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The Arrows of Thinking: Papañca & the path to end conflict
by Ajaan Thanissaro
In a striking piece of poetry (Sn 4:15), the Buddha once described the sense of samvega--terror or dismay--that inspired him to look for an end to suffering.
I will tell
of how
I experienced
samvega.
Seeing people floundering
like fish in small puddles,
competing with one another--
as I saw this,
fear came into me.
The world was entirely
without substance.
All the directions
were knocked out of line.
Wanting a haven for myself,
I saw nothing
that wasn't laid claim to.
Seeing nothing in the end
but competition,
I felt discontent.
Rather than trying to solve the problem by looking for a larger puddle for himself or his fellow fish, he looked inside to see why people would want to be fish in the first place. What he found was an arrow embedded in his own heart.
And then I saw
an arrow here,
so very hard to see,
embedded in the heart.
Overcome by this arrow
you run in all directions.
But simply
on pulling it out
you don't run,
you don't sink.
This arrow has many names in the Pali Canon--the oldest extant record of the Buddha's teachings--and one of them is papañca. Papañca is a type of thinking that causes conflict within those who think it, and leads them into conflict with people outside.
As a word, papañca is notoriously hard to translate. As one scholar has noted, the word changed meanings frequently over the centuries among Indian Buddhists, the only constant being that it was always regarded as something negative. Scholars trying to decipher what it means specifically in the Pali Canon have proposed deriving a translation from the verbal root from which the word is derived, only to run into the problem that there is no obvious root that everyone can agree on.
Some have proposed that papañca derives from the root √pad, or foot, and so should mean something like "impediment." Some have proposed that papañca is related to the root √pac, meaning to cook, and so means something "cooked up": imaginary and sarcastic. Others have suggested that it comes from the root √pañc, or five, and so is a reference to the "fiving" tendency in some of the Upanishads, which see the world as evolving through a process of multiplying through categories of five. Still others, noting that the root √pañc can also mean "spreading" or "expansion," have suggested that papañca should mean "conceptual proliferation." It's through this last interpretation that the word papañca has entered the vocabulary of modern meditation circles, to refer to the times when meditators suddenly find themselves overrun by thoughts that run riot, coming thick and fast, out of control.
Although some of these interpretations fit in with the way papañca was used in later centuries, none of them correspond to the way in which the Buddha actually uses the word in the Pali Canon. He doesn't describe papañca as an impediment to progress; he discusses it instead as a source of conflict and pain (MN 18; DN 21). Nor does he describe papañca as sarcastic. As for "fiving," the Upanishads employ many other numbers in addition to five to describe their various theories for the evolution of the world, and the Buddha himself makes frequent use of lists of fives, so there's nothing inherently non-Buddhist or wrong with "fiving." And the problem with papañca is not so much the amount or abundance of the thinking, as the type of mental labels--categories and perceptions--it employs. This is a point that the Buddha makes over and over again. The categories and perceptions of papañca are what cause conflict (MN 18; DN 22).
So rather than trying to understand the word papañca through etymology, it seems more useful to understand it through the types of mental labels that distinguish it from thinking in general. And on this point, the Pali Canon is very clear. The Buddha points out in Sn 4:14--the poem that the compilers of the Canon placed immediately before his explanation of his samvega--that the root of the classifications of papañca is the perception, "I am the thinker." In other words, papañca begins when your thinking takes you, the thinker, as its object. And as we will see, this object requires other objects in order to survive. This is why "objectification" seems to be the best translation for the word. It's from treating yourself and the world around you as objects--rather than, say, as events or processes--that the perceptions causing inner and outer conflict derive.
The Canon contains several lists of these perceptions, and in every case states that they ensnare the mind in conflict and difficulty. For instance, AN 4:199 lists 18 "craving-verbalizations" that derive from this perception, verbalizations by which craving ensnares the mind:
"There being 'I am,' there comes to be 'I am here,' there comes to be 'I am like this' ... 'I am otherwise' ... 'I am bad' ... 'I am good' ... 'I might be' ... 'I might be here' ... 'I might be like this' ... 'I might be otherwise' ... 'May I be' ... 'May I be here' ... 'May I be like this' ... 'May I be otherwise' ... 'I will be' ... 'I will be here' ... 'I will be like this' ... 'I will be otherwise.'"
MN 2 lists 16 questions that grow out of the thought, "I am":
"'Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what was I in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what, what shall I be in the future?' ... 'Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound?'"
MN 2 goes on to list six views that derived from these questions and fetter the mind:
"The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, or the view I have no self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine--the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions--is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will endure as long as eternity."
These ways of thinking all qualify as objectification, as they derive their categories--self/not-self, existence/non-existence, here/there--from the mental label, "I am." The fact that the issues surrounding this mental label can multiply so quickly and spread so far gives some credence to the idea that papañca is proliferation. However, liberating insights can proliferate as well, as when an insight into one of the causes of suffering leads quickly to insights into other causes of suffering. So the question is, what is it about the thought "I am" or "I am the thinker" that leads to ways of thinking that cause inner and outer conflict?
The answer lies in the Buddha's explanation of what it means to be a being. The act of taking on the identity of a being is primarily a mental act. In other words, it's because you have passion, desire, delight, or craving for something that you identify with it (SN 23:2). In identifying with it, you become tied there. That's what makes you a being. Your choice of what to desire defines the type of being you are. This process happens both on the macro level--in the events leading from death to rebirth--and also on the micro level, as one sense of identity is shed for another on a moment-to-moment basis in the mind.
For instance, before you left your last body, you identified yourself as the thinker that craved continued existence. With the demise of that body, the craving born of the root of objectification-labels led to your present birth (SN 44:9). Your continued craving to stay here is what maintains your present identity. On the micro level, in your search for pleasure, you identify with the desires for specific pleasures, as well as with the areas of your awareness that you can control--"I am this"--in the search for those pleasures.
The act of assuming an identity on either level requires looking for food--both physical and mental (SN 12:64)--for if you don't find food for it, you can't maintain that identity. In fact, the need to subsist on food is the one thing that characterizes all beings (AN 10:27). This fact is so central to the Buddha's teachings that it's the first item in the catechism memorized by novice monks and nuns. It's also the fact that shows why the mental labels of objectification lead to conflict. As a being looking for food, you need a world to provide you with that food. Without a world to provide you with food, your identity as a being couldn't last.
From this observation about what it means to be a being, the Buddhist notion of "becoming"--a sense of identity in a particular world of experience--derives. Your sense of who you are has to inhabit a world that can provide for the desires around which you're defined. This applies both on the external, physical level and on the internal, psychological level. This is why the views and questions of objectification cover not only who you are, but also where you are, where you've come from, and where you're going.
Externally, as a human being with human desires, you inhabit the same physical world--the same puddle--as other human beings. When you think in terms of objectification and look for food in the human puddle, you inevitably run into conflict with other beings inhabiting the same puddle looking for the same sort of food. Thinking in terms of the categories of objectification engenders the desires that see your sources of food within that puddle as dear, and anyone who blocks those sources as not-dear. From this distinction come envy and stinginess, hostility, violence, rivalry, and ill will (DN 22). These attitudes, in turn, lead to the violence of "taking up rods & bladed weapons, of arguments, quarrels, disputes, accusations, divisive tale-bearing, & false speech" (MN 18).
As for the internal conflict caused by objectification, when you focus on a particular desire, only certain parts of the external world are relevant. Your psychological world is configured around whatever will fulfill your desire, along with whatever gets in the way of that fulfillment. Everything else is either passively ignored or actively blocked out. Your corresponding sense of self is defined by its ability or inability to overcome obstacles and fulfill your desire in the world as you define it. This is why we can live in the same world physically but entirely different worlds psychologically. It's also why we can change our inner sense of who we are and where we are from moment to moment.
If there were a world that could provide all beings with all the food they want, objectification might not be much of a problem. But our desires are so insatiable that, as the Buddha said, even if it rained gold coins, it wouldn't be enough to fulfill our desires (Dhp 186). This is why the conflict between the fish in the Buddha's analogy can never be resolved by finding larger puddles, for no puddle could provide all the water we want. As a result, objectification inevitably leads to external conflict.
Internal conflict also inevitably follows from the thought that "I am the thinker" because when you define yourself, you limit yourself (SN 22:36). This may seem counterintuitive, for part of your sense of who you are revolves around the abilities you develop to get past the limitations standing in the way of getting what you want. But in doing so, you ignore the limitations that come from feeling the need to have desires. To begin with, you limit yourself to the condition of having to keep finding food. That enslaves you to the conditions surrounding the type of food you want. If you want physical food, you have to submit to all the conditions required for finding physical food and fighting off those who want the same food. You have to identify with a physical body that has physical limitations. Even if you aim for more rarified forms of food, such as the pleasure and rapture that can come from refined states of concentration, you run into the fact that concentration is conditioned and inevitably ends.
If these were the only forms of happiness available, and if we couldn't help but take on the identity of "being" in order to find happiness, we'd simply have to put up with these conflicts and to keep on fighting as best we can. But the Buddha discovered another form of happiness--nibbāna--that can be experienced when the experience of the six senses stops. This happiness doesn't require taking on an identity, is not subject to conditions, is totally free from hunger, and so is free from conflict. It's so unobjectified that you shouldn't even ask whether anything is left over or not--or both or neither--once it has been attained (AN 4:173), for the very concepts of "left over" or "not left over" derive from the thought, "I am the thinker" who would or would not be or have anything left over with the attainment. The person who attains nibbāna no longer has passion, desire, delight, or craving for anything, and so cannot be defined even as a "person" or a "being" (SN 22:36). This is why the Buddha said that arahants, after death, can't be described as existing, not existing, both, or neither, for whatever can't be defined can't properly be classified in those terms (SN 22:86). However, the unobjectified dimension can be described as the ultimate happiness (Dhp 203). In other words, not only is it totally free of suffering and stress, but after the experience of it, you can also come back to the world of the six senses and talk about it. That's the dimension in which all conflict ends.
Obviously, touching that dimension requires that you abandon objectification, and in particular the forms of objectification that would stand in the way of following the path to the end of objectification. For instance, if you define yourself as bad, there's no way you can help yourself out of the predicament of your suffering. You would need outside help to overcome your inherent badness. If, to avoid that problem, you choose to define yourself as inherently good, you also run into a problem: If you're inherently good, how did that goodness allow you to succumb to pressures to behave in unskillful ways leading to suffering? And if inherent goodness is something that can be lost, what's to prevent you from losing it again after you've reclaimed it?
So a necessary skill in the path to true happiness is learning step-by-step how to think in a way that avoids the categories of objectification. That requires a radical shift from the way people and religions ordinarily think. To begin with, it would mean thinking about experience without an "I am" imposed on it, without any reference to what objects might lie behind experience, either in the world "out there" or the experiencer "in here." Instead, you would have to look directly at the processes of experience simply as processes, explaining them only in terms of other processes that can be directly experienced.
http://www.theravada-dhamma.org/blog/?p=9567
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Тема: Перевод "papañca" (Прочитано 2196 раз)