Unscrewing Avijja Part Two
“ “Why write, if this too easy activity of pushing a pen across paper is not given a certain bull-fighting risk and we do not approach dangerous, agile, and two- horned topics?””
In “Clearing the Path,” Nanavira Thera suggests that “it is not possible to get ‘outside’ avijja by means of reflexion alone.“ He uses the English spelling of the word “reflection,” and says that reflexion is the second layer of consciousness. The first layer of consciousness is our immediate experience of the world and is aptly described in existential philosophy as “consciousness of.” We see, hear, taste or touch external objects as they arise in our awareness, as well as internal objects such as thoughts or mental feelings. These are our immediate experiences of the world, and, in Theravada Buddhism, consciousness is named vinnana, the third nidana in the chain of Dependent Origination.
But, according to Nanavira, reflexion, a second layer of conscious experience, occurs when one is able to take a step back in order to know that he is seeing or know that she is hearing, touching, tasting, thinking, etc. At some point, human consciousness evolved to a state where we were able to silently observe immediate experience, rather than being “owned” by it. This is amazing to consider. Homo sapiens (we) have been the dominant species on this earth for approximately two hundred thousand years, a fact that is nearly impossible for one to grasp. At some unknown period in our evolution, consciousness gained the ability to observe its own experience, giving us the possibility of stopping in our tracks before killing an animal, not simply for survival’s sake but for the sheer pleasure of it. I’ve never quite been able to erase the image of men (and women?) traveling West, riding on hot dusty, chugging trains and shooting at buffaloes from their open windows. “What fun! And why not? There are so many of them.” Buddha named this the faculty of self restraint “mindfulness” (sati in Pali), and said that it is an ancient path that has been long forgotten.
Our species finally achieving the ability to observe, hardly implies that we have learned to control unconscious drives and impulses,“karmic formations” in Theravada Buddhism. Our nature has successfully resisted self-control with astonishing success. I believe that this “something” about our nature describes avijja. According to Nanavira, “however much a man may ‘step back’ from himself to observe himself he cannot help taking avijja with him.” In other words, wherever we go, we carry delusion in our pocket. For those of us who practice mindfulness meditation, this can be an unnerving assertion. How can delusion be present while I’m meditating in a state of clear mindfulness, and with a calm mind that feels equanimous? How can delusion be present in the mind of a brilliant philosopher or scientist who has accomplished the rigorous discipline of objective reasoning, or how can it be present in the mind of an emergency room physician dealing with constant crises hour after hour? For that matter, how can the “little dust” of avijja be present in the introspection and investigation of psychological inquiry? The bad news is that avijja has an invisible thumb on the scale of consciousness. Clearly, its thumb has been around for a very long time.
“So what do I do about it?” is the ubiquitous question most of us ask at some point in our lives. Even if we accept Buddhism’s definition of avijja as delusion or ignorance, how do these nouns bring us any closer to a felt understanding of what it really is? In “The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way,” Jay L. Garfield says that we humans have an innate tendency to reify. We seem by nature to reduce things that we cannot understand into neat concepts that relieve us of the inner tension of uncertainty, perhaps especially our discomfort with mystery. So we pin the unknowable into words we think we understand, words like “spirit” or “unconscious,” adding and mounting these “somethings” to our butterfly collection of dead beautiful things.
But if avijja is “agile, dangerous and two-horned,” how does one propose to lock this fierce bull into a concept? Very carefully I would think, and with the respect that mystery demands. We must circle it and meander our way, not necessarily directly toward it, but always intent on approaching it. I think the best we can do is to define avijja as “something that resists being seen.”
One of my favorite stories recounts a time when Aghan Chah, the revered monk from Thailand, was leading a three month Vipassana meditation retreat at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. As meditators were doing mindful walking on the spacious lawn outside, walking at an impossibly slow, snail’s pace, while mindfully noting each sensation of lifting, moving, and placing the foot, this little monk slipped in between and among the meditators whispering, “I hope you get well! I hope you get well!” His meaning was clear. “Getting well” meant removing delusion and ending suffering. The meditators were engaged in a mindfulness “walking cure,” which is part of the prescription for removing avijja. At the end of 30 minutes, they returned to an hour of “sitting cure.” Imagining avijja as an illness is a Theravada Buddhist metaphor, and mindfulness practice is the medicine.
A caveat is necessary here: In Part One of this essay, I emphasized that while Nanavira Thera’s focus is on Theravada Buddhism, which certainly highlights mindfulness meditation, all of the great meditation traditions: Zen, Tibetan as well as Vipassana, add the crucial element of prajna (wisdom or insight) to mindfulness. If mindfulness is the aim, prajna or insight is the penetration. This is why Buddhism insists that delusion can be penetrated. As U Pandita once suggested at a three month retreat, just as a lightning bolt can strike a tree damaging its limbs or trunk, a sufficiently powerful lightning bolt can strike a tree’s very roots. In Zen Buddhism some meditators experience kensho, which, as I understand it, is a singular moment of seeing our true nature. This “electric” shock or insight can penetrate delusion, if not destroying it for all time, at least fatally damaging it. In Vipassana Buddhism, this insight is called Stream Entry. When a meditator has entered the stream, it will eventually carry him or her to eventual enlightenment, if not in this lifetime, in a future one. Seeing one’s true nature means experiencing the unbearable lightness of being. Not everyone’s cup of tea.
Perhaps our innate tendency to reify affected one of the most brilliant practitioners of mindfulness meditation. In “Clearing the Path,” Nanavira refers to, and dismisses with biting sarcasm, what he called Freud’s “celebrated” unconscious. He adds, “nothing of what I am at present can hide from reflexion; and I am thus totally open to self-criticism.” Really? One wonders if Nanavira’s dismissal of Freud’s “celebrated” unconscious does not typify a deep Buddhist bias. One well-known and excellent Vipassana teacher refers to a “trickle down” theory of mindfulness, comparing it to the action of a single light photon that can penetrate from the ocean’s surface to its very floor. I am rather sure that Nanavira would have agreed with this trickle down theory. In fact, I suspect that many Buddhist teachers would agree. But an analogy that posits mindfulness as light photons that can penetrate to the very depths of avijja is flawed. We have turned avijja into a solidified “something” that has a “floor” like the ocean. In other words, we have reified it. Heaven forbid that we call it mystery.
But Buddha noted that avijja has no beginning, at least not one that can be traced back. In fact, he used the term “beginningless time” to describe it. Years ago, my initial reaction to reading Buddha’s assertion that one cannot trace avijja back to its origin, was to disregard it. Didn’t he see and know everything there is to know? But later when I no longer needed to believe that Buddha knew or Buddhism knows everything there is to know (this is called hypostasizing), it occurred to me that perhaps Buddha was not hiding some truth or sugar coating some harsh reality for us. Perhaps he really did not know! Perhaps he was able to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing and the tension of accepting the reality that whatever it is, avijja has always been part of our nature.
If it is true that avijja has been part of our nature for as long as human consciousness can be traced back, does it make any sense to believe that it can be destroyed by the so-called penetration of mindfulness and insight? A client recently asked, with much distress, “but how can I get rid of this anger?” I answered, perhaps with too much humor and not enough empathy, “you can get rid of it if you are willing to throw yourself into the garbage bin.” I hastily explained, that we cannot get rid of something that is part of our nature. We can only hope to transform it’s energy. This is why I suggest that embracing the reality of avijja requires not only mindfulness and prajna, which are healing paths from the East, but Western psychological truths as well.
If avijja is, in fact “two horned,” we need to accept the possibility that our dangerous bull really does have two horns, and here we come to the eternal human problem of holding the tension of opposites. Buddhism speaks of greed, hatred and delusion as poisons that can be eliminated from the system. Thus an enlightened man or woman has been healed of the illness of avijja. But enlightened men or women as conceptualized in Buddhism are perfected beings, as was Buddha. “Done what had to be done,” is what he supposedly said, and this describes what one might say when a work of art is finished.
But the inner work of art is never finished according to Carl Jung. He points, instead, to our Dark Brother or Sister as shadow parts that need to live, and have every right to live, within the greater personality. He posits a model of wholeness rather than one of perfection. Wholeness is an ongoing process that does not seek an ending.
“Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ - all these are undoubtedly great virtues. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then? ”
