Turning the lamp inwards: the split in dependent co-arising (part 1)

Within Buddhism there are some practices that are described as “turning the lamp inwards”. What is the meaning of this phrase? How can it be practiced?

I have been revisiting the Shurangama Sutra recently and inspiration arose to share some of my own explorations in this area of Dharma

In the Shurangama Sutra there is a portion where the Buddha and Ajnatakaundinya speak about the realization of guest/host. A quote is below.

”World Honored One, it is like a traveler who stops as a guest at a roadside inn, perhaps for the night or perhaps for a meal. When he has finished lodging there or when the meal is finished, he packs his baggage and sets out again. He does not remain there at leisure. The host himself, however, does not go far away. Considering it this way, the one who does not remain is called the guest, and the one who does remain is called the host. The word ‘guest,’ then, means ‘one who does not remain.’ Again, when the sky clears up, the morning sun rises with all resplendence, and its golden rays stream into a house through a crevice to reveal particles of dust in the air. The dust dances in the rays of light, but the empty space is motionless. Considering it this way, what is clear and still is called space, and what moves is called dust. The word ‘dust,’ then, means ‘that which moves.’” The Buddha said, “So it is.”

The second section of the Shurangama Sutra

When I first read this, it put into simple words something I had felt was quite difficult to communicate clearly. Within the mind of the meditator, anything that comes and goes, or that is seen to be not “I/me/mine” could be described as “guests”; they arrive and depart from the experience. The host would perhaps describe the awareness, knowing and understanding that serves as the “theater” that the “guests” arrive at, perform within and depart from.

But this description too did not seem to get to the real truth of experience, it just seemed to point to deeper parts of it. For years I kept coming back to how this fit into the picture and one day a few threads came together to form a new perspective, one I will detail below. Please take this with a grain of salt, it is still just an ongoing exploration.

What if the “guest” portion could describe the second part of the model of dependent co-arising, and the “host” portion describes the first part? What is dependent co-arising you say?

The dependent co-arising model is a series of stages (often 12) that describe how delusion leads to suffering. The list can be read from the bottom to the top for our purposes. I hope to attempt to describe dependent origination in a later post, it can be a dense topic to try to unpack (even the Buddha described it as complex).

The stages of dependent co-arising

• Aging, death, etc.
• Birth
• Becoming
• Clinging
• Craving
• Feeling tone
• Contact
• Six-fold sense bases
• Body and mind
• Sensual consciousness
• Activities
• Ignorance

Marked in blue is the first portion, and marked in grey is the second portion. For the purposes of this post, it could be said that due to the first stage (ignorance) the nature of experience is not understood, and so it in turn leads to a series of behaviors and perspectives that end in experiencing suffering (aging, death, etc). If the ignorance did not take place, then the rest would not play out and that being could be described as liberation from experiencing suffering.

I propose that perhaps the list could be seen from the perspective below.

• Guest
  • Aging, death, etc.
  • Birth
  • Becoming
  • Clinging
  • Craving
  • Feeling tone
  • Contact
• Host
  • Six-fold sense bases
  • Body and mind
  • Sensual consciousness
  • Activities
  • Ignorance

What am I getting at? What if the distinction between guest and host could be used to describe two different aspects of the behaviors that lead to suffering?

Observing and learning from contact upwards is learning about and creating disenchantment towards the behavior related to “guests” (sensory contacts), ultimately resulting in the mind getting fed up with them and letting go of any future grasping or clinging at that which comes and goes.

Observing and learning from the six-fold sense bases down is learning about and creating disenchantment towards “hosts”, layers of fabrication placed on direct experience that are held to be true and that get applied to “guests” at contact.

By skillfully observing events at the contact or feeling tone layers, the experience can shift to where there is not any suffering tied to the behavior around guests, and when they are finally let go of, the guests no longer move the mind. This approach is often pointed to by Buddhist teachers, and I can confirm that it works. Perhaps however, what is pointed at by the “host” portion of dependent co-arising is liberation that seemingly goes deeper than this.

When the mind watches “guests”, then the learning is largely around behaviors related to the “guests”, but they may still be taken as reality. When the lamp is turned inwards, the mind is aware of the guest activity but the perspectives that the guests are seen from are the place where deep observation and learning are taking place.

By seeing through the stages that make up the apparent “host”, the layers of fabrication that overlay experience can be be seen through, until there remains no guest/host division, no theater that things play out in, non-duality. This in turn causes all of the stages of dependent co-arising to cease to play out, since the root issue has been resolved.

And….this is exactly what seems to be pointed to in the Analysis of Dependent Co-arising Sutta.

“Now from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications. From the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness. From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form. From the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of the six sense media. From the cessation of the six sense media comes the cessation of contact. From the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling. From the cessation of feeling comes the cessation of craving. From the cessation of craving comes the cessation of clinging/sustenance. From the cessation of clinging/sustenance comes the cessation of becoming. From the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of birth. From the cessation of birth, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of stress & suffering.”

SN 12.2 Analysis of dependent co-arising Sutta

So if one wishes to turn the lamp inwards so to speak, it can be done in the following way. Start at contact for any of the six senses. We will use hearing in this example.

Instead of watching the sounds or content of what is heard, simply notice that sounds and lack of sounds happen (guest) and the knowing they occur within (host). Over time this becomes more and more easily observable.

At that point begin observing the hearing and knowing, and watch its behavior and function. Over time the host perspective is seen through and dissolved, each time corresponding to a lower rung or section of dependent co-arising. When ignorance itself is penetrated, the lamp that has been turned inwards penetrates to the true nature of experience. In turn the rest of dependent co-arising ceases to play out.

This is experienced something like this.

• Contact
  • Sounds happening within hearing and knowing.
• Six-fold sense bases
  • The hearing input seems to happen at the ear.
• Body and mind
  • The hearing input seems to be a body experience, not a mental one. The experience of “ear” however has faded or vanished.
• Sensual consciousness
  • All of experience is merged into mental, including the input that was viewed as “hearing”. The experience of “body” has faded or vanished.
• Activities
  • There is activity happening within emptiness.
• Ignorance
  • All experience IS emptiness.
• Non-duality
  • Hard to describe. There simply “is”…

As you can see, in this practice, the content of the sense being observed is relatively unimportant. It is instead the context and perspective it is experienced from that changes and is seen through progressively. When the fabricated perspectives are all penetrated, there is a dropping into, or resting in non-fabrication. This non-fabrication may be described as non-dual, absent of any subject/object, center-less awareness.

The mind can then observe and learn about what it is like to function in this way. When the other habitual perspectives re-assemble, the mind is able to directly contrast these perspectives with the non-dual perspective that was experienced earlier when ignorance was absent.

It is my hope that this may inspire others to explore and perhaps add their input and experiences.

Continued in part 2