Transforming Internal Formations pt. 8

Jim Bootman is transformed. He has a newfound emotional literacy, an increased intimacy with the people around him, a sense of solidity in his function as a father and husband. What more could he want, other than the complete eradication of this cursed anxiety? In fact, this very thought is one of the last in a long line of conditions that are supporting the continued arising of of the internal formation.

There are two characteristics of this particular formation that make it pernicious. The first is that Jim Bootman is so accustomed to dealing with it that in a certain sense he wouldn’t know who he is without it. This is the sense of coherence that I talked about all the way back in part one. The second is that Jim’s practice itself is at least partially a manifestation of this formation. Remember the mad lib?

Hi! My name is ___Jim___ and I am  _unnerved_  __by__  _loafers_.
Hi! My name is ___Jim___ and I am   _mindful_  __of__  _anxiety_.

The very act of practicing mindfulness can be completely coopted by an internal formation. A small dose of this is normal and always present as long as manas is functioning, but when the practice narrative become a central part of the self-preservation cycle of an internal formation, the two accumulations take a big hit. Merit can still accumulate to a certain extent, but wisdom grinds to a halt. When it leads to a penchant for lofty aphorisms about emptiness, it’s called Zen sickness. When it leads to a comfortable insulation from unpleasant facts it’s called spiritual bypassing. When it leads to never-ending fireside tales of spiritual growth it’s called very tiring for all parties involved.

Jim Bootman’s case is not so alarming, but the formation is preconceptual. By the time Jim “knows what’s going on” in the present moment, it has already been shaped by the formation. This is why Jim needed to accumulate quite a lot of merit and wisdom before this could be transformed. Along the way he has had the first-hand experience of the transformation of many other formations, each of which was held together by ignorance of certain critical conditions. Let’s summarize in terms of the 5 Aggregates:

1. Body – In the words of Bertrand Russell, “Dyspepsia is the mother of many a gloomy philosophy,” and while Jim Bootman may not have come to so broad a conclusion, he has found that recognizing what’s happening in his body has short-circuited a good deal of unpleasantness in his life. Things do not seem as distasteful when he knows that he has an upset stomach. His children do not seem so tiring when he knows that he is tired. There are countless thoughts and feelings that no longer take recognizable shape because he experiences their first stirrings in his bodily experience without reacting to them.
2. Feeling (Vedana) – This one we have discussed at length. Jim has seen himself resisting inevitable unpleasantness. He has seem himself pursuing dubious pleasantness. To what effect? In both cases, ill-being.
3. Perception – Although in most cases Jim has transformed formations through recognition of vedana or volitional formations, more and more he is capable of recognizing raw perception. This is crucial for formations that are held together entirely by view. How much misery would be avoided if the people of the world could recognize the personal conviction of rightness for what it is? Jim has learned to see this conviction as a fact about his mind, not about the universe. He has also found other views, more particular to himself and his personal history, some of which were frankly bizarre, at the bottom of certain formations. In these cases, the recognition of view as view was enough disrupt the cycle.
4. Volition – Craving and aversion we have already covered. These, when combined with other mental factors, take on many shapes that can be observed with mindfulness: hatred, shame, the desire to be right, to punish, etc. None of these are necessarily ultimate in any way, but when they are seen frankly by awareness they can fail as supportive conditions for proliferation. Jim has had this experience many times.
5. Consciousness – Jim is not of the disposition to think lofty thoughts, so for the moment he has not transformed many formations by seeing through his ignorance about consciousness, but while we are here I may as well say something about it. In Yogacara, consciousness is developed into an explanatory framework for how transformation happens, but as I’ve mentioned before that includes a lot of inductions about things that are happening outside of awareness. If we’re just dealing with consciousness in terms what can be observed now, which is how it’s mostly handled in the Nikayas, here’s what we walk away with. Consciousness is:
   • Manifold – Six senses including the mind
   • Object-bound – each sense has corresponding objects (sight, sound, etc.)
   • Conditioned – When conditions are sufficient (for example having eyes) it arises.
   • Impermanent – It’s not the same in each moment.
   • Not-self – It cannot be claimed as “I” or “mine.” Such claims would themselves be conditioned by consciousness.
   • Subject to cessation – When conditions are no longer sufficient, it no longer arises.

Now bear with me here for a moment. Imagine the kind of existential luxury that Jim Bootman would be enjoying if the most pressing questions in his practice, the most driving challenges of his everyday life, were those associated with the conditioned nature of consciousness. Jim Bootman, with his mortgage, his business, his two kids, his ailing parents, his circle of friends, his political concerns, his pee-wee soccer coaching, has more pressing things to deal with at the moment. But I hasten to add that all of those other things can be framed as the accumulation of merit, and when enough good seeds have been watered, that contemplation can happen right here in Jim’s busy life. At that point, Jim will have cleared so much of his afflictions away that he will be able to coach a group of frenzied 7 year-olds and practice awareness of the conditioned nature of consciousness without breaking a sweat.

And speaking of things that don’t require breaking a sweat, let me tell you about something that happened one evening in Jim Bootman’s apartment. Priscilla and the boys were soundly asleep, having left Jim alone in his arm-chair with a Dan Brown novel, which lay forgotten in his lap. In fact, at that moment, most things lay forgotten to Jim Bootman. Even his gaze had left the room, passing obliquely through the kitchen door and finding peaceful repose on a nondescript square of linoleum. He was quiet, relaxed, still, and he was puzzled.

He was resting in contact with his puzzlement, with an undeniable fact that had grown increasingly puzzling over the passing weeks and months. He had begun to notice a startling similarity between his anxiety and his desire to transform his anxiety, or rather he was beginning to identify a common denominator that he very much struggled to name, something very basic about the structure of the moment. Slowly, reluctantly, that puzzlement gave way to a kind of clarity. He could now treat that common denominator as a distinct object. So, this is what these moments are like. This is not anxiety. This is not practice. What the hell is this?

Although he wasn’t consciously following his breathing, this was a very embodied recognition. In terms of the Factors of Awakening, Investigation of Phenomena was off the charts. His normal pathways for reacting, for distraction or rationalization, were paralyzed by their dependence on the very thing he was investigating, which could no longer operate unobserved. What happened instead was that the direct observation of a number of proliferation short-circuits, each of which contributed to a broader and more nuanced sense of this.

The first was almost purely cognitive, something he could immediately recognize as a rigid view. It was cold and “should-y.” It had a bodily element of tension in his brow and belly. Next was a slightly nauseating sense of guilt, followed by a warm shame and sense of being dressed down. There was a long few minutes of a kind of prickling vulnerability, during which he began to consciously follow his breathing, and then came a vague memory. Once, when he was a child, he had seen his father berated by a dissatisfied customer. He had been playing in the back of the shop when a frequent and demanding client, a dressage rider, stormed in the front door, slammed down his boots, one of which had a detached heel, onto George Bootman II’s workbench, and launched into a tirade. When his father had glanced back uneasily, probably hoping to see young Jim absorbed in play, he instead locked eyes with a ghost-faced 5 year-old, transfixed by the scene before him.

Jim Bootman felt compassion for himself, the little boy who wanted to do something but couldn’t. He felt compassion for his father, for whatever it was that had stood behind that pained look in his eyes, and he even felt compassion for this pretentious rider, knowing for himself the secret thoughts and feelings that don the garb of perfectionism. From inside that very tender moment, he looked out upon a world in which there was nothing wrong, no one to be blamed, and nothing to fix. Jim Bootman’s anxiety never arose again.