Realizing Cessation
The duty with regard to the third noble truth is to realize it, to realize that there is a dimension totally free of suffering. It’s unchanging, blissful, a type of consciousness that has no object, no restrictions: what the Buddha calls unrestricted awareness. And it’s the best thing there is. As Ajaan Maha Boowa once said, if you could take nibbana out and show it to other people, they wouldn’t want anything else. We don’t talk much about the duty with regard to this truth because it depends on doing the duties with regard to the other noble truths. In other words, you have to comprehend suffering, you have to abandon craving, and you have to develop the path before you can finally reach a realization of the third noble truth. In particular, the act of abandoning craving is part of the definition of the third noble truth itself.
But the third noble truth also plays an important role in our inspiration, our motivation for taking on the duties with regard to the other noble truths to begin with. We have to want to go there.
So it’s good to realize that it really is something positive. The Buddha said that if you think there’s anything negative at all about nibbana, anything negative at all about attaining this truth, that’s wrong view. The end of suffering is totally positive. It’s good to think about that because it’s an alternative to what we’re experiencing now. We hold on to our old ways largely because we think there’s no alternative. The Buddha showed us that there is, and that it can be attained through our own efforts. So he talks about it enough to give us the desire to go there.
After all, desire is the root of all dhammas. Even the path is based on desire. And, of course, all the things we do that lead to suffering are based on desire, too. The only thing that’s not based on desire is nibbana itself. But to get there, we have to desire to put the path together. This is in line with the first verse in the Dhammapada: All dhammas have the mind as their forerunner, and they’re achieved through the mind. In other words, the mind is proactive.
It’s because we sense this truth, even though we may not fully know it, that we give so much credence to our cravings, because we know it’s through our desires that we can get things done. Now, the question is, “Do they get done well? Do they get done to our satisfaction?” The Buddha’s telling us, “Not really.” Look at the things that you might desire here in this world or in any world. Either you suffer when you don’t get what you desire, or else there’s the suffering that comes when you do get what you desire, and it turns out to be disappointing. There’s always going to be that disappointment. This is why the Buddha has us think about those perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self, to remind us of the drawbacks of the things of the world.
We have to learn which kinds of desires we should follow, which ones we shouldn’t. The Buddha gives us some guidance in his list of the different kinds of emotions that he divides into household-based emotions and renunciation-based emotions. Each type has three. There’s joy or happiness; grief or distress; and then equanimity.
Most of us muck around in the household emotions. We get what we want for a while and then we don’t get what we want. So we want to go back and get some more of what we like. In other words, we go back and forth between household distress and household happiness. But it’s never really satisfying. Now, if we felt that that was all there was in the world, we’d put up with it. Or we would desire that we not want anything at all. We’ve had enough of this, and so we just hope for annihilation. But that hope for annihilation, the Buddha discovered: That, too, leads to more becoming—in other words, more experiences of happiness and distress on the household level. And “household” here doesn’t mean only human households. Deva households, brahma households: They’re all on the same level as far as the Buddha’s concerned.
He tells us that there’s something else, something much better, so that we don’t have to keep mucking around in those emotions. The way there starts with what he calls renunciation distress, in which you have a longing for unexcelled liberation and you ask yourself, “Oh, when will I be able to dwell in that dimension in which the noble ones already dwell?” In other words, you believe that it is a possibility. You believe that there are noble ones who have attained that dimension. The distress here simply is the fact that you’re not there yet. But, as the Buddha said, this is much better than trying to go for more household happiness.
If there’s household distress, go for renunciation distress, realizing, “Okay, here I’m suffering from the ways of the world, but going back and trying to find happiness in the world is not that desirable, either. Something totally free from those limitations would be more desirable.”
That means, of course, that you’re convinced that there’s a path you have to follow. That conviction is what leads to the good path.
Think about the Buddha’s analysis of what’s called transcendent dependent co-arising, where he goes through all the factors of dependent co-arising and gets to suffering, but this time he doesn’t stop with suffering. The next factor is conviction. In other words, you finally decide, “Okay, there must be a way out.” Then you start practicing the way, and that way gives rise to joy.
This is an important element on the path. There’s the joy of being virtuous, the joy of concentration, and the joy of insight. When you see that the things you used to be a slave to are not worth it and you can rise above them so that you’re no longer attracted to them, a strong sense of freedom comes with that.
And when you attain the goal, there’s an equanimity that goes along with that. The goal itself is not equanimity. The goal, of course, as the Buddha said, is the highest happiness, the highest bliss. But then you look back at all the things that used to weigh the mind down and you can be equanimous about them. In the Buddha’s terms, you’re disjoined from them, so they make no inroads on the mind.
So realizing that there is this alternative is what gives hope to our lives. Otherwise, if this alternative were not there, then it would simply be a matter of personal preference: Do you like struggling to gain the pleasures of the world? Or are you so tired of that you’d like to try annihilation for a while? It’d really up to you to decide what you prefer.
But when the Buddha says there’s something objectively much better, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. It’s because of this something-much-better that the contemplations of inconstancy, stress, and not-self really work.
Again, if everything that could be experienced were inconstant, stressful, and not-self, you’d say, “Well, I’ll go for it, or I may not go for it if that’s all there is.” But it’s because there’s something else that’s not inconstant, not stressful, that’s beyond perceptions of self or not-self: That’s why these perceptions are useful. One of the epithets for that something-else is “the permanent.”
It’s kind of ironic. There are people who say, “Even believing that there is anything at all possible in human experience that could be permanent is an eternalistic view.” But the Buddha never said that. He said that thinking that the self is eternal: That’s eternalism. That would be a wrong view.
But nibbana, he said, is permanent. It’s actually outside of time, which means that eternal isn’t even an adequate word to describe it. But it is unchanging. And it’s because of that unchanging dimension that the three perceptions actually work. In other words, you believe that they lead you to something unchanging, which is why you apply those perceptions to all the things you could crave, all the things you could cling to, to reinforce the perception that they don’t measure up to what you really want.
So it’s for the sake of this something-else that we try to comprehend suffering, abandon the cause, which is craving, and then we develop the path. This is what gives meaning to all the other noble truths, and what makes them noble.
Remember the Buddha’s definition of a noble search. It’s for something that’s deathless: free from aging, free from illness, free from death. This third noble truth is what satisfies those criteria. It’s the truth that makes all the other truths noble as well. So it’s for the sake of realizing this truth that we’re sitting here meditating. Let that inspire you. That alternative is there.
We tend to think that it’s superhuman. But, after all, the Buddha came to teach human beings. It’s like the story they tell of Richard Feynman. Someone had written to him one time after learning that Richard Feynman liked to play the bongos, saying that, “This makes you human.” And he was offended. He wrote back and he said, “Doing physics is actually human as well.” In the same way, suffering is human, that’s true. Having craving is human. But the fact that we can, through our efforts, find total release from suffering, totally realize the cessation of suffering: That’s human, too, and it’s what makes being human worthwhile.
