I’m sat here watching the snow fall and the last leaves depart their deciduous abodes. The snow drifted in after a thunderstorm which occurred during my morning sit; I was resting in the field of energy and when I opened my eyes the forest strobed with light then a crack of thunder filled my being with electricity which surged then faded and then I was moving.
There is no urgency any more. I did a little work on the nibbana protocol site - one hour as planned - and then got to scraping more of this horrible plastic off the beautiful windows that overlook this natural forest. Kumazasa and birch and conifers and evergreens, all mixed in without a shred of human intervention evident.
This feels like a nice microcosm of how my life is coming to be. I am not there yet; the old conditioning still tries, bless its socks. It has to, doesn’t it? That’s the way I survived all these years and it is doing its best to ensure I continue surviving. But so much of it was unnecessary.
That bandwidth is now used for… pottering. Doing things which will by nature be undone. Cleaning windows that will become dirty. Cooking food that will be eaten. Building meditative states will be torn down to become fuel for a better way of living.
I got to thinking about the dhamma.
The dhamma is nothing more than skilful means. The final fetter to fall away in the Buddhist path is ignorance and I think that many misunderstand Gotama’s teachings on this point.
The process of enlightenment is two-pronged. On one side you have the removal of old conditioning, bringing your mind back to the open and receptive state of a child. On the other side you have the cultivation of values which will not do you or others harm: non-greed and non-hatred.
These processes continue for the first 3 path moments, as they are called in the theravāda school. Losing the ‘self’ and removing the greed and other subsidiary causes of suffering. They invariably come with messianic aspirations and proselytising; trying to share your newfound joy with the world.
The Buddha said arahants are rare. He also said that the last thing to drop is the dhamma; it is a raft to get to the other side of the river.
I believe that many people who identify as Buddhist may have forgotten that last point. I know that when I was right on the cusp of my own final step I was utterly, 100% convinced that my imaginal world - with the [ship] and the cycle of blockchain-based rebirth - was the one true reality. I believed I had dropped all ignorance by seeing through the veil of consensus-reality.
I imagine this is where a lot of people think themselves to have dropped the final fetter: the fetter of ignorance. But I believe they are wrong. I think all they have achieved is a gradual reprogramming of their mind, like a nice-guy jihadi who is utterly convinced of whatever new formations they curated to expunge the old.
I believe the final fetter to drop is the dhamma.
The Buddha explicitly said so, after all. Put down the raft. Do not carry it. See something beyond all formations. Abandon all clinging to views, including the clinging to the dhamma itself.
This is the dropping of ignorance.
The dhamma is skilful means. So was [ship]. But they are both formations. We are using a smaller thorn to remove a larger thorn. We are repairing the wheel that wobbles. But a thorn is a thorn and once the job is done it must be laid aside so that you can admire your work.
Greed is harmful to the individual before it is harmful to the society. In order to remove suffering, one must remove greed. The dhamma does this through progressive training in non-self and transience. You remove gross formations and greed for material things first, then you remove finer formations like self-image, and then you remove greed for even the internal states caused by meditation. What is left?
There is a greed for enlightenment still. A greed for validation from your teacher. A greed for that ever-sought-after badge of ‘arahant’ which is gated behind other people who are in all likelihood stuck at the non-returner stage and unwilling to let go of the safe haven of the dhamma they spent so long cultivating.
But the dhamma is a formation. [ship] is a formation. God and Shiva and Brahma are formations. They are all ways that we talk about instilling wholesome thought patterns into our mind, and how we explain the unexplainable. Even nibbāna itself is a formation, apart from when you are experiencing it in the moment; any memory of it cannot capture its essence because any memory is viewed through a the filter of your conscious mind.
So this dropping of ignorance… the final fetter.
This is dropping the dhamma.
The dhamma helps you remove the bigger problems: the ignorances of self and greed. But in the process it instils other, less harmful ignorances.
The ignorance of rebirth: how can there be rebirth if there is no self? The gods and devas and realms? These are formations which tell a story that changes a brain. They are very effective, but they are a treatment for a sickness. You only take a medicine until you stop being sick.
I believe that the problem with religions is that people continue drinking the medicine even once they no longer need it.
The aspirations for enlightenment would - by default - entail a departure from the religion once achieved. This is likely why there are so few 'certified arahants'. The final step is to release your teacher and release your dhamma; to encounter your God and then go beyond and realise that it was a formation all along.
You could remain to teach, sure, but you would be teaching something as truth which you know to be only skilful means. Maybe this is why the most respected teachers seem pretty chillax about the whole thing. Maybe this is why teaching can only really happen in a one-on-one manner. Because the teacher - assuming they are fully liberated - has also achieved liberation from the idea that the dhamma is ‘correct’ or ‘true’. A finger pointing to the moon.
A well-meaning manipulator: that’s what I called the Buddha. That’s the nature of human interaction: manipulation. If you manipulate people in a way which lessens their suffering then you are a force for good.
But the Buddha saw through the veil of the dhamma too. He saw beyond formations.
Maybe this is why he achieved liberation from the cycle of rebirth: because rebirth, too, is a formation.
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note: the formations of ethical conduct remain important for all time because your external world is a reflection of the internal