Fetters Four and Five
Desire and Ill Will
Hans-Siebert von Heister
The 4th and 5th fetters are desire and ill will. While as embodied beings we will always have sensory experience, this fetter or belief results in the “but I want…” reaction to life, where we want sensory experience, and everything we see and hear, to be a certain way, as indicated by behaviors such as irritation, anger, longing and the like. These two fetters lead to the behaviors of craving and aversion, by which we push and pull at what is happening within and around us.
Desire and ill will are perhaps the most obvious components of what goes into the conception of a separate “self” as the first fetter, and thus provide a solid basis for it. Our strongly-held likes and dislikes can more or less define that separate self, as if to say "that's me!". However, once the belief in that separate “self” is out of the way, fetters 4 and 5 are finally accessible. These two fetters run so deep and strong that they survive the falling of the first three fetters and remain essentially at full strength. They are so strong that they must first be weakened, and then broken.
The self-referent illusion is that there is something we have, somewhere, that might feel like some mechanism, trigger or something else, such as a "button" that gets pushed, that makes the “but I want…” reaction necessary. Such reactions are often the result of not feeling like we want to feel or believe we could or should feel. Traditionally, this is described as resisting the fact that we will naturally have pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings or sensations as a consequence of simply being alive: there is nothing we can do about that. Even the Buddha experienced unpleasant sensations, particularly towards the end of his life where he described himself as like an old cart being held together by straps, such that he entered into deep meditation as a temporary respite.
Our natural tendency, though, is to expect that we can and in fact should always feel the way we want. If we don’t, we get into the habit of pushing and pulling at whoever or whatever is in our life, because we believe there is something we have, some aspect of us, that makes that pushing and pulling necessary or inevitable. If we don’t get what we want, we suffer, and what we generally call suffering, in its gross and varied forms, is addressed in this fetter.
For example, imagine you are driving in traffic, and someone suddenly cuts you off in a way that comes dangerously close to causing an accident, forcing you to apply the brakes and hope you don’t collide with any other cars. In such an instance, it can seem as though your “being cut off in traffic button” gets pushed somewhere inside you, by which there is apparently no choice but to react in an immediate and even violent way, such as cursing, speeding up to hug the tail of the car that cut you off, and so forth.
And yet, if you look closely, just as you cannot find a separate “self” as the first fetter, you also cannot find that “button” or whatever else it might seem to be. It seems like there has to be something you have that is the reason you have to react, and yet no such thing can ever be found. It can be surprisingly easy to put yourself in a position to do this sort of looking, and if it becomes clear enough there is in fact no reason to react, these fetters of reactivity can be weakened and then broken.
These are the only fetters that are weakened and then broken, and I am not aware of anyone who has truly broken them all at once. The experience of weakening can be surprisingly tangible and obvious, where as with one canonical description, reactions still arise but they are much slower to arise, reach a very modest intensity or crescendo, and then dissipate quite quickly. It can seem as though there’s something missing in your responses at first, to the extent you are used to reacting in a certain way in a given situation.
That there is more of a delay in reacting to something or someone also offers an insight into the fact that there are other possible options, even though a few moments later you are nevertheless engaging in a familiar pattern of pushing and pulling at the situation in which you find yourself. That delay can be a bit disorienting, in that it might seem at times like you are an acrobat working without a net below you, since intense and sustained reactions can lend an illusory sense of being in control of what is happening around you.
The experience of breaking these fetters can be even more obvious, and indeed unmistakable. It’s not that reactions now take even longer to arise: they simply do not, and cannot, arise at all. While you may still engage in energetic ways, depending on the situation, inside there can be a calm and serenity, and the feeling that you’re watching someone else engaging in that way. What we might normally call “suffering” largely disappears, and one person described it as though some 90% of all suffering seems to fall away at this point.
Rather than being emotionally disconnected from life, you can actually be more engaged, in that you are able to engage with a lot less of the emotional baggage that used to get in the way. Certain foods and beverages still taste good and are pleasing, and things such as sex, intoxicants, money and many others things may (or may not) still be part of your life; however, the “gotta have it” compulsion is no longer there. One friend described it as no longer feeling like they had to go out and buy some chocolate at odd hours of the night, even though they still quite enjoyed it if and when it was available.
It may be intuitive that this weakening and breaking is an inherently positive experience, by which the response to those around us shifts from one of longing or resentment to one of acceptance and love. For me, this was perhaps the most profound experience of all the shifts I experienced: it literally brought tears to my eyes as I realized that I was free of the sort of reactivity that I thought I would always be saddled with. It also allows access to the next stage of the path, in that once you stop pushing and pulling at what (or who) is happening, you can step back and see if it (or they) are as real as you thought they were.
At this stage of the path, the Mahayana bhumis first describe the experience of a “mind on fire” which, having become free of the notion of a separate ‘self’, can begin to burn through deeper and deeper illusions. This leads to one who is “difficult to conquer”, at least in terms of no longer being so susceptible to the worldly winds that once largely dictated what their reactions to them would be. It might be said that if we realize that the separate “self” was an illusion, we are much more open to other aspects of experience being illusory as well.
The Mahamudra tradition describes this as the yoga of non-conceptuality, by which we come to appreciate how the conceptual narrative in our minds has tended to dictate our responses and behaviors. Once that narrative ceases, we can come to more fully understand what is actually happening, as opposed to our conceptual ideas about it.
Desire and ill will are perhaps the most obvious components of what goes into the conception of a separate “self” as the first fetter, and thus provide a solid basis for it. Our strongly-held likes and dislikes can more or less define that separate self, as if to say "that's me!". However, once the belief in that separate “self” is out of the way, fetters 4 and 5 are finally accessible. These two fetters run so deep and strong that they survive the falling of the first three fetters and remain essentially at full strength. They are so strong that they must first be weakened, and then broken.
The self-referent illusion is that there is something we have, somewhere, that might feel like some mechanism, trigger or something else, such as a "button" that gets pushed, that makes the “but I want…” reaction necessary. Such reactions are often the result of not feeling like we want to feel or believe we could or should feel. Traditionally, this is described as resisting the fact that we will naturally have pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings or sensations as a consequence of simply being alive: there is nothing we can do about that. Even the Buddha experienced unpleasant sensations, particularly towards the end of his life where he described himself as like an old cart being held together by straps, such that he entered into deep meditation as a temporary respite.
Our natural tendency, though, is to expect that we can and in fact should always feel the way we want. If we don’t, we get into the habit of pushing and pulling at whoever or whatever is in our life, because we believe there is something we have, some aspect of us, that makes that pushing and pulling necessary or inevitable. If we don’t get what we want, we suffer, and what we generally call suffering, in its gross and varied forms, is addressed in this fetter.
For example, imagine you are driving in traffic, and someone suddenly cuts you off in a way that comes dangerously close to causing an accident, forcing you to apply the brakes and hope you don’t collide with any other cars. In such an instance, it can seem as though your “being cut off in traffic button” gets pushed somewhere inside you, by which there is apparently no choice but to react in an immediate and even violent way, such as cursing, speeding up to hug the tail of the car that cut you off, and so forth.
And yet, if you look closely, just as you cannot find a separate “self” as the first fetter, you also cannot find that “button” or whatever else it might seem to be. It seems like there has to be something you have that is the reason you have to react, and yet no such thing can ever be found. It can be surprisingly easy to put yourself in a position to do this sort of looking, and if it becomes clear enough there is in fact no reason to react, these fetters of reactivity can be weakened and then broken.
These are the only fetters that are weakened and then broken, and I am not aware of anyone who has truly broken them all at once. The experience of weakening can be surprisingly tangible and obvious, where as with one canonical description, reactions still arise but they are much slower to arise, reach a very modest intensity or crescendo, and then dissipate quite quickly. It can seem as though there’s something missing in your responses at first, to the extent you are used to reacting in a certain way in a given situation.
That there is more of a delay in reacting to something or someone also offers an insight into the fact that there are other possible options, even though a few moments later you are nevertheless engaging in a familiar pattern of pushing and pulling at the situation in which you find yourself. That delay can be a bit disorienting, in that it might seem at times like you are an acrobat working without a net below you, since intense and sustained reactions can lend an illusory sense of being in control of what is happening around you.
The experience of breaking these fetters can be even more obvious, and indeed unmistakable. It’s not that reactions now take even longer to arise: they simply do not, and cannot, arise at all. While you may still engage in energetic ways, depending on the situation, inside there can be a calm and serenity, and the feeling that you’re watching someone else engaging in that way. What we might normally call “suffering” largely disappears, and one person described it as though some 90% of all suffering seems to fall away at this point.
Rather than being emotionally disconnected from life, you can actually be more engaged, in that you are able to engage with a lot less of the emotional baggage that used to get in the way. Certain foods and beverages still taste good and are pleasing, and things such as sex, intoxicants, money and many others things may (or may not) still be part of your life; however, the “gotta have it” compulsion is no longer there. One friend described it as no longer feeling like they had to go out and buy some chocolate at odd hours of the night, even though they still quite enjoyed it if and when it was available.
It may be intuitive that this weakening and breaking is an inherently positive experience, by which the response to those around us shifts from one of longing or resentment to one of acceptance and love. For me, this was perhaps the most profound experience of all the shifts I experienced: it literally brought tears to my eyes as I realized that I was free of the sort of reactivity that I thought I would always be saddled with. It also allows access to the next stage of the path, in that once you stop pushing and pulling at what (or who) is happening, you can step back and see if it (or they) are as real as you thought they were.
At this stage of the path, the Mahayana bhumis first describe the experience of a “mind on fire” which, having become free of the notion of a separate ‘self’, can begin to burn through deeper and deeper illusions. This leads to one who is “difficult to conquer”, at least in terms of no longer being so susceptible to the worldly winds that once largely dictated what their reactions to them would be. It might be said that if we realize that the separate “self” was an illusion, we are much more open to other aspects of experience being illusory as well.
The Mahamudra tradition describes this as the yoga of non-conceptuality, by which we come to appreciate how the conceptual narrative in our minds has tended to dictate our responses and behaviors. Once that narrative ceases, we can come to more fully understand what is actually happening, as opposed to our conceptual ideas about it.
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