PURIFYING THE VISION: KINSUKOPAMA SUTTA

During Buddha’s time a monk asked another monk how one could well purify his or her vision (darshana visuddhi). When a person discerns arising and passing away of the six sense bases, as they actually are, his or her vision is said to be well purified replied the other monk.

The first monk was not satisfied with this answer and went to another monk and asked him the same question, how one could well purify his or her vision? He responded, my friend, when a person discerns, as it actually is, arising & passing away of the five clinging-aggregates his or her vision is said to be well purified.

The first monk was not satisfied with this answer either and went to yet another monk and requested an answer to his question. This monk’s response was, when a monk discerns, as it actually is, arising & passing away of the four great elements [earth, water, wind, & fire], his or her vision, my friend is said to be well purified.

The first monk was not satisfied with this answer either and went to still another monk and put forward his question to him. This monk replied, my friend, when a person discerns, as it actually is, that whatever is subject arising is all subject to cessation his or her vision is said to be well purified.

Not satisfied with the answers given by these other monks the first monk went to the blessed one, having bowed him on arrival the monk reported his conversation with the other monks and requested tathagatha’s view on this.

The blessed one addressed the monk and said, I will explain this to you with a simile.

The Simile of the Tree (Flame of the Forest)

A man who has never seen a Flame of the Forest[1] tree goes to a person who has seen one and asks him, friend what does a Flame of the Forest tree look like? Then the other man replies, it is black and looks like a burnt stump.

The man is not happy with this answer and goes to another person who has seen a Flame of the Forest tree and asks him what the tree looks like. This man would say, my friend, it looks like a lump of flesh.

Not happy with this answer the man goes to yet another person and asks him, what a Flame of the Forest tree looks like. It is a tree stripped of its bark, my good man, and has burst pods, like an acacia tree, says that man.

The man is still not satisfied an goes to still another man and asks the same question. He replies, it’s a tree that has thick foliage, freind, and gives a dense shade, like a banyan.

All these men have expressed their individual experience for as at the time they saw it that’s what the Flame of the Forest tree was like.

When a Chena[2] that is being prepared for cultivation all the vegetation, trees & plants alike get burnt. A flame of the forest tree that is pruned and burnt with others will look like what the first man saw, a burnt stump. As the time goes by with rains shoots begin to appear and it will look like the way the second man described. Likewise the two other men described how a flame of the forest tree looked when they saw it at different stages of its regrowth after burning; the last man saw the fully grown tree.

"In the same way, monk, however those wise men of integrity were focused when their vision became well purified is the way in which they answered”, said the Buddha, “I will explain this dhamma to you with another simile.”

The Fortress with Six Gates

A king who rules a provincial state has a palace fortified with a rampart & moats. The rampart wall has six gates which are manned by an experienced, efficient & wise gate keeper. This gate keeper is loyal to the king and clearly identifies who is the enemy and who is not and allows only the people who are supportive and harmless to the provincial king to go through. Two swift messengers approach from the North and inquire from the gate keeper, where the ruler of the fortress is. The gate keeper directs the two messengers to the king who sits at the city square where four roads meet. The swift pair of messengers would then deliver the message accurately and precisely as it is to the king & go back by the same route they had come. Another pair of messengers come from the South and delivers the ruler the message accurately as it is & returns via the same route they came from. Likewise messengers who reach the fortress from other directions deliver the message accurately and precisely as it is, and go back by the same route they had come.

The fortress stands for the body. The six gates represents our six senses. The gate keeper who only allows messengers who deliver messages accurately & precisely as they are, stands for Mindfulness. The two swift messengers stands for tranquillity (samatha) and insight (vipassana). The four way junction where the king resides signifies the four great elements the earth-property, the liquid-property, the fire-property, & the wind-property. The ruler or the king is consciousness (vinnana). The message accurate and precisely as it is, stands for emancipation (nirvana). The route by which they had come stands for the noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration." The swift messengers (tranquillity & Insight)report things only ‘as they really are’ which is the message of emancipation.

When we relate this simile to our own life, though we seem to have a City fortified adequately with six gates, our gate keeper is not wise, experienced & efficient. He lets in any one that comes through the gates and wouldn’t mind who brings the message accurately and precisely as it is or not. The messengers that he allows are not swift but slow and are called ignorance (delusion) and craving for existence. They come from all six gates and deliver inaccurate messages which are contrary to the reality as it is. The king (Consciousness) constantly receives false information about self, beings and things which exist when in real terms there aren’t such existences. They report about luxuries such as celebrations, parties, food, cinema, people, and vehicles etc., so called things of pleasure that exist outside the wall. These messengers tempt the king (or consciousness) to come out of the fortification & get caught up in worldly vicissitude & delusion. They make the king to believe things that are seen heard etc. exist out there, i.e. the distorted view of wholesomeness, permanence, satisfactoriness & self (soul). The messengers deliver messages of evil to make the king walk out of the fortress where he will be insecure and prone to harm. This is our life, says Venerable Mankadawala Sudassana Thero. ‘The old kamma is the City fortified with the wall with six gates and the new kamma occur when we move outside the wall.’

To free ourselves from this misery it is eminent that we employ an efficient, experienced and a wise gate keeper who will only allow messengers that deliver messages that are accurate and precisely as they are i.e, tranquillity & Insight, in other words the reality or the truth about the form to the mind.He should be knowledgeable about the true nature of unwholesomeness, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non self.

The messengers should go back on the same route they come from, i.e, the Noble Eight fold path. In other words, the visual experience should end where it occurs. What is apparent now is that they come from one direction (say through the eye) and go back through another route, e.g. the ear; we believe that what we hear can be seen as well. To ensure that the message that is delivered is accurate and precise as it is we need to be endowed with the Right View (Ditti Sampanna). In order to gain such wisdom we should first seek guidance from a Noble Friend (Kalyanamitta) who can direct us to the right path.

We can gain the Right View or in other words well purify our vision by any of the four ways that was discussed above, by knowing sense bases as they really are and their arising & passing nature, by knowing the four elements as they really are and their arising & passing nature, by knowing the five aggregates as they are and their arising & passing nature and all that arise due to conditions ceases when the conditions cease to exist. In short by knowing things as they really are.

Venerable Sudassana Thero explains this by examining the four elements and their arising & passing nature and he says by comprehending this dhamma in this manner one would know how it can be understood through the other methods as well. The Thero points out that the causes which condition arising of the four elements & arising of five aggregates, for instance, are the same. These causes as identified by Buddha are ignorance (avidya) Deeds (Kamma) Craving (tanha), Neutriments (ahara) and not knowing these four ( having no knowledge of Nibbanti lakshana). In the absence of these five causes the four elements (or five aggregates) cease to exist[3]. The one who comprehends this dhamma is known as the one who is endowed with the right view (Ditti Sampanna). However, mere understanding of these occurrences is limited to the understanding of the text only and not gaining the required wisdom. The right way is to deliver the message of emancipation accurately & precisely as it is to the king in terms of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non self that invoke deliverance of being free from impressions - signless (animitta cheto vimukti), not having anything substantial that we can long to - desireless (appanihita cheto vimukti) & free from notions of self or sentient – emptiness (sunnata cheto vimukti).

The Simile of the Chair

Ven. Sudassana Thero refers to a simile of a chair that is formed by four elements and conditioned by ignorance, kamma craving & nutrients. A carpenter decides to make a chair of a unique design that does not exist anywhere. First he conceives a design in his mind, a mental image of the chair he wants to create with components such as four legs, the back rest and decorative elements to his preference. This mental image is a kamma formation (Sanskara) and this process is referred to as conceiving a form for formation in the Buddhist cannon[4] , says Ven. Sudassana.

The carpenter’s concept for the chair he intends to make (mental image-Sankara) is conditioned by ignorance (delusion)[5]. With his desire (or craving) to make the chair and own it, he goes into the forest & cut a suitable tree that is formed by the four great elements. He would cut a log and saw it into different sections to fabricate the chair as per his mental image. He would keep shaping the timber by planning & carving until he is satisfied with the outcome. In other words he arranges the four great elements in space, consistent with the design of the chair he conceived in his mind. The final product, the chair is conditioned by ignorance, kamma, craving and nutrients (four great elements). Now when the carpenter sees the completed chair he recalls the mental image he originally conceived and therefore overlooks the actual causes that conditioned that outcome, i.e. Ignorence, Kamma Craving, Nutriments and not knowing that causality (nibbanti lakshana). He simply disregards that the chair is a formation of four great elements.

Silkworm and the Cocoon

This is a tragedy similar to that a silkworm undergoes, says Ven. Sudassana. The silkworm spins a cocoon to shield itself until it grows into a Moth. People remove these cocoons from mulberry trees and dip them in boiling water to extract the fiber (from the cocoon) which comes out as one continuous strand of silk. The silkworm meets the unexpected death due to the cocoon it creates by itself. Similarly we undergo suffering due to formation (Sankara) that we create ourselves[6]. The state of formation is also known as Ayohana Sankara as we keep building up on our formations adding further detail.

What the carpenter has created is formation of four great elements in the space (air element) as conditioned by ignorance, kamma & craving. However, due to his delusion he begins to consider the four great elements in front of him (what he formed & fabricated) as a chair. The mental image he conceived is projected on the formation of four great elements to know it as a chair due to his delusion and therefore the final product can now deceive the others too. When the object composed of the four great elements gets deformed or damaged due to some reason the carpenter thinks the chair is broken or damaged.

This is a metaphor that the Venerable Thero uses to explain how we form the notion of mother for e.g. & strengthens the resultant bond by continuing to build on that (ayohana sankara). Owing to the love and attachment we have towards mother we like to see her as often as we can. When we see a formation or a shape where four elements are grouped similar to the shape we have conceived as mother, that mental image awakens in our mind and we overlook the fact that it is a formation of four elements. For instance, instead of seeing the element of hardness (Patavi) in the figure, we see mother’s hair and mother’s teeth etc. & we attribute everything that belongs to the mother (in the mental image) to the four elements formed in space.  Due to our defilements we see mother in the formation of four elements. When these four elements change we suffer due to decay of our mother and eventually due to the death of our mother. Once we comprehend the truth as it is (the reality) we will not be deceived anymore and hence be free from suffering.

When we close our eyes, though there is no eye, an object or eye consciousness, we can visualise ‘me’ myself. That is the impression we carry of our imagination formed due to ignorance (it is Sankara) which we keep grooming with craving. Our body develops & shapes according to the way we conceive the notion of ‘me’. We see ‘me’ only as we formed and not as a body composed of four elements.[7] The one who is endowed with the right view (ditti sampanna), or a stream winner does not see self, permanence, satisfactoriness or wholesomeness etc. in conditioned phenomena and hence is free from suffering being not deluded.

As long as there is greed, ill will & delusion we retain impressions of objects (nimithi anu nimithi) of self (person, sentient) & pleasurable things. The impressions stimulate our senses and thus we see people & things around us. Only the minds that are polluted with greed, hatred & delusion associate four elements. The one who sees arising ceasing nature of aggregates sees the emptiness & will not retain impressions thereby abandoning the defilements of greed hatred and delusion.

Getting back to the simile of the fortress with six gates, the message that needs to be delivered to the king is the truth of four elements and not distorted notions such as self-view. This is a profound dhamma that one needs to see with insight and hence cannot be comprehended by the unwise. The Path leads to deliverance (ceto vimukti) that is threefold as described above which is not gaining enlightenment but are the doorways to reach enlightenment.

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[1] Flame of the Forest  is a tropical tree which is also called Kinshuk (Sanskrit) or Kaala in Sinhala

[2] an area of virgin or secondary timberland in a dry tropical region cleared and cultivated

[3] these amount to 50 qualities 25 (5X5) for arising and 25 for ceasing explained in dhamma as sama panas lakshana

[4] Rupan Rupattaya Sakathan Abhisankaranthothi Sankaran

[5] As expressed in the doctrine of Dependent Origination, Formation is conditioned by ignorance.

[6] The formation (Sankara) is related to the plight of a silkworm in Buddhist scripts.

[7] Consciousness conditions Name Matter and Name matter conditions six sense bases.