Nekkhamma (renunciation)

One quality that’s on later lists of perfections (paramīs) is nekkhamma, usually translated as renunciation. In the context of the Buddha’s teachings, it mainly has to do with renouncing something that’s appealing for something that has longer term benefits. It’s a letting go, the opposite movement of the heart from grasping or clinging.

From the Pali-English Dictionary: to go out, to go forth; in fig. meaning: to leave behind lust, evil & the world, to get rid of “kāma” (craving), to show right exertion & strength

From the Merriam Webster 3rd edition: refuse to further follow, obey, or recognize; cast off

Why is this an important practice principle for us today? Because if we are serious about training our minds in pursuit of clarity, we must understand what motivates us.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote a classic article on the subject of renunciation, titled “Trading Candy for Gold: Renunciation As a Skill” (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/candy.html). From that article:

What sort of sacrifices are intelligent? The Buddhist answer to this question resonates with another … principle: an intelligent sacrifice is any in which you gain a greater happiness by letting go of a lesser one, in the same way you’d give up a bag of candy if offered a pound of gold in exchange. In other words, an intelligent sacrifice is like a profitable trade.  …

There’s something in all of us that would rather not give things up. We’d prefer to keep the candy and get the gold. But maturity teaches us that we can’t have everything, that to indulge in one pleasure often involves denying ourselves another, perhaps better, one. Thus we need to establish clear priorities for investing our limited time and energies where they’ll give the most lasting returns.

… A third reason for sacrificing external pleasures is that in pursuing some pleasures — such as our addictions to eye-candy, ear-candy, nose-, tongue-, and body-candy — we foster qualities of greed, anger, and delusion that actively block the qualities needed for inner peace. Even if we had all the time and energy in the world, the pursuit of these pleasures would lead us further and further away from the goal.

This last point seems like the key one. Every time we choose the easy, pleasant option rather than the one that involves some effort, we are strengthening our inclination to take the laziest path. Training the mind and heart is hard, but it does offer a better return on our investment. When we come to the end of our lives, which would be more precious – a contented and loving heart or an accumulation of things we no longer want or need? Bear in mind that our lives could end on any day; we don’t know how long we have.

Practicing renunciation can be as simple as sticking with a daily exercise routine or choosing to practice meditation daily. We can spend time with those who call forth our best intentions rather than those who temporarily feed our egos. What will we choose?

Why be good?

There are many ways of “being good” and many lessons in the Buddha’s teachings that encourage us to cultivate wholesome actions of body, speech, and mind.

In a classic sutta, the Buddha lays out a very simple reason to behave towards others with the specific intention to do no harm.

With Queen Mallikā SN3.8 (translated by Sujato Bhikkhu)

At Sāvatthī.
Now at that time King Pasenadi of Kosala was upstairs in the royal longhouse together with Queen Mallikā. Then the king said to the queen, “Mallikā, is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?”

“No, great king, there isn’t. But is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?”

“For me also, Mallikā, there’s no-one.”

Then King Pasenadi of Kosala came downstairs from the stilt longhouse, went to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and told him what had happened.

Then, understanding this matter, on that occasion the Buddha recited this verse:

“Having explored every quarter with the mind,
one finds no-one dearer than oneself.
Likewise for others, each holds themselves dear;
so one who loves themselves would harm no other.”

This king and queen were very wise. The king essentially asked his wife whether she loved him more than herself, to which she honestly answered, “no”. The king then realized that he also didn’t love anyone more than himself – how could he? Don’t we all have self-preservation at the very root of our physical and psychological being? Could anyone truthfully answer that they loved someone else more deeply than they loved themself? Having discovered this (perhaps unsettling) truth, King Pasenadi went to the Buddha to think it through with him. And the Buddha confirmed that all of us hold ourselves more dear than anyone else, which is not to say we don’t love others deeply.

The point is that if we understand our own instinct for self-preservation, then with only a little effort we can remember that everyone else feels the same way! We can imagine that intentionally harming someone else is the next thing to harming ourselves.

The Dalai Lama makes this point regularly: everyone wants to be happy. Marshall Rosenberg says essentially the same thing: whatever words we use, we are all trying to satisfy our perceived needs. We may be frightfully unskillful as we go about it, but however misguided we are sometimes, we are all trying our best to be happy (or happier).

What’s our purpose?

We’ve been considering the Buddha’s teachings on how to live ethically and harmoniously in community. Each of us must decide for ourselves how to make use of those teachings. If we think generally about the precepts (non-harming, generosity, ethical sensual behavior, truthfulness, and sobriety) and the perfections (giving, virtue, patience, energy, concentration, and wisdom) do any of them seem to be well established in our lives? If yes, we can build on the strength of character already present in us and use it to sustain further growth in wholesome directions. It’s important to be aware of where our strengths lie and not undervalue them; these characteristics are more precious than any material possession.

If we think broadly about community and our place in it, the question comes, how do we affect others? Kamma dictates that whether we intend it or not, our actions influence all around us and all who hear of us. We can’t know the full extent of our influence, but we can be conscious of the fact that we are always exercising it.

George Bernard Shaw: “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

The above quote from George Bernard Shaw is not out of place among the Buddha’s teachings. This very life that we now embody, this is our chance, our opportunity to make a difference for ourselves and others. It incorporates the concept of spiritual urgency (saṃvega) that the Buddha often cited.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Saṃvega was what the young Prince Siddhartha [the Buddha to be] felt on his first exposure to aging, illness, and death. It’s a hard word to translate because it covers such a complex range — at least three clusters of feelings at once: the oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it’s normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle. …  (from https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/affirming.html)

For many of us, saṃvega presents as a general confusion or distress because we’re not sure what we should be doing, what our purpose in life is. A complete answer may not be readily accessible, but we can have confidence that if we commit to developing the qualities the Buddha emphasized in his teachings, we will at least be going in a right direction.

Virtuous community

The idea for today’s post comes from an article, “Buddhism and the Virtues” by James Whitehill, published in a textbook, Contemporary Buddhist Ethics, edited by Damien Keown. The central point is that it is difficult or impossible to develop the Buddha’s eight-fold path in isolation. We need some form of community to provide support, encouragement, correction, and some healthy peer pressure to persist.

The primary focus on persons, character, and virtuous practices in Buddhist ethics cannot be sustained without community, places where we know each other well enough to call each other into the intimacies of an ethics of intention and practice, as in a family. This means that Buddhist communities must ever be small, small enough that people intimately know each other and the other sentient beings sharing their life and death.

Whitehall goes on to say that communities can be too small or too large. If the community is too small, it may be difficult to maintain focus on the “virtue” part of virtuous community. If the community is too large, as it may be in a big city, an intimate and continuous knowledge of each other with our intentions and inclinations becomes impossible. The “perfect” community meets regularly over many years, weathering difficulties internal and external, and sharing the joy of growth in inner strength which is not visible in the short term.

There are virtuous communities that are not explicitly Buddhist, but are based on some common wholesome theme, religious or social. There are also communities with more nefarious or mixed aims, so it’s important to choose our companions wisely.

Our purpose in participating in an intentionally virtuous community is two-fold. We offer our best behavior of body, speech, and mind to the group, and rely on human (and perhaps animal) feedback to identify where our efforts need to be redirected. At the same time, we observe and appreciate the virtuous behavior of others and are uplifted by it. This attention to others helps us to adjust the priorities of our own intentional behavior; we imitate the good and overlook the unhelpful.

Trust is the foundation of any well-functioning community, and trust is built through truthfulness, kindness, common goals that are visibly being pursued, and commitment to each other and the stated purposes of the community.  Every family and community culture is unique, and they fluctuate with time, but there are hallmarks of wholesome behavior we can look for and encourage wherever we find ourselves. This mutual respect and care is at the root of growing virtue.

Wisdom (the 6th perfection)

One school of early Buddhism listed six perfections: giving, virtue, patience, energy, jhāna (concentration), and wisdom. We’ve talked about the first five and today we’ll consider the last of these, paññā or wisdom.

Wisdom can be cultivated on its own, but more often it’s a result of refining our other wholesome qualities. The more generosity we practice, the clearer it becomes that this is a satisfying and beneficial way to live. The more we are inclined to acting virtuously rather than selfishly, the more obvious it becomes that this is preferable to any alternative, and the more we’re likely to continue in that direction. Likewise with patience and the application of mindful energy and practicing to develop inner calm. Our wisdom deepens all along this path, and our mindfulness and confidence will likely increase as a byproduct. This is the culmination of the path; all things come into focus more clearly – what we are doing, what the results of our actions will be, the value of mindfulness and discriminating wisdom.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/GoodHeart/Section0005.html
… in actual practice, we’ll also find that, as we develop the other perfections, our discernment (wisdom) develops further as well. In other words, the perfections develop reciprocally. They help one another along. Discernment gives guidance to the other perfections, at the same time that the act of developing the other perfections helps to make our discernment more penetrating and precise. (Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

Perhaps it would help to identify examples of what wisdom looks and feels like. Nelson Mandela embodied both dignity and wisdom; the Dalai Lama always speaks and acts in a way designed to bring about understanding and healing. The historical Buddha is an example of the potential we all carry for full awakening. We can take them and others as our models.

Sometimes wisdom is defined as an experientially-based (not intellectual) understanding of dukkha, its origin, its release, and the path to release (also known as the Buddha’s four truths); or it’s defined as an experientially-based knowledge of the process of dependent arising. But these are just words until we live in a way that reflects our understanding. Our actions of body, speech, and mind have consequences, good and bad, for ourselves and others. When we know this for sure, we can claim to be (at least a little bit) wise.

Steadying the mind

The perfection or pāramī of concentration is also one of the factors of the Buddha’s 8-fold path. It’s an element of practice that many find challenging or frustrating, but it is essential to making solid progress towards liberation.

Of course, we can concentrate when we’re focused on something we care about, whether it’s making a meal, or a playing a card game, or completing a project. Can we care about refining our minds as much as we care about anything else? Thanissaro Bhikkhu argues that in order to develop a solid mental base through concentration, we have to first commit to the Buddha’s path.

Read the full transcript of the talk this excerpt is taken from here: https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations9/Section0032.html

All too often it happens that when you sit down to concentrate on the breath, you stay with the breath for a little bit and then you’re off someplace else. You come back, you stay with it a little bit longer, but then you’re off again. This happens so many times that you begin to get discouraged. You think, “Maybe this concentration is no good,” so you throw it away. Instead, you should think that it’s like having a baby. You feed it. But then it cries. Then you have to change and wash the diapers. Then you have to feed it again. And it cries. But you don’t throw the baby away. You just realize that it needs extra work, continuous work. It’s the same with your concentration. …

Again, it’s like raising a child. In the beginning, you have to do everything for it: feed it, clothe it, clean it, comfort it. But after a while, the child begins to feed itself, clean itself, look after itself. You still have to watch over it. After all, it is your child and it’s still not an adult. But it’s not as difficult as in the first stage when it was a baby. So even though concentration may be difficult in the beginning, don’t think it’s going to always be that way. It’ll mature. But for it to mature, you have to give it what it needs. Give it your full attention. Be alert. Be mindful. Stick with it. Keep coming back, coming back. Keep encouraging yourself. And that’s how your feeble concentration becomes strong.

By training the mind to collect itself regularly, a number of benefits can accrue. First, experiencing a calm(er) mind is pleasant in itself. Every degree of tranquility that we access represents a commensurate degree of relief from agitation; when anxiety is completely absent, what comes in its place is a form of bliss. The other important purpose of cultivating concentration is that it supports the development of mindfulness as nothing else can. With a good balance of mindfulness and concentration, the inevitable result is growing wisdom; a clarity that can make our whole lives more liveable and fruitful.

What kind of strength do we need most?

The first three pāramī  or perfections (generosity, morality, and patience) are concerned with our actions of body, speech, and mind; the next three (energy, concentration, and wisdom) are focused inward. By developing the latter three of these pāramī, we strengthen all the interpersonal qualities we want to embody. It’s a reciprocal relationship; the more attentive we are to the wholesomeness (or not) of our words and actions, the more inclined we are to the cultivation of inner peace and wisdom. And the more we nurture our inner resources, the more naturally we will behave in harmonious ways.

The pāramī of viriya, (vigor, energy, strength) is what’s required of us to develop the path in ourselves. However, we’re not talking about bodily strength, but mental strength, which we may be unaccustomed to attending to.

From https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html#ch5

Energy (viriya), the mental factor behind right effort, can appear in either wholesome or unwholesome forms. The same factor fuels desire, aggression, violence, and ambition on the one hand, and generosity, self-discipline, kindness, concentration, and understanding on the other. The exertion involved in right effort is a wholesome form of energy,  …

Time and again the Buddha has stressed the need for effort, for diligence, exertion, and unflagging perseverance. The reason why effort is so crucial is that each person has to work out his or her own deliverance. The Buddha does what he can by pointing out the path to liberation; the rest involves putting the path into practice, a task that demands energy. This energy is to be applied to the cultivation of the mind, which forms the focus of the entire path.  …

The nature of the mental process effects a division of right effort into four “great endeavors”:

1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome [mind] states;
2. to abandon unwholesome [mind] states that have already arisen;
3. to arouse wholesome [mind] states that have not yet arisen;
4. to maintain and perfect wholesome [mind] states already arisen.

The four great endeavors remind me of a story:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” (https://www.urbanbalance.com/the-story-of-two-wolves/)

By feeding our “good wolf”, we are starving our “evil wolf”. We move along the path towards awakening by being vigilant about our intentions, the stories we tell ourselves, and the diligence with which we train our minds. This is the type of energy and effort the Buddha recommends.

Integrated practice

A comprehensive approach to Buddhist practice can be based on the pāramī or perfections. The number of items in this assembled list of virtuous actions varies in different traditions, but in one grouping, there are six:

1. Generosity or gift-giving (dāna)
2. Morality or the five precepts (sīla)
3. Patience and forgiveness (khanti)
4. Courage and vigor (viriya)
5. Concentration (samādhi)
6. Wisdom (paññā)

These are categories of action that we can cultivate and develop to a high degree, perhaps eventually “perfecting” them.

We’ve talked a lot about the first two paramī, generosity and the five precepts, so let’s consider patience. There are a number of ways we can think about patience. It could mean simply ignoring what’s going on, or at the other end of the spectrum, forgiving all involved and waiting for (or helping) energies to settle. What it doesn’t include is trying to quash anyone or anything, motivated by aversion.

In our busy lives, we may easily overlook the value of patience in our quest for accomplishment, efficiency, and fulfillment. When we recognize that clear seeing, peace, compassion, and love are quite different from, even incompatible with, compulsive behavior and reactions, the value of patience becomes apparent. Patience entails choosing not to respond reactively, allowing other possibilities to arise; it provides tremendous support for mindfulness practice. (Gil Fronsdal, from https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/patience/)

When is patience needed? When something is happening that we don’t like. Impatience is a close relative of aversion, anger, even hatred. We each have a different set of sensitivities; we think various things are not as they should be, or that someone is not behaving as they should. We could be waiting in a line that’s longer and slower than expected, or meeting with an unexplained delay in traffic, or fuming that a bus or train is not on schedule.

As Gil Fronsdal advises in the article quoted above, we can develop patience by broadening our field of vision. We can take into consideration factors beyond our desires. What might be compelling someone to act in a way that we find annoying or threatening? What is driving us that makes us feel we’re being impeded? What’s the relative importance or urgency of the two “opposing” forces? Is the thing causing us to feel impatient unexpected? Or is it something we encounter often and regularly have the same response?

At https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-paramis-heart-of-buddhas-teachings-and-of-our-own-practice/, Sylvia Boorstin says this about patience:

One way to think about patience is re­flecting on the ability to wait when an­ger arises in the mind. Lots of things make us angry. Often we feel the victim of something, and, especially when we feel we’re unjustly a victim, a lot of en­ergy comes up around righteous indig­nation. Patience allows us to wait until the cloud of anger, which distorts the mind, subsides so we can decide on ap­propriate action.

The present is a good time to reflect on which circumstances or situations in our life offer opportunities to cultivate patience.

Wholistic practice

Learning to practice mindfulness requires both an effort to cultivate periods of quiet meditation, and also a growing awareness of our words and actions and what effect they have on ourselves and others. This is not a difficult discipline, but a sustainable training; we bring our attention back to our bodies, our breath and what we are doing, over and over again, each time we remember our intention to be mindful. The benefit of becoming aware of our words and actions as they happen is that we are more and more likely to steer them in wholesome directions, avoiding causing harm and inclining towards creating harmony and peace.

Developing a wholistic path of practice (from Jill Shepherd’s newsletter https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGxSHdSrKjLLTKVdnWrWccmPJGc)

…I started to re-appreciate just how comprehensive the Buddha’s path to freedom is. It includes every aspect of our lives, but perhaps because of how the Dhamma has come to the West, so far there has been a much bigger emphasis on just the meditative aspects of this path.

As a result, it can take quite a while before people understand that meditation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and that how we live our everyday lives has a big effect on what we experience in formal practice. As mindfulness has become more mainstream though, it’s sometimes presented as being something you just sprinkle over your life, like a bit of fairy dust, and hey presto, everything will be OK …

If only it was that simple and easy! By contrast, the Buddha, in laying out the Noble Eightfold Path, was very clear that we need to take care with the whole of our lives, because that’s the context that meditation emerges from. So we need to pay equal attention to all eight factors of this path, not just the meditative ones.

For more exploration of this theme, you can listen to a recent dhamma talk here

It is important to include ourselves in our good intentions. We are all hard on ourselves in various ways. We can be mindful of that process and skillfully examine it. Do we use a harsher tone of voice when we narrate our actions internally than we would ever use with another human being? Being kind, forgiving, and encouraging to ourselves is the basis for being kind, forgiving, and encouraging to others.

We can cultivate this attitude either from the outside or from the inside. We can practice being gentle with ourselves, which will (eventually) result in our being gentler with others. We can also practice being kind to others, which will (eventually) lead us to act more kindly towards ourselves. When we let go of our ego-needs, even for a short time, the Brahmavihāras (divine abodes), appear. The four forms of limitless love are always present in us, but are often obscured by our fear or inattention.

As Jill Shepherd says above, mindfulness is an “all the time” practice. We notice what’s happening and make adjustments as we go, bringing more care and awareness to each moment. In this way, we guide ourselves towards freedom.

Love and fear

What keeps us from embracing the Brahmavihāras, the four types of unlimited love and care recommended by the Buddha? What is the impediment that prevents our hearts from opening wide? Perhaps we’ve been hurt in the past and are wary of making ourselves vulnerable again. Maybe it was the custom in our family of origin to belittle people who didn’t display “toughness”.

Whatever the reason, the answer is that some variety of fear blocks us from being as open-hearted as we could be. We might be afraid of being hurt, or ridiculed, or embarassed, or maybe we just keep ourselves too busy to take the time to listen and appreciate other people, or even ourselves. It’s worth considering what holds us back from reaching our most loving potential.

There are several ways that teachers have put forward to help us develop our ability to fully accept and care for others. There is no one method that works for everyone; we have to be creative. However, we must be willing to first accept and love ourselves.

From Akāliko Bhikkhu: What’s important in developing a mind of love/friendliness/ kindness is that it is not an intellectual or dry theoretical thing, nor a rigid technique with strict rules, but rather it is all about the emotion and the instructions or method are only there so that people feel the actual emotion of love and get familiar with it. Then they can know when it is absent and when it is present and how to develop it. Love needs to be firstly felt in oneself before it can be shared with others. A big problem for many people is that due to depression, low self esteem, anger, emotional numbness etc, they can’t get in touch with this feeling and they find metta practice to be frustrating or challenging, or dry and boring. So teachers develop skillful means to help people uncover love within themselves and allow it to bubble to the surface. https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/why-does-almost-everyone-teach-the-brahmaviharas-wrong/23883/4

Many approaches to cultivating mettā start with repeating to ourselves, “May I be filled with loving-kindness”. Another phrase that works for some is, “May I be well, happy, and peaceful; as I wish to be well, happy, and peaceful, may all beings be well, happy, and peaceful.” In this way we can acknowledge that we want to be happy and contented, and with only a little imagination we can see that everyone else has this desire, too. Often the ways we try to make ourselves happy lead in the opposite direction, but the wish is still there. Acknowledging this universal desire for happiness is the beginning of wisdom.