The Seventh Fetter
My Experiences
With the falling away of the sixth fetter as insistence on there being objective form with me as the subject, the various things I experienced on a daily basis were no longer seen as objects, though the urge to have that kind of certainty was still there. By this, I came to understand that I had a life-long insistence that something surely has to be tangible and real. It was the misplaced conviction that experience has to be something more than “in the seen, simply the seen”.
As before, the inquiry was a matter of trial and error, in this case trying to figure out what the seventh fetter as arupa-raga, or insistence on the “formless”, could possibly refer to. At one point I noticed the unexpected tendency to withdraw from the mundane world, and I benefited from the caution from the Buddhist tradition that, at this stage, we need to “sow the seed of the body as form” in order to not seek to withdraw, but instead keep a workable sense of corporeal existence. Perhaps because I had many worldly responsibilities, this tendency to withdraw quickly stuck out like a sore thumb. Simply noticing and then reflecting on it for a few days effectively diffused it, and the inclination to withdraw evaporated.
I eventually started to meditate using the arupa or “formless” sphere approach, since the name of this meditation shared the same term as the name of the fetter. I became very adept at going through this meditation “practice”, especially the first three of the four stages in which the sense of there being space, consciousness and actual or real “things” was temporarily set aside. However, merely “getting into” these stages did not have much of an effect.
One night I wrote in my journal that, in looking at all the things I held up as real, I realized that the “perception” of them as being real was nothing more than an idea about perceiving them. The next morning, I sat down and entered the formless spheres as I often did, and quickly sunk into “neither perception nor non-perception”, the final formless sphere. It was by far the most solidly I had experienced this sphere, which had often been a rather tentative experience. This time, it felt like falling down a well.
From this vantage point, I saw how the notion of “perception” as an actual faculty or ability leads to the creation that everything I experienced was an actual “thing”. Perception might be described as the belief that actual “somethings” can be detected. Thus, if the belief in a faculty of “perception” persists, so will the tendency to try to locate some-thing real.
And yet, in this fourth stage of the meditation, I could clearly see that there really wasn’t anything to which the label “perception” applied. Instead, I had always just assumed there was. It was undeniably clear: there was no such thing as "perception" happening, by which the belief in something called “perception” as something I had evaporated.
After this shift, at first it felt like being in a state of “pre-phenomena”, a comparatively free experience without the need to recognize anything as real, a process which I realized required so much energy. Initially, experience seemed to be a smeared-together collection of sense impressions, but that was only in comparison to how I saw things previously, since the nominal boundaries of various “things” like chair and lamp were still available to be recognized as necessary. For several days afterwards, there were also what might be called echoes of things, where it seemed as though what I was seeing was starting to reform into an actual “something”. I often had to remind myself: “No, really! You aren't actually perceiving anything!”.
One of the most striking aspects of seeing through the illusion of perception was that formless sphere meditation, as the temporary setting aside of perception, "something-ness", consciousness and space, was no longer a meaningful practice. I realized that since I no longer mentally created or believed in (for example) “space”, there was no longer a need or even opportunity to temporarily set it aside. Instead, I could simply note that there is no such thing as “space” if I happened to notice.
While there were again no fireworks or reboots of consciousness, it was nevertheless a very substantial change in experience. It required a few days to understand what had occurred and changed, and some weeks of settling and integration. As opposed to the profoundly joyous experience of breaking desire and ill will, it was more an ongoing appreciation of the implications of there being no such thing as a perceiver, perceived or perception, a recurring “well, what do you know…”.
One surprising but obvious change to daily experience was that I no longer experienced space or time. It became clear that the mental creation of both required the belief in "somethings" that I was ostensibly perceiving: those apparent "somethings" took up space, and one thing happening after another is how we (and clocks and their regular ticking) tell time. Also, without a believable notion of "things" that rise and fall in "time" and "space", the concept of "impermanence" fell away, at least as a believable quality of "the way things are" as I had been taught. Instead, "impermanence" is simply a concept. While I could still understand how to put IKEA® furniture together, the phrase "all things are impermanent" was no longer the way in which anything could be reflected upon or understood - impermanence could no longer be experienced. Since impermanence had to that point been a central aspect of what I thought Buddhism was about, it was here that I started to slowly unlearn this deeply-rooted but erroneous belief.
If the sixth fetter involves the illusion of a “looker” as the subject, the seventh fetter involves seeing through the illusion of “looking”, the notion that such a process actually occurs. Sensory experience continued, but the subtle illusion that something is truly being “perceived” was no longer present. Dualistic "me and not me" tendencies all but ceased – I would describe it as there no longer being enough identification with experience for any noticeable duality to even get going.
Anything tentatively recognized, though useful for daily life, was clearly a mental construct. For example,there was no longer “I'm seeing that tree”; rather, it was just the temporary thought “tree”. In terms of the Bāhiya Sutta, the phrase “in the seen, simply the seen” finally rang true, where “what” was seen could only be described as "the seen", without a seer, something in particular that was seen, or a faculty or means of seeing. There was still the nominal perception of “trees” and other things, but without the notion that they are anything more than temporary thoughts and images which, as it turns out, is sufficient to get through the day.
Many presumed bedrocks of experience fell away, since I no longer assembled and maintained them. There was no longer a tangible identification with the body: a body scan, once useful as a meditation device, turned up nothing more than the various sensations that can be compiled into a “body” if need be. There was also no longer the belief in something called a “mind”, an entity that processes and displays experience: there was instead an immediacy to experience which didn’t require inferring any such mental entity.
While much of the above is cast in the negative, that’s a significant aspect of it: the absence of misconceptions about what is happening. However, it was also a consistently pleasant and even joyful experience, one of gently smiling and just getting on with life. Rather than being dissociated from life, there was an increased tendency and ability to “lean in” to circumstances, difficult or not. There was simply not much “me” that remained to get in the way of just being with people and situations. Even my “favorite” contentious issue lost its potency, having gone from being unbearable to maddening, then serious, noticeable, and finally just another situation to engage with. It’s definitely not a matter of just going along with what someone else says, but rather having both the confidence and the sensitivity to find a mutually-beneficial way forward.
As with seeing through the illusion of a “self”, we already know how to function with such a new perspective; this knowledge has simply been obscured. There was an intuitive confidence in going to work, talking with family/friends, driving in traffic, etc. and otherwise getting on with life. I had a dream a few days after the illusion of "perception" broke which seemed to help the pieces fall into place, where I was walking along the narrow shoulder of a busy two-lane road with my eyes shut, peeking only occasionally to see where the white shoulder stripe was and perhaps what or who else was around. I knew I didn't have to constantly look for every car or pedestrian coming by, but rather could trust that I would know when to peek. In daily life, it came down to intuitively knowing when to recognize something, an image or appearance that is “real enough” to effectively engage with people and situations, and this arrangement can simply be trusted.
In terms of inquiry, the final formless sphere is well suited to an Insight Inquiry approach, in that we see that there is in fact no such thing as the faculty of “perception” that we can identify with. Fortunately, at this stage, accessing and working within the formless spheres can be quite straightforward, even without previous experience of them. Alternately, it can be a matter of noticing something such as a book or a thought about breakfast, and searching for where exactly that “perception” occurs, what might feel like the “thinging” process takes place. I have found both of these two approaches effective in mentoring others.
As before, the inquiry was a matter of trial and error, in this case trying to figure out what the seventh fetter as arupa-raga, or insistence on the “formless”, could possibly refer to. At one point I noticed the unexpected tendency to withdraw from the mundane world, and I benefited from the caution from the Buddhist tradition that, at this stage, we need to “sow the seed of the body as form” in order to not seek to withdraw, but instead keep a workable sense of corporeal existence. Perhaps because I had many worldly responsibilities, this tendency to withdraw quickly stuck out like a sore thumb. Simply noticing and then reflecting on it for a few days effectively diffused it, and the inclination to withdraw evaporated.
I eventually started to meditate using the arupa or “formless” sphere approach, since the name of this meditation shared the same term as the name of the fetter. I became very adept at going through this meditation “practice”, especially the first three of the four stages in which the sense of there being space, consciousness and actual or real “things” was temporarily set aside. However, merely “getting into” these stages did not have much of an effect.
One night I wrote in my journal that, in looking at all the things I held up as real, I realized that the “perception” of them as being real was nothing more than an idea about perceiving them. The next morning, I sat down and entered the formless spheres as I often did, and quickly sunk into “neither perception nor non-perception”, the final formless sphere. It was by far the most solidly I had experienced this sphere, which had often been a rather tentative experience. This time, it felt like falling down a well.
From this vantage point, I saw how the notion of “perception” as an actual faculty or ability leads to the creation that everything I experienced was an actual “thing”. Perception might be described as the belief that actual “somethings” can be detected. Thus, if the belief in a faculty of “perception” persists, so will the tendency to try to locate some-thing real.
And yet, in this fourth stage of the meditation, I could clearly see that there really wasn’t anything to which the label “perception” applied. Instead, I had always just assumed there was. It was undeniably clear: there was no such thing as "perception" happening, by which the belief in something called “perception” as something I had evaporated.
After this shift, at first it felt like being in a state of “pre-phenomena”, a comparatively free experience without the need to recognize anything as real, a process which I realized required so much energy. Initially, experience seemed to be a smeared-together collection of sense impressions, but that was only in comparison to how I saw things previously, since the nominal boundaries of various “things” like chair and lamp were still available to be recognized as necessary. For several days afterwards, there were also what might be called echoes of things, where it seemed as though what I was seeing was starting to reform into an actual “something”. I often had to remind myself: “No, really! You aren't actually perceiving anything!”.
One of the most striking aspects of seeing through the illusion of perception was that formless sphere meditation, as the temporary setting aside of perception, "something-ness", consciousness and space, was no longer a meaningful practice. I realized that since I no longer mentally created or believed in (for example) “space”, there was no longer a need or even opportunity to temporarily set it aside. Instead, I could simply note that there is no such thing as “space” if I happened to notice.
While there were again no fireworks or reboots of consciousness, it was nevertheless a very substantial change in experience. It required a few days to understand what had occurred and changed, and some weeks of settling and integration. As opposed to the profoundly joyous experience of breaking desire and ill will, it was more an ongoing appreciation of the implications of there being no such thing as a perceiver, perceived or perception, a recurring “well, what do you know…”.
One surprising but obvious change to daily experience was that I no longer experienced space or time. It became clear that the mental creation of both required the belief in "somethings" that I was ostensibly perceiving: those apparent "somethings" took up space, and one thing happening after another is how we (and clocks and their regular ticking) tell time. Also, without a believable notion of "things" that rise and fall in "time" and "space", the concept of "impermanence" fell away, at least as a believable quality of "the way things are" as I had been taught. Instead, "impermanence" is simply a concept. While I could still understand how to put IKEA® furniture together, the phrase "all things are impermanent" was no longer the way in which anything could be reflected upon or understood - impermanence could no longer be experienced. Since impermanence had to that point been a central aspect of what I thought Buddhism was about, it was here that I started to slowly unlearn this deeply-rooted but erroneous belief.
If the sixth fetter involves the illusion of a “looker” as the subject, the seventh fetter involves seeing through the illusion of “looking”, the notion that such a process actually occurs. Sensory experience continued, but the subtle illusion that something is truly being “perceived” was no longer present. Dualistic "me and not me" tendencies all but ceased – I would describe it as there no longer being enough identification with experience for any noticeable duality to even get going.
Anything tentatively recognized, though useful for daily life, was clearly a mental construct. For example,there was no longer “I'm seeing that tree”; rather, it was just the temporary thought “tree”. In terms of the Bāhiya Sutta, the phrase “in the seen, simply the seen” finally rang true, where “what” was seen could only be described as "the seen", without a seer, something in particular that was seen, or a faculty or means of seeing. There was still the nominal perception of “trees” and other things, but without the notion that they are anything more than temporary thoughts and images which, as it turns out, is sufficient to get through the day.
Many presumed bedrocks of experience fell away, since I no longer assembled and maintained them. There was no longer a tangible identification with the body: a body scan, once useful as a meditation device, turned up nothing more than the various sensations that can be compiled into a “body” if need be. There was also no longer the belief in something called a “mind”, an entity that processes and displays experience: there was instead an immediacy to experience which didn’t require inferring any such mental entity.
While much of the above is cast in the negative, that’s a significant aspect of it: the absence of misconceptions about what is happening. However, it was also a consistently pleasant and even joyful experience, one of gently smiling and just getting on with life. Rather than being dissociated from life, there was an increased tendency and ability to “lean in” to circumstances, difficult or not. There was simply not much “me” that remained to get in the way of just being with people and situations. Even my “favorite” contentious issue lost its potency, having gone from being unbearable to maddening, then serious, noticeable, and finally just another situation to engage with. It’s definitely not a matter of just going along with what someone else says, but rather having both the confidence and the sensitivity to find a mutually-beneficial way forward.
As with seeing through the illusion of a “self”, we already know how to function with such a new perspective; this knowledge has simply been obscured. There was an intuitive confidence in going to work, talking with family/friends, driving in traffic, etc. and otherwise getting on with life. I had a dream a few days after the illusion of "perception" broke which seemed to help the pieces fall into place, where I was walking along the narrow shoulder of a busy two-lane road with my eyes shut, peeking only occasionally to see where the white shoulder stripe was and perhaps what or who else was around. I knew I didn't have to constantly look for every car or pedestrian coming by, but rather could trust that I would know when to peek. In daily life, it came down to intuitively knowing when to recognize something, an image or appearance that is “real enough” to effectively engage with people and situations, and this arrangement can simply be trusted.
In terms of inquiry, the final formless sphere is well suited to an Insight Inquiry approach, in that we see that there is in fact no such thing as the faculty of “perception” that we can identify with. Fortunately, at this stage, accessing and working within the formless spheres can be quite straightforward, even without previous experience of them. Alternately, it can be a matter of noticing something such as a book or a thought about breakfast, and searching for where exactly that “perception” occurs, what might feel like the “thinging” process takes place. I have found both of these two approaches effective in mentoring others.