not having the intended effect, even when you think it is right or otherwise like it. As a personal example, when I was younger I absorbed a lot of Mahāyāna and Tantric teachings about how pleasure is okay to experience, as long as you don't get attached to it. (This is, in fact, a teaching that goes all the way back to the EBTs!) I took that as license to indulge in whatever I wanted as much as I wanted, telling myself I was not attached to any of it. I was lying to myself. I was, in fact, quite attached to all of those sensual pleasures. I still am, in fact...this is my primary area of work right now. For someone whose main problem is, say, hate, then it's not as big of a deal to indulge...they may even be able to indulge without attachment quite easily. For someone whose main problem is greed, like me, this is not the case.

So, while we must find what teachings best resonate with ourselves, we also must be cautious not to be deluding ourselves into thinking a teaching that is right for us when it is actually wrong...that it is helping us when it is actually harming us. Or else we have no hope of advancing in the practice.

Buddhist teachings--especially Mahāyāna ones, it seems to me--can often center around some sort of "profound" experience. The experience of emptiness, of interdependence, of seeing reality as it really is. And this is regarded as "wisdom". But these experiences are meaningless if they don't get reflected in our actions. They're really not much different from just getting high for the sake of getting high. Wisdom involves seeing reality-as-it-is, but it also involves using that insight to guide our actions so that we are acting to help and not harm ourself and others. Wisdom should enable us to clearly see what is most helpful and most harmful, and take those actions. The most profound teachings of the Buddha are not the lofty philosophical ones, but the ones about how to conduct ourselves in our day-to-day lives, how to recognize our unwholesome and unskillful habits and change them for the better.