Right Questions in the Right Order

There’s a version of quantum mechanics that focuses less on the nature of reality out there and more on the process of how you try to find answers about reality, the questions you ask. As they say, depending on what you want to know, you have to learn how to ask the right questions and in the right order. It’s kind of like twenty questions. You have to start out with good general questions and work your way down.

The Buddha teaches something very similar, what he calls appropriate attention. It’s a matter of focusing on the questions that are most useful for putting an end to suffering. Some questions are worth attending to; others are not worth attending to. And even with those that are worth attending to, you have to ask in the right order.

There are a number of questions that Buddha actually puts aside as being irrelevant to the quest of putting an end to suffering. Is the world eternal? Is the world not eternal? Is it finite or infinite? Is there a soul that’s the same thing as a body, or is it different from the body? What about an awakened person after death? Does that person exist or not exist? Both? Neither?

The Buddha consistently refused to answer these questions. Apparently, they were the hot questions of philosophy at that time, but he said they weren’t worth answering because they came from the wrong state of mind and encouraged wrong states of mind.

There are other questions he put aside as well. Is universe a oneness or a multiplicity? Do I exist? Do I not exist? What am I? How am I? These are questions that the Buddha simply put aside.

In some cases, that might be a surprise, as with the questions, “Who am I? What am I?” Many people say this is the question the Buddha asked and tried to answer. But no, he put it aside. He said it’s not worth paying attention to.

As for the right questions and the right order in which to ask them, the best way to figure that out is to look at his first two sermons: the one on the four noble truths and the one on the three characteristics or the three perceptions. It’s important to note that the one on the four noble truths comes first.

He starts out by saying that the path he teaches is for the sake of the deathless and for the sake of unbinding. So he establishes the purpose first.

And what path serves that purpose? It starts with the right view. This is where he brings in the four noble truths: the truths about suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation.

So the questions here, of course, are: What is suffering? What is its cause? What is its cessation, and how do you bring about that cessation?

He defines suffering as the five clinging-aggregates. Notice, he’s not saying life is suffering, or just that there is suffering. He says suffering is the five clinging-aggregates. Now, the transcript of the talk that we have now doesn’t explain clinging or aggregates. Perhaps all we have is an outline of the talk.

But the aggregates are the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. Clinging is clinging to these things in any of four ways: through either through the desire for sensual fantasies, the desire for views, clinging in terms of habits and practices concerning the way things should be done, or clinging in terms of your sense of your self. Any of those four types of clinging to those aggregates is suffering.

What’s the cause of suffering? Three kinds of craving: for sensuality, for becoming, for non-becoming.

There’s a place where the Buddha equates clinging with passion and desire. There’s another place where he equates craving with passion and desire. So, what’s the difference? The difference is indicated by the Pali names for these truths. Craving, taṇhā, can also mean thirst. Clinging, upādāna, can also mean feeding. So you’re thirsting for something—that’s the cause—and then you find something and start feeding on it. There’s still some craving—passion and desire—in the clinging as you’re holding on and feeding.

What’s the cessation of suffering? The remainderless dispassion for that passion and desire. Now, when he’s saying “remainderless,” he’s talking about the total end here.

The path to the total end is the noble eightfold path, starting with the right view and ending with the right concentration.

So, what do you do with these things? That’s the next question. Once you’ve got these terms down and can identify them within you, what’s the next step? It starts with identifying them within you, and then realizing that there are duties with regard to each of them. You’re supposed to comprehend the suffering—in other words, see that, yes, there is clinging to aggregates wherever there’s suffering. You abandon the cause. You realize the cessation. And you do that by developing the path.

Given that craving and clinging are very closely related, the Buddha does have some suttas where he says that when you’ve got the five aggregates, what you abandon there is the passion and desire for them. In other words, you comprehend the total package of suffering, but then within that suffering, there is the craving: That’s what you abandon. So you don’t abandon form, feeling, etc. You abandon the passion and desire for them.

That goes for consciousness as well, because the consciousness in the aggregates is conditioned, fabricated. It’s an object for clinging. So there’s going to be some suffering if you cling to that consciousness, whether that consciousness is perceived as being limited or unlimited. As long as it’s conditioned, there’s going to be suffering there. So whatever passion and desire you have for that, you’ve got to abandon.

That’s setting up the framework. These are the four truths. This is what you should do with them. Based on hearing this, one of the five brethren who were listening gained stream-entry. Soon after that, after the Buddha explained some of the details of these truths and their duties, the remaining four of the brethren gained stream-entry as well.

Then the Buddha gave them a second sermon in which he brought up the issue of inconstancy, stress, not-self. This is important to notice. Sometimes you hear it said that when you gain stream-entry, you see there is no self, and that’s the end of the problem of self. And there have been people in the past who actually gained stream-entry but thought that it wasn’t stream-entry because they still had a lingering sense of self.

Yet as the suttas explain elsewhere, you no longer equate your sense of self with the aggregates or define the sense of self around the aggregates, but there’s still a lingering sense of self up until total awakening. Stream-entry involved seeing the deathless, seeing what was not subject to arising from causes and passing away, seeing that everything that is subject to arising from causes is subject to passing away.

But that thought occurs to you naturally only if you see something that’s not subject to arising and not subject to passing away. And as Sariputta said to Moggallana after he had gained stream-entry, yes, he had seen the deathless. So, you’ve seen the deathless.

Then the question about the three characteristics comes up. I’ve gone through the Canon trying to find passages where people listen to the Buddha’s teachings on the three, well, actually, they’re perceptions. There’s only one case where a monk listens to the questionnaire on the three perceptions and gains stream-entry. You can assume that he had already heard the four noble truths.

So we know the context in which the Buddha would teach these three perceptions. They function in service of the duties for the four noble truths. If you really want to totally abandon craving, you focus on the things that you crave, and you see that they’re inconstant. And in their inconstancy, there’s stress. And because they’re inconstant and stressful, the question is, are they worth claiming as you or yours, claiming as self? When you know of the third noble truth—that dispassion for craving is the end of suffering—the answer to that question is No. They’re not worth clinging to as you or yours. It’s a value judgment.

So if you understand the questions that the three perceptions are supposed to answer and the order in which those questions are asked, then you can get the most use out of them.

Instead of trying to track down, “Do I have a self? Do I not have a self?” Or trying to claim that, “I saw my self disappear,” or “I saw that I didn’t have any self to begin with,” you’ve asked the wrong questions in the wrong order, and you’re coming up with less useful information.

The most useful is: Are they worth clinging to, these aggregates? This is a large framework for all the various ways in which you might look at them and say, “No, they’re not worth it.” There’s another list where the Buddha gives quite a few variations on inconstancy, stress, and not-self—fleeting, a cancer, a dart, alien, empty—but they all come down to basically the same thing: They’re not worth it, whatever happiness they provide, whatever pleasure they promise. It’s all going to go away.

If it were not for that third noble truth, though, we might answer, “Even if it goes away, I like it. It’s good enough for me.” But with that third noble truth in the background for these questions, the Buddha is saying there’s a possibility for total end of suffering. Compared to that possibility—and here we see that the five brethren have already seen their first glimpse of the deathless; they can see that whatever else they might cling to, whatever else they might crave—it’s not worth it. It’s getting in the way of the total realization of that cessation of suffering.

When you ask the right questions in the right order, you get the most use out of them. So be very careful about the questions you ask as you practice. And when you ask a question, ask yourself, “What question lies behind this? Is there a deeper question that this is supposed to serve?”

When you have things lined up like this, then your inquiries become most fruitful. And they really do serve the purpose for which the Buddha started asking these questions to begin with.

We could sit around and talk for a long, long time about whether there is a self or is not a self, and what kind of experience would prove the answer one way or the other. You could have lots of discussions on that, but the discussions would lead nowhere.

It’s better to take the Buddha’s teachings and point them inside toward what your mind is doing. Use them to comprehend suffering. Use them to abandon craving. Then you get the best use out of them.