Awakening Means Being Released from Delusion
In this talk, I explain the structure of awakening in Buddhism. Anyone who studies Buddhism, seeks awakening, or wants to become a Buddha must first know the direction in which they are moving. Without understanding the structure, one may mistake an experience of temporarily quieting the mind for awakening, or mistake belief in scriptures and teachers for Buddhism itself.
An awakened one is called Buddha, the one who has opened his eyes. Yet opening one’s eyes does not primarily mean acquiring a great amount of knowledge. It means being released from something. This release is liberation, and what one must be released from is delusion. When a person who was bound to the wrong things is released from delusion, that person becomes free, and the fires of greed, anger, ignorance, and conceit go out. To the familiar three poisons, greed, anger, and ignorance, I add conceit. Nirvana is the quiet state in which these four fires have gone out.
The heart of awakening is release. Released from what? Released from delusion.
It is therefore not enough simply to suppress oneself with commands not to be greedy or angry. Greed, anger, ignorance, and conceit are thoughts and actions that arise when a person misunderstands oneself and the world. When someone holding a hot object clearly understands what is burning the hand, the person lets it go. Likewise, when one deeply recognizes that these four fires are causing suffering, one does not merely force them down. One lets them go.
Buddhism Begins with Doubt, Not Belief
Delusion has an important feature: while we are caught in it, we cannot recognize it as delusion. A person who misunderstands someone else does not regard the thought as a misunderstanding until an explanation reveals what happened. Someone who believed that the sun revolved around the earth likewise did not regard that belief as a delusion before learning that the earth revolves around the sun.
The first principle of Buddhism is therefore questioning and doubt. If we say that something is written in a scripture and must simply be believed and followed, our practice can become superstition rather than Buddhism. Scriptures and commentaries, masters and patriarchs, and even present-day people who speak about awakening can contain truth mixed with fiction, understanding mixed with delusion, and sometimes lies. No statement becomes true merely because of the authority behind it.
Without doubt and questions, one is not practicing Buddhism.
The greatest questions that start Buddhist practice are also universal human questions. Who am I? Why was I born? Why do people age, become ill, and die? How should I live? Reading a sentence about rebirth or karma and merely saying, “So that is how it is,” does not resolve these questions. We must ask whether it is really so and what we ourselves actually are.
To be released from delusion, we must leave open the possibility that we are deluded. A person who believes that they already know everything cannot hear another person or see counterexamples in reality. If I admit that I am not yet an arahant, that I may not know, and that I may be mistaken, I can finally question my own thought and listen to others. The deeper Buddhist study becomes, the lower one’s head bows, because one sees one’s ignorance and limits more clearly.
Nama-Rupa: Matter and the Meanings Humans Give It
To see the structure of awakening, we must first understand nama-rupa. Rupa began as a word for visible form and expanded to refer to matter. Matter exists beyond what our five senses can directly detect, but we experience the material world through those limited senses.
Nama is the activity of naming and assigning meaning. We call a certain form a tree, distinguish large houses from small ones, and judge a face to be beautiful. Yet the name “tree” and the standard of beauty are not attached to matter itself. People create names for convenience, repeatedly learn them in society, and assign meanings through experience. The humanly experienced world is a world in which matter is entangled with the names and meanings given to it.
We do not simply see the world. We see matter while naming it and giving it meaning.
If we fail to see this meaning-making, it is difficult to understand what we desire and why we suffer. The desire realm, form realm, and formless realm should not be understood as a map of heavens and hells that literally exist somewhere else. They are a framework that shows the structure of perception, desire, and practice.
The Desire Realm: Wanting What Has Been Given Meaning
Eating when hungry and breathing are basic bodily needs. They are not in themselves good or bad. The desire discussed here is the added wish that stands on top of basic need. A person desires not merely matter itself but what the person and society have endowed with a particular meaning.
The ideas that a certain face is beautiful, that a large house and money are good, or that one should be with a romantic partner at Christmas are not given at birth. They are learned by repeatedly watching and listening to other people, advertising, and dramas. When I was at university, I sometimes felt depressed at Christmas because I had no girlfriend. As a child, the same Christmas had not depressed me at all. What changed was not the date but the meanings of Christmas, romance, and happiness that had entered my mind.
The desire realm is the world in which we want things because of the meanings we have given them.
A child’s toy works in the same way. A child who was content with a robot at home sees an advertisement for a new gold-painted robot and absorbs the meaning that this new one is better. At that moment, the toy already in hand loses value, and the unattained toy becomes a source of suffering. It seems that the child suffers because a desire has not been fulfilled, but before that suffering stands the assigned meaning that the new toy is better and must be possessed.
Absorption in the Form Realm: Judgment Stops and the Mind Grows Quiet
Absorption in the form realm is not a state in which all assigned meanings have disappeared. Countless concepts and standards remain in the mind, but while we are deeply focused on one thing, we cannot retrieve them and make other judgments. A person cannot fully attend to two things at once.
When absorbed in Go, basketball, a game, reading, painting, or singing, we temporarily forget problems at work, worries about money, and the depression we felt moments ago. Until that activity ends, other meanings and judgments cannot operate. Our hobbies, in a shallow sense, perform the function of absorption. The four absorptions of the Buddhist form realm push this concentration much deeper.
When we are deeply absorbed in one thing, judgments driven by assigned meanings stop and the mind becomes quiet.
Whether the object is breathing, chanting, bowing, a meditation topic, or a flame, concentration on one thing can produce absorption. As concentration deepens, surrounding noise and other thoughts fade, and judgments of good and bad cease. What is seen remains simply seen, and what is heard remains simply heard. The four stages should be understood not as four absolutely separate worlds but as a convenient division of the depth of concentration.
A Peaceful Mind Is Not in Itself Awakening
The crucial problem is mistaking the quiet of absorption for awakening. Even if someone sits in the mountains all day without a disturbed mind, that alone does not mean that the person understands oneself and the world. In its operating principle, it is not different from becoming completely immersed in a game or a book and temporarily forgetting one’s worries.
We must also distinguish kinds of suffering. Awakening cannot remove the bodily pain of hunger, disease, or being stabbed. Suffering caused by a wrongful social structure must be addressed by changing society. What Buddhism directly illuminates is the additional mental suffering we generate through our own standards and delusions.
A peaceful and quiet mind does not by itself mean that one is awakened.
Absorption lets us experience how suffering moves through thought and judgment. Yet stopping thought for a while without understanding its cause does not answer our questions. The quiet of absorption alone cannot tell us who we are, what perception is, why we undergo birth, aging, illness, and death, or what suffering and awakening are.
Only after Absorption Do the Buddhist Questions Truly Begin
Yoga and concentration practices existed in ancient India before Buddhism. The Buddha learned them, and other renunciants of the time practiced them. Whether one gazes at fire or attends to breathing, the phenomenon in which immersion quiets the mind is not the secret of one religion. Absorption in the form realm is an important preparation for Buddhist practice, but it is not its completion.
After absorption, we must ask what the seen object and the seeing self are, what perception and the world are, and what the meanings we assign really are. When these questions are pursued deeply, dependent arising becomes visible, and impermanence and non-self are other expressions of it. Mind does not exist alone, separated from the body and world, nor is there an immortal atman within us that can know everything. Perception, mind, and body all arise within relations and conditions.
Everything exists within relationships. It is therefore impermanent, and nothing can be isolated as an eternal self.
Even a rock changes under the action of wind, sunlight, water, and matter. Whatever affects and is affected by other things cannot remain eternally identical. What we call birth and death are linguistic cuts through part of a change in which many conditions gather and disperse. Just as an egg did not suddenly arise from nothing at the moment it emerged but formed within relationships, arising and ceasing are scenes within the flow of dependent arising.
The Fires Go Out When Even the Desire for Transcendence Is Released
The Buddha, too, may initially have sought escape from birth, aging, illness, and death and tried to transcend the body to become something complete. Once dependent arising is seen, however, an immortal soul and the wish for perfect transcendence are confronted as meanings and desires made by humans. We must release attachment to worldly desires, but we must also release the desire to become a perfectly pure, transcendent being.
This is the attitude that clings neither to ora nor param, neither the low nor the transcendent. A human cannot become a perfect and pure divine being, and chasing such an illusion can itself become another delusion. When we face that we are humans and animals, conditioned beings who could die at any time, the wish that chases illusions comes to a stop.
When we look directly at the world and at ourselves, the fires of greed, anger, ignorance, and conceit go out.
A Buddha is a person who knows that one is human. Such a person is not imprisoned by words and concepts but begins to see oneself and the world moving through dependent conditions. Then the delusions that kindled greed, anger, ignorance, and conceit collapse, and the extinguishing called liberation and nirvana begins. Awakening is not a technique for keeping the mind quiet. It is looking directly at oneself and the world as they are and being released from delusion.
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