The Sixth Fetter
My Experiences
About five months after breaking the fetters of desire and ill will, it finally felt like it was time to press on. My aim was to look in direct experience regarding “form”. However, I wasn't exactly sure what it was I was looking for or why. Also, just as looking for 'desire' was a more subtle undertaking than that of the 'self', I quickly realized that inquiry into “form” was even more subtle.
One of the first things I experienced was a flavor of nihilism, which I had never experienced before, thus it was something of a surprise. It lasted for perhaps 2-3 weeks, and in retrospect was a matter of the “me” that remained throwing something of an existential tantrum. It was as if to say “well, if things don’t exist as I have understood them, then they can’t exist at all!” I watched this noticeable flavor of nihilism arise and persist, and then it simply faded altogether, without actually doing anything about it. I can imagine it might be more or less pronounced for others, but it is perhaps something to watch for.
A foothold regarding this fetter was found one evening as I was looking at various objects in the room. Each time I shifted attention to a new “thing”, there would be the initial taking-in of the image of an object such as a lamp or clock, followed by what felt like a quick look back in experience to verify there was a subject involved. That quick look back was so quick I hadn't noticed it before. I thought “Aha! I saw that…”, though I wasn't quite clear as to what it meant.
While meditating a few weeks later, a recurring and very contentious issue (the same "favorite" issue with which I worked through desire and ill will) started to arise, with its familiar elements and attributes. In almost slow motion, I watched as memories, images, thoughts, etc. coalesced into an incipient yet unformed “thing”, floating as it were in the upper right-hand portion of the stage of the mind. It felt like a sort of grasping action then “scooped up” that collection of information, matched it to a familiar pattern, and held it as a provisional thing, as if to say “ah, that issue”.
Once this tentative object was recognized, it was as if a beam of awareness was sent back to a presumed subject, something the beam would ricochet off of and then go right back to the now-fully-established object. The quick look back I had seen previously was now being observed in rather fine detail, as the object/subject duality was being created and then maintained. For every incipient “object”, a corresponding “subject” was deemed necessary, thus the habitual look back.
Then, to maintain this duality, what seemed like a separator bar, much like a tension rod holding up a shower curtain, felt like it was placed between the object and subject, between the “issue” and “me”. There was actually a physical sensation of pressure on the front of my face and chest. “This side” of the duality felt like a stepping stone, some sort of foundation that offered resistance, from which to continually “push” away the object and keep the duality alive.
This scooping up, referring back and separating is how the both the object and subject “took form”, which normally occurred in a fraction of a second. What made this process instantly stop was looking in the entirety of experience not for the separator bar, but for the ricochet point or stepping-stone, the inferred subject I assumed was “in here” somewhere. I eventually and clearly saw that there was nothing there, no point of contact or anything: I only assumed that there was. There was really just the habitual “looking back”, the imagined ricochet off of a 'subject', and then going right back to the now-fully-established object.
Directly seeing that there wasn’t anything findable in experience that corresponded to a “subject”, the illusion went away, and I could no longer hold anything as a distinct object either. In essence, nothing could take form any longer. Neither subject nor object had anything behind them; they were both clearly fabrications. It felt like something of a break with reality: I realized how I had been making it all up!
As an analogy, with a laser printer, the ink can tentatively be placed on the paper, but without the application of the toner, the ink will just smear away. Similarly, any tentatively identified quasi-object, such as “tree” or “relationship with co-worker”, needs the finishing touch of an inferred subject, otherwise all that sensory information will not hold together as an objective ‘thing’.
Reflections
My life-long assumption had been that, in discerning something, I was simply experiencing the 'object' just as it was. I didn’t consider the possibility that I was creating or modifying anything, but merely processing what was inherently available to the senses. And by inference, if there is an object of any sort being detected, then by gosh there must be a subject that detects it!
It felt as though I as the “subject” perceived and in fact met experience is a seamless and natural way. The following images may be helpful in illustrating this:
One of the first things I experienced was a flavor of nihilism, which I had never experienced before, thus it was something of a surprise. It lasted for perhaps 2-3 weeks, and in retrospect was a matter of the “me” that remained throwing something of an existential tantrum. It was as if to say “well, if things don’t exist as I have understood them, then they can’t exist at all!” I watched this noticeable flavor of nihilism arise and persist, and then it simply faded altogether, without actually doing anything about it. I can imagine it might be more or less pronounced for others, but it is perhaps something to watch for.
A foothold regarding this fetter was found one evening as I was looking at various objects in the room. Each time I shifted attention to a new “thing”, there would be the initial taking-in of the image of an object such as a lamp or clock, followed by what felt like a quick look back in experience to verify there was a subject involved. That quick look back was so quick I hadn't noticed it before. I thought “Aha! I saw that…”, though I wasn't quite clear as to what it meant.
While meditating a few weeks later, a recurring and very contentious issue (the same "favorite" issue with which I worked through desire and ill will) started to arise, with its familiar elements and attributes. In almost slow motion, I watched as memories, images, thoughts, etc. coalesced into an incipient yet unformed “thing”, floating as it were in the upper right-hand portion of the stage of the mind. It felt like a sort of grasping action then “scooped up” that collection of information, matched it to a familiar pattern, and held it as a provisional thing, as if to say “ah, that issue”.
Once this tentative object was recognized, it was as if a beam of awareness was sent back to a presumed subject, something the beam would ricochet off of and then go right back to the now-fully-established object. The quick look back I had seen previously was now being observed in rather fine detail, as the object/subject duality was being created and then maintained. For every incipient “object”, a corresponding “subject” was deemed necessary, thus the habitual look back.
Then, to maintain this duality, what seemed like a separator bar, much like a tension rod holding up a shower curtain, felt like it was placed between the object and subject, between the “issue” and “me”. There was actually a physical sensation of pressure on the front of my face and chest. “This side” of the duality felt like a stepping stone, some sort of foundation that offered resistance, from which to continually “push” away the object and keep the duality alive.
This scooping up, referring back and separating is how the both the object and subject “took form”, which normally occurred in a fraction of a second. What made this process instantly stop was looking in the entirety of experience not for the separator bar, but for the ricochet point or stepping-stone, the inferred subject I assumed was “in here” somewhere. I eventually and clearly saw that there was nothing there, no point of contact or anything: I only assumed that there was. There was really just the habitual “looking back”, the imagined ricochet off of a 'subject', and then going right back to the now-fully-established object.
Directly seeing that there wasn’t anything findable in experience that corresponded to a “subject”, the illusion went away, and I could no longer hold anything as a distinct object either. In essence, nothing could take form any longer. Neither subject nor object had anything behind them; they were both clearly fabrications. It felt like something of a break with reality: I realized how I had been making it all up!
As an analogy, with a laser printer, the ink can tentatively be placed on the paper, but without the application of the toner, the ink will just smear away. Similarly, any tentatively identified quasi-object, such as “tree” or “relationship with co-worker”, needs the finishing touch of an inferred subject, otherwise all that sensory information will not hold together as an objective ‘thing’.
Reflections
My life-long assumption had been that, in discerning something, I was simply experiencing the 'object' just as it was. I didn’t consider the possibility that I was creating or modifying anything, but merely processing what was inherently available to the senses. And by inference, if there is an object of any sort being detected, then by gosh there must be a subject that detects it!
It felt as though I as the “subject” perceived and in fact met experience is a seamless and natural way. The following images may be helpful in illustrating this:
What is happening can be imagined in the left image: things are close or far away, to the right or the left, etc. The existence of a perfectly-meshed subject and object is implicit in this. If you pull the two apart, the center image shows the inferred “objective world” on top, as the textures that sense experience presents in word and image. An inferred subject is below, assumed to meet experience in a seamless and complementary way. However, as in the right-hand image, there is just what we might call 'experience' happening, a variegated landscape of apparent things without any rigid boundaries.
A “subject” with its own boundaries isn’t necessary to navigate this experience. I realized that we have the tendency to take what is happening in experience and identify with it, and thus infer there is something about us that is participating in that experience. Some interpretation is of course needed to get through the day, but we don't need to subjectify-objectify everything.
This more “minimalist” approach felt, in comparison to before, rather two-dimensional, as if looking at a picture of experience without the “depth” provided by a dualistic perspective. Someone else I worked with described it as if people were moving posters. In hindsight, it was more a matter of there not being an exaggerated sense of depth perception, as if the people and things I saw were as separate as I thought. Even with this more modest sense of depth perception, however, driving a car and otherwise navigating daily life was not a problem.
Seeing that “subject” is an illusion thus provided an answer to a long-standing question I had: how do you function in a world where nothing truly exists, and what does experience consist of? The Buddha was obviously able to distinguish food from bowl, path from tree, etc., without the need for any dualities. So too, we can “scoop out” a quasi-object, but not infer a “subject” which establishes rigid boundaries of any sort. For example, there can be an empty stomach, taste buds, memories of a phone number, and a delivered pizza, all very helpful notions when eating, but none are more or less a quasi-object than “pizza” is, and none somehow attest to a “subject”.
With this shift, we no longer experience what in the Buddhist tradition is called the rūpa loka, or “the world of form”: we stop believing that there is an aspect to what we experience that inherently is, or naturally has, the nature of form. Should the need arise, we can trust that we are still able to recognize and respond to what is happening: it’s not like we forgot what “hot stove burner” or “person who needs help” is. It's just that this useful ability we have, to nominally discern things, needn’t be taken any further than required, regardless of how convincing the apparent “subject and object” relationship might be.
There was now what might be called an immediacy in experience, wherein it was obvious that a significant amount of the separation from other people and things was weakened or removed. Someone I worked with in this regard described it as having a more intimate and interested perspective. Rather than becoming aloof from others, it was just the opposite: there was a tangible willingness and ability to engage with others even more deeply, because there was less “me” standing in the way of that. There was also what I would call a delightful disorientation for quite some time, as I got used to this new perspective wherein presumed boundaries had been significantly altered and reduced.
By no longer superimposing a ‘subject’ onto sensory experience, sensory information can just be what it is: visual or other items appear and disappear, but without any perceived boundaries (i.e., without being particular 'forms'). Seeing through the illusion of “subject” and thus forms did not eradicate all dualistic tendencies, but it took a big bite of them and allowed the unraveling of duality to proceed. There was no consciousness ‘reboot’ that I noticed, though I wouldn’t doubt that one might occur. There was also no need for a lengthy integration period, and while it took a day or two to fully appreciate what had happened, it felt like more of a re-focusing of the inquiry into the fetters.
A “subject” with its own boundaries isn’t necessary to navigate this experience. I realized that we have the tendency to take what is happening in experience and identify with it, and thus infer there is something about us that is participating in that experience. Some interpretation is of course needed to get through the day, but we don't need to subjectify-objectify everything.
This more “minimalist” approach felt, in comparison to before, rather two-dimensional, as if looking at a picture of experience without the “depth” provided by a dualistic perspective. Someone else I worked with described it as if people were moving posters. In hindsight, it was more a matter of there not being an exaggerated sense of depth perception, as if the people and things I saw were as separate as I thought. Even with this more modest sense of depth perception, however, driving a car and otherwise navigating daily life was not a problem.
Seeing that “subject” is an illusion thus provided an answer to a long-standing question I had: how do you function in a world where nothing truly exists, and what does experience consist of? The Buddha was obviously able to distinguish food from bowl, path from tree, etc., without the need for any dualities. So too, we can “scoop out” a quasi-object, but not infer a “subject” which establishes rigid boundaries of any sort. For example, there can be an empty stomach, taste buds, memories of a phone number, and a delivered pizza, all very helpful notions when eating, but none are more or less a quasi-object than “pizza” is, and none somehow attest to a “subject”.
With this shift, we no longer experience what in the Buddhist tradition is called the rūpa loka, or “the world of form”: we stop believing that there is an aspect to what we experience that inherently is, or naturally has, the nature of form. Should the need arise, we can trust that we are still able to recognize and respond to what is happening: it’s not like we forgot what “hot stove burner” or “person who needs help” is. It's just that this useful ability we have, to nominally discern things, needn’t be taken any further than required, regardless of how convincing the apparent “subject and object” relationship might be.
There was now what might be called an immediacy in experience, wherein it was obvious that a significant amount of the separation from other people and things was weakened or removed. Someone I worked with in this regard described it as having a more intimate and interested perspective. Rather than becoming aloof from others, it was just the opposite: there was a tangible willingness and ability to engage with others even more deeply, because there was less “me” standing in the way of that. There was also what I would call a delightful disorientation for quite some time, as I got used to this new perspective wherein presumed boundaries had been significantly altered and reduced.
By no longer superimposing a ‘subject’ onto sensory experience, sensory information can just be what it is: visual or other items appear and disappear, but without any perceived boundaries (i.e., without being particular 'forms'). Seeing through the illusion of “subject” and thus forms did not eradicate all dualistic tendencies, but it took a big bite of them and allowed the unraveling of duality to proceed. There was no consciousness ‘reboot’ that I noticed, though I wouldn’t doubt that one might occur. There was also no need for a lengthy integration period, and while it took a day or two to fully appreciate what had happened, it felt like more of a re-focusing of the inquiry into the fetters.