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Disenchantment

April 29, 2007

One of the traditional principles of the teaching is that when the mind gainsconcentration, its able to see things as they are. Actually the Pali term means

seeing things as theyve come to be. Theres an interesting passage where theuddha ma!es a distinction between bhavaand bhuta.Bhavameans a state ofbeing, becoming, the process of becoming, which is a combination of past !armaplus our present !arma. ut then bhutameans things as theyve come to be" theraw material that comes in from the past before weve added our hype, addedour salt#and#pepper and mustard and !etchup to ma!e it what we want.

The tric! is in learning how to see things as theyve come to be before youdress them up, so that you can move on to the ne$t step, which isdisenchantment. ecause as long as all you see are the things that youvedressed up and put all your condiments on, youre going to want to eat them. utif you see the raw material before its been dressed up, before its been %$ed up,

you lose your taste for it. &ts li!e that 'ar (ide cartoon. A group of cows is out inthe pasture. One of them lifts up her head and spits out the grass and says" )aita minute. This is grass* )eve been eating grass* &ts the same with us humanbeings. )eve been eating form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, andconsciousness. This is a lot of what clinging means. &t means feeding and ta!ingour sustenance o+ these things. ut if you loo! at the raw materials and youthin! of what !ind of happiness youre trying to build out of them, you realieyouve set yourself up for a fall. The raw material simply cant provide it.

One of the biggest issues in life of course is lust. &f you actually loo! at whatsinvolved in the se$ual act, its pretty disgusting. And so people spend a lot oftime dressing it up. This last wee! & heard a group of people complaining whenthey heard about the whole idea of disenchantment and dispassion" -ant we stillhave se$ &n other words, if & get to the point where & dont want it any more, can& still have it This is the !ind of thin!ing that comes from focusing entirely onhow you can dress things up, ta!ing pleasure in the dressing up without reallyloo!ing at the raw materials that youre dressing up. &f you loo! carefully at /ustwhats there, without all the hype, without all the added condiments, you reallylose your taste. And its very di+icult for people to loo! at whats already there,because theres so much involved in the adding on.

0oo! at dependent co#arising. &ts interesting to note that the uddha doesntstart everything out with sensory contact, because contact comes at least onethird of the way through all the factors. A lot of other things come even beforeyouve had your %rst contact at the senses. There are all these attitudes, theseintentions, ways of paying attention, and all the di+erent forms of fabrication"These already color the way youre going to approach sensory contact. And theseare the factors that ma!e all the di+erence between whether its going to causestress and su+ering or whether its not.

(o normally we bring this huge parcel of attitudes to apply to the presentmoment, to shape the present moment. And one of the main purposes ofconcentration is to learn how to pare that down, so at the very least you !now

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what youre bringing. 1ou loo! at fabrication. The bodily fabrication is breath.2erbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation. 3ental fabrication isfeeling and perception. These are the basic elements the uddha has us focus onas we concentrate.

'irst, of course, we learn how to dress them up in a new way. &n other words,bring the directed thought and evaluation to the breath, to create feelings of

comfort. 1ou use your perceptions to maintain that sense of comfort. (o theseelements4the fabrication and intention that we normally bring out of ignorance")ere now shaping them with !nowledge, with awareness, so at the very least wecan be clear about what were doing. &ts only when were clear about what weredoing that we can begin to pare away the uns!illful things in what were doing"the intentions that lie to us, the mental verbaliations that lie to us. )e begin tosee right through them. O!ay, this is a lie. This is not the way things actuallyare. This isnt how the way things wor!. )e begin dropping those things,dropping those things. )ere loo!ing at the nuts and bolts. )ere loo!ing at theprocesses that we bring to the present moment, that we bring to sensory contact.And as we loo! more directly at the processes, we begin to see how false and

arti%cial they are. This is what helps to bring aboutyatha-bhuta-ana#dassana4the !nowledge and visions of things as theyve come to be.(o you loo! at the raw materials and you realie youve been eating grass. 1ou

thought it was something really special, but its /ust grass or even worse. Andwhen you can let yourself loo! at that consistently enough, thats when!nowledge leads to disenchantment. The word nibbidasometimes can betranslated as disgust" the !ind of disgust that comes not because things in and ofthemselves are disgusting, but simply because we were trying to feed on them.)e havent really been paying careful attention to what weve been feeding on.)e begin to see that the things weve been drawing nourishment from reallydont have the nourishment we thought they provided.

As A/aan 0ee once said, its as if most of the 5avor comes from our own saliva,li!e a dog chewing on a bone. The only 5avor the bone has to o+er is the dogsown saliva. Thats what weve been bringing to it. 1ou see that its a futileprocess, and seeing that is what leads to dispassion. The reason why dispassionma!es such a di+erence is because weve been so involved in the activity ofdressing things up and ma!ing them into something that theyre not. )hen youdevelop dispassion for that process, you dont want to get involved in thatma!eup, ma!e#believe dressing up !ind of activity. And so your own e$perienceof whats actually going on really changes. 1ou see things from a totally newlight, and the whole thing /ust stops because youre no longer !eeping it going.&ts not that youve been watching a T2 show and you decide you dont li!e it,

and so you turn it o+. &ts more li!e realiing youve been in an interactive gameand youve been playing it really poorly. The game itself doesnt have that muchat all to o+er anyhow. (o you lose interest in the game. And the game stops.

(o the reason were concentrating the mind here is to get more sensitive towhat were bringing into the present moment, seeing all the hype that we add tothe raw material that our past !amma has created for us. )e realie no matterhow great we are in hyping things, the raw material simply cannot provide whatwere loo!ing for. 6o matter how s!illfully we try to ma!e it into something thatslasting and reliable, the materials are ready to fall apart all the time, all the time.

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One of the reasons why we dont stop it is that were afraid that there wouldbe nothing, life would be pabulum, it would be porridge without any condiments.Thats what our fear is. This is why we are so loath to let go. ut the uddhasgreat discovery is that when you stop dressing things up you open up tosomething that doesnt re7uire any dressing up at all. &ts much better to beginwith. And all this e+ort to ma!e things delicious was getting in the way of the

happiness you actually wanted. This is when things open up, this is wheredispassion leads to release. And its a release that you can !now. &ts not li!eyoure blan!ing out. &f thats all it was, if we /ust blan!ed out totally, what wouldyou !now 6othing. ut the happiness of release is something you can !now. 1oucan !now this freedom. &t comes from ta!ing all these processes apart.

(o this is why we meditate. This is why we bring the mind to concentration.6ot so that we can /ust hang out here and have a good time, but so we can seethe processes of the mind" how they try to create happiness out of raw materialsthat simply cant provide it, or at least not in the really lasting reliable way thatwe want. The uddhas advice is to use them in a new way, to create a path.After all, what else are you going to wor! with 8ow would you create a path

unless you too! those aggregates that you were using for one purpose and usethem for another 3editation is a di+erent way of dressing up the presentmoment using form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness astools. 1ou dress them in a di+erent way. ut in the process of dressing them in adi+erent way, you get to see processing as its happening. 1ou come to realiethat this !ind of happiness that you create by following the path is much greaterthan what you had before. 9ltimately it will ta!e you to a point where you evenlet the path go. As A/aan 0ee said, thats where it gets really good.