Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode 5 of Being Integrity. We’re going to discuss the process of transformation. Up until now, we’ve been slogging through a bunch of definitions and preliminaries.
But this is the actual heart of the matter. This is the engine of the Buddha’s teaching, and we can use it to become anything we want to be. And of course, what we want to be is a person of integrity. So we’re going to explore that in this episode, and then give some examples in the next couple of episodes to make it clear.
What is becoming?
Becoming is the process of changing your being. Actually, our being is changing all the time anyway. It’s a natural process, a natural law, just like gravity. We don’t realize that we’re changing our being because we’re under the control of external forces.
We don’t have knowledge of the process, and so we don’t know how to take control of it. But what is becoming?
The dictionary defines becoming as follows:
Begin to be, grow to be, turn into, of a person, qualify or be accepted as, acquire the status of. ‘She wanted to become a doctor.’
So to become means to change your being. Now we’re being one thing, we want to be something else. So how do we do that?
The Buddha gives an agricultural analogy. He defines becoming as follows:
“kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, craving the moisture. The consciousness of living beings is tuned to a lower quality, to a middling property, to a refined property. Thus, there is the production of renewed becoming in the future. That is how there is becoming.”
So the dictionary tells us what becoming is, but the Buddha tells us how. kamma (or karma) is the accumulated result of previous activities. So in order to become something, we have to have a requisite kamma. It’s sort of like a bank account.
If you want to buy a ticket to someplace, you have to have enough money in your bank account to afford it. Similarly, if we want to become something, we have to have enough kamma supporting that change in being in order to make it successfully.
Consciousness is the seed. So by changing our consciousness, we change the process of being to become whatever it is we want to be. And consciousness, of course, is influenced by name-and-form. We’ll get into that in great detail later on. And craving is the moisture. Craving means desire.
You have to have the desire to become something different than what you are now. And we’ll also get into that in detail in the next episode. So let’s talk about the process of becoming, as given in the Buddha’s teaching. This circular figure is called the Wheel of kamma.
And it’s a common symbol in Buddhism. Here we see a modern rendering of it. But it’s a very common symbol. You’ll see it everywhere in temples.
What does this wheel represent? Well, it represents the Buddha’s teaching in summary. On the left side of the wheel, we have the stages of Dependent Origination, from ignorance all the way down to suffering. And this represents the First and Second Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is there is suffering.
The second Noble Truth is the cause of suffering, the origin of suffering. This is the origin of suffering. This is the detailed knowledge of it. On the right hand side, we have the path to unbinding, to nibbāna, to full enlightenment.
And this is the Third and Fourth Noble Truths: cessation of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering, the Noble Eightfold Path.
So the process on the left is a descending process. It’s a process of becoming. The process on the right, shown in green, is an ascending process. It’s also a process of becoming, but it’s a very special one, a very unique one, that leads to nibbāna, that leads to the cessation of suffering and deliverance from conditioned existence.
So let’s look into this deeper. The process of becoming has 12 stages, beginning with ignorance, and it’s a descending process. In other words, it leads to our long-term degradation and suffering, as stated by the Buddha. And this is the process of becoming, or Dependent Origination. This is how conditioned being is created.
The right side is an ascending process leading to the long-term elevation and liberation of living beings. And this is the end of becoming, the Noble Eightfold Path. And as I said, the Noble Eightfold Path is another process of becoming, but a kind of becoming that leads to the end of becoming. This is a very special thing which we’ll talk about toward the end of the series, once the understanding of this process is well established in your mind.
Now when we speak about the process of becoming, specifically, we’re talking about these steps in the process of Dependent Origination.
Now these steps can be manipulated, can be engineered, if you will, to produce any kind of becoming. And so the first step in the process of overcoming suffering is to gain understanding and mastery of these stages, of this process of becoming, so that you can create any kind of becoming that you want.
For applications like ontological education, integrity, and leadership, we are especially interested in this part of the process, because by gradually mastering the higher stages of the process—in other words, fabrication, consciousness, name-and-form—we can gain leverage to control the subsequent stages of the process, such as the senses, contact, feelings, and so forth. We can use the leverage of the knowledge gained from the Buddha’s teaching to control the process of becoming, and in that way we can fashion any kind of being that we desire.
Are you starting to get the picture?
Now, let’s take a close look at each stage of the process of becoming. So we’re going to give the definitions from the Paṭicca Samuppāda Vibhanga Sutta. The Buddha says,
“and what is ignorance? Not knowing stress, not knowing the origination of stress, not knowing the cessation of stress, not knowing the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress. This is called ignorance.”
So what are these things?
The Four Noble Truths. Because we don’t know the Four Noble Truths, we start a process of becoming that leads to suffering. In other words, out of ignorance, we don’t realize that any kind of becoming is going to lead to suffering. And so we begin a process of becoming, we initiate a process of becoming by our desire, by our intention, that leads to gross, abject suffering, such as birth and death in conditioned consciousness. This is called ignorance because if we knew better, of course, we wouldn’t do that. The process of becoming always begins from some degree of ignorance.
These Four Noble Truths are actually very deep. They’re not just catchphrases, ‘oh yeah, stress, the origination of stress, cessation of stress,’ and so on. Each one represents a tremendous amount of knowledge. And you’re going to gain that knowledge step-by-step as you practice.
And what are fabrications? These three are fabrications: bodily fabrications, verbal fabrications, mental fabrications. These are called fabrications.
They’re also sometimes translated as formations, determinations, and various other terms, but they all mean the same thing. Once we decide to create a certain state of being, then we begin to fabricate it. We fabricate it on the bodily level, on the verbal level, and on the mental level; but chiefly the mental level, and then the verbal, and then the physical.
So how do we do that? Well, this is why we stress terminology, because what we do is we create a network of terminology dealing with the type of being that we want to attain. This is the very first step after the initial intention to create a state of being. So it’s really, really important that we learn and understand how semantic systems, how ontology works, so that we can create the type of ontology, the type of context that leads to mastery of the process of becoming.
Next is consciousness, and by this the Buddha means conditioned consciousness:
What is consciousness? These six are classes of consciousness: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, mind-consciousness. This is called consciousness.
In other words, according to the Buddha, there is no such thing as pure consciousness. Consciousness** is always associated with a sense and sense objects.
There is no such thing as consciousness without senses. The type of consciousness, of course, that we experience through the senses is conditioned consciousness.
And how do we condition our consciousness? Through fabrication. In other words, we create categories of existence, categories of being, or categories of experience. And then we apply these to the experiences that we gain through our senses, and we begin to classify them according to those categories.
That’s why fabrication of verbal networks, such as ontologies and so on, is so important. Because they determine the categories of experience that we can experience through our consciousness. And if we happen to experience something that’s not in any of those categories, we’ll miss it. We won’t recognize it, and we won’t even be aware of it in most cases.
So this is why we have to get rid of our ignorance and develop our classes of consciousness to the point where we can be conscious of the higher things that are possible in life. Next is name-and-form.
What is name-and-form? Feelings, perception, intention, contact, and attention. This is called name.
And later on we’ll go into each one of these in detail.
The four great elements—earth, water, fire, and air—and the form dependent on the four great elements. This is called form. This name and this form are called name-and-form.
So now we’ve passed beyond the stage of consciousness to the stage of name-and-form. We’re starting to fashion something out of the four elements, earth, water, fire, and air.
We’re starting to create a kind of being. And how do we do that?Well, we do that on the mental, on the verbal, and on the physical levels. In this way we lock ourselves into a particular type of being, a particular process of becoming, a particular state of consciousness. And it’s all because of the fabrications that we made earlier in the process.
Now the six senses:
What are the six sense media? These six are sense media: the eye medium, the ear medium, the nose medium, the tongue medium, the body medium, and the mind medium. These are called the six sense media.
How are we aware of name-and-form? Through the six senses. Of course the six senses come into the stage of consciousness as well. But here they are emphasized that this name-and-form that we’re creating begins to become tangible. We begin to acquire a location and a world, a type of environment for our becoming.
And it starts to become tangible, real, and sensible. Then there’s contact.
And what is contact? These six are classes of contact: eye contact, ear contact, nose contact, tongue contact, body contact, mind contact. This is called contact
or contact of the senses with their objects. So far we have been developing a type of being through this process of becoming that is basically intangible. It hasn’t really landed yet anywhere until we hit contact. And at the time of contact this means the actual sense impressions are generated by contact of the senses with their objects.
And this is where it gets real. This is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Next is the stage of feelings:
What is feelings? These six are classes of feelings: feelings born from eye contact; feelings born from ear contact; feelings born from nose contact; feelings born from tongue contact; feelings born from body contact; feelings born from mind contact. This is called feelings.
And there are three kinds of feelings: pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, and neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable feelings. When we have contact the next thing immediately is, “Do I like it or don’t I like it? Or is it neither one?**
And this is feelings. At this point we are pretty much locked into this process of becoming. In other words, it has become fully determined. It has become manifest in the world and in our experience as well. That we have senses, contact, and feelings. Now we have feelings about it. Is it good or bad? Well whichever way it is, it’s pretty much too late to do anything about it at the stage of feelings.
There is a type of meditation practice where you try to detach yourself from your feelings. You hear this many times when talking about meditation. Just be aware of your feelings and let them pass. Don’t judge them and so on like that. Don’t cling to them.
But the problem is you’ve already got these feelings. That means there is contact. That means you have a kind of being, a kind of name-and-form already.
So at this stage it’s really difficult to change the process of being. Whatever process of being that you initiated in the higher stages is pretty much determined and you are going to have to ride it out all the way through the end. The next stage is craving.
“What is craving? There are six classes of craving: craving for forms, craving for sounds, craving for smells, craving for tastes, craving for sensations and craving for ideas. This is called craving
and this is where the suffering starts. Because once we get feelings, and especially feelings of displeasurableness from our contact, then we start to crave, “Oh I wish I had better feelings.” Or even if our feelings are pleasurable, we might want to crave more pleasurable feelings and so on.
Or if we have some pleasurable feelings and then they go away, we start to crave more of those same kinds of feelings. This is self-created suffering. This is where the suffering really starts, is in craving. Because then the next thing is clinging:
“And what is clinging? These four are clinging: sensuality clinging, view clinging, precept-and-practice clinging, and doctrine-of-self clinging.
So everybody can understand sensuality clinging. Sensuality clinging is when we get some nice feeling and then we want to have more of it or we want to extend it or so on. Or we get some displeasurable feelings and we want it to go away.
It’s also a kind of clinging, clinging to non-being. But view clinging, precept-and-practice clinging and especially doctrine-of-self clinging are also major causes of suffering. Clinging to views, well everybody knows about that because we have certain views. We have certain ideas about the world and we’re very, very reluctant to change them. People will rather fight sometimes than change their views about the world. And this creates tremendous suffering.
And then we also have views about self, views about philosophy and spiritual practice. So these views are also objects of clinging. If you’ve ever tried to discuss philosophy with someone who is committed to a certain religious path, you know what I’m talking about. They see things a certain way and they’re clinging to that and that’s the end of the story. They’re not willing to change anything. Then there’s self-clinging, the views of self.
And these are a major source of aberration and self-deception, thinking that ‘I am a permanent self, I am especially an eternal self or soul and I exist forever.’ Actually, “I” doesn’t exist at all. “I” is simply something that we build up out of sense perceptions. And we discussed that extensively in the video on Mūlapariyāya Sutta.
So I’ll put a link to that on the bottom here. Now we come to the stage of becoming
“and what is becoming? These three are becomings: sensual becoming, form becoming and formless becoming.
So sensual becoming means to try to become a certain way of sense perception. In other words, let’s say I want to always have enough to eat. So I want to be someone who always has enough food. So this is my sensual becoming. And of course, if anything disturbs that becoming, then I’m in suffering. I’m hungry, I’m ravenous, I’m starving.
Form becoming means I want to become a certain type of form. And of course, by this time in the process of becoming, I’m already in a particular form. I had to generate a form, an environment for that form to get to this stage of the process. So whatever form I’ve got, I’m stuck with that. And of course, every form has limitations. Every form has imperfections. And so I’m going to have to deal with those and that causes suffering.
And finally, there’s formless becoming. We not only want to have a certain form, a certain bodily image, we also want to have a particular mental image, a type of being that is not in form. Well, it’s actually subtle form. And in the very high stages of meditation, there can also be actual formless existence. But that’s pretty much beyond the level of discussion now.
And the next stage is birth. Birth can be bodily birth, or it can be the birth of a self, an ego, an identity, a state of being, or what have you. So birth is defined as
“whatever birth, taking birth, descent, coming to be, coming forth, appearance of aggregates, and acquisition of sense media of the various beings in this or that group of beings. That is called birth.
So it’s not only the physical birth of the body, from the body of the mother. It’s also coming to be, or coming forth, or appearance of aggregates—the aggregates, of course, are the senses and the sense objects—is called birth. So if we read this carefully, we can understand that there are many types of birth on many different levels.
And so the birth of a self or an “I”, the coming to be or coming forth of that identity, the appearance of aggregates of some creative process, let’s say—this is also birth. If we’re trying to create a specific type of becoming, this is where that becoming becomes visible to others.
Finally, we have aging and death.
“Now what is aging and death? Whatever aging, decrepitude, brokenness, graying, wrinkling, decline of life force, weakening of the faculties of the various beings in this or that group of beings, that is called aging.
And whatever deceasing, passing away, breaking up, disappearance, dying, death, completion of time, breakup of the aggregates, casting off of the body, interruption in the life faculty of the various beings in this or that group of beings, that is called death.
So aging and death are an inevitable and natural result of the process of becoming. This is saying, “whatever has a beginning also has an end; so whatever is born will also die.”
Whatever has gone through the process of becoming and being will also have to endure non-being and non-becoming. In other words, people who think that the cure for being is non-being are wrong, because non-being is an inevitable part of the process of being. In other words, death is part of life. As soon as you sign up for life, you also have to go through death.
It’s part of the natural process of becoming. Any time you initiate a cycle of becoming, it will always end in aging and death. Everything grows old and everything eventually withers away and dies. This brings us to suffering.
“From birth as a requisite condition, then aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress and despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress and suffering.
So if you’re suffering, if you’re in stress, this is why. Because you’re being. Because you’re becoming. That is why we often use the word “being” in quotes. It’s not real being; it’s conditioned being. It’s being that begins from ignorance and ends in death and suffering. That’s not real being. That’s not the kind of being we actually want. And that’s why we’re suffering.
So in other words, the cause of suffering, the ultimate cause of suffering is this process of conditioned being, or becoming based on ignorance. That is the ultimate meaning of the process of Dependent Origination, the process of becoming. It’s a descending process, and it takes us into the depths of suffering as just a normal part of its cycle.
This whole thing is called Dependent Origination. This is given in the Suttas, and it gives us a picture of how we come to be. So let’s run through it one more time right from the suttas and see how it works.
So this is a type of causality called this-that causality. In other words, because this exists, then that exists. Because ignorance exists, fabrication exists. Because fabrication exists, consciousness exists and so on, all the way down to aging and death and suffering.
Sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress and despair arise together. It’s a package deal. We can’t avoid any of it as soon as we begin this process of Dependent Origination based on ignorance. Now our strategy in the Buddha’s teaching is to end this ignorance. And when we end our ignorance, then it begins to disappear.
And what happens? We begin to develop positive qualities. From the cessation of ignorance, cessation of fabrications occurs. To make ignorance go away, we have to develop integrity. So integrity is the first stage on the Eightfold Noble Path.
Sometimes you see it translated ‘faith’. What does that faith mean? It means that we follow the precepts, that we have integrity, and that we begin the practice according to the instructions of the Buddha. So from the cessation of ignorance, cessation of fabrications occurs. That brings us to contentment.
From the cessation of fabrications, cessation of consciousness occurs. Well, what kind of consciousness? Conditioned consciousness, actually consciousness of suffering, based on a relative platform. And instead we get consciousness based on an absolute platform of transcendent knowledge and integrity, and that brings us to contentment.
Then we start meditation practice, and we experience rapture, and that gives us cessation of consciousness, and from cessation of consciousness, cessation of name-and-form occurs, and so on:
And this brings us to nibbāna and unbinding. And later on in our series, we’re going to discuss this process in detail, but the point I want to make now—and make very well: if you take nothing else away from this video, you need to understand that integrity is the key to getting out of the process of becoming in conditioned consciousness and beginning the Eightfold Path that leads to nibbāna and unbinding. Please make that very firm in your mind that in order to get on this eight-fold path, integrity is the necessary prerequisite.