Preliminaries for Meditating on the 5 Skandhas

In Tibetan Buddhism there is a notion of preliminary practices that precede deep looking meditation, or in the case of that tradition, tantric practices. I don’t exactly subscribe to that school of thought, but I think there is some basic wisdom in it. First of all, the formulations of deep looking meditation need a certain amount of framing so that they won’t be taken as statements about reality, ie all dharmas are suffering, and second of all, real concentration and insight are unlikely to arise if you are approaching the practice with the wrong mindset.

So, with the right mindset, the mind is steadied through meditation, and then that steadied mind undertakes the investigation of the 5 skandhas. After all is said and done, the only important thing is to directly investigate how the skandhas co-condition each other and “this whole mass of suffering comes about.” When that is fully understood, and the mind dwells constantly in that understanding, liberation has been achieved. So what constitutes the right mindset?

It seems to me that the Buddha wasn’t particularly concerned with whether or not people understood the process, only that they undertook the practice and obtained the results, and in fact scholars believe that in the Nikayas themselves, the earliest records of the Buddha’s teachings, the texts that are presented as systematic and progressive were edited together by the recitation masters after the Buddha’s death. Instead of presenting an overview of the mechanisms of the mind, karma, and the transformation process, the Buddha just presented a few axiomatic assumptions that were enough to form a foundation for practice and included them under Right View in the Noble Eightfold Path. When Thay talks about Right View, he only really talks about what is called Supramundane Right View, namely insight into the impermanent, selfless, co-dependently originated nature of dharmas. He doesn’t explicitly talk about Mundane Right View, the set of assertions that supposedly must be taken at face value for the practice to proceed. Let’s look at them!

1. There is generosity and its fruit.
2. There is mother and father (and familial obligations)
3. There are beings reborn according to their actions.
4. There are good and bad results of karma.
5. There are this world and the other world.
6. There are awakened ones who, having realized for themselves by direct knowledge, proclaim this world and the other world.

Now, is this the foundation for a theory of reincarnation, of heavens and hells, of a whole Buddhist cosmology that we need to adopt in order to benefit from the practice? I don’t think so. Because I’m a real Buddhist, baby! Any views that the Buddha presents are antidotes to defects of mind that prevent progress on the path. The implications of these defects on the deep looking process are serious, so they have to be addressed from the beginning. Here is my estimation of what these defective attitudes might be:

1. Why give? It doesn’t benefit me.
2. I don’t owe my parents anything.
3. My story begins with my birth and ends with my death.
   • I did not set in motion the events that led to my life unfolding like this, so I have no responsibility to respond to these events.
   • I have no responsibility for the implications of my actions beyond my death. If something doesn’t catch up with me before then, it never will.
4. There is no connection between root and fruit.
5. There is nothing beyond what I can see.
6. There is no one who has seen beyond what I can see and who can be relied upon as a guide.

I encourage you to look over the traditional list and see what it bounces off of inside of you, not in terms of your views about “how the world really is,” but in terms of your habitual ways of relating to the world, your experiences, and most importantly your mind. While I don’t accept the concrete details of the world described in Mundane Right View, the perspective is very, very conducive for meditation practice. I also think that it is in brilliant accord with our instinctive conceptual and affective wiring. In this respect I would describe enlightenment as being in complete harmony with human nature. I’ll make a brief scientific diversion here:

Human beings basically conceive of things in one of two ways: materially or spiritually. The research on this stuff is fascinating and shows definitively that these two systems are operating well before infants have any sophisticated conceptual system. The kinds of assumptions we make about something depends on which of these two modes we employ while looking at it. These two systems are fundamentally at odds with one another because they produce radically different intuitions about the same phenomenon. For example one of our most basic assumptions about living beings when viewed spiritually is psychic constancy. We take for granted that the person asleep in front of us is the same person that will wake up tomorrow, and that person will be the same person even if knocked unconscious, or if unseen for 30 years, or if transformed into a pumpkin by a wizard, or even if their body is totally destroyed in an explosion. But, when the living being is conceived of materially we get a very different story, and after the explosion we are forced to conclude that the person is “no more.” I believe that a lot of the suffering that Buddhist meditation can completely resolve is bound up where the conflict between these systems meets with phenomena that we have strong feelings about. Imagine how much additional trouble arises when one of those phenomena is taken to be “me!”

If you are unable to accept the assertions of the Buddha on faith alone, then the necessity of practice is not a logical result of the structure of the world. You will have to find your own reason to decide to practice. I’ll assume that you have one. My practical advice with regards to the cultivation of a solid mindset for meditation is summarized by the two reflections I included in the meditation for this week:

1. Take full responsibility for what arises in your mind
2. Expect that you and your mind will be together for the rest of eternity

This sets a rock-solid foundation for pursuing the only outlet provided for in Buddhist meditation: liberation through understanding. I should mention here that Thay has his own way of dealing with this issue, and a research project for passionate students might be to read through his teaching and compile a kind of Mundane Right View according to Thich Nhat Hanh.

Four Ways of Steadying the Mind

When it’s time to undertake the practice of analytical meditation, the mind has to be very present and stable, in fact it’s best if there is no thinking taking place at all. How will one cultivate such a mind? In the Buddhism of the Nikayas, through one of these four kinds of meditation:

1. Breath/Body Meditation – Everybody knows about these. They provide a wonderful training ground because of the characteristics of bodily sensations: constantly changing, but localizable. Even when you are new to developing your discerning awareness, there is a distinct contrast between being connected with bodily sensations and being lost in thought. You should do this until connecting with your body is second-nature.
2. Loving Kindness Meditation – Counteracts ill-will. Hate! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! I recommend combining this with body awareness to anchor the mind in the present. Fantasies of loving kindness do not result in a stable mind.
3. Death Meditation – One of the most powerful ways to sharpen the mind into a vivid recognition of the relevance of this moment is to develop the conviction that you won’t have a next moment. Next time you go for a walk, walk with the conviction that this is the last walk you will ever experience, and tell me what you thought of the colors of the leaves.
4. Not-Attractiveness Meditation – Traditionally called repulsiveness meditation. Humans are wired to be repulsed, even horrified by certain things. When that mode is operating, enchantment and lust for the objects of sense, including objects of thought, are totally undercut. When this is deliberately cultivated, the mind steadies in a state of non-pursuit. The objects of meditation for this are usually, unsurprisingly, repulsive: a pus-filled abscess, a rotting corpse, etc. In the context of cultivating a steady mind, these objects are no more perverse than meditating on a cute puppy as a support for the arising of loving kindness.

Now that the mind is steadied and you’re ready to jump in to the investigation of the 5 skandhas, allow me to warn you that I’m only just warming up my capacity to pursue long-winded diversions before getting to the point.

How Does the Practice Work?

If you think about it, the skandhas are roughly presented in order of abstractness. The natural starting point for investigating them is the body, which is the most concrete, and this is in fact what the Buddha and Thay both recommend. But then Thay starts talking about Store Consciousness, which isn’t even a part of the 5 skandhas that is accessible to awareness. Why does Thay talk about something that lies outside of the explorable terrain of the 5 skandhas? Probably because, even though it’s only an intellectual model, it provides a clear map of how the practice works, and it never hurts to have a map when exploring a new place. The next thing I’d like to do is to try and give you a clear picture of that map.