Just A Little Dust

Perhaps a few interruptions in the flow of posts I was trying to develop are in order. I’d planned on writing about nāmarūpa next — and I’ve got a good start on that post — but there are a few other items that have moved a bit higher up my list. First, just a quick post to put something missing from the internet up where it can be more easily found (by me, if by no one else).

More than a decade ago I encountered a list labeled “The Buddhist Catechism” which, at the time, I found a little strange and mysterious. Now that I understand most of it, it makes sense and I’ve come to suspect its strange mysteriousness is part of its point. “Come to understand these things deeply to understand Buddhism deeply” it says to us.

I find in notes on my more recent efforts to read every sutta (and put the ones I find remarkable into a database, thank goodness, or I’d never find things again) that there’s a sutta source for the list. It’s AN 10.27,¹ which in this post I’m just going to distill down to the short list of what are, effectively, mnemonics.

In the sutta, some monks are told that if the Buddha teaches them to “directly know all phenomenon,”². Well, since that’s what their teachers also say, what’s the difference? When the monks go ask the Buddha, he tells them they need to get dispassionate about these ten things:

1. all beings depend on food (sabbe sattā āhāraṭṭhitikā)

2. name and form (nāme ca rūpe ca)

3. the three experiences (tīsu vedanāsu)³

4. four types of food (catūsu āhāresu)⁴

5. five components of self that we cling to (pañcasu upādānakkhandhesu)⁵

6. six individual’s senses (chasu ajjhattikesu āyatanesu)⁶

7. seven stations of consciousness (sattasu viññāṇaṭṭhitīsu)⁷

8. eight worldly conditions (aṭṭhasu lokadhammesu)⁸

9. nine abodes of beings (navasu sattāvāsesu)⁹

10. ten unskillful actions (dasasu akusalesu kammapathesu¹⁰

To me the most interesting thing about this list, as well as how it’s presented in AN 10.27, is that first item, which I summarize as “All beings must eat.

When I first encountered it my first thought was, “Well sure, everyone knows that.”

But then — since I was by then some distance into my understanding of dependent arising and the way the Buddha uses “nutriment” (āhāra) as a key to what’s going on in DA — that is, that what’s described is the way we “feed” the self, defined as “a being,” by the way we think about concepts — so in the first place in the list, it’s expressing how critical understanding that concept is.

That brief statement also is an excellent example of one of the patterns the Buddha uses in shaping many of his lessons: what I call “What Everyone Knows.” He often starts with a statement that everyone can agree with — he gets folks’ heads nodding in response to what were very likely concepts under discussion everywhere — but he isn’t, once we come to understand what he’s teaching, saying what everyone else is saying about what everyone knows. In fact, in most cases what he’s point out is that “What everyone knows” is part of the problem. Both believing we know what’s being said when we actually haven’t yet gotten the whole lesson, or — in life in general — assuming what we know about how people behave means that person over there has the motivations we think they do — gets us in trouble because we actually know very little. Starting with “what everyone knows” but ending by demonstrating that what everyone knows isn’t necessarily correct is a very clever technique and, it seems to me, one we students of the suttas need to pay more attention to.

The other aspect of that first item that I keep thinking about is that it seems different to me from the rest, when presented as AN 10.27 does, as something to become disenchanted with. Here’s Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation in the big volume of the Numerical Discourses:

When a bhikkhu is completely disenchanted with one thing, completely dispassionate toward it, completely liberated from it, completely sees its delimitations, and completely breaks through its meaning, in this very life¹¹ he makes an end of suffering. What one thing? All beings exist through nutriment.

It should seem quite clear to anyone listening that when the Buddha tells us that “All beings exist through nutriment” very few of us are particularly enchanted with the fact that all critters have to eat to survive. Is this a hint to those who are new to the Buddha’s teachings to look more deeply into why he says what he says?

The other thing about this list: Perhaps it’s just me being “a being” who is overweight, so that I’m keenly aware that food is the one thing one can become enchanted by that we can’t actually give up completely. For as long as I can remember, I have recognized the degree to which I am a person strongly inclined to addiction of all sorts. I’ve given up smoking, for example: not easy to do, but being able to just stop made it easier. Food: not possible to give up. I believe it’s that, that sets that first item apart from the rest, to me. Whatever else is on the list seems more completely quitable.

Then again, maybe not. And maybe that’s the point, and part of the key to understanding here: that all the items described on this list are going to continue to be part of our lives. We are still going to have experiences that feel good, bad, or indifferent to us. We are still going to experience gain and loss, success and failure. What we’re being told here is not that we need to avoid these things, but we need to change our attitudes toward them. In this way Item #1 is actually a key to all the rest because it says that we need to stop feeding the fires of passions about our experiences in order to “make an end to suffering.”

1. AN 10.27 [pts A v 50][↩]
2. sabbaṃ dhammaṃ abhijānātha[↩]
3. Did you ever think about how there are three vedanā*, and that the word vedanā has at its root Veda? Might it be that there are three Veda–nās to form a pointed pun on the famous Three Vedas — The Three Knowledges? The Buddha seems to be suggesting that these are the Three Knowledges that are actually important.

   * pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral[↩]

4. Food, contact, intention, and awareness
   kabaḷīkāro āhāro — oḷāriko vā sukhumo vā, phasso dutiyo, manosañcetanā tatiyā, viññāṇaṃ catutthaṃ. MN 9 [pts M i 48][↩]
5. form, experience, perception, drives, consciousness
   rūpa, vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā, viññāṇa for example in MN 10 [pts M i 61][↩]
6. The eye experiences form, the ear experiences sound, the nose scent, the tongue taste, the body touch, the mind ideas.
   As in SN 35.115 [pts S iv 92][↩]
7. A list found in DN 15 [pts D ii 68], as well as other places. I suspect it’s the Buddha’s riff on the seven heavens of Vedism.

   Bhurloka (the world of form), Bhurvarloka (vitality becoming in form), Svargaloka (the mental world), Maharloka (supramental world), Janarloka (blissful world), Tapaloka (thought-world), Satyaloka (the world of self).[↩]

8. Gain and loss, success and failure, insult and praise, pleasure and pain. AN 8.6 [pts A iv 157] lābho ca alābho ca, yaso ca ayaso ca, nindā ca pasaṃsā ca, sukhañc, dukkhañca[↩]
9. AN 9.24 [pts A iv 401] A list very like the seven stations of consciousness, but with two more in the list.[↩]
10. Found in many places in the suttas, for example in AN 10.176 [pts A v 263] where we find the summary: three unwholesome actions in body, four via speech, three in the mind. Taking life, taking what’s not given, sensual misconduct; lies, divisive or harsh talk, idle chatter; greed, ill will, wrong view.[↩]
11. “in this very life” — this is diṭṭheva dhamme — which actually means “having seen into the truth”[↩]