This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Insights on Knowledge ~ Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good evening, good evening. Welcome. Happy President’s Day. I admit I kind of forgot it was President’s Day until just as I was driving here, there was a sign. Like, “Oh, right.” I don’t have a regular 9-to-5 job, so I sometimes forget that some of these Mondays are holidays. So whatever you did today, I hope it was delightful and nice. I know when I was a kid, this was ski week, right? With the President’s holiday, we would go skiing or something like that, go enjoy the winter.
So we’ll see if there’s something that arises in my mind to tie in President’s Day with what I’m going to talk about. There might be nothing, but there might be something. We’ll see.
But I want to talk a little bit, starting with this story that’s in the suttas. And the story is of this woman, her name is Dhānañjānī. She stumbles and she trips, and then as she recovers her balance, she says the homage to the Buddha. So in my mind, she’s like, “Oh my God,” or “Jesus,” you know, it’s something like this, right? Except that she says, “Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammāsambuddhassa.”1
Some of you will recognize that that’s a part of a chant that we do even now today. But here’s something that was, you know, thousands of years ago, kind of gets recorded as the way that she—this thing that she says when she trips. The veracity of that story is a little bit questionable because I don’t think somebody would say something quite that long. Nevertheless, the story is she says this, and then somebody nearby, a man named Sarva, who was a priest of the dominant religious tradition of that time, Brahmanism, is quite offended that she would say something like that. And he says to her, “I can’t believe that you just paid homage to that bald-pated recluse.”
So he’s insulting the Buddha. But even though the Buddha has hair, I guess in this story he’s bald, and that this is a common insult that other people talk about the Buddha. They say he’s a shaveling, you know, because he shaves his head or something like this. And then she says, “Well, you don’t know the wisdom of the Buddha, and if you did, you would not be insulting him.” And I give him credit. He says, “Okay, well, the next time he’s in town, let me know, and I’m going to go hear about this Buddha person and see what he has to say.”
Because this is how it was back then, right? You had to hear the teachings. There weren’t books or, you know, there wasn’t certainly meditation centers or retreat centers or anything like that. So you had to hear from the teacher themselves or one of their students. So as the story goes, the Buddha eventually finds its way to that part of where they were living, and this guy Sarva goes to talk to the Buddha.
He asks about him. He says—this is paraphrased—”There are spiritual teachers who teach others after finding a final and ultimate insight. And where is Master Gotama?” So he’s not even calling him venerable sir or the blessed one or anything like this. He’s using his given name, “Master Gotama.” “Where does Master Gotama stand among them?”
So Sarva is asking, “Okay, there’s all kinds of spiritual teachers. Like, who are you amongst all these? Do you are you a follower of this person? Do you do something else? Like, who are you? What’s your story?” And the Buddha replies, “Well, actually, there’s a difference among spiritual teachers based on what wisdom they teach about.”
There’s three different bases or foundations that teachers can use for authority for their teachings. And he says one is what he calls the traditionalist. And these are teachers that are relying on the tradition, what other people behind them have discovered or taught. And this was the truth for Brahmanism at this time. So Sarva, he’s a priest, and he follows this tradition. That tradition believed that everything that needed to be known to live a good life, to have a good life and a good whatever happens after death, is already known. And it was revealed to other people a long time ago, and it’s been preserved in the tradition. So you just have to know the tradition. You just have to study what other people have known. You have to memorize it and really know that, a lot of memorization. So that’s one way that spiritual teachers come to be, is because they are just memorizing what people before them have been—what’s been passed down through the tradition.
And then they believe that just, you know, the sacred texts were the most authoritative, or whatever it says in the text, that’s all you need. And then there’s a second group, the Buddha is describing, that actually they think that the spiritual texts have some value but need some logic and some reasoning and some philosophy to be added on to them. Maybe some way to work with them, like, “Well, okay, if it says this in the sacred text, then it must also mean that.” So there’s a little maybe some more interpretation that they add on to the sacred text. And he called these the reasoners or the philosophers or the logicians, people that are taking it one step further.
And then the Buddha says there’s a third type of teacher who teaches based on their direct experience, from what they’ve actually known for themselves. This idea that you need to have this personal and direct experience of reality or acquaintance of reality, of the way things are, by things that they really are. And this is often the contemplatives or those who have meditative practices are the ones that can touch into seeing things more clearly.
Then the Buddha says, “I’m one of these third ones, these experientialists, these ones who have come to know things through my own experience, through discovering them.” And then he goes on to give Sarva his biography, where the Buddha is talking about where he did all these meditative practices, he did all of these ascetic practices, and realized that neither of those were the way to complete awakening. But instead, it was some meditative state of calm and ease and stability and stillness that allowed the Buddha to see things clearly and that allowed for his awakening.
So there’s this way in which the Buddha, he’s telling Sarva that he’s a teacher that is based on his direct experience. And in fact, we can see in the very first teaching that the Buddha gives—this is the one that the tradition holds is the very first teaching—in it he says, “In regard to things unheard before”—so saying, “you know, I didn’t hear this from anybody else, this isn’t something that I just learned”—”there arose in me vision, knowledge, wisdom, higher knowledge, and illumination.” So he’s talking about how this wisdom arises, and this knowledge and higher knowledge. We could debate what does higher knowledge mean exactly, but what I want to point to here is this idea of direct experience.
There’s a way in which we know things differently when we’ve actually experienced them. We know what it’s like through our experiences is so different than if we just hear about it or read about it or maybe hear somebody else talk about it or listen to a podcast people talking about it. This is a silly example, but not too long ago, I was going outside in a place and the temperature was cold. And I looked at the thermometer or looked to see, “Okay, what is the temperature?” Like, “Oh, okay, that’s not so bad. I’ll be fine with what I’m wearing.” And then I go outside and I’m like, “Okay, it’s fine. It’s fine.” No, it’s not fine. It’s really cold. So then there’s this like, “Oh, yeah, there’s something when 38 degrees…” Like I read that, like, “Okay, that’s kind of colder than what we normally think,” but it’s not until you actually experience 38 degrees… For some people who might be listening to this who think 38 degrees is nothing, I’ll just say, you know, we’re here in the Bay Area where 38 degrees is a cooler temperature. That it wasn’t until you experienced it, like, “Oh, this is very different than just reading about a number and imagining it and thinking it’s cooler.” And just to have this experience.
I don’t know if that’s a good example. I mean, the typical example that I’m often giving is something about—maybe you have this experience too—is we all understand that people are going to die, pets are going to die. We all know this intellectually. We know this. But I’ll say for myself, it wasn’t until my father died that I realized, “Oh, yeah, this thing about death is different when it touches you personally.” It’s different than just an understanding.
And so the Buddha, he’s pointing to this different way of knowing things just through experience, or maybe we might even say some insights. This vision, knowledge, wisdom, higher knowledge, and illumination. And I appreciate in this list is both we have this vision and illumination. And even in contemporary times, we might say things like, “Oh, I see.” Like there’s something about seeing, and then there’s something about knowing. And like these are related, but maybe they aren’t exactly the same. And we see this in the Buddha’s teaching sprinkled throughout about all kinds of things is this expression, yathābhūtañāṇadassana,2 that means like knowledge and vision of things as they are. So knowledge and vision, like putting together knowledge and vision, like to see things and to know things, and these things are as how they really are. And I’ll talk about this in a moment. I’ll unpack that a little bit.
But I also wanted to say that the Buddha, he also, when he was describing to Sarva as part of his biography about how did he come to have these experiences that supported him in becoming awakened, becoming liberated, and then in part of this biography that gets repeated in a few places in the suttas, he says, “This Dharma3 that I have attained”—so Dharma we could say is teaching or the way things are, are different ways that we can translate that, doctrine, but it’s not doctrine here because it’s something that he has attained, it’s not something that he’s heard—”This Dharma that I have attained is profound, hard to see, and hard to understand. It’s peaceful and sublime, but unattainable by mere reasoning. It’s subtle and to be experienced by the wise.”
So he’s pointing to also like it’s not just reasoning, it’s not just thinking about things, but is experienced by the wise. So the wise are being those who maybe are following his teachings or… yeah, how do we define the wise? It’s we kind of get into this loop here. The word is paṇḍita4 for wise here. One who has wisdom experiences this Dharma. So maybe we could say it’s the wisdom that has put aside what is extra, what is not needed, that enables them to see this deeply.
So the Buddha, when he’s talking to Sarva, he says, “Well, there’s these three types of teachers who come to teaching through three different routes.” And I’d like to offer that we actually need all three of these types of teachings or these three ways of coming to understand things: both teachings from others who have gone before us, some reasoning, some logic, maybe some philosophy if you have an inclination that way, as well as some direct experience. This is a way in which we can make the teachings our own and in which we can find the liberation, experience the freedom and the peace that’s being pointed to.
Because maybe when we first start this practice—certainly this was the case for me—I heard a talk by accident. I was at a yoga class and somebody came in and started to talk about the Dharma, which was completely unexpected for me. And I certainly would not have gone to that yoga class if I had known that was what was going to happen. But this person started speaking and something in my heart, I don’t know what it was, I found myself kind of like with tears in my eyes, kind of like, “Oh my goodness.” It just resonated with me so deeply. And here I am all these years later, having dedicated my life to this now.
But there’s a way in which we might read a book, hear a talk these days, listen to an app, listen to a podcast, and then we might say, “Oh, okay, yeah, this makes sense. I can see this.” Maybe there’s something that resonates for us and maybe there’s something that feels like, “Okay, yeah, I can feel that there’s some truth here and it’s not asking me to get rid of all of my logic or independent thinking.” Maybe, for example, we hear this teaching that clinging or grasping leads to suffering. And then the teaching says, “Well, if you want less suffering, do less clinging.” We could just see, “Oh, there’s some clear logic here.” It’s not asking us to just believe something.
So we could say—I heard this expression a number of years ago and I really liked it—that just like hearing these teachings in the beginning, before we perhaps have a meditation practice or perhaps before we’ve really tried to bring them into our lives, we could call them as like “borrowed wisdom.” Like, you know, we’ve heard from others, they seem to make sense. But then for us to find this own wisdom, this own knowledge and true knowledge or direct knowledge for ourselves, we bring them into practice. We engage with them, maybe like roll up our sleeves in a particular way.
And so maybe there’s Ajahn Amaro, who is a well-respected monastic in this tradition. He used to be here in Northern California, and he now is in England. He heads up a monastery. And he said that the teachings need to be fully internalized, fully actualized, made real, brought to life through our practice during the course of the day, here in this moment. And I appreciate this way of internalized, actualized, and made real by experiencing them, discovering them for ourselves.
And so we might say, “Well, how do we do this? What is this?”
There’s a way in which we can maybe use some of this borrowed wisdom, some of the teachings as a way to help support this exploration, this exploration in our lives, exploration in our practice. And there’s a number of ways in which we can do this, and I’m just offering one can be really powerful and transformative. Well, ideally, I could say all of them can be powerful and transformative, but I’ll offer these. And these are some of this teaching of Anicca, Dukkha, and Anattā.5 Some of you will recognize these as the three characteristics. That is that there’s change and uncertainty, Anicca. That things are unsatisfactory, that there’s this little sense of like things aren’t quite right, they could be a little bit better, Dukkha. And then this sense that there isn’t a constant, stable, controllable self that’s inside here somehow, and that’s Anattā.
I’m using a lot of Pali words today for some reason. I apologize if that’s—no need to remember any of these. Some people like it, some people really dislike it. That’s perfectly fine. I think I started teaching Pali recently again, so that’s maybe why it’s more in my head.
So these are ways in which we can use to explore our experience. So just exploring this idea of inconstancy and impermanence. Is what we’re experiencing, whatever it is, is it completely static, never changing? Or are there some fluctuations? Are there sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not there? Or is there some gradations or flickering or same intensity, maybe a different intensity? Just whatever experience you’re having, completely mundane, washing the dishes, is it the same time, exactly the same as the last time you washed dishes? Is the experience itself just one thing that’s exactly the same getting repeated? And this seems so obvious, like, “No, the things are changing.” So the intellectual mind understands that. But there’s a way in which if we really like bring this question and explore driving to work, is it exactly the same? We might be going the same route, leaving at the same time, but it’s not exactly the same, is it? So using this exploration of what inconstancy, the changing nature.
And then the second is this idea of, “Well, is this completely satisfactory? Is this a lasting source of happiness?” Because if this is satisfactory, will it always bring me happiness? Will I always be happy now that I have found this, this whatever it might be? And when we initially, we’ll say, “But I have lots of beautiful, wonderful experiences in my life.” Hopefully you do. Hopefully everybody’s life has these experiences. But then if we start to look at them, there’s often just this really quiet, “Oh, I hope this lasts.” “Oh, what did I do so that I can get here again so I can have this other experience, so I can have it again?” Or there’s this little thing like, “Oh, I don’t want this to end. Okay, how can I prolong this?” There’s this quiet little niggling that’s happening during even the most fantastic experiences that we’re having. And so it’s pointing to even the things that are wonderful, there’s this tiny sense of this afraid of loss or wanting a little bit more. I’m not saying that’s the dominant experience. I’m saying that we don’t discover things that are completely 100% stress-free forever. If you found it, you would not be here on a Monday night, right? So they might be sources of happiness and pleasure and all that kind of stuff, but they’re not like lasting sources of happiness.
And so this is another way that we can explore, not to make it be a downer, because actually what I have found is that if I’m having a tremendous experience, something that’s just fantastic, hiking and seeing these views that are just so uplifting… and I was hiking not too long ago and went to a place I hadn’t been before, and there’s these views I just thought, “Wow, it was just amazing.” It was just, I don’t know, a little bit breathtaking. And then I start to notice, “Why didn’t I come here before? How come of all these years I’ve never been here before? And I’m going to have to come back here later, and I need to show somebody else this.” And like there’s all this kind of stuff that shows up. But what I noticed is that when I recognized, “Oh, yeah, there’s that little bit of…” I’m going to call it Dukkha. Dukkha is this really—it’s this one word that has this huge range of meaning, and one can just be that tiny niggling little, “Yeah, something not quite right.” But when I acknowledged, “Oh, yeah, there’s that little tiny voice that sometimes shows up that says, ‘Oh, why didn’t I?’ or ‘It should be something like this,’” then I could let go of this, “Why didn’t I know this earlier? I better show somebody else.” And letting go of that just made it more beautiful. Like, “Oh, yeah, there’s this experience here. It won’t always be here at this particular…” I mean, the view will be there, but this experience will be changing. I will be different, the weather will be different, the light will be different, some of those trees will grow, and you know, whatever it might be. So acknowledging that little bit of Dukkha allowed a certain of letting go, which made even the beauty be a little bit more poignant and maybe even a little bit more beautiful, appreciation, gratitude arising.
So that’s a second way in which we can explore our experience, have some of these direct experiences of this unsatisfactory, not the lasting sources of happiness. And then the third way in which we can explore our experience is this idea of just exploring what is it that feels like there’s a me that’s having these experiences, maybe out there in some kind of way, or maybe there isn’t a location. Maybe there’s just a sense of all these experiences that are happening to this core here, this essence here. What gives me that idea? What makes me feel like that? We all do. It’s a natural thing to have that experience or to have that belief or to have that interpretation. But what is it that makes it feel like there’s this constant, or there’s a me somehow, this homunculus maybe that’s inside? To bring some curiosity to this, because if there’s a me, then there’s often this sense of mine and not mine, what belongs to this me and what doesn’t.
Certainly there are plenty of things that we don’t think are ours or we don’t think that we think they’re ours. If you were right now, wherever you’re sitting, if somebody were to come in late and to say, “Can you move? That’s actually my chair. I’m sitting there. That’s mine. I sat in it two weeks ago. I was in that location and I’m pretty sure that’s the exact same chair.” That seems silly, right? But there’s a way in which we often, like, “Okay, while you’re sitting there, you feel like, ‘Okay, this is my chair.’” But then, you know, as soon as you go away, it’s not. It’s just a chair again. There’s a way in which we have these subtle ways of thinking, “This is mine.” If I asked you guys to stand up and stretch or something and then to sit back down, chances are you would sit back down in the same chair because you have a feeling like, “Oh, this is mine.” Or not mine in terms of you own it, but somehow it has a relationship with you at this time.
Maybe that’s not a very good example, but there’s this way in which the sense of “I” or the sense of “me” is getting created by these thoughts that we have, these just mental events that they themselves don’t have any substance. But is this way that we feel like, “I’m this way. Well, I’m a person who likes to do things in a XYZ… I like to think about things analytically. I like to, or I just like to think about, I like to figure things out.” So they have this way in which they’ve identified that they’re an analytical person. But are you an analytical person when you’re dreaming, when you’re asleep and dreaming? Are you an analytical person when you knock on wood after you say something that… a little superstitious thing and you feel like you have to knock on wood or whatever it might be, right? There’s we have times when we’re not that way, even though we might think that we are all the time. So we might have the sense, “Oh, I’m the one that’s like this,” but actually it’s just that that’s a pattern that arises. And that’s a pattern of thought, a pattern of behaviors, but it’s not inherently who you are. It’s something that happens frequently and that you’re identified with. There’s nothing wrong with having those identifications, but it turns out that we need thoughts to support these identifications. We need plans, we need programs, we need to-do lists and ways that we spend our time to support this.
So there’s this way that as the mind starts to quiet down with the meditation practice, as well as when we’re just in daily life outside of meditation, we can just have this exploration like, “What is this sense of me? What is it?” And there’s this way there can be kind of like a, “What’s there?” or kind of this like turning around and looking at what’s looking, what’s doing the thinking, what is feeling these feelings, what is thinking these thoughts.
So this idea of having our own direct experience, and then we can borrow some of the wisdom that the Buddha has offered to help us explore our experience so that we can have our own insights, our own understandings. And then we don’t have to rely on what the Buddha is saying. We don’t have to have this borrowed wisdom. Instead, we can have our own.
So these teachings—Anicca, Dukkha, Anattā—these teachings of inconstancy, changing, impermanence, of unsatisfactoriness, and not a stable inherent core to the self or to anything, it turns out that just doesn’t exist. We can use these teachings as ways to investigate our experience. And you might even say that’s what insight is, is when we start to have our own understanding of them. We’re the Insight Meditation Center. We might say insight is to have your own direct experience of these in a way that leads to less suffering, in a way that leads to more peace and ease and freedom. There’s a way that we can define insight and become our own teacher, or maybe even become a Dharma teacher, or just have our own understanding.
Maybe one last thing that I’ll say here. One of the beauties, I think, of exploring our experience through these lenses, through these frameworks, through this borrowed wisdom of impermanence, not satisfactory, no inherent substantial core, is that it doesn’t require that we have any particular experience. It’s not like meditation has to be always pleasant in order for it to be impactful. It’s not like that we have to have things going our way or the way that we prefer things, like being our life or meditation practice or anything. We can bring these queries to whatever is happening, whatever is happening. And then we kind of like—the tyranny of wanting to have a good meditation session kind of starts to fall away. And you realize whatever is happening in your meditation practice, if the mind is all over the place or if there’s a lot of calm and stillness, whatever is happening, we can just bring this exploration to all of our experiences.
So then to close out the story, Sarva, having heard this from the Buddha, feels quite touched by this and decides to become a follower of the Buddha. So maybe there was something in that the Buddha said, because he was a priest in the dominant religion of the time, and he became a follower of the Buddha. So maybe there was something that recognized some of these teachings. And sadly, this little vignette with Dhānañjānī, this is all we know about her, is that she just trips and falls and says, “Namo Tassa.”
So thank you for your attention, and if you like, I will have some questions and answers.
This idea of direct experience, for me, I’ll say this is really meaningful, that we don’t just have to adopt beliefs, but you know, just like to investigate and explore for ourselves. Can anybody tie this in with President’s Day?
Yeah, I think that’s one of the things I like best about the practice is that it’s not dogmatic. I’m very rebellious in many ways. If somebody tells me to do something, not always, but… so yeah, I love, so far I’ve loved exploring what, how these things come up in my daily life and what it means. And the impermanence one I really like lately. Early in the morning, I sit with my coffee, stare out the window, and watch the light change. So I can see impermanence in the world, and I also see, okay, this is how I am when I wake up, what’s my state of whatever being, and then I see how it can shift and change in that time while I’m staring out the window.
Nice, nice. Thank you.
Elena, okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you all. And if you like, you’re welcome to come up and talk to me in person, but otherwise, I wish you a happy rest of the President’s Day today. Thank you.
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammāsambuddhassa: A Pali chant meaning “Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Self-Enlightened One.” It is a traditional way to pay respect to the Buddha. ↩
Yathābhūtañāṇadassana: A Pali term that translates to “the knowledge and vision of things as they really are.” It refers to a direct, non-conceptual insight into the true nature of reality. ↩
Dharma (or Dhamma in Pali): A core concept in Buddhism with multiple meanings, including the teachings of the Buddha, the universal law of nature, and the path to liberation. ↩
Paṇḍita: A Pali word for a wise or learned person, one who possesses wisdom (paññā). ↩
Anicca, Dukkha, Anattā: The three characteristics of existence in Buddhism. Anicca is impermanence or inconstancy. Dukkha is often translated as suffering, stress, or unsatisfactoriness. Anattā refers to the doctrine of “not-self,” the understanding that there is no permanent, unchanging, independent self or soul. ↩