Always Willing to Learn

The Buddha taught that appropriate attention is the most important internal quality you can develop on the path for gaining your first taste of the deathless. Now, notice that’s “appropriate attention,” not “bare attention.” The Buddha never taught bare attention. For him, there are only two kinds of attention: appropriate and inappropriate. The difference has to do with the questions you ask and pay attention to.

For appropriate attention, you avoid questions such as, “Who am I?” “What am I?” “Do I exist?” “Do I not exist?” You focus instead on questions having to do with the issue of suffering and its end: “Where is the suffering right now?” “Where is the stress?” “Where is the cause of that stress right now?” In other words, you look for these things as you experience them directly.

The path, though, isn’t something you can just look for. It’s something you actually have to construct. Then you can have a direct experience of the cessation of suffering.

That’s appropriate attention. You’re looking to see the four noble truths inside you. If, like the path, they’re not already there, you give rise to them.

As for the cause of suffering, that’s already there, and your duty is to get rid of it. All four of these truths have duties. Stress or suffering is to be comprehended. In other words, you have to understand it to the point of dispassion: no passion, no aversion, no delusion around it. The Buddha defines suffering as clinging to the aggregates. The clinging there is desire and passion. When you comprehend that, you comprehend suffering.

Then the cause of suffering is craving, which is also desire and passion.

So what’s the difference between suffering and its cause?

Well, the word for “craving” also means “thirst.” The word for “clinging” also means “feeding.” You see the connection. You’re looking for something to feed on. That desire and passion are still there when you actually land on something you’re feeding on, and that’s what’s going to cause you to suffer. Even though you may be getting some enjoyment out of the food, having to feed is a very unstable and dangerous situation.

Look at stray dogs. When they get a piece of meat or something else to eat, they’re constantly afraid that somebody else is going to take it away. They growl and snap at anyone who comes near. Feeding puts you in a position of uncertainty, instability. And even though you’re feeding—getting some nourishment and beginning to assuage your hunger—there’s still some hunger that drives you to keep feeding there.

So that’s the suffering. You look to see how your mind does that. You have to see what sensual fantasies you’re attached to, what views about the world you’re attached to, what ideas of habits and practices you should follow that you’re attached to, what ideas of self you’re attached to. Those are the things your mind feeds on.

We often see these forms of attachment much more clearly than seeing that, as the Buddha says, we’re attached to form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. Even though those activities are actually closer to the mind, we tend to attach to them in the more developed form of views, or habits and practices that we’re attached to, or a sense of who we are, or a sense of where we’re going to find our sensual pleasures. Those things we can clearly see.

It takes us time to get into meditation. As you get the mind to settle down, you start dealing directly with form, feelings, perceptions, and the other aggregates as you try to create a state of concentration.

So you’re looking for these things in terms of the pattern of: Where’s the problem? What’s the cause? Is a solution possible? If it is, then what is the solution? You’re looking at things in terms of cause and effect. And the causes here are going to be causes coming from the mind. That’s why the Buddha has a special term for them: “origination.” You’re not just looking at things arising and passing away. You’re looking at things as they’re caused from something going on in the mind.

But you constantly have to put aside those other questions — about me, who I am, what I am — because they’re not just metaphysical questions. There’s an emotional aspect to them as well. After all, the things the Buddha says are causing you suffering — and things that are suffering — are things that you want, things that you hold on to, things that you have desire and passion for. As long as you define yourself around those passions, you won’t be able to let go of them. You won’t be able to see them clearly. So you have to learn how to put that sense of “I” and “me” aside.

This is especially important as you’re learning, because often your “I” is very attached to a certain amount of pride, a certain amount of conceit, an unwillingness to change. Yet an important part of the practice is seeing, “I’ve been doing things wrong. I’ve got to learn new ways of doing things.” To whatever extent the “I” is constructed around those old ways of doing things, it’s going to be a problem.

So you need to have a more fluid sense of “I” and see that sense of “I” as part of the path, something you do rather than something you are. You can do a new “I,” make a new “I” for yourself, by deciding that you’re going to be willing to learn, eager to learn. If we’ve learned nothing else from those koan stories from the Zen and the Chan tradition, the lessons we need to learn are precisely where we’re blinded by our own sense of what we think we already know, what we think is already right.

This is where it gets difficult. On the one hand, you do want to be willing to learn new things, but there are also times when you want to make sure that the lessons you’re learning really are good for you, and that the person teaching you is trustworthy. That’s why the Buddha said that the most important external quality is admirable friendship. That means, one, having admirable people as friends — people you can trust in terms of their conviction, their virtue, their generosity, their discernment. Are they good people? Then, two, if they are, you try to emulate their good qualities.

Which means that before you choose a teacher, you want to make sure that this person really does have those good qualities, qualities worth emulating.

The Buddha says one of the tests is being around that person and being very observant. If you notice that this person would tell somebody to do something that was not in that person’s best interest, or would claim to know something that he or she, i.e., the teacher, doesn’t know, then that kind of teacher is to be avoided. If the teacher has some subtle knowledge and you realize that it’s based on honesty rather than just a desire to appear or sound subtle, then you put all those qualities together: You want someone who you trust will not harm you, i.e., someone who has compassion. Two, someone who won’t make false claims, someone who’s truthful. And three, someone who’s discerning. Truthful, compassionate, discerning: Those are the qualities you’re looking for in an admirable friend. When you’ve found someone like that, then you’re safer in opening yourself up and being willing to learn from that person. You’re willing to change your sense of “I.”

The Buddha doesn’t have you throw out a sense of “I” entirely at the beginning of the path. You have to be more fluid, though, in how you define yourself. One of the best ways to redefine your sense of “I” for the purpose of the practice is to foster the “I” who’s always willing to learn — willing to learn again and again and again, because the mind has many layers.

You may think you’ve already dealt, say, with lust or with anger, but then it comes back. Well, these things don’t wear just one costume. As Ajaan Lee would say, they’re like actors who put on plays. If they perform just the same play all the time, everybody gets bored. Nobody comes to watch them again. So they put on a new show with a new plot, new costumes. But it’s the same actors. Greed again. Aversion again. Delusion again, just dressed up in different ways. So you have to be willing to take it in stride that the lessons you thought you learned you haven’t really learned yet.

Or you may have learned one side of the problem of, say, anger, but there are other sides as well. Or one side of conceit and pride: You think you’ve taken care of it? Well, there are other layers, deeper and deeper. You have to be willing to learn about those, learn those lessons, again and again. Make sure you don’t get your sense of self involved — the self that feels pride about the knowledge you’ve already gained, or the self that’s just too tired to do anything new. You have to learn how to give yourself energy.

The Buddha’s Dhamma talks, remember, were not just for giving information. They were also for urging, rousing, encouraging. Those are the verbs that were used: He was said to inform, urge, rouse, and encourage. One part information, three parts encouragement. You have to learn how to energize yourself.

I remember years back, I had a friend in high school who went into ROTC. He came back after his first ROTC program and told me what I thought was a horror story. The guys had been told to run a mile. So they ran the mile and then, as they reached the finish line, the coach said, “Okay, another quarter mile.” If it had been me, I would have collapsed. I would have been out of the program right away. But as the coach said, “When you’re in the battlefield, you can’t determine that you have to go only so far, and then you get to rest. Sometimes you think you’re going to rest, but, ah, there’s more work to be done. More battles to be fought.”

It’s the same with the defilements in your mind. It’s not that they have a time clock where they check in and check out. They can come up at any time on many levels of subtlety. When they come up, you have to be prepared. Find resources of strength inside.

That’s the kind of “I” you want: always willing to learn. Even at times when you’re tired, you’re willing to learn. When you’re feeling frustrated, you’re still willing to learn. And what are you learning? You’re learning about cause and effect. How is it that the mind is causing itself suffering? This is the most interesting and most important problem in life. The Buddha’s wisdom was not only in understanding suffering, but also in realizing that suffering is the big problem — the suffering that we impose on ourselves — seeing that it’s totally unnecessary. Once that problem is done, then everything is done. That’s when you can really rest.

As the Buddha said, when you get to that point, then the questions of “What are you?” “Do you exist?” “Do you not exist?” hold no more interest anymore. It’s not the case that you put those questions aside as you practice, and then they get answered with your awakening. No, you put them aside as you’re practicing, and then when you gain awakening, you look back at them and say, “Those were stupid questions to begin with.” The important questions are about understanding suffering and its cause, the possibility that it can be ended, and the fact there’s a path of practice that you can follow to end it. When you see those things directly, then you realize how important the Buddha’s teaching is and how wise it is — and how wise you are in taking it on.

But before you get wise like that, you have to be willing to admit to your own stupidity. In fact, gaining awakening is when you realize how stupid you were all along, which is why awakening doesn’t come with pride. It’s a chastening experience. But all in the best way.