Inner Eyes

Goodness in the area of the Dhamma isn’t an affair of the body. The body is an affair of the world. Goodness in the area of the Dhamma arises from the mind.

The duties of those who practice the Dhamma are (1) listening, (2) Dhamma discussion, and (3) practice. The third duty, though, is the most important in reaching success.

When you practice but haven’t yet reached the truth of the Dhamma, it’s like studying in school to the point where you know how to read and write, but you haven’t yet used that knowledge to further your livelihood or to benefit yourself in other ways. It’s only when you use these three principles in your practice that you can be said to be interested in the Dhamma. Otherwise, you’re just playing around.

The body, or this rūpa-dhamma, is something coarse because it has a shape and features that are easy to see. As for the mind—nāma-dhamma—it’s something more refined. There’s just awareness, without any shape or features that you can see with the eyes of the flesh. Only when you give rise to inner eyes within yourself can you see the features of the mind. The eyes of the flesh are the eyes of the world, and every person has two of them. These eyes of the flesh can see only crude and coarse things that have a shape—and they’re eyes that you can’t really trust. Sometimes they see good as bad; sometimes bad as good. They look at things both in right and in wrong ways. You can’t find anything true or for sure in them at all. As for inner eyes, when they see that something isn’t good, you can let it go. When they see that something is good, you can hold onto it. This is why we’re taught to give rise to inner eyes so that we can use them to contemplate the truth of the world and of the Dhamma.

There are three inner eyes: (1) ñāṇa-cakkhu, the eye of knowledge; (2) paññā-cakkhu, the eye of discernment; and (3) dhamma-cakkhu, the Dhamma eye—all of which are forms of cognitive skill. To give rise to these three eyes depends on the stillness of the mind. When there’s stillness, the clarity and brightness of these three eyes will appear.

What does lack of stillness come from? Lack of stillness comes from waves—the waves of ignorance. When there’s ignorance in the mind, it gives rise to fabrications. When there are fabrications, they give rise to waves. There are three types of fabrication: (1) meritorious fabrications, the mind thinking in ways that are good and skillful; (2) demeritorious fabrications, the mind thinking in ways that are evil and unskillful; and (3) impassive fabrications, when the mind stops still in concentration or the attainments of jhāna that are neither meritorious nor demeritorious. As long as ignorance permeates the mind, the mind can’t escape from these three forms of fabrication. This is why we’re taught, Avijjā-paccayā saṅkhārā: From ignorance as a condition come fabrications. And depending on which direction the current of ignorance pulls the mind, that’s where the mind tends to go.

The mind that seeps into fabrications is like the fire element that permeates trees and other objects. For example, the fire element that permeates the floorboards on which you’re sitting right now: You can’t see that there’s any fire, and you don’t feel any heat. That’s because we can’t see the fire element. We sit right on top of it without fearing any danger. If it were a blatant fire outside on its own, we could immediately see it—and we’d know that it’s hot. We wouldn’t dare go near it or use our hands to touch it. This is why blatant fire doesn’t pose us any danger. But as for the subtle fire that we can’t see with the eye of the flesh, it burns away at us all the time every day, but we’re not aware of it. We’re immersed in a bonfire but we don’t know enough to try to get out.

In the same way, a person who latches onto fabrications doesn’t feel the heat of fabrications. It’s like the fire element that permeates material objects. Only when the object is struck or rubbed violently will the fire appear—and that’s when we’ll feel its heat. It’s because we can easily see blatant fire that we can get away in time. This is why we only rarely die from it. But as for the subtle fire that we can’t see: That’s what burns us to death without our realizing it.

This subtle fire of ignorance burns us with birth, the gradual weakening called aging, the waning away called illness, and the final disbanding called death. The nature of fire is that if we feed or nourish it, it’ll grow. If we don’t feed or nourish it, it’ll disappear. For example, if you have a small fire but don’t feed it, it’ll disappear. If you feed it, it’ll immediately flare up—and it can spread out indiscriminately. But the nature of fire is that when it’s developed in full measure, it has to start dying out—the only difference being whether it disbands quickly or slowly. If we see that fire is hot and damaging, we should search for water to put it out. In that way, it can disband quickly. Or else we simply let it disband when it runs out of fuel. This is why they say that the mind arises and disbands—but the disbanding is stressful, the arising is stressful.

If we train the mind so that its ignorance grows smaller, fabrications will get shorter. It’s like the wick of a candle. If there are only a few strands in the wick, it’ll burn slowly. If there are lots of strands, it’ll burn quickly—and its flame will be strong. The three types of fabrication are like three strands in the wick of a candle. In other words, meritorious fabrications are one strand, demeritorious fabrications are another strand, and impassive fabrications another strand. If you twist all three strands together, the wick will be large, and the heat of the mind will get stronger. But if the mind has only a single preoccupation, it’ll cool down and grow still. This is why we’re taught,

If the mind is in seclusion, its burdens will be light. And like all light things, it will float up into the air where it can see the world far and wide.

As the mind grows higher, it will give rise to cognitive skill. Ignorance will grow shorter, and the waves will die down. If the mind isn’t stilled in concentration, it’s difficult to get ignorance to disband. But when ignorance disbands, you see the aspect of the mind that doesn’t arise and doesn’t die. This is why we’re taught to develop virtue and concentration, making the mind still and free from hindrances. The hindrances are like dust, soot, and mud. Wherever these things are found, they make the place dirty. This is why a mind clinging to the hindrances can’t find any purity.

When the mind is immersed in hindrances, that’s ignorance. People with ignorance are ignorant of themselves. Knowledge of yourself has to come from stopping in stillness. For instance, if you want to know the power of the light of the sun, go out and sit still in its rays. After just three minutes it’ll be almost too hot to bear. In the same way, if the mind doesn’t stop in stillness, you won’t be able to see your own stress and suffering. If you want to know how hot the sun really is, you have to stand really still in the sunlight. After just a moment you’ll know just how hot it is. If you walk around for half a day, you won’t feel so hot. As long as our mind wanders around in its concepts and preoccupations, it won’t know its own stress and suffering. But if you make the mind quiet and still, that’s when you know that the world is hot.

To see the stress and drawbacks of things, you have to give rise to stillness in the mind. In other words, you focus on a meditation topic and stay within the boundaries of where you’re focused. Use directed thought and evaluation of the Dhamma as your preoccupation. When the mind does this, it’s in the factors of jhāna. Don’t let it fall into other preoccupations, which follow the current of ignorance. When the mind doesn’t fall into preoccupations of past and future, it’ll shrink into the present. Lift the meditation object into the mind; lift the mind into the meditation object. Normally, the mind has six kinds of preoccupations, but when we sit in concentration we need to let it have only one: ek’āyana-magga, the one-way path; ekaggat’arammaṇa, singleness of preoccupation. Only then can you say that you’re established in tranquility meditation.

When concentration arises in the mind, it’s a skillful mental state. The mind’s burdens will be light. Its flavor will be cool, empty, and at ease. It’s like sitting in the breeze in a quiet, wide-open spot, with no noises to disturb us. If we sit next to a wall, we won’t be able to see far. But if we sit in a spot with nothing to block our eyesight, we’ll be able to see far distances: This refers to knowledge of the past and future. That’s the discernment that will be able to kill off and destroy the three kinds of fabrication. The eye of knowledge will kill off the fermentation of sensuality; the eye of discernment will kill off the fermentation of becoming; and the eye of Dhamma will kill off the fermentation of ignorance. The mind will give rise to the cognitive skill that will kill off meritorious fabrications and demeritorious fabrications, and will see through impassive fabrications. It won’t be stuck in any of these forms of fabrication.

If the mind isn’t able to strip away ignorance, we won’t be able to see suffering. This is why the Buddha said, “Cakkhuṁ udapādi, ñāṇaṁ udapādi, paññā udapādi, vijjā udapādi, āloko udapādi”: The eye arose, knowledge arose, discernment arose, cognitive skill arose, light arose. The mind rises to a high level called gotarabhū-ñāṇa, change-of-lineage knowledge, and it will see what takes birth and what doesn’t. It will blossom as buddho—the awareness that knows no cessation—bright in its seclusion from thoughts and burdens, from preoccupations and mental fermentations.

When we keep practicing in this way, we’ll come to amatadhamma—birthlessness and deathlessness—the highest happiness. That’s because when we have inner worth and skillfulness, it’s like having a vehicle that will take us easily to our destination.