How do we know a thing?
Favourite teachings: The three wisdoms
Among the many refined and powerful teachings of Buddhism is the explanation about how we can know a thing. In our society, the ability to recall facts and figures about a particular subject and use them to solve a problem, for example, or shape an argument, is considered evidence of knowledge.
While this kind of knowledge is not to be underrated, Buddhism sets out other more subtle levels of knowing, each of them the foundation for the next. The goal of what are called the three wisdoms is to know things not merely as facts or ideas, but as fully integrated elements of our behaviour. To embody them. For this to happen, the way in which we know things moves from the conceptual to the non-conceptual – that is, from something that is merely an idea to a truth that we experience directly.
No words are really capable of describing these experiences, just as no words can truly express profound love or loss, or how our favourite music makes us feel, or even something as mundane as the taste of chocolate.
What words can do, however, is point us in the right direction – sometimes likened to giving a map to a person who lives inland and who yearns to swim in the sea. The map is not the sea, but it will show him how to get there so that he can dive into the ocean and experience it for himself.
One of my teachers often says that we start by learning the meaning of the words. Then the truth of the meaning of the words. Then we experience the truth of the meaning of the words. These ever more subtle but powerful ways of knowing apply to all subjects on the path to enlightenment. They are especially helpful as we set our minds on the subjects of bodhichitta (the wish to attain enlightenment to benefit all living beings) and shunyata (the true nature of reality).
The wisdom of listening/reading
The wisdom of listening – or reading – is the first wisdom. We sit and listen, or read, and as things are explained we move from a state of not knowing to one of knowing.
Most of us have been so habituated to this process since school that we take it for granted. Buddha cautioned against this in his teachings about the four bowls, which I have written about separately here.
I can still, vividly recall the blow I felt in a bookstore the first time I encountered the concept of “no self.” It was one of those peeping-through-your-fingers-at-the-screen moments, I was so horrified yet mesmerised by the notion. The shock of it was visceral, like a stab at the heart. For the first time in my life I felt challenged about whether my most-cherished creation – me – was quite as substantial as I had always assumed.
I would have related completely to the sentiment expressed by Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who in referring to quantum theory – a Western path up shunyata mountain - said: “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”
An ‘aha’ moment? Indubitably, dear reader! Insights of this kind are what are conferred by the wisdom of listening or reading.
The wisdom of thinking
Facts and ideas are all very well, but we need to roll up our metaphorical sleeves and really engage with them if they are to become agents of transformation. As one of my lamas likes to put it, we need to be more than ‘just professors’ - i.e. an intellectual understanding is only the beginning.
Buddha’s teachings are sometimes likened to a vast tapestry comprising many different elements which, in combination, represent a sublime explanation of reality. No single teaching or reading session can possibly form all the connections in our own minds between the different insights shared. This is not a process our teachers can do for us. We need to do for ourselves, and it’s known as the wisdom of thinking.
For people like me who live in our heads, one of the joys of coming to the Dharma is the treasure trove of concepts and metaphors which shake up our conceptual world. I remember driving home at night from Path to Enlightenment classes in the early days, turning over the various reality-shaking ideas presented with such a sense of adventure that it was sometimes difficult to go to sleep later.
When I first heard about bodhichitta, I thought it a laudable if hopelessly idealistic ambition: to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings. I was exactly like the blind beggar described by Shantideva, who doesn’t know that he has somehow stumbled upon a precious jewel in a pile of garbage.
As it happened, in the news around that time was the story of a group of tourists who’d been kidnapped and held hostage while travelling in a South east Asian country. Negotiators managed to secure the release of women and children early on. The men had been held in hellish, jungle conditions for months.
When one of them was released, I watched him being interviewed on his arrival home. He must be thrilled, journalists prompted, to be reunited with his wife and family? His response was decidedly ambivalent. Yes, of course his personal freedom and reunion was wonderful he agreed. But having just spent months with his fellow hostages in harsh conditions, people to whom he had become very close, he was also desperately worried about them. He couldn’t really celebrate his own freedom, until they were free too.
Which helped further my own understanding of bodhichitta. How heavenly can heaven be if we know that those we love are suffering? The wisdom of thinking helped me make other links too. Through familiarity with equalising self and others I came to recognise that, in reality, all other beings were my fellow hostages, not only the relative few I knew personally. Also, the more familiar I became with mind-training concepts, the more I recognised that having others as a focus of attention offered a practical alternative to my mind’s unhelpful tendency to focus on self.
Plus, as my understanding of karma deepened, most especially on how the weight of any action depends on motivation and object, I came to recognise that no intention could possibly be higher than the wish for others to be enlightened, and no object greater than every sentient being in universal space. If you were looking for a secret sauce to turbo charge your merit, this was it - just like the lamas say!
Such recognitions, such joining of dots, arise from the wisdom of thinking. The drawing together of our different experiences, insights and reflections in such a way that the teachings we have heard become personally meaningful.
Tibetan Buddhist monasteries have a tradition of debate going back centuries. Monks are given subjects to debate and, lawyer-like, must defend their position even if they know it to be wrong. Debates can last long into the icy, winter nights, and can frequently be the cause of cracked finger webbing as monks ritualistically slap their hands together in challenging or defending a point.
Our own analysis may be gentler than this, but the wisdom of thinking requires us to consider, analyse and test a subject to the point that we, too, have a stable conceptual understanding. When it comes to shunyata in particular, we need to arrive at our own, correct mental image of this very subtle subject. This is something that may need to evolve over time and should not be rushed - we don’t want to spend years meditating on the wrong thing!
Our ‘aha’ experiences are of a different order from the lightbulb moments of the wisdom of listening as we arrive at a more integrated knowledge of the Dharma. Our understanding deepens, not only of the subjects themselves but the way they relate to one another, such as the marriage of karma and shunyata, for example.
We may also find our behaviour changing as we shed our skins to reduce the cognitive dissonance between unhelpful past patterns of behaviour, and what we have discovered to be true. We are laying the foundation for the wisdom of meditation.
The wisdom of meditating
At some point we have all picked up a stone and thrown it into a lake or pond. Do this on a windy day, when the surface of the water is agitated, and the impact is scarcely noticeable. But the same action on a calm day when the surface is smooth as a mirror has a quite a different impact. We see concentric circles of mini waves rippling out towards the edges of the lake. This, in an approximate way, is the difference between thinking about a subject while on the sofa with a cup of coffee and meditating on it. The subject itself is no different, but our state of mind is.
Of the two types of meditation practiced in Buddhism, single-pointed concentration is generally the better known – that is, focusing our mind on a single object, whatever that object may be. Analytical meditation is equally emphasised as a means of exploring subjects, especially of a more subtle nature, like shunyata. Our teacher leads us, step by step, through a sequence of logic, pausing at each step so we can meditate on it, our mind moving only gently – sometimes likened to a tiny fish slipping through water so as to not disturb it – before resting on the final conclusion single-pointedly.
The impact of this meditation cannot be overstated. It is hard to state at all, because it is ultimately a non-conceptual or direct experience. I had an extremely powerful response to one such meditation session during a retreat many years ago. Meditating on shunyata as it applies to myself, I felt so stunned that afterwards I had to take myself off for a while to continue to bathe in the wonder of it. I can’t put into words exactly how I felt, only that it was an awareness of a subject I was familiar with, but on a level beyond words.
The subject was the same as that which had caused me such shock when I had first encountered it in a bookstore. But this time I didn’t feel at all shocked, but rather a sense of liberation. Of extraordinary spaciousness. Of incredible lightness of being. In truth, I hadn’t lost anything – it had never been there to lose in the first place. Instead I had caught a glimpse of the more panoramic reality of who and what ‘I’ am.
How direct experience transforms our reality
I am not, by the way, making claim to any great insight, only illustrating the power of the wisdom of meditation. Fairly often I am asked by someone who seems to have a good conceptual grasp of shunyata, ’What difference does it make, knowing that everything lacks inherent existence? You still have to get out of bed every morning and deal with the same shit.’
When shunyata exists for us as a concept, an object of mind, its effects are limited. But when the implications of shunyata begin to be realised at a non-conceptual level it transforms our experience of reality. We start to understand how everything we experience really is coming from our own minds - even though it doesn’t seem that way.
You or I may check our frustration at the failure of our computer to do something. We may decline an invitation to ‘come in for a coffee’ from a married someone we are physically attracted to. We may do these things because we are trying to be virtuous. But for someone who has fully realised shunyata, the computer is no more a source of anger than the married person is an object of desire. If they aren’t perceived as having any inherent qualities, then aversion or desire don’t even arise.
Geshe Loden makes a most interesting point in relation to the three wisdoms and our faith, or confidence, in the Dharma:
“There are two types of faith. One is having the devotion without knowing the qualities and knowledge of the object of faith; for example, having strong faith in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha without knowing their qualities or how those qualities were attained. When delusions or obstacles arise, this type of faith is easily weakened and damaged. The other type of faith is based on the three wisdoms. With this faith we understand the goal (enlightenment), the Buddha Dharma and Sangha and their qualities. This type of faith and devotion is very strong, virtually indestructible.”
(Path to Enlightenment, p 76)
In summary, knowing things, in Buddhism, is a much more nuanced, profound and transformational process than simple data acquisition. At the start of our practice, our main emphasis may be on the wisdoms of listening and thinking. As our conceptual understanding becomes increasingly stable, the emphasis of our time may shift more to meditation.
Samsara and nirvana are, after all, not inherently-existent, separate places with different GPS coordinates, but the same place. As we journey from one state to the other, the three wisdoms hold the key to our inner transformation.
Thanks David.....a perfect round up and explanation.......your emails always seem to arrive exactly at the right moment.
So much to learn that it is almost too much, but the description of the stone in the disturbed water and then the calm pond is the most revealing to me - it is so simple and explicit. A good lesson to call upon. Thank you.