Mark Cooper

Mindfulness and meditation in the midst of life

No suffering without craving

The farmer cannot make the crops grow. The farmer can only provide the conditions for the crops to grow

The four noble truths are arguably the central teaching of Buddhism. They are not intended as laws beyond investigation, as though they were commandments written on free-standing stone obelisks.

The noble truths are actually an expression of conditionality, of dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda).

Dependent arising is the philosophical bedrock of Buddhism. It basically says nothing arises on its own, it always has the support of other conditions which are themselves supported by other conditions.

Truths of co-arising

We can think of the four noble truths as:

  1. There is suffering in life.
  2. When there is suffering there is also craving.
  3. There can be a cessation of suffering.
  4. When there is a cessation of suffering, there is the noble eightfold path.

This may be a different way of phrasing the truths than you're used to but I've done that deliberately to emphasise how mind states such as suffering/peace depend on other conditions. This interpretation is influenced by Bhikkhi Akiñcano, who I think would say that dependent arising doesn't so much imply that "craving causes suffering" but that these two arise together. You can't have one without the other. They lean on each other. Like two sheaves of wheat leaning against each other, take one away and the other vanishes too. (Apologies to Bhante if I have misinterpreted his position.)

A path without craving

If you look carefully, my translation of the four noble truths implies that a key feature of the eightfold path is an absence of craving.

The cessation of suffering co-arises with the noble eightfold path. Craving always accompanies suffering, and the eightfold path diminishes suffering. Therefore the eightfold path must be about diminishing craving in some way.

Note that craving (tanhā, literally "thirst") also includes aversion, resistance to experience as well as a lusting after the worldly. For me, it isn't limited to the craving that we associate with addictions—however mild or serious—but indicates a resistance to life and an insistence that experience be different to how it is. Here, I often think of the guidance around "set and setting" that one receives before a psychedelic trip not to resist the experience. "If you see a door, go through it."

Fundamentally, "craving" is a metaphor for a limitation of view. When we crave something, our view is narrowed to that one thing. Craving constrains our experience to narrow interests and outcomes, usually of a worldly nature. It is a non-acceptance, a preferencing. Remember also, for our purposes here, that craving is nearly synonymous with suffering. They arise together. The presence of one indicates the presence of the other.

What makes something right?

So, if this eightfold path is the negative image of suffering, we should be really interested in it. One thing to know about the eightfold path Each limb of the noble eightfold path is prefixed by the word "sammā". This word is a qualifier, usually translated as "right", "wise", or "appropriate". Martine Batchelor understands it to mean "caring and careful", which seems pragmatic.

But what determines whether something is sammā (appropriate) or not?

What if the absence of craving defined each limb of the eightfold path?

If we interpret the direction of the eightfold path as being fundamentally opposed to craving we would have:

  1. Views that diminsh craving, the view that actions have consequences.
  2. Intentions that are free of craving: to give up harming, to no longer crave posessions, power, status, etc.
  3. Speech that restrains and abandons the compulsion to deceive and upset and create suffering and craving in others.
  4. Actions not taken on the basis of craving, actions that diminsh suffering.
  5. Livelihood that does not stimulate craving or suffering in oneself or others.
  6. An effort to cultivate wholesome qualities and to abandon qualities associated with craving.
  7. Mindfulness that guards against craving, free from insistence that experience be other than it is.
  8. Gatheredness of mind such that the mind and heart are contented, present, safe from craving, safe from suffering.

I'm not saying this works perfectly, but perhaps it drives home the point that ending suffering means ending craving. They rise and fall together.

The term noble path also implies an absence of craving to me: the nobility of not being dependent on what may be coarse or unethical.

How do we practise non-craving?

So, if we find this a useful way of looking at the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path, what are the implications for how we practice and meditate? This is probably something we will have to explore deeply for ourselves but the Buddha had a progressive way of relaxing tension and stress. As his practice deepened he would ask himself now where he was suffering and progressively let go of the increasingly subtle tensions and preoccupations and limiting views he was experiencing until fully at peace. This is something Ajahn Thanissaro speaks about in his essay, Jhāna Not by the Numbers.

An ideal state of concentration for giving rise to insight is one that you can analyze in terms of stress and the absence of stress even while you’re in it.—Ajahn Thanissaro

When we see that experiences arise with suffering as a necessary part of them, we become dispassionate towards them. There is a cooling, a wise equanimity towards life. If all of the sights, sounds, touches, tastes, and smells of the world arise of a piece with suffering—with impermanence, imperfection, and impersonality—then we will hold them more lightly, and in doing so we grasp less, in grasping less what we fabricate, what co-arises with less grasping, experience itself becomes lighter. We experience states of less fabrication and this feels freeing.

I want to leave you with an image from Sarah Shaw that I think points to a good attitude:

This mindfulness—a subtle sense of the feeling of something growing, that one looks after but with which one does not try to interfere too much and allows to gestate—lies at the heart of a samatha breathing mindfulness...

We observe, we support, we understand, we nourish, we protect. But we also leave wholesome qualities to grow. We don't bring the attitude of craving and insistence and suffering and angst into practice, as far as we can. That would be walking the path in the wrong direction. So we're patient. We let awareness work and, slowly, that which is seen is understood and that which is understood is released.