Self-Inquiry Guide to the Tenth Fetter
Introduction
With the falling of the ninth fetter, what remains after the restlessness, urge to compensate and other forms of “rising up” against what is happening in daily life are the beliefs that made that struggle seem necessary. It is these beliefs that have led to all of our suffering. One way to summarize these beliefs is that they lead us to experience life in an indirect way, by which we prefer to look for, and try to mentally create, a desired version of what is happening, rather than agreeing to live only with what is.
The ninth fetter was about no longer fighting the truth that we don’t find what we want, such as being able to describe, predict or know exactly what is happening. Having acquiesced to the fact that what we want and expect isn’t available, working with the tenth fetter involves fully recognizing that we don’t need to describe, predict or know either: it’s simply not necessary. In other words, we don’t need to project anything onto what we experience. Rather than merely being “fine…” with the fact that what we expect to find isn’t available, which is one way to describe the shift when working with the ninth fetter, here we let go of that expectation altogether.
The transition from the ninth to the tenth fetter can be quite subtle: there is often no aha! moment when the restlessness ceases and the underlying beliefs and expectations are laid bare. Also, inquiry into both fetters often focuses on the same belief(s) and expectations(s), by which moving from one to the other can seem to be simply “more of the same”. However, even though the focus might be the same, now you can and must inquire into whatever belief or expectations are still there.
When it is time to work with the tenth fetter, the trauma responses that may have been experienced while working with the ninth fetter have settled down, and the trauma that led to the responses can even be part of the inquiry now. As my friend Christiane Michelberger describes it, it is as if the dust that was kicked up during the ninth fetter inquiry has settled, by which your view of what is actually happening can now be clear.
In other words, your resistance to seeing “what is” is finally gone, and you have revealed what your unrealistic expectations are and why you suffer. Such expectations have likely exerted their influence on you for as long as you can remember, leading to the continuing (and mistaken) assumption that what you see and otherwise experience is (or is supposed to be) different than it is.
Thus, what remains is to allow what is seen to be simply the seen: what you see is what (and all that) you get.
Step 1 – What Are You Looking For?
The inquiry begins as it always does: being clear on what it is you are looking for. As mentioned above, what you are looking for may be the exact same thing as you looked for in the ninth fetter, such as predictability, knowing exactly what is happening, or always feeling good. This isn’t something you have, or even something that is tangible, but is an aspect or quality of experience in general that you seek.
To start, silently drop in the fact you worked with in the ninth fetter, such as “there is no such thing as predictability”: is this still something you are nevertheless searching for? Is there the sense that what is happening in daily life isn’t sufficient or complete because it doesn’t have that quality or aspect to it? Are you still disappointed that you can’t reliably find or have it?
If that fact is no longer significant, you can refer back to the guiding outline for the ninth fetter, and see if there is another term such as safety, control or certainty that describes what it is you are looking for. Whatever it is, it may seem to color your entire outlook on experience. It may be very familiar to you, as if it has been with you for many, many years, if not your entire life. Or, it may be so familiar that you almost don’t need to name it.
What you are looking for may well change as you go through this inquiry. However, please decide on one thing for now, so you have something to work with.
Step 2 – Starting to Look for It
This step of the inquiry is more subtle than that of the ninth fetter, in that there is no obvious, reactive resistance to tip you off that you are once again looking for “it”. Instead, your “reaction” is simply starting to look for it, and noticing when that looking starts up. It may take you a while, perhaps days or even weeks, to become familiar with when and how you start looking or casting about for something that isn’t actually there. The casting about is the result of a lingering belief or expectation: please don’t wonder or explore why the belief or expectation is there, but just recognize that it is.
Becoming familiar with how the belief or expectation manifests may be a matter of catching yourself searching or even longing for what it is you want but can’t find, or it may seem as though you are looking for a different version of what is happening that is more to your liking. As with the ninth fetter, there can be a “but I thought…” sort of response that you can watch for. Or, there might be a sense of “OK, here I go again…” when this familiar longing starts to manifest. However it typically manifests for you, starting to look for what you seek is something that you can become quite sensitive to, and it can start to stick out like a sore thumb.
As you become sensitive to it, there can be a “gap” between starting to look for it and putting any time or effort towards actually looking for it. Pausing there, it will become clear (once again) that you are (once again) looking for something that simply isn’t available. And yet, you are still looking for it… why? Do you assume it’s necessary? Why does it need to be true? Take a moment to look around in the moment: are you OK right now without it? Is this an actual need or urgency, or just a life-long habit? At some point it may be helpful to shift from silently dropping in "X is not available" to "X is not necessary". You can also start to see that whatever it is, such as “predictability”, can only be created by thought, or perhaps better only the prospect or possibility of it.
It might also be the case that you don’t need to label or even know what “it” is. Instead, the arising of any resistance, and thus looking or casting about whatsoever to what is happening, is enough for you to know and remind yourself that whatever it is you are looking for isn’t available. This highlights the fact that this inquiry is about getting out of the habit of looking for something that isn’t actually happening or possible, regardless of what “it” might be.
For some, there can be something of a targeted inquiry aspect to this. For example, there can seem to be a disconnect between what is happening and your preferred version of it: is there: can you find a disconnect? Or, it can feel as though a translator of some sort activates and attempts to convert what is happening into another version, for example a version that is more pleasing or predictable: is there in fact a “translator” that you can find? Or, it may seem as though you are projecting or placing an “expectation” or “condition” onto experience: can you find anything corresponding to those terms?
Things to Keep In Mind
This is not about adopting a belief that whatever you seek is not available or necessary, which can subtly augment your more fundamental belief that it nevertheless might be possible to obtain. Instead, it is about paying attention to when something seems to be missing from life, or perhaps something doesn’t seem quite right, and seeing if the concept you have in mind (such as “predictability” or “feeling good”) is available, and in fact necessary.
This can be something of a leap into the unknown, thus fear can arise, and adrenaline rushes can still happen. If so, please just watch what is happening, and see if you have to do anything about that fear or trepidation. While previously you may have automatically reacted when certain thoughts or sensations arose, as if something was wrong and you needed to act, now you can see if there is in fact anything wrong.
Avoid deconstructing experience, such as telling yourself “there is no job that I want to feel good in” or “there are no actual people in this relationship, so there is nothing that could be predictable”. By now, you have a lived experience of how you, other people and everything else both “is" and "isn’t”, so just allow your experience of a “job” or of a “partner” to be what it currently is, without paying attention to whether it "really" is or isn’t there.
Finally, please don’t dismiss the importance of the fact you are focusing on. Consider the fact that worldwide soybean prices gradually fell from 2012 to 2018: that’s also a fact, but not likely one you care about. However, that there is no such thing as what you seek is, for you, the most important fact there can be.
The Eventual Shift
Eventually, you don’t just get used to it not being found: you start to truly see it is completely true that it isn’t available. Because you’ve regularly stopped yourself short of habitually looking for it, and repeatedly seen that it’s simply not available, that fact sinks in and you stop looking for it, just as you stop looking for Santa Claus to arrive in late December once you know there’s no such thing as “him” either. That what you seek simply isn’t available is something you’ve probably heard a thousand times, and perhaps even focused on because it was clearly something you didn’t (yet) agree with, but it’s now blazingly obvious.
This is the first thing to notice: has the looking for whatever you were seeking actually stopped, even in the most stressful or unusual of situations? What happens when you silently drop in that it isn't available or necessary?
By no longer searching for a different version of what is happening, you can settle into what might be called your natural state. In the Buddhist tradition, this is termed sahaja, which literally means “that with which you were born”. It can feel like you float or alight back down onto the most basic level of experience, finally free of unrealistic expectations about what experience could or should be. Of course, it isn’t a nihilistic experience: as a traditional Zen saying goes, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers, even though they aren’t the same mountains and rivers that they once appeared to be. It’s simply “what’s left” once the beliefs and projections are removed.
There is also an obvious “this is it, I’m done” sense when this last fetter is broken, in that there is nothing left to do in terms of spiritual practice. The Buddha frequently described it as ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is no return to any state of existence’.
This is the second thing to look for: does it feel like there is anything left to do, create or know, or that there are further steps remaining on your path?
Most importantly, suffering stops. You see that it was suffering that made it seem as though there was something to do, a spiritual destination to reach, or a particular path you needed to follow. It’s not that pain has stopped arising, in the sense that hitting your thumb with a hammer won’t hurt (trust me - it will!). Rather, it is that the mental anguish of not getting what you want or expect no longer arises. You can apply some first aid to your hammer-bashed thumb, calmly change lanes when cut off in traffic, and otherwise respond to life without any of the drama and anguish that once might have occurred.
This is the third thing to look for: has all resistance to what is happening fallen away, even if what is happening isn’t what you want or prefer? Has suffering stopped?
If and when this shift occurs, there will in all likelihood be no fireworks or “peak experience” associated with it - it can be very anticlimactic. And yet, it’s will be obvious that suffering is over. For a Buddhist, the Four Noble Truths are finally clear: suffering existed, it had its causes, it can in fact cease, and there’s a path to traverse to allow that. Rather than hanging on to this pithy formulation, though, it simply becomes a memory. And that’s it. I was walking across a street on the way to work one morning when the fact that there is no such thing as reliability or predictability finally sunk in. It was finally clear that what I thought was true is not, and it doesn’t need to be true. I had a good laugh when I reached the street corner, and then continued walking to work.
With the falling of the ninth fetter, what remains after the restlessness, urge to compensate and other forms of “rising up” against what is happening in daily life are the beliefs that made that struggle seem necessary. It is these beliefs that have led to all of our suffering. One way to summarize these beliefs is that they lead us to experience life in an indirect way, by which we prefer to look for, and try to mentally create, a desired version of what is happening, rather than agreeing to live only with what is.
The ninth fetter was about no longer fighting the truth that we don’t find what we want, such as being able to describe, predict or know exactly what is happening. Having acquiesced to the fact that what we want and expect isn’t available, working with the tenth fetter involves fully recognizing that we don’t need to describe, predict or know either: it’s simply not necessary. In other words, we don’t need to project anything onto what we experience. Rather than merely being “fine…” with the fact that what we expect to find isn’t available, which is one way to describe the shift when working with the ninth fetter, here we let go of that expectation altogether.
The transition from the ninth to the tenth fetter can be quite subtle: there is often no aha! moment when the restlessness ceases and the underlying beliefs and expectations are laid bare. Also, inquiry into both fetters often focuses on the same belief(s) and expectations(s), by which moving from one to the other can seem to be simply “more of the same”. However, even though the focus might be the same, now you can and must inquire into whatever belief or expectations are still there.
When it is time to work with the tenth fetter, the trauma responses that may have been experienced while working with the ninth fetter have settled down, and the trauma that led to the responses can even be part of the inquiry now. As my friend Christiane Michelberger describes it, it is as if the dust that was kicked up during the ninth fetter inquiry has settled, by which your view of what is actually happening can now be clear.
In other words, your resistance to seeing “what is” is finally gone, and you have revealed what your unrealistic expectations are and why you suffer. Such expectations have likely exerted their influence on you for as long as you can remember, leading to the continuing (and mistaken) assumption that what you see and otherwise experience is (or is supposed to be) different than it is.
Thus, what remains is to allow what is seen to be simply the seen: what you see is what (and all that) you get.
Step 1 – What Are You Looking For?
The inquiry begins as it always does: being clear on what it is you are looking for. As mentioned above, what you are looking for may be the exact same thing as you looked for in the ninth fetter, such as predictability, knowing exactly what is happening, or always feeling good. This isn’t something you have, or even something that is tangible, but is an aspect or quality of experience in general that you seek.
To start, silently drop in the fact you worked with in the ninth fetter, such as “there is no such thing as predictability”: is this still something you are nevertheless searching for? Is there the sense that what is happening in daily life isn’t sufficient or complete because it doesn’t have that quality or aspect to it? Are you still disappointed that you can’t reliably find or have it?
If that fact is no longer significant, you can refer back to the guiding outline for the ninth fetter, and see if there is another term such as safety, control or certainty that describes what it is you are looking for. Whatever it is, it may seem to color your entire outlook on experience. It may be very familiar to you, as if it has been with you for many, many years, if not your entire life. Or, it may be so familiar that you almost don’t need to name it.
What you are looking for may well change as you go through this inquiry. However, please decide on one thing for now, so you have something to work with.
Step 2 – Starting to Look for It
This step of the inquiry is more subtle than that of the ninth fetter, in that there is no obvious, reactive resistance to tip you off that you are once again looking for “it”. Instead, your “reaction” is simply starting to look for it, and noticing when that looking starts up. It may take you a while, perhaps days or even weeks, to become familiar with when and how you start looking or casting about for something that isn’t actually there. The casting about is the result of a lingering belief or expectation: please don’t wonder or explore why the belief or expectation is there, but just recognize that it is.
Becoming familiar with how the belief or expectation manifests may be a matter of catching yourself searching or even longing for what it is you want but can’t find, or it may seem as though you are looking for a different version of what is happening that is more to your liking. As with the ninth fetter, there can be a “but I thought…” sort of response that you can watch for. Or, there might be a sense of “OK, here I go again…” when this familiar longing starts to manifest. However it typically manifests for you, starting to look for what you seek is something that you can become quite sensitive to, and it can start to stick out like a sore thumb.
As you become sensitive to it, there can be a “gap” between starting to look for it and putting any time or effort towards actually looking for it. Pausing there, it will become clear (once again) that you are (once again) looking for something that simply isn’t available. And yet, you are still looking for it… why? Do you assume it’s necessary? Why does it need to be true? Take a moment to look around in the moment: are you OK right now without it? Is this an actual need or urgency, or just a life-long habit? At some point it may be helpful to shift from silently dropping in "X is not available" to "X is not necessary". You can also start to see that whatever it is, such as “predictability”, can only be created by thought, or perhaps better only the prospect or possibility of it.
It might also be the case that you don’t need to label or even know what “it” is. Instead, the arising of any resistance, and thus looking or casting about whatsoever to what is happening, is enough for you to know and remind yourself that whatever it is you are looking for isn’t available. This highlights the fact that this inquiry is about getting out of the habit of looking for something that isn’t actually happening or possible, regardless of what “it” might be.
For some, there can be something of a targeted inquiry aspect to this. For example, there can seem to be a disconnect between what is happening and your preferred version of it: is there: can you find a disconnect? Or, it can feel as though a translator of some sort activates and attempts to convert what is happening into another version, for example a version that is more pleasing or predictable: is there in fact a “translator” that you can find? Or, it may seem as though you are projecting or placing an “expectation” or “condition” onto experience: can you find anything corresponding to those terms?
Things to Keep In Mind
This is not about adopting a belief that whatever you seek is not available or necessary, which can subtly augment your more fundamental belief that it nevertheless might be possible to obtain. Instead, it is about paying attention to when something seems to be missing from life, or perhaps something doesn’t seem quite right, and seeing if the concept you have in mind (such as “predictability” or “feeling good”) is available, and in fact necessary.
This can be something of a leap into the unknown, thus fear can arise, and adrenaline rushes can still happen. If so, please just watch what is happening, and see if you have to do anything about that fear or trepidation. While previously you may have automatically reacted when certain thoughts or sensations arose, as if something was wrong and you needed to act, now you can see if there is in fact anything wrong.
Avoid deconstructing experience, such as telling yourself “there is no job that I want to feel good in” or “there are no actual people in this relationship, so there is nothing that could be predictable”. By now, you have a lived experience of how you, other people and everything else both “is" and "isn’t”, so just allow your experience of a “job” or of a “partner” to be what it currently is, without paying attention to whether it "really" is or isn’t there.
Finally, please don’t dismiss the importance of the fact you are focusing on. Consider the fact that worldwide soybean prices gradually fell from 2012 to 2018: that’s also a fact, but not likely one you care about. However, that there is no such thing as what you seek is, for you, the most important fact there can be.
The Eventual Shift
Eventually, you don’t just get used to it not being found: you start to truly see it is completely true that it isn’t available. Because you’ve regularly stopped yourself short of habitually looking for it, and repeatedly seen that it’s simply not available, that fact sinks in and you stop looking for it, just as you stop looking for Santa Claus to arrive in late December once you know there’s no such thing as “him” either. That what you seek simply isn’t available is something you’ve probably heard a thousand times, and perhaps even focused on because it was clearly something you didn’t (yet) agree with, but it’s now blazingly obvious.
This is the first thing to notice: has the looking for whatever you were seeking actually stopped, even in the most stressful or unusual of situations? What happens when you silently drop in that it isn't available or necessary?
By no longer searching for a different version of what is happening, you can settle into what might be called your natural state. In the Buddhist tradition, this is termed sahaja, which literally means “that with which you were born”. It can feel like you float or alight back down onto the most basic level of experience, finally free of unrealistic expectations about what experience could or should be. Of course, it isn’t a nihilistic experience: as a traditional Zen saying goes, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers, even though they aren’t the same mountains and rivers that they once appeared to be. It’s simply “what’s left” once the beliefs and projections are removed.
There is also an obvious “this is it, I’m done” sense when this last fetter is broken, in that there is nothing left to do in terms of spiritual practice. The Buddha frequently described it as ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is no return to any state of existence’.
This is the second thing to look for: does it feel like there is anything left to do, create or know, or that there are further steps remaining on your path?
Most importantly, suffering stops. You see that it was suffering that made it seem as though there was something to do, a spiritual destination to reach, or a particular path you needed to follow. It’s not that pain has stopped arising, in the sense that hitting your thumb with a hammer won’t hurt (trust me - it will!). Rather, it is that the mental anguish of not getting what you want or expect no longer arises. You can apply some first aid to your hammer-bashed thumb, calmly change lanes when cut off in traffic, and otherwise respond to life without any of the drama and anguish that once might have occurred.
This is the third thing to look for: has all resistance to what is happening fallen away, even if what is happening isn’t what you want or prefer? Has suffering stopped?
If and when this shift occurs, there will in all likelihood be no fireworks or “peak experience” associated with it - it can be very anticlimactic. And yet, it’s will be obvious that suffering is over. For a Buddhist, the Four Noble Truths are finally clear: suffering existed, it had its causes, it can in fact cease, and there’s a path to traverse to allow that. Rather than hanging on to this pithy formulation, though, it simply becomes a memory. And that’s it. I was walking across a street on the way to work one morning when the fact that there is no such thing as reliability or predictability finally sunk in. It was finally clear that what I thought was true is not, and it doesn’t need to be true. I had a good laugh when I reached the street corner, and then continued walking to work.