When I first started with Buddhism, I went on a Vipassana retreat and learnt the fundamentals of Buddhism from the Theravada tradition. There was something that always bugged me, despite being convinced about the practice. The teacher said: 'We are here to change the habit pattern of the mind and to remove all sanskaras and thus remove all incling of craving and aversion.'
What bothered me was that we were all there with the desire to learn the meditation, and I presume all of us wanted to attain enlightenment.
So how could we be trying to get rid of craving and aversion.
This question has bothered me for some time until I read the section on Buddhism at that Muslim site that Brian recommended us to see. The writer uses my same arguments in negating Buddhism.
Now I've known that the emphasis in Theravada schools is on removing craving and aversion and Mahayana schools focus more on removing ignorance. They share the same view in my opinion, it's just that their methods are different.
I think that there is a common misunderstanding about what the Buddha means when he talks about craving and aversion. It is known that through time and translations to different languages, the meanings of words can be lost and also that some languages may have many different words with subtler meanings which in another language are only granted a single word.
For instance ignorance in sanskrit has two forms, a sort of mundane ignorance (ajnana) and a fundamental ignorance (avidya). The mundane being about knowledge: how many colours there are in the rainbow, where tornadoes come from. The supramundane being about dualism, seeing that opposites are one in the same.
Here is an extract by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's from 'The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep': 'Prior to realisation, the individual's true nature is obscured by the root ignorance that gives rise to the conceptial mind. Ensnared in dualistic vision, the conceptual mind divides the seamless unity of experience into conceptual entities and then relates to these mental projections as if they inherently exist as separate beings and things. The primary dualism divides experience into self and other, and from the identification of only one aspect of experience, the self, preferences develop.'
This would be the first link in the 12 chains of samsaric existence.
He continues: 'This results in the arising of aversion and desire, which become the basis for both physical and mental actions. These actions (karma) leave traces in the individual's mind as conditioned tendencies, resulting in more grasping and aversion, which lead to new karmic traces, and so on. This is the self-perpetuating cycle of karma.'
The second link is sanskara or 'conditional response.' Here there is no consciousness performing the task, it simply happens without any will involved, like pulling your hand away from a hot plate. It is this unconscious aversion to the hot plate which is under scrutiny, not conscious desire which forms the eighth link in the chain.
The desire and aversion one tries to transcend are not the ones which are ultimately products of consciousness, they are the cause of consciousness.
Here are the 12 chains of existence:
1 - Ignorance
2 - Conditional response
3 - Consciousness
4 - Name and Form
5 - The Senses
6 - Contact
7 - Sensation
8 - Desire
9 - Attachment
10 - Existence
11 - Birth
12 - Death
The root of our problems lies in what we are not aware of. 'I know I must be nice, but I just can't help acting in such and such a way when I meet a certain person.' This is because the unconscious mind starts sending me big signals to stay away or defend with aggression. For whatever reason, maybe the person is notoriously violent, for instance. The mind is conditioned to respond to that type of person in a certain way. It has sanskaras. The man might be a reborn Christian, but because my mind is conditioned, I judge him and see him as he was, not as he is.
The point is to put everything under control of the conscious mind so that we can act appropriately to each situation as it arises without being biased by our own conditional responses. Our desires and aversions are perfectly valid so long as they are conscious. They can be controlled with rational thought, unlike our unconscious which needs special methods such as meditation. If our desires and aversions are put on automatic, in other words, they manifest simply as a result of our conditional responses without any consciousness inbetween, then we're going to become attached. When you are attached to a certain way of thinking, it is more difficult to break away and do something different, to have a choice. It's like being addicted, except it's psychological addiction, not physical.
The chain of existence can be broken at many different links, and it is best to do so at as many as possible.
Awareness of the ultimate nature of reality, emptiness will lead to the removal of link 1, ignorance. Awareness of the unconscious thought processes, the sanskaras will remove link 2.
Awareness of the lack of the inherent self or focusing our beneficial actions on others will remove link 3.
I say awareness and not knowledge because we need to experience the truth not just know it.
This is why absorbing oneself in contemplation is so important, because it imprints onto the unconscious mind.
Hope this helps anyone who has had the same question.
What bothered me was that we were all there with the desire to learn the meditation, and I presume all of us wanted to attain enlightenment.
So how could we be trying to get rid of craving and aversion.
This question has bothered me for some time until I read the section on Buddhism at that Muslim site that Brian recommended us to see. The writer uses my same arguments in negating Buddhism.
Now I've known that the emphasis in Theravada schools is on removing craving and aversion and Mahayana schools focus more on removing ignorance. They share the same view in my opinion, it's just that their methods are different.
I think that there is a common misunderstanding about what the Buddha means when he talks about craving and aversion. It is known that through time and translations to different languages, the meanings of words can be lost and also that some languages may have many different words with subtler meanings which in another language are only granted a single word.
For instance ignorance in sanskrit has two forms, a sort of mundane ignorance (ajnana) and a fundamental ignorance (avidya). The mundane being about knowledge: how many colours there are in the rainbow, where tornadoes come from. The supramundane being about dualism, seeing that opposites are one in the same.
Here is an extract by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's from 'The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep': 'Prior to realisation, the individual's true nature is obscured by the root ignorance that gives rise to the conceptial mind. Ensnared in dualistic vision, the conceptual mind divides the seamless unity of experience into conceptual entities and then relates to these mental projections as if they inherently exist as separate beings and things. The primary dualism divides experience into self and other, and from the identification of only one aspect of experience, the self, preferences develop.'
This would be the first link in the 12 chains of samsaric existence.
He continues: 'This results in the arising of aversion and desire, which become the basis for both physical and mental actions. These actions (karma) leave traces in the individual's mind as conditioned tendencies, resulting in more grasping and aversion, which lead to new karmic traces, and so on. This is the self-perpetuating cycle of karma.'
The second link is sanskara or 'conditional response.' Here there is no consciousness performing the task, it simply happens without any will involved, like pulling your hand away from a hot plate. It is this unconscious aversion to the hot plate which is under scrutiny, not conscious desire which forms the eighth link in the chain.
The desire and aversion one tries to transcend are not the ones which are ultimately products of consciousness, they are the cause of consciousness.
Here are the 12 chains of existence:
1 - Ignorance
2 - Conditional response
3 - Consciousness
4 - Name and Form
5 - The Senses
6 - Contact
7 - Sensation
8 - Desire
9 - Attachment
10 - Existence
11 - Birth
12 - Death
The root of our problems lies in what we are not aware of. 'I know I must be nice, but I just can't help acting in such and such a way when I meet a certain person.' This is because the unconscious mind starts sending me big signals to stay away or defend with aggression. For whatever reason, maybe the person is notoriously violent, for instance. The mind is conditioned to respond to that type of person in a certain way. It has sanskaras. The man might be a reborn Christian, but because my mind is conditioned, I judge him and see him as he was, not as he is.
The point is to put everything under control of the conscious mind so that we can act appropriately to each situation as it arises without being biased by our own conditional responses. Our desires and aversions are perfectly valid so long as they are conscious. They can be controlled with rational thought, unlike our unconscious which needs special methods such as meditation. If our desires and aversions are put on automatic, in other words, they manifest simply as a result of our conditional responses without any consciousness inbetween, then we're going to become attached. When you are attached to a certain way of thinking, it is more difficult to break away and do something different, to have a choice. It's like being addicted, except it's psychological addiction, not physical.
The chain of existence can be broken at many different links, and it is best to do so at as many as possible.
Awareness of the ultimate nature of reality, emptiness will lead to the removal of link 1, ignorance. Awareness of the unconscious thought processes, the sanskaras will remove link 2.
Awareness of the lack of the inherent self or focusing our beneficial actions on others will remove link 3.
I say awareness and not knowledge because we need to experience the truth not just know it.
This is why absorbing oneself in contemplation is so important, because it imprints onto the unconscious mind.
Hope this helps anyone who has had the same question.
