Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha. An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book - [12]

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Wisdom, The Third Training

Sounds simple, and while it is, it also isn't. There are many types of insight that we may derive from experiencing the world. Usually, we might think of training in wisdom as having to do with relative issues like how to live our lives. In this sense, one might just try to be wiser.

Perhaps we could skillfully reflect on something that went badly and see if perhaps in the future some wisdom gained from that experience might change the way we live our life. This is an ordinary form of wisdom, and so the insights we derive from such reflections and observations are insights into the ordinary world.

On the other hand, these sorts of reflections can only take us so far, and to really get what the Buddha was talking about, we need to go far beyond these conventional definitions of wisdom and attain to ultimate insights by doing insight practices. Many people try to make insight practices into an exercise that will produce both insights into the ordinary world and also ultimate insights. I have come to the conclusion that we should not count on ultimate teachings to illuminate our relative issues or vice versa, and so I feel that it is extremely important to keep the relative and ultimate wisdom teachings separate. Failure to do so causes endless problems and makes progress on either front more difficult rather than easier. Thus, I will revisit this topic again and again throughout this work, doing my best to clearly differentiate those practices that produce ordinary wisdom from those practices that fall within the third training and lead to ultimate realizations that are independent of our relative insights.

There are many wisdom traditions and many styles of insight

practices. I will lay out a number of them explicitly and hint at many others in the chapters that follow. When choosing an insight tradition, I would suggest you look for a tradition that is tried and true, meaning that is either very old and well tested, or at least can, in modern times, demonstrate that it consistently leads to unshakable realizations. I can verify that the specific practices I will present lead to the effects I promise if they are applied as recommended. Even better, you should verify this for yourself.

A brief note of caution here: occasionally, when people begin to really get into spirituality, they may get a bit fascinated with it and may forget some of the useful relative wisdom they have learned from 14

Wisdom, The Third Training

before. Caught up in “ultimate wisdom” and their “spiritual quest,” they can sometimes abandon conventional wisdom and other aspects of their

“former life” to a degree that may not be very wise. They falsely imagine that by training in insight they are also mastering or transcending the first training, that of living in the ordinary world. We awaken to the actual truth of our life in all of its conventional aspects by definition, so make sure that yours is a life you will want to wake up to.

In summary, by seeing deeply into the truth of our own experience, profound and beneficial transformations of consciousness are definitely possible. You guessed it, we’re talking about enlightenment, The Big E, awakening, freedom, Nirvana, the unconditioned, and all of that. The arising of this understanding is the primary focus of this book. There are actually lots of interesting insights that typically occur even before awakening. Again, there are no magic formulae for producing ultimate insights, except for the Three Characteristics...

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5.THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS

The Three Characteristics are so central to the teachings of the Buddha that it is almost inconceivable how little attention the vast majority of so-called insight meditators pay to them. They are impermane nce , un satisfactori nes s, and no- self . I cannot possibly stress enough the usefulness of trying again and again to really understand these three qualities of all experience. They are the stuff from which ultimate insight at all levels comes, pure and simple. They are the marks of ultimate reality. Every single time I say, “understand the true nature of things,” what I mean is, “understand the Three Characteristics.” To really understand them is to be enlightened.

Somehow this exceedingly important message just doesn't typically seem to get through to insight meditators, and thus they spend so much time doing anything but looking precisely moment to moment into the Three Characteristics. They may be thinking about something, lost in the stories and tape loops of the mind, trying to work on their stuff, philosophizing, trying to quiet the mind, or who knows what, and this can go on for year after year, retreat after retreat, and of course they wonder why they don't have more insight yet. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions, but you do not have to be part of it! You can be one of those insight meditators that knows what to do, does it, and finally “gets it” in the grandest sense.

The big message here is: drop the stories, find a physical object like the breath or body or pain or pleasure or whatever, and look into the Three Characteristics precisely and consistently! Drop to the level of bare sensations! This is vipassana, insight meditation, or whatever you want to call it. It is the way of the Buddhas. All the “opening to it,” “just being with it,” “letting it go” and all of that are quite important, as we will see later, but insight meditators must, repeat, must, look into the following: